LGR - Restoring a 1987 IBM PS/2 Model 30 

To everyone sending me links to hard disk cables they think will work on this machine: as mentioned near the end of the video, there is _only one_ cable that works with this configuration on this particular variant of the Model 30. That would be IBM PN:61X8903. Even then I still don't have the correct hard drive for this machine so I wouldn't be able to use the thing anyway, so I'm temporarily just using an XT-CF-Lite card instead. Also, yes I am aware that blowing air into a fan can cause problems. TOO BAD, HAD FUN, _NO REGRETS_ :P

The power button was most likely disabled on purpose, because this machine was never supposed to be turned off.

Clint's Home for Wayward PCs

'That was used so that IBM can annoy me 30 years later.' That is pure gold.

I don't even own any old computer stuff but it's just relaxing and interesting hearing you talk about this kind of thing.

I hate when I get computer restoration blue balls. I feel your pain.

You should write a big book about all things old IBM PC and call it "Fifty Shades Of Beige".

"I don't know what this thing went through, but I found it sad" Judging by the scraped off serial number, the permanent marker, and the masking tape label, probably public school

Your passion for forgotten obsolete technology is so refreshing in the current throwaway culture we live in.

Why is this so soothing

What a beauty! We had these, or maybe a 35, at our school :D Great memories of learning Logo and other stuff, and of course at the end of the lesson the teacher would let us play games! Zany Golf anyone? Great video!

I can't believe I'm have an emotional reaction to a RU-vid video but I'm loving these old PC reviews. I'm quickly approaching 40 so these are the kinds of computers I had as a kid. My dad was a teacher so he'd bring various computers home from school for me to use. One year he brought home a PS/2 Model 30 with an IBM dot matrix printer and IBM monitor. For me watching this video and the other ones where you build a "dream" Win 98 or XP PC is incredibly nostalgic. I remember in the late 1990s/early 2000s wanting a killer Tualatin 1.4S system. Seeing the boxes with Diamond Stealth video cards Gravis soundcards takes me back to going to the local computer store and seeing all the components and of course the ever present Altec Lansing speakers. They're also an incredible source of nostalgia for me. I think one of the biggest things for me was that back in the 1980s and into the 1990s computers were kind of like a secret club. They were pretty expensive and most people didn't have the first clue about them. I didn't feel elitist or anything like that. I just felt like computers were these magical devices and I could poke around them and figure out how to get them to do what I wanted. So yeah, seeing all this stuff brings back a lot of memories of my childhood, highschool, and university days. I've often thought about building a "dream machine" from the Windows 3.11/95/98/XP/7/Vista eras but I have no idea what I would do with them after I built them and played a couple of games. For me the fun would be in actually building it and getting it all set up.

I know nothing about computers, but watching these videos is so satisfying and fun to me

I feel its pain, it's as old as I am LMAO. Floppy, grimey, oily, we'll all be in that state some time 😂

"some of my Packard Bells" is not a phrase I expected to hear in the Year of Our Lord 2018

"I don't know if it's actually helping, but it makes me feel better..." Ahh. Story of my life :D

I can't wait for you to hit 1M, man. You deserve it so much. Been here since

this was my first computer. I'm still using its keyboard as of today. Thank you for this

Thank you for making these videos! They’re really enjoyable to watch while relaxing.

you have no idea how much I love these videos, they are very well produced, and they still help me practice my English every day, thanks ^^

10 print "farts" 20 goto 10 run

I love your restoration videos!

I enjoyed the video, especially seeing Silpheed at the end. I played it so much in my childhood I can still remember the names of some of the ships used for copy protection in the manual. Seeing you demo that game brought back a huge wave of nostalgia. Thanks for that!

man, youre totally the best retro computing tuber. i love how informative yet entertaining you are.

Christmas morning 2003, building my 1st PC with new parts (Athlon 1.1GHZ) I cut my finger all the way to the bone. Blood makes me faint, well not so much after having cancer but back then I hit the ground and woke up in my parent's bedroom hours later. Have a nike swoosh looking scar to this day.

