danalogue
New Member
Hey everyone, new member here in the UK! I'm an electronic engineering student and vintage electronics collector with a growing stable of micros, though I'd love to dip my toes into some bigger iron one day (maybe one day my RA60P disk pack and 8Kx16 Unibus core plane will have things to go in!). I picked up this machine from my old sixth form college (along with a BBC Model B and accessories, some 35mm film cameras and a nice lot of vintage A/V gear) and it's been languishing in a corner under a 16K Spectrum and another 386 for over two years now. I even have an Olivetti electronic typewriter from a similar era (ET 2450), so they'd combine to make a great retro office setup - if I ever have the space!
This is an M380/XP4 (front: https://i.imgur.com/9HK74nC.jpg back: https://i.imgur.com/V6Y7bJB.jpg). It's a 25MHz 386DX with a 385 cache RAM controller that's as big as the CPU itself (https://i.imgur.com/lpcB8WW.jpg) and 8MB of system memory (640K on board), as well as a 136MB NEC ESDI HDD. I was somewhat disappointed it didn't come with a 5.25" FDD as well as the 3.5" (which was dead and probably needs caps, hence the non-colour-matched bezel), but I can't complain for the price of free! I got the original Olivetti monitor with the machine, which has a paper-white phosphor, as well as the keyboard (https://i.imgur.com/k7JXG0k.jpg), which uses a detachable cable with a nifty RJ-style connector. The original plastic cover for the keyboard was there, but it was hideously yellowed, brittle and cracked, so I let it head to the recycling in peace. There were also some other miscellaneous cards in an ESD bag (including a full-length 10b2/10b5 card) and a serial/parallel breakout unit that ended up jumping into my car, even though I really didn't need it...
When I got the machine, it worked great (barring the wiped hard drive), and after messing with it for a while I put the machine into storage, since I was messing with the Beeb at the time. Today, I pulled it back out and discovered to my horror that the CMOS battery was running low - and since the configuration diskettes for these boxes seem to be made of unobtainium, I decided to replace it. I made up a 4AA pack to replace the 6V non-rechargeable lithium battery that had been connected, and with the machine turned on I swapped it over. Initially the machine claimed to have lost CMOS settings, but after a couple of reboots it came back on and figured itself out, even remembering the time! With that dealt with, I felt I should show this machine off, since it's pretty unusual and people might find it interesting. The photos were taken before I replaced the pack, so the original Sanyo Laser Lithium cells are still present in these shots.
OK, let's crack this beast open! The machine is built with an ISA backplane (https://i.imgur.com/AVd3LLO.jpg) in the upper compartment of the case, where the boards are housed - the larger one is the multiple I/O controller (https://i.imgur.com/pSnvRGd.jpg). There's also an Olivetti GO470 VGA board (https://i.imgur.com/UpBLYCY.jpg) in the machine, which works perfectly. It also had a Wangtek 30850-008 (https://i.imgur.com/aEHWEsC.jpg), which I believe is a SCSI tape drive controller (I don't have the matching tape drive... If anyone could shed some light on this, I'd be very grateful) but the first time I powered the machine on, one of the tantalum caps on this Wang controller decided to do its best impression of a firecracker and so it was retired to storage, after a painful exercise in removing small pieces of exploded capacitor from every corner of the case. The edge of the backplane connects through to a huge motherboard (model BA829) in the lower compartment (https://i.imgur.com/nNjFHtf.jpg), which houses the CPU, memory SIMMS and some basic on board I/O. Note the inbuilt PC Speaker volume control dial/slider assembly, as well as the key lock, for which I sadly lack the key. Fortunately, it was left unlocked! The beefy metal bar on the right runs from the power button at the front to the physical switch on the power supply. There's a beefy NEC half-height hard drive in the machine (https://i.imgur.com/90V13YU.jpg) with a capacity of 136MB according to FDISK, which uses ESDI.
