This is being written on my Tandy 1000TX, using Norton
Textra Writer 2.0, an older version of Textra than what I am used
to. My usual go to is Textra 7.0, which despite being released in
1994 should still run on this Tandy 1000TX - the problem is, my
copy of Textra 7.0 uses a disk-based installer that relies on
1.44Mb 3.5" floppies and the 1000TX can only handle 720Kb 3.5"
floppies. Theoretically I could have just copied it over from a
machine on which I have already installed it, but as I mentioned
in my last post, they're all put away at the moment. This 1000TX
also has a fully-functional 360Kb 5.25" FDD, which means I could
have probably made some disks for Textra 6.0 (1991), but it comes
on like 5 360Kb diskettes which would eat up a pretty significant
chunk of my known-good blank double density 5.25" floppies.
Norton Textra Writer 2.0 (1989) is a stripped-down version of
Textra sold to schools through the W.W. Norton publishing company
- but more importantly, it does not require an installer! I was
able to simply copy the executable over and be done with it.
I am very pleased with this machine - despite not exactly
having the best reputation historically, the Tandy 1000TX seems
to have been built relatively solid, but it is still very simple
to get into and work with. I acquired this machine bone stock,
with no expansion cards, no coprocessor, and only 640K of RAM. I
have since maxed out the RAM at 768K, added a 10Mhz 80287
coprocessor, an I/O card for a second serial port and the option
of a full-fat parallel port instead of the Tandy's odd edge
connector 'printer port,' as well as an XT-IDE / CF-IDE combo
card as a storage solution. I decided against a graphics card,
opting to instead rely on the onboard Tandy Graphics Adapter, and
opted-out of a networking card in favor of using the serial port
for connectivity. Since I don't have a TGA-compatible monitor or
a landline, I am using an MDA/CGA/EGA to HDMI convertor I
acquired from TexElec for my Tandy graphics and a WiFi-capable
serial modem emulator I acquired from TheOldNet for getting
online via BananaCom.
My next steps for this machine are to install a SmartWatch+,
a Dallas clock module alternative for the Tandy 1000 series that
uses regular coin batteries so I don't have to keep keying-in the
time and date at start up, and to replace the I/O card I have
installed with one a little more useful for this machine - the
current card has some conflicts with the built-in Tandy
functions. My long-term hope was initially to use this machine as
my dedicated 'retro-terminal' for BBSing and etc, but there are a
couple short-comings that another machine I recently found might
be able to better address, so now I think my plan is just to use
this as my XT-era games machine. If I get feeling really froggy
though, I might try to install ELKS at some point, haha.