Always smile when an LGR video is uploades, at least when it´s fresh video.

man i really love your content, I'm not a retro computer guy myself but your laid back format and clear love for what you do lightens my day every time :)

EXTREME....ly satisfying, thanks for recording and editing this!

You should make more of these restoration videos, they are just so relaxing to watch

I have not watched this yet but I know it’s gonna be good since it’s an LGR video

Thank you so much for that. It really takes me back. My 1st PC was a 2nd hand IBM PS/2 mod 70. Tool-less case, hard power switch on the front. Lots of satisfying clicks. running os/2. I junked it back in 2006 and have regretted it ever since. Love your work.

One of the most relaxing videos I've watched in awhile. I could listen to LGR restoring old computers forever.

You should have just written "GR" after the "L" :P

What's this? More IBM stuff? Awesome!

Sooooo satisfying to see you clean up and restore things. LGSMR.

thank you for delivering us this content, its amazing and i appreciate everything you do

This video is cool and all, but we're all left asking.. Where's the woodgrain?

For a moment, I was thinking you'd just go and add a "GR" to that L

When I worked for IBM I had a PC/AT with a 3278 emulator card. Using a series of keystrokes you could switch from PC mode to green screen mainframe access and back. I had a PS2/30 286 with windows for home use. I ordered the PC and then broke my leg. I spent my recovery playing King’s Quest IV. Thanks for the stroll down memory lane.

Around '95 I had a buddy who ran a computer store. One time he offered me old used PS/2 systems (386dx20) for ~$10 each, me and my best friends grabbed 10-11 of them, incl a bunch of ps/2 keyboards. Over the years they all ended up in a dumpster for one reason or another. Just a few years after the last of them were gone, I realized the vintage value..... I still havent stopped crying.

This was my first PC. I miss it like crazy. 20 MB Hard Drive!

IPL is an IBM term, "Initial Program Load". I think it attempts to boot from the network.

Your videos are so soothing and entertaining to watch during the Holidays. Merry Christmas, anyone seeing this.

Mr. Lgr your videos have inspired me to find and get all our old computers back running and play old dos games and such. I even found a 486 laptop and pentium 1 I didn't know we had. I already have our PC AT clone working. As someone who grew up in the 90s and built 3 pcs by 2000 it is bringing back so many memories and not all good. Sadly memories of IRQ conflicts and such that plug and play eliminated. Not trying to blow wind up your skirt and dont get a big head but keep up the good work and thanks clint. Wow this sounds way more pandering than I meant to but whatever. Most these old computers get tossed so its good to see someone saving them.

omg yes

I used to have a stack of a couple dozen PS/2's of all different models... I now wish I had not scrapped most of them for parts back around 1998 when they were worthless junk. I saved a few, but it still hurts me to think I wasted so many.

I could watch your videos for hours! So much good content.

Loving your videos. Very therapeutic and satisfying.

ZOMG this was my first computer! My family bought it for 600 USD in 1996 because we didn't know any better. It had some kind of after market TI co processor that was supposed to make it a 386 equivalent (according to the family that sold it to us). I think it was a normal math co processor though. Also mine still had it's 5.5 disk drive.

I suppose this machine worked over here in Germany for a while! There’s a sticker on the Power supply which says „TÜV geprüfte Bauart“ TüV stands for „Technischer Überwachungsverein“ its a technical test Organisation and „tested constructio“

Great video LGR. You do a great job with restoration!

I love how many of the restorations you do are of machines I've actually owned at some point in time.

Good morning from Australia :)

I actually have one of these somewhere in storage. Of course, I haven't turned it on in probably 15 years. Luckily for me though, I have a working HDD and cable in mine (last I checked)

Good video and again you've brighten up my friday. Thanks Sir!

