First post, by carlostex
- Rank
- l33t
I managed to get an IBM 5160 locally in Portugal. I never thought i would find one in Portugal let alone while being on vacation. But it seems every cloud has it dilver lining and i stumbled on one.
First things first the monitor. I made no pic of it but it's a IBM 5151. The monitor does not seem to be in good health so i didn't even tried to power it on.
Now for the main unit and the hardware inside:
Hercules card, was really happy to see that since i was expecting crappy MDA:
This one seems to be a RAM card?:
A Western Digital MFM/RLL HD controller:
Of course it comes with the basic floppy controller and it has got a Network card that will probably be useless to me.
Now the not so much great condition IBM Model F:
It seems to be in great conditions doesn't it? Well it wasn't working so i had to open the bugger and:
Ugh, duct tape in the cable and the damn thing wasn't grounding properly so it would hang my XT test bench. So i stuck the thing on the keyboard rest spring and sure enough the damn thing started working.
Now for the bad news. The space bar wasn't seated properly so thr silly man in me made the terrible mistake of pulling the space bar out. I didn't brake anything but YOU SHOULD NEVER PULL A SPACE BAR OFF AN IBM MODEL F KEYBOARD. The space bar rests on a metal stabiliser that is impossible to reseat again without disassembling the metal plates. WTF IBM? Stupid over engineering much?
Well i need to clean it so tomorrow being extremely careful i'll reseat the damn thing. But i know it's gonna be a pain. Needless to say i didn't even boot the machine nor i'll boot it tomorrow since the keyboard will take my whole time.
One thing for the IBM Model F. The typing experience is great and apparently its springs are softer when compared to an IBM model M. It feels great for typing and it should be fine for some XT gaming.
More news to come-