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IBM 5160 CGA Upgrade

SpidersWeb

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2012
Messages
2,701
Location
New Zealand
Well last week over here in New Zealand, I was finally able to obtain a 5153 CGA display in mint condition, albeit at great discomfort to my wallet. A few months ago I'd aquired a NIB IBM Color Display Adapter - so it was time to do the upgrade.

I made an effort to make a video, that wasn't completely useless. Which you can view at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ioAwKAfpHM

I still have a lot of learning to do, and need to get a better camera, but it is the video of me using the card for the very first time ever (including unboxing) and installing my new monitor. It is my plan to do more and pollute the world with my voice and weird hand motions.

To my suprise everything worked first time. I was somewhat expecting some kind of failure but no issues. There is a lack of beeps in the video because I found my PC speaker hadn't been plugged in.

There was a lot of snow. In the menu system Direct Access 5 I recommend disabling the time on the main screen - that way you only get snow when you change menu items using an original IBM CGA adaptor. For XtreeGOLD I enabled the FlickerFree feature. The problem does not appear to occur in graphics modes.

Since this video I've installed SimCity (original box/disks/codes etc) off the original floppies and also California Games - which is a great show piece because of it's theme music and 6 colour mode. The 6 colour mode relies on timings only available at 4.77Mhz and worked perfectly.

Removing the MDA also meant I had LPT2 but no LPT1. This actually crashed CheckIt. So I've changed JP2 on the serial/paralell card (normally found in a 5170 AT) for COM1 and LPT1 modes.

My next adventure will be testing the MFM drives I've aquired recently, including an ST412 from a Wang PC. I intend to do another video on this subject.
 
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