Yay, love a story with a happy ending. Thanks for getting back. Have fun with it.

See if you can format, write and then read a floppy through the IBM drives. If so, see if that floppy is recognized on another machine.
If there are problems with format or reading perhaps the drives are dirty and need service. I would not be surprised after that many years.

Is this a long persistence monitor? For 50Hz MDA/Hercules card? These are fun, perhaps not great for some games but fun anyway.

Honesty the floppy drive potentially being iffy is the least of my concerns at the moment. I've ordered one of those USB ISA cards to get files on and off the hard drive, so I'm not going to mess with the computer until that arrives. The keyboard needs to be bolt/screw modded, too: I opened it up for cleaning and there were a load of broken plastic rivets. And now that I'm saying all of this, I've just realised that it's also the only XT keyboard I own, so I need to do the bolt mod before I can do anything else. It also needs retrobrighting, so I think I'll leave it all until the weather starts to improve.

But yes, it's a 50Hz long persistence MDA monitor. I plan on getting a Hercules card to replace the MDA card in there at the moment. I'd love a CGA monitor, really, but I never expected to ever find a working 5160 locally, so I am definitely happy with what I've got. If a CGA monitor ever shows up for a decent price, at a travelable distance - and hasn't had its shit kicked in - at least now I've got most of the other bits to make it go. There are apparently brand-new CGA cards on Aliexpress?! I'd be curious to see if they work.

alfiehicks wrote on 2025-02-01, 13:18:

There are apparently brand-new CGA cards on Aliexpress?! I'd be curious to see if they work.

The brand new CGA cards on AliExpress do work. They are a spin-off of the Book8088 project that includes a CGA replica. Those cards only have an RGBI video output that requires a monitor or scan converter with an RGBI input. The original CGA cards, though, also had a composite (aka CVBS) video output you can connect to standard television sets with a yellow RCA connector input, so you don't necessarily need an RGBI monitor.

Using CGA in composite mode is great for many old games that specifically target this setup, but is not useful for 80-column color text. Nevertheless, you might have a lot of fun with a composite TV connected via composite video to a CGA card.

Be aware that EGA cards still have the composite jacks, but lack the circuit to produce composite video. The idea was that you can add on an optional composite video generator to the pin header called "feature connector", but I've never seen a composite video generator for that connector.

Yeah, I did consider the possibility of hooking it up to a TV, but I'm not too sure about it, and for the silliest reason: I don't have a contemporary composite TV to use it with. I've got three 13" CRT TVs, but they're all from the late 90's, and it just seems wrong to use such an anachronistic display. If I ever come across a good, period accurate composite display, I'll definitely check it out, though.

alfiehicks wrote on 2025-02-01, 19:35:

Yeah, I did consider the possibility of hooking it up to a TV, but I'm not too sure about it, and for the silliest reason: I don't have a contemporary composite TV to use it with. I've got three 13" CRT TVs, but they're all from the late 90's, and it just seems wrong to use such an anachronistic display. If I ever come across a good, period accurate composite display, I'll definitely check it out, though.

Kinda funny - I just recently got rid of my last 13" CRT television.

I kept it around for years, for one reason:

As part of my video-game collection, I had two of the Nintendo Deluxe sets with "R.O.B. the robot", and a few
systems with "light guns" - all of which only work with an actual CRT - The sensors detect the
"scan flicker" of a CRT - and don't detect an LCD at all.

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

DaveDDS wrote on 2025-02-01, 20:19:

Kinda funny - I just recently got rid of my last 13" CRT television. […]
Show full quote

Kinda funny - I just recently got rid of my last 13" CRT television.

I kept it around for years, for one reason:

As part of my video-game collection, I had two of the Nintendo Deluxe sets with "R.O.B. the robot", and a few
systems with "light guns" - all of which only work with an actual CRT - The sensors detect the
"scan flicker" of a CRT - and don't detect an LCD at all.

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

All of my CRTs are 13", actually. It's not intentional, that's just how it's happened over the years.

I lie - I've got a 2" Sinclair TV80 and I don't even know if it works because I have simply never bothered to get a power supply for it. Someday I will, though, because I think it'd be very fun to set up with a ZX Spectrum; they look so good together.

alfiehicks wrote on 2025-02-01, 21:12:

All of my CRTs are 13", actually. It's not intentional, that's just how it's happened over the years.

I lie - I've got a 2" Sinclair TV80 and I don't even know if it works because I have simply never bothered to get a power supply for it. Someday I will, though, because I think it'd be very fun to set up with a ZX Spectrum; they look so good together.

I haven't had a CRT monitor in years - this was an actual TV - It might have be 12"
the smallest CRT TV I had was I think 5" - got a couple from a hospital that was replacing them with
something newer -- had a little 2" pocket TV at one point - but it was an LCD.

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal