geekhack
geekhack Marketplace => Great Finds => Topic started by: platon on Mon, 12 April 2010, 16:37:03
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The gray ghost has appeared once again...
link (http://cgi.ebay.com/Rare-Gray-Ghost-IBM-Keyboard-for-PC-XT-AT-PS-2_W0QQitemZ350322742111QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item5190dcd35f)
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Waaaay too much. BON sells these things for about $40-60 and they look much cleaner too...
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Waaaay too much. BON sells these things for about $40-60 and they look much cleaner too...
Surely it is overpriced, but it comes with a funny description.
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Good 'ole Dave...
I actually looked at the picture weird... This one looks clean, but it's about the price I'd expect of a NIB one.
And the description is wrong... that definitely won't work in a 5150 or 5160 :P
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This new one (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370338264651&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT) passed under my radar not too long ago and i am not very happy it did ...
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Congrats webwit! At least it is in good hands now.
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Oooh yeah, let me take this baby out of the box for a moment and show it to y.. *** CRASH ***
Two left hands huh ? I should have known ...
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What year was it?
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Good enough.
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If someone has one and has the extra money to send it to and from me, I can verify if they actually are XT compatible.
I doubt anyone wants to know that much though. Just letting you know I'll do this if someone REALLY wanted to know.
CH is more than likely right; there's no reason why this will be XT compatible that I can see.
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There was a second revision of the XT design (not the XT-286) for which the 1390120 was designed for. Reportedly, all early Model Ms were backwards compatible with this model, but supposedly (or so someone around here said) when IBM revised the controller board, this capability was done away with. This possibly occurred during the Great Subtle Change Spree of 1989.
I think it may have been possible to update the BIOS of older XTs to support the Model M. I'm not sure that such an update was ever made for the original PC, although given that the 5150 wasn't discontinued till the launch of the PS/2, it's quite feasible that later ones sold with the '0120, I just have never seen any mention of such an arrangement.
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I suspect it's more simple than that and the XT-286 may have just used the AT keyboard interface, since the AT was definitely out and about by that point.
Next project: accumulate one of every single Model M year/part number combo and every submodel of IBM 5160 for comprehensive testing. Or not.
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Yeah, every pic I've seen of an XT-286 had it with either an AT Model F or a 1390131. After all, it was basically a low end AT.
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Yeah, every pic I've seen of an XT-286 had it with either an AT Model F or a 1390131. After all, it was basically a low end AT.
If what I've heard is correct, the XT-286 outperforms the AT for some things. Better looking case + better performance = winner in my book.
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I think what happened was it had less memory than the AT, but the memory had no wait states, so it was faster overall. Something similar happened when Intel released the second generation of Celerons - they had less cache, but it was on-die as opposed to external cache on the cartridge, so the CPUs were more efficient than the Pentium IIs they were meant to be inferior to.
The AT was actually nerfed quite a bit... IBM feared that the 286 chip was fast enough as to compete with their higher end minicomputers, so the AT had it limited to 6MHz when it could easily be run at 8-12. Some enterprising individuals found that by replacing the clock crystal on the motherboard, they could double the speed of the CPU. IBM responded by modifying the BIOS to only POST if the CPU ran at the speed it was specified to. The overclockers fought back with signal generators which would let you run the thing at stock speed when POSTing, but crank it up when it was booting. Now THAT is hardcore overclocking... none of this LN2 ****...