I wrote to 27 IBM support emails asking for a copy of the reference disk files, only 4 bothered to respond at all.

One replied that they are sorry but they can't help me.
Another gave me a phone number that referred to an IBM base in Angola. My portugal is not so good but I gave it a try, only greeted by a long beep. Number seems dead. They also didn't respond to my email so I didn't expect much.
The third told me that IBM sold their POS business to Toshiba and I should ask them. Going to.
The fourth forwarded my email to another department and I've yet to hear from them.

To be honest I didn't expect much, this is how old tech becomes just another piece of junk without the proprietary software.
I'm 100% sure they have these files on their servers somewhere they just don't want to bother finding and emailing them to a random guy.
I never had much success with huge corporations regarding older tech, they just don't want to be bothered.
I'll try contacting stores where these might have been in use, maybe some of them have a 4684 floppy lying around.
Yeah, I'm that desperate.

What kind of system is this? Didnt find too much. Are you not able to boot DOS from it? Do you have some pictures of the inside?

Looks like I did it again, I keep buying computers nobody ever heard about. I can't even find info about the mainboard!
It turns on so at least the enormous power supply works, ESDI drive spins up, but nothing shows on screen through the VGA output.
Plenty of big tantalum caps onboard, so I'll have to measure those first. No visible damage anywhere else but it has two battery backed chips:
A DS1225AD-170 SRAM and a DS1287 RTC. Could these cause this problem?

Looks interesting.

You should shift this to the "hardware"-section so more people can see it.

Also dont know where to start. Does it try to access the floppy after powerup? Is a speaker in the system and is there a output?

Don't know how much this'll help / work with your current problem, but I love a good internet rummage, so...

searches seemed to show the 4684 had at one time used both 4690 OS & OS/2 and I did find links to the reference disk modifying CONFIG.SYS (could've been either OS but 4690s is apparently a binary file compared to OS/2s text version).

Found a link to this page http://ps-2.kev009.com/ohlandl/4683/pos_index.html with some additional info and a link to the IBM file support page (now dead), but the Wayback link is still there

https://web.archive.org/web/20000301215701/ht … /html/4693.html

Sadly, all the links point to dead ftp addresses, but in searching for random dead filenames I came across this site with what appears to be what you need

http://ftpmirror.your.org/pub/misc/ftp.softwa … il/poseng/468x/

These pdfs also mentions the 4684-300; one has good document names / reference nos. for the same

and this one is a troubleshooting guide

You, Sir are a pro at finding lost software, thank you so much!
I already made the reference diskette and it works flawlessly.
My hat's off to you.

Now it's time to repair the computer somehow.
The PSU turns on, the hard drive spins, the little fan spins, but no floppy activity and nothing shows on screen. There is a beeper onboard but it's silent.
I'm just not sure if the system starts at all if those battery backed chips lose battery life.
I'll check the tantalum caps, measure voltages on pins, take a look inside the PSU (that has rust on one side so it could be water damaged) and hope for the best.
The ESDI drive also has 3 leaking e-caps but first things first. Then I'll check the BIOS chips in the TL866.

It's a start - glad to hear 😀

Also just realised that the source of the troubleshooting guide

http://ps-2.kev009.com/basil.holloway/boo-to-pdf/

probably has a number of the other pdf documents too (seems to be the ones starting xx27) - sadly they too seem to have been stripped of their illustrations.

ATM maybe the TechRef SY27_0336_00.pdf would be the most help.

It was a tough read but IBM's solution to a problem is replacing everything that seems defective.
Examine the cables and displays and exchange them. If that doesn't solve the problem, replace the mainboard.
It's logical, why would they bother with repairs when they can just get new parts (in 1993)? 😉
I have to get my hands dirty on this one.

Moved to Marvin -> General Old Hardware at Miphee's request.

Miphee wrote on 2020-03-09, 10:51:

I wrote to 27 IBM support emails

Ya know, if you're gonna tango with a large global corporation regarding support on an obsolete product that they shouldn't support any longer, this is the way to do it - good job! 😉

Miphee wrote on 2020-03-11, 05:28:

Now it's time to repair the computer somehow. The PSU turns on, the hard drive spins, the little fan spins, but no floppy activi […]
Show full quote

Now it's time to repair the computer somehow.
The PSU turns on, the hard drive spins, the little fan spins, but no floppy activity and nothing shows on screen. There is a beeper onboard but it's silent.
I'm just not sure if the system starts at all if those battery backed chips lose battery life.
I'll check the tantalum caps, measure voltages on pins, take a look inside the PSU (that has rust on one side so it could be water damaged) and hope for the best.
The ESDI drive also has 3 leaking e-caps but first things first. Then I'll check the BIOS chips in the TL866.

