Uploaded December 2024 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Today we're taking a look at my Tandy 1500 HD laptop computer. Like many 1500 HDs, neither the floppy drive nor the hard drive are functional. So we're going to get creative and take advantage of some free space on the BIOS ROM to add the XTIDE Universal BIOS extension and boot MS-DOS via the serial port using SerDrive. Complete with a bonus appearance by the Tandy 3000 NL!
UPDATE: 115.2k baud works if you tell SerDrive to use named pipe mode (-p). It’s much more usable.
Music/SFX (in order):
None
Links:
XTIDE Universal BIOS: xtideuniversalbios.org
Intro & Book Report (0:00)
Power Up & A Look Inside (4:00)
ROM Spelunking / Adding XUB (6:35)
First XUB Test Power-Up (8:57)
Serial boot: Failed Attempts 1, 2, and 3 (10:49)
Serial boot: Slow success! (14:45)
Tandy Setup Program setup_15.com (17:47)
Hard and floppy drives over serial (18:51)
Outro (20:35)
I do these videos unscripted, so I apologize if the in-the-moment descriptions of things are a bit scattered. If you have any questions/comments about this video, you can find me in any of these fine locations:
The Tandy Discord Server
The CoCo Nation Discord Server
The TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo) group on Facebook
The CoCo Crew Podcast group on Facebook
On the Vintage Computer Forums (vcfed.org)
The TRS-80 Models I-4/4P Group on Facebook
Tandy / Radio Shack Model II /12 / 16 / 16B / 6000 Owner's Group on Facebook
X (I'm TJBChris there...)
Mastadon: TJBChris@mastadon.social
The Level29 BBS (I'm TJBChris there, too.)
Particles BBS (Guess who I am here? Yeah, TJBChris.)
Thanks for watching!
Today we're taking a look at my Tandy 1500 HD laptop computer. Like many 1500 HDs, neither the floppy drive nor the hard drive are functional. So we're going to get creative and take advantage of some free space on the BIOS ROM to add the XTIDE Universal BIOS extension and boot MS-DOS via the serial port using SerDrive. Complete with a bonus appearance by the Tandy 3000 NL!
UPDATE: 115.2k baud works if you tell SerDrive to use named pipe mode (-p). It’s much more usable.
Music/SFX (in order):
None
Links:
XTIDE Universal BIOS: xtideuniversalbios.org
Intro & Book Report (0:00)
Power Up & A Look Inside (4:00)
ROM Spelunking / Adding XUB (6:35)
First XUB Test Power-Up (8:57)
Serial boot: Failed Attempts 1, 2, and 3 (10:49)
Serial boot: Slow success! (14:45)
Tandy Setup Program setup_15.com (17:47)
Hard and floppy drives over serial (18:51)
Outro (20:35)
I do these videos unscripted, so I apologize if the in-the-moment descriptions of things are a bit scattered. If you have any questions/comments about this video, you can find me in any of these fine locations:
The Tandy Discord Server
The CoCo Nation Discord Server
The TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo) group on Facebook
The CoCo Crew Podcast group on Facebook
On the Vintage Computer Forums (vcfed.org)
The TRS-80 Models I-4/4P Group on Facebook
Tandy / Radio Shack Model II /12 / 16 / 16B / 6000 Owner's Group on Facebook
X (I'm TJBChris there...)
Mastadon: TJBChris@mastadon.social
The Level29 BBS (I'm TJBChris there, too.)
Particles BBS (Guess who I am here? Yeah, TJBChris.)
Thanks for watching!
