- VCF South West - June 14 - 16, Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at University of Texas at Dallas
- VCF West - Aug 2 - 3, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA
- VCF Midwest - Sept 7 - 8 2024, Schaumburg, IL
- VCF SoCal - Mid February 2025, Location TBD, Southern CA
- VCF East - April 2025, Infoage Museum, Wall NJ
-
Please review our updated Terms and Rules here
Finding specs on 5150 with 5161 expansion unit
- Thread starter DumbQuestionDuJour
- Start date
Ok guys ... we're having a little thread abuse problem here. It's devolved into an off-line chat channel.
Posts should be meaningful and of general interest to a wide variety of readers. If it takes less than 30 seconds to compose a reply to a thread, then you probably shouldn't be pressing the reply button.
I realize there is a lot of interest in this item, but it's time to stop frothing at the mouth. ; - 0
Mike
DumbQuestionDuJour
Member
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2012
- Messages
- 48
Unless Norton has a park utility hidden somewhere, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to park it as I'm not sure how to transfer a program onto it. I don't have any 5 1/4" disks, much less a 5 1/4" drive.
The box issue is still difficult. I'm afraid to list it if I don't have the proper shipping supplies, and I'm having a tough time finding them. The joys of living in a rural area. Off to look for some this AM.
I put the whole thing on Craigslist yesterday with what I realize is probably a fairly high price, just hoping that the right person would see it and save me the step of shipping, but no luck on that as of yet.
I'm still wavering between one listing or two. If I did one listing, I'd be willing to ship only the 5161 if that's all the buyer wanted, but not knowing what the pieces are worth, I think that might lead to difficulty reaching consensus about an appropriate credit amount.
modem7
10k Member
We know you have an ST-412 drive. Its landing zone (cylinder) is 319. One of us here will knock up some very short code that you can type into DOS' DEBUG, code that will move the heads to cylinder 319. You would then power off the 5161 immediately after running the code.
DumbQuestionDuJour
Member
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2012
- Messages
- 48
WOW! Thank you! :D
Shadow Lord
Veteran Member
I thought we resolved this? Didn't UPS say they will pack it for you for $17? And if you are going to ship you are going to have to go down to their store seems like the easy thing to do is have them pack it. Just list the item w/ UPS as your shipping option and the eBay calculator will tell the potential buyer how much it costs to their door. You will most likely make enough profit that the $17 is not a big issue for packing, but if it is, just take your minimum acceptable price + $20 (so your costs are covered) and list that as your stating bid price.
Save yourself headache and list the two separately. After all of this the last thing you want is deal to fall through because the buyer only wants the 5161 and you two can't figure out how to split the price. If somebody is that desperate to keep them as a set they can bid on both! And since it sounds as if you are selling the cable w/ the 5161 again don't forget the transmitter card!
Just my two cents. I buy exclusively on eBay (no selling) and after 12 years I've seen alot of the BS sellers pull either intentionally or unintentionally and shipping/packing issues is one of the major ones.
DumbQuestionDuJour
Member
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2012
- Messages
- 48
Hmmm... I'm fairly sure that the $17 figure was what they would charge me for the box if I wanted to just buy the box and pack it myself. And that was for a box that gave only 1" of play on each side of the longer side of the unit (maybe that's sufficient, though?). I did not get the impression that that included the labor of packing and any packing supplies like bubble wrap. Maybe I'm mistaken, though. And that, of course, is for one box, so three boxes alone would cost $51. If that included packing, then I should probably be all over it. I guess I'll have to call to clarify. And also to clarify, the only reason that I would travel to that site is because they have packing services. There's a UPS office significantly closer to me that has package drop-off only, or I think I could call to schedule a pick-up at pretty much any address on their route, anyway.
I've just put out an appeal to friends for boxes; hoping to find a few folks who have some spares kicking around.
Stone
10k Member
If UPS is charging $17 that must be for packing. FedEx charges me ~$20 to pack and ship a multisymc monitor in a box they charge $5 for. That's a 20" x 20" x 20" box. Seriously, they're not charging $17 for a box. 
