SomeGuy
Veteran Member
Recently grabbed a rustbucket Tava computer off of eBay. I had been looking for one of these for a while. After a LOT of cleaning, I have it fairly presentable. It is not perfect, but it has been very interesting to derp with.
The Tava PC was among the first clones to use somewhat generic form parts, and it did not try to add features beyond that of IBM. The Tava brand seemed fairly short lived, but it did make it in to the compatibility lists of a number of programs.
Behold the Tava PC - Yawn at its magnificence!
Like some of the other shorter lived early clones, there is little information out there. Hopefully this provides a bit of useful information.
The name of the game here is CHEAP, CHEAP, CHEAP. Reportedly, Tava massively undercut IBMs prices. And looking at it, I can see how.
Let's start with the motherboard:
The motherboard is an IBM 5150 clone. It only has 5 sockets, and uses the same spacing as the 5150. The board is the same size as a 5150 and has the same mounting holes. Aside from the missing cassette port and a different power plug, this board could directly replace an IBM 5150 motherboard.
The sticker on the back calls this a "Model 96000, Config 1.5". The motherboard in this one differers a bit from that shown in a PC World review, as well as another one that had been on eBay a way while back.
This board features on-board serial and parallel ports, uses an NEC 8088, and accommodates 256k of motherboard RAM. It *looks* like the earlier motherboards may have only held 128k.
I had wanted to dump the BIOS, but disappointingly, the BIOS was at some point "upgraded" to a generic 1986 DTK BIOS. While this suggests that the motherboard hardware is IBM PC compatible, it also suggests that the original BIOS had problems that warranted an upgrade.
The construction of this motherboard is a bit shoddy.
There are some re-soldered chips, one chip with a messy "piggyback", and various patch wires. A string of patch wire on the bottom between the ISA slots suggests the traces for power were not thick enough. The board is held in with plastic screws, as traces run too close to the mounting holes and could short. A couple of chips next to the ISA slots are right up against each other. The parallel port uses a DIP socket and plug. And one of the ISA sockets isn't quite soldered in right!
Amazingly, this mess actually boots.
Reportedly, the original boards were manufactured by Faraday Electronics, who sold boards only to OEMs like Tava. I don't know if this one was a Faraday board. The only markings on it are Tava, copyright 1984, "SS", and "Part No. 1001 Rev B"
According to several small snippets from Google Books, Tava did at some point start obtaining similar motherboards from manufacturers other than Faraday. Tava continued to use copies of the Faraday BIOS in these boards in violation of their contract, which landed them in some hot water. So perhaps this is one of the later non-Faraday boards?
The case itself is not really generic. The slots and mounting will fit an IBM 5150 motherboard, but the the power supply form and connector is proprietary. The drive bays are designed for two full heigh 5.25" devices.
BTW, the case and cover attach with a pair of latches in the front of the case. To remove the top part of the case, you must have the system on a good flat surface, unscrew only the two lower screws on the back, and then push the top off with quite a bit of force. Similarly, you must push it back on with quite a bit of force.
The power supply itself looks kind of cheap. I had an issue with the +5 volts line to the floppy drives not getting power. Looked like a bad solder joint, but a touch up fixed that.
Although the case is designed for full height drives, Tava PCs came with half height drives. The two drives are awkwardly held together with a set of shims. If the screws aren't tight the top one can slide around. Reportedly, the earlier ones used Qume drives, however this one uses Matsushita JA-551-2N drives. They don't look impressive, but they work and test out OK.
Sadly this unit did not include its original video card. I believe it had been upgraded at some point, and then whatever video card removed (possibly by the seller).
It is not clear if TAVA designed and provided the video cards themselves. Video card compatibility would have been a major factor in determining overall IBM compatibility. It would have been good to test.
This system does work with a standard 8-bit ISA compatible VGA card.
It also came with a WDXT-GEN hard disk controller, but no hard drive. That controller is of a bit later vintage, and would not have shipped with it. Given how this system seemed to have been stored, any hard drive probably would have been dead.
It did come with what is probably its original floppy controller. It is a fairly ordinary low-density controller, however it has TWO internal headers. Like the IBM PC/XT floppy controller, it can control up to four drives, but unlike IBM's the third and fourth may be internal.
With everything put together, the next trick is booting it.
Surprisingly, the power supply did not explode.
I thought it was a fluke that my Columbia Data Product 1600 did not like XT/AT switchable keyboards, however this motherboard also does not like them. So, I had to use my one earlier non-switchable XT compatible keyboard. I tried dropping in a Phoenix BIOS that works on another machine, but it still did not like the keyboards. Whatever the issue is must be in the hardware.
Once powered up, the TAVA happily boots IBM PC-DOS. Throwing a few test applications at it, it seems over all compatible, and acts like any other PC clone.
Speed wise, it tests the equivalent of a 4.77mhz IBM PC or XT.
So, it is a mess, but it is a historically interesting mess.
Tava also produced a small 80186 laptop-like computer called the "Tava Flyer".
However, TAVA did not last much longer. A 1985 PC World reported: "Battered by IBM's price cuts and the limitations of a one-product line, Tava was swallowed by Replitech, one of the Tava PC's primary distributors. Tava management sold all manufacturing and marketing rights to the New York firm, which promptly began producing a PC compatible of its own-under the Tava label. Still with us? Coinciding with Tava's metamorphosis, CompuShack, the California- based computer wholesaler that originally spawned the Tava PC, ceased operations."
