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How do I get a 3.5 floppy and Hard Drive for my 5170

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Pekopome

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Oct 19, 2009
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Hey guys I just bought an IBM 5170 from its first production year. But the system only have the original 5 ¼ floppy and the gold-plates resistor instead of a harddrive. I want a harddrive and 3.5 inch floppy so I can get some apps and games on the machine.

I normally collect old Macintoshs, but the 5170 was my first computer as a child, so It have great sentimental value for me. But I dont know much about the hardware configuration.

Im thinking about buying this hard drive. Will this one: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=390101937149&ssPageName=ADME:X:AAQ:US:1123 work with the disk controller card, wich is the original from IBM?

Also I have a 1992 3.5 no-name floppy drive. But the power and data input don’t match the cable from the disk controller and power supply. Will I need an older floppy-drive, or can I get a converter for the cable?
 
The ST225 should work unless someone has put a strange controller in. There should be two cables off the controller for the HD.
On the 3.5" you probably have the standard cable and the later 3.5 drives used a pin connection as opposed to the slot. There are adapters that will let the 3.5" drive work with the older cables (including the power connector).
To be safe with the HD boot the system and run debug then G=c800:5 and you should see some info on the Hard drive. (it's how you do a low level format) but obviously if there is no hard drive it won't do anything.
 
Sounds good with the harddrive.. Thank you so much..

Any idea where I can get the cable-converters.. and what is the name of the pin/slot-standard from the disk controller cables?

Also I fear the old 5151 monitor is dead.. nothing happens when the system boot other than a short beep after 10 seconds. I tried to connect the screen to and external powersource. No result. Can I connect a normal VGA-screen to the monocrome card? I also have a 1991 unspecified VGA-graphic card.. will that work in the 5170-system?
 
Pekopome said:
Any idea where I can get the cable-converters..
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's a good question. I only found ONE, a bit overpriced @ $6, after about two months of searching. Are they fantastically obsolete or do they just have a name I never thought to search under?
 
Save yourself the trouble of getting an MFM hard drive, and just use IDE or compact flash.

What I would do is get a standard ISA multi I/O controller card from ebay. You should be able to pick it up for next to nothing.

http://cgi.ebay.com/acculogic-high-...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item3a53d94af6

Get an IDE to compact flash adapter:

http://cgi.ebay.com/IDE-HD-to-CF-Co...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item4ceb8b6de1

And a compact flash card that can be used like a fixed disk.

http://cgi.ebay.com/SanDisk-2GB-60x...gital_Camera_Memory_Cards?hash=item4a9b966752

That should take care of your hard drive. The floppy is a little more complicated. Because you are running the original 5170 BIOS, you won't be able to use a 1.44mb floppy drive without using DRIVPARM in your system files. You also won't have the ability to boot from 1.44mb disks. This can be resolved by using a replacement BIOS. If you want, somebody in the forum can burn you a set of new ROMs. The other problem is finding a matching grey 3.5" floppy kit that matches your AT. Most kits available are either black or beige. Grey exists, but I don't know how easy they are to find.

My personal recommendation is to forget the 1.44mb drive. If you get that external compact flash reader I showed you, you can just use it like an external drive and just pop it into your modern PC whenever you need files. I have a cheap USB compact flash card reader in my PC. I use this setup on my 5160, and it's much better than a 1.44mb drive.

Your other option is to use a parallel port backpack drive.
 
One can use a 1.44MB drive to boot from, as long as the boot media is formatted as 720K. After that, a driver can be loaded to handle any 1.44MB-specific issues.
 
About the floppy cable and the adapters...

Unless the connector on the card itself is also an edge connector (I don't know), you can get a newer cable which has both edge and pin connectors on it...I have a grocery bag stuffed with them from systems I've sent to the graveyard, so they can't be hard to find. Don't bother with an adapter unless you want to use the original cable for some reason.

Oh and about those ISA multi/super IO cards, I have 4 (maybe 5) in one of the boxes of stuff to recycle. I'll send you all of them for cost of shipping lol. No guarantee they work, though, these are the ones I never got around to testing for whatever reason (that's why I'd send all of them, so hopefully at least one is working and compatible)
 
Great I had no idea you could do that.. will I need any special drivers with that setup? I cant Imagine DOS 3.0 can handle that amount of storage...
Click to expand...

If you want to be able to use all 2GB of space, you will need to install a drive overlay to get around the BIOS limitations. You'll also need to upgrade your DOS to one that supports FAT16. I believe DOS 3.31 does. On my AT, I prefer to run either PC-DOS 2000 with QRAM, or DR-DOS 7.

