IBM AT 5170 - The most beautiful PC in the world
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ก.ค. 2024
- In this video I am going to give you a high level overview of the interiour and exteriour of my IBM AT 5170 machine. In my view the most beautiful machine IBM every created. Paired with an IBM EGA monitor, lets explore the machine and see what we can do with it.
0:00 - Introduction
01:02 - Exteriour
02:40 - Keyboard
03:00 - Front
04:22 - Back
05:45 - EGA Monitor (5154)
07:12 - Starting her up
08:36 - Some games
10:24 - Some apps
12:22 - Opening her up
15:43 - The motherboard
17:06 - The CPU
19:25 - The expansion cards
22:47 - A real hard drive Vs flash storage
25:00 - Outro
#IBM #PC #Retro - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
That case is a beautiful piece of industrial design, pure functional elegance!
This video and title are the most exact and accurate ever ! And this is a proud owner of 2 AT 5170 that says this !! :) Great video again !!
Thanks a lot appreciate it ! I passed my second 5170 along to a fellow collector. It was stock with 30MB hard drive and all IBM expansion cards.
@@RetroSpector78 My 2 are over-crowded with IBM RAM expansion cards (one has 3 MB, the other one has 4 MB). One has a 30 MB stock hard drive and the other 20 MB. I love them ! I retrobrighted all the plastic parts (the 5.25" can look a little bit yellow and the retrobright makes it become light gray again, it's beautiful !)
My dads work had the same computer I remember seeing a 5170 on his desk in 1993 I was 9 at the time my dad is retired now😌
@@mikesilva3868 If I were you I'd hunt for a 5170 and restore it, this is a very nice project ! :)
Sharp MZ-2500 looks better! 😋 As does the Epson MX-20 laptop!
Very nice one. On the CPU clock: Right next to the CPU you see the crystal oscillator at 16MHz. The CPU runs at half crystal clock. So a 16MHz Crystal makes a 8MHz CPU Clock. My Headland 286 board uses a 32MHz crystal for a 16MHz CPU. The 286-8 runs at 2/3 CPU Clock (1/3 crystal clock), so it will run on 5.something MHz. On my 16MHz, it would run at 1/3 Crystal/2/3 CPU meaning little above 10MHz. My 287-8 can still handle this but I put a little heatsink on it.
However, I assume if you put a 32MHz Crystal in this board, you will massively overclock the ISA bus, as it is coupled to the CPU clock. Enhanced ATs like with NEAT or Headland Chipset use CPU clock dividers, so e.g. a 16MHz 286 on a Neat will again work perfectly with an 8MHz ISA Bus with a CPU/2 clock divider
I thought the ISA bus was clocked using a different crystal and as such decoupled. But I couldn’t get it higher than 10MHz. Had issues with the memory expansion card at 11MHz. And didn’t boot at 12MHz. (Error code)
@@RetroSpector78 To my knowledge, independent clocks for Bus and CPU would require a buffer or at least (if there is a full divider like /2) a waitstate. I think this is not implemeted in a discrete logic chipset like the 5170 mainboard, but came with NEAT and other integrated late 286 chipsets. Boards with configurable clock also have configurable ISA clock dividers. Most ISA cards can be overclocked a little, and it seems, according to your experience, that the ISA bus is coupled to the CPU clock and with >10MHz, which is already 2MHz overclocked, you get close to or beyond the limits of your ISA cards.
That was another great watch... TNX for sharing :)
A very nice IBM you have there. Back in the 80's I maintained a bumch of these running AutoCAD. They came configured with a Hercules monochrome video card, and an Artist Graphics video card that supported a resolution of 1024 x 768. A dual monitor configuration back in the 80's. Dos on the Hercules monitor and the AutoCAD graphics on the color monitor using special drivers.
yeah ... did a video on a dual monitor setup on an even older IBM PC XT .... that must have been pretty sweet. Really love these machines and going to explore it a bit further.
What release of AutoCAD was that? Pre version 11 I suppose? I still use AutoCAD today for my work as building / structural engineer. When I first learned to use AutoCAD, I was using AutoCAD 2000. I find AutoCAD/386 R12 to quite interesting to play around with in Dosbox.
@@dykodesigns AutoCAD 2.1 or 2.5 sticks in my mind. I used AutoCAD up to Version 2004 when we switched to Solidworks.
I did much the same but we originally used a BNW card which seemed to output 1024x1024 at 'digital' signal levels. I think we had 8 colours with a very slow refresh, high persistence monitors were required. We used AutoCAD 10 (DOS) for years and had a slick work process with Xtree as a front end and a Lantastic network. We didn't change that until WIN NT 3.5.1 came along, skipping the kludge of DOS based WIndows.
