Thank you for all of the cool stuff you do with IBM machines and MCA related machines. I have a PC386SX/MC-20 that I never would have gotten booting if you hadn't shared your video on it with the links to a website that has the reference disk images. Now that machine is a project machine and I will be building my own MCA Snark Barker for it. And thank you to @Epictronics1 for all of the cool PS/1 videos. I was always fascinated with these machines when I was growing up but they were far out of the range of my family.
I am constantly amazed by the magnificent engineering in these machines. They are made with the same care as a mainframe. The disk chassis is a thing of beauty. The field tech would pull off the side panel, release the drive, and put a new one in. Way before hot swap front mounted drives. And the mechanical build quality is just incredibly robust.
You did get premium quality for a premium price. Not much use for the average Joe or basement frankenhacker, but if you had the dough you got the best.
Even people folks who know what drive A: is will often not know where drive B: is. You really had to be there at the time, or use these systems in the retro hobby, to understand. If you have two physical floppy drives then they are A: and B:, but if you only have ONE floppy drive then it is *both* A: and B: B: is effectively a virtual floppy drive and DOS will remember context for both. That's the reason you sometimes see the message "Insert disk FOR drive A" rather than "Insert disk IN drive A" or similar. That's because there is an "Insert disk FOR drive B"
XGA was the follow-on to the ground-breaking 8514/A system, the first affordable hi-res (1024x768x256 colors interlaced) display option for PCs. It was something like $5000, which was a crazy bargain. At the time I was writing code for a dedicated graphics display with the same specs - that unit cost $12000 and was shared to several computers, only one of which could use it at a time of course. This PC needs the matching 8514/a display! The XGA/2 can do non-interlaced 1024x768x256.
This is wonderful how you bring back all these memories. I fondly recall having to set irq (interrupts for anyone who doesn't know) and com ports, and they can't conflict with one another either ha or it'll be a bad time, then before you even consider adding a card you should be sure you have the driver diskette or if you were lucky on a cd-rom later on.. I am only 1:15 into the video so far and remember all the order of operations when working on unknown systems back in the day, if you missed a step or went in the wrong order sometimes you would have a failure of something else not even what you were attempting to do. So good! Plug n Play (or plug and pray as I say) made things SO much better and easier, but very much took the fun out of things, as did the advent of the internet and being able to find obscure drivers and manuals for just about everything ever created, well except that ONE motherboard you can't figure out the jumper settings for 33mhz clock speed haha
Oh!! I squealed with joy after you found that patch and success with the original problem!!! So good!! Props to Major Tom!!! edit: Also wow 16mb is very impressive to have on that 386 DX machine (when it works at least)!! I was lucky to have 4mb on my 386sx25 back in the olden days. I would have killed to quadrupled my ram back then!
I wish I had working 1MB simms for my 386DX-40. All I could find out of my horde of 30 pin simms that worked with the board were 4MB simms. I would prefer 8MB in the machine because it will boot faster and I don't know many programs that will use more than 8MB for a 386.
There are a LOT of large multi-GB later generation SCSI HDDs available at the usual places for under $30. The later drives are SCA80. You can get an adapter that converts from SCA80 to the slightly older 68 pin SCSI connector then use another adapter to convert 68 pin to the old-school 50 pin SCSI. This also requires a 68 wire SCSI cable. I didn't look recently but there may be adapters that go from SCA80 to 50 pin directly. My Amiga 3000 runs a 10000 RPM 76GB SCA drive. The drive is large enough to hold the entire ~50GB Amiga software library :-)
I've seen capacitors like those in the past. They were in a Sega Game Gear. The people online were correct. The usual method of replacing these kinds of caps is to use through hole caps and lay them down on their side.
those old caps are through holes they stuffed into plastic shells, and the other metal bit is indeed just pad to keep the other end stuck to the board. the whole idea is low profile in an era where they didn't really make super low profile electrolytics. you can find them in sega game gears, too.
Interesting - the "encapsulated" :) caps are surely made that way so the primitive robots of the day could place them on the board. How interesting, I had never seen those before! Or wasn't paying attention!
The robots of that day were not primative at all. They were most likely using Fanuc CNC controls (in USA they were branded GE or GE-Fanuc). Those robots use the same G-code programming language that is common even today on the very latest CNC machines. I know this because I worked as a CNC Programmer for ~30 years, now retired) and saw the very early machines back in the late 70's and they were very sophisticated even ~45 years ago. The IBM manufacturing plant would have been state-of-the-art with no expenses spared.
I always call those caps around the 21:50 mark "fake tantalums". because at first glance, they can be confused with some types of tantalum capacitors. And yes, they can do hideous amounts of damage to the PCB.
Man, I remember working on some PS/2 systems like that, way back when. It's frustrating how IBM made everything custom to only their own ecosystem. And of course, it showed, because where are they now? Where are the MCA slots and funky brackets now? :) I guess we did get the PS/2 keyboard/mouse port out of it, so that's something.
