Captain Chaos
Member
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2022
- Messages
- 21
Hello everyone,
Because I needed a way to write 720K diskettes for the IBM PC XT I'm trying to repair, I decided to try and revive my old PS/2. So now I guess I'm repairing two old "PC"s...
It's a 2 MB 16 MHz 80386 Model 80 that my father originally purchased through his work for IBM. Unfortunately it no longer boots and I'm having a hard time trying to get it to.
The symptom is that after the memory test, it gives a
According to these instructions I found, these errors mean that the BIOS data is corrupt because the CMOS battery died. This makes sense. However after replacing the battery with a new one the errors don't go away (even the 161 error, which those instructions say should go away), and I also can't get it to boot from the reference diskette.
I can no longer find the original reference diskette, so I downloaded one from here and wrote it to a diskette. But the PS/2 just seems to ignore it. All it currently does is (with the reference diskette in the drive):
Who can help me get this PS/2 to boot again? I no longer need it for writing diskettes, I found an old laptop for that, but this machine is nostalgic to me and I'd still like to get it to work again. Do you have any suggestions for what might be wrong? What should I check or what actions should I take to get further? Many thanks in advance for any help you can give!
Because I needed a way to write 720K diskettes for the IBM PC XT I'm trying to repair, I decided to try and revive my old PS/2. So now I guess I'm repairing two old "PC"s...
It's a 2 MB 16 MHz 80386 Model 80 that my father originally purchased through his work for IBM. Unfortunately it no longer boots and I'm having a hard time trying to get it to.
The symptom is that after the memory test, it gives a
161
and then a 163
error code and then beeps twice. It also sometimes gives ** 301
errors, which I understand is because of stuck keyboard keys, which the keyboard now seems to be prone to, especially the space bar, but I can usually avoid those.According to these instructions I found, these errors mean that the BIOS data is corrupt because the CMOS battery died. This makes sense. However after replacing the battery with a new one the errors don't go away (even the 161 error, which those instructions say should go away), and I also can't get it to boot from the reference diskette.
I can no longer find the original reference diskette, so I downloaded one from here and wrote it to a diskette. But the PS/2 just seems to ignore it. All it currently does is (with the reference diskette in the drive):
- Counts the memory
- The diskette drive makes the seeking sounds I remember from my youth, so it seems to work in principle
- Gives a 161 and 163 error and beeps twice
- Diskette drive light lights up momentarily, but it does not proceed
- I press F1, it beeps once and the diskette drive lights up momentarily again but nothing else happens
- I do that twice more. Now it displays the ASCII art "insert reference diskette and press F1" screen
- I press F1 once more. It lights up the diskette drive light one last time, and then drops to BASIC (I did not even know PS/2's still had ROM BASIC!)
Who can help me get this PS/2 to boot again? I no longer need it for writing diskettes, I found an old laptop for that, but this machine is nostalgic to me and I'd still like to get it to work again. Do you have any suggestions for what might be wrong? What should I check or what actions should I take to get further? Many thanks in advance for any help you can give!