In my experience, bad heads are relatively uncommon. The technology was in its prime.

I would bet on dirt on the heads, or a misalignment. I watched the video many times. I'd have to compare it to my own ps/2 but if I'm not mistaken, it almost looks like the heads aren't moving all the way to the center. So I'd make sure the worm gear is clean and lubricated as a starting point.

Ok. On the qtips with ipa was no dirt when i cleaned the head. The drive is overall very clean.
How can i alignment the drive head? Maybe i can try it with marking positions.
I really want to try fix it before switching to adapters..

its relatively easy on 8 and 5.25 inch disks. but i've never even attempted to do it for 3.5". this would be totally uncharted territory for me.

I would suspect the worm gear before the alignment. in your video, it never made it all the way to the center. I would start there.

i know its a big call, but if its possible someone post a working drive spin against mine? Its because my worm drive looks good at all for me, it also has no caps fail.
If i see a working drive startup i maybe understand.

i have my model 70 within reach. i'll see if I can get to it.

Hey there, fellow PS/2'er here. Forget the Texelec clone cards for Adlib and sound blaster........ you want the ChipChat clone.... but its gonna cost you $$$

https://www.cognitoforms.com/vintech2/chatchi … sionofinterest/

Also, we have a facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CSIPH and the news group, comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware is still active, see here: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware

CPU upgrades are possible... but they are rare and you gotta be a high roller.........
https://www.ardent-tool.com/CPU/386_upgrade.h … x486SRX2_SnapOn
https://www.ardent-tool.com/CPU/

I saw a Reply TurboProcessor board for a Model 80 on eBay with modded Dallas chip, a Pentium Overdrive 83Mhz, and 52MB of RAM. Paid $800 for it, because I fortunately could... I didn't even blink, it was rare and ready to go........ The PS/2 hobby is painful...... I wont admit what I paid for the ChipChat... or how I got and how much I paid for the L2 Cache module....

It's my favorite retro rig.... with a Bus Logic 646S SCSI card that is the fastest card that will work (the IBM SCSI-2 cards like the Corvette/Corvette Turbo wont work), a Zulu SCSI RP2040 (it does 7MB/sec), a ChipChat for 16bit Stereo sound in DOS and Windows, a 3com Etherlink III ethernet adapter, a Gotek Floppy drive, a Nakamichi MJ-5.16Si 16X 5-Disk SCSI changer with a 5.25 Bezel for the middle.... and 3d Printed drive sled/drive bay overs to convert standard 3.5 drives to look pretty good in Model 60/65/80, see here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/304399284311 ....Oh... and some carefully matched beige paint to match!

The Pentium Overdrive 83Mhz on the Reply board doesn't preform as fast as it should. Probably a factor of the Intel changing specs, the SyncroStream controller being older Tech than the POD era chip... and it simply being an older Socket 2 board.... but it's worth it. Get's about 40, 41 in Speedsys. When running FASTDoom it's butter. I have an IBM Valuepoint 433SX/X with a Pentium Overdrive 83Mhz as well and it gets like 60... much faster as it's a later IBM ISA variant... but this PS/2 Turbo80.... she's my fav.

If you can stomach the costs and spend years searching for parts..... maybe you'll love yours.

Got some parts, still waiting for the floppy converter. Hope this will work than...

So i got my floppy adapter today. Connect a gotek with installed flashfloppy software, looks like working fine.
But what to do next? I tryed booting the Reference disk images for my mashine from ardent. But it starts only over to the basic?? I push F1 after that error message.
Do i need something else first? I was thinking that refdisk make the bios working again with the installed hardware?
that is my error message:

yea, 165/163 is the codes, telling you the options need to be set.

You mentioned using flashfloppy? i'm not familiar with this program. you should be able to just copy the .IMG file directly to the USB drive on your gotek.

that said, I would double check the settings on the gotek, there might be something required for proper PS/2 usage. I dont own a GOTEK, but its on my list.

its the same behave as a i try boot from a real floppy. So im not really know whats going on. Pretty sure my real floppy is ok after that. As the gotek take the img without windows image programs between. Strange.. makes no sence.. I also pretty sure my gotek is correct jumpered and configuered. I use it on a 486 before.

Are you sure that you have the correct type of adpter for your model?

im sure

This is indeed puzzling. Couple of things come to my mind: floppy cable and controller. Are you using the original cable? If so, I’d check it is in good condition and measure continuity through the wires.