15:05 I just found an identical 9GB IBM SCSI HDD here that was given to me ~10 years ago. It didn't work back then. I just noticed at least 10 pins are loose with cracked solder joints on the SCSI connector where it solders to the PCB. I resoldered them with absolute certainty that it would be fixed and working.... plugged it in and it still doesn't work lol. I set the jumpers like you had it set at 15:30 and it locks up so I removed jumper at position 6 (auto termination) and it gets into the SCSI card bios utility but doesn't detect the drive. Oh well, I still have about a dozen other SCSI drives here just laying around.
I've seen electrolytic capacitors like the ones that were on your CD ROM drive most often in Sega Game Gears. They pretty much are through-hole types that are packaged in a way to be surface mounted.
May not help the games, but a 387 will speed up Windows 3.1/WFW 3.11 graphical performance. Windows will use the 387 for speeding up the trig functions used to draw shapes and windows/buttons.
Yes, I remember the frustration with the reference disk when I installed my XGA-2. All the time I watched you struggle with it, I wanted to yell "get the XGAOPT.exe file and upgrade the reference disk." For more fun, you might try some of the IBM upgrade cards that do not have ROM... I love it when people see the RAM count up to 4 MB (my current planar memory) then they think "OK, 4 MB, not bad for a 386." Then the cards initialize and they see the POST messages from the network card and SCSI card, then the memory count comes back and counts up to my current 16 MB! This really confuses people... Only drawback is I can lose the "track 0" voodoo that the reference disk uses to replace the ROM sometimes if I re-partition my boot drive. Supposedly there is a way around this with a new ADF, but the new ADF did not fix this for me.
At 18:48 you say you tried multiple RAM sticks on your SIMMply Logic board, but only those two already installed would work. When trying to upgrade the RAM on my PS/ValuePoint, I had the same issue when trying a bunch of 72 pin modules. The ONLY ones I could get to work were IBM modules that had the FRU # 92F0105 code, just like the ones you have on your SIMMply Logic. After discussing this with a RAM vendor, they explained to me that IBM "PS" machines (PS/1, PS/2 or PS/ValuePoint) will only accept RAM modules with certain specific FRU codes (FRU stands for IBM's "Field Replacement Unit"), and it seems the FRU code for 4MB sticks has to be 92F0105 for machines of the "PS" line (8 or 16MB modules will likely have different FRU codes).
I have the same problem with the Model 70 project. I can't even POST that machine past the RAM error because I don't have any RAM. Someone needs to figure out what's different with these modules so we can hack them.
@@Epictronics1 Indeed! I wonder what kind of extra logic IBM put on these modules to restrict compatibility. As it is now, these types of FRU RAM cost at least twice the price of other regular 72 pin RAM on eBay because of their scarcity. At any rate, if you use these RAM sticks from your SIMMply Logic board on your Model 70, it should post just fine.
@@IOSam The SIMMply logic board probably honors IBM presence detect bits, which use a series of resistors on the RAM to declare its capabilities. You can hack true parity SIMMs to make them into "IBM SIMMs," there is a page describing how to do this on the Ardent Tool.
@@userlandiaLet me just start by saying that I'm a big fan of your channel (loved the UK "retro computing travel log")! Second, this RAM hack for PS/2s would make a rather interesting video!!! ;)
You need to reroute that SCSI cable so that the HDD is connected to the last physical connector on the cable (furthest from the controller). I can see visually that the termination resistors are not installed on the CDR drive. So, it would stand to reason you have termination enabled on the hard drive. The terminated device needs to be at the physical extreme of the cable for proper signal integrity.
Just out of curiosity, do you have any ambition to also look into IBM's Power PCs (running AIX)? The two that I'm personally acquainted with are the 7025-F50 (a.k.a. the beast... at least where I used to work) or 43P-240 (the beast compacted into workstation form and finally painted black).
A 3D Printer is a great way to print various brackets like a 5.25 to 3.5 mount. But I'm sure lots of people have already pestered you about 3D printers before :P
@@Epictronics1 I've got an SV06+, but it's old by now, the 07 and 07+ aren't quite the same but they come with Klipper ahead of time. The newest model is the 08 which looks really cool but also kinda expensive. If you want something that's generally easier to use but also kinda limited in upgradeability, there's the Bambu Labs printers, I've also used those, but they're a bit more expensive, and no 3D printer is truly entirely plug and play I find, tho they come the closest.
That the only thing I hated about classic IBMs and Compaqs, No BIOS access or configuration without a disk. Id rather use dip switches and the good old built-in BIOS setup. Alot of clones were doing this as far back as the 286. MCA was even worse. prolly one of the reasons it quickly lost out to PCI.
I have seen those same caps in the plastic housing in my IBM ThinkPad 700. Unfortunately all of them leaked and completely destroyed the Inverter Board for the LCD backlight.
Stick Windows NT 3.51/4 on the rest of the HDD space. Would be excruciatingly slow on a 386 😁. Those SIMMS on the ram expander card have 9 chips on them. Could be that it requires ECC/Parity SIMMS to be installed.