Back in the mid 90's I worked for IBM in a hard drive fab plant in the UK. Surrounded by IBM and all of its goodness. This brings back fond memories...

When all your favorite youtubers post videos back to back after a dry spell 😭

"Lets address some of the yellowing going on with the front of the case" Hello and welcome back to The 8-Bit Guy

Nice work. Always happy to see an old machine restored.

I just feel comfortable watching this videos, keep the good work.

That power switch though! WANT!

I didn't know there were PC floppies that were powered through the data cable. That's how Mac floppies work, and surprisingly their cables are much smaller.

Although I never grew up with computers like this one or similar types, and even though I consider myself as a noob when it comes to most computer stuff it is always very interesting and pleasing to watch LGR. You do a great job, dude!

Why do I love this channel so god damn much? I didn't even knew that I liked old computers.. Clint you must be a wizard the way you enchant me with passion for old PC's and games!

Hang on, LGR AdLib clone?

I think that computer was a server at a company and was NEVER to be shutdown. Also, that hard drive was removed because of the stuff on it, not to leave the building.

Watching someone narrating cleaning is way more interesting than actually cleaning something. Thanks, Clint! :)

1989 I worked for Chevron in SanFran setting up these PS/2 computers and sending them in 5 unit sets (along with monitors, keyboards and the first HP deskjets ) out to their fleet of ships. Previous to this, I was a 2nd Engineer in their fleet and I knew nothing about computers, but knew the ships and their people. Chevron sent me on training courses to learn, and I learned machine code and programming in their learning centres. After one year, I was hacking Lotus 123 and creating nuisance code to randomly change the keyboard language of my fellow office workers. Man, that was fun!

I wrote C programs on one of those boxes (and Intel Assembly) while in college. :) I loved the old keyboards, but hated the mouse...

Target used these as terminals in there stores in the late 80s and early 90s

Trying to get some sleep after a hard day and then a lgr video comes along. Gosh darn clint! Nice video as always

Silpheed was my first game with sound on my 8088 XT clone with a MediaVision Thunderboard sound card... great memories, I'm so glad you featured it.

If I wanted to aquire one of those detailing brushes, what exactly would I be looking for? As in, what are they called? What would I type into Amazon search, for instance.

Oh.. Im as old as this computer

when i heard you say ESDI...it brought back memories of when i was looking into my PC's specs as a kid. I had totally forgotten that term.

I like that power toggle over the AT death switches that had live AC wires running to the switch

Nice timing I was really bored.

to explain the missing product label being scraped off, it wasn't that uncommon for companies to intentionally scrape off serial numbers, especially front panel serial numbers do possibly distance themselves with the their computer suppliers if for whatever reason their business relations with the company declined at some point or just as a company policy that they do not show front panel product numbers on any of their office machines. Back in my time as a janitor some years ago I ran into quite a few of these old PS/2s and IBM PCs (being thrown away sadly, and no we couldn't salvage them and/or take them home, that was against the company policy, we had to just throw them out with the garbage back than) that had their front serial numbers removed in almost the exact same way.

Thank you very much for doing all these great things!

A great work, really return to the life with a renovated look

Arrrhh, perfect timing Clint. My gf just made me an Irish coffee, now i can enjoy it with a good episode of LGR.

I deactivated adblock for this channel.

Man. I think you did an excellent job restoring it. That's unfortunate about the hard drive, but obviously you did everything you could do to provide the proper drive for that model. Great job!

Love your restauration videos!

It's worth mentioning for any readers just getting into VC that PS/2 systems are very attractive and often have some pretty fascinating features (particularly the later, MCA Bus systems) but they're not really "first project" material due to how nonstandard they are. They can also get pretty pricy for how common they are, even by the standards of a increasingly expensive hobby. Our boy Clint is striving for authenticity, but anyone who's working on a proprietary HDD based PS/2 like the 25 or 30 may be better served with a ISA IDE card such as the XT-IDE depending on their budgetary and/or time needs. (Later models, using MCA, are better served by SCSI cards like Future Domain's fare since ISA cards are unusable and no IDE card for MCA exists.)

