Update!
I've been focusing on one thing at the time. So my priority was to fix and clean the wonderful piece of hardware, the IBM Model F keyboard.
Keys out, got them all soaked with warm water and Fairy dish cleaner:
Disassembling the IBM model F can be a bit tricky. So i followed the advice in this page. It gives great advice an insight about the process and all the steps necessary to do this correctly.
Now on the next pic i had already cleaned the main metal plate which was incredibly dirty and dusty. Fortunately no rust spots on the plate. At this point i already had the Space Bar mounted, there's no other way to lock the stabiliser bar on the spcae bar when the back plate + pcb joins the front plate + key hammers.
Using a hair dryer to get those keys all nice and dry:
All keys in again!
Now, at first some of the keys weren't registring. Because the reassembly process is a bit tricky sometimes the hammers need a little kick to go back into place and be properly placed against the PCB. I had 5 or 6 keys that weren't working properly. It's a good idea to actually remove those keys. Pressing on the spring did register the key presses so it was just the matter of puting the keys back in and now the keys would work. So i went to CheckIt to try keyboard tests. Checkit is a very useful diagnostic software btw, really cool.
This was all tested in my Juko Turbo XT motherboard. My next step is actually to disassemble the main unit and get everything all nice and clean. I'm a little suspicious about the power supply that came with it. It seems that sometime during the machine's life the PSU was replaced since now it has a 63W PSU. I'm sure that for an IBM 5150 the 63W PSU could make it but for an XT with a hard drive?
The hard drive in it is a Rodime HD! I didn't take a proper picture nor did i take notice of the model, but it could be its a R0352 model, which was one of the first 10MB 3.5" Hard Drives.
raymangold wrote:
Nope, only the Model F AT, F XT and 'blueswitch' have the early internally mounted spacebar. Other Model Fs such as the 122, 104 'unsaver', 4704 series and others have the spacebar mounted like a Model M.
http://deskthority.net/wiki/IBM_Model_F
And how relevant are those models for an XT? As far as i know those aren't compatible with an IBM PC or compatible.
bjt wrote:Excellent! Lots of fun ahead!
Indeed, working on the model F was already a gratifying experience!
keropi wrote:nice find! what upgrades come next? 😁
I think this machine will indeed need some modding. I don't trust the PSU so much so probably i will try using an AT or ATX PSU and somehow recycle the rocker switch on the XT PSU so there is no cosmetic change and fucntionality. An IBM XT without a rocker switch is not IBM XT anymore.
Obvious plan is an original IBM CGA. There's just no way around it. Finding a true CGA monitor is very hard. The only option for me locally in Portugal is to find a Commodore 1084S with a 9 pin digital RGB input.
But the easiest solution is CGA to SCART. I do have a small CRT TV's stashed so i would like to use that. Those TV's are relatively easy to find in Portugal too and i should find one that accepts composite as well. Not to worried about that. In the mean time i can always use a VGA card on the 5160.
Anonymous Coward wrote:It's interesting that none of the cards inside are IBM. I wonder if they failed, or the original buyer bought it barebones. BTW, I think the memory expansion card adds an extra 256kb to the system. If you want to upgrade to 640k, there is a way to put it all on the motherboard without the need for expansion cards, but you have to make one small modification.
I didn't take the Floppy controller card out to picture it but i think it is the original IBM floppy controller. Will check later.
Scali wrote:
Indeed, and the plan is to have it! 😀
