When you get a Chance, Can you Make Copy's of all your Old Dos (and the Packard Bell MS-DOS 3.3) and other old Software Disks in IMA Format (Use the Winimage Program for this) and put them all in a Zip file and then Email it to me? Thanks.
@cr1901 VGA always used the high density 15-pin (HD15) connector from the moment IBM invented it in 1987. However, some early aftermarket VGA cards also provided a 9-pin connector, so you wouldn't need to buy a special cable when using an older NEC Multisync-type monitor. Most of these cards were actually EGA/VGA combination cards, so people could also use their existing EGA monitor until they were ready to buy a new VGA-capable monitor.
@vwestlife Oops lol... I should do my research then. Someone on the VC forums is willing to sell me a multisync monitor which has the 9-pin connector for VGA, but I didn't know that 9-pin VGA only existed for the sake of those monitors.
That is a pretty awesome computer, and even awesomer when it has a freakin hard drive! I usually see them with dual full height floppy drives. How did you get the hard drive to work right? Do you use a special card? Im curious..
@Matthew55904 Unfortunately, no. The best you can do with that kind of machine is to install an ISA Ethernet card and then connect it to your home network to transfer files (or use a yellow crossover Ethernet cable to transfer data directly to another computer).
From what I can recall (and it's been a LONG time, you can use an RLL controller and double the capacity of the MFM hard disk, presumably you would have to do a new low level format (go into debug and type g=c800:5) (IIRC) to access the low lever format (It might be a god idea to do re-format the drive anyway, given it's age).
@christo930 I've done that many times, and it does work, but you need a drive which is reliable enough to support the higher data density of the RLL format. Any MFM drive will format as RLL, but you'll eventually encounter read/write errors if it isn't quite up to par. Seagate indicated their RLL-certified drives with an "R" at the end of the model number, such as the ST-238R.
@vwestlife I remember back in the day there were computer shows where dishonest sales people would sell 20 meg drives as 40 meg drives with an RLL controller. I miss those old shows, there hasn't been one in my area for years.
Woah.... A 20MB hard drive. Even back in the late 80's, that hard drive would've set you back at least $1500. It's hilarious how we can now get a 2TB hard drive for about $100.
Digger actually used a standard 320x200x4 mode, it just used the CGA registers directly to set the mode instead of going through the BIOS like most games did (possibly so that it could flip between different palettes very quickly) which is why it isn't EGA/VGA compatible. However, it was very easy to hack it to make it EGA/VGA compatible, and there are a lot of hacked versions floating around. There's lots more information about Digger at digger.org .
This is a sheer joy to see again. Thanks for uploading this. My first IBM was a 4.77mhz 8088 as well; I had a 10MB RLL hard drive (rather than an MFM controller) and 360K floppy on mine. Such sweet memories. Thanks again!
Btw, you might be able to use one of the Paradise EGA cards with a dipswitch for CGA mode to avoid burning out the CGA monitor if you can't find a working CGA card for it...once upon a time I had to fall back on a monochrome card and monitor, but got that EGA card and was ok
I love finding old working machines like that. The oldest machine in my posession at this time is a 386 16MHz which I was able to upgrade to 16MB of 30 pin SIMMs. I had a whole mess of varying capacity 30 pins and managed to find 2 pairs of 4MB ones. Has a 500-ish MB Conner HDD, and an old SB-16 sound card.
I have one of these but not the original monitor but I was able to use a Commodore 1084 from my Amiga on the CGA card and I also have a VGA card that surprisingly worked in an 8bit slot despite being 16bit.
I had Digger on my old 286, again I had that garbled screen since it had a VGA card. At the time I thought that was what the game was supposed to look like, good fun despite that.
Would you be willing to share some of those games, especially that CGA game? My model 25 has the MCGA chip, and I wonder if it, being based on CGA, will be able to handle it..
@hakemon The game was "Digger". It should work fine on MCGA or VGA; I was just using a floppy with some bad sectors, and the program probably got corrupted. (It doesn't help that Digger was originally designed to be a "booter" game, and it just blindly writes its high scores to a specific sector on the disk, clobbering whatever else might be stored there!)
nice!!!!!!!!!! :) oowww the memorys!!! this vid reminded me of my old ms dos computer it was an amstrad!!!!! but it looks like mine was alot older than this one because it didnt suport a hard drive only floppy discs and it had a one color screen (green) but one day the mother board stoped working :'''((( it was so sad......
well i would be very happy if i could find the same one again but i don't think anyone will still have one..........i hope your one wont do the same with mine :)
Lol... Video card is huge. But whats funny is, its only probably what? 64kb of memory on it. LOL, new video cards that are 1/6th the size could pwn it. Crazy how shit has changed.