One of my first experiences of IBM PC was the 5170 running Xenix 286 with mono screen it was awesome, it was the first system i had ever used that had a hdd. 20mb and it was the whole world to me back then. I remember getting an 8088 clone pc and been disappointed when i realised i could not run Xenix on it.
Great story. Xenix is definitely something I want to look into at some point.
All versions of the 5170 bios had trouble with 3rd party disk and hard drive controllers. The common fix was to replace the bios roms with ones containing a generic clone AT bios. That also gave you the now traditional built in setup screen.
That’s true. You do lose a bit of authenticity. Don’t really like seeing a 1990 copyright msg on a machine like this. But will try the quadtel bios and try out some other stuff with the machine.
Cool looking video card! Love the yellow silkscreen on green!
Really concise overview, really enjoyed it. I had a 386 in a similar chassis that replaced my Mitec 286. Just wish I used it more back in the day instead of playing Atari ST and Amiga games! Ps looking forward to part two
Blue color in EGA is magic
My own IBM 5170 has been my Winter project - and I agree about it being one of the most beautiful PC's ever built! Mine has the original MFM HDD still intact and working w/ its original controller card! I also have one 5.25" 1.2MB FDD and one 1.44MB GoTek connected and configured via the original IBM BIOS. I did add a 512MB CF Card via XTIDE as secondary storage. 6MB RAM takes forever to check during POST but it's lovely to watch. Best part is I found an "Intel SnapIn 386" upgrade board on eBay, in the original box! It connects to the mobo via the original CPU socket and provides a 20MHz 386sx plus 16KB onboard cache. The speed of the system in most tasks still feels more like a fast 286 than a real 386 due mainly to the slow RAM access speeds, but it can run everything that requires the 386 architecture - which had quickly become a sticking-point for me after restoring this machine. I didn't realize how many things, even so many drivers, require at least a 386-class CPU! I've owned an XT-class PC and a Dell 386, but had very little experience with the weird in-between architecture that is the 286. The easy fix (suggested by many on Vogons) would have been a 386 motherboard swap but I really wanted to keep the IBM heritage in my IBM! For me it's a functional piece of art and I worked very hard to preserve certain aspects like the quirky original IBM BIOS. That crystal next to the CPU does set the system clock speed, but you're also correct that the IBM BIOS found on 8MHz AT's performs a "speed check" during POST and will hang the system if it's "too fast." The QuadTel BIOS upgrade fixes this - and eliminates the need for a "setup program" to configure BIOS settings - but that's taking too much IBM out of this IBM for my taste. I did read about hacked versions of the original IBM BIOS that simply bypass the speed check - and I'd love to experiment with that option if you ever come across one! My 386 CPU still derives its clock from that original crystal (16/2=8, 8*2.5=20) and I'd love to see what would happen with, say, a 20MHz crystal and faster memory chips! Fun times :)
Yeah also have the quadtel bios but think I’ll keep this one mostly stock. Don’t have the MFM hard drive. I did have another 5170 that was full stock with the seagate hard drive, but passed that one on to another collector.
The CGA monitor can display 16 colors as well and even so in graphics mode when used with an EGA card. The EGA monitor can actually display 64 colors, but almost no EGA software ever made use of that.
For 64 colors you need a graphics card that supports Enhanced EGA (like the Tseng ET3000) and you need a monitor that supports switchable graphics. The ET3000 is easy to find, but the EGA monitor is a unicorn by now, unfortunately.
It's my greatest wish to get my hands on an EGA monitor, so I can assemble a fast 286-16 or 286-20, like I had when I was a kid.
But yeah, even a CGA monitor can display the 320x200 16 color EGA mode - but it won't display the 640x350 16 Color EGA modes.
@@TheRetroRaven I was talking about the 64 colors EGA is able to choose from. Of course you can still only show 16 at the same time, but almost all EGA software uses the 16 CGA colors instead of choosing from the enhanced palette and will display fine on a CGA monitor as well therefore.
@@_derSammler Yes, the original EGA palette is only 16 colors out of 64 to choose from. However, some EGA cards supported non-standard Enhanced EGA graphics modes that can show all 64 colours at once. I only know one game though, that actually supported it (Ironman offroad).
@@_derSammler Mostly like software using all 16 of the CGA colors but no other colors had their graphics designed for PC Jr/Tandy standard and the same graphics were recycled for EGA rather than making a separate EGA graphics set making more use of EGA's capabilities
Yes. But actually not quite. It wasn't really the number of colors that was the issue. It was the scan rate. There were some EGA only modes that display in x400 resolutions and that kind of thing. The 64 color modes were all x350 or x400 (third party boards). But yes, the EGA exclusive titles were extremely few and almost all games with an EGA mode display in 16 color x200 modes. There are some productivity titles that use full EGA to an excellent effect, but I can't imagine using any of that in 2021.