I plan to install NT on the Model 56 SLC2 I mentioned in the video. Because I have an MCA sound card that only works under NT. That should be a fun video. The difficult part is going to be to find a good game that runs under NT
If you know the size measurements on the bezel that you need including the cut out size for the drive to stick through, I am sure there are plenty of people here who have a 3d printer, me included that could print one for you. I fear that I wouldn't be able to match the color of the PS/1 but it would be paintable. A print that size can't be more than about 3 hours of time to print, and if I have to build the bezel as well, maybe another hour for that?
XM-3401 is 1994. The Model 80 was made between 1987-1990. As I said in another comment there are no period correct internal CD drives made in those years. The drives that were made then were external, large and very expensive.
My SCUMM VM folder contains 5GB of Lucas Arts adventures, plus Discworld 1 & 2 and Simon the Sorcerer 1 & 2... so filling up your 9GB drive shouldn't be "difficult". Although, some of the later entries in the SCUMM catalogue (such as Monkey 3) might be beyond the capabilities of a 386.
@@Epictronics1 Of course, the 5GB also contains the data that is usually left on the respective CDs. So, you might still be alright... unless of course you want to go beyond just Lucas Arts in your SCUMM catalogue.
CDrom but no digital sound support is far from ideal you miss out on all speech in the talkie cdrom versions of Adventure games and the ocasional use of voice in floppy games. Options are limited because of MCA but one of those parallel port devices like a covox/dss clone might be useful if getting a MCA Sound blaster compatible is too expensive.
@@awilliams1701 It won't do much because of the high heat the flux will disappear quickly. If you want to make part removal easier add some leaded solder.
@@g4z-kb7ct or low melt solder. But I've seen plenty of videos with and without flux and flux always makes it easier. (including videos where they added flux to make it easier)
@@Epictronics1 meh. I run my C64 on a 4K monitor. It still looks and feels analog, but it's not blurry, it doesn't hurt my ears and it doesn't hurt my eyes from the flicker. lol I Hate CRTs. I always have. At one time they were a necessary evil.
I thought the last one was going to kill me it was 32". My dad gave it to me. I wasn't sure I wanted it. I rarely used it. I already had 19" LCD's for my computer. I don't think it was used much after I got it. But even with 2 people carrying it, carrying it felt like death. LMAO
10:40 it looks like there is something wrong with your reference, I would make an exact duplicate of it and see if you can try again with that configuration stuff
These MCA based IBM pc's may be interesting and special as they are so rare and odd in their system configurations and behavior. A mayor drawback is that to find good performing cards for having a decent 386 or 486 system with it as they are insanly rare, and if they exist for sale, will probably cost a fortune to achive. That is why I stay away from these MCA based computers, and rather aim for collecting standardized ISA, EISA and VLB 386's and 486's. It's a lot easier and cheaper to get parts for and to find drivers to than for MCA adapters that are proprietary parts for IBM's only, not to mention the psu's too if they should fail as they also use odd connectors for the motherboard. My builds are instead one 386DX-33, running on two IDE to CF cards of 512MB's, 8MB 70ns ram at the moment, and has a 2MB diamond Speedstar 64 ISA gpu, a ESS 968 soundcard with the IDE cd reader connected to it. Runs MS-DOS 5 and Win 3.1 with mods from Win3.0a MME add-on's. My 486 is a DX4-120MHz (have one DX5-133MHz cpu too), with 32MB 60nm memory, two IDE CF cards as my 386 pc, and a 4MB VLB S3 P86C928 gpu, a real SB16 soundcard from 1993 (with volume wheel at the slot side), a 4x speed caddy loaded scsi cd reader from 1994 on a ISA adapter. Runs MS-DOS 6.22 with mods from dos 6.0, and Win 3.11 WFW for the networking extras. They do pretty well in dos games and softwares.
@@Epictronics1 Thanks. A more period correct gaming pc of the 80's would be a 286 based system, as the 386 pc that was shown in the video probably came around the early 90's you have. I got one IBM model 8555 from 1989-90 with a 16MHz 386SX pc with an 80MB ESDI HDD and 4MB built into it. The psu failed in it once, and even though I've repaired a few switched power supplies before, I couldn't manage to get that psu working again with its original board. It just powered on for like 2 seconds and then died, despite all original capacitors were good and measured good esr and capacitance within the tolerances. So I ended up finding a new cheap a*s psu at 200W, purchased it and took the pcb out of it, desoldered the ATX harness from it and mounted the harness of the IBM's psu to the new pcb (found a pin-out map to connect the right pin for the right voltages), and tweaked the psu case for the IBM to fit the new circuitboard, and connected the green and one black wire to the switch for powering on the psu. Mounted it all back into the IBM and got it working again, despite not having the -5V feeding. The Dallas RTC chip was also dead, so I grinded two slits into it on one side and soldered a CR2032 socket with a new battery onto it, so that it now stores the time and settings of the bios again. So I'm about to have that computer fully restored to sell it later as I don't have any need for it, and is now working.