@Roflcopter4b Well, when I say RAM, I'm talking about the board's ram. When I say Video memory, I'm talking about the memory on the video card. I was making a point of how much shit has changed in the past few years.
@Roflcopter4b Although most VideoCards indeed have Random Access Memory, when talking about a computer as a whole the term RAM always refers to the Computer's Memory.
Old Computers (e.g. Amiga) simply divided/reserved available memory, meaning it dedicated a part for graphics, the CPU got the rest.
Modern Video-On-MotherBoard Systems do it as well.
I was not aware the original IBM 5050 could accept ISA cards. I also thought it could not power a hard drive b/c the power supply was only 60 Watts or so... eh learn something everyday...
Gotta love the full length CGA card. I have one of those in a bin somewhere. The closest to an old PC that I have nowadays is the PC Transporter card for the Apple II. XT-on-a-card with 640k, a 10Mhz NEC V30, and CGA graphics. I wonder if I can get Windows 3.0 running on that thing in real mode with the CGA graphics driver.
That game you're playing has some interesting sounds, I believe some games that used the PC speaker could do some interesting things with it, but generally speaking the PC Speaker really wasn't that creative when it came to games although so many games used it for many years.
I like how you can actually remove the chips from this computer. Therefore if a chip, say on the mother board, goes bad, you can just replace the chip rather then having to buy a whole new board. More resource efficient and cost effective that way for the end user
@vwestlife If you know, or can determine it easily, what's the company manufacturer name and model no. of the multifunction board you have in your system (the one that has the FDD controller, LPT and COM ports, and clock calander)?
@Dyrenys The floppy disks in my collection are originals from the 1980s and 1990s. I have no modern computer with a 5¼-inch floppy drive, so I have no easy way to upload them to the Internet.
@vwestlife you can always transfer files to a modern PC using a "laplink" serial cable. :) or if you got an 8 bit ISA high density floppy controller, you could hook up a 3.5 inch floppy drive to the 5150 :)
@neutrino78x I have used the InterLink software provided with DOS 6.x, which can transfer data through the parallel port at a much higher speed than LapLink did through the serial port. Or if you retrofit a NEC V20 processor in place of the 8088, you can also use a parallel port Iomega Zip drive with the PC (Iomega's DOS driver requires at least a V20/V30 or 286 CPU in order to work).
Wow, I wish I had the skills you have there to do a repair like that. I have the possibility of aquiring an ill one of these and will have to do so much research to attempt to repair it :o) (But I'm a geek so I will enjoy that lol)
I have a VGA card in my 5150 as well at the moment. I used to have an MDA 5151 monitor, but it exploded on me. I have CGA and MDA cards for it, I'll have to get a new monitor one of these days.
@MixerVM Deterioriation due to old age often causes capacitors to either lose their value or short out. In the latter case, they usually explode when power is applied!
@MixerVM 16-bit ISA slots use a longer connector on the motherboard with more electrical contacts on it. The 8088 processor does not support a 16-bit expansion bus, so the original PC only has 8-bit ISA slots.
awwww. I managed to get 3 of these about 10 years ago in an auction with 25 old computers (old Digital, AT&T Olivetti). Seeing all these videos makes me wish i still had them. My dad and me would always work on them together. fun times
My 5150 had the IBM MDA monitor, but it decided to explode, so I cheated with a VGA adapter. Still have the MDA board as well as a CGA card. Would love to get a cheap-ish CGA monitor for it if anyone has one lying around.
Wow, memories! I'll never forget when I got one of these from my school. Prior to that I just had an Apple II+.
I had an EGA video card and a CGA monitor. Everything would work except the high res modes.
I actually had the EGA/CGA setup all the way into my 386 days. When my Dad got me my first SVGA monitor and video card, it was like heaven! The video card was a Trident 8900 if I recall.
maybe that's why they're still working. i wish we had less planned amortisation these days. anyway, it's truly a unique vintage machine; nice to see it's in good shape. any news on the CGA board? :)
@firehawk400: Just go to digger dot org, there you can get remakes for DOS and Windows. Only thing that isn't re-created is the slowdown you would get on an 8088, when too many opponents were on screen :-)
I used to have a similar computer, but it never got any further than the blinking mark at the top left of the screen (memory test). Probably a reason why it was junked in the first place....
