In this video I mention something called a Greaseweazle - a really handy tool for connecting modern systems to old floppy drives via USB to allow reading and writing of all sorts of obscure old formats. I probably should've at least mentioned that, but anyway, it's arrived now so I'll be giving a demo in part 2. github.com/keirf/greaseweazle
for those that grew up during that time period - the ability to use a personal computer was a big deal. I remember my first time running programs on an IBM PC XT and IBM PC AT. Amazing!! Thanks for the video!
I was a lucky 2 year old to play this game when it was new, on powerful hardware for the time. My dad still has the 5.25 inch floppies in storage somewhere.
Nice video I was in college in the computer lab when I saw someone playing wolfenstein so I got a copy off them. Great game with all the secrets. I remember those mom hard drives weren’t too reliable and that was when I was in IT in the early 90s
What a way to introduce your 5162 to the channel! Gotta say it's a bit seeing Wolfenstein 3D being played in AdLib mode only. We were fortunate enough to have a Thunder Board (8-bit SoundBlaster clone) on our family PC, so that meant I got to hear the dogs barking and the guards yelling "achtung!". Looking forward to seeing what you do with your 5162 in future videos.
The sound in this game really was incredible for its day. I remember playing it using the PC speaker at the time and then a friend getting a SoundBlaster card - I was so blown away I dragged my dad around to my friend's house to show him! Sadly it didn't lead to him buying a SoundBlaster for our PC like I'd hoped 😂
Oh, it's critical to have something SB Pro compatible, so you get the stereo effects. :-D Speaking of the Thunder Board, though... I have one in an old Packard Bell 386SX/20 that I got a while back. It didn't sound quite right... Then, just last night, I was reading something on the DOS Days blog that mentioned that it's not exactly 100% SB 1.5/2.0 compatible, and that Wolf3D in particular had some noise issues. That was kind of a relief -- at least that means there isn't anything wrong with my card. (I hope!)
I might be a nerd but batteries like that always impress me. I've never seen that battery used in anything else, it's pretty amazing they make all these weird batteries still! Of course the 5162 is very cool, I never had a 286 machine but I always liked the look of those vs PS/2's.
I'm not sure what model 286 we had but it was late on around 1993 it had a relatively modern case and a VGA monitor. I remember I upgraded it at a fairy quick pace (386 & 486) as I wanted to play Doom after getting the FPS bug with Wolf 😁
As a kid, I took Wolf3D to school once, and tried to play it on the library PS/2 286s. I was shocked at how poorly it played, compared to the 386DX/40 we had at home.
Great project. I'm looking forward to the upgrades. On the keyboard error: I had a similar problem when I made my PS2->PC1512 adapter. Turns out that the PC resets the keyboard on boot by pulling the CLK line low, and it expects to receive 0xAA as a response. So all I had to do is to send 0xAA scancode when the uC detects low CLK.
10 min of goodness. Good video man. The noise you say also appears on the actual monitor eh? Fascinating. I have never seen anything like that apart when I was using a TV with the RF cable to use my ST and the cable would not always be a perfect fit/position. I had no idea this was possible on anything else. Was part of the video sped up? Thanks for sharing.
Sped up? I don't think so. Gameplay footage should be as-is, I wanted it to be an accurate representation. Yes, the interference is very strange indeed, I've never seen anything like it on any of my systems!
@@ctrlaltrees Sped up regarding the shots you are in. It looks like you are ready to beat the shit out of everyone with kung-fu. Perhaps I just need a nap. If you do manage to fix the issue with the interference, please let us know. Very curious.
@@ctrlaltrees ok I am watching the footage again, the speed looks normal this time. I am guessing some weird glitch while i was first watching it or something. NVM.
I had an 8Mhz Turbo XT back in those days. I would have killed for a 286. Now I have a 12Mhz 286 in my retro collection so this game shouldn't be a problem at all (just kidding).
That’s the IBM 5175 monitor, it has the cool ‘microwave oven’ styling of the IBM 5151, 5153 & 5154 monitors and could display 256 colors, out of a pallet of 4,096. It used the IBM PGC standard, but could be converted to VGA (and often was back in the day when that standard became dominant). They’re nigh on impossible to get hold of though. :(
Did GSETUP not work? Or were you not able to get that onto a disk? I'm interested in seeing if you tried the 1989 beta BIOS that was discovered the deletes the CPU speedcheck code.
I couldn't get it onto a disk, just had all sorts of issues trying to write 5.25" disks with various other machines. I now have a Greaseweazle I can hook up to the original drive so no longer an issue, and I'll be showing how that process works in part 2. Just waiting for some components to arrive. 🙂 I actually went with an AMI BIOS but I have come across the IBM beta that you mention. Maybe I should try burning it to some EPROMs?
