• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here
  • From now on we will require that a prefix is set for any items in the sales area. We have created regions and locations for this. We also require that you select a delivery option before posting your listing. This will hopefully help us streamline the things that get listed for sales here and help local people better advertise their items, especially for local only sales. New sales rules are also coming, so stay tuned.

Pre-production IBM 5170 motherboard on eBay

One of my 5170 AT's has the older style larger motherboard,
but its green instead of brown like this one. Are the brown
boards earlier than the green ones ?
 
1987

1987

Chuck(G) said:
That 8749 looks an awful lot like a manufacturing date code.
Click to expand...
per said:
49th week of 1987?
Click to expand...
Isn't that what I wrote?

Then I thought, maybe I wrote the post with too much Australian influence, and the guys had a problem understanding it.
And so I went back looking for my post. I was expecting something like:

"Gidday cobbers. Sorry I took so flamin long to repond to yas posts but I had to scare off a croc that had wandered onto me property, scaring me pet roo half to death. Anyhows, I reckon that "8749" might mean the 49th weekend in '87, you know, the year Shazza, me wife, made me cut off me mullet."

But no, I had actually written the post in English. So now I'm puzzled.
 
mikey99 said:
One of my 5170 AT's has the older style larger motherboard,
but its green instead of brown like this one. Are the brown
boards earlier than the green ones ?
Click to expand...
We don't know. Possibly. Does anyone other than me (and eBay) have a brown type 1 board from a 5170?
 
modem7 said:
Isn't that what I wrote?

Then I thought, maybe I wrote the post with too much Australian influence, and the guys had a problem understanding it.
And so I went back looking for my post. I was expecting something like:

"Gidday cobbers. Sorry I took so flamin long to repond to yas posts but I had to scare off a croc that had wandered onto me property, scaring me pet roo half to death. Anyhows, I reckon that "8749" might mean the 49th weekend in '87, you know, the year Shazza, me wife, made me cut off me mullet."

But no, I had actually written the post in English. So now I'm puzzled.
Click to expand...

The scary part is, I UNDERSTAND all of that. :)
 
modem7 said:
Isn't that what I wrote?

Then I thought, maybe I wrote the post with too much Australian influence, and the guys had a problem understanding it.
And so I went back looking for my post. I was expecting something like:

"Gidday cobbers. Sorry I took so flamin long to repond to yas posts but I had to scare off a croc that had wandered onto me property, scaring me pet roo half to death. Anyhows, I reckon that "8749" might mean the 49th weekend in '87, you know, the year Shazza, me wife, made me cut off me mullet."

But no, I had actually written the post in English. So now I'm puzzled.
Click to expand...

Sorry,sorry. I replied before reading page 2. I was tired and the clock was about midnight.
 
mikey99 said:
One of my 5170 AT's has the older style larger motherboard,
but its green instead of brown like this one. Are the brown
boards earlier than the green ones ?
Click to expand...
At http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?t=13587, I see that aaron7 is listing a green type 1 motherboard (as shown in his photos) which he includes in the description, "has many buswire revisions on underside".

Without further research, that suggests that the 5170 motherboard colour isn't indicative of age (based on an assumption that the hookup wire modifications only appear on early type 1 motherboards).
 
Sorry for the delay getting back to this thread. Catching up...

frozenfire75i: Thanks for the welcome aboard. Looks like a good place to share some old memories.

Chuck(G): I am not aware of a logon screen popping up and it shouldn't be there - there is no password protection on that server. Has anyone else seen this? Please send me a screen capture.

You are right, an engineering prototype would probably look a lot rougher. However, production prototypes can be quite polished. The whole idea is that if it passes muster then that's what goes into production.

modem7 & Chuck(G): If I didn't know better I'd think that was a 1987 date code, too, but that just isn't possible. The computer was used as received from IBM for two or three years and then upgraded with a newer mobo. I don't recall what happened to the original box, but I kept the original mobo, which was never altered.

Modem7: That's an interesting board. Any idea where it came from.

BTW, if anyone wants this board, make me an offer. I have no expectations of getting $850, I just stuck a high price on it to see what would happen.
 
Scribe, the logon screen is gone today, but I did receive it several times yesterday when I visited the auction. Probably a glitch.

"Never mind" - Emily Litella
 
Scribe,

I believe that you are Jack Crone, otherwise frozenfire75i, who earlier in the month writes that Jack Crone is a "good ferind (sic) of mine", would not have (in this thread) welcomed you to the forums.

Scribe said:
If I didn't know better I'd think that was a 1987 date code, too, but that just isn't possible. The computer was used as received from IBM for two or three years and then upgraded with a newer mobo. I don't recall what happened to the original box, but I kept the original mobo, which was never altered.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, the "8749" (whatever that may be) combined with what can be interpreted as "AMI 256" gives a bad impression.
I think it would be just as difficult to disprove as to prove that the four digits on that ROM are a date code (of the form YYMM).

Scribe said:
Modem7: That's an interesting board. Any idea where it came from.
Click to expand...
The board belongs to a friend. He bought it on eBay "as is". Keyboard port not working, hence my green wire track repair. Board is now with me for a second time now due to a very low level failure (no POST codes). I've temporarily removed the RAM, swapped the CPU (the original may have been the '82 dated one) and swapped out the original IBM ROMs. There's only so much I can do with an oscilloscope and diagnostic ROMs, and so most of the LSI chips have been swapped out (now in sockets).
 
modem7,

Yes, I am Jack Crone, editor and publisher of Personal Computer Age, the first IBM PC magazine. After that I was the founder of Flambeaux Software, a company you may not have heard of, but you have used Flambeaux technology.

I agree with you about the questionable aspects of the board. I know the history and I created the listing on eBay with that information in mind. Were I on the outside looking in, I might be skeptical about the claims in the listing.
 
Chuckle, looks like Jack and I (Chuck Magee) were both working in Glendale, Calif in 1994! And I too had never heard of Flambeaux Software before right now.
 
Chuck,

The mailing address was Glendale, but the offices were actually in La Crescenta.

If you search the distribution disks of later versions of DOS with a hex editor, you will find the Flambeaux copyright. IBM or Microsoft, we were in both.
 
Good place for offices! Well, if you HAVE to live in the L.A. area, that is. I don't miss the wonderful smell of smog. Managed to retire to the high desert, north of Vegas, in Nevada. I am even far enough away from Vegas to not have to suffer from the smog there either. Pasadena was pretty bad fairly often. The on-shore wind would stack all the crud up against the mountains. Of course, I went to U.C. Riverside starting in 1968 -- TALK ABOUT SMOG! In Riverside, you could look straight at the setting sun and not hurt your eyes. Sometimes I would even spot larger sunspots. Glad to be out of there!!
 
Chuck,

We think alike. I'm now semi-retired in the high desert of south-central Oregon. LA was good to me and, in the beginning, I liked the place. After 40 years there it had become too big and too dirty.

Personal Computer Age was located first in Tujunga and later in Sunland - about as far out of LA as you can get and still be in LA.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top