Advice needed on add-on purchases for Commodore PC-10 8088

[CanadaPhil]

This model was my FIRST ever PC compatible that I bought back in the day. I regret selling it long ago. I miss it and need to also reacquire one to relive my early "IBM" days. Guess I wasn't watching Ebay when you were or I might have picked this up! Hahaha.

I "upgraded" the video in my original PC10 with the classic ATI EGA Wonder... I unbelievably STILL have that card stored in its original box to this day. Still have a working 1901 green monochrome monitor. That was the original monitor equipment packaged with the PC10 and is what I first used until I did the video upgrade and got a colour monitor.

Ahhhhh... the memories.

 

[sgifanatic]

Doesn't the Commodore PC-10 need an PC/XT keyboard, or was it compatible with the AT keyboard?

Yes, you are correct. Somewhat ashamed to admit that I had completely forgotten about this. I since replaced the ps/2 keyboard and converter with a Honeywell xt/at keyboard I found on eBay (not cheap) and that solved the keyboard issue.

But here is the surprise. It solved everything else also! The 360K floppy that wasn't booting DOS suddenly started working. And the lo-tech xt IDE card is working as well. The particularly strange thing is that even with the older keyboard arrangement, the bios would (post init), look for a boot floppy. If you hit f1, the floppy light would come on again and it would appear to attempt a boot sector read, but would fail with a hex error code. The xt IDE bios would simply never show. Further, removing the keyboard entirely had the same effect.

I haven't spent too much time on this other than verifying boot via floppy and xt IDE, but I never realized the keyboard (or lack thereof) could result in all this! A cautionary tale for any future Commodore PC-10 users out there.

 

[SkydivinGirl]

I'll have to test my PC10-III without the keyboard. I think I have booted up without a keyboard in the past but I'm not certain.

I'm glad it's booting for you!

Heather