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Dual full-height floppy IBM XT 5160?

compaqportableplus

compaqportableplus

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I was looking on eBay at the completed items for IBM 5160s, and saw this earlier production XT with dual full-height floppies and no hard drive.

My question is, did IBM actually offer this configuration from the factory?

I know they sold versions of the later 256KB-640KB XTs without a hard drive and two half-height floppies, but did they ever produce the earlier 64KB-256KB with dual full-height floppies and no hard drive?

Below is two pictures of the unit in question.
B7029337-51D9-4781-849E-68D06EA48EFE.jpeg
85F58867-623F-48D6-985E-3E18D958EBF8.jpeg
 
IBM sold 'bare bones' units and dealers could order direct from IBM in the configuration they wanted for their customers AFAIK.
 
You can check IBM's product announcement. A dual-floppy 5160 XT is model 5160-978, described as:

Model Abstract 5160-078​


(For IBM US, No Longer Available as of February 21, 1989)
The IBM 5160 Model 078 has a System Unit/Keyboard, 256Kb Memory, two 5.25-inch Double-Sided Diskette Drives, 5.25-inch Diskette Drive Adapter.

IBM Announcement
 
That same announcement has the dual half-height floppy system as:

Model Abstract 5160-277​

(For IBM US, No Longer Available as of February 21, 1989)

The IBM 5160 Model 277 has a System Unit/IBM Personal Computer XT Keyboard, 256Kb Memory, two Half-high 5.25-inch 360Kb Double-Sided Diskette Drives, and Diskette Drive Adapter.
 
booboo said:
You can check IBM's product announcement. A dual-floppy 5160 XT is model 5160-978, described as:

Model Abstract 5160-078​


(For IBM US, No Longer Available as of February 21, 1989)
The IBM 5160 Model 078 has a System Unit/Keyboard, 256Kb Memory, two 5.25-inch Double-Sided Diskette Drives, 5.25-inch Diskette Drive Adapter.

IBM Announcement
Click to expand...
Okay, I did some research on that one, and it seems that could be it, although one source I found with that model indicates it was announced in 1985? I’m almost positive the XT I posted the pic of is a 1984 product unit.

Here’s that list.

booboo said:
That same announcement has the dual half-height floppy system as:

Model Abstract 5160-277​

(For IBM US, No Longer Available as of February 21, 1989)

The IBM 5160 Model 277 has a System Unit/IBM Personal Computer XT Keyboard, 256Kb Memory, two Half-high 5.25-inch 360Kb Double-Sided Diskette Drives, and Diskette Drive Adapter.
Click to expand...
Yes, that’s the later unit with half-height drives that I mentioned above.
 
I used to live near a large government installation (which shall remain nameless) which generated huge amounts of surplus, and in the 1990’s they flooded the market with possibly-literally thousands of 5150s and 5160s. (You used to be able to pick one up for less than $50, I think I paid only $10 on a few occasions.) So far as I can recall every single unit I ever saw of either type had full height drives. I would guess a majority of the 5160s had only a single one (they’d pull and destroy the HDs before surplusing them, alas), but there definitely were dual floppy ones.
 
compaqportableplus said:
Okay, I did some research on that one, and it seems that could be it, although one source I found with that model indicates it was announced in 1985? I’m almost positive the XT I posted the pic of is a 1984 product unit.

Here’s that list.


Yes, that’s the later unit with half-height drives that I mentioned above.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure that list is completely accurate. Per IBM's own announcement the dates are different:

Marketing Service Replaced
Type Model Announced Available Withdrawn Discontinued By

5160-068 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-078 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-086 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-087 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-088 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-089 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-267 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-268 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-277 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-278 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-470 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-589 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -

They have a withdrawn date of 1989. It's neat that IBM provided support until 1998 for all those models.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
I used to live near a large government installation (which shall remain nameless) which generated huge amounts of surplus, and in the 1990’s they flooded the market with possibly-literally thousands of 5150s and 5160s. (You used to be able to pick one up for less than $50, I think I paid only $10 on a few occasions.) So far as I can recall every single unit I ever saw of either type had full height drives. I would guess a majority of the 5160s had only a single one (they’d pull and destroy the HDs before surplusing them, alas), but there definitely were dual floppy ones.
Click to expand...
I wish I could travel back in time and pick up a few! At $10, you could’ve gotten a small truckload of them for what one costs today! Crazy.

