Great purchase! I'd love to get a 5153 or a 5154 monitor someday.

What is this "hard drive on a card" thingy? Never seen one of these before.

MMaximus wrote:

What is this "hard drive on a card" thingy? Never seen one of these before.

Well, they're not so uncommon nowadays, though indeed I didn't realize they had them for older systems.

XT's are so nice. Very elegantly designed I must say. Congrats!

That's a nice find! I'm a little bit surprised technicians were still willing to repair XTs back in 94.

blank001 wrote:

XT's are so nice. Very elegantly designed I must say. Congrats!

You think? I think this is nowhere near as nice as my Commodore PC20-III or Philips P3105 clones.
Those machines have most stuff on the motherboard, and have smaller, more practical case designs (eg only two 5.25" bays, and a 3.5" internal bay for a HDD, no need to run ribbon cables through half your case, from some ISA card to the actual drives. The floppy and HDD connectors are located on the motherboard, right underneath the bays).
My 5160 is made in 1987, so it is from the same year as my Commodore and Philips. Yet the IBM is still made to 1981 standards, making it large, heavy, and requiring most of the 8 ISA slots just to get the basic functionality the others have (serial/parallel port, CGA/Hercules graphics, floppy controller, HDD controller).
Not to mention that it's still 4.77 MHz, where the others are 9.54 and 8 MHz respectively.
The build quality of the case is not that great either. It's very difficult to get the cover on, because it doesn't fit that nicely.

Scali wrote:

You think? I think this is nowhere near as nice as my Commodore PC20-III or Philips P3105 clones. Those machines have most stuff […]
Show full quote

blank001 wrote:

XT's are so nice. Very elegantly designed I must say. Congrats!

You think? I think this is nowhere near as nice as my Commodore PC20-III or Philips P3105 clones.
Those machines have most stuff on the motherboard, and have smaller, more practical case designs (eg only two 5.25" bays, and a 3.5" internal bay for a HDD, no need to run ribbon cables through half your case, from some ISA card to the actual drives. The floppy and HDD connectors are located on the motherboard, right underneath the bays).
My 5160 is made in 1987, so it is from the same year as my Commodore and Philips. Yet the IBM is still made to 1981 standards, making it large, heavy, and requiring most of the 8 ISA slots just to get the basic functionality the others have (serial/parallel port, CGA/Hercules graphics, floppy controller, HDD controller).
Not to mention that it's still 4.77 MHz, where the others are 9.54 and 8 MHz respectively.
The build quality of the case is not that great either. It's very difficult to get the cover on, because it doesn't fit that nicely.

All those are valid points, but its an IBM PC/XT! The brand name has a certain mystique in the IBM PC compatible world that no other computer manufacturer can quite reach. People were still buying them in 1987 because of the IBM brand name, even though their design was out of date and they were overpriced.

The thing is constructed like a tank and bjt's is well configured with mostly IBM parts. IBM XTs are noted for their absence of proprietary chips and open design. You do not have to worry about conflicts with on-board hardware.

I only really wanted the monitor (and maybe the keyboard) but now I have a complete system the temptation to tinker is strong 😎

NEC V20, HxC Gotek & XT-IDE would be relatively easy upgrades. The 4.77Mhz 8088 is really painfully slow even next to my 10Mhz 8086 laptop.

There is something cool about the noise the hardcard makes though. I understand these are pretty uncommon in working shape nowadays.
In place of an activity light, it prints a '+' to the top right corner of the screen, presumably by writing directly to video memory.

Either way I'll give it a good cleanup before making any further changes.

Great Hierophant wrote:

All those are valid points, but its an IBM PC/XT! The brand name has a certain mystique in the IBM PC compatible world that no other computer manufacturer can quite reach. People were still buying them in 1987 because of the IBM brand name, even though their design was out of date and they were overpriced.

The thing is constructed like a tank and bjt's is well configured with mostly IBM parts. IBM XTs are noted for their absence of proprietary chips and open design. You do not have to worry about conflicts with on-board hardware.

I guess we can only marvel at how this thing was so successful, given how poorly it was built (even for 1981 standards... Compare for example to a C64, and see how much more functionality Commodore could pack in much fewer components, or an Apple II or Atari 8-bit for that matter), and how incredibly expensive it was.

