The joys of 80s computing. These kinds of things could very easilly take months to get going back in the day. No twitter posting or streaming then, it usually involved talking to loads of people in many different places in the hope somebody was able to get you one step further at a time.
in the early 90s I had in IBMPC Jr. that had a network card and telecommunication disks but i couldn’t get it working. i was also 10 so i just played original kings quest.
@@branscombe_ after writing the above I recalled how I had to walk out of my Network Admin course to go fix a network issue, because I was the only one in the company on call at the time (everyone else was sitting in on the course to get certification), thus I failed to get certified - circa 97 & "story of my life" :)
Hehe, nice, JB:) My setup was a obsolete industry 386 PC, 3Com 10BASE2 (BNC-connectors), ISDN-Card (greetings from Germany:) ) which functioned as dial-up router for the following PCs. Over the years from 486DX to dual Pentium II, etc. Never had a problem with that 386 ... well, it ran Linux. The other stuff (where I also played Kings Quest ... but a little older as you, 14-16), OS/2 and of course Windows 95 (later NT) for gaming ... let's not talk about the good old BSOD factory:) And all that for GOPHER and IBM's dialup service (AOL was much later;) ), BBS and chatting like a madgirl. You know whats good? The good memories are preserved:) Edit: I was just remembering one demonic practice used before networking: "LapLink" over the printer port. In the dark ages ... Hehehe:)
I remember doing this kind of stuff routinely back in the day. I kept a notebook (which my employer wanted to keep) of how each machine I configured was set up, because no two systems were ever completely the same. (It was a very heterogenous hardware environment.) Well done getting this going.
Yep. Resource management is definitely an issue from the past. It was pretty well documented, but it was often underestimated when building a computer. Great to see you’ve managed to figure out what the issue was. As for the 8-bit slots, containing 16-bit cards; I’ve got an 8088 clone running here, with a Creative SoundBlaster Vibra, which has a PnP functionality. I needed to disable it on a 16-bit computer too. So, needless to say, it’s quite common for computers with newer hardware to not have 8-bit compatible management software.
16:07 The joys of interpreting binary data and the occasional 'terminal beep' \x0a (ASCII \x07) lol Love these uploads and your extensive use of CAT cables for other formats. It's such a universally good cable.
Just found you from the comments on an LGR video, easily the best retro computing channel. Always wanted to see people network these old machines, and your other videos are just as good! Keep it up man
One of the great advantages of a network card in a PC is being able to mount a remote filesystem. Today that would likely mean mounting a Samba server setup to support those legacy protocols. There's old DOS software capable of mounting a Samba fileserver mount. Being able to treat the network disk like your local disk is a huge advantage. It's a LOT better than using ancient FTP protocols and the like to copy things back/forth. I worked in a computer lab circa in the mid 90s Back then we installed software on the fileserver (though Novell, not SMB), which was pretty handy when you had a lab full of PCs. I _think_ this will work on an old machine like this, but I've never tried it. But I'd agree having a network card and FTPing things back/forth is a pain, and a bit of a waste of a network card.
Been watching your backlog and as soon as this started I went "Hang on,this looks way different" then you just mentioned you're doing an 80's office space and it just made sense
So basically, you got your 5150 with D-Link network card running by replacing it with a Compaq Portable with a 3COM network card... 😂 Well, that's how these projects sometimes end up, been there, done that! 👍
Hi Shelby, enjoy all your videos. I had a similar issue with XT IDE in my 5160. Likely the PSU output not being clean enough as you suggest. In my case it only affected a particular SD card adapter though. Powering this through a slightly larger smoothing cap on the XT-IDE worked for now my PSU has been refurbished already (though not by me).
Put an authentic 80's telephone next to it like LGR Clint did to give your space the extra bit of retro flair 👀 To BBS with that thing or at least to SSH into your Linux server with the IBM sure feels cool.
@@prophetzarquon1922 Of course, they just changed the oscillator to overclock the 8086 by a factor of 100 and then placed in a subzero refrigeration chamber.