Most CGA games will run on VGA; some with incorrect or missing colors. But games that use the "hacked" 16-color 160x100 CGA graphics mode won't run at all on VGA.
Wow!, I've seen one of those when I was younger, even then it was obsolete by decades, at least it felt like that.
I remember that my father talked a lot about PC-Tools, according to him it was just perfect. Of course that being a 286 running DOS, but I still can't help my curiosity.
Is this a computer you got/inherited with documentations, software & hardware altogether. Or have you been sourcing it out? My father have an vintage IBM but no doc. or soft. Is there a community for this?
Yes, PC Tools and Norton Utilities were two sets of very useful utility programs. Eventually the best parts of both were licensed by Microsoft and IBM and were included with the later versions of DOS, such as Defrag, Backup, and AntiVirus.
I have collected various original IBM documentation and software over the years, but none came with this PC directly. The PC you see in the video was given to me years ago by my dad's friend, who used it at his workplace.
The shutdown command I use is an aftermarket program. I believe older versions of IBM PC DOS come with an official IBM hard drive parking program, but the newer version of PC DOS I use does not.
I had one of these in my early computing years... around 1995. I accidentally blew a transistor when I had the HDD partially mounted in the chassis while it was running... the transistor shorted out against the chassis. That was the worst day of my life.
When you get a Chance, Can you Make Copy's of all your Old Dos (and the Packard Bell MS-DOS 3.3) and other old Software Disks in IMA Format (Use the Winimage Program for this) and put them all in a Zip file and then Email it to me? Thanks.
PB70CDOEM 2 days ago
@PB70CDOEM There are already web sites which have images of DOS boot disks.
vwestlife 2 days ago
@vwestlife oh, I Guess I did not look hard enough, can I Get the Link?
PB70CDOEM 2 days ago
Where did you get that Seagate MFM HDD?
ferencproject 5 days ago
LOL, that song sounds familiar...
"Popcorn" - Hot Butter
XzTS 1 week ago
My gosh! I miss those 5.25-inch floppies!
XzTS 1 week ago
I remember digger. We had that on an old Xt in our classroom in 3rd grade.
makinbac0n 1 week ago
Rise from your grave !
CommanderFuckFace 1 week ago
that is possibly the biggest video card ive ever seen....
420bmxer 2 months ago
Big video card!
gdm413229 2 months ago
seagate mfm?! ;)
marquis0r 2 months ago
Capacitors are measured in microfarads. Find one that matches the original design spec of the CGA board.
- One other thing you should try is connecting a VGA monitor to it.
HoneycombAgent 2 months ago
@HoneycombAgent VGA monitor uses 15 pins,, CGA and EGA only used 9 pins
n9xvt 2 months ago
@n9xvt But, if the "VGA card" has only 9 pins, then, technically it probably isn't certified as a VGA card. Basically it would be EGA instead.
HoneycombAgent 2 months ago
@n9xvt The VERY first VGA cards used 9-pin connectors, to my understanding. I've actually seen one for sale on Ebay, but I can't find the link.
cr1901 3 weeks ago
@cr1901 VGA always used the high density 15-pin (HD15) connector from the moment IBM invented it in 1987. However, some early aftermarket VGA cards also provided a 9-pin connector, so you wouldn't need to buy a special cable when using an older NEC Multisync-type monitor. Most of these cards were actually EGA/VGA combination cards, so people could also use their existing EGA monitor until they were ready to buy a new VGA-capable monitor.
vwestlife 3 weeks ago
@vwestlife Oops lol... I should do my research then. Someone on the VC forums is willing to sell me a multisync monitor which has the 9-pin connector for VGA, but I didn't know that 9-pin VGA only existed for the sake of those monitors.
cr1901 3 weeks ago
That is a pretty awesome computer, and even awesomer when it has a freakin hard drive! I usually see them with dual full height floppy drives. How did you get the hard drive to work right? Do you use a special card? Im curious..
lucianodinino 2 months ago
@lucianodinino It is a Western Digital MFM hard drive controller. I forget the exact model number, but it is an 8-bit ISA bus controller.
vwestlife 2 months ago
@vwestlife Oh that's awesome. You should see the video about the 5150 from phreakindee, you'd like it.
lucianodinino 2 months ago
@vwestlife I bought a IBM 5160 on ebay, it doesnt have a Hard Drive but I will buy a Seagate ST412 for it.
