Tandy 1000RL audio recording & playback

Demonstrating the amazing built-in digital audio features of the Tandy 1000RL.

In the Fall of 1990, everyone was amazed when Apple introduced the Macintosh LC, a small, low-end home computer with a graphical user interface and a microphone input, so you could record voice and music and play it back. Well, Radio Shack had the same thing two years earlier, with their new 1000SL and 1000TL computers, introduced in the Fall of 1988! The 1000RL is a slimline version of the same hardware, using a 9.54 MHz 8086 processor chip... yes, not even a 286!

While PC sound cards were just beginning to catch on and most required a 386 running Windows to record and edit digital audio, Tandy had the same features in an XT-class machine running their own DeskMate GUI, without even a hard drive necessary -- the audio records into RAM, and then you can save the sound file onto a floppy disk if you want. There is an internal jumper to set the audio input jack to either microphone level or line level. It also has an external audio output as well as the built-in speaker.

For some reason the recorded audio plays slightly slower than it should. However, if I take an audio file recorded on another computer and convert it to the Tandy's .SND format, it plays at the correct pitch. Or with a program called DMSOUND, the Tandy can even play regular Windows .WAV audio files with no conversion necessary!

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