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IBM PC 5150 Rev. A S/N: 0108587 - In the Original Box!

compaqportableplus

compaqportableplus

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Well, I have found another rev A 5150 for my collection! Not only is this the oldest one I have found yet, but it's in the freaking original box too! The machine is not fully stock and is a little dirty, but it's been very well kept for all these years. Here are some pics of it in as-received condition.

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What a find this was! I have been wanting a metal speaker bracket 5150 for many years and I FINALLY have one!

As you can see, the disk drives and power supply have been replaced over the years. However, some of you may remember the rusty S/N: 0126215 I got in 2023... it has an original "bronze" power supply and Tandon drive, so I will be swapping those components in to this one, as it's older and in better condition. And don't worry, I will rebuild S/N: 0126215 in a slightly more tricked-out config, which should be a lot of fun!

With this machine I also finally got an original revision IBM CGA card! I'm really excited to play with that.

And I must disclose that even though it was sold as untested, I have already checked it out and it actually works PERFECTLY! I did not have to perform a single repair, not even a shorted tantalum. Crazy to think that 43 year old motherboard is still running fine with all of its original parts. These things were built right!

Will be back later with more!
 
I absolutely understand the desire to return such a machine to stock but those Teac drives are nothing to sneeze at. Much better quality than the Tandon slop it came with. I'd certainly repurpose those drives in your other system
 
maxtherabbit said:
I absolutely understand the desire to return such a machine to stock but those Teac drives are nothing to sneeze at. Much better quality than the Tandon slop it came with. I'd certainly repurpose those drives in your other system
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If you can believe it, I don’t actually think those are Teac drives! They seem to be clones of some sort, I’ll have to check them again for a brand name. If they are made by Teac they certainly don’t say it anywhere on them. Extremely well built drives though and they work fine. These will be going in the other 5150 for sure!

And I have to say I do love my Tandon drives too though! Sometimes they need more TLC than other drives but in my experience they are almost always fixable.
vwestlife said:
Did it get dropped? It pains me to see the full-length cards twisted like that.
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You know I’m not sure! The modem card is most certainly bent. Even after removing the modem the card still has that bow to it. The CGA card had also come out of the little retainer on the end. If it was dropped it must have been dropped in the box, because I don’t see any damage on the computer case.
 
Here are the half height floppy drives that came with this system. Had another look at them and they are Tecmate NPH-502s. They look just like Teac drives, except instead of the rectangle LED in the top left corner, they have a square LED on the bottom left.
DSC04644.JPGDSC04643.JPG

Very heavy and well built drives! They were built in May of 1986 according to the labels on the back. These likely replaced the original single sided drives.

And here is the current state of the 5150!

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Got an original "bronze" power supply and single sided Tandon (sourced from my other 5150) installed. I will be installing a Tandon double sided drive (also from the other 5150) in the B: position.

Very happy with how it's coming together so far!
 
Congrats! Love all those blue caps, an excellent find for sure. You’ve certainly had good luck building your collection.
Now need an early RGBi (pre 5153 of course) and a metal connector keyboard to complete this awesome time warp.
 
Andrettigto said:
Congrats! Love all those blue caps, an excellent find for sure. You’ve certainly had good luck building your collection.
Now need an early RGBi (pre 5153 of course) and a metal connector keyboard to complete this awesome time warp.
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Thank you! Oh yes, completely forgot to mention the blue caps, which are indicative of a very early 5150. Oh yes I would love to find one of those early RGBi monitors like an Amdek or something. And of course the metal connector Model F!
 
Here is the modem card that came in this 5150. It's an early pre-XT era board for sure. It has 1982 date codes and the wider, black slot bracket.

DSC04646.JPGDSC04649.JPG

It's an Anchor Automation IBMPC300. A quick search of that found nothing unfortunately. Does anyone have any info on this modem? It's a really cool board and I'm definitely very happy to have it. I'm guessing by the model number that it's a 300 baud, which is super cool. Never had a true 300 baud modem before! And check out that gigantic crystal on the left side of the board! It also seems to have connectors for an expansion daughterboard of some sort.
 
So here's where the machine is at now. Got the double-sided Tandon from my other 5150 in the B: position. Sure is nice to see two Tandons back in here!

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I also installed an original 1981-dated IBM 64KB memory expansion, and a later (1984) 64KB-256KB memory expansion also from the other 5150! I wish I had the early rev 64KB-256KB board with the black slot bracket but it's very rare. This brings the total memory to 384KB, which is pretty decent for this machine. Most of the games and early software I've tried so far run fine with 384KB.

And one thing I forgot to mention is that this machine had been updated to the rev. 3 BIOS, so I actually swapped in the rare ceramic/gold 08/16/82 BIOS chip that my other 5150 came with. I would have preferred a first revision BIOS chip, but I'm perfectly happy with this for now.

And here is another one of the cards that came in this machine. I will be using this in the other 5150 I keep mentioning that I have sourced all of the original parts from.

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This is one of the really nice late model AST SixPakPlus cards that can hold 576KB of RAM! This allows you to upgrade an early rev. A 5150 to 640KB without using multiple slots, which is great. Really glad to have this card!

This card dates from 1991, meaning this machine was already almost 10 years old when this was installed! Someone got really good use out of this PC!

Oh, and for anyone curious, yes, this machine DOES still have the original '78 copyrighted 8088 chip with the interrupt bug! That's always nice to see in an early PC for sure.

So there's where I'm at currently with this PC! Really coming together nicely.
 
This machine did also come with some extra stuff in the box that was not mentioned!