MrComputerfan 2 months ago
What brand and model is the videocard in this video? It looks like my Super VGA Trident videocard...
MBaMichel 3 months ago
@MBaMichel It's an old 8-bit VGA card, I believe made by Western Digital.
vwestlife 3 months ago
is there such a thing as ISA Bus USB Controller card? i have a old 94 Win 3.1 upgraded to Win95 computer im trying to bring back
Matthew55904 3 months ago
@Matthew55904 Unfortunately, no. The best you can do with that kind of machine is to install an ISA Ethernet card and then connect it to your home network to transfer files (or use a yellow crossover Ethernet cable to transfer data directly to another computer).
vwestlife 3 months ago
@vwestlife i have a ISA eathernet card in it already but Win95 dont even show it exists and its a Windows 3.1 Eatherne Card (dated 1991)
Matthew55904 3 months ago
have u tried upgrading it installing a bigger HDD like a GB or some USB Ports?
Matthew55904 3 months ago
@Matthew55904 No such thing is possible.
vwestlife 3 months ago
DIGGER...!
amoeis 3 months ago
From what I can recall (and it's been a LONG time, you can use an RLL controller and double the capacity of the MFM hard disk, presumably you would have to do a new low level format (go into debug and type g=c800:5) (IIRC) to access the low lever format (It might be a god idea to do re-format the drive anyway, given it's age).
christo930 3 months ago
@christo930 I've done that many times, and it does work, but you need a drive which is reliable enough to support the higher data density of the RLL format. Any MFM drive will format as RLL, but you'll eventually encounter read/write errors if it isn't quite up to par. Seagate indicated their RLL-certified drives with an "R" at the end of the model number, such as the ST-238R.
vwestlife 3 months ago
@vwestlife I remember back in the day there were computer shows where dishonest sales people would sell 20 meg drives as 40 meg drives with an RLL controller. I miss those old shows, there hasn't been one in my area for years.
christo930 3 months ago
that video card is HUGE!!
hburke7799 4 months ago
Woah.... A 20MB hard drive. Even back in the late 80's, that hard drive would've set you back at least $1500. It's hilarious how we can now get a 2TB hard drive for about $100.
Diskoboy1974 4 months ago
Back when using a computer required a brain...
I salute thee.
xxTigerzGirlxx 5 months ago
Pop Corn music inside at the start of digger!!!
Thorgils1 5 months ago
3:52 game is dead ;-D
Renatodonadio 5 months ago
Digger actually used a standard 320x200x4 mode, it just used the CGA registers directly to set the mode instead of going through the BIOS like most games did (possibly so that it could flip between different palettes very quickly) which is why it isn't EGA/VGA compatible. However, it was very easy to hack it to make it EGA/VGA compatible, and there are a lot of hacked versions floating around. There's lots more information about Digger at digger.org .
andrewmjenner 5 months ago
This is a sheer joy to see again. Thanks for uploading this. My first IBM was a 4.77mhz 8088 as well; I had a 10MB RLL hard drive (rather than an MFM controller) and 360K floppy on mine. Such sweet memories. Thanks again!
Btw, you might be able to use one of the Paradise EGA cards with a dipswitch for CGA mode to avoid burning out the CGA monitor if you can't find a working CGA card for it...once upon a time I had to fall back on a monochrome card and monitor, but got that EGA card and was ok
jameswasil 5 months ago
thanks for the video, i have just bought an ibm xt and I don't even think my parents knew you had to park the heads of the hard drive manually.
DaBigbobo558 6 months ago
i got 8mb of ram on my windows 95...still works
47crazed 6 months ago
eww it's old.
HayLotion 6 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
How is that machine so clean? It looks 'new'.
Do you live in a dust free lab?
WWWeed2 7 months ago
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WWWeed2 7 months ago
I love old computers.
LauxHawk 7 months ago
@LauxHawk Me too!
spongebobrules99 6 months ago
I love finding old working machines like that. The oldest machine in my posession at this time is a 386 16MHz which I was able to upgrade to 16MB of 30 pin SIMMs. I had a whole mess of varying capacity 30 pins and managed to find 2 pairs of 4MB ones. Has a 500-ish MB Conner HDD, and an old SB-16 sound card.