I know that the Original Sound Blaster cards can be very expensive, and difficult to come by, so I'd recommend keeping an eye out for something like an early Aztech Sound Galaxy BX card, which is SB-compatible and even has a real Yamaha OPL2 chip. It's perfect for such an old machine. Just in case you want digitized sound and not only Adlib music. Thanks for the awesome content!
Thanks for the tip! I have an Orpheus sound card in another machine that I could've used but decided it was finally time I did something with my AdLib card. To be honest I actually played with the PC speaker back in the day as I'm sure many others did, I'll get some footage of that in part 2. 🙂
The NIC you put it seems to have a BNC connection rather than ethernet. Did I see that correctly and if so how easy is it to connect one to a modern ethernet cable?
BNC connectors were everywhere in the early-mid '90s. The IBM-compatible room at high school was connected to a NetWare server via those BNC style network cards (probably 10BASE2). I didn't see my first RJ45-style network until about 1996.
I have a Victor V286C with a 10Mhz 286 that I'm working on. I've picked up a couple of 16Mhz 286 CPU's to upgrade it. I'm assuming the process is similar and similarly complicated, so I'm eagerly awaiting your next video :) The weird thing is my Victor doesn't have any 10 or 20 Mhz crystals, so how it generates it's CPU clock is a bit of a mystery that I'm trying to work out.
Looks like a real pain to setup. Plus it's a big ask for "original" hardware that's 5-6 years older (and 10 year old tech) than the game. I bought Wolf3d back in the day and had a 286, but it was an IBM PS1. Ran beautifully and fast, but no damn sound card 😄 oh, the things we put up with back then!
Oh it certainly was! I'm sure a 1992-era 386 would've been much easier but where's the fun in that? Also like you say, fighting with old hardware to try to squeeze every last drop of performance out of it was something of an art form back then 😁
I’m really looking forward to watching your series on the IBM 5162 PC as this rare model doesn’t have a huge footprint on UA-cam. I’d be especially interested in how you manage memory within config.says and autoexec.bat to get the most conventional memory to run games. I’m struggling to get more than 570k free on my XT286, despite having a 1mb memory expansion card. It seems quite difficult on a 286 with EGA/VGA to manage memory (for me at any rate). I’ll try going over to PC DOS 2000 as you suggested to see if that better than the MSDOS 6.22 I’m currently running. I have quite a rarity as I have the IBM 5162 with a Model F AT keyboard (UK layout) and the IBM 5154 EGA monitor. I play EGA games on it (Lemmings and Commander Keen being a firm favourites) as they are period correct for this PC and run really well on it. I’m interested to see the mods you make to the XT286 to make it run VGA games.
Yes, VGA is definitely a bit of a stretch and in all honesty, once this is over I'll probably be putting it back to EGA and downgrading my 5150 to CGA so it's all period correct. I have a 486 DX4/100 that's perfect for the VGA stuff (in fact that's what I used to capture the Wolf3D footage right at the beginning of the video). But it's certainly interesting to see how far I can push this machine - and certainly something that 286 owners would've been doing at the time as well to squeeze out every last ounce of performance! 🙂
I had a 16-bit ISA card with 1MB simms on it a long time ago that would work with one of my old 386DX boards When you ran mem check, you could tell which 4MB were on the 32-bit main bus and which 4MB were running from the ISA card LOL but it was still fast and better than nothin!. I wonder if you can upgrade the memory to 2 or 4MB...If you can find one of those.
Why do you keep shaking your hands? You look like you've seen a video on how to be interesting which tells you to use gestures so now you do it compulsively.
In this video I mention something called a Greaseweazle - a really handy tool for connecting modern systems to old floppy drives via USB to allow reading and writing of all sorts of obscure old formats. I probably should've at least mentioned that, but anyway, it's arrived now so I'll be giving a demo in part 2. github.com/keirf/greaseweazle
for those that grew up during that time period - the ability to use a personal computer was a big deal. I remember my first time running programs on an IBM PC XT and IBM PC AT. Amazing!! Thanks for the video!
More hertz in the keyboard connector than in the computer 😳
Lovely video Rees. Even the second time round 😁
ooh I have been waiting for this vid series for a while! I love my 5162! can't wait to see part 2
I was a lucky 2 year old to play this game when it was new, on powerful hardware for the time. My dad still has the 5.25 inch floppies in storage somewhere.
Love it. Great memories of playing this game back then.
Worthy of archival for sure.
Nice video I was in college in the computer lab when I saw someone playing wolfenstein so I got a copy off them. Great game with all the secrets. I remember those mom hard drives weren’t too reliable and that was when I was in IT in the early 90s
Reminds me of the time I got banned from the school library for installing Doom on the PCs 😬
I love the old IBM machines. Also amazing to think that runs on a 286.
