I just came across a small box of stuff tucked behind things for years that is super welcome... it's full of all kinds of unexciting parts, drivebay covers, slot covers, 3.5 to 5.25 rails and adapters, drive rails, 2xCDROM audio cable, a couple of drive cables, all the stupid stuff you end up short of to finish off systems, the stuff that nickel and dimes you, or more likely these days $5 and $10s you. Anyway in that I found my precious... my original IBM XT speaker, the sole part remaining of my first XT I had to abandon in long distance move.. up until early 2000s I had managed to keep an unbroken line of upgrades, replace everything but the speaker... so I was still using my "Ship of Theseus" original IBM XT, but I had misplaced it, until now... So I gotta jump it through some quick upgrades, Tbred to X2 to X4 to FX8350 to bring it up to date...
So tested it on mods, on same setup I am using that speaker I liberated from a modem. I dunno if it's just that this one has been through hell and back, but it's bad, worse than the smaller 2". Seems to have no response below 500 and above 7000, whereas I guesstimate the modem speaker covers about 50 to 10,000, neither of them at all linear, response at each end is poor, but talking about the cliff where it falls off to nothing. Anyway, IDK if that in particular is why the original IBM speaker is maligned, or whether this one just kinda shagged.
Weird BIOS ROM off to the left in pic there only says H. T. M11003 on it... I'm guessing it might be our favorite penny pinchers Hsing Tech, and remember a bad ROM on a PCChips board way back that this might actually be, but any ideas of it's equivalent to try burning it real good not just on a PCChips minimum viable EEPROM interface?
Also shown there, some 5.25 floppy connector to 3.5" drive connector convertors, useful in the case where you have onboard I/O on OEM formfactors where the cable has it's own end or is soldered down. Or when you need a really long cable to get around the other drive cages for a right mount sidewinder floppy, and the 3.5" is 3" down the cable from the 5.25 on the end... and otherwise strange situations... I would say I need to put them somewhere safe in case I need them for that, but you know how that goes, better just leave them with the rest of this "random shit that's super important when you haven't got it." stuff.
Edit: also happy because I "discerned the presence of" a dot matrix printer, not sure which one it is yet, was beginning to think they all got discarded/destroyed.... it's a kind of peek in the box coz there's not clearance to get it out without a couple hours heavy lifting kinda thing.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.