Received the most weird "PC" 

80186 makes sense now, Siemens built industrial CNC controls in the 80's using that processor. Notably the Hardinge CHNC 1 series were equipped with the Siemens 810T control. This was an 80186 powered control with a VME bus and passive backplane design. The 80186 includes most of the glue ASICs that were needed on 8088 and 286 based machines, designed for embedded and industrial use. A couple PC companies built systems with the 186 processor, such as MAD Computer Inc.

I have a complete system of the same kind. Still with all the original boxes and documentation. You can make your own cable which will work with any generic monochrome BAS monitor. It should also be noted that this is identical to the Siemens PC-D. With the PC-X being the unix version (SINIX) and the PC-D being the DOS version

12:53: That CPU is in fact not a PLCC package, but rather the "LCC" package variant. PLCC (Plastic Leaded Chip Carrier) chips have contact pads on the bottom and has exposed "leads," while LCC (Leadless Chip Carrier) has the contacts on the bottom, because the IC still has no leads but rather the pads on the underside of the chip package, as you can see at 13:05, where these pads are visible on the CPU package running to the IC at the center. Also LCC sockets _require_ a retention mechanism, as opposed to PLCC sockets which are self-retaining.

15:47: what you call "additional ROM chips" are not ROM chips at all. It is 2 times intel 8259 Interrupt controller and 3 times SCN2661 serial interface ICs. The total memory of that machine is 512KByte since it has 16 chips with 256K bit each. The entire memory bus architecture is 16 bit. This is why there are 2 BIOS ROMS and 16 DRAM chips.

Those orange capacitors in the PSU are known for failing short circuit, I'd check them out!

A 80186, a pretty rare beast indeed. Mostly used in industrial systems, that would explain the strange keyboard that looks similar to a POS terminal/ruggedised industrial one. One thing I'd check is the 4 pin power connectors, make sure they are wired the standard way, I've seen similar example systems that had the 12v running on the normal 5v pins and 5v on the 12v pins despite the connector being standard fit. Nice way to blow things up!

Even if it won't run just having an 80186 for show is cool.

Interesting to see 80186 in a PC. I've got a piece of laboratory equipment (Tektronix CSA803A oscilloscope) which uses several of them, and if memory serves they're in sockets like the one in the Siemens PC too.

The video controller card uses the SCN2674 - consequently the card is completely incompatible with regular PC video controllers which where based on the older MC6845. The SCN 2674 was a much more capable controller although not very widely used. Also interesting that the board has it's own microcontroller (NEC 8741) and an 8k byte ROM (perhaps OTPROM) presumably for font data. I love the use of the DIN 41612 connector for the main bus in this computer. They were very widely used in industrial computer systems in the 80s-90s.

Interesting find! I have some additions... The ISA connector has also been used in GDR Robotron EC 1834 machines - albeit with normally laid out cards, where this connector just replaced the ISA connector. Not only that, the EC 1834 also had 720k floppies in use! The 186 is indeed rare (have one, but no board to run it). It doesn't have an edge with 1 MB memory, the 8088 can address the same. It DOES however include some new commands and some operations run a bit quicker. The new commands were later continued to be used with the 286 (e.g. pusha, popa for registers on the stack). The main reason this isn't mainstream though is that includes some circuitry that is normally found on the MoBo itself, like a clock gen, interrupt controller, etc. Therefore it was incompatible with many existing board designs.

It reminds me of the Acorn A5000. It too had expansion cards with those connectors, this is no Acorn though!

wow a 186 didnt know these existed i thought it was like movies where you dont call the first one 1 lol

Good luck finding a monitor & keyboard for this particular PC, I suspect they aren't exactly common!

I wonder if this was used for some sort of automation controls.

It being a Siemens 80186 system with dual 720 KB floppy drives, I think I encountered one of these when I was doing on-sight service. The only one I ever saw. If my memory is trustworthy, it was 1990 or 1991 and the one I saw was used in a hospital, maybe to control the MRI machine that was in the same room. I had a devil of a time sourcing replacement 720 KB drives.

wish I had the keyboard, monitor ect. for you.. .would be awesome to see this machine up and running ..

i really like the old style of stacking expansion boards . It doesnt do much for functionality today with signal integrity being affected by even the connections of the components . It probably wouldve worked back then with little issue and the space savings . I guess it does force size/thickness conformance at the same time and would not support modern expansion. Just cool to see another way of doing things.

those orange caps on the output like to short; look if one is shorted...

Indeed a very strange duck in the pond....I've never seen a system like this one in my 25 year IT career...I'm curious what will follow and I sure hope you can get the system running....well done by the way..very interesting video...congrats with that 😎

I have seen that style of power connector in other PC-class hardware. Specifically I have a Wyse PC motherboard that uses it (and yes I do have the power supply for it too). The lines are fairly easy to trace, and in fact you can still buy the connectors and adapt a standard AT supply to it. That Wyse PC is otherwise a fairly standard 8088 PC motherboard otherwise.