@@KnutBluetooth Nah, it works fine. You can look up DIY videos if you want. Old machines can do modern encyrption; the only *really* hard stuff is arbitrarily hard due to speculation, such as BTC.
@@prophetzarquon1922 Old machines, that's a bit vague. Yes, I know a Pentium class machine can encrypt a stream with AES. It's an old machine, from 1996-1997. But an XT? I guess it could encrypt a file with AES for sure, but it would take some time. But fast enough to encrypt a stream of data with AES? I want to see that.
You've got my Compaq Portable! I LOVE IT. I bought one for 99 cents when I was a teen and my dad thought I was an idiot for wanting an old relic that took up lots of space. Now it's worth gobbles of money but I'd never part with it. The keyboards have really terrible foam inside that decays over years so I have to get replacement foam or find a way to cut the foam myself. Also the floppy controller has an issue now so I can't boot. HOWEVER, I saw one guy take his apart and a (12v?) rail was missoldered in the PSU and pops out. So its entirely possible that my floppy controller works but it's a power supply issue instead. The poor beast is currently in pieces across like 6+ boxes in my office. A keyboard here, a keyboard cable there, videocard and controller card are wrapped in another box, the motherboard in another box. But that's life! Stuff gets moved around while you deal with "real life" (TM). Best wishes!
I thought getting an old SMC ISA NIC working on a 486 was hard... kudos to your dedication. I ended up 3D printing a tray that holds a CF reader on the front and I just sneaker-net files over. I would love to circle back and try again though. This looked like fun, despite the issues.
NICs on 486 systems are usually annoying because of t he mishmash of manually configured ISA cards and the horrible excuse for PnP that later ISA cards tried, in with the fact that on 486 era system people tended to have more add-in cards that need there own like sound cards and by the 486 era having a parallel port and two serial ports was pretty common.
I picked this exact same model machine this week from a local computer shop who were having a clear out. Mine is unused, still got the original carry bag and even the card inserts in the drives and everything it mint and untouched, still the original color with no yellowing or dirt! and the best bit, only cost me £100.
I'm digging in my memories from more than 30 years ago and I've got a feeling that the memory address for the hard drive may be clashing with the memory address for the com port. I suggest booting into the BIOS and checking the memory addresses there. I'm pretty sure 3E0h is reserved for the com Port but I can't remember which 1. Also I'm fairly sure that Compaq used to use rather odd memory addresses for the com ports. You were previously using 300h memory address for the hard drive.
I love those Etherlink III cards. After I found out about the nestor driver, I made sure I saved every single one of those cards from Computer Reset on my last visit there. There were a bunch, and now they are safe.
It's interesting that you call it a patch panel. I've always called those wall jacks or network jacks. And used patch panel to exclusively describe 19" panel punch down termination on a rack that goes to a hub/switch/router. So what is the name for a network port on a regular wall? Also get a "toner" it'll make figuring out what port is what way easier.
Wall jack for sure. I've only ever heard it called that from techs in the industry. Network ports are specifically on equipment. Patch panels are where the wiring terminates at the switch side. You don't really need a toner either, just a switch with enough ports and patch cables, a pen and some legs. The switch will light up when a new device is connected. A toner really helps though. Especially when you have tons of unlabeled ports.
@@denniswoycheshen yeah you can make due without one. What I consider essential though is a thermal printer labeler. Label every wall jack and a corresponding number at the patch panel. I usually do room number - port.
@@Codeaholic1 in my personal experience the best way is to label everything with D or P for data and phone (if the network requires it) and number them. Room names and numbers suck because that could be changed or maybe someone doesn't understand what "Spare office" really means. At least when you go to the jack and see "D 11" you know what to look for at the patch panel.
@@denniswoycheshen I meant room number and port number rather than monotonically increasing number. Makes it easier to find stuff and renumbered or change things without affecting everything assuming the room numbers stay relatively constant.
