My father brought one of those home from his work so he could work from home, dialing in to his work via 2400 baud modem. After it had become obsolete, he just kept it. We already had a PC clone (Leading Edge Model D) a PC/XT, and a Compaq Portable II in the house, but this was the first with a greater-than-8088 CPU! Later, right before OS/2 2.0 came out, I signed up for the beta program, and in order to have a system to run it on, I bought an Evergreen 386 CPU upgrade for it. Since it was a 386 running on a 286 bus, it was slow as molasses. And the system only had a 20 MB hard drive and 4 MB RAM, both the absolute bare minimums for OS/2 2.0. But it ran! While yours *CAN* run OS/2 1.x, that was the older 16-bit version co-developed by both Microsoft and IBM, and really isn't the OS/2 you're probably familiar with. OS/2 2.0 was the first "modern OS/2", 32-bit, and thus without a CPU upgrade, won't run on the 286.
@@databitsOh man, did that machine have character, from the hard drive spinning up to the floppy (we in South-Africa called it a stiffy [3 1/4'])-drive stepping once through and the satisfying beep once the memory check ran through. You could actually hear it crunching data as it read from and wrote to the hard drive. Remember to Park your Drive before you go home... (Wait, didn't it it park it's own drive head? I might be confusing it with my earlier Ollivetti there.) Ah the good old days.
Had one very similar back then. Used it to operate my business. Love the way you call it LOW END... damn thing was still nearly $5000 with a green screen monitor, a wide carriage pin printer. and an external 5.25 floppy... My accountant was impressed as it was better than his machine. Remember when you thought you could never fill a 20 meg HD?
OS/2 1.3 was the last version of OS/2 to run on a 286. It should work on your PS/2 though finding it on 720K disks might be tricky. OS/2 1.x never had many apps written for it either, so might not be very useful, but you can run the OS/2 versions of Word and Excel on it. Or Microsoft C 6.0.
16x errors on IBM PS2 pc’s are related to ether a failed BIOS battery or hardware changes that need settings that to be need changed in the BIOS. PS/2 systems don’t have a built in configuration utility like standard PC’s. There were model specific reference diskettes for configuration of the BIOS. I don’t remember if the model 30 uses a reference diskette or if it was only the Microchanne models that used reference diskettes.
20 MB HD in '91? Really? That sounds more like it was 1984, and let us not forget computer specs rose at like twice the speed they do today, or more...
Also, 8086 and '286 in 1991. You could get a decently spec'd 386SX with more memory and hard drive space for this price at that time. These systems were aimed at the IBM business customer who valued service and support over price.
@@Lane42 "These systems were aimed at the IBM business customer who valued service and support over price." Also as replacements of XTs and ATs that were running 5250 emulation adapters to connect to their System/36...
My dad chunked these in the dumpsters because they were proprietary microchannel and by then useless 286's (unable to do virtual memory) that halted on any boot error, but he saved the keyboards. I just scarfed 7 PS/2 Model M keyboards from het barn yesterday and am going to standadize on them. Typing one one now.
PSA: Replace the capacitors. The floppy drives all suffer from bad caps. PS/2s used Alps, Mitsubishi, and Sony as OEMs for the 720K and 1.44MB drives in that large 3.5” format. My M30-286 also came with a Sony, and it worked fine after a thorough cleaning and relube. The Alps drive in my M30 (8086) needed new caps. The Mitsubishi in my M70-386 had leaked so badly it needed trace repairs on the controller PCB and a ton of pad cleaning on the motor PCB. I bought a lot of 3 more Mitsubishi drives and it took three to cobble together one good one. All three had leaked and corroded the pads around them, but the one I got with the system was the worst. The other two drives need work on the stepper motors and a realignment. Those DBA hard drives have bad caps too. The one in my M30-86 worked much more reliably after a re-cap, but head #3 is still almost totally DOA. I get maybe 5% of that platter as usable - which I don’t trust at all. Heads 0-2 seem to be A-OK. The ESDI disk in my M70 had leaky caps, which I replaced. It still throws a controller error. Got a spare drive online and same leaky caps, replaced them, and same controller error. Might be the motherboard or riser, I dunno. The Model 70 PSU had leaky caps inside. Luckily it’s a single sided phenolic PCB so it didn’t do any damage. Recapped the whole thing and it’s doing great. The M30 and M30-286 PSUs seemed OK but I recapped them anyway. I had one tantalum cap blow, so I replaced all of them on the motherboards of all my PC, XT, AT, and PS/2 machines. (LOTS of 10u/16V caps!) Also replaced the tantalums on the Shugart drives, MDA, CGA, EGA, I/O, controller, and RAM cards. With just the few exceptions above, the rest of that old stuff is running 100% OK now. Capacitor replacement is a required skill for retro PCs. :-)
I noticed that your PS/2 has a power switch on the front. When I was in high school, we had PS/2 Model 25s and I swear I remember them having a switch like yours, but all the pictures and videos of the 25 I see show it having a push power button instead.