FsckYourMother 7 months ago
3:51
BSOD on DOS
didogazeto 7 months ago
Looks shiny and new, good to see that old stuff is kept alive :)
clauzii 8 months ago
I have one of these but not the original monitor but I was able to use a Commodore 1084 from my Amiga on the CGA card and I also have a VGA card that surprisingly worked in an 8bit slot despite being 16bit.
Membrane556 8 months ago
Aw man i'm jealous! I wish i never sold mine back in the 90's
DGMRuadeil 8 months ago
I had Digger on my old 286, again I had that garbled screen since it had a VGA card. At the time I thought that was what the game was supposed to look like, good fun despite that.
MrStewToobe 9 months ago
omg !
conexioNohovajj 9 months ago
i miss old games
gocountry1391 10 months ago
Would you be willing to share some of those games, especially that CGA game? My model 25 has the MCGA chip, and I wonder if it, being based on CGA, will be able to handle it..
hakemon 10 months ago
@hakemon The game was "Digger". It should work fine on MCGA or VGA; I was just using a floppy with some bad sectors, and the program probably got corrupted. (It doesn't help that Digger was originally designed to be a "booter" game, and it just blindly writes its high scores to a specific sector on the disk, clobbering whatever else might be stored there!)
vwestlife 10 months ago
@vwestlife I happen to have a IBM XT 5162 CGA card... let me know if you wish to trade...
waytostoned 9 months ago
Arggh!
Brings back terrible memories of having to get these beasts to actually do some real work!
MichaelKingsfordGray 10 months ago
nice!!!!!!!!!! :) oowww the memorys!!! this vid reminded me of my old ms dos computer it was an amstrad!!!!! but it looks like mine was alot older than this one because it didnt suport a hard drive only floppy discs and it had a one color screen (green) but one day the mother board stoped working :'''((( it was so sad......
well i would be very happy if i could find the same one again but i don't think anyone will still have one..........i hope your one wont do the same with mine :)
theultimatedestroy80 11 months ago
@theultimatedestroy80 Yours was far newer than this. This is the very first.
doritostheking 9 months ago
Lol... Video card is huge. But whats funny is, its only probably what? 64kb of memory on it. LOL, new video cards that are 1/6th the size could pwn it. Crazy how shit has changed.
ccraig412 11 months ago
@ccraig412 The original CGA card has 16K of video RAM.
vwestlife 11 months ago 9
@vwestlife I stand corrected. :p
ccraig412 11 months ago
@ccraig412 Uh, what the hell does Ram have anything to do with anything?
Roflcopter4b 10 months ago
@Roflcopter4b Never mentioned RAM. I mentioned the memory on the video card. :P
ccraig412 10 months ago
@ccraig412 That is RAM...
Roflcopter4b 10 months ago
@Roflcopter4b Well, when I say RAM, I'm talking about the board's ram. When I say Video memory, I'm talking about the memory on the video card. I was making a point of how much shit has changed in the past few years.
ccraig412 10 months ago
@ccraig412 No worries, you got it right.
@Roflcopter4b Although most VideoCards indeed have Random Access Memory, when talking about a computer as a whole the term RAM always refers to the Computer's Memory.
Old Computers (e.g. Amiga) simply divided/reserved available memory, meaning it dedicated a part for graphics, the CPU got the rest.
Modern Video-On-MotherBoard Systems do it as well.
matt47110815 6 months ago
Sound like refrigerator not a computer - really loud operation.
chronius9 11 months ago
I was not aware the original IBM 5050 could accept ISA cards. I also thought it could not power a hard drive b/c the power supply was only 60 Watts or so... eh learn something everyday...
cr1901 1 year ago
I love the sound of old mechanical-click keyboards. Modern keyboards just don't have the audible or tactile response of the old clicky keyboards.
Eep386 1 year ago
@Eep386: Just look around, you can buy brand new clicky keyboards, but they are more expensive.
armorgeddon 5 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
... stop acting like its a zombie
ericericeric833 1 year ago
Gotta love the full length CGA card. I have one of those in a bin somewhere. The closest to an old PC that I have nowadays is the PC Transporter card for the Apple II. XT-on-a-card with 640k, a 10Mhz NEC V30, and CGA graphics. I wonder if I can get Windows 3.0 running on that thing in real mode with the CGA graphics driver.
