The Tandy 1000 RSX was the last computer to carry the Tandy 1000 name and is rare. These do not come up very often and when they do they are usually very expensive. The last one I saw on eBay a couple of years ago went for over $600. I am always keeping an eye out for one at a half way reasonable price. One with some condition issues came up for auction and it was only tested for power. I felt comfortable bidding $300. A couple of days later another one came up in nearly mint condition with a Buy It Now price of only $300 with free shipping. It had the original manual, paperwork, keyboard and mouse. My timing must have been perfect because I jumped on it and made the purchase. A couple of days later the auction ended for the other one and I increased my bid to $325 and I ended up getting that one for $323 plus $35 shipping.
The Tandy 1000 RSX in great condition was exactly as it appeared. It even had the original 52MB IDE drive in good working order. I have since put that aside and replaced it with a 256MB Compact Flash card. I upgraded the memory to the maximum 9MB, the Accumos AVGA2 VRAM to 512K and installed an IIT 387SX math coprocessor. I am currently running MS-DOS 6.22 and with everything installed I still have 85MB available. I installed a MK1869 (ESS Audio Drive) sound card and using a Xircom Pocket Ethernet parallel port adapter for networking. The one issue with the sound card is both it and Tandy DAC use DMA channel 1. I found out by temporarily changing the DMA channel to 3 for the MK1869 while using the Tandy DAC fixes the sound card issue. Switching back to DMA channel 1 for the MK1869 for Sound Blaster audio works just fine as the Tandy DAC does not cause any issues.
The Tandy 1000 RSX with condition issues was another story. It turned out to be cracked on the front face plate in 8 places. When taking the system apart for repairs, I found out the power switch plastic post was broken in two. My attempts to glue that did not work, but I did come up with a work around that alleviated the need to replace the power switch. I took the part of the plastic post that broke off and inserted it into the power button. I then took masking tape and covering it in two overlapping sections. You then insert the power button from the back of the front face plate and installed the case cover. This pushes the power button forward and the tape does not allow it to push through all the way. You can push the power button on and off normally and it feels exactly the same. There were also surface rust issues on the chassis. I cleaned the chassis and used Lime Away gel to remove the rust. The PC speaker and the cooling fan were attached using a thick adhesive tape. I had to remove this and scrape away the excess using Goo Gone. When reattaching the PC speaker and cooling fan, I used 3M clear double sided tape. This makes future removal much easier and it works well. I cleaned the case cover using a combination of 409 and baking soda. This got rid of all of the dirt and grime. The two case cover screws had been replaced with two screws with oval head screws that require a hex key driver. I picked up two replacement 10-24 3/8" oval head Phillips machine screws. They are not painted but look way better and these are the original type screws that would have come with the computer in the first place. I have the same upgrades in this Tandy 1000 RSX as the other, except I have a vintage ESS Audio Drive sound card with a Dream Blaster S2 wavetable board. Everything went together perfectly and overall this computer came out great.
Here are pictures of the Tandy 1000 RSX that was in excellent condition.
The Tandy 1000 RSX in great condition was exactly as it appeared. It even had the original 52MB IDE drive in good working order. I have since put that aside and replaced it with a 256MB Compact Flash card. I upgraded the memory to the maximum 9MB, the Accumos AVGA2 VRAM to 512K and installed an IIT 387SX math coprocessor. I am currently running MS-DOS 6.22 and with everything installed I still have 85MB available. I installed a MK1869 (ESS Audio Drive) sound card and using a Xircom Pocket Ethernet parallel port adapter for networking. The one issue with the sound card is both it and Tandy DAC use DMA channel 1. I found out by temporarily changing the DMA channel to 3 for the MK1869 while using the Tandy DAC fixes the sound card issue. Switching back to DMA channel 1 for the MK1869 for Sound Blaster audio works just fine as the Tandy DAC does not cause any issues.
The Tandy 1000 RSX with condition issues was another story. It turned out to be cracked on the front face plate in 8 places. When taking the system apart for repairs, I found out the power switch plastic post was broken in two. My attempts to glue that did not work, but I did come up with a work around that alleviated the need to replace the power switch. I took the part of the plastic post that broke off and inserted it into the power button. I then took masking tape and covering it in two overlapping sections. You then insert the power button from the back of the front face plate and installed the case cover. This pushes the power button forward and the tape does not allow it to push through all the way. You can push the power button on and off normally and it feels exactly the same. There were also surface rust issues on the chassis. I cleaned the chassis and used Lime Away gel to remove the rust. The PC speaker and the cooling fan were attached using a thick adhesive tape. I had to remove this and scrape away the excess using Goo Gone. When reattaching the PC speaker and cooling fan, I used 3M clear double sided tape. This makes future removal much easier and it works well. I cleaned the case cover using a combination of 409 and baking soda. This got rid of all of the dirt and grime. The two case cover screws had been replaced with two screws with oval head screws that require a hex key driver. I picked up two replacement 10-24 3/8" oval head Phillips machine screws. They are not painted but look way better and these are the original type screws that would have come with the computer in the first place. I have the same upgrades in this Tandy 1000 RSX as the other, except I have a vintage ESS Audio Drive sound card with a Dream Blaster S2 wavetable board. Everything went together perfectly and overall this computer came out great.
Here are pictures of the Tandy 1000 RSX that was in excellent condition.