Yes, I would also start with the BIOS and backup the ROMs.

Then you should try the supersoft-ROM or Ruuds-ROM and listen if there is an output on the speaker.

Stiletto wrote on 2020-03-11, 07:29:

Moved to Marvin -> General Old Hardware at Miphee's request.

Miphee wrote on 2020-03-09, 10:51:

I wrote to 27 IBM support emails

Ya know, if you're gonna tango with a large global corporation with support on an obsolete product that they shouldn't support any longer, this is the way to do it - good job! 😉

As an ex-IBMer (for quite a few years already), I would not have known where to send you even when I was still working there. There is no magical internal website to find obsolete stuff like that. The internal search engine is really geared towards finding data, such as sales and support data, on more modern products. Especially for a division that was sold to another company, most data would have been moved with it. Your only possibility would be to find someone that was involved back in the day (development or support), and who just happens to have kept a copy. Yes there are obviously backups somewhere on tape, but good luck with that.

As a bit of history... In the days before the web, all data was kept on VM/CMS (accessible with a 3270 terminal (emulator)), then with the web a lot of departments made their own internal websites which would sometimes have lots of useful data on them, but then IT caught up with them and forced them to migrate to hosted solutions, typically in the form of Notes databases on Domino. At first this data was often still accessible to all, but after a few years new rules came in and made most of this accessible only on request with often no easy way to locate these databases unless someone gave you a link to them. In later years a new internal structure was setup for finding sales and support data with a new search engine. But like I said, that mostly covered products that were more or less current. Nobody would be adding data on obsolete systems. Trying to find data on such old systems would typically only turn up announcement letters.

That's all true, but when you are desperate enough you just try anything.
It was a longshot and failed miserably, but I don't blame IBM at all. They ended their support for this product a long time ago and they allocate their resources as they please. If they don't want to bother with my request it's their prerogative. I'll still try though.
I already gave up when PC Hoarder Patrol was kind enough to do a search and find those files for me so I learned that there is always a little hope.
I have the ROM chip contents here, couldn't read the 40 pin chip, not sure if it can be read by the TL866 at all.

Took a quick look at them. The 1208/1209 are the LO/HI parts of the main Bios, in the combined file (128kb) you can see the entry JMP at Offset 1FFF0:
EA5BE000F0 JMP F000:E05B
There are not many strings in the file, therefore I dont think the BIOS has an integrated Setup or Diagnosis.

You should create matching Supersoft-ROMs. Dont think all tests will run on this board, but at least you will be able to hear if its initialized and ROM execution starts or if its totally dead...

Do these ROMs support VGA? The minuszerodegrees site claims they don't.
Is there a version that supports a 386 board with onboard VGA?

No, you wont have a display on VGA. But you will hear the output on the speaker. 386/486 is supported if the chipset does not require special initialization...

Okay, thank you, I'll try.

I finished cleaning and measuring the PSU. It was insanely dirty but no visible damage to the components.
I'm getting very strange readings though:

? means a value that is "jumping around" between 0-300mV.
- means a reading below 30mV that is holding steady.

I have +5Vs, +12Vs but missing the +38V and the -12V the PSU case mentions.
Faulty PSU?

Maybe the +38V is for the dot matrix printer that attaches through the back of the PSU. It has several ports there. Still missing the -12V rail.

Okay, so my progress so far:

Checked the PSU voltages on the MCA bus and everything is fine. I even found the +38V rail so the PSU seems OK.
Checked the RAM the POS came with: working fine. Tested the computer with different RAMs, no change.
The attached monitor demagnetizes when I turn the machine on so something must be sent through the VGA port. I use an IBM 8513 and this POS was shipped with this exact same model.
I made the Supersoft ROMs and they did nothing. No beeps, no signs of life. Are there any more "dual" BIOS ROMs I can try, maybe for the 386SX?
CPU gets slightly warm.
Don't know what the 93F1475 ROM does next to the Dallas SRAM. Maybe that SRAM losing battery power has something to do with it? Maybe it's the DS1287 RTC?
The 93F0596 is also unknown but since the rest of the ROMs were fine I considered that also OK.

So unless there is a hidden short somewhere my money is on the 1287 and the 1225.