I moved from a Color Computer to an original Tandy 1000, then a 1000 TX 
and finally, a 1000 TL.  The move from the TX to the TL was a real learning 
experience because there were so many changes from the older 1000's.  Here's a 
few things I learned about installing a hard drive on the TL. 

    For hard-drives, on the TL and SL, you're better off to use SETUPTL so 
AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS are read from drive A: and DOS from disk. With 
this configuration, it'll check drive A: first and then boot from the hard 
drive (including CONFIG and AUTOEXEC) IF there's no disk in A. The reason I 
strongly suggest this, is that, as I found out the hard way, if it's set to 
read those files from the hard drive, it won't even try to boot from drive A.  
This is fine as long as everything is going ok but if you like to tinker with 
Config.sys as I do, or something happens to the boot files on the hard 
drive so the computer hangs up when booting then the only way you're going to 
be able to boot from a floppy is to pull the hard-drive out, boot from a 
floppy, use SETUPTL to change back to factory settings, reinstall the hard 
drive and boot from floppy again. I'm not sure if this situation is caused by 
the TL, DOS 3.3 or both but it definitely is better to have the option of 
booting from floppy available even if it means slightly slower boot up time. 
    When installing a hard drive on the TL and I imagine, the SL, be sure 
everything is set to use interupt 5, not 2 as with the older 1000's.  This 
means, with RS hard drives, the jumpers be set the same as for the 3000.  And 
on the TL motherboard, the jumper at the back for the video interupt must be 
set to enable interupt 5.  That's the jumper the TL manual tells you to change 
if older games don't run.  If you find after installing a new, preformatted 
hard drive you get the C> prompt but it hangs from there, that's probably what 
the problem is.  
    Another tip when installing hard drives on any computer but especially if 
you get a drive already formatted is to check the interleave of the drive 
before you start installing programs on it.  I got a 40 meg hard card from the 
Shack that was pre formatted with an interleave of 4 which was was probably 
fine for the 3000 but after some testing with a program called Spintest (from 
INTRLV.ARC from one of the IBM SIGS) it turned out not to be optimum for the 
TL.  I eventually found that an interleave of 6 made a HUGE difference in 
read/write time with that combination of computer and hard-drive.  There are 
some programs that do this for you automatically but they don't work on all 
drives.  I changed the interleave by redoing all the formatting manually.  
Takes longer but it's safer.  Just follow the instructions for the hard drive 
for manual formatting.  You'll be prompted for the interleave along the way.
Be sure you get a disk of hard disk utils to go with the hard drive.  You can 
do this if you already have programs on the drive but be sure you have it 
backed up first, especially if use one of the programs that claim to change 
the interleave without reformatting.  You can get more information on 
interleave from the IBMSIGS.  
     Also, I'm not at my TL so I can't check this, but I'm pretty sure to get 
at the option in SETUPTL to install a second or third floppy, you have to use 
/A.  IE- SETUPTL/A. This is not mentioned anywhere in the manuals I have.  
Without the /A, you only  get one page of options.  Using the /A gets you 
around 10 pages of options. Use PGUP/PGDN to get at the other pages.  A word 
of caution though, changing some of the settings can have unpredictable 
results.  For instance, if you reduce the amount of video RAM, you won't be 
able to run Deskmate. 


                                                Daryl Larsen