Yes, any XTs made from 1983 till late 1985 will have full height drives, but in early 1986, they updated the XT with half-height floppy drives, a 256KB-640KB system board, and a revised BIOS with a much faster memory count among other things.

Here’s my 1986 XT with dual half-height floppy drives for anyone that’s never seen one.
24C90E7F-2F6C-4A40-A3EE-031B34AA93DC.jpeg
They are ALPS drives and are of excellent quality! It originally only had the single top drive, but I actually found an identical matching drive at goodwill which I installed in the bottom position!
booboo said:
I'm not sure that list is completely accurate. Per IBM's own announcement the dates are different:

Marketing Service Replaced
Type Model Announced Available Withdrawn Discontinued By

5160-068 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-078 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-086 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-087 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-088 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-089 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-267 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-268 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-277 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-278 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-470 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -
5160-589 - - 1989/02/21 1998/09/30 -

They have a withdrawn date of 1989. It's neat that IBM provided support until 1998 for all those models.
Click to expand...
Yeah, probably not. It is unfortunate that IBM doesn’t show the “announced” and “available” dates on that page. And what’s up with the “marketing withdrawn” date of 1989/02/21? I’m assuming that means when they were discontinued? I was under the impression all PCs and XTs were discontinued in 1987 when the PS/2 was introduced.
 
compaqportableplus said:
I wish I could travel back in time and pick up a few! At $10, you could’ve gotten a small truckload of them for what one costs today! Crazy.
Click to expand...

Heh. Mostly what I did with them back then was set them up with similarly cheap surplus monitors (mostly green composite ones) and pirated word processor software so a charity-minded friend of the family who apparently knew *everybody* in town could distribute them to needy people. But they were so cheap if you needed, say, disk drives for the TRS-80 you bought at a garage sale, it made perfect sense to buy a genuine IBM PC just for the drives and throw the rest away.

(I also used to do things like stuff higher-power motherboards into them; most powerful 5160 I made had a K6-233 in it, I think? To make it fit I had to whittle away part of the drive cradle but, hey, who cares, right, they're disposable!)

But, yeah, at today's going rate if you happened to a have a Mr. Fusion-equipped Deloreon in the garage it definitely might make financial sense to take a little trip back to the surplus depot...
 
compaqportableplus said:
And what’s up with the “marketing withdrawn” date of 1989/02/21? I’m assuming that means when they were discontinued? I was under the impression all PCs and XTs were discontinued in 1987 when the PS/2 was introduced.
Click to expand...
IT managers sometimes don’t like to jump on the latest technology. I’ve seen mainframe customers buy the previous system because the one that came out this year was too new and untested. It doesn’t surprise me that there were a couple of years of overlap between XT and PS/2.
 
compaqportableplus said:
Yeah, probably not. It is unfortunate that IBM doesn’t show the “announced” and “available” dates on that page. And what’s up with the “marketing withdrawn” date of 1989/02/21? I’m assuming that means when they were discontinued? I was under the impression all PCs and XTs were discontinued in 1987 when the PS/2 was introduced.
Click to expand...
Marketing withdrawn is EOS End-of-Sale, there's always overlap due to large institutional customers and the fact that it takes time to test and approve new hardware; think government users as well.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
Heh. Mostly what I did with them back then was set them up with similarly cheap surplus monitors (mostly green composite ones) and pirated word processor software so a charity-minded friend of the family who apparently knew *everybody* in town could distribute them to needy people. But they were so cheap if you needed, say, disk drives for the TRS-80 you bought at a garage sale, it made perfect sense to buy a genuine IBM PC just for the drives and throw the rest away.

