IBM 5170 AT Restoration 

That would explain it. Unfortunately, there are no clues on the hard drive where it was in service

You work for rifa? 😂😂

I was thinking semiconductor clean room environment too, could be medical too, I've worked on machines used in cytotoxin administration laboratories and they're all pristine. They don't leave the lab their whole life and any hardware repairs have to be done in situ with parts that have been quarantined before they can enter the lab.

@@izools I have an IBM P60 that came with software installed for some lab. It looked like it was brand new

that technology needs to make it into the home.

I have a Commodore XT clone that uses a strait cable and jumpers. But yeah, it's rare

The controller on the original 5150 had a large plug on the back for external floppy drives, those would've been the 3rd and 4th drive. They dropped this feature and thus more than two floppies in PCs went away also.

@@Nukle0n very true, and some floppy controllers have a second internal header to support 4 drives as well.

@@Nukle0n Yep. I would argue the real limiting factor in PCs (re: number of floppies) was the drive lettering convention. Probably not much of a problem in the MS-DOS 3 days, but once HDDs got to be ubiquitous, and C: became de-facto for "the hard drive," the poor 3rd and 4th floppy drives were forever evicted. Even when controller cards provided a physical interface, having an "E:" floppy just felt like such a hack, and most applications that worked with floppies never considered anything beyond A: and B: to be relevant. Contrast that to, e.g., Linux where it would just be dev/fd2, regardless what other fixed, removeable, or optical media existed.

@@nickwallette6201 Yeah, it does feel odd while the 3rd and 4th floppy drives would still be accessible, they would be assigned letters after C:. I find it odd that they made a decision to hard code the first hard drive letter like that. Other OSes that didn't have their roots in DOS or Windows don't have that limitation. Also, in other computers as well. The Amiga, for example, has capacity for 4 floppy drives, which are designated df0: to df3:. Hard drives start at dh0:. The X68000 is a bit weird, as drive A: is the boot drive, whether its a floppy or hard drive, and then other letters get assigned after.

I got a Trident TVGA8800, two or three 8900 and a huge stack of 9000s. I prefer the 8900 as it's usually upgradeable to 1MB of video RAM (but god is it slow).

Then there's 8900D which actually isn't slow any more and very usable.

Thanks :)

Thanks, Good luck with the board!

The AT commands presence. Surrounded by all sorts of computers in the studio here, It looks like it's the big boss :)

Looking forward to see how fast we can make it

Don't forget their initial poor reputation with failure-prone hard drives. Took a bit to shed that stigma.

Excellent. Good luck with the project

Yeah, I definitely need to get some crimp tools

The PS/2 286 I had back in the day looks like a toy compared to this monster IBM :)

Thanks!

I'm glad it came unlocked

Spinrite by that time was (is) most bullshit.

@@billlewis9740 Spinrite has a Wikipedia page, it can't be bull.

Thanks. I've done some more tests with the drive since the upload. It works fine :)

@@Epictronics1 Maybe you need to Low level format the drive with the new interleave?.

@@GuillermoFrontera Yes, I did

Thanks, yes there even was an optional vertical enclosure. I'd love to find one of those someday

@@Epictronics1 There’s a rack mount, too, with filter on the fan.

@@billlewis9740 Sweet. Gotta have one of those

@@Epictronics1 I had one of those somewhere around 25 years ago. Sold it at some point. Look up "IBM Industrial Computer: $10,000 PC from 1985" on the LGR videos.

Maybe we'll explore it someday

I find it fascinating that a crazy expensive machine like this wasn't used more. I wish it could tell the story

Thanks. Yeah, If I remember correctly, it shouldn't matter if the cable has a twist

​@@Epictronics1it does, you need a cable with a twist for a second drive on PC and both drives should be set for DS1 if it even has the option to change that. Most 3.5" drives don't even have those jumpers because PC didn't use that.

I need one of those cards :o

I was thinking. With the two cards missing. Maybe it was a backup machine for a critical application?

Yes, when i was a teenager in the early 90s i helped out at a local insurance agent's office. The agent was a family friend, he had MS, and i was a do person, it was a nice gig for easy cash. Anyway he has 2 insurance agent's and 2 clerks they had a few IBM AT machines out in the office, and i don't remember what model they were, i wish i could get them today but there were 2 backup systems, identical to the ones in the office over in the store room. They were plugged in and all set up but never turned on. I bet that's exactly the same idea. What a great find for you!

Thanks. So much happened during the AT's lifespan. We can either go "classic" with EGA and lower specs or go nuts with VGA and a CD-ROM drive! I really want to see which board will win the overclock battle. I can always go back to stock!

@@Epictronics1 To each their own, of course. I know you love to see what the hardware can do! :-D For me, it's more about, "where does this machine fit?" Like you, I have a 5150, 5160, 5170, and 5162. They all have a hardware loadout that I find most representative of their characteristic role. 5150: Dual 360K floppies, no HDD (obviously), MGA graphics (with a secondary CGA card, because I had it, so why not?), 640K RAM. 5160: 360K + HDD, CGA graphics (with a secondary MGA, again, because I had two of each anyway), 640K 5170: 1.2M + 360K (bridge machine! haha), HDD, 2MB RAM IIRC, EGA, AdLib 5162: 1.2M + HDD, I want to say this one has 1MB RAM?, Hercules Then I have a PS/2 Model 30 with MCGA and an AdLib, a PS/2 M.30 286 with VGA and a Sound Blaster, an early Packard Bell 386 with a ThunderBoard, a 386 DX with a Sound Blaster Pro 1.0, and so on... None of them are hot-rods. They're just "what you would expect to find," living their moment in the sun, telling a story of their glory days.

@@nickwallette6201 Excellent configurations. Although, Hercules to me is the perfect choice for the 5150.

It is very strange indeed!

I actually swapped the 5.25" drive for one with a matching front but strangely enough, it looked better with the mismatch, so I swapped back!

I'll try with 2:1 again after I have used it for a while

Very nice with a clean machine for a change. That nasty dead bug, however...

Nice summer job!

@Epictronics1 I was involved in converting a beverage manufscturing plant trucking department from manual paper spreadsheets to Lotus 123 spreadsheets. I guess they were late to the game.

Thanks

@@Epictronics1 thanks

I'm going to test it with an AST Six-pack plus in the upgrade video

Thanks for the feedback

Definitely an option, but I'll keep the MFM drive as long as it's working

Thanks, I'll give it a try in the next vid. Unfortunately, no, I have not found a good stand yet

Two bugs :)

According to minus zero it should. However, there were two revisions of the card. Perhaps this early one doesn't. I'm leaning toward VGA at the moment but I'm not sure yet

I did and it fixed it

I never thought about its looks before. Now that I have it on the bench, I think it looks awesome! :)

@@Epictronics1 Looks are highly subjective. I am happy that you like it.

But isn’t that the the point. It’s an IBM. It should be ugly. That’s what makes it beautiful.