I used to have one of those when my school threw them out. It might still be at my niece's place somewhere. I think even including the monitor, OS and software disks and the keyboard.

Good video, 8088, 8086 and 80186 all had 20 bit address bus widths. So they all could address 1MB of address space, be it ROM or RAM. The 80286 moved to a 24 bit address bus allowing it to access up to 16MB of address space.

Looks like the monitor port has composite monochrome video on pin 9....

Passed one by the local e-waste center back when taking stuff out was legal. I did take the CPU out of it because it looked cool and even 14 year old me thought it was a curiosity. Back then I was looking more for practical PCs I could use for gaming and tinkering with...

It's the first Siemens PC clone, kind of. It can run a Siemens version of DOS or their unix which was called SINIX. But it can't run most IBM compatible software. I think I saw some pats for this on German ebay local ads but the seller wanted far too much for them. Good luck finding the monitor, keyboard, software.

Not PC compatible. Can't be with a 80186. The 80186 integrates the DMA controller and the timer chip in package (chip select decoder etc.) which are not compatible with the 8 bit peripheral chips IBM chose for their PC. There were several PC that were built around the 80186, the Philips :YES, the Siemans PC-D, SMT-Goupil G4, several HP models and many more. All were not fully PC compatible even if they used MS-DOS as OS (PC-D had an adapted MS-DOS 2.11 version). The 80186 was probably the least known Intel CPU with the longest production time if one counts the embedded derivatives. AMD presented new models up into the millenium. The 186/188 was an excellent embedded processor. We used it extensively in the company I worked for in Germany in th 90s.

That motherboard expansion connector looks like the same one Apple used for Nubus

That white connector is a PCI/104 adapter, it is often used in Industrial machines, where space is limited, so stacking cards is the best solution.

Those big white connectors for staking the board look like DIN 41612 connectors to me. Those are widely used for backplanes etc. in industrial type equipment. Logical choise for Siemens I think. Like the big power connectors. Not standaard for pc's but pretty common in industrial equipment.

I believe these were used for SCADA systems (industrial process control), as an alternative to hardware from Digital Equipment Corporation. They wouldn't have been running DOS, but a form of Unix. Likewise, the DEC hardware often ran a form of Unix called Ultrix instead of VMS.

No need to undo the slot screws fully (around 7:00) - they're designed to loosen up then fit through the bigger hole ;-)

I've got a Socket 7 motherboard with similar clips for the IDE and floppy connectors, interestingly.

That keyboard is great. I love old stuff like that.

13:55 What do you mean by having an edge over the 8088? The 8088 had a 20-bit address bus and could address 1MB RAM as well.

Reminds me of the RM Nimbus PC186s, though i think they had a standard isa bus. They could even run a modified version of windows 3.0

That is definitely an unusual computer. I thought at first it might be a computer used for connecting to industrial machinery.

The 80186 CPU are not so rare as i thought.

I do like Siemens Computers. I keep a Core2 Duo Siemens for XP gaming, the build quality is amazing and it runs absolutely silently.

More than a few similarities to the Tandy 2000. 80186, 720k floppies, same stacked bus etc

Isn't that bus connector one used by Acorn in some of their later machines as well?

Is it as weird as a kaypro with extra ram a hdd and modem?

i am 100% sure the vga uses a standard rgb protocol and it shouldn't be too hard to find r g b and hsync vsync , there is probably another 12v on the unused pins and u can easily find which one is the power and ground by trace thickness ,

this machine is already equipped with a heat sink for the processor. Does it heat up to the point where it really needs it?

Good luck!

I wonder if the keyboard is a serial device. If so, you could use another PC as a terminal to test this.

So someone sent you a box full of siemen...

Very interesting the chips manufactured in Portugal, I didn't know they already had a chip factory in the 80's. 👑👑👑 Muito interessante os chips fabricados em Portugal, não sabia que eles já possuíam fábrica de chips na década de 80.

I like the stackable cards

Could it require the monitor to start ?

Almost reminds me of a Tandy 2000. Same CPU.

The old joke "Siemens .. don't get any on ya"

Someone put a lot of time and work into that hinged heatsink. 😆

This smells like a Unix workstation from the 80's. There were many weird Unix workstations back then.

>made in germany does it play Erika on the pc speaker during boot?

Your PSU is crowbarring, so either a peripheral is pulling it down or a watchdog or electrolytics gone bad

Quad density floppies…. 80 tracks but with the same magnetic formulation as the 360k discs which is just ferric oxide. Not very common in 5.25” form but the the same parameters where popular in 3.5” discs. The quad density format saw some use on BBC micro floppy drives. I do wonder how many drives this siemens computer can handle, if it is regular shurgard it might handle 4 drives (2 per cable) perhaps? That would be an interesting experiment as this normally not easy to achieve on most pc’s.

