Thought I'd post some pics of the 5150 I recently acquired to replace my long gone original that I had when I was a kid...
This was a Craigslist find; I had put up a Wanted to Buy post and a nice guy out East got in contact with me a couple weeks later. He was the original owner, having acquired it in 1982. He'd been storing it hoping to get it up and running someday, but eventually decided to find someone else who was interested. I even got the original boxes, replete with multiple addresses, having been shipped back and forth to Alaska where he still works as a programmer.
It came with a Revision 2 BIOS (as you might be able to see from the closeup of the motherboard), and dual Tandon DS floppies. The machine was also configured with a fully-populated QuadRAM Quadboard and another generic memory card that takes it up to I believe 544K. The Quadboard is also notable in that it seems to accept modern dates, and as long as the drivers get loaded at boot the system knows it's in the year 2009. Video is supplied by an IBM MDA into the venerable 5151.
I was lucky enough that one floppy was still functional, but the other needs some tuning. In ignorance, and before reading about the details of floppy head alignment, I unscrewed the bracket holding the top head down. I plan to eventually drag out my OScope to do a real alignment, but now I guess it's going to be complicated by my previous hamfisted effort (anyone know where to get an alignment floppy?)
Anyway, I disassembled it for cleaning and took some pictures along the way in case anyone was interested. You can click the thumbnails to get a better look. After the new window opens with the image, you can click on it *again* for an even closer look:
A closeup of the BIOS chips, pre-cleaning.
Case and motherboard, pre-cleaning. For being such an old machine it was remarkably dust-free.
Another shot of case and motherboard.
Case, motherboard, and Tandon drives in background.
Shiny clean case after dusting off with a microfiber cloth.
Another shot of the clean case and power supply.
Clean motherboard after some subtle Q-Tip work.
Partially reassembled with motherboard and floppies back in place.
This was a Craigslist find; I had put up a Wanted to Buy post and a nice guy out East got in contact with me a couple weeks later. He was the original owner, having acquired it in 1982. He'd been storing it hoping to get it up and running someday, but eventually decided to find someone else who was interested. I even got the original boxes, replete with multiple addresses, having been shipped back and forth to Alaska where he still works as a programmer.
It came with a Revision 2 BIOS (as you might be able to see from the closeup of the motherboard), and dual Tandon DS floppies. The machine was also configured with a fully-populated QuadRAM Quadboard and another generic memory card that takes it up to I believe 544K. The Quadboard is also notable in that it seems to accept modern dates, and as long as the drivers get loaded at boot the system knows it's in the year 2009. Video is supplied by an IBM MDA into the venerable 5151.
I was lucky enough that one floppy was still functional, but the other needs some tuning. In ignorance, and before reading about the details of floppy head alignment, I unscrewed the bracket holding the top head down. I plan to eventually drag out my OScope to do a real alignment, but now I guess it's going to be complicated by my previous hamfisted effort (anyone know where to get an alignment floppy?)
Anyway, I disassembled it for cleaning and took some pictures along the way in case anyone was interested. You can click the thumbnails to get a better look. After the new window opens with the image, you can click on it *again* for an even closer look:
A closeup of the BIOS chips, pre-cleaning.
Case and motherboard, pre-cleaning. For being such an old machine it was remarkably dust-free.
Another shot of case and motherboard.
Case, motherboard, and Tandon drives in background.
Shiny clean case after dusting off with a microfiber cloth.
Another shot of the clean case and power supply.
Clean motherboard after some subtle Q-Tip work.
Partially reassembled with motherboard and floppies back in place.