The Tava PC was among the first clones to use somewhat generic form parts, and it did not try to add features beyond that of IBM. The Tava brand seemed fairly short lived, but it did make it in to the compatibility lists of a number of programs.
Behold the Tava PC - Yawn at its magnificence!
Like some of the other shorter lived early clones, there is little information out there. Hopefully this provides a bit of useful information.
The name of the game here is CHEAP, CHEAP, CHEAP. Reportedly, Tava massively undercut IBMs prices. And looking at it, I can see how.
Let's start with the motherboard:
The motherboard is an IBM 5150 clone. It only has 5 sockets, and uses the same spacing as the 5150. The board is the same size as a 5150 and has the same mounting holes. Aside from the missing cassette port and a different power plug, this board could directly replace an IBM 5150 motherboard.
The sticker on the back calls this a "Model 96000, Config 1.5". The motherboard in this one differers a bit from that shown in a PC World review, as well as another one that had been on eBay a way while back.
This board features on-board serial and parallel ports, uses an NEC 8088, and accommodates 256k of motherboard RAM. It *looks* like the earlier motherboards may have only held 128k.
I had wanted to dump the BIOS, but disappointingly, the BIOS was at some point "upgraded" to a generic 1986 DTK BIOS. While this suggests that the motherboard hardware is IBM PC compatible, it also suggests that the original BIOS had problems that warranted an upgrade.
The construction of this motherboard is a bit shoddy.
There are some re-soldered chips, one chip with a messy "piggyback", and various patch wires. A string of patch wire on the bottom between the ISA slots suggests the traces for power were not thick enough. The board is held in with plastic screws, as traces run too close to the mounting holes and could short. A couple of chips next to the ISA slots are right up against each other. The parallel port uses a DIP socket and plug. And one of the ISA sockets isn't quite soldered in right!
Amazingly, this mess actually boots.
Reportedly, the original boards were manufactured by Faraday Electronics, who sold boards only to OEMs like Tava. I don't know if this one was a Faraday board. The only markings on it are Tava, copyright 1984, "SS", and "Part No. 1001 Rev B"
According to several small snippets from Google Books, Tava did at some point start obtaining similar motherboards from manufacturers other than Faraday. Tava continued to use copies of the Faraday BIOS in these boards in violation of their contract, which landed them in some hot water. So perhaps this is one of the later non-Faraday boards?
The case itself is not really generic. The slots and mounting will fit an IBM 5150 motherboard, but the the power supply form and connector is proprietary. The drive bays are designed for two full heigh 5.25" devices.
BTW, the case and cover attach with a pair of latches in the front of the case. To remove the top part of the case, you must have the system on a good flat surface, unscrew only the two lower screws on the back, and then push the top off with quite a bit of force. Similarly, you must push it back on with quite a bit of force.
The power supply itself looks kind of cheap. I had an issue with the +5 volts line to the floppy drives not getting power. Looked like a bad solder joint, but a touch up fixed that.
Although the case is designed for full height drives, Tava PCs came with half height drives. The two drives are awkwardly held together with a set of shims. If the screws aren't tight the top one can slide around. Reportedly, the earlier ones used Qume drives, however this one uses Matsushita JA-551-2N drives. They don't look impressive, but they work and test out OK.
Sadly this unit did not include its original video card. I believe it had been upgraded at some point, and then whatever video card removed (possibly by the seller).
It is not clear if TAVA designed and provided the video cards themselves. Video card compatibility would have been a major factor in determining overall IBM compatibility. It would have been good to test.
This system does work with a standard 8-bit ISA compatible VGA card.
It also came with a WDXT-GEN hard disk controller, but no hard drive. That controller is of a bit later vintage, and would not have shipped with it. Given how this system seemed to have been stored, any hard drive probably would have been dead.
It did come with what is probably its original floppy controller. It is a fairly ordinary low-density controller, however it has TWO internal headers. Like the IBM PC/XT floppy controller, it can control up to four drives, but unlike IBM's the third and fourth may be internal.
With everything put together, the next trick is booting it.
Surprisingly, the power supply did not explode.
I thought it was a fluke that my Columbia Data Product 1600 did not like XT/AT switchable keyboards, however this motherboard also does not like them. So, I had to use my one earlier non-switchable XT compatible keyboard. I tried dropping in a Phoenix BIOS that works on another machine, but it still did not like the keyboards. Whatever the issue is must be in the hardware.
Once powered up, the TAVA happily boots IBM PC-DOS. Throwing a few test applications at it, it seems over all compatible, and acts like any other PC clone.
Speed wise, it tests the equivalent of a 4.77mhz IBM PC or XT.
So, it is a mess, but it is a historically interesting mess.
Tava also produced a small 80186 laptop-like computer called the "Tava Flyer".
However, TAVA did not last much longer. A 1985 PC World reported: "Battered by IBM's price cuts and the limitations of a one-product line, Tava was swallowed by Replitech, one of the Tava PC's primary distributors. Tava management sold all manufacturing and marketing rights to the New York firm, which promptly began producing a PC compatible of its own-under the Tava label. Still with us? Coinciding with Tava's metamorphosis, CompuShack, the California- based computer wholesaler that originally spawned the Tava PC, ceased operations."