This is exactly the kind of thing I actualy attempted (and failed miserably at) in 1998. I used to work for a small PCB factory in Australia, in the CNC drilling room. The CNC "computer" was connected to an XT system via a custom designed tape drive emulator card, which allowed us to load digital files directly to the CNC computer. I should mention the CNC computer was built in 1973 and the size of a wardrobe. The only way to get files to this XT PC was 5.25 floppies and networking this PC would have been a real timesaver but alas, I didn't have the patience to work it out so I gave up. I am glad it was actually possible.
You remind me of when friends and I used to get together for LAN parties - inevitably someone would have removed the network card (and config software) and we'd have to all work together to troubleshoot and figure out how to get them working again - before we could all play. Those were of course newer machines than you're working with here, we didn't do 10base2 until we had 386s - but remember the joy of configuring everything (and then trying to have enough conventional memory to run things).
I used a 3c509 for my first time wired to the internet in 1992. It was fun seeing you eventually landing on the same settings I eventually landed on, but I had progressed to the point of a 32-bit cpu by that point and had to deal with a conflicting sound blaster 16.
As a fellow collector, I’ve come up with a method that provides network file access via USB, allowing a network share to appear as a USB storage device.
What a lovely retro computer space; wall is a little bare. It could use just one modest sized framed picture or poster from the era, something not too visually distracting. I wish I still had my 8088-1 machine.
Holy cow... what memories.. First time I played MS Flight Simulator was early 80s on the IBM Portable PC. This is awesome! Great video, Thanks for the memories.
Welcome to the wonderful world of IRQ and Port conflicts. If you have either one in conflict or assigned to the wrong device it is a headache to work out. Some devices are hard wired for IRQ static, Port static, or worse both.
I got a monitor from a friend when I was a kid, that was DB15 on one end and DB9 on the other end (the monitor end ). Didn't recognize it at the time and when I got it home and tried to shove the VGA end into my CGA card, well.. I spent many years looking for a replacement and nobody had even seen a cable like that before. So a perfectly good color monitor ultimately got relegated to being used in it's monochrome (amber/green) mode.. lol.
IIRC at least CGA is TTL level logic, so you could quite easily make a buffered line driver that goes from CGA -> RJ45 & local CGA - I feel like the design of this is almost so simple as to be apparent with some 74 series logic, but ... I don't know much about long-distance signalling so... caveat emptor?
@@richfiles I wondered that but it would run at 15 kilohertz, at the very least you could multiplex it over the lines if you're running out of the high frequency cable pairs.
I have been doing networking since the early 80's. Back in the day there were no online resources and not many people who understood office level networking. Did a lot of DEC, ARCnet and Novell before anything resembling standards came along. Good job man, I hated those days! I spent a lot of time at a University as a private tech working on this kind of stuff.
Very cool video. I had gone through a similar process with bringing an IBM 5155 online. I first brought it online over serial and slip. I tried esp_slip/zimodem to avoid the wires, they partially worked, i could transfer files to the local network but not access anything outside of the router, packets were being sent out but not directed back to the machine. The most convenient method has been to cheat and mount a raspberrypi zero W on the headers of a serial port card. (connect directly to the 16550 and i have ttl level) The pi share's its internet over slip using the etherslip diver. If I want, i can terminal connect to the pi and treat the 5155 as a serial terminal. The metal shield isn't enough to block wifi to the pi for my router distance. Very tidy to have the mounted inside....
I think you could try switch the Compaq Portable to low-res text mode and see if it outputs CGA video. There is a key combination for that. CTRL + ALT + < selects the CGA-compatible mode
The joys of dos networking. At least you didn't have to deal with ethernet framing types, there were two competing types for a while. I wonder if you could setup a mapped drive in dos to a samba share. That might make things enev easier provided you still had enough conventional memory left over.
