IBM PS/2 Model 80 restoration & mods. 386DX25 

For those in the UK. Denatured alcohol is methylated spirit.

I took a model 80 and went full absurdity with it. It was one of the most fun I have had with a retro project. I ended up putting in a 4 MB planar memory card and 2 microchannel memory expansions with 12 MB installed total to get 16 MB RAM. The hard drive was completely dead (of course) so I removed the old MFM card and put in an Adaptec AHA-1640 in its place. I also added a SCSI CD-ROM drive in the 5 1/4 bay with some 3d-printed rails so it fit in the hard drive area. For the front bezel, I used the panel IBM supplied for installing a 5 1/4" floppy drive.in the PS/2 80 series. In order to get it to fit the bezel properly, i had to install the rails upside-down on the CD drive, but it was a perfect fit otherwise. Video was upgraded with a Microchannel XGA-2 card. Network adapter is a Microsoft LAN Adapter/A for Ethernet I topped it off with a blue lightning 486slc33/66 upgrade, so this is probably one of the fastest model 80's in existence without a Reply motherboard replacement. The only non-period-accurate parts I have in it are the hard drive and sound card. Instead of sourcing the proper hard drive, I went with a bluescsi. I did not want to constantly worry about an old hard drive failing I also used a modern re-creation of the Sound Blasted MCV called the Resound New Wave MCA for the sound card

Shrack are a large manufacturer of industrial automation components. They're still in business today, most of what they make is switchgear and relays.

PS/2s are so cool, especially when you think about how much these things cost when they were new. I have a Model 60 that I got a few years ago which is very, very similar to the Model 80 but it is rocking a 286 processor. It took quite a while and a complete tear-down to clean up all the deteriorated foam from inside it.

There’s a medical product called Remove. It is a bandage adhesive remover and it works on just about everything with almost zero effort. If you can get some of that it might save you tons of time cleaning stuff like this. It comes in individually wrapped square swabs.

Your comment at 19:40 made me experience once of those spooky moments. Back in 1989 I was also a long-term Commodore 64 user and the PC computer I was using back then in my first job was also am IBM Model PS2/50z. It had a "massive" 20 Megabyte Hard Drive and one 3.5 inch floppy drive and it was running dos 3.3 with the Lotus Elite Software Suite (Word Processor, Spreadsheet and Database all in one package). I still have the original disks somewhere:) We managed to get a version of Castle Wolfenstein working on it at a reasonable frame-rate as well ;) I also remember we had a huge Monochrome Laser Printer but I can't remember the model, it took up half the desk space it was so large and it took two people to lift it. Thanks for bringing back the memories, this is a great restoration video and it is good to see another PS2 being brought back to life, I share your fondness for this line of IBM machines ;)

Schrack is a well known company in the industrial side of things, credited by producing the finest relays money can buy.

I think the answer to mounting the big fan is just to bend yourself a giant spring clip from metal sheet, screw the fan to that, and press into that hole in the shroud. Should be possible to find in your local hardware store. Steel is ideal, but aluminum flashing might work ok. Try to get slightly curved bends instead of sharp ones. To figure out the right shape, try to use some thicker than normal paper (such as card stock, the stuff that greeting cards are made of), and test the general shape with that to get an outline. Remember to file down the edges with your dremel after cutting. You'll want sheet metal shears for the actual cutting.

Great video as usual! The decomposed foam is hideous! I had fun clearing my Model 80! Also, for those in the UK we have a UK IBM Collectors Discord!

The melted foam was called "black cheese" at the shop where I worked in the 1990s. Whenever we encountered "black cheese" we used IPA, denatured alcohol, acetone, "Goo Gone Original" and WD-40 in succession until we found a solution that would work. Most cases were metal in those days, so I am not sure how any of those would work on plastic cases.

The state of that foam is repulsive, I certainly understand your sentiment!

Watching your process to clean up that foam gave me flashbacks to my old Antec Sonata mid-tower case. It was a pretty quiet build in 2003 but I wanted to make it even more quiet and installed an after-market sound deadening kit consisting of enough rubber+foam cutouts to cover the entire inside surface. When the foam turned back into dino poo, I spent hours scraping and peeling sticky, gooey and dusty foam off of the inside. I considered condemning that case multiple times during the journey and it still smells like Goo Gone whenever I fire up that system. Nice video! I've got a special spot for desktop cases but a very close second are these full towers.

Looks like an Alien chestburster lost his skin @23:00 👽. Leaving behind a few annoying remnants for posterity. I really admire your patience with this one here.

