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IBM 5155 Not booting

Welcome to these forums.

Lots of IBM 5155 information at http://www.minuszerodegrees.net

The card that has the leaking battery (the black block), is a particular version of the Quadram Quadboard. The first thing that you should do is remove that card, if only to stop the leakage spreading further, and causing damage to the motherboard and/or other cards. The card provides a real-time-clock, RAM to supplement the RAM on the motherboard, a serial port, and a parallel port. The 5155 does not need it to start up and display something. Put the card aside for now.

Have you tried a Minimum Diagnostic Configuration ?
Details at http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/5150_5160/MDC/minimum_diag_config.htm
 
Definitely try the minimal configuration and if you have time press on any of the chips that are in sockets (or if you can pull them and re-seat them that may help also). On a side note have you checked your contrast knobs? Looks like one is set quite high and you could possibly be too bright to show the text if there was any. As the site says, do you get any beep codes or anything indicating the system is booting up?
 
It works now :)
2014-09-17%2018.41.45.jpg

removed the quadram board and changed the switches. But I only have IBM Basic so i was wondering if it is possible to connect the isa floppy controller and one of the floppy drives to a more modern pc and copy over dos files to a floppy as i do not have another computer with 5.25" floppy support. If this is possible what version of dos will run? do i have to use pc-dos or can i use ms-dos?
 
rosaage said:
But I only have IBM Basic so i was wondering if it is possible to connect the isa floppy controller and one of the floppy drives to a more modern pc and copy over dos files to a floppy as i do not have another computer with 5.25" floppy support. If this is possible what version of dos will run? do i have to use pc-dos or can i use ms-dos?
Click to expand...
Any DOS will do. You can use interlnk to copy files and run programs off a HDD on another computer. There's a fresh thread today about that.

BTW: that image is almost 2MB and dropbox serves it at about 300kbps so that's over a minute to download. :)
 
The IBM 5155 can be considered to be a portable version of an early 5160.
As such, your 5155 has the ability to read/write 720K diskettes.
More information on that subject is [here].
 
I'd have to search around so perhaps someone else has the information readily available (or the existing knowledge of "no") but I don't remember if there's a way to bootstrap the 5155/XT natively but that'd be sweet. I do recall one of the XT-IDE projects implementing that but don't remember if it was done or what version had that ability.
 
I tried to boot it with a 1.44 MB drive. Everything worked fine on my "modern" computer dos loaded and all that, then When i booted up the 5155 It started counting memory. 64k ok then i got "configuration too large for memory". What now? Do i have to use another version of dos? or do i have to buy a new memory expansion card?
Or is it possible to fix my old one?
 
I think you may have a memory expansion card misconfig, but that is my hunch w/o more detail. Can you boot without it?

5155 is same as any xt or xt-class machine. You will find lots of how-to info on the 5160 model that you can apply to the 5155.

Here is the drive controller I use in my 5155:
http://www.vintagecomputer.net/ibm/5155/LCS-6610F_drive_controller.jpg
I have a pic that makes it appear that I booted to the A drive, a 1.44 3.5" but I think normally I use it as a b drive.

I have directions on my site how to build a DOS 1.1 and 3.3 boot disk (3.5 or 5 1/4) and tools you will need. You may need an xp machine or older to build the disk, not sure if vista/7/8 will work.
http://www.vintagecomputer.net/browse_thread.cfm?id=60
(Bottom of thread link to download dos 3.3)
 
I'v tried to reconfigure the switches and i think they are set correctly now, but the computer just boots to the blinking screen you see in the dropbox pictures if i have the card in.
 
rosaage said:
I tried to boot it with a 1.44 MB drive. Everything worked fine on my "modern" computer dos loaded and all that, then When i booted up the 5155 It started counting memory. 64k ok then i got "configuration too large for memory". What now?
Click to expand...
64 KB is not enough RAM for DOS 3.3; that is why it reports, "configuration too large for memory".

As supplied by IBM, the IBM 5155 had 256 KB of RAM, on the motherboard (4 banks of 64 KB). People would typically then add a RAM card (like your Quadboard) to get the total RAM to 512 KB or 640 KB. The photos that you posted of your Quadboard show that:
1. It has 384 KB of RAM.
2. Its switches (5 to 8) are set to start that RAM at address 256 K (assuming that the info at [here] matches your card).

That is what I expect. 256 KB on the motherboard plus 384 KB on the Quadboard for a total of 640 KB.

You have removed the Quadboard because of the battery leakage (and possibly also because it may have been what was stopping your computer from starting).

So, you should have 256 KB of RAM; what is on the motherboard, not the 64 KB that the computer is seeing.

Do you see that all four banks of motherboard RAM are populated?

If so, are you confident that you have the motherboard switches set correctly for that: switches 3 and 4 both OFF
 
Continuing from my previous post:

Assuming that your motherboard has all four RAM banks populated, and that the motherboard switches are set correctly for that, then there is a known reason why only 64 KB of the 256 KB would be seen:
* Second bank of RAM, bank 1 [diagram] - one or more RAM chips is faulty.
* Second bank of RAM, bank 1 [diagram] - one or more RAM chips has developed a poor connection with its socket.

The reason is explained in the 'Flawed methodology ...' section at [here].

If you suspect that, try swapping the chips in bank 1 with those that are in bank 2 (or bank 3). You can do that because on the 5155 motherboard (an early 5160 motherboard), all RAM chips on the motherboard are of the same type (although they may be of differing manufacturer).
 
When i booted with one chip from bank 0 removed I got the same screen as when the bad card is installed, could this men the ram chips on the card are broken?
I'll try moving from bank 2 to 1 tomorrow
 
Your 5155 counted up to 64 KB and so considers bank 0 to be good.

rosaage said:
When i booted with one chip from bank 0 removed I got the same screen as when the bad card is installed,
Click to expand...
One of the initial checks that the IBM BIOS in the 5155 does is to check the first 16 KB of RAM (the first 16 KB is considered critical).
If the BIOS finds that it is faulty, it just stops the computer, with no indication to you.
Therefore, you must leave bank 0 (0 to 64 KB) in place.
 
It works now. For some reason I thought Off was On and On was Off so it was set to bank 0 only. The quadram card is still broken, but with 256k of ram and a nice 5,24" floppy with ibm dos 2.00 I can finally play some games on it. :)
 
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