Holy CRAP that front panel design is cool. So '80s. Nice system.

Can you take a picture looking straight down on the motherboard ?
It appears to be an XT computer with a Memory card, SCSI card and drive or ESDI card and drive, floppy card and drive plus CGA or EGA vid card but really hard to tell w/o a better picture.

added: Nice !

Horun wrote on 2020-01-08, 00:05:

Can you take a picture looking straight down on the motherboard ?
It appears to be an XT computer with a Memory card, SCSI card and drive or ESDI card and drive, floppy card and drive plus CGA or EGA vid card but really hard to tell w/o a better picture.

added: Nice !

Not sure if this is what you want but here are some more shots, sorry for the quality, made with my phone.

That's an XT clone all right 😀

What I can tell about the cards:
- the first card (closest to the drives) is an I/O + floppy controller.
- second card has a "104866" part number. That implies a Xebec 1210C MFM HDD controller.
- third card is a memory card. Can't make out chips on it or on motherboard, I'd guess 512kB on the one and 128kB on the other, but could be wrong there.
- fourth is the display card. Can't make out what it is, as it's not a 1:1 clone of one of the original IBM (or Hercules) cards, but the lack of large chips means it's almost certainly not EGA and probably not Hercules either. That leaves either CGA or MDA, and given it was used in a business setting, I'd guess it's MDA.

By the way, you can boot the system, just not get display output. If you hear it beep and count down RAM, it's probable (almost) 100%, and worth looking for a TTL monitor or (better) an MCE2VGA adapter. If some tantalum caps blow up in your face, it's not quite 100%, but you know where to start 😉

dionb wrote on 2020-01-08, 16:43:

That's an XT clone all right :) […]
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That's an XT clone all right 😀

What I can tell about the cards:
- the first card (closest to the drives) is an I/O + floppy controller.
- second card has a "104866" part number. That implies a Xebec 1210C MFM HDD controller.
- third card is a memory card. Can't make out chips on it or on motherboard, I'd guess 512kB on the one and 128kB on the other, but could be wrong there.
- fourth is the display card. Can't make out what it is, as it's not a 1:1 clone of one of the original IBM (or Hercules) cards, but the lack of large chips means it's almost certainly not EGA and probably not Hercules either. That leaves either CGA or MDA, and given it was used in a business setting, I'd guess it's MDA.

By the way, you can boot the system, just not get display output. If you hear it beep and count down RAM, it's probable (almost) 100%, and worth looking for a TTL monitor or (better) an MCE2VGA adapter. If some tantalum caps blow up in your face, it's not quite 100%, but you know where to start 😉

Thanks for the information. I was looking at TTL monitors and those are pretty expensive... the MCE2VGA is cheaper. Am I getting this right that a regular 9pin RGB monitor (like a commodore monitor) would not work on this machine?

You'll also need an XT keyboard. I myself have a bunch of XT hardware (none as beautiful as this system, admitedly), and the prices for XT keyboards is what stops me from messing with these parts. Most of XT keyboards are mechanical, which really drives the prices up considerably.

I always check every AT keyboard at thrift stores and garage sales, some are XT compatible thru a switch on the back. A few weeks ago picked this one up for $10 and it works in XT and AT modes. Over the last 5 years have found 4 AT kb's that are also XT compatible plus a great shape Leading Edge DC-2014 xt KB for $5 at thrift stores. The online (ebay and such) sources are WAY to expensive.

Failing that, you can use a Teensy Arduino+USB adapter to convert USB keyboard input into XT codes:
https://github.com/toelke/xt-keyboard-adapter