The machine came to me with a completely wiped HDD, onto which I installed a fresh copy of DOS 6.22. It insists that it has a B: drive even though one is not present and the POST only enumerates one FDD (https://i.imgur.com/EuwgXfv.jpg) - I suspect this was the long-gone tape drive? (Notice the error in this picture - I had forgotten to plug the hard drive power back in...
)
Anyway, apologies for the wall of text - I hope you enjoyed taking a look at this PC!
This is an M380/XP4 (front: https://i.imgur.com/9HK74nC.jpg back: https://i.imgur.com/V6Y7bJB.jpg). It's a 25MHz 386DX with a 385 cache RAM controller that's as big as the CPU itself (https://i.imgur.com/lpcB8WW.jpg) and 8MB of system memory (640K on board), as well as a 136MB NEC ESDI HDD. I was somewhat disappointed it didn't come with a 5.25" FDD as well as the 3.5" (which was dead and probably needs caps, hence the non-colour-matched bezel), but I can't complain for the price of free! I got the original Olivetti monitor with the machine, which has a paper-white phosphor, as well as the keyboard (https://i.imgur.com/k7JXG0k.jpg), which uses a detachable cable with a nifty RJ-style connector. The original plastic cover for the keyboard was there, but it was hideously yellowed, brittle and cracked, so I let it head to the recycling in peace. There were also some other miscellaneous cards in an ESD bag (including a full-length 10b2/10b5 card) and a serial/parallel breakout unit that ended up jumping into my car, even though I really didn't need it...
When I got the machine, it worked great (barring the wiped hard drive), and after messing with it for a while I put the machine into storage, since I was messing with the Beeb at the time. Today, I pulled it back out and discovered to my horror that the CMOS battery was running low - and since the configuration diskettes for these boxes seem to be made of unobtainium, I decided to replace it. I made up a 4AA pack to replace the 6V non-rechargeable lithium battery that had been connected, and with the machine turned on I swapped it over. Initially the machine claimed to have lost CMOS settings, but after a couple of reboots it came back on and figured itself out, even remembering the time! With that dealt with, I felt I should show this machine off, since it's pretty unusual and people might find it interesting. The photos were taken before I replaced the pack, so the original Sanyo Laser Lithium cells are still present in these shots.
OK, let's crack this beast open! The machine is built with an ISA backplane (https://i.imgur.com/AVd3LLO.jpg) in the upper compartment of the case, where the boards are housed - the larger one is the multiple I/O controller (https://i.imgur.com/pSnvRGd.jpg). There's also an Olivetti GO470 VGA board (https://i.imgur.com/UpBLYCY.jpg) in the machine, which works perfectly. It also had a Wangtek 30850-008 (https://i.imgur.com/aEHWEsC.jpg), which I believe is a SCSI tape drive controller (I don't have the matching tape drive... If anyone could shed some light on this, I'd be very grateful) but the first time I powered the machine on, one of the tantalum caps on this Wang controller decided to do its best impression of a firecracker and so it was retired to storage, after a painful exercise in removing small pieces of exploded capacitor from every corner of the case. The edge of the backplane connects through to a huge motherboard (model BA829) in the lower compartment (https://i.imgur.com/nNjFHtf.jpg), which houses the CPU, memory SIMMS and some basic on board I/O. Note the inbuilt PC Speaker volume control dial/slider assembly, as well as the key lock, for which I sadly lack the key. Fortunately, it was left unlocked! The beefy metal bar on the right runs from the power button at the front to the physical switch on the power supply. There's a beefy NEC half-height hard drive in the machine (https://i.imgur.com/90V13YU.jpg) with a capacity of 136MB according to FDISK, which uses ESDI.
The machine came to me with a completely wiped HDD, onto which I installed a fresh copy of DOS 6.22. It insists that it has a B: drive even though one is not present and the POST only enumerates one FDD (https://i.imgur.com/EuwgXfv.jpg) - I suspect this was the long-gone tape drive? (Notice the error in this picture - I had forgotten to plug the hard drive power back in...
)Anyway, apologies for the wall of text - I hope you enjoyed taking a look at this PC!