Indeed one of the most beautiful PC ever made 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Please more content. Love the videos
Magnificent machine !
I started being interested in computers in 1985 when I was a high school freshmen. My parents were poor so there was not way they could afford this. Now I love fantasizing about how it would've been if I had this PC back then. I would've never leave the house.
Great looking machine
A agree with you; it's a classic design and I just love it.
Yeah don’t really know what it is with this one. I’m not really an IBM fanboy despite being lucky enough to own most of them. But this one really ticks off a lot of boxes as far as I’m concerned.
Classic iconic piece of tech !
I can shed some light on the CPU swap: Some of the very early 80286 where buggy. The 286 is a CPU relying heavily on microcode. But unlike in modern CPUs, that microcode cannot be loaded or updated at boot-time. Instead, the mask (ROM so to speak) containing the microcode was fixed and not changable. So a new revision of the CPU would have to be done - which wasn't too hard due to the microcode.
Some of these early, broken 286 chips made it into the early ATs shipped. They would cause no trouble unter MS-DOS, but would fail in protected mode under Xenix/Microport UNIX.
So, it was not uncommon to swap the CPU when you had such a machine. Maybe this machine was used under UNIX in a second hand live, then the new owner would ge a cheap 286 and swap the CPU and maybe at the time, the 16Mhz version was at hand.
The adaptec is another pointer to this machine being used under Xenix/UNIX - it was a very popular and reasonable choice for UNIX. Suffice to say, that UNIX could utilize the full 2megs of RAM, completed by this fantastic AST card.
This box would be the perfect 286 retro-unix machine. By having subbed recently to your channel, I start feeling the urge to return to my early UNIX days and get me a proper 286 - the machine I ran my first "personal UNIX". Suffice to say, I felt like being the king of the world with my own UNIX :)
Many North American 5170's were made in Scotland as well. Both of mine are. As to the 8mhz clock speed, as many here have already said, it's controlled by the 16mhz crystal. You can bump it up some, but doing so also overclocks the ISA bus, causing undesirable results. In this day and ae of course, a few extra mhz isn't worth stressing 35 year old ICs.
Very very nice!!
ha, sometimes I think there is a bit of collective consciousness between retro PC TH-camrs :) I've been working on my IBM 5170 video the last few weeks. You have the one thing I've never been able to acquire, a true EGA monitor and an IBM one to boot! Awsome video.
The 5154 EGA is one of the most hard to find pieces of hardware. Not really sure how many were made (given the short lifespan of EGA). But EGA stuff in general is really hard to come by.
@@RetroSpector78 I'd be happy at this point with any EGA monitor but just never happened to come across one. plenty of RGB, monochrome, CGA, composite, and VGA monitors but EGA has always eluded me. So for right now, I'm just running my IBM EGA card on a Tandy CGA monitor with the lower resolutions.
If you update the crystal to speed it up, you'll need to replace the BIOS with an AMI BIOS. This is because IBM added code to the stock BIOS that intentionally prevents the POST from finishing if it notices the system is running faster than 8MHz.
Will do some overclocking attempts in the next video. But think I’m out of liquid nitrogen :)
I did not know that, thanks for posting it
@@RetroSpector78 After some thought, it might only be the second revision of the 5170 BIOS that does this, before the 8mhz version came out. But, you should still have an AMI BIOS on hand, just in case.
I know someone else already mentioned it, but here's the short version: change the crystal next to the cpu out for a 32 MHz one. You'll get 16 MHz out of the CPU.
On mine I replaced the 12 Mhz crystal with a 16 Mhz to get 8 Mhz out of the CPU. But I seriously doubt that the AT components will support 16 Mhz overclock. Surely the 6 or 8 Mhz CPU won't support it, as well as most of the motherboard components. I think 10 Mhz is somewhat a hard limit on the 5170...
@@olivierpericat9224 correct - my type 3 ibm at mobo will not go over 10mhz w/o having jibberish on the display etc.
If I understand correctly the CPU / Crystal isn’t the only bottleneck. Memory and other TTL chips also. With a 20MHz crystal everything works, a 22MHz crystal boots, but the memory on the 16bit ISA card isn’t detected. With a 24MHz crystal it doesn’t boot. All with an AMD 286 12MHz and a Quadtel BIOS.
Even if that works, you have to make two lists: One with all the new software and games that will be able to run, and the software that will run too fast and will become unusable.
The first PC I worked on, was this one, my college's computer class had those. However these had Amber monitors and, I believe, Hercules cards, and I like the amber monitors so much since then :)
although this machine is older than my first experiences with computers.... it still just looks like THE PC to me.