The only thing you have to worry about is if the CF card works as a "fixed disk". Most of them come factory configured as a "removable drive" and cannot be switched. The SanDisk Ultra II cards are known to work, but they need to be unlocked by a special software utility first.

To answer your question about VGA displays...no, you cannot use a VGA monitor with a monochrome card. However, you can replace your MDA card with your VGA card.
 
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Pekopome said:
Great I had no idea you could do that.. will I need any special drivers with that setup? I cant Imagine DOS 3.0 can handle that amount of storage...:)
Click to expand...
Yes, you need at least DOS 3.30 for 1.44 MB floppy support.
And for HDD partitions >32 MB you need at least Compaq DOS 3.31, or IBM DOS/MS-DOS 4.00.
My favorite DOS version for 286 machines is 5.0 - very reliable (especially compared to those buggy 4.0 versions), and comes with XMS/HMA support.
 
Marrr said:
My favorite DOS version for 286 machines is 5.0 - very reliable (especially compared to those buggy 4.0 versions), and comes with XMS/HMA support.
Click to expand...

Great guys, thanks.. I just ordered a complete unpacked 5 1/4 floppy installation of DOS 5.0 on Ebay.. sorry for me being ignorant.. But can you run DOS 5.0 without a hard drive? And will I be able to boot from the flash disk?
 
Yes, you certainly can boot from them like a regular hard disk. Just make sure when you run FDISK, issue the /MBR command to force it to rewrite the master boot record.

If you plan to take the compact flash route, there may be some small challenges starting out. Somehow you'll have to get the Sandisk utilities and drive overlay installation program onto a 5.25" disk in order to set things up.
 
Anonymous Coward said:
Yes, you certainly can boot from them like a regular hard disk. Just make sure when you run FDISK, issue the /MBR command to force it to rewrite the master boot record.
Click to expand...

And you mean the master boot record of the hard drive I guess or the DOS floppy disk?

Again I'm am Mac-person, so all these command thing are new to me..:) I only remember the basic dos-commands from my childhood...

I think I will go for the regular hard drive.. only problem as I see it. Since I don't have the original system disks for the 5170, I will need to use another tool to tell the BIOS that there is a hard drive present. Is there a BIOS configuring tool on the DOS 5.0 system disks?

I cant write data to a 5 1/4 floppy from my Mac Book Pro, so I'm kind of stuck, if I cant configure the BIOS from the DOS 5.0 disks...
 
phogren said:
To be safe with the HD boot the system and run debug then G=c800:5 and you should see some info on the Hard drive.
Click to expand...
That won't work in this case of an IBM 5170 with it's first generation controller.

Pekopome said:
I think I will go for the regular hard drive..
Click to expand...
Yes, an ST-225 will definitely work in a first generation 5170, with original hard/floppy controller. The ST-225 was so common that even if someone has upgraded the BIOS chips on the motherboard, the ST-225 will be supported.

If you are curious as to whether your motherboard has the original BIOS chips, look at chips U27 and U47. We expect them to be marked 6181028 and 6181029.

Pekopome said:
only problem as I see it. Since I don't have the original system disks for the 5170, I will need to use another tool to tell the BIOS that there is a hard drive present. Is there a BIOS configuring tool on the DOS 5.0 system disks?
Click to expand...
No, but there are other ways.
Example: When you get the video working, you'll probably find that your 5170 is booting into BASIC (because it can't find a bootable floppy or hard drive). We can supply you with some BASIC code that you type into BASIC, and that will configure your BIOS. To see what we use, refer to thread http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?t=15197
 
modem7 said:
When you get the video working, you'll probably find that your 5170 is booting into BASIC (because it can't find a bootable floppy or hard drive). We can supply you with some BASIC code that you type into BASIC, and that will configure your BIOS. To see what we use, refer to thread http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?t=15197
Click to expand...


Great, I got the 5151 to work yeasterday after I realized the port I thought was the monitorport really was a Token Ring Network port....:)

And yes it boots up in Basic.. Amazing you can use a code to configure the BIOS.. I will check what chip is on the motherboard when I get home from work 2night..

And again thanks for all your help!!
 
Pekopome said:
A CF-card would be the only way to get programs on to the 5170...
Click to expand...
If you have a look through these forums, you'll find that the subject of getting programs/data from a 'new' computer to an 'old' computer has been discussed many times. I use ZIP100 cartridges myself. Old external ZIP100 drives for the parallel port are quite cheap on eBay.
 
Hard/floppy drive mounting in a 5170

Hard/floppy drive mounting in a 5170

In case you are unaware, hard and floppy drives for the 5170 have plastic slides (example shown below) screwed to the sides.

5170_slides.jpg
 
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