Thanks for letting me live vicariously through your eyes lol. The Model 80 has been a holy grail since I worked on them back in the late 80s-90s. They truly are IBM's Crown of Creation in the PS/2 line, and we sold them almost exclusively as servers, although a few did go to the big wigs at various major reinsurance companies. They would have been insanely expensive for an individual to buy as we live on an island, where everything cost at least two to three times the US price. Now, some technical things I seem to remember. The hard drive cage, in the systems I worked on, was usually populated by full-height SCSI drives, of about 60MB. I remember they used to make this loud pinging sound as if a metal arm was bouncing off of something, something I never figured out lol. Great work, man!

I love my model 80. Had one in college in the early 90's as a replacement for my really slow PS/2 55sx. I just had to get one for my my modern office. The foam was horrible to remove and as pieces flaked off they would stick to the carpet and stain it. In the end I had to use brake cleaner on paper towels to get it out of my case. To try and get the most life out of the model 80 as possible I used my thermal camera to find hot chips on the motherboard and MCA cards. I then added stick on heatsinks to those hot components to keep them cool. Looking forward to your next video in the model 80.

The 8580 was overpriced, overbuilt, and over the top. I love it. One of my favorite PS/2 machines. I've found an easy way to remove the foam is with an old flat scraper, and acetone to clean up the mess. The foam was for sound deadening, the full height hard drives were noisy (and HEAVY!). These were the pinnacle of 80386 technology, nothing but the best in these since they were the big professional workstation or small server solution of the PS/2 line. That power supply is interesting. Never heard of that one before, all of the ones i've ever worked on or owned were all Astec supplies. Those just have a zip tie on them for the "handle" to remove them. These were never meant to be serviced in the field, you just swap the PSU out and send the old one back to IBM for refurbishment. They loved the security torx screws to keep fingers out of the high voltage area. the 8580 was in production for so long that it is one of the few PS/2 machiens that actually got upgrades over its lifetime. From 16 to 20 to 25MHz and 3 different board designs. The Type 3 board can use 2mb or 4mb modules as long as they are 80ns or faster. The OG memory modules were 120ns, the 25MHz machine needed the faster modules for reliable operation, and those were more readilly available when this machine came out in 1989. I need to dig my 8580 out one of these days. I have a Reply planar to install into it that will give it a 486 and more up to date upgrades like 72pin SIMMs and XGA video onboard.

The thing to use to remove that old foam is Goo Gone. We have it in the USA. As a backup I will go for some WD-40 it works but not quite a good a Goo Gone.

That's a very appealing computer for sure. I love the red switch too!

33:00 That chip can be fixed easily. Carefully and slowly grind away the plastic at that point to reveal the leg and attached a tiny wire from that stub to the PCB.

RU-vid gave me an ad for Mr. Clean magic eraser while watching the case cleaning.

I remember back in high school in the early to mid 90s our computer classroom had one of those in it. It was definitely a 386 and all the pcs were IMB 286 systems with monitors, oh I guess there were 20 total plus the server, as it were. In middle school (a wing off the high school, I am from a very small town back then with its own school district) anyway, I remember there were really only a few of us my age (7th grade maybe?) who really knew computers well, one of us ran a BBS in town, it was a good time, but anyway we used to go in there when we could and mess around, it was so easy to get into all the teacher's accounts, there were drives partitioned down to zz (it was great) so every teacher had their own drive letter, anyway I'm babbling, but I remember this system very well.. good times back in the 90s, we will never get those days back. Technology was moving SO fast back then!! edit: oh it's good to hear you said the history of these towers, how they actually were workstations, but a lot of places implemented them as servers in the time.. exactly as our school did. Also, I am sure ours had a red switch. But I also thought the IBM badge was blue with white IBM letters, I may be mistaken, but my memory shows that. Thanks for the wonderful trip to my past, as you always give me..

That foam goo will come off with an oily solvent like mineral terpentine or white spirits. Possibly WD40, or a label and glue remover like GlueGone too.

The original switch, or at least one that seems to match a lot better than your one, was an Arrow 93RP4040B103K. I've checked it against my PS/2s and it's almost a perfect match in terms of the paddle width and thickness (although the length may be a mm or two shorter), as well as the mounting bracket. If anyone's looking for one, there's currently a vendor on the electronic bay website selling 12 packs, although they've only got a couple of lots left as of right ... now.

I really love your restoration videos! Thank you.