There are no period-correct CD drives for the Model 80. CD drives for PCs were not widely available until the mid 90's. There were earlier drives but they were largely dismissed as useless (for example the Commodore CDTV... no one knew what to do with the CD media format in 1991/92 and it failed). Even so something early would use a proprietary interface and it would be external and be the size of that Mouser box. check the movie License to Kill office scene at the beginning with Felix for a view of a period correct 1987 external CD drive. The CD drive you are using is not an early drive. By the late 90's all drives were tray types. The caddy type is just for those people who had or liked caddies but by the late 90's they were completely abandoned in favor of tray versions and those people were just hanging on to that old tech by their fingernails hehe! If you want a tray-based Sony SCSI CD drive look for a CDU76S. I have a couple here they are dated 1996. I have them because they were used in some arcade games of that era.
Yeah, a CDROM drive would definitely have been a late upgrade to these machines. The bezel I mentioned in the video must have been designed for a floppy drive upgrade/downgrade. The challenge with this build is to find a drive made as close to 1992 as possible that also works mounted vertically.
@@Epictronics1 Tray drives work vertically. They have 4 little rotating things on the tray that can be moved to hold the disc in place. Once the tray shuts the disc is held by the spindle and will work even upside down. The closest period-correct CD drive might be the AppleCD 300 which is a SCSI caddy CD drive made in 1990. If I were you I would stick to something newer like a Sony CRX140S or the previously mentioned CDU76S or another Sony model. I have a CRX140S 4X SCSI writer tray loading drive plugged into an external SCSI box connected to my Amiga 3000 and it works great.
This is not a 1987 Model 80, it's a 1990 model 80 (type 3 planar), and IBM definitely listed part numbers for CD-ROM drive options (and a mounting bracket kit with front bezel) in the October 30 1990 announcement letter for this machine. I don't know what mechanisms the numbers correspond to exactly, but for this one there does exist a period-correct CD-ROM.
The Model 80 restoration video here: ua-cam.com/video/o6b9dE5wht4/v-deo.html
Support me on patreon.com/Epictronics
Thanks for the shout-out at @17:56!
Thanks for identifying the card!
Thank you for all of the cool stuff you do with IBM machines and MCA related machines. I have a PC386SX/MC-20 that I never would have gotten booting if you hadn't shared your video on it with the links to a website that has the reference disk images. Now that machine is a project machine and I will be building my own MCA Snark Barker for it. And thank you to @Epictronics1 for all of the cool PS/1 videos. I was always fascinated with these machines when I was growing up but they were far out of the range of my family.
@@helldog3105 Thanks! I don't want to spoil anything, but you will probably like one of the three upcoming videos...
I am constantly amazed by the magnificent engineering in these machines. They are made with the same care as a mainframe. The disk chassis is a thing of beauty. The field tech would pull off the side panel, release the drive, and put a new one in. Way before hot swap front mounted drives. And the mechanical build quality is just incredibly robust.
You did get premium quality for a premium price. Not much use for the average Joe or basement frankenhacker, but if you had the dough you got the best.
I totally agree. These machines are beautiful and built to last.
Even people folks who know what drive A: is will often not know where drive B: is. You really had to be there at the time, or use these systems in the retro hobby, to understand.
If you have two physical floppy drives then they are A: and B:, but if you only have ONE floppy drive then it is *both* A: and B: B: is effectively a virtual floppy drive and DOS will remember context for both.
That's the reason you sometimes see the message "Insert disk FOR drive A" rather than "Insert disk IN drive A" or similar. That's because there is an "Insert disk FOR drive B"
XGA was the follow-on to the ground-breaking 8514/A system, the first affordable hi-res (1024x768x256 colors interlaced) display option for PCs. It was something like $5000, which was a crazy bargain. At the time I was writing code for a dedicated graphics display with the same specs - that unit cost $12000 and was shared to several computers, only one of which could use it at a time of course. This PC needs the matching 8514/a display! The XGA/2 can do non-interlaced 1024x768x256.
Wow, that's one expensive card! I actually have an 8514/A card set aside for the Model 50 project but I'm still looking for the matching display.
This is wonderful how you bring back all these memories. I fondly recall having to set irq (interrupts for anyone who doesn't know) and com ports, and they can't conflict with one another either ha or it'll be a bad time, then before you even consider adding a card you should be sure you have the driver diskette or if you were lucky on a cd-rom later on.. I am only 1:15 into the video so far and remember all the order of operations when working on unknown systems back in the day, if you missed a step or went in the wrong order sometimes you would have a failure of something else not even what you were attempting to do. So good! Plug n Play (or plug and pray as I say) made things SO much better and easier, but very much took the fun out of things, as did the advent of the internet and being able to find obscure drivers and manuals for just about everything ever created, well except that ONE motherboard you can't figure out the jumper settings for 33mhz clock speed haha
I just realized, maybe there is a conflict with that RAM card...