NJRoadfan 1 year ago
I would love to have one of those "clicking" keyboards.
kklasen 1 year ago
@kklasen I have one that might be from 1995. :D
Racecar564 1 year ago
@Racecar564 wanna sell it ill buy it
TOTORIALSFOROLDPEEPS 1 year ago
That game you're playing has some interesting sounds, I believe some games that used the PC speaker could do some interesting things with it, but generally speaking the PC Speaker really wasn't that creative when it came to games although so many games used it for many years.
Lachlant1984 1 year ago
I like how you can actually remove the chips from this computer. Therefore if a chip, say on the mother board, goes bad, you can just replace the chip rather then having to buy a whole new board. More resource efficient and cost effective that way for the end user
debiani3866 1 year ago
ace, how you still get it working, i dont know, cus that is one old computer, good job!
Dazzerlikestech1 1 year ago
AMAZING
TheROYO11 1 year ago
you buy all these relics?
Willd86 1 year ago
wow, where did you store it? you must have a lot of space at your house
vassilischr 1 year ago
Why do you talk the the whole time about adding chips? You're not adding individual chips, you're adding cards that contain chips.
3ytc 1 year ago
@3ytc The original PC does not use SIMMs. It uses inidividual RAM chips.
vwestlife 1 year ago 14
@vwestlife If you know, or can determine it easily, what's the company manufacturer name and model no. of the multifunction board you have in your system (the one that has the FDD controller, LPT and COM ports, and clock calander)?
cr1901 7 months ago
@cr1901 The "7-Plus" multifunction board was made by Chaplet Systems.
vwestlife 7 months ago
@vwestlife Thank you. A quick search on Ebay suggests that no one is selling them right now. :(
cr1901 7 months ago
HI man, where do you get this old apps (gmz), or... can you put it in an image file and upload it??. Thanks =)
Dyrenys 1 year ago
@Dyrenys The floppy disks in my collection are originals from the 1980s and 1990s. I have no modern computer with a 5¼-inch floppy drive, so I have no easy way to upload them to the Internet.
vwestlife 1 year ago
@vwestlife I understand T..T.
-///But, if you put your 5 1/4 inch floppy drive in a modern pc (instead a 3,5 inch floppy drive) and get images???///-
=)
Dyrenys 1 year ago
@Dyrenys Many are available online. Just search for DOS games.
vwestlife 1 year ago
@vwestlife you can always transfer files to a modern PC using a "laplink" serial cable. :) or if you got an 8 bit ISA high density floppy controller, you could hook up a 3.5 inch floppy drive to the 5150 :)
neutrino78x 1 year ago
@neutrino78x I have used the InterLink software provided with DOS 6.x, which can transfer data through the parallel port at a much higher speed than LapLink did through the serial port. Or if you retrofit a NEC V20 processor in place of the 8088, you can also use a parallel port Iomega Zip drive with the PC (Iomega's DOS driver requires at least a V20/V30 or 286 CPU in order to work).
vwestlife 1 year ago
The original power supply was made by Zenith and didn't have a brand name on it.
douro20 1 year ago
Comment removed
douro20 1 year ago
Ah the good old ST-225!
nipperoid 1 year ago
that thing is remarkably clean.
SilentServiceCode 1 year ago
Wow, I wish I had the skills you have there to do a repair like that. I have the possibility of aquiring an ill one of these and will have to do so much research to attempt to repair it :o) (But I'm a geek so I will enjoy that lol)
RetroGamerVX 1 year ago
...Can you bring back the USSR and Ronald Regan?
TalksWithDirt 1 year ago
I have a VGA card in my 5150 as well at the moment. I used to have an MDA 5151 monitor, but it exploded on me. I have CGA and MDA cards for it, I'll have to get a new monitor one of these days.
bobdole57 1 year ago
@bobdole57
I just decided to do some videos on some of my old crap.
bobdole57 1 year ago
I use the same LIST file manager.
Do you use HDM? I think MS totally ripped that off when they made the start menu.
Jerkwad152 1 year ago
Pause at 1:28 to see how big the computer is compared to a nine-inch monitor!
MixerVM 1 year ago
i can hear the computer screaming "Windows 7 now"
:S
jdcrispe95 1 year ago
how did the capacitors get blown?
MixerVM 1 year ago
@MixerVM Deterioriation due to old age often causes capacitors to either lose their value or short out. In the latter case, they usually explode when power is applied!
vwestlife 1 year ago
wow thats old school .
cisco760ca 1 year ago
Is that VGA board you have in there a 16 bit card in a 8 bit slot?
