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IBM Expansion Chassis Questions

Great Hierophant

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I am in the market for an IBM PC 5161 Expansion Chassis, but I have a few questions:

First, some cards don't work well or at all. Which cards don't work and why? Do some work better in certain slots than in others?

Second, the Expansion Chassis has a card inside the Expansion unit that communicates with a card inside the PC or XT? Are these two cards the same? What is the part number(s) for this/these card(s)?

Third, can an Expansion Chassis be used with an IBM PC AT or XT/286?
 
The 5161 expansion unit consists of the following:

- Chassis
- Extender card (goes in the host machine)
- Receiver card (goes in the expansion unit)
- Connector cable (56 wires, 62 pin connector)

The extender and receiver cards are not the same.

Technically the 5161 can be used with the 5150 and some models of the 5160. Some models of the 5160 explicitly exclude using the 5161 for some reason I don't know. It is not supported with the 5162 (XT 286) or the AT.

I've looked in the PC Guide To Operations, the PC Tech Reference and the Options and Adapters Tech Reference and I can't find any restrictions on what cards can go in the 5161. Obviously you can stick a hard disk controller in it. You can also put memory in it, although that memory will be slower because the cards add an extra wait state to memory accesses (RAM or ROM) going to the expansion unit.
 
Some more details:

The expansion unit is not supported on 5160 Models 088, 089, 267, 268, 277, and 278. Some of those might be the 3270 line of PC XTs, so that's not a big deal. Also, 'not supported' does not mean 'does not work'. It usually means 'not tested'.

The power supply in the expansion unit is the same as in the XT - 130 watts.

Expansion slot 8 in the expansion unit is special ... Only the 'async card' with J13 can be used. (This slot requires the 'card select' signal. I think that XT motherboards have the same requirement on slot 8 as well.)

The extender card is part number 6323445. The receiver card number is 8529251.
 
mbbrutman said:
Some more details:

The expansion unit is not supported on 5160 Models 088, 089, 267, 268, 277, and 278. Some of those might be the 3270 line of PC XTs, so that's not a big deal. Also, 'not supported' does not mean 'does not work'. It usually means 'not tested'.

The XT Models you mention are those with the "revised BIOS" (either dated 01/10/86 or 05/09/86 and 64KB in size.) They support 101-Key Keyboards without LEDs, 720KB Floppy Drives and 640KB of RAM on the Motherboard without any modifications. Essentially I would think the Expansion Chassis works as well in them as in an AT or XT/286 or ISA-based PS/2 system.

mbbrutman said:
The extender card is part number 6323445. The receiver card number is 8529251.

I have found a part number 8529251 also corresponds to IBM Extender Card and 8529253 corresponds to IBM Expansion Unit Cable (at least on one spare parts site.) I wonder if that would work.
 
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I don't have the IBM expansion box, didn't even know it existed, but I have one made by Tecmar. I'd consider a trade for something equally groovy. You should join the classiccmp.org mailing lists. There's lots of gurus there to ask questions of.
 
Chris2005 said:
I don't have the IBM expansion box, didn't even know it existed, but I have one made by Tecmar. I'd consider a trade for something equally groovy. You should join the classiccmp.org mailing lists. There's lots of gurus there to ask questions of.

Do you have the cable to go with it? I'd be interested if it does (I'm pretty sure I can find sum'n to swap).

--T
 
It's a big cable, but the pinouts are available if you want to build one. Email me if you want scans of the docs.
 
I'm talking about a pc/xt expansion box. Not only does mine have the cable, it has the card too. Working or not is currently unknown. I could dig it out. PMing me is the best way. I don't get norified of posts on here the way I used to.
 
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