First post, by keropi
- Rank
- l33t++
Hello fellow vogons'ers!
If you happen to notice my ramblings on other threads then you'll probably know I was gifted a complete XT setup from Acer 😊 It came with the original keyboard/monitor and in excellent condition. Here is a quick pic from the test bench (lcd monitor is showing the cga's composite output) :
So what are the hardware specs? Checkit to the rescue! 🤣
It all boils down to a 8mhz V20 , 640kb or RAM, a CGA and 2 x 360kb 5.25" floppy drives.
4.77 or 10mhz speed is controlled with a small executable called SPEED.COM - I actually found it by accident while digging the ~10 floppies I was given with the machine. It was in a disk with some GW-Basic programs ... (I am attaching the util to this post, maybe someone somewhere sometime will need it)
edit: CTRL+ALT+(plus) works too, alternating between low/high speed.
And here are some games running side-to-side with the composite output:
...and a closeup of the original monochrome monitor:
Naturally I disassembled the main unit and keyboard for cleaning. Only a little dirt inside, this machine was VERY well kept! That's the whole main unit in parts:
as you can see there is an ISA backplane with 4 slots and 2 of them are occupied by the mainboard and the cga/floppy/io combo cards:
That's a weird way to build it but it works... the bad thing is that there are only 2 available slots for upgrades... 😵 (well, the isa backplane does have a place to solder an extra ISA slot but there is no space for it in the case, maybe I will solder an extension and use it with a card that needs no external access, like an IDE controller)
For now the upgrades are a new fan to replace the old noisy one, a SB 1320C and an XTIDE rev2 controller that I will be assembling once all parts arrive:
(there is plenty of space behind the floppies, I am thinking of using it for the extra ISA slot if I ever solder it 🤣 )
I had to clean the keyboard PCB so that CTRL starts working again and for some reason the fuse holder in the PSU was almost broken and made little contact. I replaced that too.
You might have noticed that the CGA composite colors are off, I have no idea why and I have made another thread about it here: Wrong colors with CGA composite, how to fix/check it?
I still haven't done much with the machine, atm I am drowning in an ocean of XT information that I was unaware of 🤣
Thanks for reading! As always comments/ideas are welcome! 😊
