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Whoa! The 5170 front badge can be reoriented!?

M

misterblack

Experienced Member
Joined
Jul 20, 2017
Messages
228
Location
Portland, Oregon, USA
I picked up a 5170 yesterday and took the front bezel off. Looking at the backm I noticed you can rotate the badge to any 90 degree orientation. Is this common knowledge? Funny is I had never heard of this on this machine! It makes it especially nice if you have the computer in a vertical "tower" configuration.

Some pics:
https://imgur.com/a/AqjhN

I was also amazed at how chunky and thick the metal badge is. I love old IBM machines!
 
Very nice find !

What cards were installed in the AT ? Does it boot from the hard drive ?
 
Does anyone have any spares of this type of square badge? I have a couple cases that are missing them... They don't have to be IBM.

And sorry, I don't mean to thread-jack. It's just the same subject.
 
Maybe IBM was copying Tandy. The Tandy 2000 (released before the AT) also had a rotating badge and optional tower stand.

tandy2000.jpg
 
mikey99 said:
Very nice find !

What cards were installed in the AT ? Does it boot from the hard drive ?
Click to expand...

Well it no longer had the original motherboard and had some 386SX installed. Luckily I had a PC-Calc full size 286 which I installed. In it was the original floppy and power supply. It also had a Miniscribe 20 meg MFM 5.25 hooked with original IBM cables to a full length MFM/floppy controller. It also had a IBM serial/parallel card but it has some burned traces so it doesn't work. I may try to troubleshoot. The MDA card was some tiny triangle ISA card but it also didn't work. I tossed that out.

It had an Amdek 310A MDA monitor which works although with a little burn in. Oh and it had some floppy interface tape drive.

The best part is it had the original manuals as well and a copy of IBM DOS 3.

So with my 286 installed and the parts back in, it does boot into DOS 5.0!! I was stoked that's it is quite a nice system for just $20. I'll post some more pics.
 
Ummm ok, but how you want to power on/off when its turned vertically with logo on the top?
 
romanon said:
Ummm ok, but how you want to power on/off when its turned vertically with logo on the top?
Click to expand...

You could also use an external power strip or under monitor power distribution center to control it. It wouldn't be a good way to orient though as it would out the drives at the bottom and far from reach. :)
 
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