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IBM PS/2 8570: What have I got myself into?

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Materidan

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Aug 28, 2023
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My first PC as a kid was an Epson 286-12 in 1988, but the oldest I still have is a PII-350… so, for the past couple years, I’ve been trying to get something OLDER… and then this PS/2 386 comes up on local auction. Never actually owned a 386, jumped right to a 486DX-33.

No idea if it works. Can’t even test anything for a couple months, as I’m between houses and almost everything I own is in storage, so I have no VGA cables or floppies or anything like that. Probably going to need a fair bit of work, and of course PS/2s are super proprietary and expensive. But it seems clean!

Not quite sure what specific model it is.
 

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Congrats on getting the cable kit for the external 5.25" floppy drive. Those drives are common as dirt but the adapter is not.
 
Nice! Was already checking out those drives, though I’m not sure I’m going to be able to spend a precious slot on that!

Assuming it’s not totally dead, already looking at 10baseT, audio, and MCIDE-CF adapters. A CD-ROM is likely out of question? Probably don’t need it; my Pentium-II system is likely good enough for that.

Looks like it’s the A21, 386-25 model. 1988 production. Kinda stoked to get it all cleaned up and working!





IMG_8240.jpeg
 
8570 Type 3 & 4 Planar page
The 386 -A61 and -A21 can be upgraded by a 486/25 Power Platform. It uses the same planar, with the exception of the ROM chips. The only 486 system that supports memory expansion adapters is the model 70 A21
System Firmware (POST & BIOS)

One of them there 16-bit video accelerator cards is a nice use for the AVE slot. XGA-2 will not fit [XGA / XGA-2 are BVE]
 
Congratulations on your acquisition. I bought one of these for reasons similar to yours. Unfortunately the floppy drives in these systems are prone to failure. This wouldn't be a problem in most other systems but you need to boot from floppy in order to do any reconfiguration. Mine ended up being bad so I had computer that would only start into BASIC. I ended up purchasing a stand alone drive which worked for a few boots and then failed. Then I ended up buying a second system which, thankfully, had an operational drive. I fixed both of them up and then immediately gave them away on Craigs List as I didn't want to deal with them anymore.

I wish you the best with yours.
 
Materidan said:
Nice! Was already checking out those drives, though I’m not sure I’m going to be able to spend a precious slot on that!

Assuming it’s not totally dead, already looking at 10baseT, audio, and MCIDE-CF adapters. A CD-ROM is likely out of question?
Click to expand...
I don't like to gatekeep but what you are asking is the #1 biggest issue with the PS/2 line: The upgrade paths for everything are extremely expensive. A PS/2 is probably the worst PC one can try to hotrod.

Network cards are in high demand. The 3com ones do surface from time to time but expect $75-$120 these days on ebay.
Sound cards are all expensive. Expect $150 and up, even for the repro cards. Non-repro can exceed $500.
The MCIDE is slow. If you can get your original drive working with a recap (and most people write them off because it's still not common knowledge) it's worth it, just to save a slot.
CD-Rom will require a SCSI bus. The model 70 lacks that and has no physical space inside to fit a drive. You would then require in addition to an external SCSI CD drive an MCA SCSI adapter (again, $100 and up).

On the other hand if money is no barrier, go wild. I use mine for OS/2 2.1.
 
And right about now is when I lament the things I have gotten rid of. I had a NEC external SCSI CD upgrade kit for my Epson 286 system, and while I’d need a new card, the drive itself was pretty nice. Kit came with a bunch of CDs too, like Battle Chess and some basic encyclopedia that ran on an integrated copy of Windows 1.0.

I’m probably going to keep it pretty “basic”. Don’t need to hot rod a system that doesn’t suit that, but getting it going “as good as it can be” is enough for me. Just need to figure out what’s working and what’s not.
 
NeXT said:
I don't like to gatekeep but what you are asking is the #1 biggest issue with the PS/2 line: The upgrade paths for everything are extremely expensive. A PS/2 is probably the worst PC one can try to hotrod.

Network cards are in high demand. The 3com ones do surface from time to time but expect $75-$120 these days on ebay.
Sound cards are all expensive. Expect $150 and up, even for the repro cards. Non-repro can exceed $500.
The MCIDE is slow. If you can get your original drive working with a recap (and most people write them off because it's still not common knowledge) it's worth it, just to save a slot.
CD-Rom will require a SCSI bus. The model 70 lacks that and has no physical space inside to fit a drive. You would then require in addition to an external SCSI CD drive an MCA SCSI adapter (again, $100 and up).

On the other hand if money is no barrier, go wild. I use mine for OS/2 2.1.
Click to expand...
I'm curious why you say the McIDE is slow. It can transfer up to 3.3 MB/sec, which is faster than any ESDI drive. The McIDE also supports optical drives.
 
They don't support DMA. The McIDE is faster than any other MCA IDE controller released along with DBA drives.
 
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