Indeed you can, using MS LAN Manager or MS Client. But they are memory hogs. Can also connect up to an NFS share using XFS (though it requires a V20 CPU). It's less of a memory hog. I did some vids on different DOS network methods and wrote some procedures on how to setup using various DOS networking clients.
I love ISA ethernet cards with ROM/EPROM sockets. I use them to boot XTIDE Universal BIOS 🙂 Then you can use the on-board IDE controller (if it exists) to connect a CF card!
Oh wow, funny coincidence! This came out literally a few minutes after I found an entire old box at work of ISA networking cards and some Modbus cards.
Bro for future reference: if your wall is 8' and you have an existing cable, pull cover - remove from existing cable - get all new cable runs ready mark 8' and 16' with tape - then tape existing cable end to all new cable ends - go to attic space and pull existing cable until you find the new cables, pull until 16' mark is exposed - now retape existing cable to the 16' mark of new cable - stuff cable bundle back into wall until roughly 8' mark - go back to open box and pull new cables until 16' is exposed with old cable attached - remove old cable from bundle and secure it, you now have 8' worth of new cable runs in the attic that you can easily pull by placing spool on broomstick between two chairs in front of box. If you have no hole or box cut hole for box anywhere you want put a loop of cable into the hole approximately 48" long(picture it like stuffing underwear band back into pants) - in attic drill hole in top plate and fish cable through until it hits 8' pre-mark - goto box and pull 48" cable loop which should pull 16-18 inches worth of cable run out of wall - put cable through tabbed hole on clamp down box - put box in wall and tighten the two clamping screws to secure it in place (no stud needed). I ran RS-232 over cat5 for an interlnk/intersvr connection between two rooms, and even a phone service toggle switch from outside box to bedroom, so no one could pick up the phone and kick me offline as well as a sneaky headphone jack for listening to calls when i was a kid I only plugged the jack in to check the line before dialing ;)
A lot of the networks back in the days of DOS machines where usually using Novell Netware and or Lantastic. Lantastic made their own cards for some time that used twisted pair wire for the network, the card had a z80 processor and SIO chip and max speed was 2mbs. IBM also had a star topology network i.e. token ring that ran over coax. For the ethernet cards you could use the NCSA packet drivers and software designed for the packet drivers to do telnet, ftp etc.. I dig your channel.
Ok.. Shelby I know my Comment may suck now after 3 hours of work 😶....... but at 4:07.. you have 2 blue wires.. so you "TEMPORARILY" join one of them with the red one (covering the joint with tape or heat shrink so the joint does not get stuck on something) 😑.. You go to the other end of the blue cable.. and pull it all the way until the red one pass through .👈.. then with the red one.. you bring back (guide) the 2 or 4 or 5 cables 👉👉👉you need to run through the wall.. Similar to (The wolf, goat and cabbage problem is a river crossing puzzle) 🤭
Is it at all possible to use standard CGA controllers in the Compaq Portable? With regards to video capture - obviously using the internal CRT isn't going to be an option that way. Also, seeing vi running on that system is quite the treat.
I used to do this stuff. I first came into Networking when Novell version 3.11 came out. I remember getting my CNE in Netware 4.11, and I had to take TCP/IP as an elective. I was like I just have to pass this to get my CNE no one is ever going to use that TCP/IP crap. Then started using a client with a 3270 in windows 3.11 and it involve loading tcp/ip on the network card and using a program called trumpet winsock. Then the internet got popular. In Early 2000's I started going out an moving one server after another from Novell to Windows, and one day I looked up and Novell was done for.
I networked by mTCP my 386SX machine but it takes ages to copy data. When I moved to Windows 3.11 it works pretty fast. Maybe my NE2000 card is not compliant enough but as long as it works nearly at 10 Mbps under Windows I'm fine with that. Great yourney thou.