It looks like it was brand new, gave me a big flash back to 1985 when I could use it the fist time. It was a realy fast computer at that time and it was very expensive too. But my XT looked like a snail compared to the AT.
That you taking care of this old treasures. 😊
I had the same computer as a kid but was a Zenith Data Systems clone...geeze I miss that computer. So many memories of tinkering, upgrading and gaming with it...
Very cool retro computer
Thx ... really happy to have this one in the collection. I remember driving to Holland to pick it up with my wife. She decided to keep me company during the 2.5 hour drive (one way). True love I guess :)
I am one who came of age in the computer industry at the very time the IBM PC, TX, AT, et al were also coming of age. I actually worked for the local IBM dealership, so I was tasked with fixing these things, along with the PS/2 line (this was the late 80s-early 90s). I didn't think of them as anything particularly special, except that the build quality and keyboard were exceptional.
FFWD to today, and I lust after those early machines, and I'd give anything for an AT, with either the original keyboard or M series.
Edit: I fell even deeper in love with this machine while watching an episode of Rumpole of the Baily, shot in the mid-80's. On scene at the front desk of a hotel had a very prominently displayed AT with green screen in all it's glory, only for half a second, but enough to make me feel very nostalgic lol.
Also should have said, great video as usual! Looking forward to part two! What will you be covering?
Nice system, a few points. The SCSI cable that is so short, is from a Macintosh LC pizza box (or similar form factor Mac). On the 286 system. The clock is determined not by the bios, but by the crystal. In this case it's the 16MHZ one next to the CPU socket. It's complicated as to why, but the clock will be half what the crystal provides. In this case 8mhz. Complicating this is you have an FPU. It's marked 8mhz. However the 287 ran async to the CPU, usually divided by three from the crystal. In this case 5.33mhz, so plenty of headroom here. Now you likely can't just plop a 32mhz crystal in here because these AT systems ram the ISA bus at that clock, and 16 is way too fast. 12mhz is the usual upper limit for ISA bus, but on some boards your lucky to get 10mhz. Yours having memory on the ISA buss will be EXTREMELY picky about how fast it will run. I suspect that a 20mhz clock crystal will be tops, this gives you 10MHZ CPU, and ISA bus. And 6.66mhz on your FPU. The jumpers on the AST card are kinda wacky. But it looks like it's providing a second GAME port. Likely via the pin header J4. J3 pin headed is for a second com port, but to use that you will need to populate the empty 16450N UART. It's good that the video has documented the switch settings on the AST card, as they configure the memory addresses to. Depending on if you had a 512K or 640K system board, you had to change those jumpers to move the memory start and end addresses around. So DO be careful when flipping them trying to fix the ports. As to the 601 error. The IBM system board and bios works with any floppy controller. In this case the Adaptec 1542CF has a standard floppy controller chip. It's throwing an 601 diskette error because it senses two drives on the cable, but only one is configured in BIOS. You can get that to go away by configuring them correctly in the BIOS. Speaking in the BIOS, some versions of the AT bios would lock the system if it detected too fast of a clock though.
What a stunner! Respect for Cosmo too, basically my childhood was Cosmo on my IBM AT, Loom also, awesome times. Still have mine and cherish it, my HDD is beginning to fail though. I also use Gsetup, but once I lost all settings due to loss of battery from which I ended up using the built in BASICA and OUT functions to configure the BIOS to get it to boot properly again!
The monitor is made here in my home country. Made in Finland. 💪😍 (in Finnish: Tehty Suomessa!) Suomi mainittu - torille, siis! Soittokunta, soittakaa Porilaisten marssi. 🎵
And certified in my home country by the TÜV: Technischer Überwachungsverein. High five! 🙏
EGA monitor with tube in excellent condition. Amazing! I have 2 EGA card's in my collection, but haven't no one EGA monitor.
I've kept a tidy 5170 Type 3 in my collection, the last revision with the baby AT size board. The Seagate 30MB linear-actuator hard disk still works to provide the original thumping sound. I have a Tecmar Graphics Master installed driving the 5153 monitor because it was a period-accurate upgrade to CGA, adding an interlaced graphics mode. I do agree agree that the industrial design is superb and it is my favorite vintage computer.
Good-looking computer in very good shape. 37 years old computer running well. Few errors to fix as you mentioned but definitely operational.
Very nice setup you have there 🙂 I have the 8580 but missing a model m and a nice old ibm crt
The model 80 is also really nice. Also need to start on mine .... the floppy drive died (obviously) and the battery almost leaked its way out of the case :)
This is a beautiful IBM PC
This takes me back! My family was always well behind the curve when buying computers. This was our 2nd, bought sometime in the very early 90s. Before that was a PC clone, the Epson Equity II. Sadly that model doesn't have much online presence these days.