I have a real IBM CGA card, real IBM MDA card, and also the original Seagate MFM 20 MB hard disk and controller, and original IBM-branded 5.25" drive and floppy controller. I am not sure if the serial card I have is also IBM or not, because nothing in the IBM PC/XT is branded at all. This gives it a really strange look of being some random Taiwanese clone. I'm used to any custom PCB having at least some brand info on it, but there seems to be no IBM anywhere on the motherboard or the ISA cards.

When you guys put it that way, I guess I really have IBM rose-colored glasses.

@bjt : I've been curious about alternatives to a CGA monitor (space issues) to get output from my Zenith Supersport laptop. Would you say that there is no satisfactory alternative to a real CGA monitor? I do have a Sony PVM, but it does not have the DB9 RGB input, unfortunately.

boxpressed wrote:

@bjt : I've been curious about alternatives to a CGA monitor (space issues) to get output from my Zenith Supersport laptop. Would you say that there is no satisfactory alternative to a real CGA monitor? I do have a Sony PVM, but it does not have the DB9 RGB input, unfortunately.

I use a Commodore 1084S monitor for RGBI. Had a Philips CM8833 earlier, which is pretty much the same thing.
I connect the composite output to my Samsung LCD TV, or to a USB capture device to a modern machine.

Cool machine! I stay away from PS/2 and 51** though: hard to repair. 😀

PeterLI wrote:

Cool machine! I stay away from PS/2 and 51** though: hard to repair. 😀

PS/2 I can understand, but the 5150 and 5160 must be among the easiest machines to repair due to the lack of any custom logic chips. Finding replacement parts can be tougher because of the form factor of the power supply and drive rails for the full height drive bays. Also, the 5-slot PC case makes finding a non-5150 form factor motherboard difficult.

Scali wrote:

I have a real IBM CGA card, real IBM MDA card, and also the original Seagate MFM 20 MB hard disk and controller, and original IBM-branded 5.25" drive and floppy controller. I am not sure if the serial card I have is also IBM or not, because nothing in the IBM PC/XT is branded at all. This gives it a really strange look of being some random Taiwanese clone. I'm used to any custom PCB having at least some brand info on it, but there seems to be no IBM anywhere on the motherboard or the ISA cards.

I imagine it must be ironic if you find an IBM label on a card or device from the pre-PS/2 era, except in known instances like the 5.25" full height drive or on ROM chips, because it may very well be a clone product trying to masquerade itself as a genuine IBM product. Usually it is the other way around.

boxpressed wrote:

Would you say that there is no satisfactory alternative to a real CGA monitor?

There are alternatives and I would have settled for one if I had gotten one to work.

I've tried both a home-made digital to analogue converter and an Extron 202xi, which does pretty much the same thing. In both cases I had trouble getting my preferred displays to sync in either 40 or 80 column mode.

It may just be that the Victor laptop I have puts out a slightly out of spec signal - even on the IBM monitor the images is slightly shifted to the right compared to the XT.

A more minor issue is that true CGA monitors display brown correctly where it's a yellow on the alternatives... Not a big deal IMO. I believe this is the case for the Commodore/Philips monitors too.

Your PVM should be ideal though, with a suitable digital->analogue converter. Are you in the UK? I'd be happy to send you my Extron 202xi as I've no use for it now. It has DB9 input and BNC output.

This is a really cool setup! I can only dream of finding something in relatively working shape of this vintage. In fact I found a p3 Compaq at work that Im going to try to save and am surprised!

bjt wrote:

A more minor issue is that true CGA monitors display brown correctly where it's a yellow on the alternatives... Not a big deal IMO. I believe this is the case for the Commodore/Philips monitors too.

Nope, the Commodore/Philips do brown properly.
Here is the textmode CGA demo GP-01 by Genesis Project running on my 1084S: https://youtu.be/2O_-sb0purg
This is a DOSBox capture, so you can see where the browns should be (eg the guy's trousers are brown, and some brown in the plasma):
https://youtu.be/t83LHBOM4PE

if you do anything to it at least replace that 720k floppy drive and bay converter to ones with black faceplates.

^ oh God yes plz do if you can! or at least spray paint them!!! That is a horrible match (im not even picky)

Good to know about the 1084S. I guess these are a lot easier to get hold of for Euro people than a CGA monitor, and can handle other sources too.