• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

What's the max than an IBM XT case can take - IBM XTeroids upgrade?

D

DaCiRo

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 13, 2014
Messages
169
Location
Japan
Recently started pondering what to do with one of my XT units that it currently in storage :confused: ...and I am entertaining the thought of looking at emptying it up and place inside whatever is the most that it can handle within the 130Watts limit, ...the most powerful Mother board possible, Graphics card, etc... however I am not looking at drilling extra holes or damaging the case to place a 500Watts PSU or an oversize board for which the latching holes or rear ports do not align. When it comes to the case that its the only part not to be modified.

Anyone has attempted an IBM XTeroids upgrade like this ? If you were to tune up yours....What would it look like?
 
It sort of made sense in 1995. It doesn't make much sense now. Not to me anyway.
 
I built a few "Super XTs" back in the 90's (when it was more politically correct) and I'll have to say from my experience that if you're *not* willing to hack on the case a little your options are pretty limited. The problem you'll run into trying to fit most "Baby AT" motherboards into a 5160 is there simply isn't enough space under the drive bay to slide them under it. They almost inevitably will have components like SIMM sockets, voltage regulators, the CPU itself, etc, that are just too tall. I dealt with that back in the day by simply hacksawing out a corner of the bay but, yeah, you probably don't want to do that now. They did sell those little one half/two-thirds size AT boards that were only a couple inches longer than a 16 bit ISA slot, you could try measuring it out and seeing if one of those would fit. The only one I had back in the day was a truly tiny 386SX board and that certainly did fit, but I'm sure you want to go higher than that.

Note that even if you do go with a really short board that doesn't make you cut the metal you still probably won't be able to use the middle drive bay, at least not with a device resting on the floor of it. On the ones I built I hacked together a little shelf to let me stick a 3 1/2 HD into the space over the bay.

The best Baby AT boards I've ever laid hands on myself have been K6-2 Super Socket 7's, but I've heard rumors that Socket 370 boards do exist. I suspect it'd be hard to go any higher than that without really thinking outside the box and going with something like a single-board industrial computer with a passive backplane in place of a real motherboard. The sky would be the limit there, although it would probably limit your video card choices and those passive backplane computers are *expensive*.
 
you could go w/a different form factor, atx? or itx? (same as mini-atx?), set the main board away from the card slots, then fenagle some sort of adapter that mates with the case holes, with cables on the inside to mate with the cards. You won't have to alter anything, and I wouldn't (a no name clone case maybe, but on second thought they're a whole lot less plentiful then IBM cases so scratch that idea).
There are other types of power supplies available on the surplus market. Do a search. They were more plentiful years ago. Lots of different shaped units, oblong, etc. I have a 24vdc unit I purchased from bgmicro.com I think. Not necessarily what you're looking for. Break out of your peecee mindset and see what else you can scrounge. If you're that determined.
 
Well, yes, it goes without saying that if you don't care about your solution "bolting in" to the existing anchors and slot guides there are any number of miniaturized computers you could hide in a box that large. Just drop an i7 NUC loosely inside and go to town?
 
it went w/o saying unitl I said it!

I have an Ampro LittleBoard/PC you could probably just lay in there on top of the antistatic bag it's currently swaddled in. Just run power to it, run cables to and fro and wala! Just don't jostle it much, it'll slide off the bag and short against the case. Heck you could even bolt it right to the lower floppy, what it was designed to mount to, and put a tinyish 2.5" hardrive above it, and you're set. You got to know how to use your noggin. Not much of an upgrade though

GET 'ER DONE YEEHAW
 
tipc said:
it went w/o saying unitl I said it!
Click to expand...

Well, yeah, you certainly did. ;) I'd just say it sounds a bit out of sync with what the OP was asking. I mean, really, if all the XT case is being used for is as a paperweight the obvious thing to do would be to just jam an Intel NUC (or one of those teeny Shuttle PCs, or any number of other options) up against a slot cover opening and go to town. The NUC is about as wide as an ISA card is tall, and eyeballing the back of one it looks like you could probably expose most of the rear through a single slot opening; you might lose one of the USB ports. Then use some extenders to take the front USB ports to another opening to the case, work out a way to remote trigger the power button, and you're off to the races.

I guess I'm not exactly sure how this solution involves "using your noggin" more than the more authentic way; given how dime-a-dozen tiny computers are now it actually seems a lot easier than researching and finding the best "conventional" parts that would bolt into an XT case.

Also, re: "bolting it to the lower floppy": When I think of an XT I think of a *real* one with full-height floppies, and as I recall the floppy rested directly on a mostly-solid metal shelf and was in fact only secured on one side. I'm not quite sure how you're going to be able to bolt a Littleboard under one.
 
He said the limitations would be the output of the 130 watt supply, and didn't want to modify the case. If he had said "needs to be a baby AT form factor mobo" then I wouldn't have volunteered any suggestions. And whether or not XTs came with 1 full height drive, perhaps they did, it's irrelevant. He's upgrading the machine, so therefore the full height drive might very well be removed along with the other obsolete components. Not to mention the capacity and type of media it takes. Whether or not a little board could fit on top of a floppy and still fit I don't know (not staring at a 5160 case). It was just a suggestion. But if the case takes full height drives, I would think there's room above a 1/2 height drive for a little board.
 
The Idea is not to modify the case in any way, leaving its internal structure as AS-IS and find the most powerful board to fit in. The ATX ones might be a good choice. The Keyboard connector in this boards (link below) is AT style and by some of the pictures that I have seen it seems that would line up with the keyboard hole in the case. I am adding a link to one that I have been checking out (Though I have no idea if this is the best I could find)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/GENERIC-ACH...033933?hash=item35f0e8794d:g:5yoAAOSwsB9WAQrJ
Seems that the 16BIT ISA slots would allign well with the case.... not sure about the PCI ones. I heard in the past that the ASUS P5A-B was a real close fit (if not a perfect fit) for the case but I do not seem to find these out in the market,...
My other constrain is that I am limited by the 130WATTS PSU, I can make it up to 200WATTS with another suitable CPU that fits into the XT case, but that is about it. Though other option could be to hook it up to an external PSU.. (Hmmm....why not)

This could be a fun project, I am not giving any use to this case now, hence willing to try new things, thought in the future I might want to restore it to its original contents and that is why I am not looking to modify (damage) the case at all.
 
I think an external PSU might be the easiest way, because fitting an XT or even an AT-PSU to a modern ATX board will be very difficult. ATX power supplies are soft-switched by the motherboard, rather than having a power button that switches the mains on/off.
Then there's hibernate/sleep modes etc.
 
I did see an 'ATX motherboard in XT case' project online some years ago, which gutted the original PSU, replaced its innards with the works of an ATX PSU, and hooked the ATX power button up to the Big Red Switch. So to get the same effect as pressing an ATX power button, the user would have to turn the Big Red Switch on and off.

I won't get on to what was done to the rest of the case to get an ATX motherboard and optical drive in there...
 
DaCiRo said:
The ATX ones might be a good choice. The Keyboard connector in this boards (link below) is AT style and by some of the pictures that I have seen it seems that would line up with the keyboard hole in the case. I am adding a link to one that I have been checking out (Though I have no idea if this is the best I could find)
Click to expand...

So, I've run into a few boards like that before. Form-factor-wise they were technically Baby AT boards, but they included an ATX power supply connector (and soft-power-ability) and came with a pretty ridiculous looking ATX I/O plate that accommodated the AT keyboard connector. (And also let you screw the pigtails for the onboard SuperI/O ports into it instead of consuming slots with them. This let them go into either kind of case and work with either sort of power supply so they were sort of handy. Something like this is exactly the sort of thing you might want to try fitting into your XT case; as I said, the wild card is if it'll go in without something like the RAM slots or CPU socket physically interfering with the drive bracket.

My other constrain is that I am limited by the 130WATTS PSU, I can make it up to 200WATTS with another suitable CPU that fits into the XT case, but that is about it. Though other option could be to hook it up to an external PSU.. (Hmmm....why not)
Click to expand...

In my experience it's sort of a crapshoot whether a given Baby AT board will work with an XT power supply. I swear I vaguely recall that there's some subtle difference between XT and AT power supplies (something to do with the power good signal or something, I honestly don't remember?) and I remember encountering a couple AT boards that just weren't happy with with XT supplies for some reason. BUT, that said, I think the majority of them worked, and 130 watts should be good enough to drive a Super Socket 7-era board and a hard disk, as long as you don't go super crazy with the video card.

For the most powerful hybrid I made (An AMD K6) I gutted a dead 63 watt PC power supply and replaced the innards from one of those dirt-common MiniTower AT power supplies. Not suggesting you do that but it was a relatively easy way to get a 250 watt AT-compatible XT supply. ;)

This could be a fun project, I am not giving any use to this case now, hence willing to try new things, thought in the future I might want to restore it to its original contents and that is why I am not looking to modify (damage) the case at all.
Click to expand...

If you have a ready source of old Pentium-era junk to paw through I'd totally say go for it. Again, the biggest problem you're going to run into is the placement and low altitude of the middle drive bay. It sits so close to the motherboard that if there's anything like a SIMM socket in that area of the board it's a deal-breaker. (I'd almost suggest what you should do is make a cardboard template the same size as the original motherboard, slip it into place, and outline the drive bay "shadow" onto it. That might give you an idea at least when you're looking at a given board if it's likely to interfere or not.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
I swear I vaguely recall that there's some subtle difference between XT and AT power supplies (something to do with the power good signal or something, I honestly don't remember?) and I remember encountering a couple AT boards that just weren't happy with with XT supplies for some reason.
Click to expand...
See the earlier thread at [here].
 
Thanks! The cardboard motherboard model is a great idea actually!. I will take measures from the spec docs of several of this and see if I can can reproduce a reliable cardboard model. This actually will help me too in confirming if the Motherboard holes and I/O ports line up with the case nicely.
The Power is still an issue if I keep it as an internal PSU.... I think about an external solution might be the best.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top