I never got to experience that early pc experience. I started with a 486 when I was 17 years old. Spent much of my childhood with philips msx, c64’s and amiga’s. Its really cool to get to revisit all those machines.
Keyboards on these were lovely to use
yes. This particular model M is a lot newer than the PC (uses a PS/2 port so had to convert it), but looks really good with this PC.
That's the first time I've ever heard the AT referred to as the most beautiful - I admit, I did stop to take a second look and it certainly does have an appeal that IBM couldn't really match after that - except maybe with the PS/2 Model 25 and much later, Thinkpads. Great stuff man, you'll be at 100k subs in no time
She thicc. And boxy.
Beautiful...? Uhh, well, it takes all kinds I guess. :-)
It wasn't 'beautiful'. But it was very solidly built, with a thick steel case, not an aluminium or plastic one. It could take a very heavy CRT monitor or TV on top with no hint of sag. IBM build quality was unmatched in those days.
I didn't think it was so beautiful at first either, I thought the PC and XT was better looking, but the AT has very much grown on me and I now prefer it to the XT style case, although both are nice and the build quality is definitely a big part of the appeal to me. I have a ps/2 and they are charming but very ugly imo.
Beautiful PC indeed, I love IBM hardware.
2MB what a beast mate! ;-)
My first PC was a 286 in 1988. My favourite games were flight sims - Battlehawks 1942, Gunship, and F-19 Stealth Fighter, although I did play some D&D games like Pool of Radiance as well.
So many of these machines and monitors were junked back in the day as trash; now they're revered and worshipped :D
Revered and worshipped might be pushing it, but they are indeed sought after. Fortunate enough to have owned 2. This one I picked up in Holland after a 2.5 hour drive. So I was set on having one.
@@RetroSpector78 I had one myself about 30 years ago. Nobody back then regarded them as anything more than obsolete technology barely worth a couple of euros, so it's pretty funny how they're so sought after nowadays, but I get the appeal because they do look cool :)
It was the first PC my parent bought when I was a kid, amazing machine at its time. I had a ZX-Spectrum as that time, and I was so often working on his machine that my dad bought me a PC... "just" a clone, Not an IBM, not an AT 286 but a PC, for a kid in the mid-80's it was great.
😊great video
I start working in 1982 at Inacomp Computer Center, this was my first tec course in IBM, the CPU only can work at a max speed of 10mhz, to support the 3.5 floppy you need to set it in the config.sys file with the wright parameters.
I think I owned that PC some years ago... I sold it to a guy from Belgium... Nice to see it again.
I could be that guy from Belgium :) was it your birthday when I came to pick it up (with my wife). Think it is almost 2 years ago.
@@RetroSpector78 Hi Yes it was....... :) So you have more than one retro PC...
Haha ... indeed I do have a couple others .... you’ll see this one again soon. Looked at your overlocking package and going to play with that a bit. Been wanting to make a video on it for a long time, but something else always got in the way. that being lots of other retro pc’s indeed :)
@@RetroSpector78 The AST card is blocking higher frequencies as far as I remember. Maybe you have another ram expansion card.
@@Oldsukerbole yeah expansion cards are sensitive. The AST one works at 10MHz but no ram count > 512kb when we push it to 11MHz.
few £$€ worth there! Lovely set up
Nice machine, it's in amazing condition. Video compression isn't quite doing the CRT footage justice, should look even better in person.
Hope to see more IBM5154 monitor videos soon Lol
Wooow, that adaptec BIOS was the same for aaaaaages!!
The Adaptec SCSI card in this machine is from 1996, more than ten years newer than the 5170.
Ohh i see... Mr. @Techmoan he's been lending his time machine again huh..... you went back to get this one right of the shelf.... :-D
Very nice one.. i think that it is the second best preserved after the one that @LGR took out of the box back in 2017..
the IBM 5170 has got to be the best case design ever!
great from Brazil 🖒🖒🖒🖒
At this time I had a 286 with 2 x 4mb RAM cards and an 80mb HD, the RAM used to create a RAM drive that could be used in conjunction with an Alsys ADA compiler to cross compile to some other milirtary hardware or other. The machine itself cost £4,000 and each RAM board cost £4,000 each. The hard drive was five or six hundred too. I had probably one of the highest spec. PC/ATs around the world at that time.
That is pretty impressive. Have a couple of 286 machines, lots of them with very little ram. These 16 bit isa ram cards are pretty hard to find.
“Satisfying power switch” that SO describes all IBM gear of that era.