TheLoFiGuy 1 year ago
@TheLoFiGuy Yes. Most VGA cards will work in either a 16-bit or an 8-bit ISA slot.
vwestlife 1 year ago
Comment removed
MixerVM 1 year ago
@vwestlife What is the difference between 8-bit and 16-bit slots? Is one short and one long?
MixerVM 1 year ago
@MixerVM 16-bit ISA slots use a longer connector on the motherboard with more electrical contacts on it. The 8088 processor does not support a 16-bit expansion bus, so the original PC only has 8-bit ISA slots.
vwestlife 1 year ago
awwww. I managed to get 3 of these about 10 years ago in an auction with 25 old computers (old Digital, AT&T Olivetti). Seeing all these videos makes me wish i still had them. My dad and me would always work on them together. fun times
MarkNF82 1 year ago
Comment removed
MixerVM 1 year ago
@dxproductions Not really. The ST-225 was one of the most popular MFM drives ever, and I've found them to be very reliable.
vwestlife 1 year ago
digger sounds like a bunch of farts LOL
cheetawolf 1 year ago
Beautiful machine. Very clean. Thanks for uploading this video.
Vintagecomputer 1 year ago
if it weren't for this video, i would have not of know about your channel. this is the first video of your's i ever watched
CenaTv2 1 year ago
I got a Zenith and I dont know what kind of mouse or keyboard I can use.Theres no regular plugs on it.Its a 1995#p5pc15-md.Thanks
dwt66 1 year ago
I highly recommend you replace the nicad backup battery, it will leak eventually and possibly corrode the board
VideoMajestic 2 years ago
Notice the name of the screen is ''Miracle'' hahaha .. a lot of respect for thoses things !
deepblue1980 2 years ago
My 5150 had the IBM MDA monitor, but it decided to explode, so I cheated with a VGA adapter. Still have the MDA board as well as a CGA card. Would love to get a cheap-ish CGA monitor for it if anyone has one lying around.
Good luck with your PC. Wonderful machines.
bobdole57 2 years ago
Tip: You can use other CGA/SCART monitors, like the very common Commodore ones.
VintageReviewsJr 2 years ago
Death march at 3:54 lol That would be a cool windows startup sound.
raymondleeleggs 2 years ago
At least it showed a simple error code for kayboard error and not "Keyboard error. Press any key to continue."
IAmNotAFunguy 2 years ago
Wow, memories! I'll never forget when I got one of these from my school. Prior to that I just had an Apple II+.
I had an EGA video card and a CGA monitor. Everything would work except the high res modes.
I actually had the EGA/CGA setup all the way into my 386 days. When my Dad got me my first SVGA monitor and video card, it was like heaven! The video card was a Trident 8900 if I recall.
Maxxarcade 2 years ago
Wow that CGA board is *huge*!
All those chips would fit into a single controller the size of a drop of water today.
Cool nostalgia though.
captain150 2 years ago
The circuitry is large even by 1981 standards. But that was the way IBM made everything back then: large, heavy, and built like a tank.
vwestlife 2 years ago
maybe that's why they're still working. i wish we had less planned amortisation these days. anyway, it's truly a unique vintage machine; nice to see it's in good shape. any news on the CGA board? :)
bamdadkhan 2 years ago
The CGA board has been repaired and is functional again.
vwestlife 2 years ago
care to make a video sometime?
bamdadkhan 2 years ago
@vwestlife make a video!
mannesx 1 year ago
Wow, the music for digger is Popcorn. I wonder if they licensed it...
strizzuth 2 years ago
yay for old games and their beeping sounds
bobofengland112 2 years ago 19
I would kill for Digger to work on VGA. Since my AT died I had to give it up...
firehawk400 2 years ago
@firehawk400: Just go to digger dot org, there you can get remakes for DOS and Windows. Only thing that isn't re-created is the slowdown you would get on an 8088, when too many opponents were on screen :-)
armorgeddon 5 months ago
I used to have a similar computer, but it never got any further than the blinking mark at the top left of the screen (memory test). Probably a reason why it was junked in the first place....
Da9eI 2 years ago
awesome!
jporras2789 2 years ago
you should think a VGA card can run all the CGA games...
bravo3000pirate 2 years ago
Most CGA games will run on VGA; some with incorrect or missing colors. But games that use the "hacked" 16-color 160x100 CGA graphics mode won't run at all on VGA.
vwestlife 2 years ago
Wow!, I've seen one of those when I was younger, even then it was obsolete by decades, at least it felt like that.