It is also possible that floppy controller is not working correctly. Here is the documentation for different controllers used in these machines. With the information in these, you may be able to measure FDC pins if the signals required for operation are indeed there:
https://www.ardent-tool.com/floppy/Controllers.html

I know that there is a possibility of frying the controller if you install wrong kind of floppy drive (even from some other PS/2) to these systems. Your drive is most likely original, but there is a chance that someone has tried wrong drive on the system at some point after the original drive failed and FDC controller is dead. However, it may be that in this case you’d get some other error codes.

Whole floppy drive thing in these is really annoying as it is a critical failure point. This is the reason why I always recommend making sure the floppy is functional in a way or another and just after that start thinking expanding and building rest of the system.

Sign of life

apologies that I have no time at the moment to read the whole thread and see what is answered and what is not, but I did a fast search for "IML" in the thread and I don't see it mentioned anywhere. So, IML is "Initial Microcode Load", such machine you cannot go over 3.94GB, no matter what you do, because the BIOS is stored by the "Reference Diskette" in special HDD partition called IML- partition, more about it here:

https://ardent-tool.com/IBM_SCSI/SCSI_over_1GB.html

as far as other things are concerned like using PC ram instead IBM one, using ATX power supply and using regular PC floppy you can read here:

Help IBM PS/2 model 8556 wiring 1.44MB floppy

ATX info here:
Re: Help IBM PS/2 model 8556 wiring 1.44MB floppy

RAM info here:
Re: Help IBM PS/2 model 8556 wiring 1.44MB floppy

but you need to adapt those to your model and it's not trivial and easy - it requires effort - plus with the floppy - be very careful high chance to smoke the controller on the board, even though looking here:

https://ardent-tool.com/floppy/Pinouts.html#40p_Planar

your model 8555 is not Media-Sense, which is the much easier case.

[EDIT]

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2023-09-29, 10:02:

Whole floppy drive thing in these is really annoying as it is a critical failure point. This is the reason why I always recommend making sure the floppy is functional in a way or another and just after that start thinking expanding and building rest of the system.

indeed, but at least all PS2 I have are IML machines. So, I need to use the floppy only one time to run the "Reference Diskette" and setup the IML- partition, after that I just move the SCSI hdd to my PC using 5 bucks PCI SCSI card and make image of it (to preserve the IML partition created from the "Reference Diskette" and in case I need to change the HDD due to failure) and I even "sys c:" it, i.e. install DOS on it on the PC - why waste time and do it on the slower PS2. I use the same to transfer all software I need. I then even run the "Reference Diskette" and disable the floppy - I don't want anything to make noise. So, for example this PS/2:

Help IBM PS/2 model 8556 wiring 1.44MB floppy

no longer has any floppy attached and it's up and running.

Anything working fine now. I set the date/time and did the adf file config for the CF and sound board.
After that my mashine is booting into DOS from the HDD without errors *happy*

Jackhead wrote on 2023-09-30, 11:55:

Anything working fine now. I set the date/time and did the adf file config for the CF and sound board.
After that my mashine is booting into DOS from the HDD without errors *happy*

How did you solve the boot problem? Might help some other poor fellow who needs to deal with IBM shenanigans at some point.

I used this adapter: https://zzxio.com/product/34-pin-floppy-disk- … -ps-1-and-ps-2/
connected a gotek with flashfloppy and set the cfg file for the flash floppy to IBM PC. After that the ref disk img and the rest boots fine.

Jackhead wrote on 2023-09-30, 12:15:

I used this adapter: https://zzxio.com/product/34-pin-floppy-disk- … -ps-1-and-ps-2/
connected a gotek with flashfloppy and set the cfg file for the flash floppy to IBM PC. After that the ref disk img and the rest boots fine.

Leonardo_ DiCaprio_ pointing.JPG

I knew I had a memory about the gotek needing some config changes for the PS/2.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2023-09-07, 18:49:

there are IBM XGA graphics cards for MCA, which support higher resolutions.

actually, now is the time to buy XGA-2 card, if you're in Europe, because there are like dozen offers available and on very reasonable prices - several times cheaper than the one I bought several months ago, because I needed to import it from the US. so, I wish those offers were available back then. I start to think the economic situation is getting really bad and some people start to sell what they have collected over the years, because 6-7 months ago there was not a single XGA-2 card I was able to find for sale in the EU.