One opinion here, NOW is a good time to replace ANY caps - especially surface mount - on ANY device you cherish from the late 80s early 90s, really up until the 2000s or so.. they used SUCH JUNK back in the early 90s, it was just terrible.. really, if you're watching this channel and you have any interest at all in preserving our history, please learn to desolder, to use good flux and wic, then to re-solder. It's fun and very rewarding when done right and (well used to be) caps really aren't very expensive. You can practice on old electronics that are trash, then fix up your old PC parts and renew their lives!!

Totally agree with the decision about the power switch. A PS/2 w/ a white switch just seems weird. As a teenager I had a summer job cleaning up drug stores in the early 90s in Vancouver, Canada, and I remember there would invariably be a Model 80 in the back office. Usually they would be hooked up to a tractor feed printer and an X.25 packet network (Datapac) to talk back to the central office.

Love it - really great to see your restoration, "it has to have a red switch" yes I agree! 😂 I worked with numerous Model 80s in the nineties, running Netware (and Lotus Domino under Netware) on Token Ring networks. I think we even had an LU6.2 link between HO sites, to support replication between Domino servers - very exciting. These were the days when departments shared printers, hanging off these servers. Backup systems were a pain, as they always are. Maybe that's one possible idea, to get an ArcServe config up and going? Or if you could get hold of media for Netware .. that would be something - a Model 80 in its element? :)

A suggestion for the sticky foam: Gasoline. It's safe on plastic and can dissolve many types of adhesives. It also liquefies polystyrene, so if you ever have issues of old pvc cabling that has "melted" into the styrofoam packaging like with some Model M and Model F keyboards I've seen on the channel in the past, gasoline will clean it up faster than anything else.

A drywall or putty knife would speed up that foam removal significantly over that little plastic pry tool.

OMG, this thing is an absolute beast!

Great job fixing this thing up. Definitely a very backwards design in general. It'd legit probably be better turned upside down.

This mashine looks awesome! 😊

with the amount of effort put in modifying the red switch you might as well just have painted the white switch red :D

250 Watts: Dolly needed to lug the thing around! 🤣

I had to put a foam pad in my i7-4770 to make it quiet, because I bought some old DDR3 RAM with plasma tubes that buzz all the time - lol -. The plasma tubes look amazing, but you can hear them buzzing when I try to record my YT vids, ie, I should really cut their power supply.

Beautiful tower! ❤

You might want use IPA to "soak" the sticky and gooey spots, let the alcohol work for a couple of minutes, before scraping. Time is a factor in chemistry. You could for exampe use a piece of cloth or a sponge soaked in IPA and put it on the spots where liquid would simply run off.

Cars now: made of plastic IBM in 1987: Let's make that case of cast aluminum

The "higher end" and newer machines had white switches, as i remember We had a Model 80 very early, it had written on Model 80, not 81 and hat a red power-switch

I never ran into the model 80's as workstations always as servers due to the "large" number of scsi drives you could cram in them and have a tape backup drive. I also remember the floppy drive cage with edge connectors but I only serviced a hand full of these over the years. Not being an IBM official service rep getting parts, manuals and setup disks were always a huge pain in the ass.

A DInoaur though a modern one. And that was my first Computer my they have come so far 😊😁👍

I ordered one of these around 1989 at work to run a relational database system and to run the associated remote data capture system. Eventually it was replaced so I brought it home. After I retired I tried to sell it but there was no interest at all and several PS/2 systems had been on ebay with no interest. I tried firing it up and it POSTed but wouldn't run. So I had to scrap it. It's such a shame. About a year after I started using it at work I installed a Novell network but that didn't work. We contacted IBM and under our corporate maintenance contract their engineer came and swapped out the motherboard. Apparently an I/O or DMA line was missing in the early design

Pretty tower.

Red switch with a loud clack. Yep, that's what belongs in an IBM PS/2. ;)

You're not kidding about the fragile ribbon cable to the heads. I once sneezed while working on one. It's now a parts drive. Just as well. It takes about 1.2 of those to make 1.0 working one.

I am fairly certain that model actually shipped with a white power switch. Though most PC/2 systems did have a red power switch.

I think I'd like to pick one of these up to fill the 386 vacancy in my collection

hi! i can't believe you just swap the schrack power supply for some generic one.... Schrack is very big company in Europe, that makes most reliable industrial electronics today....and, to be honest i also had no idea that they ware making power supplies back then... but that power supply is a gem, and if it's original to that system (and works properly) - you should keep it that way! thanks for the video, cheers mate!

