VintageVic
Experienced Member
So, I decided to set up this thread for this 'storage found' IBM XT 5160.
I have already discussed about the history of this unit in hard drive help request thread here:
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?72705-Seagate-ST-412-stuck-(spindle-not-spinning)
To avoid repeating myself, I post the link above.
But, as a summary, I got this unit some 25 years ago for less than 5$.
They were not desirable at that time at all. Back then I had no experience to
get the unit to work and I soon lost interest in it and put it into cold storage.
Now, the interest is found and unit rediscovered from the storage. Cold storage did no
good to the unit and it had many issues.
o Power supply interference caps blew at first attempt. They were replaced, and not psu is working.
o Keyboard is missing ALT key, that prevents booting. As a solution, I'm blocking the alt key down. Looking for xt keyb. alt key !
o One RAM chip at bank 3 was faulty and replaced. Total of 512kb ram was working at that time.
o Floppy drive was giving 601 error. Maybe due to stuck HD or alternatively, unplugging the controller
and cables and reinserting them, the floppy is now working well and giving no 601 error during boot.
o Seagate st-412 HD's spindle was stuck. More of how to recover this in the link above. Drive is now
working and booting reliably. However, there is some significant noise - I mean extra noise that maybe
coming from the drives bearings at times. Now that I think of it, the mounting screws are not yet in
place to the IBM chassis and some extra noise may be from vibration. Hopefully it is nothing serious and
the drive has still somewhat long life left. I have to comment, that the spindle motor has surprisingly
weak torgue, it is barely anything and the drive takes really long to get up to full speed. However, this maybe
just according to its specs
o 256kb ram card failed soon, right after I was starting to get the st-412 running up. Ram check got stuck
at 320kb. Rebooting resulted the ram check stuck at 0. I'm currently running the xt at 256kb motherboard ram only.
Perhaps there is a hint to what ram chip is busted. 320-256 = 64. It maybe chip no 8 that has failed. I recently
acquired about 100 8kb ram chips from china for the C64, so I should definitely have enough chips to fix the ram card.
I'm new with the IBM XT. Last night, I got first games transferred to the unit! And what a job that is.
The media transfer chain goes like this:
abandonware sites -> USB -> XP pc, that has USB support and 1.44 floppy -> 1.44mb floppy -> 486dx33 HD -> (change of
1.44 floppy drive to XT 360kb floppy drive) -> to the 360kb floppy itself -> to the IBM XT hard drive !
Whoa - going through this chain is really time consuming =).
I'm trying to get this chain a bit shorter, but I noticed yesterday, that connecting 5 1/4" floppy
drive to newer pc is not possible. Even if it has floppy adapter, it may support only 720 or 1.44 floppies and
not the 1.2mb or 360kb drives. That was the case with that winxp pc I have in use.
I also learned, that IBM XT original display adapter does not seem to support graphics. At least, that
adapter that I have with the green monitor. But, there was a second display adapter. I read hercules
and Video in it, so I figured out, that adapter may support graphics. Sure enough, I started the packman
game and I had to move the monitor cable from original display adapter to the Hercules adapter. I got
graphics then! But when exiting back to dos 3.3, I had to move the display cable back to the original display adapter.
-> is this really the normal standard setup ? It feels really clumsy to change the display cable when chance
happens from text to graphic states or backwards. Maybe I'm doing something wrong - I probably am .
Well here is where I'm at with this today.
Some more work to do, tidying up to do and upgrades to do.
I have at least one 8bit VGA card, that I'm going to try with the XT. Would be much cooler
to have colors and some games require color adapter to work at all.
I'm attaching two pics from the day when I rediscovered the unit from cold storage.
With it, there was Mikromikko 3TT (supposed to have been upgraded to 386) and IBM ps2/model 30.
Neither of those give anything to vga display. Maybe more on those on a different topic, when I have
time for them.
I have already discussed about the history of this unit in hard drive help request thread here:
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?72705-Seagate-ST-412-stuck-(spindle-not-spinning)
To avoid repeating myself, I post the link above.
But, as a summary, I got this unit some 25 years ago for less than 5$.
They were not desirable at that time at all. Back then I had no experience to
get the unit to work and I soon lost interest in it and put it into cold storage.
Now, the interest is found and unit rediscovered from the storage. Cold storage did no
good to the unit and it had many issues.
o Power supply interference caps blew at first attempt. They were replaced, and not psu is working.
o Keyboard is missing ALT key, that prevents booting. As a solution, I'm blocking the alt key down. Looking for xt keyb. alt key !
o One RAM chip at bank 3 was faulty and replaced. Total of 512kb ram was working at that time.
o Floppy drive was giving 601 error. Maybe due to stuck HD or alternatively, unplugging the controller
and cables and reinserting them, the floppy is now working well and giving no 601 error during boot.
o Seagate st-412 HD's spindle was stuck. More of how to recover this in the link above. Drive is now
working and booting reliably. However, there is some significant noise - I mean extra noise that maybe
coming from the drives bearings at times. Now that I think of it, the mounting screws are not yet in
place to the IBM chassis and some extra noise may be from vibration. Hopefully it is nothing serious and
the drive has still somewhat long life left. I have to comment, that the spindle motor has surprisingly
weak torgue, it is barely anything and the drive takes really long to get up to full speed. However, this maybe
just according to its specs
o 256kb ram card failed soon, right after I was starting to get the st-412 running up. Ram check got stuck
at 320kb. Rebooting resulted the ram check stuck at 0. I'm currently running the xt at 256kb motherboard ram only.
Perhaps there is a hint to what ram chip is busted. 320-256 = 64. It maybe chip no 8 that has failed. I recently
acquired about 100 8kb ram chips from china for the C64, so I should definitely have enough chips to fix the ram card.
I'm new with the IBM XT. Last night, I got first games transferred to the unit! And what a job that is.
The media transfer chain goes like this:
abandonware sites -> USB -> XP pc, that has USB support and 1.44 floppy -> 1.44mb floppy -> 486dx33 HD -> (change of
1.44 floppy drive to XT 360kb floppy drive) -> to the 360kb floppy itself -> to the IBM XT hard drive !
Whoa - going through this chain is really time consuming =).
I'm trying to get this chain a bit shorter, but I noticed yesterday, that connecting 5 1/4" floppy
drive to newer pc is not possible. Even if it has floppy adapter, it may support only 720 or 1.44 floppies and
not the 1.2mb or 360kb drives. That was the case with that winxp pc I have in use.
I also learned, that IBM XT original display adapter does not seem to support graphics. At least, that
adapter that I have with the green monitor. But, there was a second display adapter. I read hercules
and Video in it, so I figured out, that adapter may support graphics. Sure enough, I started the packman
game and I had to move the monitor cable from original display adapter to the Hercules adapter. I got
graphics then! But when exiting back to dos 3.3, I had to move the display cable back to the original display adapter.
-> is this really the normal standard setup ? It feels really clumsy to change the display cable when chance
happens from text to graphic states or backwards. Maybe I'm doing something wrong - I probably am .
Well here is where I'm at with this today.
Some more work to do, tidying up to do and upgrades to do.
I have at least one 8bit VGA card, that I'm going to try with the XT. Would be much cooler
to have colors and some games require color adapter to work at all.
I'm attaching two pics from the day when I rediscovered the unit from cold storage.
With it, there was Mikromikko 3TT (supposed to have been upgraded to 386) and IBM ps2/model 30.
Neither of those give anything to vga display. Maybe more on those on a different topic, when I have
time for them.