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Here's a First-Look at the Tandy 3000HL
by R. Wayne Day
Forums Manager
Tandy Users Network - CompuServe
Copyright 1986 Golden Triangle Corporation
All Rights Reserved
New York City, NY (July 30, 1986) -- Tandy Corporation previewed
their "mini-AT", designated the Tandy 3000HL, this morning at a press
conference here. It combines the high-performance speed of the Tandy
3000 with the smaller footprint and price range of their Tandy 1000 line.
The 3000HL, destined to become the replacement for the Tandy 1200, rips
along at 8 MHz with an Intel 80286 microprocessor supporting up to
4 Megabytes of RAM. The faster clock rate can be slowed down with the
MODE command, in order to run software that requires the 4.77 MHz clock
rate. The same flexibility is available via system calls.
The base system comes with 512K of RAM (expandable to 640K on the main
board), one 40 track double-sided 360K drive, on-board floppy controller,
printer interface, clock/calendar, MS-DOS 3.2, GWBASIC and DeskMate II,
which has been changed to allow the individual Deskmate modules to act
as "pop-up" applications.
There is space on the circuit board for the addition of an 80287 Math
Co-Processor chip.
Expansion of system RAM has been made easier with a new SETUP option
program. SETUP creates a RAM parameter storage area using non-volitile
CMOS RAM, eliminating the need for configuration switches on the circuit
board. Up to two 2-Megabyte RAM boards can be added to the system,
addressing the additional memory using four 8-bit DMA channels and four
8-bit page registers.
The 3000HL has seven expansion slots available, one of which must be used
for the video driver (which is not included in the base unit). Four of
the slots are 8-bit XT-type slots, while three slots support the 16-bit
AT-type boards. The slots will accept standard PC length boards (up to
14 inches).
In addition to the one disk drive included in the base unit, there is
space for two additional half-height storage devices on the front panel
(similar to the current 3000). Optional storage devices include a new
Bernoulli rigid disk cartridge system the size of a standard half-height
floppy drive, a 1.2 MB floppy or a 20 and 40 MByte internal hard disk.
Rounding out the 3000HL will be the standard AT-compatible keyboard
currently used on the 3000.
MS-DOS 3.2 includes software selection of the clock speed, support for
both 8-bit and 16-bit hard disk controllers, a new print spooler, RAMDisk
(VDisk), support for up to 1.2 MBytes on 80 track double sided drives
(quad density) and 3.5 inch drives, and improvements to ATTRIB, MODE, FC
and HSECT. Additions to MS-DOS 3.2 include:
APPEND - adds PATH-like flexibility for DATA files
GRAFTABL - enables alternate character sets for ASCII CHR$ (128-255)
MLPART - allows multiple partitions of up to 32 Megabytes each on large
hard disk systems
SPOOLER - improved print spooler
VDISK - RAMDisk
System hardware reliability should be improved with a decrease in the
number of chips used on-board from previous models, thanks to the use of
Very Large Scale Integration (VSLI) technology.
The system will support the Protected Virtual Address mode of the 80286,
allowing it to provide for extended physical and virtual address space,
as well as memory protection and virtual memory management.