I have PS/2 80 series tower in my collection. It is only 386. The motherboard seem to be unusual type. Is there any way to upgrade the board common 486? What size I should look for in database?
The power connector seem to be different 🙁
http://www.win3x.org/uh19/
What you need:
Controller (any type) for hard drive, best to go with SCSI.
Battery,
power supply (it comes with the tower internally).
floppy drive with correct type of cable.
set of floppies to configure the computer.
This is minimum to run. Caution: expensive to restore one to working condition.
I know these PS/2 stuff rather well.
Cheers,
Great Northern aka Canada.
pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-11-22, 23:49:What you need: […]
What you need:
Controller (any type) for hard drive, best to go with SCSI.
Battery,
power supply (it comes with the tower internally).
floppy drive with correct type of cable.
set of floppies to configure the computer.This is minimum to run. Caution: expensive to restore one to working condition.
I know these PS/2 stuff rather well.
Cheers,
Thank You for your response. Maybe you will be able to help me.
So I powered it on. The PSU and HDD makes pitch noises, and all I got on the screen is
I tried to boot from 6.22 fdd, but it reads it for minutes, but never stops.
Battery for it is removed, and I don't know how to get to BIOS and set it up.
You need a new battery (google CR-P2)
https://ardent-tool.com/misc/batteries.html
BIOS is setup using reference floppy disks.
https://ardent-tool.com/disks/
Beware PS/2 floppy drives tend to die from bad capacitors so you need to check if yours works.
Collector of old computers, hardware, and software
Niezgodka wrote on 2021-11-22, 23:38:I have PS/2 80 series tower in my collection. It is only 386.
"only"
The motherboard seem to be unusual type.
YUUUUP. Welcome to IBM PS/2!
Is there any way to upgrade the board common 486? What size I should look for in database?
The power connector seem to be different 🙁
Short answer, NO. Long answer, yes. - There exists upgrade boards for most PS/2 machines. They exist in the same way that a virgin exists at a whorehouse. If you're lucky enough to find one, its going to cost you an arm and leg. And I'm not being funny. The last 286 > 486 upgrade board I saw for the 60/80, went for about $1000 on ePay. cpu upgrade boards are a little more common. (plugging a 486 into a 386 socket). They still cost the same as a mortgage payment. I love my IBM machines. But god almighty, they are intentionally obtuse.
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
I was just thinking about sticking SBC card with VGA output into it and use it that way 😀
I ordered a battery.
Quick question, that PSU needs some recapping? It makes crazy noises 🙁
Is there a way to enter bios, or I have to have that floppy first?
Original fdd is 1.4 or 720KB?
I haven't run across any power supplies or motherboards that needed recapping
*knocks on wood*
That said, the SMD caps in the floppy drives are a common point of failure.
As for the BIOS, you get to that via the reference disk. They are easy to find online. you MUST use a program like winImage. You CAN'T use a dos formatted disk and just copy the files.
IBM machines can be fun, but they hate you. Its like working with Linux.
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
Unknown_K wrote on 2021-11-23, 05:07:You need a new battery (google CR-P2) […]
You need a new battery (google CR-P2)
https://ardent-tool.com/misc/batteries.html
BIOS is setup using reference floppy disks.
https://ardent-tool.com/disks/
Beware PS/2 floppy drives tend to die from bad capacitors so you need to check if yours works.
I bought a new battery, still same codes popped up
161, 163
I put Reference Disk v1.12 image on floppy, but fdd reads for minutes with no effect.
What else I can try?
161,163 are a good sign. It means the system date/time isn't set. If that is the only error, it will boot from floppy just fine.
Try a DOS boot disk.
If it won't boot, you need the floppy drive serviced and/or replaced. Clean the heads first. BE GENTLE.
Failing that, there are smd caps that dry out and cause drives to not work. Those 2 issues fix about 90% of drives.
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
Niezgodka wrote on 2021-11-22, 23:38:Short answer, NO. Long answer, yes. - There exists upgrade boards for most PS/2 machines. They exist in the same way that a virgin exists at a whorehouse. If you're lucky enough to find one, its going to cost you an arm and leg. And I'm not being funny. The last 286 > 486 upgrade board I saw for the 60/80, went for about $1000 on ePay. cpu upgrade boards are a little more common. (plugging a 486 into a 386 socket). They still cost the same as a mortgage payment. I love my IBM machines. But god almighty, they are intentionally obtuse.
if i'm not wrong, model 80 use socketed 386/387.
so you can go for a 486/7DLC with no fear. they're easy to find, and still cheap.
and maybe the model 80 can be overclocked a bit, if some PS/2's hate you, some are really really fun.
the model 35sx for exemple, is a nice one. (not mca, maybe it's an advantage 😁)
if you know soldering, you can replace the 386sx for a TI486sxlc2, and overclock the bus to 33Mhz (20Mhz stock).
cache is enabled by bios, and you could run the cpu at 66Mhz internally
and upgrade the VRAM from 256 to 512K.
not so bad 😀
Ok. So it looks like problem with FDD.
