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A few 5170 questions...

T

TomFCS

Experienced Member
Joined
May 19, 2008
Messages
214
Location
Highlandville, MO
Hi all,

I started working on an IBM 5170 today and I've got a few questions, I'm hoping some of the knowlegeble posters here can help me out.

It's 6 MHZ, 512k with the double stacked memory. It posts fine, no errors and the battery is holding the time and date. Going to change it very soon.

It's got an 85 meg Maxtor XT 1085 HD, that for some reason, is only partitioned to 62 megs. MS DOS 6.22 was already installed but fdisk does not show any unused/unpartioned drive space. ???

It also has a Wangtek 5099en24 tape drive. The data and power cables were pulled on it and I haven't done anything with it yet. My knowledge of tape drives is pretty much zero. Is something like this even worth messing with?

I also learned that there are several numbers listed for the 6 MHZ model. 5170-068, 5170-099, 5170-239 and 5170-599. Do these just designate the drive capacity or are there some differences in each one's design. If so, how do I find out which one I have?

One more. I tried an IBM keyboard (function keys on left) with a 5 pin din but it freezes displaying strange ASCII characters. It works fine with a Model M and a PS2/din adapter though.

Lastly, what OS was most commonly installed when sold new. Only thing IBM I have is IBM DOS 5.0.

Any info, resources or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks and have a great day!

-Tom

pics - http://www.welook4things.com/sub_5170.html
 
TomFCS said:
Hi all,


I also learned that there are several numbers listed for the 6 MHZ model. 5170-068, 5170-099, 5170-239 and 5170-599. Do these just designate the drive capacity or are there some differences in each one's design. If so, how do I find out which one I have?

pics - http://www.welook4things.com/sub_5170.html
Click to expand...

As for what model it is, this might give you some info:
5170 Release notes
The bios date is another clue.

The tape drive, I don't know. Can you still get media (tapes) for it? Otherwise it might be not very useful.

Nice pics :D I love these machines (besides the moments I have to pick it up and move it).
You've got the 5154, does it have an EGA card?
 
It looks like a 5153 (CGA) monitor to me, Jorg!

Original IBM cards are the Colour Graphics Card, and the Serial/Parallel card. The hard drive / floppy controller isn't original. The factory hard disk on a 6MHz AT would be something like a 20MB Seagate ST225.

I think I have that very same tape drive somewhere! No documents or software, unfortunately.

Original DOS would be PC-DOS 3.0, 3.1, 3.2 or 3.3. My favourite is PC-DOS 3.2 :)

AT's are great machines, I have one too ;)
 
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Jorg;

Thanks for the release notes link, interesting and informative. Saved for future reference.

dongfeng,

I looked a bit more today for info on the tape drive, its a 60 meg QIC SCSI tape drive - http://www.sprague-magnetics.com/library/w5150jpr.jpg, too bad it doesn't matter now, looking closer I found the former owner pulled the controller for it out anyway. :(

Found this too - http://www.halfvalue.com/wiki.jsp?topic=Computer_Memories_Inc. Seems that at some point some of the drives used in these machine were pretty bad.

Also found a nice IBM list - http://mastodonpc.tripod.com/ibm/type.html 20 and 30 meg models were available.
 
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