Be glad this thing doesn't have MCA. That means you can actually get cards and stuff for it. I have a PS/2 Model 50 with MCA, and good luck finding a sound card for that...
I also have a Model 30, but with a 8086 CPU and I think 640K RAM. It has a 720K floppy drive, and AFAIK, it can't be upgraded to 1.44MB, because the BIOS does not support it. I hate the 720K drive, because 3.5" DS-DD disks are rare and quite expensive nowadays. I was lucky and bought a 10 pack of NOS Maxell for $7, the paper box is busted, but each disk is individually sealed in plastic bags, so they are probably OK (previously when I bought diskettes in an opened box, they went to the dumpster, because they were filled with dust and sand...). Someone said that the custom connector on these floppy drives resembles a ordinary, PC compatible interface, just with different pinout and with the power supply pins in the same connector. I'd be happy if it's true, because then I'd install a Gotek floppy emulator. I currently planning to put some software on it so I will be able to transfer files via the serial port.
"It has a 720K floppy drive, and AFAIK, it can't be upgraded to 1.44MB, because the BIOS does not support it." If you can find a working 1.44Mb drive of that proprietary connector - a drop-in replacement with any of the BIOS versions.
My 8086-based Model 30 is maxed-out: NEC V30 replacement CPU, 8087, Trantor SCSI adapter, 1Gb HDD, IBM VGA adapter (with the V30 supporting the 80186 instructions in the video driver, Windows 3.0 in color), 4869-001 adapter and external 360Kb 5-1/4" drive, primary floppy drive upgraded to 1.44Mb - but it has failed and is the only non-functional device currently on the system.
@@IBM_Museum Thanks a lot, good to know. I have an other, dead PS/2, maybe it's a model 50, I don't even remember what CPU it has. And it has a 1.44MB FDD in it. I'm not sure if the FDD connector is the same, but I remember the HDD connector is different. Both of my PS/2s are packed away, I have to dig them out to check it. Maybe on next weekend. My $7 DS-DD diskettes arrived. The individual packaging was open on one end, and it seems the surface of most disks is moldy...
OS/2 is not really the right OS for this machine. You really need at least a 386 for OS/2. It's been a LONG time, but I don't think you will even be able to run any Windows programs (inside OS/2) on it without V86 mode. No virtual memory either. Even really early versions of OS/2 are going to struggle on this machine. OS/2 2.1 is the best version, IMHO.
Wow that is a great Model. And realy Modern for a 286 PC My 286 is a Simple Desktop PC from 1988 The PC have a 20 MB HDD 640 K of RAM but to Upgrate it i need DRAM Chips but i don´t know what kind of... I have a VGA Card, 5,1/4 Floppy and 3,5 Floppy Drives. My HDD is in Great Condition. MY PC Works Fine with DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.0 Thank you for the Video.
I had this very model - it was my first PC and already very outdated when I got it. The only difference I see between the two visually is that mine had a red power switch. Mine came with an additional 4 megs of expanded memory via an Intel Above Board ram expansion.
@@catfishkempster: OK, PS/2s are also visibly differentiated by power switch color - red being the "lesser". The red switch PSU for the 8086-based Model 30 version even have different connectors than the white switch - I'll take your word - it just seems unusual. BTW, the standard red switch version was 70 watts - I even have a clone 486DX case that the vendor modified to run this PSU!
Those boot up sounds were sexxyyy... Lol I have 486 ps/2 I'm restoring.... Mine has the same problem with the Dallas battery .. so I need to do that hack just like you have done
Very nice your channel. I love your videos of VCR's. Can I have your email address please? I would like to ask you some questions about vcr because I love such devices