I remember that my father talked a lot about PC-Tools, according to him it was just perfect. Of course that being a 286 running DOS, but I still can't help my curiosity.
Is this a computer you got/inherited with documentations, software & hardware altogether. Or have you been sourcing it out? My father have an vintage IBM but no doc. or soft. Is there a community for this?
adrianjcc 2 years ago
Yes, PC Tools and Norton Utilities were two sets of very useful utility programs. Eventually the best parts of both were licensed by Microsoft and IBM and were included with the later versions of DOS, such as Defrag, Backup, and AntiVirus.
I have collected various original IBM documentation and software over the years, but none came with this PC directly. The PC you see in the video was given to me years ago by my dad's friend, who used it at his workplace.
vwestlife 2 years ago
I also also found the Vintage Computing Forum to be very helpful for all types of classic computers. Just Google that name and you'll find it.
vwestlife 2 years ago
Thanks!
I found it and it seems very promising. Hopefully I can make my father a regular visitor to it's PCs and Clones section :)
adrianjcc 2 years ago
What causes those annoying little tantalum caps to fizzle on old boards?
I lost an old Gateway 386-16 to a burned cap.
Eep386 2 years ago
Definitely the culprit is internal shorts in the caps... but what causes those shorts, I'm not sure.
vwestlife 2 years ago
When was this unit built? I thought the XT had a full-height HDD.
bbishoppcm 2 years ago
This is not an XT. It is a late model 5150 PC from 1986. The hard drive was an aftermarket add-on.
vwestlife 2 years ago
My bad... I somehow missed that fact!
bbishoppcm 2 years ago
man, hearing "popcorn" was really something. nice going on getting that old thing workin again now you can play leisure suit larry on it.
ratix98 2 years ago
LSL isn't my cup of tea, but I have plenty of other classic games to play on it. :-)
vwestlife 2 years ago
I also have the same problem when I use a more "modern" screen.. So now i know why it is like that. Thank you for the info. :D
Intellivision78 2 years ago
that's quite a monitor, unique that is. I'd trade for a 17" Envision A770 if I could.
ceracecar 2 years ago
man long video card
jonytonybonk 2 years ago 2
The videocard is as long as my one in my Ericsson Pc.. ;) Great stuff.
Intellivision78 2 years ago
isnt dos or whatever that is great!!!
KrazyKuul111 2 years ago
If only Alienware can resurrect an IBM PC and upgrade it to above limits.
soulwrithe44 2 years ago
nice to see the old mfm harddrive .
vorkev1 2 years ago
It runs IBM PC DOS 7.0. MS-DOS 7.0 / 7.1 (from Windows 95 / 98) require at least a 386 processor to run.
vwestlife 2 years ago
How did you use the shutdown command to park your drive? Do you need a certain program to do it with? It's been years ago since i used such command.
bassmanwright 2 years ago
The shutdown command I use is an aftermarket program. I believe older versions of IBM PC DOS come with an official IBM hard drive parking program, but the newer version of PC DOS I use does not.
vwestlife 2 years ago
if you wondered what the song was when you played digger (intro - gameplay), it called popcorn and made by gershon kingsley.
Nice computer though
linuxlove4004 2 years ago
Is that a 5160 or 5150? I like the fancy 20 mb hard disk :) I have a ST-506 waiting to go into a 5160 if I ever get some spare time.
-Jason
compu85 2 years ago
It is a 5150. It was originally dual floppy drives with no hard drive.
vwestlife 2 years ago
I love it,On Ebay people offer nice prices,I started Collecting also some outdated machines
tudortoma83 2 years ago
ugg Dry caps.
horred smell.
Zagroseckt 2 years ago
old school i love it
usmcgrosso 3 years ago
Nice computer!
Penya666 3 years ago
is this DOS?
shakazzolo 3 years ago
Yes, it is IBM's PC DOS 7.0.
vwestlife 3 years ago
Sweet i have heard about this but never seen it thanks for making this vid 5/5
acuraRule12355 2 years ago
I love the sound of those hard drives spinning up :)
spatsbear2 3 years ago
I had one of these in my early computing years... around 1995. I accidentally blew a transistor when I had the HDD partially mounted in the chassis while it was running... the transistor shorted out against the chassis. That was the worst day of my life.