Yeah, I miss them too. Schools always tend to be full of obsolete computers, too bad they just trash them instead of giving them away. Actually one of the Science rooms at my schools is full of old IBM PS/2's from the late 1980's, and the teacher just says "why get rid of them if they still work?" I completely agree with that!
It's cool that you have some of the official Atarisoft games for the PC. They really did the best version. I only ever had cheap imitations like "Pack-Man", "Digger", and "Hopper" (instead of the real Pac-Man, Dig Dug, and Frogger).
I remember playing many of these games on my grandpas old XT back in the 80's. Have fond memories of Centipede, The Ancient Art of War, MS Decathlon and Kings Quest 1.
This really took me back to the good old DOS era. Lovely video! :) I haven't played a lot of the games shown here but I'm pretty sure I'd love them. I had the Test Drive game and a few others.
Oh man.....this video takes me back. I used to LOVE that cat game .....and the car driving game at 4:19 - I can't believe what I nerd I was even at such a young age.....and a girl at that!
Hey, that's great! XT class machines were before my time, so most of the programs on it were from the internet. Some great sites are dosgames, dosgamesarchive, oldschooldos, abandonia, and Astoria Theodor Lauppert's Homepage to name a few.
Yes! Those two beeps mean that you have a happy and healthy working computer. If you're really interested you could get a monitor for it from eBay, I could help you pick out the right one as well if you'd like.
@VideoMajestic Yes, as long as you use the correct DIP Switch settings. Those instructions can be found online or with your EGA card's manual. If you use the wrong settings, you could damage your monitor. Some of the newer cards don't have DIP Switches though, they can automatically detect the monitor type.
@boost43534 They sure did! Many of the games that we play today derived from this era, such as Tetris and Frogger. Not only that, but it was also easy to create your own games using BASIC.
Yeah, we got our first computer in 1994 so most of the games that I played on that are way too new to play on the IBM PC/XT. These I just downloaded from the internet. But I do agree that they are good clones.
All of them were downloaded from another computer and transferred onto this one using the 5.25" floppy drive. The hard drive that came with the computer was broken, and they new one that's in there now was so messed up when I got it that I had to format it. So I started off on a fresh empty HD, but new of a lot of old games that I could put on it.
I do think that eBay is a good place to get old computers, but just make sure you read the description to make sure they say whether it works or not. When they say they're not sure if it works, it usually means they tested it and it didn't work, and they don't want you to know that. Also it never hurts to look on Craigslist, that's where I got my Apple PowerMac 5500/225, the only thing is that you have to go get the item yourself.
The PC has no sound card, but some programmers were crafty enough to get the regular PC Speaker to create sounds other than beeps. As for Donkey Kong, I'm not sure but I'd guess that Nintendo licensed the game for IBM.
It depends on what type of graphics card it has. If the 9 pin monitor port is on the same card as the 25 pin printer port, then it's a monochrome graphics card, you'd need an IBM 5151 monitor (~$50). If you have that dual monitor and printer port card ALONG with another 9 pin monitor port on another card, then your PC uses either a CGA or EGA graphics card. So those are used with an IBM 5153 (~$80) or an IBM 5154 (~$200) monitor.
I'm pretty sure that I got most of this computer from eBay. I didn't buy it all at once (because a complete set is hard to find) so I purchased all of the parts separately (Monitor, keyboard, printer, tower, hard drive, memory, graphics card, etc.). I probably spent around $210 for all of this.
@Vintagecomputer Yes, I had to restart the computer which is really annoying. I think the reason is because a lot of these games came on bootable floppy disks that you would just stick in the drive and turn on the computer, so you would never need to exit the game because you would just shut down the computer when you were done. But people have since made dos executable versions of these floppies that you can start while in dos, but there is no way to exit and go back to dos.
Hi Alex, I just resurrected my old XT I grew up with, but discovered I have almost no vintage software for it, save WordPerfect 4.2 and some BBSs. Do you know where I could get any of those games you demo'ed? I remember some of those...was a long time ago! They're especially hard to find now. Thanks for sharing the video.
Nah, there are always tons of XT's on eBay. Original IBM PC's with 160kb floppy drives are very rare though, and are often sold for thousands. The monitors on the other hand are relatively rare. Monochrom IBM 5151's aren't that hard to find, but CGA color IBM 5153's (which I have) are harder to find, and EGA color IBM 5154's are even harder to find and pretty expensive.
Yeah, I admit that I'm too much of a pack rat, but then that way I never regret throwing things out! Have you ever thought of taking those computers out and booting them up? It's amazing how some of those things can boot up now just as smoothly as they did in the 1980's. Too bad none of my newer Dell computers have lasted more than 3 years.
The music in Space Racer, which I've never even played sounds better than what the typical PC speaker could produce, does that machine have a sound card in it? Did Nintendo officially produce and licence a third party company to produce Donkey Kong for Dos, or was that a homebrew thing?
The 8088 was a crippled 8086 with an 8 bit memory bus.... Friend of mine had a 8086 AND 8087 with maxed out memory. My Headstart explorer was extremely slow and noisy compared to the 8086/8087 IBM clone...
@ZVONIMIR111 Oh cool! Yeah, maybe someday. I would give you links to where I got the games but it's been so long I have only a vague idea of where I go them from. But if I ever do put a .rar archive online I'll let you know. Is there any free way to do that do you know?
