Waiting for my Model 30 to show up... I'm hoping the 20MB HDD still works -- and if it does, I'll just use that. But, first thing I'll do is strip down and refurbish the power supply. While I'm in there, I'll add a Molex and floppy power connector for future use. I have a power supply cable graveyard I keep as donor parts for projects like this, so may as well be prepared in case I ever need to replace the original drives.

Stepinwolf wrote on 2019-03-20, 05:41:

I have an IBM PS/2 model 30 286 that has had the folloing upgradeds. The processor has been upgraded using a Kingston SX Now board which changes the processor to an intel 386SX-33 processor. The memory has been maxed out at 4 MB. An 8 bit IDE adapter has been installed that plugs into the riser card. It provides both the standard IDE 40 pin connector and a cable with a 4 pin molex connector to power the IDE hard drive. I have also soldered on some standard cabling from an regular PC that can provide two of the molex type drive power connectors and 1 floppy connector. I am hoping to swap out the 8 bit card for a 16 bit ISA card which has both a 40Pin IDE connector for the harddrive and the 34 pin standard floppy connector. It is not working yet. There are a lot of jumpers on that board. There was no Plug and Play back in that time frame. With the 8 bit card, I was able to connect an 80 GB Maxstor hard disk, but it is only recognized as a 500 MB drive. Still compared to the original 20 MB drive, that is not bad. https://woofinstepper.tumblr.com/

I've been working on my IBM PS/2 model 30-286 as well. Wondering did you find your Kingston SX board on eBay? how about that 4MB of RAM? I haven't had any luck finding the kingston board, and someone on ebay has a 4MB kit but wants $500 bucks for it.

So just 6 years in the making, but i finally got around it and was ready to order all the parts only to come to the conclusion that the ic’s used on this board can’t be ordered anymore because they are out of production. Nice.
Mouser had a lot of stuff, but shipping the parts would be more then 20 euros for a few parts that can fit in a envelop.
So that’s not a option. Ordered the parts i needed at a european parts distributer called Conrad. But needed to cross reference every part to see if i got the correct one. Ordered all the ic’s via different auctions on ebay, and after 6 years i was ready.
First boot no sign of live. I thought i ordered already flashed eproms but i guess not. Since it is pretty easy to do this yourself i flashed the bios of the xt-cf and it came to live, only it didn’t want to detect my cf-card. Tried an other card nothing. Other ps/2 nothing. A normal 386 so i could hookup the cf-card holder with a normal floppydisk power cable, nothing.
Checked all solderpoints, nothing strange. Since i ordered a few cf-cardreaders i tried another one, succes.
Turned out the cf-card reader was defective.
I have the card now in my model 30 8086. With a 1 gb cf card. Added a sb16 vibra for sound and it works nice, if you use titles that run on a 8086 with mcga graphics. Also tried my roland um-one with munt running on my main pc. This also works great.
I’m now going to order a cf-reader that fits in a bracket so i have easy access to the cf-card when i want to add software.
Next building the second card i have so i can use that one on the model 30 286.
Tomorrow i will try to make a few pictures of the card.

Here are some pictures of the card in action.
Card installed into the middle slot.

Bottom card is a sb vibra. Covered the 16bit slot fingers of the card with some electrical tape. Also removed the battery and placed a coin cel battery holder in place.

Top view

Pc booted from cf card into DOS no keyboard presses needed.

I even didn’t have to use a setup disk for the model 30 to get the card working.
Simply plug and play (after flashing the cards bios).