Oh!! I squealed with joy after you found that patch and success with the original problem!!! So good!! Props to Major Tom!!!
edit: Also wow 16mb is very impressive to have on that 386 DX machine (when it works at least)!! I was lucky to have 4mb on my 386sx25 back in the olden days. I would have killed to quadrupled my ram back then!
Yeah, Tom has some serious skills with these machines. It was very rewarding to finally see it work after days of troubleshooting :)
I wish I had working 1MB simms for my 386DX-40. All I could find out of my horde of 30 pin simms that worked with the board were 4MB simms. I would prefer 8MB in the machine because it will boot faster and I don't know many programs that will use more than 8MB for a 386.
Excellent attention to detail how you synchronised the end of the phrase in the Monkey Island theme music with the end of the video! 🎉
Thanks :)
Drive and data cards normally go in the longer! 32 bit video and audio go in shorter 16 bit MCA slot
I have a model 70 (same CPU) that had all these same issues :)
My Model 70 has a bad PSU. It will return in a repair video :)
There are a LOT of large multi-GB later generation SCSI HDDs available at the usual places for under $30. The later drives are SCA80. You can get an adapter that converts from SCA80 to the slightly older 68 pin SCSI connector then use another adapter to convert 68 pin to the old-school 50 pin SCSI. This also requires a 68 wire SCSI cable. I didn't look recently but there may be adapters that go from SCA80 to 50 pin directly. My Amiga 3000 runs a 10000 RPM 76GB SCA drive. The drive is large enough to hold the entire ~50GB Amiga software library :-)
I ordered an SCA80 to 50pin adapter two weeks ago from China :) I plan to try it out on a PS/2 system :)
So, you were having trouble with Tribbles?
:)
Love this beautiful ibm build and your skillful restoration! 😊
Thanks!
I've seen capacitors like those in the past. They were in a Sega Game Gear.
The people online were correct. The usual method of replacing these kinds of caps is to use through hole caps and lay them down on their side.
Beautiful work Roman!
Thanks!
those old caps are through holes they stuffed into plastic shells, and the other metal bit is indeed just pad to keep the other end stuck to the board. the whole idea is low profile in an era where they didn't really make super low profile electrolytics. you can find them in sega game gears, too.
Shaping up to be quite the sexy machine!
Close to perfection!
Interesting - the "encapsulated" :) caps are surely made that way so the primitive robots of the day could place them on the board. How interesting, I had never seen those before! Or wasn't paying attention!
The robots of that day were not primative at all. They were most likely using Fanuc CNC controls (in USA they were branded GE or GE-Fanuc). Those robots use the same G-code programming language that is common even today on the very latest CNC machines. I know this because I worked as a CNC Programmer for ~30 years, now retired) and saw the very early machines back in the late 70's and they were very sophisticated even ~45 years ago. The IBM manufacturing plant would have been state-of-the-art with no expenses spared.
I always call those caps around the 21:50 mark "fake tantalums". because at first glance, they can be confused with some types of tantalum capacitors.
And yes, they can do hideous amounts of damage to the PCB.
Man, I remember working on some PS/2 systems like that, way back when. It's frustrating how IBM made everything custom to only their own ecosystem. And of course, it showed, because where are they now? Where are the MCA slots and funky brackets now? :) I guess we did get the PS/2 keyboard/mouse port out of it, so that's something.
Marvelous video, as usual!
Thank you!
15:05 I just found an identical 9GB IBM SCSI HDD here that was given to me ~10 years ago. It didn't work back then. I just noticed at least 10 pins are loose with cracked solder joints on the SCSI connector where it solders to the PCB. I resoldered them with absolute certainty that it would be fixed and working.... plugged it in and it still doesn't work lol. I set the jumpers like you had it set at 15:30 and it locks up so I removed jumper at position 6 (auto termination) and it gets into the SCSI card bios utility but doesn't detect the drive. Oh well, I still have about a dozen other SCSI drives here just laying around.
That's a bummer. They seem to be nice and silent drives. My jumpers in the video were set to ID3. I moved them off-camera to change to ID6.
I get great joy out of reusing Apple branded hard drives. I'm a little younger so it's mainly SATA. I've even snuck them into a RAID array!
Yep, that 1gb partition should be more than enough space. I mean who is ever going to need 9gb of drive space? 😉
I've seen electrolytic capacitors like the ones that were on your CD ROM drive most often in Sega Game Gears. They pretty much are through-hole types that are packaged in a way to be surface mounted.
May not help the games, but a 387 will speed up Windows 3.1/WFW 3.11 graphical performance. Windows will use the 387 for speeding up the trig functions used to draw shapes and windows/buttons.
Thanks for sharing. I'm planning to run 3.11 on this machine
fantastic vid as always
Thanks :)
Yes, I remember the frustration with the reference disk when I installed my XGA-2. All the time I watched you struggle with it, I wanted to yell "get the XGAOPT.exe file and upgrade the reference disk."
