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Just purchased my first IBM 5160

Further to my previous post:

If you have the ability, execute the RAYXTMFM.EXE tool at [here]. I expect that one of the steps in part 5 will fail. That will help us.
 
What hard drive do you have? Does the drive spin up? One of my 5160 had a seagate ST412 and it wouldn’t spin up when I got it. I able to carefully stick and small plastic knife behind the pcb and turn the exposed rotor a few times and eventually the drive would spin up. I researched which way to spin the drive first, just to reduce the risk of damage from spinning it the wrong way.
 
modem7 said:
See the 1701 entry at [here], in particular, the link within the description of 1701.

BTW. Your hard disk controller is an 'IBM Fixed Disk Adapter'.


You are referring to Cassette BASIC. It is is ROM.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

On my way to work this morning I realized I didnt hook up the DATA cable. ‍SMH!

Ill hook that up when I get home .

Rookie mistakes, gotta love'em!
 
John's first 5160 said:
On my way to work this morning I realized I didnt hook up the DATA cable. ‍SMH!
Ill hook that up when I get home .
Click to expand...
I too have an 'IBM Fixed Disk Adapter' in my IBM 5160. I disconnected the data cable from it. After that, the IBM Fixed Disk Adapter did not display a 1701 error at power-on time. That is because the power-on diagnostics (POD) code (i.e. executed at power-on time) within the BIOS ROM of the IBM Fixed Disk Adapter does not do anything that reads the disk surface.

(Some other XT-class hard disk controllers differ.)

Technical information on the power-on diagnostics (POD) within the IBM Fixed Disk Adapter is at [here].
 
So, I hooked up the data cable. No errors,but still only boots to Basic.

Im assuming I need a OS diskette? Maybe nothing is on the HDD?

I installed an XTIDE CF adapter and was able to boot from that.

I ran the CHECKIT from minuszerodegrees.net

It passed everything but the HDD controller.

But I have odd vertical stripes on the screen. Bad CGA card?

Thanks for all your help. 20211108_165838.jpg
 
If the HDD controller is indeed defective, then there's little that you can do with any (typical) hard drive until you get it repaired/replaced.

I could be mistaken, but from the above photo, you appear to be driving output to an LCD monitor. You'll likely never get anything close to what you should see unless you use something that can handle true CGA from your (assumed working) CGA card or replace it with something that can drive the monitor properly.
 
T-R-A said:
If the HDD controller is indeed defective, then there's little that you can do with any (typical) hard drive until you get it repaired/replaced.

I could be mistaken, but from the above photo, you appear to be driving output to an LCD monitor. You'll likely never get anything close to what you should see unless you use something that can handle true CGA from your (assumed working) CGA card or replace it with something that can drive the monitor properly.
Click to expand...

I don't have anything eles to try at the moment. Plain text is fine in 80 column mode. 40 column its jumping up and down.
 
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Are you using the RCA composite output or the 9 pin TTL output on your card?
 
John's first 5160 said:
I don't have anything eles to try at the moment. Plain text is fine in 80 column mode. 40 column its jumping up and down.
Click to expand...

Consider either MCE2VGA or RGBtoHDMI. I bought both, but didn't yet test RGBtoHDMI.

I got my MCE2VGA from here. It works fine, but has some random noise sometimes. Still, works very well with all MDA/Hercules/CGA/EGA modes.

Alternatively, set switched 5&6 to ON and use almost any ISA VGA card until you sort your CGA displaying issues.
 
John's first 5160 said:
So I tried the RAYXTMFM and received this....
BIOS unable to identify, and no BIOS expansion ROM.
Click to expand...
Regarding RAYXTMFM's inability to identify your 5160's motherboard BIOS ROM's. Are you able to provide a photo of those ROM's (U18 and U19) ? I am curious.

Regarding RAYXTMFM indicating no BIOS expansion ROM at C8000, the BIOS ROM on your IBM Fixed Disk Adapter. The motherboard was able to 'see' the ROM before - it is what generates the 1701 error. To attach the data cable, you probably needed to remove the IBM Fixed Disk Adapter from its ISA slot. Verify that your IBM Fixed Disk Adapter is now properly sitting in its ISA slot.
 
modem7 said:
Regarding RAYXTMFM's inability to identify your 5160's motherboard BIOS ROM's. Are you able to provide a photo of those ROM's (U18 and U19) ? I am curious.

Regarding RAYXTMFM indicating no BIOS expansion ROM at C8000, the BIOS ROM on your IBM Fixed Disk Adapter. The motherboard was able to 'see' the ROM before - it is what generates the 1701 error. To attach the data cable, you probably needed to remove the IBM Fixed Disk Adapter from its ISA slot. Verify that your IBM Fixed Disk Adapter is now properly sitting in its ISA slot.
Click to expand...

Ok. Here it is
 

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John's first 5160 said:
Ok. Here it is
Click to expand...
The "1501512" on U18 confirms a revision of 11/08/82. I guess that the contents of your 1501512 differs slightly to my 1501512. I will do further research on that.

RAYXTMFM's failure to identify your motherboard BIOS does not impact on part 3 ("ID the BIOS ROM at C8000").
So verify that your IBM Fixed Disk Adapter is properly sitting in its ISA slot.

(And if the motherboard is out of the computer, do not have the IBM Fixed Disk Adapter in slot #8 - slot #8 is 'special'.)
 
Well now I did it. I was running the RAYXTMFM XTIDE CF card adapter, and I went into the flash bios section. I screwed up the MASTER address, now it wont boot from CF anymore. Lol.
 
modem7 said:
The "1501512" on U18 confirms a revision of 11/08/82. I guess that the contents of your 1501512 differs slightly to my 1501512. I will do further research on that.

RAYXTMFM's failure to identify your motherboard BIOS does not impact on part 3 ("ID the BIOS ROM at C8000").
So verify that your IBM Fixed Disk Adapter is properly sitting in its ISA slot.

(And if the motherboard is out of the computer, do not have the IBM Fixed Disk Adapter in slot #8 - slot #8 is 'special'.)
Click to expand...

Yes, we all are a little special. Lol.

I did try other slots, not 8. Sometimes it will do memory count, other times just blank screen. 1 time it had 1701.

Read my last post, I ran the RAYXTMFM from a CF adapter card. But in my wisdom I screwed up the master address, now it wont boot at all.
 
John's first 5160 said:
Sometimes it will do memory count, other times just blank screen.
Click to expand...
Obviously, your computer should not be showing instability like that.

Is it the case that you are turning off the power supply, then immediately turning the power supply back on? With these old power supplies, you need to wait some seconds before turning back on the power supply. (On the Compaq Portable, that period is 15 seconds !)

If not, is the instability present when your computer consists of only motherboard, power supply, and video card ?
 
modem7 said:
Obviously, your computer should not be showing instability like that.

Is it the case that you are turning off the power supply, then immediately turning the power supply back on?
Click to expand...

I wait until the fan spins down before turning on again.

I will remove all boards except the video card and try that.

Also I noticed the HDD status led has 1 fast flash and 1 longer flash. That keeps repeating and only stops if it boot to basic. Is that anything?

Thanks for the help.
 
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