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This is the box for an original "Sup'R'Mod" according to the manual in the box, but it is actually a Sup'R'Mod II in the box! I really want to give this a go at some point. This will let you hook computers with a composite video out to the RF input on a television, which is so cool I think. Someone was definitely using this on this PC too, because they cut a little notch out of the DB-25 connector cover on the back for the composite cable to come out of. I assume they likely removed this and upgraded to an RGB monitor within a few years when they became more common and affordable.

I was extremely excited to find these in the box!

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Two ORIGINAL black, wide slot covers and an original IBM parallel port card! All 1981 date codes on the card. How cool is that!?

Oh and I also wanted to show the original green foam inserts in the box, which I believe only the early boxes had (later they switched to more normal looking gray foam).

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Amazing those have survived 43 years!

And here is another inside shot of the machine. Only change I made was reinstalling that original parallel port card. I haven't tested the port, but Norton System Info now says I have 1 LPT port, so I think it's working!

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Pretty happy with this config! I do want to get another early RAM card at point to swap that later 64KB-256KB board out with sometime, but it's fine for now and it gives this machine enough RAM to actually be useful. I don't have a serial port yet and don't even have room for one, but I really don't think one is needed at the moment.

And finally, I rearranged some things and made some room to actually set this machine up so I can enjoy it!

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As you can see, I have cleaned the plastic front panel up and it looks so much nicer! It was filthy before. It's not spotless, but I didn't want to get too rough with cleaning since it is painted and I absolutely did NOT want to damage the paint. Most of the dirt wiped off easily though.

I'm using my old Samsung CGA monitor from 1987 with it for now which I'm perfectly happy with. It's not as sharp as a 5153 (the dot pitch isn't as good) but it's a well built little monitor. Even though it isn't fully period correct I wouldn't even mind using a 5153 on here, but my only 5153 is set up with my XT and I want to keep those together.

What a find this was! So happy with it. If I do anything else cool with it I'll definitely update this thread! I will be definitely be making some more posts about the other rev. A 5150 I have as I build it back up.
 
Things have progressed really well.
I was trying to read the bank 0 RAM chip dates from one of your images. Interested to know roughly where they were, supply wise for that early 8587 s/n. One of the early ones I have is s/n 9596 and the bank 0 RAM is dated 8140. Unlike yours, the motherboard has a roughly 50/50 mix of blue/yellow caps and still using the early 8088.

I wonder if the motherboards or any expansion cards had production dates? Other than looking at chip/component dates for an idea, it would be helpful to learn how to decipher the actual build dates. I just learned the other day from another site how to decipher the dates on my old VooDoo II video cards and it turns out, one of them is a very early build.
It's a fun "Looking Back" hobby for sure.
:)
 
Andrettigto said:
Things have progressed really well.
I was trying to read the bank 0 RAM chip dates from one of your images. Interested to know roughly where they were, supply wise for that early 8587 s/n. One of the early ones I have is s/n 9596 and the bank 0 RAM is dated 8140. Unlike yours, the motherboard has a roughly 50/50 mix of blue/yellow caps and still using the early 8088.

I wonder if the motherboards or any expansion cards had production dates? Other than looking at chip/component dates for an idea, it would be helpful to learn how to decipher the actual build dates. I just learned the other day from another site how to decipher the dates on my old VooDoo II video cards and it turns out, one of them is a very early build.
It's a fun "Looking Back" hobby for sure.
:)
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Thank you! I'm definitely happy with how it turned out. I completely forgot to post this pic I got that shows the motherboard without any cards installed!

DSC04642.JPG

The soldered bank is TI brand chips all dated "8127." My board has all yellow tantalums and mostly blue ceramics, with a few odd yellow ones. And it does have the '78 revision 8088 as I mentioned above, but all rev As came with those factory as far as I know. The original diskette controller is 100% blue caps, tantalum and ceramic and has factory bodge wires on the back, very neat!

Not sure about actual board dates, but that would be cool if there was a way to tell!
 
Found these on eBay to go with the early PC!

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A first edition Guide to Operations and the PC DOS 1.10 manual! Really happy to finally have these. No disks in either unfortunately but I can make those easily enough. Having the physical books is so much cooler than PDFs though!

This PC actually predates DOS 1.10 though, so a DOS 1.0 manual would be even more correct, but honesty I wanted the 1.10 manual more and the 1.0 one is very hard to find and expensive when it shows up. 1.10 has some really crucial enhancements so it's what I would prefer to run anyway when I want to use DOS 1.x, hence why I preferred to get the 1.10 manual.

Here is a pic from the Guide to Operations, showing it is indeed a first edition!

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And then of course the DOS manual, showing it is the May 1982 edition for version 1.10.
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There seems to actually be two editions for DOS 1.0, an August 1981 and a January 1982, but as far as I know the May 1982 edition is the only one for DOS 1.10.

I definitely want to get some of the other early edition IBM PC binders also. These were two of the main ones I really wanted though!
 
Andrettigto said:
'...seems to actually be two editions for DOS 1.0"
I remember the news media back then making a big deal about how IBMs new computer can't add. I think the modified DOS 1.0 appeared shortly after that.

COMPANY NEWS; Flaw in an I.B.M. Computer​

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Oh, I remember reading about this a couple of years ago but I completely forgot about it! I think I was reading some old Usenet post from like 1982 talking about it. Fascinating stuff! I have never seen this exact article though so I will give it a read.
 
Makefile said:
Does that internal modem predate AT commands even? Or perhaps it can't even dial by itself?
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I honestly don’t know! Other than what comes up for the FCC ID, I have not been able to find anything else about it online. A manual or something would be very helpful!
 
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