The Good, the Bad and the Less Than Totally Inspired (IBM PS/2 Model 50Z Overview/Demonstration)
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- Опубліковано 27 лют 2013
- Here is an in-depth look at the IBM PS/2 Model 50Z. This was originally an 80286 based computer, later upgraded to use an IBM 486SLC CPU provided as an upgrade kit from Kingston Technology. (Kingston Technology is still around, although they have definitely forgotten about their old products. Therefore I will be posting the files, an outline of the CPU card itself and scans of the manuals for the sake of preservation.)
If you should find a similar Kingston upgrade, especially those made for PLCC packaged processors, be very careful with it. They won't survive too many insertion and removal attempts! (The PGA style ones are much better in this regard.) It's also far too easy to not get them lined up correctly with unfortunate results. Please don't ask me how I know this.
I have a page on the SX Now! family of Kingston microprocessor upgrades:
www.walshcomptech.com/ps2/king...
The "Z" portion of the model number indicates zero wait state memory access. Due to differing clock speeds between the system CPU and other parts of the computer, wait states were often inserted to "even out" the differences. A wait state is just what it sounds like...the CPU is essentially put "on hold" and doing nothing while it waits for more data and work to do. Empirical evidence seems to suggest that the CPU upgrade will require the insertion of wait states so that the slower surrounding memory and system buses will continue to work with the faster CPU. (This does mean that in a way, the 286 could give better performance if its workload is largely disk or memory I/O based.)
In this video I also talk about taking a road sofa to Chicago, present incontrovertible evidence that old computers can really get your heart racing, explore the tool-less nature of the PS/2 (and, yes I know I was a bit hard on that floppy drive), and give a brief demonstration of this computer's software.
This system turned up on eBay and was brought to my attention by fellow UA-camr briant333: / briant333 . Given the rarity of PS/2s and the number of people looking for them, winning the auction came as a surprise.
The previous owner bought this system new, and from the looks of it, purchased it through IBM's academic program. The type/model (8550-Uxx) reflects this, as a leading U indicates a computer sold for "academic" use.
Tags: uxwbill IBM PS/2 Personal System/2 Model 50Z 8550 use demonstrate explore take apart tantalum capacitor explosion Kingston Technology SLC/Now CPU Upgrade
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"The IBM PS/2 series does toolless right. You just need this special tool."
Wait...what?!?
When I was in middle school, I fixed up a huge stack of these and gave them away to a bunch of students. Think I went through about 80 of them. I remember installing Windows 3.1 on them all, it actually run on them just fine. I tried a diskette install of Windows 95 on one, it was slow to install and slow to use. If I remember right, the Windows 95 diskette install was like 38 disks long.
Old computers are a great hobby. Cheaper then old cars and guns. Allot of great games and it is still fun to play flight simulater 1.0 on an 8086 or 286. Found a version of space invaders that uses 5k of mem and works on 8088 hardware. I always liked the ps/2 just from the way it is designed. I once got word 6.0 working on an original 50z with the 287 and 16 meg ram, max for the 286. Biggest pain for the ps/2 is when the battery dies you need to use the reference disks on startup.
Old vintage computers are what laid the path for new age computers. These machines are what my childhood was made of. I love these vintage machines.
Real computers have flip power switches.
Me and my dad was going to start our old Aptiva family computer that had been standing cold and sad in the basement collecting dust and dead bugs, so we took it up, vacuumed it, and plugged it in. Guess what it did... blew up! I was right behind it to put the cable in the PSU so i was looking right into it and dad turned it on right away so i didn't have time to crawl away to safety and let me tell ya'... that flash didn't help my already bad eyesight... must have been one of those capacitors
you never showed the cpu that was upgraded
No computer collector shall come of age until they hath seen thy magic smoke!
22 mpg for a car of that age, size and with that engine, plus the fact that US gallons are smaller, makes that very impressive!
These systems are virtually indestructible! In the late 90s, I've been given 2 PS/2 systems which I later traded in for a (then huge) hard drive of several hundred Megabytes. They were in lower cases, had 2 FD drives and were equipped with 8086 or 8088 CPUs. With one of them, I slid a screwdriver over the connectors of the RAM card while it was on. It was a sparkly experience, and of course crashed. Turning it off and back on again brought it back to life though. Try doing that with DDR3-RAM! ;)
A nice guy posted one of these on Craigslist in mint condition with all the peripherals and Windows 3.1 installed for FREE. I was fortunate enough to get there first....Now, I buy and resell computers as a small business, but I just can't bring myself to sell this one. It's definitely a great machine.
Its very cool that you post these videos .A lot of people just don`t have the appreciation for the older technology . I started having a interest in using and working on computers in the early 90s so seeing computers like this from the time is kind of cool . I have a mix of computers in my music studio that I use Ranging from 30 year old Commodores ,Pentium 1s IIs and IIIs as well as multicore modern computers . I still find it more of a kick and a challenge to work with and use the old stuff .
It's amazing how you learned all these details about these machines. I have a ps/2 tower that need the Dallas battery hack to get it to work again
I used to deal with these on a regular basis. The trick to working with the power supplies, is to unplug them and then turn the power supply ON. This will dissipate any power left in the rather large capacitors in this behemoth of a power supply back then.
Your videos are great. You seem to know what you're talking about and it's great hearing somebody talk about something with a lot of passion. Anyway, thanks for the videos.
Nice video. I have 2 PS/2 IBM Model 57 that were given to me. Fortunately, a friend gave me his set of W3.11 disks as I don't know what became of my original set of diskettes and any version of Windows after that seems to have found its way to the garbage pail.
I found mine in a dumpster almost seventeen years ago. I still have it. To get it running, I just had to replace the cmos battery and download the reference disk image still available from IBM 23 years after. That is true commitment to the customer, I'd think?
THANK YOU !! Great to see someone is taking time to preserve this stuff for the future. You just
Hi, very nice presentation and commentary. Good to see some old tech being preserved, keep up the good work. Most younger people now days do not appreciate older equipment and see last years model as old. I love some of the comments: Sofa of an automobile, tantrum capacitors. Cheers.
No idea why I clicked this video but you seem very knowledgeable and made me want an old computer... It would look nice with my retro gaming consoles. Nice machine and video.