Friend 1:Hey! I have a PS2! Do you want to come to my home? Friend 2:Yes please! -shows ps/2- Friend 2:Ok bye

Amazing! I was the proud owner, upon graduating High School in 1989, of an IBM PS/2 Model 30/286. It had a 20MB HDD and a few K of memory. I was later to upgrade it with a Plus Hardcard XL 100MB, and 2x 512k SIMMs for 1MB RAM - WOW! The Hardcard was the sweetest peripheral I ever purchased. 10 years later it was still operating just fine, having been transplanted to my 386 and then to my VLB 486 and never giving me errors or crashes. That Hardcard cost my Dad $500 at Egghead Software when it was new, and I had to do a good deal of convincing him that it was a good investment. I also installed a 2400 baud MNP5 modem for my first online experience. My parents didn't like BBSes - thought they'd run up our long distance bill - but they were OK when I connected to the college's Annex box for Internet access. Eventually I installed Minix on this PS/2. That was the end of playing DOS games and pretty much anything else useful... but, MINIX!!!

Wow, did you bring back some memories! About six months of my first year of full-time employment was spent on a 1987 IBM PS/2 Model 30 very much like this one, writing software and providing tech support for my company's software package! I didn't know much about hardware in those days - I was primarily a programmer - but I do remember that my PS/2 Model 30 had the optional "whopping-big" 30MB ESDI hard drive and 640kB RAM. The computer came from one of my employer's business partners, who was an IBM dealer, so it also came with a matching PS/2 VGA monitor, a 14" IBM 8512, I think. If I remember correctly, it had a 10MHz 80286 processor (but did not have the math coprocessor), which made it the fastest Intel-based PC I had ever used up to that point. It couldn't keep up with my boss's Compaq DeskPro 386/16, of course, but it was more than enough for the kind of work we were doing at the time. We didn't have 3270 emulator network cards at that company (although in 1988, I got a new job in a bank's IT department, and at that bank we did use 3270 emulation, first mostly with IRMA coax cards similar to the one you found in this computer, and later via software emulation that worked with our IBM Token-Ring network hardware. (Also at that second job, I had an IBM PS/2 Model 50 for awhile, which had a slightly faster '286 processor and Micro Channel Architecture.)

omg 2160p 60fps, it's glorious

I wonder why they went with captive spring-loaded Torx screws it they were trying to save money

Yeah! I dropped everything I was doing to see this hahaha These are your best videos dude, hardware restoring, keep it up, what you are doing is great! Thanks!

That power switch it ridiculous! I bet you couldn't believe what you were looking at when you opened it. I love your writing, and encourage you to keep going! More vintage machine restorations! PLEASE!

Dang. Haven't seen SIMM's in many many years. Largest ones were one meg iirc?

That monitor is screaming out for a hinge so it can fold flat against the top of the PC. It would look beautiful. Swap that gigantic PSU for a couple of D Cells, and you would have a retro laptop-ish thing. Yay.

Awesome video it's always need to see these machines saved best as they can be.

I've usually watched your channel for the reviews, but hot damn did I enjoy this restoration video! There is something awfully satisfying about seeing these machines meticulously examined, cleaned and explained. Thanks for all your hard work LGR! P.S. Please review Ultima IV some day. :3

But can it run Crysis?

Am I watching LGR or The 8-Bit Guy?

Not many people can make cleaning a 31-year-old computer interesting, but somehow you can. And that's what I love about this channel, along with the oodles of oddware, the exciting edutainment videos, & the terrific thrifting videos. :)

I love this guy's channel! Takes me back to the days when my Dad had the IBM PS/2 and the IBM PCJr. He could just switch on the computer for me when I was about 3 years old and Reader Rabbit and Math Rabbit would keep me busy for hours!