Wolfenstein 3D - what a classic!
Wolfenstein 3d got me interested in PC's. X-Wing was the nail in the coffin for the poor old Atari STE
using basic to poke at the computer's config to make it see the hard drive is a thing I never knew could be done
What a way to introduce your 5162 to the channel! Gotta say it's a bit seeing Wolfenstein 3D being played in AdLib mode only. We were fortunate enough to have a Thunder Board (8-bit SoundBlaster clone) on our family PC, so that meant I got to hear the dogs barking and the guards yelling "achtung!".
Looking forward to seeing what you do with your 5162 in future videos.
The sound in this game really was incredible for its day. I remember playing it using the PC speaker at the time and then a friend getting a SoundBlaster card - I was so blown away I dragged my dad around to my friend's house to show him! Sadly it didn't lead to him buying a SoundBlaster for our PC like I'd hoped 😂
mein leben
Oh, it's critical to have something SB Pro compatible, so you get the stereo effects. :-D
Speaking of the Thunder Board, though... I have one in an old Packard Bell 386SX/20 that I got a while back. It didn't sound quite right... Then, just last night, I was reading something on the DOS Days blog that mentioned that it's not exactly 100% SB 1.5/2.0 compatible, and that Wolf3D in particular had some noise issues. That was kind of a relief -- at least that means there isn't anything wrong with my card. (I hope!)
I might be a nerd but batteries like that always impress me. I've never seen that battery used in anything else, it's pretty amazing they make all these weird batteries still!
Of course the 5162 is very cool, I never had a 286 machine but I always liked the look of those vs PS/2's.
Oh yes! I wonder what else takes this type of battery? I've certainly never seen one before!
I'm not sure what model 286 we had but it was late on around 1993 it had a relatively modern case and a VGA monitor. I remember I upgraded it at a fairy quick pace (386 & 486) as I wanted to play Doom after getting the FPS bug with Wolf 😁
The early 6MHz machines like this were pretty rare so I imagine it would've been 8MHz or maybe even 12!
That's way more playable than I was expecting
As a kid, I took Wolf3D to school once, and tried to play it on the library PS/2 286s. I was shocked at how poorly it played, compared to the 386DX/40 we had at home.
Great project. I'm looking forward to the upgrades. On the keyboard error: I had a similar problem when I made my PS2->PC1512 adapter. Turns out that the PC resets the keyboard on boot by pulling the CLK line low, and it expects to receive 0xAA as a response. So all I had to do is to send 0xAA scancode when the uC detects low CLK.
Oh wow, that could save me a lot of debugging! Thanks so much for sharing. I'll see what I can do. 😁
10 min of goodness.
Good video man.
The noise you say also appears on the actual monitor eh? Fascinating. I have never seen anything like that apart when I was using a TV with the RF cable to use my ST and the cable would not always be a perfect fit/position. I had no idea this was possible on anything else.
Was part of the video sped up?
Thanks for sharing.
Sped up? I don't think so. Gameplay footage should be as-is, I wanted it to be an accurate representation.
Yes, the interference is very strange indeed, I've never seen anything like it on any of my systems!
@@ctrlaltrees Sped up regarding the shots you are in. It looks like you are ready to beat the shit out of everyone with kung-fu. Perhaps I just need a nap.
If you do manage to fix the issue with the interference, please let us know. Very curious.
@@ctrlaltrees ok I am watching the footage again, the speed looks normal this time. I am guessing some weird glitch while i was first watching it or something. NVM.
i used to decrease the render window on my 286 to get a decent fps .
Indeed, I went with the default size just to see what it was like and it's playable, but of course it could be shrunk even further!
I had an 8Mhz Turbo XT back in those days. I would have killed for a 286. Now I have a 12Mhz 286 in my retro collection so this game shouldn't be a problem at all (just kidding).
It'd be really cool if you somehow had that very rare IBM VGA monitor in the same styling as the 5153, etc. It'd fit even better with the machine.
That’s the IBM 5175 monitor, it has the cool ‘microwave oven’ styling of the IBM 5151, 5153 & 5154 monitors and could display 256 colors, out of a pallet of 4,096. It used the IBM PGC standard, but could be converted to VGA (and often was back in the day when that standard became dominant). They’re nigh on impossible to get hold of though. :(
Oh absolutely! One can never have too many monitors 😁
Did GSETUP not work? Or were you not able to get that onto a disk?
I'm interested in seeing if you tried the 1989 beta BIOS that was discovered the deletes the CPU speedcheck code.
