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geekhack Marketplace => Great Finds => Topic started by: Hak Foo on Sun, 10 October 2010, 13:59:18

Title: Early M - plus 5150 PC
Post by: Hak Foo on Sun, 10 October 2010, 13:59:18

http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-Personal-Computer-5150-and-Keyboard-/180571379628?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a0ae497ac

I wonder if he'd toss/relist the computer and ship just the keyboard if you asked nicely?

Title: Early M - plus 5150 PC
Post by: ch_123 on Sun, 10 October 2010, 14:16:12

AFAIK, only certain later XTs could use those keyboards, not the original 5150.

Title: Early M - plus 5150 PC
Post by: JohnElliott on Sun, 10 October 2010, 14:28:03

My guess would be that if the keyboard works on a later XT, it would also work on a 5150, but without any BIOS support for the enhanced keys. Same as plugging a 102-key board into an original AT.

Title: Early M - plus 5150 PC
Post by: Phaedrus2129 on Sun, 10 October 2010, 15:06:01

Are these old IBM cases ATX compatible? I mean, probably not, but one can hope.

Title: Early M - plus 5150 PC
Post by: Hak Foo on Sun, 10 October 2010, 15:21:14

The simplest answer is just to gut the back and install the motherboard tray from a $29 ATX case.

I did that years ago with a big-old AT full-tower; the whole fiasco was JB-welded together.

Title: Early M - plus 5150 PC
Post by: DesktopJinx on Sun, 10 October 2010, 23:40:02

Oh my, the nostalgia is acting up again.

It's been a very long time since I worked with one of these. If you think Model M keyboards are sturdy, well, they ain't nothin' compared to this case.

I know actually retrofitting (!) it with modern guts would be an exercise in frustration, but... all the computer nerds in their 40s would think it was totally rad.

Sigh.

I bet that's even an original monochrome display card. And it sounds like it's still functional -- all it needs is a PC/XT keyboard, a 5151 monochrome display, and a 360K IBM PC-DOS system diskette.

Title: Early M - plus 5150 PC
Post by: Hak Foo on Mon, 11 October 2010, 00:12:26

At one point I had a 5151 display; bought it with a 286-10 clone which had a Hercules clone video board, and Windows 3.10.

The display was not hugely stable, and the shape was vaguely fish-like, but it was pretty with the long-persistence green phosphor.

I replaced it with a 12" GoldStar (remember GoldStar?) B&W VGA CRT.

Title: Early M - plus 5150 PC
Post by: Sam on Mon, 11 October 2010, 00:36:56

Quote from: Hak Foo;232393

I replaced it with a 12" GoldStar (remember GoldStar?) B&W VGA CRT.

Goldstar is actually still around.  The original company was Lucky Goldstar, and Goldstar was the electronics branch of the group, then much later they changed the name of the group to LG, and Goldstar became LG Electronics.

I had both the IBM green screen and the color display.  Had an IBM monochrome card (MGA) in my IBM PC and the color card (CGA) in my IBM XT, though later replaced it with an IBM EGA card when they first came out.  The color display worked well, but as you say the green screen had some stability problems.  Every six months or so, when I got tired of banging on the side to get the thing back into sync, I'd have my friend open it up and fix it up to get it back to being stable.  Those Hercules cards were hugely popular, though I never had one myself.  Chose to stick with true Big Blue for compatibility reasons in testing software compatibility.

Title: Early M - plus 5150 PC
Post by: KillerBee on Mon, 11 October 2010, 22:16:15

I looked here thinking I had been DE-Throned! Must have allllll early M's!!!!!

I saw a Sept 85 but the dude wants 85.00 for it and I would still have to convert it just like my June 85 one!!