Is there any XTIDE card that will work with such computer? It looks like ISA, but seem to be further from sliding slots 🙁
Maybe there is some I/O card, with regular FDD and IDE interface? What to get?
oh no... you're in MCA madness, welcome 😀
your best luck actually is to go with scsi. then a sd2scsi, or an acard adaptor.
actually, there's no CF/IDE solution.
ide controller exist (there's one model for sure) but it's not a standard ide, dos and windows can't use it natively. and is not bootable.
probabely hard to find anyway, and you can consider it useless...
Correct,
Configuring the PS/2 requires booting a prepared floppy disk to do so to configure and store settings.
Most and easiest way is:
Floppy drive issues:
Have someone who is good with SMD repair replace these SMD capacitors and re-grease the stepper screw (particularly bearings) so screw can turn properly, have to watch it to make sure. I had one of PS/2 floppy drive that stepper screw not turning from grease turned into glue.
Restoration is mandatory as finding *correct* working parts such as floppy drives for PS/2 is expensive, like 100 dollars each these days and is not physical and electrically compatible. Different PS/2 models used different floppy drives interfaces even the bezel to match is different too!
eg: 55SX, 70, 80, 85, 95, 77 used different floppy interfaces pinout.
The PS/2 8580 is MCA slots, it is not anything you can use any cards. Has to be MCA cards.
The reason I said MCA SCSI card as it is most easiest way to go and still is costly.
But this performance performs well only on EGA, VGA DOS era games not such as Doom up to VGA and Windows 3.11 but no sound.
Sound card is expensive. Read expensive even the MCA snarker is more than 100 dollars.
In other words restoring any PS/2 computer with MCA bus is expensive and difficult to source parts other than SCSI.
I know this and had migrated away from PS/2 long ago to standard generic PCs parts even brand names like, HP, IBM (ISA, PCI), etc, Compaq is better way to go. I have not yet acquired any parts for my PS/2 70 for years and needs SCSI controller along with small SCSI hard drive to complete. But what good if I can't play without sound so it sits gathering dust.
Best fit all is build you own PC based on Pentium that runs 120, 133, 166 or 200MHz processor based on ATX form factor motherboard, 16MB or 32MB, non-sound blaster sound card, PCI S3 or cirrus logic video card, so you can use any ATX PSU and ATX case. This will cover widest range of DOS games from 1988 thru late 1990.
Cheers,
Great Northern aka Canada.
Pretty much everything PentiumSpeed said is correct.
You are at a decision point. A very real red pill / blue pill moment.
If you pick the blue pill, you sell the machine to someone, maybe even me if the shipping is low enough. You use the cash to get an easier system.
If you take the red pill, I will hold your hand into a world of overpriced hardware, intentionally user unfriendly interfaces, asinine levels of incompatibility, and sheer mountains of frustration.
Its a deep hole, but I love the model 60/80. Its probably my favorite system. I'm very fortunate to have a dragon's horde of spare parts. It also helps I'm also a glutton for punishment when it comes to the idiosyncrasies of IBM PS/2.
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-11-28, 23:34:Different PS/2 models used different floppy drives interfaces even the bezel to match is different too!
eg: 55SX, 70, 80, 85, 95, 77 used different floppy interfaces pinout.
just to precise, there's only 2 type of drives. (or maybe 3, with the strange "asterisque" story, but nothing to concern here anyway)
but in short, there's media sense drive or not. if the machine use a media sense drive, then using a non media sense will give a 604 error.
but pressing F1 will pass it, and drive work normally. but it's annoying 😁
then come the cable story, but as long you have it in your machine... nothing to worry here.
Oh boy.... I’m thinking about putting into that lovely case some regular pentium 133 motherboard with isa and ide standards.
Will any known mbs fit smoothly?
What about the psu and floppy? ShouldI just stick AT psu into current psu case?
The only thing that "fits" into a model 60/80 chassis, are the 60/80 motherboard. I could literally list 20 reasons why, even ignoring the act being textbook sacrilege.
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
All retro geeks should have a PS/2 machine to keep them humble 🤣 The "rip the guts out and start over" impulse means you failed the test 🤣 Mac addicts in recovery may find them cheap and easy to work with.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
Don't bother if you all have is PS/2 model 80 motherboard!
You need all the PS/2 parts to work correctly.
Cheers,
Great Northern aka Canada.
Ok. So as I recall, computer was working around 2016-2017. It was able to boot into some old dos from hdd. Now the battery in it died, so I need to detect hdd in bios again. To do it, I need floppy drive, however mine seems to be not working correctly 🙁
So repairing the fdd or getting the MCA i/o card with regular fdd connector would be the road to go?
Can anyone help me with such type of fdd?