Well, most of the IBM Floppy Drive Controllers that came with the computer that are normally used with 5.25" 360KB floppy drives can be used with 720 KB 3.5" drives. As for 1.44 MB 3.5" drives that's a different story, you'd need to install a new floppy drive controller. P.S. - In case you didn't know, a floppy drive controller is the peripheral card the controls the floppy drives, all modern computers have that card built into the motherboard.
Well, after much trial and error you get what you want. Never expect to get these things working on the first try, and it can get frustrating at times. The first IBM PC XT that I bought off of eBay would power on and then do absolutely nothing, just like my broken PS/2 (which I have a video of). Then I got this one, but had to wait about 4 months before finding a decently priced CGA monitor. Then of course the first EGA card that I got didn't work, nor did most of the games before adding RAM.
The older ones like this are, they last forever and are not easily damaged, however IBM no longer makes PC's. Their late 80's and 90's PS/2's and Aptiva's I don't think were as good (more powerful than this obviously, but not that reliable). The only thing that usually doesn't last on these are the Hard Drives.
Yeah.. It came with a Monochrome card, and I figured why not get an EGA instead of CGA. EGA is backwards compatible, and you can still use the CGA monitor with it.
smartalex61, what do you say about you put games into rar archive and upload it somewhere? i've got motorola q9 with windows mobile. it has got freedos emulator. i started up Windows 3.0 and i would like some dos games!
I just bought a 5160 with its original parts like yours. I added a VGA card since I don't have room for another monitor. I did change a few parts around in my machine but I am keeping the original so it can be put back to orriginal.
Hey, no problem, I like helping people with computer questions. Also it's highly doubtful that one could get a Windows virus on this computer, especially since hardly any programs were written for Windows 1.01 and the computer isn't connected to the internet. But it is possible to get a DOS virus, although I've never gotten one before, probably because I usually never accept pirated diskettes.
What a brute! What's the size of its HDD? 20MB? I can still remember the old times with my first laptop, an IBM 486 DX2/75. Not as old as this of course, but it was still very DOS compatible and its 420MB HDD could hold a sick amount of such games. Used to play Arcade Volleyball a lot which was like 20 kB xD
P.S., I forgot to mention that an IBM 5153 CGA monitor can be used with an EGA port in case you can't find a decently priced IBM 5154 EGA monitor, since they are rare and expensive. I have an IBM 5153 CGA monitor with an EGA graphics card for that reason. Also there is the rare possibility that your computer has a 15 pin VGA port, which in that case you could use any modern VGA monitor. (Which is probably the monitor you're using right now if you're on a desktop computer, unless you have DVI).
@eduardodc3 All together probably around $200. And the best place to look for one is eBay, but buying the parts separately is usually cheaper. Programs can be bought the same way, unless you haev a 5.25" floppy drive to transfer files to it just download games online. Dos 5.0 works best. And the input is a Monochrome or CGA plug. Different size than VGA. Hope that helps!
Oh yeah, I've played that game before. I could never really figure it out though. I'll try to get a video up soon, I've had some other requests as well.
@neutrino78x Hey thanks! That program would be very helpful. Originally this title screen was animated, but I had to take out the animation because it was just too slow.
Well, actually, they do: "Unicomp, which now owns the rights to the design, now sells the keyboards. Recently, the keyboards have made a comeback amongst writers and computer techs.[1] Unicomp has had difficulty making them profitable; because they rarely break, and at US$70.00, the chain retailers will not stock them."
My woodshop teacher keeps most of the old 95/98/DOS? (haven't tested all of them) computers, Mainly due to the automated lathes being pretty old. He says if i can help get the lathes hooked up to a few of them, he'll give me 1 or 2 :D
Well, while servicing one of the woodshop teacher's computers, i found a floppy with the Stoned virus on it XD Too bad the Norton version the computer had deleted it, it'd have been nice to have a specimen.
Hi. When you ran the game Alley Cat, you needed to restart the computer to run the next game? Some games do not seem to have a combination of keys to exit. Thanks.
I have some questions. How much do a computer like that one costs? Where can i buy one? and... Where can I buy games and programs for it? What kind of software does it run? That monitor... what kind of input cable does it uses?
I use to play a game on a computer like this but I can't remember the name of it. All I can remember is the hero of the game had a mining hat and overalls. He was in outerspace looking for diamonds. You could pick different doors to play different levels. Each level you had to collect diamonds and kill aliens with your blaster. Anyone remember this at all?
@JeremyPassarelli A lot of them are from the "Home of the Underdogs" website (Google it). Some were really hard to find though, and I had to go through a lot to get them.
@smartalex61 if i don't find the games on abandonware site, try to do something. i watched your videos and read the description of cybermax 686 computer. try to transfer files with floppy disks from ibm pc xt. then download 7-zip, a free program and install it. it is even working with windows 3.x versions. then try to add it to an archive.
Does any1 remember the game where your a bunny or rabbit, and the map is covered in carrots, and you have to collect them all without boulders falling on you? what is the name of it. And does any1 remember the game where your a little green car and you are racing and you cannot hit the grass?
Well since nobody uses Diskettes, especially 5.25" diskettes, anymore I think it would be harder to find one with a virus. But I just recommend downloading all of the games onto your main computer and copying them to a diskette yourself.
@ca280491 Most of them I got from a website called "The Underdogs." Unfortunately that website has since been taken down, but there is another one called "Vetus Ware" that may be of help. It's really slow and only lets you download so many games per day, but it will have some of these games. The rest of them I just got from googling them, although they are at times hard to find.
does anyone know what the game is called thats like a honey comb game i believe it was for this computer and i believe you either had to do spelling on it or math any help