Interesting computer. Btw at ca 8:40 there is a 'bug' in the editing.

QD 720K 5.25" drive, 80186.... why does this remind me of the Tandy 2000?

On the back plane: top card: 9 pin Mouse port, 9 pin video port. main board: 25 pin RS232, 9 pin V11 printer, 25 pin RS232, 9 pin V11 serial, 9 pin Keyboard.

Oh, by the way, if that is what I think it is, you can make an adapter to have ISA cards from that connector.

Oh dear, I once had a Fujitsu Siemens PC which was the most awful and unreliable PC I have ever had.

Mouse likely serial, keyboard looks proprietary, though have not seen it all yet

Very interesting. I'd love to see Doom run on it, haha! Just kidding.

you said that 720KB 5.25 inch was not common.. But thats not true from how i remember it from back in the days. Capacity back in the days where very expensive.. When IBM started with the XT class computer on the main stream market.. 360KB was the basic standard.. Later is was quickly followed up with 720KB 5.25 inch disk drive.. ( it could be that these drives where not sold in big capacitys like the 360KB and 1.2MB drives did. I can remember when i was 4 years old i used 720KB 5.25 inch drives as well.. Later after this the mini floppy 3.5 inch 720KB came the the market.. Followed up with later 1.2MB 5,25 inch drives.

Unfortunately, my long time neighbor who had a PCD1 and a PCD2 threw them away when they stopped working (probably a few years ago) even though he knew that - I can fix ancient computers - I'm lusting after them

It probably isn't even remotely compatible, but it reminds me of the Amiga A4000 power connector.

This system reminded me in many ways of the Tandy 2000 system that I made the mistake of buying back in 1984. It was supposed to be "more advanced" than the IBM PC and Radio Shack had a whole comparison chart showing how it was "better", but it was also very incompatible. Peripherals were incompatible, limited, and expensive, and Radio Shack quietly abandoned it after not too long. The key similarities that jumped out at me were (1) the 720K floppy drives which the T2K also used, (2) the VG96 expansion connectors, though the T2K had them in a traditional bus arrangement rather than the daisy-chain we see here, and (3) the 80186 CPU. This almost makes me wonder if the T2K was OEM'ed from Siemens... see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_2000 for more details.

That bus connector looks a lot like the Nubus connector for the Mac. The pin count is the same and the connector itself looks the same, although I'm sure the pinout is completely different. It is a very strange PC. Looks like they were going for a more integrated design than the IBM PCs, but they made the weird choice at almost every stage. 8088 or 80286? Nope, 80186. 360K or 1.2M 5.25", or 720K 3.5" floppy? Nope, 720K 5.25". MFM or IDE hard drive controller? Nope, SCSI. Every other clone manufacturer standardised on the ISA bus, but this one uses some weird proprietary bus. So yeah, not surprising this machine wasn't very successful.

Why would the serial no be scrubbed off the CPU?

8741 is nort an EPROM, itt`s an MCU from Intel with an Integrated such.

@8:40, that editing 😩

80186? Yep confirmed, that is a rarity and was mostly used on controllers truth be said :) I'm gel, never touched one of those specifically!

It is made in germany, it have specified power factor - premium product, not consumer grade for sure

Do you really need a monitor and keyboard, have you checked if you can use a terminal instead ?

This must be used in a counter

Does it run Crysis?

This seems quite industrial to me. I can't imagine someone having this at their home or office desk.

If you need the service manual I posted the link and it was removed. Sorry to you and youtube

A 'pizza-box' pc :)

wrong, 80186 had the same memory model as 88/86. Improvements were in the speed of MUL/DIV/bitshift operations, plus some new useful instructions.

Found a honeypot with documentation and service manual for PC-D. 100 MByte scanned. With pinouts etc. I shared the link in another comment but this comment will be hidden in the spam folder until RetroSpector validates the link as "OK".

A seaman's PC? :p

This looks very 'Soviet' on the inside.

💛

Most weird? May the Gods of grammar take pity on all of us!

Can it runs crysis ? 🤣

Seamens PC, Big Gaping hole, within the span of 5 seconds of one another? You're playing with fire.

A semens pc with a big gaping hole?

But can it run Crysis?

PCB-WAY IS THE WAY

720? On 5" 1/4(5.25") disks? Those should be only 360Kb then 1.2Mb!!! 720Kb , 1.44Mb and 2.88Mb were all 3"1/2 (3.5"). What the heck you're on about?

Lol semens computer 😂

semen.

RU-vid is banned in China, but you continue to support its economy. What a hypocricy.