(I also used to do things like stuff higher-power motherboards into them; most powerful 5160 I made had a K6-233 in it, I think? To make it fit I had to whittle away part of the drive cradle but, hey, who cares, right, they're disposable!)

But, yeah, at today's going rate if you happened to a have a Mr. Fusion-equipped Deloreon in the garage it definitely might make financial sense to take a little trip back to the surplus depot...
Click to expand...
I wasn’t around in the ‘90s so I missed out on all of that unfortunately! Good that you fixed some of them up to get them to people in need.

The thought of cutting on an IBM XT case does make me cringe a little (okay, a lot), but I understand that these weren’t vintage collectors items at the time!

jafir said:
IT managers sometimes don’t like to jump on the latest technology. I’ve seen mainframe customers buy the previous system because the one that came out this year was too new and untested. It doesn’t surprise me that there were a couple of years of overlap between XT and PS/2.
Click to expand...
booboo said:
Marketing withdrawn is EOS End-of-Sale, there's always overlap due to large institutional customers and the fact that it takes time to test and approve new hardware; think government users as well.
Click to expand...
jafir and booboo:

That all makes sense. I think whatever they were selling in 1988/89 had to have been old stock though, as I’ve certainly never seen or heard of a 5150 or 5160 manufactured after 1987.
 
I started my working life behind a dual full-height floppy IBM XT .... started it every morning with DOS in one drive and Lotus 1-2-3 in the other. I loved the colour screen as well .... the green colour that is haha! Seriously though, it was my first experience with a PC and boy, was it magic ;)
 
Brian Todd said:
I started my working life behind a dual full-height floppy IBM XT .... started it every morning with DOS in one drive and Lotus 1-2-3 in the other. I loved the colour screen as well .... the green colour that is haha! Seriously though, it was my first experience with a PC and boy, was it magic ;)
Click to expand...
Very nice! You’re certain it was an XT and not a PC? I do agree about the green displays, they are lovely!

DOS and Lotus 123, now that’s the proper way to use an IBM right there!
 
compaqportableplus said:
They are ALPS drives and are of excellent quality! It originally only had the single top drive, but I actually found an identical matching drive at goodwill which I installed in the bottom position!
Click to expand...
I think mine has YEDATA drives in it. They are the same as the 360K drive in my 5170. I damaged one by not being careful when I cleaned the heads, something caught on the little spring steel thing that the heads float in, and bent it all out of shape. I had an NOS 5170 drive and swapped the beige faceplate with the black one.
 
Consider a large operation using 5150s with large, negotiated contract for 2-drive 5150s. Time passes and the 5150 is withdrawn. It's not unusual for a vendor to supply a look-alike, work-alike system.

We had a similar problem before the PC. Purchase orders were cut for systems with 7MB and 14MB Rodime hard disks. When the industry standardized on 10MB and 20MB, what to do? We were asked by sales to artificially limit the 10MB hard disk to 7 and the 20 to 14MB. "B...but, we could supply them with larger disks for nothing." "But then they'd renegotiate the purchase contract..." The world is crazy like that.... <sigh>

It still goes on like that. Go buy a Rigol DSO for a special price, with bandwidth limit of 100Mhz. Same scope with 200MHz bandwidth is the same unit, but with different firmware. Eventually, someone figures out how to install the 200MHz firmware. The manufacturer adds fake security features to make that impossible--until someone figures out how to defeat that.... Such is marketing...
 
booboo said:
You can check IBM's product announcement. A dual-floppy 5160 XT is model 5160-978, described as:

Model Abstract 5160-078​


(For IBM US, No Longer Available as of February 21, 1989)
The IBM 5160 Model 078 has a System Unit/Keyboard, 256Kb Memory, two 5.25-inch Double-Sided Diskette Drives, 5.25-inch Diskette Drive Adapter.

IBM Announcement
Click to expand...

That matches with this IBM document as well (page 6-2) which shows the matrix of a factory build variations.

 
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