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found a nice IBM 5155 today

M

mikey99

Veteran Member
Joined
Jun 15, 2006
Messages
1,148
Location
NC , USA
I found an IBM 5155 Portable PC (Luggable) listed on my local
FreeCycle a couple days ago. I was hesitant... but in the end couldn't
resist and I picked it up today :-) It has been stored in the blue IBM soft
case so cosmetically its excellent.

Removed the cover for a quick look inside before powering up.
Inside is amazingly clean. Has a SixPack Plus, Tandon TM262
hard drive with WD1002 controller, and a Manzana MUX adapter
(NEVER heard of this before) for attaching a 3.5 external floppy
(which was included).

The machine is in excellent condition. Powered it on, counted
up to 640K and booted from floppy. Couldn't get the hard drive to
work. Tried Debug c800:5 and got into the drive formatter but for
some reason its like it can't see the drive. Anyway I have a couple
Seagate Type 2's laying around, eventually I'll get around to putting
one of those in.

All in all it was a good day :-)
 
Congrats :) I really envy you :) Wish I could get one of these units myself too one day.
 
Sorry, but mine's not available (for now). It may become so if I can manage to work out a deal with Sharko for one of his Columbia machines (interested, Tony?)...

--T
 
I took a couple pictures of the 5155 last night. The Tandon TM262 is
totally dead, doesn't even sound like its spinning when I apply power.
I was able to get one of my Seagate ST-225's working. The black face
plate looks like it will need some mods before it will fit in the cutout.
Apparently the 5155 drive slots are a little narrower than the standard.

Did some more research on the Manzana card, made by Manzana Microsystems.
They produced high-end adapters and external drives. The 3.5 external
was included , although I haven't tested it yet. It's a nice option as space
is limited to two internal drives, 5.25 and hard disk.

Here's the pic's:
http://home.nc.rr.com/mwcompu/DSCF0118small.jpg

http://home.nc.rr.com/mwcompu/DSCF0121small.jpg

http://home.nc.rr.com/mwcompu/DSCF0125small.jpg
 
Last edited:
Yeah, I felt REALLY lucky to get the 5155 :-)
This had been listed on FreeCycle way back on January 15 , and I picked
it up on February 2.

A similar thing happened about 3 months ago, I checked craigslist and
did a search on ibm vintage , came up with a 5150 with CGA monitor
listed three weeks before. I usually check craigslist a couple times per week
but for some reason had missed this. Replyed to the ad and the guy said I was the
first person to contact him. Picked it up the next day. Included a big box of extra
parts, floppy drives, hard drives, etc. A couple days later
I opened the case to find the original 16-64KB motherboard inside.

I guess I'm in an area where there is no interest in vintage computers.

tezza said:
Congratulations. I wish that sort of thing happened to me.!
Click to expand...
 
Today I had an idea to try the original Tandon TM262 from the 5155.
The drive appeared to be totally dead as it wasn't even spinning.
I attached it to an AT power supply, hit the switch, it made
a couple loud noises, then spun up ! Could be it was stuck
and the 5155 power supply didn't have enough oomph to get
it going. Attached it back to the 5155 and the drive now works fine :-)

And most importantly, it contained the device driver I needed for the
Manzana external 3.5 inch drive 3FIVE.SYS loaded in config.sys like so:

device=3five.sys /m

Now the 3.5 external drive works fine too....
 
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