Isn't the frequency of the CPU defined by the clock oscillator nearby? It generates obviously 16MHz which has to be twice the speed of the CPU. This would set the CPU to 8 MHz. I guess, if you put 32 MHz oscillator there, the CPU will go up to 16MHz. The question is, if the whole board will stand that clock. I doubt it, because on this early machines there was no clock divider for the buses. It was simply not required, because there were no CPUs on the market, which would run at 16 MHz. So, I guess, if you drop a faster clock generator in there, it would horribly overclock the system.
my thoughts exactly!
My first PC exactly with the 5154 💕
Great monitor. One of the more rare things one can find I think. Along with the IBM expansion chassis.
@@RetroSpector78 I wish I still had mine.
IBM always had a definite style. They always stood out from the crowd, and while I don’t think either the XT or AT was particularly pretty, I didn’t dislike them either. I like the model m, and love the design of the monitors.
I find the PS/2 line more attractive, although I think the design of those has dated more than the AT or XT.
Any of them is better than the usually generic clone design.
My 5170 looked much different motherboard wise and came with different drives. My system had more RAM sockets on the Motherboard but still equaled to 512KB. System came with a 35MB hard drive, 360KB and 730KB Floppy. It had a RAM expansion card to bump it to 1MB. A family friend swapped out the 720KB with a 1.44MB. When my parents bought a 486 years later I ended up with the 6170 and swapped out the CPU to a ITT brand 286 running at 12MHz, tossed on a Soundcard/Modem card and modified the case bezel and was able to add in a CD-ROM into the bottom bay that sat under the Floppy drives. I also managed to get some BIOS chips from a seimans brand 286 Motherboard and replaced the IBM stock BIOS and worked just fine. I honestly hated the machine because it was hard to find software that would run and was stuck with EGA graphics. Four years later I was able to toss in a 386 Motherboard and got VGA graphics.
Relevant to my interests. I just completed the quadrinity! PC, XT, XT 286, and AT.
They’re all fully original IBM hardware, if you accept the Hercules card in the XT 286 as an official option. Of the three with hard drives only that same one gave me any trouble - the ST-225 20M in there just makes knocking noises. To my surprise, the 10M (XT) and 30M (AT) drives still work great!
Now I just need to find one of those 5154s! :-D Maybe some day I’ll be as cool as RetroSpector.
The more I see it I think it's more and more badass. I had one since I was 12 (around 1997) and it's packing nearly 4 MB of RAM, 1gig HDD, and Creative Labs 1x CD-ROM drive. I also have the drivers installed for my parralell port zip drive. At some point I'd like to 3D print something to allow two 3.5" devices to fit in one of the 5.25" bays. Maybe an internal zip drive and a FDD? Probably but I may consider other options if they come up. If you ever watch Computer Chronicles there are a few episode where you can see Gary Kildall interacting with an AT.
P.S.- can't stop watching... I'm happy to see that SCSI to mSD card adapters exist. That's like considerably better than what I expected to be something like an IDE/ATA to mSD card. I do have a couple of antique 40 MB HDD's but I'm afraid to put more spin-hours on them.
It does look great. I always thought that EGA monitor looked old fashioned next to the sharp lines of the AT case and Model F, though.
In the computer lab in my College there was one IBM AT 5170. At the time it was not remarkable for us because they had Tandy PCs which were faster.
But the aesthetics of the 5170 really influenced every other PC.
When I finally could buy my own computer it was an off-brand one but they copied the look and feel of IBM's. Even to the point of having the same lights, keyhole and a mechanical keyboard!
i miss my old pc AT - I had a 286 with co math, 512+640 card and 1MB to the max video card spent hours developing software on that pc .. remember laplinking 10 mb of Windows 3.0 on to the 30MB drive those were the days ... .. in 2016 I found the old motherboard in the cupboard on its own. and sold it sold as seen and the buyer told me it still worked perfectly after 20 years of being under all sorts of stuff just shows stuff was built to last loved that computer.. used the case so many times to drop in new mainboards back then even two a pc-486 looked liked a mini-itx in that big box !!
Yeah these things are built like tanks. Tantalum caps and ram chips are pretty much the only things that fail.
retro nerd in me wants one, but the practical side of me cant see a reason to get one. Everything i need to run can on my 386, 486, or P200 systems. Seems like the a common opinion out there is that the 286 is in a niche spot. 386 was better in every way. great videos love seeing these systems and the insides. Really appreciate you take the time to show everything.
is the throughput or speed you get from SCSI to SD bottlenecked by the 16 bit ISA slot?
I wish I could find a dead or gutted 5170 case and see how far it could be hotrodded.
I have a spare 5170 motherboard so also in the market for an empty 5170 case :)
looks like New Both keyboard and Pc case!!!
Wow, didn't even know that they made monitors for IBM here in Finland.
