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IBM 5150 and 5161 DOS setup configurations

MikeS said:
Those power centers used to be really common and I'm surprised you don't see more of them these days of always-on printers etc. and our eco-guilt. Probably what Maverick is talking about above, a pizza box with a row of illuminated switches that usually sat (and still sits in my case) under the monitor, sometimes even with a swivel base built in.
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Exactly :) I never had one until about a year ago - found a NOS one in a Goodwill for a buck. It wasn't as "retro" as I would've liked, but it works great. (it has no green or orange power indicators, no toggle switches, just push white push switches in a white metal housing)

and Ole... those switches look cool. Has me idly wondering if it would be worth retrofitting mine! Laugh
 
MikeS said:
Like this?
View attachment 8512View attachment 8513

Or how about:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Radio-shack...ultDomain_0&hash=item3f15ed6779#ht_1194wt_700

They look cool (definitely vintage) but don't order those particular ones; looks like they're momentary contact.
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Obviously if they're momentary they won't work, but if someone has one that will work, and are willing to sell, please; let's PM. I did message the seller of this particular one to see if it was still for sale. This would be perfect for my needs here with this setup.

Thanks.
 
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bettablue said:
Obviously if they're momentary they won't work, but if someone has one that will work, and are willing to sell, please; let's PM. I did message the seller of this particular one to see if it was still for sale. This would be perfect for my needs here with this setup.

Thanks.
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OK guys. I'm in a bind. I just got in touch with the original seller. He just relisted the power switch center, but I can't buy it right now. But I'm still out on disability and will be for at least another month. Please PM me if we can work out something. If someone can buy it and hold it for me that would be fantastic.
 
SpidersWeb said:
Those power boxes do look pretty awesome.

Have you started the machine up yet?
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Naw. Not yet. I need to get things kind of figured out first. I had a very hard time moving things around yesterday, so I'm going to have to wait till I have me friend over on Tuesday to try booting the system. If the power switches were on the left side, I wouldn't have nearly as much trouble reaching them. But with my arm and legs the way they are, well, I only have the left arm that works the way it should.
 
Maverick1978 said:
Don't let that stop you. Remember the old "System Saver" pieces that RatShack sold back in the day that would allow you to selectively power off your monitor/printer/computer with its switch rather than with the computer switches? - Those babies were made to act as the "switch" for computer systems! Why not run something similar here with your UPS? Keep your 5151/5161 switches to "on," and use the UPS to power the systems off and on - with the front toggle switches that most UPS's have, you should be able to click it with your toe :) - and you can manually toggle the switches on the monitor and printer as needed if you don't want to keep them powered on all the time.

Anyone else know of any reason why this wouldn't be a good idea? (I know it was common back in the day, and I've never specifically read anything against doing such a thing w/ vintage electronics that are regularly used, but figured it would be worth gathering opinions)
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You don't want to do that w/ a UPS unless you want to seriously shorten the batter life.
 
bettablue said:
Naw. Not yet. I need to get things kind of figured out first. I had a very hard time moving things around yesterday, so I'm going to have to wait till I have me friend over on Tuesday to try booting the system. If the power switches were on the left side, I wouldn't have nearly as much trouble reaching them. But with my arm and legs the way they are, well, I only have the left arm that works the way it should.
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Aww bugger :( that'd drive me nuts!
 
SpidersWeb said:
Aww bugger :( that'd drive me nuts!
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Trust me. I know It's driving me crazy too. But I paid for it all day yesterday with pain. I'm going to try again today to setup the system the way I really want it. Then, I'll figure out what I want to do about the power issue. I'm pretty confident that I did everything right up to where I am. And, yes, there is still some work that needs to be done. But at the same time, I really don't want to kill myself over it. Basically, I'm the one armed man in a wheelchair, so you get the idea. Things just aren't that easy to do sometimes. This is definitely one of those times.
 
Betta, these are common devices. I'd suggest waiting. Besides, that white one that was relisted won't match the look of your PC anyways. I'd suggest this one or this one. (I did a search for computer power center)

More vintage looking, and as I remember, the color scheme of the casing was made to match the look of the PCs. And, I can tell you, this one is much sturdier than the radio shack one like mine - I don't know that I'd trust a monitor sitting on mine, which is why it's not in use currently.
 
Cool I'll do that. I do sometimes, OK most of the time, jump too soon. You're right. The color scheme will look a lo better with the ones you linked. The funny thing is that I did use those same terms and got a completely different set or results. Then when I was logged in, I got another set that finally had one of the ones you linked.

Thanks again Mav.

I'll keep my eyes open.



Maverick1978 said:
Betta, these are common devices. I'd suggest waiting. Besides, that white one that was relisted won't match the look of your PC anyways. I'd suggest this one or this one. (I did a search for computer power center)

More vintage looking, and as I remember, the color scheme of the casing was made to match the look of the PCs. And, I can tell you, this one is much sturdier than the radio shack one like mine - I don't know that I'd trust a monitor sitting on mine, which is why it's not in use currently.
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Today, I got the wife involved with helping me reconfigure the system again. There really isn't anything different than I had it befor. The main PC and monitor are on the top of the portable desk, and the expansion unit along with the iOmega Zip drive and cassette recorder. The graphics printer are located on the bottom shelf along with the manuals.

I'll be booting the machine WITH the expansion unit installed later today. Wish me luck!
 
