per
Veteran Member
I have now gotten the ability to look at my new XT. You problably know what's in it if you have read my earlier posts, and I can now confirm that the multicard is an AST six pack.
The first thing I did was to take the system apart and identifying and cleaning stuff. Here is what I figured:
Then I read on the PSU that it was switchable, so I decided to try it. Of course I didn't plug it into the system board, in cause of miss-voltage, but I connected it ONLY to the full heigth floppy disk drive. When I turned the power on, there was abig BANG, and the fuse for my room went out. I turned it off, and opened it. What I saw was that one of the transistors had blown (one of the bigger ones with a small cooling-plate. it had splitted it's plastic shield open, and you could actually see the silicon plate!). It might have been that missing screw-head that shorted something.
Then I decided to look at the monitor, and I found that all board had cracks in them (except the monitor's PSU boards). Nothing to keep, and I have put it up for tossing (don't know when the next time we're going to the dump are).
At last, I decided to move over the PSU from my other XT and test the unit. I removed all cards, exept the hard drive controller (WD1002-WX1) and the FDC. I also moved over the ATI card because I couldn't use the real CGA card (lack of monitor). When I turned it on, it counted all up to 256, the A: drive spun, and a short beep appeard (as usual). The A: drive then tried to load, and then the hard drive went active.
To my BIG surprise, the hard drive actually works! Somehow, the previous used parked the drive heads before storing it, and because of that, it booted flawlessy! The other great news is that the drive contained the Orchid PCTurbo 286e drivers, and yes, there is a NOTABLE difference in speed when the turbo board is enabled (a dir of the root dierctory takes 2 seconds instead of 10!). It is EMM compatible too, or it can be used as a RAMDisk.
I have provided the drivers here, but if you are going to use them, make sure to alter the setting files (*.bat, Config.sys and Turbo.sys) as of they contain the startup for my system. Your system might have another setup than mine.
@moderators, I hope it is okay to post the drivers because the board is incompatible with versions of DOS above 5.0.
The first thing I did was to take the system apart and identifying and cleaning stuff. Here is what I figured:
- It's an early model XT with the first PCB layout (later 64-256kb XTs [like the other one I got] uses the PCB layout for the later models)
- It was originally assembled in New York the 24 February 1983, 7am (didn't they start to sell them in March that year?)
- It got the disk protecting plate (was this made by IBM?)
- It got the keyboard cover (was this too made by IBM?)
- It got a Model 1 full heigth floppy drive
- It got a half height 720Kb floppy drive
- It got a Seagate ST-225
- The "Model 5160" sticker on the back is gone
- some paint on the inside of the unit was missing
- Three of the expansion cards are original and has chip datings from 1982/83
- The clone 200W PSU states it is "switchable" between 120v and 240v
- The head is missing on one of the screws holding the on/off switch in place
- The overall unit and some of the expansion cards are missing a LOT of screws.
Then I read on the PSU that it was switchable, so I decided to try it. Of course I didn't plug it into the system board, in cause of miss-voltage, but I connected it ONLY to the full heigth floppy disk drive. When I turned the power on, there was abig BANG, and the fuse for my room went out. I turned it off, and opened it. What I saw was that one of the transistors had blown (one of the bigger ones with a small cooling-plate. it had splitted it's plastic shield open, and you could actually see the silicon plate!). It might have been that missing screw-head that shorted something.
Then I decided to look at the monitor, and I found that all board had cracks in them (except the monitor's PSU boards). Nothing to keep, and I have put it up for tossing (don't know when the next time we're going to the dump are).
At last, I decided to move over the PSU from my other XT and test the unit. I removed all cards, exept the hard drive controller (WD1002-WX1) and the FDC. I also moved over the ATI card because I couldn't use the real CGA card (lack of monitor). When I turned it on, it counted all up to 256, the A: drive spun, and a short beep appeard (as usual). The A: drive then tried to load, and then the hard drive went active.
To my BIG surprise, the hard drive actually works! Somehow, the previous used parked the drive heads before storing it, and because of that, it booted flawlessy! The other great news is that the drive contained the Orchid PCTurbo 286e drivers, and yes, there is a NOTABLE difference in speed when the turbo board is enabled (a dir of the root dierctory takes 2 seconds instead of 10!). It is EMM compatible too, or it can be used as a RAMDisk.
I have provided the drivers here, but if you are going to use them, make sure to alter the setting files (*.bat, Config.sys and Turbo.sys) as of they contain the startup for my system. Your system might have another setup than mine.
@moderators, I hope it is okay to post the drivers because the board is incompatible with versions of DOS above 5.0.