I couldn't get it onto a disk, just had all sorts of issues trying to write 5.25" disks with various other machines. I now have a Greaseweazle I can hook up to the original drive so no longer an issue, and I'll be showing how that process works in part 2. Just waiting for some components to arrive. 🙂
I actually went with an AMI BIOS but I have come across the IBM beta that you mention. Maybe I should try burning it to some EPROMs?
I know that the Original Sound Blaster cards can be very expensive, and difficult to come by, so I'd recommend keeping an eye out for something like an early Aztech Sound Galaxy BX card, which is SB-compatible and even has a real Yamaha OPL2 chip. It's perfect for such an old machine.
Just in case you want digitized sound and not only Adlib music.
Thanks for the awesome content!
Thanks for the tip! I have an Orpheus sound card in another machine that I could've used but decided it was finally time I did something with my AdLib card. To be honest I actually played with the PC speaker back in the day as I'm sure many others did, I'll get some footage of that in part 2. 🙂
@@ctrlaltrees Yeah, I also only had PC Speaker in my 286.
Can't you resize the window so it runs faster on slower hardware? Half resolution might be more realistic on a 286.
Say amém, in 286 church!
Preach! 👏
The NIC you put it seems to have a BNC connection rather than ethernet. Did I see that correctly and if so how easy is it to connect one to a modern ethernet cable?
It has both. 🙂
Back in the 90s many cheap 10mbit hubs (not switches) came with both BNC and RJ45. I'm happy that I kept one all those years.
BNC connectors were everywhere in the early-mid '90s. The IBM-compatible room at high school was connected to a NetWare server via those BNC style network cards (probably 10BASE2). I didn't see my first RJ45-style network until about 1996.
I have a Victor V286C with a 10Mhz 286 that I'm working on. I've picked up a couple of 16Mhz 286 CPU's to upgrade it. I'm assuming the process is similar and similarly complicated, so I'm eagerly awaiting your next video :)
The weird thing is my Victor doesn't have any 10 or 20 Mhz crystals, so how it generates it's CPU clock is a bit of a mystery that I'm trying to work out.
For those recapping a graphics card, remember to only replace tantalums with tantalums, or the card may not work.
Lovely machine!
Thanks!
Looks like a real pain to setup. Plus it's a big ask for "original" hardware that's 5-6 years older (and 10 year old tech) than the game. I bought Wolf3d back in the day and had a 286, but it was an IBM PS1. Ran beautifully and fast, but no damn sound card 😄 oh, the things we put up with back then!
Oh it certainly was! I'm sure a 1992-era 386 would've been much easier but where's the fun in that? Also like you say, fighting with old hardware to try to squeeze every last drop of performance out of it was something of an art form back then 😁
iirc it ran playable enough on friends 286 at, at 12 mhz.
I’m really looking forward to watching your series on the IBM 5162 PC as this rare model doesn’t have a huge footprint on UA-cam. I’d be especially interested in how you manage memory within config.says and autoexec.bat to get the most conventional memory to run games. I’m struggling to get more than 570k free on my XT286, despite having a 1mb memory expansion card. It seems quite difficult on a 286 with EGA/VGA to manage memory (for me at any rate). I’ll try going over to PC DOS 2000 as you suggested to see if that better than the MSDOS 6.22 I’m currently running.
I have quite a rarity as I have the IBM 5162 with a Model F AT keyboard (UK layout) and the IBM 5154 EGA monitor. I play EGA games on it (Lemmings and Commander Keen being a firm favourites) as they are period correct for this PC and run really well on it. I’m interested to see the mods you make to the XT286 to make it run VGA games.
Yes, VGA is definitely a bit of a stretch and in all honesty, once this is over I'll probably be putting it back to EGA and downgrading my 5150 to CGA so it's all period correct. I have a 486 DX4/100 that's perfect for the VGA stuff (in fact that's what I used to capture the Wolf3D footage right at the beginning of the video).
But it's certainly interesting to see how far I can push this machine - and certainly something that 286 owners would've been doing at the time as well to squeeze out every last ounce of performance! 🙂
I had a 16-bit ISA card with 1MB simms on it a long time ago that would work with one of my old 386DX boards When you ran mem check, you could tell which 4MB were on the 32-bit main bus and which 4MB were running from the ISA card LOL but it was still fast and better than nothin!. I wonder if you can upgrade the memory to 2 or 4MB...If you can find one of those.
There are actually modern ISA RAM cards for these, might be worth looking into!
Ii would be fun to run old minix on it in dual boot with MS-DOS
Why do you keep shaking your hands? You look like you've seen a video on how to be interesting which tells you to use gestures so now you do it compulsively.
I sit still, I get told I'm too dry, I move my hands I get comments like this. Such is the world of UA-cam 😅