For more fun, you might try some of the IBM upgrade cards that do not have ROM... I love it when people see the RAM count up to 4 MB (my current planar memory) then they think "OK, 4 MB, not bad for a 386." Then the cards initialize and they see the POST messages from the network card and SCSI card, then the memory count comes back and counts up to my current 16 MB! This really confuses people...
Only drawback is I can lose the "track 0" voodoo that the reference disk uses to replace the ROM sometimes if I re-partition my boot drive. Supposedly there is a way around this with a new ADF, but the new ADF did not fix this for me.
16MB is a sweet amount of RAM for this machine. We need to figure out how to make it work!
Heh, I'm a sucker for noisy hard drives if you can believe that!
MFM drive noises are music to my ears, Quantum drives from the 90s, not so much :)
At 18:48 you say you tried multiple RAM sticks on your SIMMply Logic board, but only those two already installed would work. When trying to upgrade the RAM on my PS/ValuePoint, I had the same issue when trying a bunch of 72 pin modules. The ONLY ones I could get to work were IBM modules that had the FRU # 92F0105 code, just like the ones you have on your SIMMply Logic.
After discussing this with a RAM vendor, they explained to me that IBM "PS" machines (PS/1, PS/2 or PS/ValuePoint) will only accept RAM modules with certain specific FRU codes (FRU stands for IBM's "Field Replacement Unit"), and it seems the FRU code for 4MB sticks has to be 92F0105 for machines of the "PS" line (8 or 16MB modules will likely have different FRU codes).
I have the same problem with the Model 70 project. I can't even POST that machine past the RAM error because I don't have any RAM. Someone needs to figure out what's different with these modules so we can hack them.
@@Epictronics1 Indeed! I wonder what kind of extra logic IBM put on these modules to restrict compatibility. As it is now, these types of FRU RAM cost at least twice the price of other regular 72 pin RAM on eBay because of their scarcity.
At any rate, if you use these RAM sticks from your SIMMply Logic board on your Model 70, it should post just fine.
@@IOSam The SIMMply logic board probably honors IBM presence detect bits, which use a series of resistors on the RAM to declare its capabilities. You can hack true parity SIMMs to make them into "IBM SIMMs," there is a page describing how to do this on the Ardent Tool.
@@userlandiaLet me just start by saying that I'm a big fan of your channel (loved the UK "retro computing travel log")! Second, this RAM hack for PS/2s would make a rather interesting video!!! ;)
@@IOSam Thanks! Someone braver than me will have to do those mods, but they're not impossible.
Great video
Thanks!
You need to reroute that SCSI cable so that the HDD is connected to the last physical connector on the cable (furthest from the controller). I can see visually that the termination resistors are not installed on the CDR drive. So, it would stand to reason you have termination enabled on the hard drive. The terminated device needs to be at the physical extreme of the cable for proper signal integrity.
Thanks for noticing, We'll connect everything properly in the next installment
Just out of curiosity, do you have any ambition to also look into IBM's Power PCs (running AIX)? The two that I'm personally acquainted with are the 7025-F50 (a.k.a. the beast... at least where I used to work) or 43P-240 (the beast compacted into workstation form and finally painted black).
If I can find one, for sure!
Should cover the window on that eeprom 👀
I love it❤
I demand to see the ugly case!
lol. Your eyes are going to hurt!
@@Epictronics1 Challenge accepted. 👀
A 3D Printer is a great way to print various brackets like a 5.25 to 3.5 mount. But I'm sure lots of people have already pestered you about 3D printers before :P
I'm saving up for a printer
@@Epictronics1 I recommend a Sovol if you want something that's cheap and easy to tinker with.
@@Nukle0n Thanks. Any specific model?
@@Epictronics1 I've got an SV06+, but it's old by now, the 07 and 07+ aren't quite the same but they come with Klipper ahead of time. The newest model is the 08 which looks really cool but also kinda expensive.
If you want something that's generally easier to use but also kinda limited in upgradeability, there's the Bambu Labs printers, I've also used those, but they're a bit more expensive, and no 3D printer is truly entirely plug and play I find, tho they come the closest.
@@Nukle0n OK, great. I'll check them out. Thanks
That the only thing I hated about classic IBMs and Compaqs, No BIOS access or configuration without a disk. Id rather use dip switches and the good old built-in BIOS setup. Alot of clones were doing this as far back as the 286.
MCA was even worse. prolly one of the reasons it quickly lost out to PCI.
I have seen those same caps in the plastic housing in my IBM ThinkPad 700. Unfortunately all of them leaked and completely destroyed the Inverter Board for the LCD backlight.
Oh, that sucks. I'll check my TP 700. Thanks
Stick Windows NT 3.51/4 on the rest of the HDD space. Would be excruciatingly slow on a 386 😁.
Those SIMMS on the ram expander card have 9 chips on them. Could be that it requires ECC/Parity SIMMS to be installed.
