compaqportableplus
Veteran Member
After many years of wanting one, I finally own an early-revision IBM 5150 PC.
There was a seller with an IBM 5150 on eBay (just a regular Rev B), and it was sitting on a stack of several others, one of which was this Rev A that caught my eye.
So I I figured they were long since sold most likely, but to my surprise when I asked the seller they said they still had all of the other IBMs that were visible!
So I got him to send me more pics of this one and it looked great, and I knew I had finally found what I’ve been looking for, so I told the seller I’d take it and they promptly made a listing for me and I grabbed it immediately!
I wish all sellers were like this. Dealing with them was painless. They were quick to respond to my messages, kind, ship extremely fast and pack things well.
Here is one of the eBay pics showing the inside. I knew I had to own it after seeing this one!
That black PSU is gorgeous, isn’t it? Looked all stock with the exception of one card and the addition of an NEC V20 CPU.
So the PC arrived yesterday very well secured with foam all around. I was extremely worried about this one getting damaged, but this seller actually cares and made sure that wasn’t possible.
I could see from the eBay pic above of the inside it had a the original MDA display adapter, floppy controller, and an additional card with memory, serial, parallel and a real time clock.
As I expected, the NiCd battery on that card had leaked a little bit, but it wasn’t too bad. There was a tiny bit of corrosion of the motherboard that was easily cleaned off with vinegar. No broken traces.
The card itself, a Quadram QuadBoard from 1982, only ended up having one broken trace from the battery on it, which I repaired.
So I immediately stripped the unit down for cleaning and testing.
To my amazement, aside from floppy drive A:, everything worked fine the first try! How does that even happen? A 40 year old PC, and not even a shorted capacitor or a bad memory chip. Unbelievable.
I didn’t even try the QuadBoard until it was cleaned and repaired, but once I tested it after cleaning and fixing that trace, it now works fine and the machine reports the total of 320KB of RAM! 64KB on the motherboard and 256KB on the QuadBoard.
The A: drive in this machine I believe is the original drive, as it has 1982 date codes. The heads and spindle were completely seized! A few turns of the spindle got that freed up and some oil in the stepper motor helped the head movement it a lot.
Although, in my tinkering with it, somehow the little roller that moves the metal band for the head because loose from the stepper motor. I realized this when I moved the head with my finger and the stepper motor wasn’t turning!
So it was obvious to me why the drive wasn’t working at that point. I got it all tightened back up and re-aligned and it seems to be working fine so far.
I don’t even have an oscilloscope or head alignment disk, I just did the the manual way, turning the adjustment screw until the DOS disk boots successfully.
The B: drive was made in 1985 and was probably a later addition. This machine probably shipped with one drive.
As I stated above, this computer had an NEC V20 installed at some point, but I swapped that back out for an 8088, as I have no interest in running a V20 in here. I want this one to stay mostly stock.
I really wish I could fine an original 8088 with the 1978 copyright and interrupt bug, but I can’t find one at the moment. This computer would have had one originally for sure.
Oh, and it does have the original BIOS chip! It’s the 10/19/81 version. Very happy with that.
And finally, here are my pics of my fully-working 1982 PC.
And no, the monitor and keyboard didn’t come with it, I already had those.
I can’t believe how relatively easy it was to get it running. I figured there would at least be a shorted cap or bad RAM chip, but there were none! The floppy drive was really the only thing that gave much trouble.
This will be my stock “period correct” 5150. I have a really tricked out Rev B as well. I had a stock Rev B with dual floppies that I sold recently to fund this one (and to make room).
I’m so happy!
There was a seller with an IBM 5150 on eBay (just a regular Rev B), and it was sitting on a stack of several others, one of which was this Rev A that caught my eye.
So I I figured they were long since sold most likely, but to my surprise when I asked the seller they said they still had all of the other IBMs that were visible!
So I got him to send me more pics of this one and it looked great, and I knew I had finally found what I’ve been looking for, so I told the seller I’d take it and they promptly made a listing for me and I grabbed it immediately!
I wish all sellers were like this. Dealing with them was painless. They were quick to respond to my messages, kind, ship extremely fast and pack things well.
Here is one of the eBay pics showing the inside. I knew I had to own it after seeing this one!
That black PSU is gorgeous, isn’t it? Looked all stock with the exception of one card and the addition of an NEC V20 CPU.
So the PC arrived yesterday very well secured with foam all around. I was extremely worried about this one getting damaged, but this seller actually cares and made sure that wasn’t possible.
I could see from the eBay pic above of the inside it had a the original MDA display adapter, floppy controller, and an additional card with memory, serial, parallel and a real time clock.
As I expected, the NiCd battery on that card had leaked a little bit, but it wasn’t too bad. There was a tiny bit of corrosion of the motherboard that was easily cleaned off with vinegar. No broken traces.
The card itself, a Quadram QuadBoard from 1982, only ended up having one broken trace from the battery on it, which I repaired.
So I immediately stripped the unit down for cleaning and testing.
To my amazement, aside from floppy drive A:, everything worked fine the first try! How does that even happen? A 40 year old PC, and not even a shorted capacitor or a bad memory chip. Unbelievable.
I didn’t even try the QuadBoard until it was cleaned and repaired, but once I tested it after cleaning and fixing that trace, it now works fine and the machine reports the total of 320KB of RAM! 64KB on the motherboard and 256KB on the QuadBoard.
The A: drive in this machine I believe is the original drive, as it has 1982 date codes. The heads and spindle were completely seized! A few turns of the spindle got that freed up and some oil in the stepper motor helped the head movement it a lot.
Although, in my tinkering with it, somehow the little roller that moves the metal band for the head because loose from the stepper motor. I realized this when I moved the head with my finger and the stepper motor wasn’t turning!
So it was obvious to me why the drive wasn’t working at that point. I got it all tightened back up and re-aligned and it seems to be working fine so far.
I don’t even have an oscilloscope or head alignment disk, I just did the the manual way, turning the adjustment screw until the DOS disk boots successfully.
The B: drive was made in 1985 and was probably a later addition. This machine probably shipped with one drive.
As I stated above, this computer had an NEC V20 installed at some point, but I swapped that back out for an 8088, as I have no interest in running a V20 in here. I want this one to stay mostly stock.
I really wish I could fine an original 8088 with the 1978 copyright and interrupt bug, but I can’t find one at the moment. This computer would have had one originally for sure.
Oh, and it does have the original BIOS chip! It’s the 10/19/81 version. Very happy with that.
And finally, here are my pics of my fully-working 1982 PC.
And no, the monitor and keyboard didn’t come with it, I already had those.
I can’t believe how relatively easy it was to get it running. I figured there would at least be a shorted cap or bad RAM chip, but there were none! The floppy drive was really the only thing that gave much trouble.
This will be my stock “period correct” 5150. I have a really tricked out Rev B as well. I had a stock Rev B with dual floppies that I sold recently to fund this one (and to make room).
I’m so happy!