You say that the XTIDE is freaking out due to a bad power supply... I wonder how hard it would be to debug potential transients with a oscilloscope. Wouldn't be surpriced if even a small drop (such as from floppy disk access or some other heavy-ish load) could stun the CF card but leave the rest of the system intact, causing a boot failure. For outputting video from a Compaq Portable, I wonder if you can set it to output video all the time, then deal with the mixed MDA/CGA signals externally. How does it determine when to output video, anyways? If all else fails, hook the signal going to the internal CRT, or modify the card so it skips the signal disabler thingy.
@Tech Tangents - Freedos has NE2000 pkt driver package, and pktdriver setup utility(with dhcp client, etc. There is a page dedicated to it), on the disk alongside a auto-setup utility.
This video was actually originally going to be about that funnily enough. But I thought that would take too long when I didn't have a lot of time. Hah.
@@TechTangents Ok.. Shelby I know my Comment may suck now after 3 hours of work 😶....... but at 4:07.. you have 2 blue wires.. so you "TEMPORARILY" join one of them with the red one (covering the joint with tape or heat shrink so the joint does not get stuck on something) 😑.. You go to the other end of the blue cable.. and pull it all the way until the red one pass through .👈.. then with the red one.. you bring back (guide) the 2 or 4 or 5 cables 👉👉👉you need to run through the wall.. Similar to (The wolf, goat and cabbage problem is a river) 🤭
Dont suppose you can remember that "easy to set up" DOS network "OS" (You could boot it off floppy?) that was a competitor to Novell near the end of their peak?
You should use it with one of those modems that still requires the phone horn to be placed on it to make connections. Would fit right in with the vintage office feel.
Wow, that was seriously involved. I jumped in a lot later with PCs, around the 486 era, and things were considerably less janky. Hope you got the fibreglass cleaned out of your hands, haha; that stuff's nasty.
Yet again we are doing the same project at the same time... Just about to finish up my Portable I and get the network card setup with xt-ide on it! Nice! Wish I knew you were having issues setting up the 3com 905B. I already plowed through that not 2 months ago, and got XT-IDE working on the cards as well. Could have saved you a ton of time LOL.
Trained Installer's for a Low Voltage & Networks Contractor in SoCal. Did a lot of work for Universities. Wall Fishing was always a lot of fun. Sys. Config's were always hit & miss.
I used to upgrade those Compaq portables, new mother boards etc. After a couple of iterations there was basically nothing left but the screen from the original. They were used for onsite data collection....
I well remember trying to link a 8088 with a 8086 together using the serial port with a friend of mine, back in the days. Using a 4 wire phone line and homebrew software. It took several months to get it working, but it did well without any external components at about 120 meters or so, speed was I think around 300 bits/sec. But it didn't matter, there were no big files to transmit. Lol
Getting your CF card to work on the IBM's was probably a matter of doing fdisk /mbr on it. I've seen the CFs go fishy sometimes when transferring between machines. They are accessible just don't boot. At worst you will need to repartition and reformat. Or you have one of those weird unsupported CF cards (check the compatibility list on the xt-ide page, certain cards just don't work right). The fact that the xt-ide bios is working is a good sign. I guess you could also check the firmware. I've made a video on how to flash the xt-ide firmware if you like a reference for that.
Literally just had some headaches getting a SoundBlaster card working alongside XT-IDE the other day, and it ended up being that I was setting the MIDI port to 300h. If reconfiguring the NE2000 compatible card is difficult without dragging out a whole other system to work on it, maybe dumping the ROM on the XT-IDE then using the configuration tool (with DOSBOX/PCem if need-be) would be a more sane option: If your dip switch settings aren't fixed on your model of XT-IDE card you can change it's base address...It just has to be done in both ROM and on jumpers...
I'm surprised the XTIDE I/O port is _sooo close_ to the sound card, "back in the day" that was just _asking_ (begging?) for trouble. There were I/O Port Lists you could download off BBS that would let you know the _common_ ranges for specific card type. I woul;d have expect the XTIDE to be up around 0x380 hex at least, or at least in the same range as other HD/CD adapters
Take your pick. Novell netware, NWlite, nwpersonal, Artisoft lantastic, Winderz (WFW or AKA peer to peer) Apple talk. Oh, and you got to have a NE2000 or compatible card. Old Serial cables with cards. I forget. To many years ago.