Shadow Lord
Veteran Member
Okay, I misunderstood. The 1" is enough. Basically you won't able to stop a catastrophe (i.e. someone running a truck into it) but small bumps, pressures, and shallow penetrating trauma will be protected against. Just make sure you either pack w/ lots of peanuts (ideally contained in plastic bags) or add solid Styrofoam blocks (even better) in between. Again, i am not sure why you are stressing about the cost of shipping? The cost of shipping is what the cost of shipping is. If someone wants to buy it they need to understand that on top of the auction price they need to pay X dollars for S&H. And if they buy all three boxes they have to pay a significant amount for shipping these days.
bettablue
Veteran Member
Again Mike, I agree. There just seems to be something funny here. The OP stated that the unit will pop up with error 1701, or 1801, then all of the sudden, it's OK? Yet, when they boot the expansion first, everything is normal. Well, that's to be expected, it should be normal. And now that they have started booting it from the expansion unit, it works too! I would say that regardless what the booting issue might be, and I'm thinking more about user error because the OP is unfamiliar with the system. (Don't worry, we were all there at some point; especially me!) I'm just glad they got it all figured out and marcoguy has something he can bid on.
I sincerely hope that marcoguy wins this auction. I've been working with him in private messaging for a while. I can't think of a better person to win this particular system. Besides, if he loses; well, I can't stand to see a grown man cry.
Is there any idea on what the opening bit might be?
For those of you who don't know (and I hope I'm not screwing myself by saying this!) It already went up on Ebay with a starting price of $295. There's been one bid, and it isn't me. I usually wait until the end to bid. If this goes over $400, I will likely buy the Tecmar unit that is on Ebay for $400 but it now. Here's a link to the 5161 (once again, I hope I'm not screwing myself by putting this here:D):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/18090394809...AX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649#ht_500wt_1414
http://www.ebay.com/itm/18090394809...AX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649#ht_500wt_1414
Stone
10k Member
Shadow Lord
Veteran Member
Marcoguy,
No you are not screwing yourself. You have a certain amount of money you can spend/are willing to spend on this system. If someone is willing to spend more than you then they are willing to spend more than you. Thats all there is to it. Sniping at the last second, or not bidding until the last minute are strategies only useful in avoiding giving someone time to think "can I spend $50 more"? But they won't help against another bidder who is willing to outspend you. Plus like I told OP: The people who want a 5161 saw this posted on eBay in the first few hours. I suspect this will see the usual last 30 second flurry of bidding before the price becomes known. However, the opening BID is very large already so you never know. It may not climb much past that...
Last edited:
bettablue
Veteran Member
I personally thinkk that regardless which one you get, you'll be happy, although you're like me in a lot of respects and will really only be happy with the original. The 5161 on eBay is super clean and in fantastic condition; it looks as good as mine. As well it should. After all, it was boxed for so long.
I really hope you do get it.
I'll be watching marco. Good luck.
I really hope you do get it.
I'll be watching marco. Good luck.
We are the same in a lot of respects with things like that. If I win, it'll be refreshing to see 2 HH IBM 360k FDDs and a FH ST-412 in my 5160 instead of the eyesore of a faceplateless 1.44Mb FDD, a 3.5" HD, and a faceplateless CDROM drive. (Those'll go in the 5161) Also, still nothing from Ed...
bettablue
Veteran Member
DumbQuestionDuJour
Member
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2012
- Messages
- 48
MikeS said:
I'm not sure I'm following here. If it were only booting to Basic, would I be getting a C prompt? Would I be able to move around from directory to directory, look at which programs are on the system, rewrite the autoexec.bat to remove the Procomm line, etc.?
I don't think I've booted to anything other than Basic on the 5150 alone (really wish I had a boot disk known to be good, but I got rid of all of my 5 1/4" disks at least ten years ago), but based on what I'm seeing on the 5161, I think it's booting to DOS.
I will confess operator error on one thing: The time that I was turned on the 5161 AFTER the 5150, I (examines feet) discovered that the 5161 wasn't actually plugged in. Ahem. At that point, though, I was told that the 5161 should go on first, anyway, so I didn't try it the other way around again. Not sure what would happen if I tried it that way again with both machines plugged in this time (examining feet again...) but since I'm so paranoid about doing anything wrong and causing any damage, I'm not inclined to try.
Re the auction / starting price, I hadn't intended to start it out that high, but I received two offers for the 5161 -- both involving long-distance shipping -- prior to listing it, and I would have felt completely stupid if I had listed it low and it for some reason sold low. I've lucked into auctions that just didn't take hold before myself, and I know it must really stink for the seller, and I didn't want that to happen to me here.
That said, I also hope that Marcoguy gets it; I wish he had bought it when it was on CL.
Last edited:
MikeS
Veteran Member
No, you're booting DOS on the hard disk all right; that was in response to a post early on when you'd said it came up saying OK instead of a DOS prompt.
Nice looking listing, well done; good luck!