Valco Oy (company founded by the government, Salora and Hitachi) manufactured tubes from 1976 to 1979. They only managed to produce around a thousand tubes under that time, so it's no wonder you haven't heard about monitors made in Finland
I was going through some old files and found an order that my employer put in for one of these in the mid-80’s, we spent $10000 on a single PC. Its kinda insane to think about as someone who has had access to a PC their whole life. I showed the document to the department head and he got a laugh out of it too lol
Out of all the cases that have passed through my fingers, the one I miss the most was an AT case with a built in audio amplifier and stereo speakers in the front of the case.
Have one of those, think it has a pentium or 486 in it. Just saw a local listing of such a system with a 200 mmx and voodoo2. Really cool looking. Like a beige audio amplifier.
@@RetroSpector78 Ohh i see... Mr. @Techmoan he's been lending his time machine again huh..... you went back to get this one right of the shelf.... :-D
Very nice one.. i think that it is the second best preserved after the one that @LGR took out of the box back in 2017..
A Model F keyboard would indeed be more period-appropriate, and is arguably even more comfortable to type on, though I do understand opting for the Model M due to its revised key layout.
Out of curiosity, are you running any software that makes use of the Model M's extra keys (e.g. F11 and F12)?
I love my model f, I just wish I had t he AT version. It's kinda hard to find XT to AT converters, there are some AT to XT ones, but they don't work the other direction. I've only ever found one supposed adapter and it's like 40 or 50 bucks I just can't bring myself to pay that.
I remember being a kid at 6 years old in 1984, using an 8088 at 4.77 mhz with only 640k memory on a Tandy 1000sx and I thought it was amazing lol. Trying to play Street Rod on it was horrible lmao
I totally missed that PC era and started out with a Philips MSX and later c64 and Amiga. My first PC was a 486.
@@RetroSpector78, still glad you get to touch it though. You have some amazing retro machines. I regret years ago throwing away my old ones. Every day, I hate myself lol ❤️
I needed a cold shower after seeing this beauty.
Could I please refer to these EGA captures in a future video of mine? Thank you 🙂
No problems ! Love your channel. Feel free !
@@RetroSpector78 Thank you 😀
There was a version of the CGA adapter that had the PLANTRONICS Chipset and allowed you to use 16 from 64 colors.
When I was a young kid in primary school our school had heaps of these
Holy shi... that's a monster HDD!
ooOoo 16 colors at the same time , lol those were the days of our lives
Like!
WoW ! It looks almost brand new LoL
I see some light and faint black marks lines on your monitor bezel. The should go off very easily with a slight application of magic eraser. I always use this Magic Eraser on IBM stuff and it works like miracle, without damaging their very sturdy plastic.
@RetroSpector78 If I am not mistaken the issue is with the ISA bus and related components. On newer 286 boards (that support 16mhz+ CPUs) the bus has it's own crystal oscillator so it can run at a fixed 8mhz. 10mhz is about the upper limit the IBM 5170 can handle on the bus, some have gotten lucky with 12mhz (24mhz crystal) but I wouldn't chance it with such old hardware. At the end of the day the system was designed for either a 6 or 8mhz CPU. Trying to upgrade it is pointless especially given how easy/cheap it is to get a newer 286 board and build a separate, faster system and keep the venerable 5170 original/stock.
I would put an 8mhz CPU back in there and keep that 16mhz part and adapter for another project.
I have a 5170 and also a 5162. I always preferred the rounded look of the XT, so having the power of an AT+ in a PC/XT case. I always felt that the AT looked like a big boring industrial looking slab. No nice lines.
PS: I don't recall the 5170 supporting 1.44mb drives , just 720k, without replacing the BIOS at least.
Latest bios IBM released for the machine introduced support for 1.44mb drives. Also have both machines. Still prefer the 5170 though :)
@@RetroSpector78 sorry yes, just watched the video to the end now, saw your remark in there about it. Wasn't aware that the last BIOS supported it, thanks for that.
I really miss the 80’s
IBM PC's after the AT just could not compete.
Didn't know they made IBM monitors in Finland. Maybe manufactured by Nokia (or Salora actually)? Neat.
Valco Oy (company founded in cooperation with the government, Salora and Hitachi) started manufacturing tubes in 1976 and stopped production in 1979. They only produced around a thousand tubes under that period because of complications in the production line and company mismanagement, so it's no wonder you haven't heard about monitors made in Finland
Nokia (former Mobira Oy) were only in mobile phones and telecommunications, but the license to the Nokia brand was sold off to other companies. There was even Nokia PC's manufactured by Fujitsu
@@DecibelAlex I thought the Nokia PC's were first made by Nokia, and Fujitsu later bought Nokia's PC business?
