Hard Drive in a 5150 - Cheating?

[gerrydoire]

My 5150

My 5150

When I bought my 5150 it had 1 floppy and no hd.

I'm keeping the computer pretty much the same as it is, except I removed the video card for a vga card, rgb monitors are rare and expensive.

The only other thing I would like to have for the computer is an ide to sd for massive storage.

 

[per]

Ahh, now we're getting somewhere. I too see the computer as a tool, and I like to get the most use I can out of the computers I collect. I can even reasonably see upgrading as a viable way to get more use out of a computer. But whenever I upgrade my, say 5150, 5170, or any other vintage computer, I upgrade with parts available at the time or reasonable replacements. I don't believe in putting VGA video in any 808X computer or 286. Those processors aren't strong enough to get any real difference between EGA and VGA. Now 386's and up could come with VGA or VGA was readily available, and they can run programs optimized for VGA.

There are few exceptions to my belief. For instance, if VGA is put in an 8088 5150 for some cool project, such as making a video on the 5150, or to get 256 colors on a 5150 to paint a picture, or just for cool factor, I see no problem. Just the same, if no CGA or MDA monitor is available and VGA is the only viable solution, I'd put VGA in an 808X as it's better than nothing.

Another upgrade I can see reasonable is replacing an MFM drive with an SCSI drive. SCSI is far more reliable, and when you are like me and store VERY IMPORTANT DATA with your vintage computers, you want something reliable to fall back on if your floppy disk is damaged. It happened to me before. My floppy disk I had my important data on was destroyed. So, I figured I'd just load the backup of the files I had put on my MFM HDD the day before. I fired it up and the MFM drive crashed. I never saw that financial report again and had to start anew with a new, better system. But if I were to put SCSI in my vintage computer(I haven't found a good card yet) I'd make it LOOK like MFM. Another plus about SCSI--CD drives. Their not genuinely vintage, but they are still great for opening your vintage machine to huge amounts of information without huge amounts of floppy disks. For instance, the 8GB of DOS games on my HDD would be a pain to put on disks. Just unzip them onto CDs and I could play any game I wanted to without an infinite amount of disks.

Now my post is very long and hard to read. I will stop soon. Point is, I don't think vintage computers should be upgraded much more than what was available in their hey-day, with very few exceptions. It's like taking the 8-track out of a muscle car and replacing it with an MP3 CD player. Blasphemy.

--Jack

Agree... this is pretty similar to my point of view. However, I got an exeption. Soundblasters isn't really from the XT era, they where more from the AT era, but I still allow my XT to contain one. All other cards I got in my XT is from the XT-era (or made escapely for XT-era PCs, talking for the ATI GS).

As of storage, I allways keep backups on my recent computer and I use my 486 to transfer the files to/from the XT when I need to. When I backup a program disk, I allways backup both the files (as files) and the disks (as a raw disk images, as long as the disks aren't copyprotected).

 

[Chuckster_in_Jax]

I'm keeping the computer pretty much the same as it is, except I removed the video card for a vga card, rgb monitors are rare and expensive.

I prefer the cards that have both 9-pin TTL and 15-pin VGA connectors. I believe some people are thinking that the reasoning for replacing a CGA or EGA card with a VGA is to display higher resolutions on the screen. The 15-pin VGA allows you to run lower resolutions on monitors that are more available . Software that runs on a 5150 or 5160 usually doesn't use VGA mode.

 

[Yzzerdd]

Agree... this is pretty similar to my point of view. However, I got an exeption. Soundblasters isn't really from the XT era, they where more from the AT era, but I still allow my XT to contain one. All other cards I got in my XT is from the XT-era (or made escapely for XT-era PCs, talking for the ATI GS).

Ya, I can see how it'd be cool to have a sound blaster in an 808X computer. Granted, the sound would probably be pretty bad, but whats cooler than having Flight Simulator 2 on on speaker? STEREO! I think for coolness, it's a good exception.

--Jack

 

[per]

Ya, I can see how it'd be cool to have a sound blaster in an 808X computer. Granted, the sound would probably be pretty bad, but whats cooler than having Flight Simulator 2 on on speaker? STEREO! I think for coolness, it's a good exception.

--Jack

Yes, yes, that's the problem. The only easy-to-use program I know that uses the soundblaster on an 8088, without using EGA/VGA, is Trixter's "8088 Corruption". I just wish I had a hard drive in my XT, so I could run it.

However, the program I stated above proves that good sound on an 8088 IS possible, as long as you got enough (and fast) storage.