I plan to install NT on the Model 56 SLC2 I mentioned in the video. Because I have an MCA sound card that only works under NT. That should be a fun video. The difficult part is going to be to find a good game that runs under NT
Great👍
Thanks!
@@Epictronics1 thanks
If you know the size measurements on the bezel that you need including the cut out size for the drive to stick through, I am sure there are plenty of people here who have a 3d printer, me included that could print one for you. I fear that I wouldn't be able to match the color of the PS/1 but it would be paintable. A print that size can't be more than about 3 hours of time to print, and if I have to build the bezel as well, maybe another hour for that?
A period correct SCSI CD-ROM would be the Toshiba XM-3401 which IBM sold as FRU 60G0879.
XM-3401 is 1994. The Model 80 was made between 1987-1990. As I said in another comment there are no period correct internal CD drives made in those years. The drives that were made then were external, large and very expensive.
I'll see if I can find one, thanks
@@g4z-kb7ct I'll get something made as close as possible. In 1994 some of these machines were still in use
@@Epictronics1 I have an external IBM SCSI CD ROM drive on my model 80 which is quite period correct
@@StevesTechShed That's very cool. I wouldn't mind having one of those too
that sony drive isn't early, it's from the late 90s. it's a burner after all. it's just a silly drive meant for people that have caddies.
Recommend computer name "Monolith" in honor of 2001 Space Odyssey;-)
very fitting :)
What was that plastic Amazon crap, you need the nice zinc coated wings that came with every 3.5” hdd I bought in the late 90’s 🎉
At least that 9.1GB drive wasn't a DGHS...those drives are known not to be particularly reliable.
All IBM drives were not very reliable. I remember the IBM Deskstar.... they were legendary for failing... known as IBM Deathstar hehe!
The frustrations you're experiencing is exactly why I quit using IBM products.
I almost want a hard drive with a motor head actuator for newer stuff
My SCUMM VM folder contains 5GB of Lucas Arts adventures, plus Discworld 1 & 2 and Simon the Sorcerer 1 & 2... so filling up your 9GB drive shouldn't be "difficult".
Although, some of the later entries in the SCUMM catalogue (such as Monkey 3) might be beyond the capabilities of a 386.
Ok, I better increase the size of that partition. I'll see if I can find something similar to seatools for these IBM SCSI drives
@@Epictronics1 Of course, the 5GB also contains the data that is usually left on the respective CDs. So, you might still be alright... unless of course you want to go beyond just Lucas Arts in your SCUMM catalogue.
Huh, I never knew they kept making caddy loading CD-ROM drives beyond the 1x or 2x era, let alone into the CD-R era. Very strange.
I was surprised too!
CDrom but no digital sound support is far from ideal you miss out on all speech in the talkie cdrom versions of Adventure games and the ocasional use of voice in floppy games. Options are limited because of MCA but one of those parallel port devices like a covox/dss clone might be useful if getting a MCA Sound blaster compatible is too expensive.
I'm not aware of a clone with CD audio for the MCA bus, but I'm hoping someone will make such a clone
I'm surprised you don't use flux when removing components. Seems like it would be easier
Sometimes I do. It depends on how crusty the solder is. This board was pretty clean
@@Epictronics1 I'd still use it anyway especially if you're only using air. Not that I have much experience in that area. lol
@@awilliams1701 It won't do much because of the high heat the flux will disappear quickly. If you want to make part removal easier add some leaded solder.
@@g4z-kb7ct or low melt solder. But I've seen plenty of videos with and without flux and flux always makes it easier. (including videos where they added flux to make it easier)
What is that empty socket to the right of the CPUs used for?
a 387 math co
yay LCD! So much much better!! lol
but it's not period correct! lol
@@Epictronics1 meh. I run my C64 on a 4K monitor. It still looks and feels analog, but it's not blurry, it doesn't hurt my ears and it doesn't hurt my eyes from the flicker. lol I Hate CRTs. I always have. At one time they were a necessary evil.
@@awilliams1701 No worries, just send all CRT displays to me🥰
@@Epictronics1 I threw them out years ago.
I thought the last one was going to kill me it was 32". My dad gave it to me. I wasn't sure I wanted it. I rarely used it. I already had 19" LCD's for my computer. I don't think it was used much after I got it. But even with 2 people carrying it, carrying it felt like death. LMAO
10:40 it looks like there is something wrong with your reference, I would make an exact duplicate of it and see if you can try again with that configuration stuff
yeah, it needed the update patch
Is it my imagination or is that CRT flickering more than CRTs usually do on your channel? lol
It actually did! some weird PS/2 flickering going on there for sure!
What's R440 for?
So weird that the 82385 cache controller is the same size as the 386 itself.
Yeah, it is. The first time I had a look inside a Model 70, I thought it was a 287
These MCA based IBM pc's may be interesting and special as they are so rare and odd in their system configurations and behavior.
