• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Ibm 5150 with Keyboard and Monitor

J

Junk Junkie

Member
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
30
Location
East Tennessee
I was off work yesterday and my boss calls to tell me he has something for me. He's a very generous guy so you never know what it is when he has something for you. So I went over and he has this IBM 5150 with keyboard and Monitor. A customer traded it in toward a new computer. Generally my boss wouldn't accept something this old as a trade in, but he knew I would want it. I was just amazed. Anyway it works, but its not original. The video adapter is an ATI Wonder EGA and it has a 20mb MFM Seagate hard drive. What was the original video adapter in this model? The Floppy is not IBM either although it is full height and is black, just doesn't have the IBM logo. It boots to Dos 2.10 and has 640K, 256 on board and the rest on an AST 6 pack plus.

I would love to get the original manuals and software that came with this. Even if I can't get the originals some high quality images of the manual covers and PDF's would do so I could make binder copies myself. Then I would just copies of the software. Any Ideas?

5150.jpg



Gary Fletcher
 
Junk Junkie said:
I was off work yesterday and my boss calls to tell me he has something for me. He's a very generous guy so you never know what it is when he has something for you. So I went over and he has this IBM 5150 with keyboard and Monitor. A customer traded it in toward a new computer. Generally my boss wouldn't accept something this old as a trade in, but he knew I would want it. I was just amazed. Anyway it works, but its not original. The video adapter is an ATI Wonder EGA and it has a 20mb MFM Seagate hard drive. What was the original video adapter in this model? The Floppy is not IBM either although it is full height and is black, just doesn't have the IBM logo. It boots to Dos 2.10 and has 640K, 256 on board and the rest on an AST 6 pack plus.

I would love to get the original manuals and software that came with this. Even if I can't get the originals some high quality images of the manual covers and PDF's would do so I could make binder copies myself. Then I would just copies of the software. Any Ideas?
Click to expand...

For the manuals, this site is your friend : http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/

For software, assuming the hard drive has IBM PC-DOS 2.1, you can create a bootable 360K floppy using format a: /s, then copy all the DOS commands over. If whoever installed DOS on the hard drive did not copy the commands over, you can find disk images of DOS if you look hard enough.

The power supply probably is not original to the system, as the 63.5W supply of the IBM PC was not considered sufficient to power early hard drives. The Seagate hard drive is probably the ST-225. The floppy drive, even without an IBM logo on the faceplate, could still be a Tandon TM100-2A, which is what IBM usually used.

There system did not come with a video adapter, just a floppy controller in most configurations. The user added a video card when he purchased it.
 
What GH said :)

But to add my $0.02, the ATI EGA Wonder is a nice card. It can be set to auto-adjust to the monitor (MDA/CGA/EGA), and that, to me, makes it invaluable. It's half of two of the more desirable upgrades you can do to your 5150/5160.

The AST SixPackPlus gives you extra memory and internal battery-backed clock. That is always nice.

So far as original software and manuals, watch eBay - I've often seen 5150 Guide to Operations, BASIC, and IBM PC DOS 2.1 close out in the $10-15USD range - you just have to be patient and watch the listings regularly. Of course there were other manuals out there (Tech Refs, Options and Adapters, etc), but the essential ones are the ones above.
 
Yes, you are correct, the power supply is not original and the hard drive is a ST-225. So the Bios on this machine would have been updated as well so that a hard drive could be installed?\\\



Gary Fletcher
 
Junk Junkie said:
So the Bios on this machine would have been updated as well so that a hard drive could be installed?
Click to expand...
You wrote, "256 on board". If your machine still has its original IBM motherboard, then that motherboard must be the later 64KB-256KB one. Those motherboards were supplied with the third (and final) BIOS revision.
 
Plick !
I just tried it for four minutes, and nothing happened except I now have headache.
I'm not trying it anymore.
 
Junk Junkie said:
Yes, you are correct, the power supply is not original and the hard drive is a ST-225. So the Bios on this machine would have been updated as well so that a hard drive could be installed?\\\



Gary Fletcher
Click to expand...

The BIOS on an IBM PC or XT knows nothing about hard drives. The 3rd BIOS for the PC, which would have been supplied with your motherboard scans the upper memory region to find BIOS extensions (usually on third-party cards). The hard drive controller to which your hard drive is connected supplies a BIOS extension to allow basic interaction with the drive and allow it to boot an operating system. With a 1st or 2nd PC BIOS, you would need to boot DOS from a floppy drive to use a hard drive every time you started up the system.
 
My experience lately is very limited with an IBM XT 5150. I'm sure that I know it has no onboard support for hard drives and much of the documention found with a quick google search plainly states that a hard drive is not supported. With that knowledge I assumed the XT bios was updated to support the bios on an MFM controller. So rather than having an updated bios, my XT shipped with the 3rd and final Bios revision. Now I fully understand how that works. Thank you.



Gary Fletcher
 
Junk Junkie said:
My experience lately is very limited with an IBM XT 5150.
Click to expand...
IBM 5150 = IBM PC
IBM 5160 = IBM XT (see Note 1)
IBM 5170 = IBM AT (see Note 2)

Note 1: IBM typically used "IBM Personal Computer XT". Done to indicate that the XT was a member of the Personal Computer family. Sometimes people use IBM PC XT or IBM PC/XT.

Note 2: IBM typically used "IBM Personal Computer AT". Done to indicate that the AT was a member of the Personal Computer family. Sometimes people use IBM PC AT or IBM PC/AT.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top