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Found lots of IBM PC/XTs

aitotat

Experienced Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2009
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351
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Finland
I found some old PC stuff, mostly IBM systems:

I haven't tested any of them yet. I'll do so when i have time. I'm planning to keep IBM manuals and diskettes, 5160 with EGA monitor and maybe one 5150 with MDA monitor (assuming they work). Everything else can go (and must go since i have no place to store all these).

I'm going to take photos from every equipment. It's going to take some time so i won't post them all at once. I'm going to place the photos here.
I'd like you to help me identify all the expansion cards. I'd really like to know what cards were originally used on 5150 and 5160 systems and what of them are added later.

Here and here are the 5150, 5160 and 5161 from the back and here they are from the front.

Here are what was in the 5160: [not for sale]

Here are what was in the 5161 expansion unit:[ALL SOLD]

Here are what was in the 5150 without floppy drives. This seems to have stronger power supply than other 5150s. IBM P/N seems to be 1501438 and that is the same as on 5160 and 5161 power supplies.

Here are what was in another 5150:

Here are what was in the third 5150: [not for sale]

Here are what was in the last 5150: [SOLD with some customizing]
 
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Intel RAM card seems to be ABOVE BOARD/PC. If so, it supports up to 2 MiB and has I/O port selection. Is it some sort of EMS card? Anybody has a driver for it?

Multi I/O card says Persyst Time Spectrum 384 on it but i couldn't find it on total hardware 99. There were some similar cards not nothing exactly like it. I hope somebody has jumper settings for it.

Floppy drive controller is original IBM, right?

The small floppy drive card is for JD series external floppy drives (JD-320, JD-324, JD-560, JD-562). The external floppy drive is JD-324 so it is actually a 1.44 MB drive.
 
I would like to say something, but I am speechless of impression... and jealousy.

And yes, this is definitely Spam.
 
Intel RAM card seems to be ABOVE BOARD/PC. If so, it supports up to 2 MiB and has I/O port selection. Is it some sort of EMS card? Anybody has a driver for it?
It's definiately EMS. This is because the XMS builds on a phenomen that appears when a 286 or newer CPU tries to emulate the 8086/8088.
Floppy drive controller is original IBM, right?
Yep, and after my knowledge of the second of three PCB revisions.

The Floppy disk controller seems to be the only card left from the original factory configuration, but the multicard may have been added rather quicly, maybe even before the unit were sold. All other cards are problably added at later dates (try to identify the datecodes of the PCB's).

What I find weird is that they still used patched Rev-0 boards in early 1985. The Rev-1 and patched Rev-0 boards came in early 1984, and I thought all the patched Rev-0 boards were out by fall 1984...
 
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Motherboard has 8504 and floppy controller has 8408 printed on it. Are those year/week dates? Do they appear on all IBM motherboards and cards?
 
Motherboard has 8504 and floppy controller has 8408 printed on it. Are those year/week dates? Do they appear on all IBM motherboards and cards?

Yes. They appear on some, but not all cards from IBM. Sometimes you only got small metal-letters in the PCB forming the datecode. Anyways, if you find four digits somewhere where two of them says something like 84/85/86/87 and the other two digits is below 52, you may be rather sure that's a date/week code.
 
I'd be interested in that 5161!! My 5150 came with the interface card in it...would love to use it. Interested in the 5152 as well.

Also interested in PC Tools copies! Although I know no one on this site would ever make copies of software..... ;)
 
New photos added. See the first post. I also took new 5160 photos.
About the Video 7 EGA. Is it faster or slower than original IBM EGA? What about compatibility?
 
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Is the SDLC adapter compatible with normal async adapter, in other words can it be used as a normal serial port controller?

I'm currently testing the equipment and here are the results so far:
5151 MDA monitor: completely dead, does not appear get any power at all.
Hitachi CGA monitor: works and looks quite good.
5150 systems: All of them work. I tested them with CGA adapter since MDA monitor was dead. MDA adapter cards are all untested.
5160 system: Dead, no beeps, no cursor.
5161 expansion unit: Works but power supply fan is dead. I tested this with one of the 5150. Both hard disks were found and they had some data on them. It was a quick test so the power supply wouldn't overhead because of the dead fan.

Any ideas what to try with the 5160? I tested with CGA adapter card only so it is the motherboard that is dead and not any card. I/O card battery had leaked a bit over one of the memory chips. I switched bank 0 and 1 memory chips but it did not help.

By the way, does anyone have later version of the IBM diagnostics? I have v2.20.
 
Is the SDLC adapter compatible with normal async adapter, in other words can it be used as a normal serial port controller?

I'm currently testing the equipment and here are the results so far:
5151 MDA monitor: completely dead, does not appear get any power at all.
Hitachi CGA monitor: works and looks quite good.
5150 systems: All of them work. I tested them with CGA adapter since MDA monitor was dead. MDA adapter cards are all untested.
5160 system: Dead, no beeps, no cursor.
5161 expansion unit: Works but power supply fan is dead. I tested this with one of the 5150. Both hard disks were found and they had some data on them. It was a quick test so the power supply wouldn't overhead because of the dead fan.

Any ideas what to try with the 5160? I tested with CGA adapter card only so it is the motherboard that is dead and not any card. I/O card battery had leaked a bit over one of the memory chips. I switched bank 0 and 1 memory chips but it did not help.

By the way, does anyone have later version of the IBM diagnostics? I have v2.20.

Nope, the SDLC uses it's completely own protocol. A normal Async adapter won't be able to make any sense at all from the data sent by the SDLC. The SDLC isn't even asynchronous, in fact.

About the 5160, did you remember to change the motherboard switches when you swaped the EGA card with the CGA one? SW1 position 5/6 should be either On/Off or Off/On when a ~100% hardware-compatible CGA card is being used. For a card with it's own BIOS extension (EGA/VGA) or no monitor at all (if no BIOS extension present) it should be On/On, and for MDA it should be Off/Off.
 
....... I/O card battery had leaked a bit over one of the memory chips.

I have a 5150 with the original 16-64 KB motherboard that also had one of those I/O cards with a battery
that leaked all over the motherboard. Fortunately I was able to clean it up and the board still works.
Sometimes the battery electrolyte damages lands on the board. Possibly it can be repaired if you can
find the damaged land.
 
I dunno how I missed this thread a day or two ago but I have been searching for an IBM 5161 for a while now and am quite interested in that.
 
Switches were correct on the 5160 so that is not the problem.

The 5151 MDA monitor works after all! It was the dark brown MDA adapter that was broken. Unfortunately now the 5154 EGA monitor gives me trouble. It displays sharp picture but the picture is not stable. The picture jumps a bit from time to time. I hope it can be fixed since the 5154 and 5160 were the ones i really wanted to work.
 
Switches were correct on the 5160 so that is not the problem.

The 5151 MDA monitor works after all! It was the dark brown MDA adapter that was broken. Unfortunately now the 5154 EGA monitor gives me trouble. It displays sharp picture but the picture is not stable. The picture jumps a bit from time to time. I hope it can be fixed since the 5154 and 5160 were the ones i really wanted to work.

Its possible you might have a bad/marginal capacitor in the 5154 power supply causing the jumping. Or maybe a loose solder
connection, in which case gently tapping on the case might exhibit the problem. Please provide more details about the jumping
symptom you see, is it a fluctuation in brightness ? Does the vertical/horizontal size increase/decrease or does the picture
move around on the screen ? And are you sure its not the EGA card or the connection from the monitor to the card ?
 
If you have the capacity to easily do so, perhaps taking a video of the symptoms is in order?
 
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