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IBM XT and all the cards

Joined
Apr 18, 2005
Messages
43
Location
Melbourne, Australia
Hi All,

I just aquired an IBM XT origainal with Monocrome, memory expansion, Hdd, Fdd, and parrallel controller cards installed, 20 meg Hdd drive and 5 1/4 Fdd. all nice discrete logic cards, dust free and in excelent condition. The BEST thing I recon is the old clunky IBM keyboard of course :wink: . Haven't had a chance to plug it all in yet but no reason to think it wont work. And where did I find this gem?? Saved it form the Garbadge monster, hard rubish collection day is comming up and some kind old lady was putting it out and didn't mind me taking it. Scored a tosiba T1000XE at the same time, but I dont think it's working too well.

One question I do have, is where do I find info on the tape interface cable to attatch a casette tape to the motherboard. would be nice to make up a cable for it. I'm sure I can find some suitably old clunky casstte deck to suit the machine and complete the picture......

:twisted:
 
For starters, the XT doesn't have a cassette port. Only the original PC has it. The PC (5150) has five expansion slots, but when the XT (5160) came, they abandoned the cassette jack in favor of eight expansion slots.

That being said, the cassette cable for the PC is the same as the cable used by the TRS-80 Model 100 et.al. RadioShack used to sell 'em, but I think nowadays you'll have to build your own (unless you get lucky and find one on eBay). I've seen the plans somewhere on daNet, but I don't remember exactly where, either on www.club100.org or the NEC website at http://www.web8201.com/ Look around those sites, I'm sure you'll find what you need.

--T
 
Nice machine - I've been looking for an XT.

You are going to have a problem putting a cassette on the XT. Besides not having the port, it probably doesn't have the internal wiring on the motherboard, or BIOS support either.

A machine with a hard drive standard does not need a cassette port. :)
 
But thats the fun thing. This mother board DOES have the port. It's an origainal and old enough to still have all the electronics for the cassette port on it. I would assume that means it would have the driver installed also. It only has five expansion slots on it so I would assume this makes it a PC (5150)??? I was not aware of this diferance, I'm not normally a collector of IBM hardware. I was wondering why I had not seen other IBM systems with this facillity. I only picked this little toy up becuase It was there for the taking when I was riding past on my Bicycle. Makes this a bit older and perhaps a bit more interesting than I thought. I'll definitely power it up today and see if it's still a worker in that case. A usable early version of DOS installed on the hard drive could be an added bonus.......

:twisted:
 
Your "driver" for the cassette is built-in, along with all the rest of the BASIC language in ROM. To access ROM BASIC, there's a system call, but I don't recall it right now, I'm drawing a blank. Next best would be to disable (unplug) the hard drive and power-up without a bootdisk. The PC will boot into BASIC. (While you're at it, make a note of the version number, that'll give you some idea of the age (and value) of 'er). If you'd like me to send you a BASIC manual, I'm sure I can find an extra one for a couple of buck$. Just PM me.

--T

P.S. CSAVE <filename> command saves to tape and CLOAD <filename> retreives from tape.
 
Then too, your PC-DOS (not MS-DOS) bootdisk should have BASICA.COM on it, which is a superset of ROM BASIC, with disk extensions, so CLOAD & CSAVE will work in BASICA too.

--T
 
Yes, just turned the beast on. Lights dim, power meter winds up to an unbelievable speed no doubt increasing my power bill enormously, anxious wait for way to long........ IT WORKS.... Booted DOS 3.10 from the hard drive. After I save a good copy of DOS I'll have to think about where I'm going to store the beast..... :lol:

Thanks for the offer of a Basic manual Terry, I'll let you know.....

:twisted:
 
I missed something here. You said this was an XT, but it only has five slots and a cassette port? That makes it a PC 5150, not an XT 5160.

XTs have 8 slots and no cassette port.
 
Yes, My bad, See my second part to the post about four posts down from the top. As I said, I'm not an IBM collector normally, didn't realise there was a PC then an XT, or for that matter any differance. Never really looked at IBMs at all in much detail. I didn't get into IBMs until MUCH latter. My first IBM was a pentium 133. Of course by that time this machine was a distant legend. :wink:

:twisted:
 
Ellation at actually getting the beast was turning to disapointment at the fact it obviously wasn't working... Then Noises started and presto.... Took a while to start things in motion... Obviously this is normal for the PC??? It certainly loaded quickly enough once things got underway...

:twisted:
 
I was booting one up at the store the other day, and the young techie-type who works there told me at least 4 different times while waiting for it to boot, that it was junk and wasn't gonna come on. Besides, everyone knows that a computer is "s'pozed" to display sum'n on the screen if it's working.

--T
 
Sinisterdragon said:
Took a while to start things in motion... Obviously this is normal for the PC???

Yep, like molasses in January...

One place I worked at years ago, they gave the secretary an XT, everbody 386s (newest at the time)

Her routine was:
First, turn on the computer
second through 100th, those early-morning tasks.
101st; use the computer to do her work, by then it was ready to go.
 
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