A mayor drawback is that to find good performing cards for having a decent 386 or 486 system with it as they are insanly rare, and if they exist for sale, will probably cost a fortune to achive.
That is why I stay away from these MCA based computers, and rather aim for collecting standardized ISA, EISA and VLB 386's and 486's.
It's a lot easier and cheaper to get parts for and to find drivers to than for MCA adapters that are proprietary parts for IBM's only, not to mention the psu's too if they should fail as they also use odd connectors for the motherboard.
My builds are instead one 386DX-33, running on two IDE to CF cards of 512MB's, 8MB 70ns ram at the moment, and has a 2MB diamond Speedstar 64 ISA gpu, a ESS 968 soundcard with the IDE cd reader connected to it.
Runs MS-DOS 5 and Win 3.1 with mods from Win3.0a MME add-on's.
My 486 is a DX4-120MHz (have one DX5-133MHz cpu too), with 32MB 60nm memory, two IDE CF cards as my 386 pc, and a 4MB VLB S3 P86C928 gpu, a real SB16 soundcard from 1993 (with volume wheel at the slot side), a 4x speed caddy loaded scsi cd reader from 1994 on a ISA adapter.
Runs MS-DOS 6.22 with mods from dos 6.0, and Win 3.11 WFW for the networking extras.
They do pretty well in dos games and softwares.
Sounds like fun machines. Yeah, PS/2 systems are pretty hardcore to restore and upgrade
@@Epictronics1 Thanks.
A more period correct gaming pc of the 80's would be a 286 based system, as the 386 pc that was shown in the video probably came around the early 90's you have.
I got one IBM model 8555 from 1989-90 with a 16MHz 386SX pc with an 80MB ESDI HDD and 4MB built into it.
The psu failed in it once, and even though I've repaired a few switched power supplies before, I couldn't manage to get that psu working again with its original board.
It just powered on for like 2 seconds and then died, despite all original capacitors were good and measured good esr and capacitance within the tolerances.
So I ended up finding a new cheap a*s psu at 200W, purchased it and took the pcb out of it, desoldered the ATX harness from it and mounted the harness of the IBM's psu to the new pcb (found a pin-out map to connect the right pin for the right voltages), and tweaked the psu case for the IBM to fit the new circuitboard, and connected the green and one black wire to the switch for powering on the psu.
Mounted it all back into the IBM and got it working again, despite not having the -5V feeding.
The Dallas RTC chip was also dead, so I grinded two slits into it on one side and soldered a CR2032 socket with a new battery onto it, so that it now stores the time and settings of the bios again.
So I'm about to have that computer fully restored to sell it later as I don't have any need for it, and is now working.
19:40 Wrong memory size. You have 16384 with memory card installed and counter goes only to 16000.
This is expected behavior, 384K is reserved.
There are no period-correct CD drives for the Model 80. CD drives for PCs were not widely available until the mid 90's. There were earlier drives but they were largely dismissed as useless (for example the Commodore CDTV... no one knew what to do with the CD media format in 1991/92 and it failed). Even so something early would use a proprietary interface and it would be external and be the size of that Mouser box. check the movie License to Kill office scene at the beginning with Felix for a view of a period correct 1987 external CD drive. The CD drive you are using is not an early drive. By the late 90's all drives were tray types. The caddy type is just for those people who had or liked caddies but by the late 90's they were completely abandoned in favor of tray versions and those people were just hanging on to that old tech by their fingernails hehe! If you want a tray-based Sony SCSI CD drive look for a CDU76S. I have a couple here they are dated 1996. I have them because they were used in some arcade games of that era.
Yeah, a CDROM drive would definitely have been a late upgrade to these machines. The bezel I mentioned in the video must have been designed for a floppy drive upgrade/downgrade. The challenge with this build is to find a drive made as close to 1992 as possible that also works mounted vertically.
@@Epictronics1 Tray drives work vertically. They have 4 little rotating things on the tray that can be moved to hold the disc in place. Once the tray shuts the disc is held by the spindle and will work even upside down. The closest period-correct CD drive might be the AppleCD 300 which is a SCSI caddy CD drive made in 1990. If I were you I would stick to something newer like a Sony CRX140S or the previously mentioned CDU76S or another Sony model. I have a CRX140S 4X SCSI writer tray loading drive plugged into an external SCSI box connected to my Amiga 3000 and it works great.
This is not a 1987 Model 80, it's a 1990 model 80 (type 3 planar), and IBM definitely listed part numbers for CD-ROM drive options (and a mounting bracket kit with front bezel) in the October 30 1990 announcement letter for this machine. I don't know what mechanisms the numbers correspond to exactly, but for this one there does exist a period-correct CD-ROM.
@@g4z-kb7ct Ok, I actually have an AppleCD 300. But then I won't have one to use with my Macs :) I'll see if I can find another one
@@userlandia OK, Let's hope I can find one of those!
26:56 Oh well NOW I have to know how ugly the case is.
I can't possibly show it on camera. Your eyes are going to hurt lol