Great work! I have a question though: is there any reason that you left full duplex turned-off on the 3COM card? Not that it would probably matter much on an PC/XT class system, but just about all modern switches support full duplex operation.
I was trying to find someone commenting about this. I would highly recommend turning on full-duplex unless you have a reason not to (e.g. it doesn't work). Half-duplex is kinda jank and reduces performance without gaining anything in my view.
You time and effort pretty much confirms all my memories of doing these things......I remember working for hours and even days on stuff - only to reach my goal....and then be like.....ok.....that was anti-climactic. I will say one of my fondest triumphs was realizing my Pentium MMX 233 was on a motherboard that could run at 75Mhz (default was 66mhz). I realized that this would overclock the motherboard, the bus, the northbridge / southbridge, ram, and CPU......what a performance gain! I loved that so much, felt like a new computer -for free!
There are some serial to wifi adapters sold for vintage 8 bit computers aficionados out there. May be it's a less painful solution than trying to make vintage network stuff work on even older machines.
I'm a diehard fan of EtherDFS That and a Intel EtherExpress 16TP LAN Adapter or if you don't want to mess with 8bit/16bit a WD8003E and a AUI adapter works fantastically. No FTP just a linux box with etherdfs server and the etherdfs dos client allows me to copy files from the linux host to the dos host easily. The linux server can have samba and now you can copy files from your windows box to your dos box. You can also point a linux samba share to another share on your network as a pass through. I have a very thin linux vm pointing to a folder on my much larger file server and just push files there and now they are available to every dos machine I have.
I assume you have the 5150 connected to a network switch and not an ethernet hub. If so, you should use the nic configuration tool to enable full duplex. Network hubs are half-duplex but network switch ports are by default full duplex. Depending on the switch if it fails auto-negotiation of speed and duplex, which your nic doesn't support, it may fallback to half-duplex for the connection. This is undefined by the standard. Either way your speed is going to be affected. If both sides are half-duplex you aren't taking full advantage of the connection. If there is a duplex mismatch network connectivity will work but your performance will be extremely poor especially when sending data both ways and any tcp connection involves some level of two way traffic since the receiver sends acks.
The Compaq's Keyboard reminds me of having studied Informatics at the Tech Uni Delft between 1985 and 1992 (took me longer than anticipated ;) using some multi-mode editor (like vi/emacs) and programming in Turbo Pascal 3.01. I just love the look of those split-height keys...
I used Dos 6 and a cross over cable and interlink & intersrv to transfer files, between my XT and my newer PC. But I haven't tried doing it again in a long time.
I cut my teeth on ThinNet (coax) Ethernet in 1986 as CAT5 was not widely accepted and had all the fun of looped tails all around the office wall plates and dealing with terminating resistors on the "last card" on each end of the chain. Thank the goddess I didn't have to deal with vampire connectors.
I had a AT&T 8086 they if I can remember all those years ago. I think I upgraded to 8088 and I took 1 floppy out and installed a 10 meg hard drive maybe it was 20 but I think 10. This was my first ms dos pc. Before this I had a commodore 128.
I've found that if I remove the CF card (such as to go load something onto it or modify a file), after reinserting the CF card the 5150 won't always boot up again from C. I sometimes have to re-insert the CF card several times before it'll boot again -- it might be that specific XT-IDE adapter (or the CF pins) are slightly off (in height/depth). I'm sure you've tried something like (by virtue of swapping the CF card around to multiple systems -- assuming same CF), // Another nifty thing about the NIC is you can use it to sync DOS up to a time server during bootup (some serial cards may have the RTC support, but it may be inconsistent on how it works -- just using the web has been more reliable for me).
Forgot to mention - if you use SNTP to set your clock, the 40 year sudden shift in time causes your DHCP lease to expire, so you have to run DHCP a second time.
