Great score today!

[QuantumII]

Hi,

Today I found the following machines piled down in the recycling room:

- 1x IBM PC XT with 1x HH 5,25" Floppy drive and HDD. No monitor or keyboard.
- 2x IBM PC AT. Dual floppy, and probably HDD's as well. No monitor or keyboard.
- 1x Macintosh SE
- 3x MFM HDD's, 1 MiniScribe 3,5", 1 Tandon 3,5" and 1 NEC D5126 5,25"

There were also some generic 386's, but I didn't rescue those. Also in the pile were some newer 5,25" 1,2MB floppy drives. I also didn't rescue them. A very large "Tandberg Data" terminal was there too, but I have no use for it, and it was VERY heavy.

I have not tested anything yet, but I assume they work fine. They were rescued from the same uni as the last XT I found.

 

[Unknown_K]

You might regret not taking that 386 and those 5.25" drives someday.

Too bad the XT didn't have its monitor, getting hard to find CGA ones.

 

[QuantumII]

It's lucky that I have a spare 1514 EGA monitor then Yeah... I know I may regret it, but it was a clone (Not IBM), and I already have a bunch of 1.2MB drives. If it had been a nice brand, like Commodore or IBM, I would have snagged it.
I remember seeing a MCA ethernet card too, further down in the e-waste cage.

Hmmm.. Maybe I will have to go back there and get that 386 and the other stuff too.. I had to drive my car over there, because carrying all this in a single go was impossible. I work nearby, and I was able to park the car close to the entrance so I was in and out in 1 minute

The monitor may turn up there soon, I will go back in a couple of days to check. I wonder where they keep all this stuff and what it was used for. I think the AT's has been used in a lab environment, judging by the rest of the weird machinery stacked next to them.

The XT had a weird card:

it has a small cable that goes from the MDA port on the MDA card to a second ISA card which has 2 monitor ports and one COAX. Very much like the way the old Voodoo2 cards on PC's were connected. I have everything in the trunk now, but I will haul it into my storage room at work for closer examination soon. Pictures will then follow. (When I have time to take them. Be patient )

 

[QuantumII]

Here's an update after I did a brief inspection:

AT's:
- Both AT's have the FH HDD inside.

- One has a pure 8-bit VGA card inside. IBM made if I am not mistaken. This seems like a cool find

- The other one has a EGA/VGA Combo-card
- Both have the 256-512K motherboard
- Both have a memory expansion card, but not the same.
- One has a Microsoft interface card, probably for mouse support.

Both probably came from a lab environment.

XT:
- Has a 20MB Seagate ST225 HDD inside.
- It has the 640k motherboard inside.
- IBM MDA card
- The weird looking graphics card is a card which magnifies the output for persons with bad eyesight. It has a coax video output in addition to a pass-trough MDA port for the normal MDA monitor.

This PC was used in an environment for disabled students.

MAC:

- Has 1 MB ram, 800k drive, and a 20MB SCSI drive.


I have not applied power to anything yet, as I cannot set up a test-lab in the office at this time.

 

[per]

- One has a pure 8-bit VGA card inside. IBM made if I am not mistaken. This seems like a cool find

That's a quite rare find. Please post pictures as I am quite curious on how it looks like, and I have also been searching for the part number on the BIOS extension ROM for quite some time.

 

[QuantumII]

Will do it tomorrow, as the pile is stacked at work

 

[Maverick1978]

Nice find!! I'm interested in seeing the IBM VGA card as well. You guys around here make me so jealous... you actually have local recyclers, and universities that throw things out.. man, in my area of Florida, we've virtually nothing! (at least not without a 2-hour drive each way!)

 

[tezza]

I have not tested anything yet, but I assume they work fine. They were rescued from the same uni as the last XT I found.

Nice find.

My Uni also has a large recycling unit which I've had cause to visit now and again. Nothing vintage at all appears there now and you never see anything rarer than a Pentium II these days. I think any classic that may have been languishing in a cupboard or underneath a lab bench has now long gone.

Tez

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Man, I'd love to have a working Miniscribe 3.5". (Assuming it's the "famous" 8425, of course.) That model has such a distinctive sound; it tends to be the "computer working" sound for most Hollywood movies.

 

[QuantumII]

The MiniScribe is an 8425, allright

Here are some pictures of the IBM 8-bit VGA Card. The big gray can-chip says IBM 5352, and the ROM chip says IBM ,87.

 

[per]

and the ROM chip says IBM ,87.

8222554 - Yep, that's no doubt the IBM VGA ROM. The dump I have of it reads "674008222554 (C)COPYRIGHT IBM Corp. 1984, 1986 10/27/86" at offset 04h. Till now I only guessed that 8222554 was the part number, but now I can confirm it. If I have it correctly, therse cards were intended for the ISA-based PS/2 model 25 and 30.

I'd never guess IBM made any of their cards THAT narrow. Perhaps the dimensions in the targeted PS/2 models are different than in the regular PC/XT/ATs?

 

[QuantumII]

Sweet. A real IBM 8-bit VGA card! It may have been designed for the PS/2.. But the PS/2 already have VGA.. it must have been for one of those 8088 ones then