My Acer MPF-PC 1100/16 uses also the MC146818 as AP version and have two NEC D8237AC-5 and D8259ac-2. The Acer is a 386 from 1986
Usually in AT class without jumpers or dip switches you need to change crystal oscillator to change the clock and it should be 2 times the cpu speed.
Will try that in a future video but think some other components might also be a limiting factor.
That original HD is a real boat anchor. Not as bad as this one, though:
The 350 Disk Storage System was a major component of the IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) system, which was introduced in September 1956. It consisted of 40 platters and a dual read/write head on a single arm that moved up and down the stack of magnetic disk platters. Those 40 platters stored a whopping (for the time) 5MB of data.
images.macworld.com/images/features/graphics/156760-ibm350hd_slide.png
Think my wife would throw a fit if I took that one home :)
One issue that the AT and the XT have is that you need to have the setup disk to make changes in the BIOS, and it's inflexible at best. But I believe with GSetup you can also set it up, alternatively that long BASIC programme as well that you have to type in. Thankfully many other clone manufacturers used easier to access BIOS setups like AMIBIOS, Award and Phoenix.
The only problem for me: The Model M isn't QWERTZ. ;)
My Compaq Portable II has that issue of requiring the setup floppy, which has now become more of a problem now that the CMOS battery has finally run flat after all these years.
With the 5170, one common thing in the late 80s/early 90s was to swap out the original BIOS chips for AMIBIOS/Award BIOS, so you'd have builtin CMOS config. I'm not sure I can do that with the Compaq though. Or want to. I'll have to look into replacing the battery soon.
A beast of an AT! Thanks for sharing this. My first PC wasn't an IBM, but a Philips NM9100 PC/XT 8088 with an EGA card and I must say EGA was a lot better on these old PCs than the CGA my room-mates used.
Yeah CGA was horrible. Also got a couple of Philips machines but all xt class I think. Like having this one on my desk. Going to explore it some more I think.
@@RetroSpector78 It would be interesting to see if you could get it running at 12Mhz above the 8Mhz limit. Looking forward to some more on this machine!
@@lactobacillusprime I’ll do my best ...
OPTi 82C929? My old 486 PC had a very similar sound card with an OPTi 82C931.
ah, so this "clonk" sound the hard drive makes when powering down is actually normal ? it kinda scared me when my drive did this the first time.
I did use 286 and 386 clones when i was a kid but i have never owned a genuine IBM PC myself until a very nice person gave me his 5170 a couple months ago.
seems to be an early model because it came with a model F keyboard and has a 6 MHz CPU + FPU + 512k RAM on a type A mainboard.
it was also equipped with a 20mb MFM HDD, one 1.2mb floppy drive, hercules graphics and a 5151 green monitor to go with it - unfortunately, that monitor is 120V only and i don't have a step down converter so i did not bother with the monitor yet and just replaced the hercules with a VGA card.
besides the VGA card, i have done some other upgrades such as replacing the original IBM BIOS with a compatible AMI version because AFAIK the IBM BIOS version that was installed does not support 1.44mb floppy drives (of wich i also added one) and i also did not have the IBM setup diskette.
i also replaced the MFM controller with an IDE card + IDE to CF adapters and added a network card because i needed some way to install an XT-IDE boot ROM (without it, the machine refused to boot from CF cards or a 128 mb DOM that i also tried)
going IDE was cheaper than getting a SCSI2SD or similar + a SCSI card that has a boot ROM (i got my hands on a bunch of 16 bit adaptec SCSI cards and installed one in the 5170 but it lacks the boot ROM capability)
to put a cherry on top, i installed a snark barker (sound blaster clone, for those who don't know already) that i soldered together myself
as it stands right now, i think the machine has about everything you'd want in a 286 except some more RAM.
i have two isa slots left on the mainboard but because i have two CF adapters installed, i ran out of free slots on the back to screw more brackets in so i will either have to pull out the COM+LPT card and pay crazy collector prices for one of these COM+LPT+RAM cards you just showed in the video or wire up something similar on an isa dev board with no bracket, shove it into one of the few remaining free isa slots and somehow attach the card to a CF adapter bracket so it does not wobble around and rub against another card causing a short or something.
The "clunk" was normal after powering-down old MFM hard drives. At the time there was also small utility programs like PARK.EXE or SHUTDOWN.EXE which would tell the drive to park its heads, and then you'd switch off the machine. Supposedly this was "safer" than parking the drive by powering it off with the red switch on the side, though I'm dubious of that claim. It may be that some drives occasionally failed to auto-park when you removed power, though I never experienced that at the time. And parking the drive heads was only really important if you were going to move the PC.
Try to change master oscilator crystal to 32 mhz one. Maybe this is limiting the cpu to 8 mhz - Frequency devided by 2
9:49 what game is that called? The car one?