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bettablue said:
A lot of these games will not work with lesser versions of DOS, which is why I want to install the latest version of DOS possible.
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I totally agree, I don't know why people want to run DOS 2.0 or something...you have 10 MB of disk space, that's plenty for any version of DOS. :)

Well, there's DR-DOS 7.03 (click for link), now owned by DeviceLogics, but this is an updated version of DR-DOS from the 80s. You buy it for $35. :)

There's also IBM DOS 7.1, IBM doesn't sell a retail package of DOS anymore, but you can download 7.1 for free from their web site. Just go here (link), download the zip file, go into sgdeploy, then sgtk. The DOS directory is DOS 7.1. :) If I remember right, IBMDOS.SYS and IBMBIOS.SYS are the system files that have to be in the root directory of a floppy to make it bootable, well, them and COMMAND.COM too, of course. :)

Beyond those two there's FreeDOS and OpenDOS. :)

I'm not sure what OS I would install if I got our 5150 out of storage...it is buried under my dad's stuff that he has in there...I think eventually I will buy an XT or PS/2 Model 30 off ebay. :) But, most likely I would try to get IBM DOS 2000 if it is still available on amazon when I get to that point, there are only like 2 copies on there. If not, I would probably buy a copy of DR-DOS and dual boot that and FreeDOS. :)
 
SpidersWeb said:
Those power boxes do look pretty awesome.

Have you started the machine up yet?
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I just now booted up the old gal! Believe it or not, the computer booted to c:\ Don't you lust love it when things go as planned?
DOS is installed on the drive, but I don't have any idea what version is loaded. There were no device errors, or extra beeps, so DOS picked up the AST six-Pack card installed in the main PC too. So far, so good.

All I wanted to do is boot it up today to see if the expansion unit was doing it's job, and Wow! I'm surprised! Some of the configurations are already loaded. I am stoked!
 
Awesome :D Congrats

Type VER and find out your DOS version. My XT came with 4.01 when it arrived and I ended up just leaving it because it wasn't worth changing (for me anyway).
 
SpidersWeb said:
Awesome :D Congrats

Type VER and find out your DOS version. My XT came with 4.01 when it arrived and I ended up just leaving it because it wasn't worth changing (for me anyway).
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Good idea. DOS 3.30.

The best thing is that the extender and receiver cards I got from ole juul for the expansion unit work. We both had some trepidations about that. At least we don't have to worry about that any more. Boot time is just over a minute. There seems to be a lot of duplicate programs in a seperate DOS directory as well another directory called SYM which seems to belong to a program called Symphony.

The drive started out pretty noisy, bit it is really smoothing out as I let it run, which I think is a good sign. I want to upgrade to a higher version of DOS though; like 6 or 7. I have a question about something though. When I ran the directory I found some AST software, ASTCLOCK.EXE and SET CLOCK.EXE. Neither of these allow me to actually set the clock. When I run either of these, date and time all report all 9's.

So, I want to completely reformat the hard disk, reinstall DOS, and bring over all of the primary DOS commands I'll be using. What are your thoughts?
 
That'll be all good, you can always try out different options to your hearts content too (as long as you have some way of making 360KB disks).
Not sure about the clock stuff, but there is a section dedicated to RTC drivers on the minuszerodegrees website which has AST tools in the list. Awesome site that.

On a few of my machines I've just given up caring about dates now lol Have two RTC units but they're obscure and wont work with anything I throw at them.

Enoy :)
 
SpidersWeb said:
That'll be all good, you can always try out different options to your hearts content too (as long as you have some way of making 360KB disks).
Not sure about the clock stuff, but there is a section dedicated to RTC drivers on the minuszerodegrees website which has AST tools in the list. Awesome site that.

On a few of my machines I've just given up caring about dates now lol Have two RTC units but they're obscure and wont work with anything I throw at them.

Enoy :)
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Oh, I'm very familiar with modem 7's site. You're right, fantastic site for info.

Onto some other things though. I built up an old Compaq 5403 from 1998, and install Windows 98 on it. It has a 4 Gig hard drive 64 Megs of RAM, DVD burner, internal 100 Meg Zip drive, but most importantly, I swapped out the 3.5" 1.44 Meg floppy drive for a 5.25" 360 Kb DSDD drive. I built it for one purpose only, and that is to make 5.25" floppy disks for use in my IBM 5150. Once I can get the network configuration figured out and working, I'll add some additional hardware and make the Compaq a vintage gaming machine. For now though, it serves its purpose quite well.

I definitely want to upgrade DOS on the IBM. With version 3.3, there are a lot of games in my collection I can't play. At the bare minumum, those will require DOS 6.22, so I'm actually looking for a copy I can buy through E-Bay or something. At the same time, there are some files on the drive I want to keep. With the IBM able to read and write to both if it's floppy drives, there shouldn't be any problem there either.

I'll tell you this though. Being able to boot to the hard drive is a major improvement inn the system. I'm just curious as to why it worked when I didn't configure anything in the PC yet. Can it be the work that Chuck did on the controller when he sold it to me? (BTW Chuck, you are an amazing guy, thanks again...)
 
bettablue said:
Good idea. DOS 3.30.
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Good choice. MS-DOS 3.3 came out July 1987 so that is realistic for this machine. Also PC-DOS 3.3 came out April 2 1987 (with the PS/2 I think) and had 1.44 disk support and multiple partitions. Perhaps MS-DOS 3.30a from February '88 would be pushing it. But yes, in general, 3.3 rocks. :)

In my experience 3.2 is really irritating if you're writing batch files and there is generally no good reason to use it other than historical correctness in some cases. Although 3.0 and 3.1 came out in (Aug) '84 which is a good date for a PC, they were really meant to get up to speed with the AT. Really, if you want earlier than 3.3 then you might as well go with PC DOS 2.0 which came out March 8 of 1983 and is the historically appropriate upgrade for a PC. It is also probably just as functional as 3.2 would be on that machine.
 
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