Going to need a fish-eye lens to get that in shot. lol

The closest I've been to having an IBM is a lenovo laptop. It was my first 2in1. I got it in 2014. I've never really thought genuine IBMs were worth the cost, at least not back in the day. I get it for retro purposes though.

Next time try nitro thinner or acetone! Ipa is not as good in breaking glue. But you should be very careful on plastic. Also, the used lithium battery isn't prone to fail cataatrophic like ordinary NiCD. So systens with this battery type should generally be much safer.

I love it. Just glad it isn't my retro 386. It looks like a good way to become poor (not that I need more encouragement on that front)

That slimy residue very much reminds me of Aliens 😬

In my uneducated opinion, I think they put those foam pads in strategic positions (via trial and error) to prevent resonance, the case suddenly getting unpleasently loud.

@5:54 - Later Model 80 cases removed the edge-connect assembly at the back of the diskette drive cage, and switched to the "small button" 34-pin connect drives. The back rotating 'T' foot was also replaced with just a heel. I'm not sure where exactly in the lifecycle where those changes occurred, but you might be able to narrow down the production date (and manufacturing location) by the serial number.

Same with the cars from the late 80s early 90s foam disintegrates and falls off the vents, plus it smells.

you know your computer is heavy when it has a built in handle and a weight warning underneath it!

I should think Acetone would take care of that adhesive really quickly.

i'm using tar mats for cars to silence whiny pcs. sticks very well and doesn't disintegrate...

My boss had one of these. I used a PS/2 P70.

MXR and DOD effects pedals from the 70s and 80s also have this obnoxious petroleum based foam in them, on metal parts you can use acetone to remove it cleanly. If it's in contact with other metal parts that are not painted it will cause them to corrode, very awful stuff.

asatone should work on that foam pal

It is really no point in using both IPA and denatured alcohol as solvent because those are both alcohol and works in similar ways. I'd recommend petrol/diesel instead, as alcohol is polar solvent and petrol is non-polar. For cleaning this sticky rubber, I'd suggest a knife that is being used to clean ceramic stoves.

Been waiting for this one! I loved my model 80, I learned so much from it.

another great video. But i have to disagree with the red switch. Red ones were only on the first lot of PS2 ie 30 8086 and others from that era. They swapped to white for the later machines

Those poor floppy drives. Ugh. I really need to do mine.

Aliens stuff is inside your ibm ps/2.

Power supply from Zenith. That does go back aways.

Dear god, a mains filter circuit inside a Matryoshka can! WHY?! :P

Funny i just repaired a floppy like that model 30

For the rotten foam residue, have you tried WD40 or Acetone? I've had good results using WD40, just let it soak a bit. You need a petroleum solvent for petroleum residue so water or alcohol based solvents won't work.

My 30/286 has a white switch too.

Try wd-40 on the sticky surface

WD40 is good for removing old glue

acetone to get that stuff off the mettle parts :D

37:55 why is that a Zenith PSU there? Smh..

Isn't it possible to just replace the plastic lever? Or colour / dye the white one red?

I dont think missing a bonding and grounding check will kill too many peiple unless the plane is stuck by lightning and the wings catch fire. Ok never mind.

I avoid the MCA PS/2 models like the plague. I don't mind the tech behind MCA, but the fact that there are almost no cards available, makes me not be very excited about those models. The PS/2 machines with ISA bus are far more collectible.

my floppy no longer works, even after trying to replace caps. What are my options for replacement? all drives on ebay are way too expensive :(

ah those disgusting foam pads!! Did you try WD40 to peel stickers off? Might take a bit more than a couple of minutes but if they're made of paper, they'll come off easily. And yes, an IBM must have an orange switch! And of course there's a dremel in action, it's an IBM video! ;)

Sorry but, a blue switch would be it for me ^^

I have a dumb question: Why not just reverse the fan in the PSU and forego the intake fan entirely?

are those extended pci slots? I'm not familar with that.

*Too

has anyone ever said you sound a little like christopher walken? This is not criticism btw

are you swedish BTW?

Downside with PS/2 is the lack of ethernet and soundcards.

I thought IBMs were supposed to have an orange switch

TOO late?

I worked in IBM mainframe late 80s then moved to PC services early 90s. We had IBM PS2s and also other brand PCs like Compaq and Elonex. The IBM PCs reeked quality, they felt well made and like they would last lifetime…they felt like real IBM computers. Compaq came a very close second but the Elonex felt like cheap disposable rubbish by comparison.

You in the states? I have a model 80 psu that doesn’t work and a board. No need for them.

*TOO LATE