New Toys!

[SpidersWeb]

Will do.

Almost none of the disks work completely (sadly), except the Sanyo disks which seem to run fine - even ran WordStar off one of them.
Although my beleif of them being original backups I beleive is false, the OEM barcode seems to be on almost all the disks so was probably just an asset label.

Disks are labeled (for Sanyo):

Sanyo MCB 550/555 #1 Disk 1 of 2 (SET A) WordStar
Sanyo MCB 550/555 #1 Disk 1 of 2 (SET A) WordStar
Sanyo MCB 550/555 #2 Disk 2 of 2 (SET A) CalcStar
Sanyo MCB 550/555 #2 Disk 2 of 2 (SET A) CalcStar
Sanyo MCB 550/555 #3 Disk 1 of 3 (SET B) MailMerge/SpellStar
Sanyo MCB 550/555 #3 Disk 1 of 3 (SET B) Mailmerge/Spellstar
Sanyo MCB 550/555 #3 Disk 2 of 3 (SET B) MailMerge/Datastar + DBase II
Sanyo MCB 550/555 #4 Disk 2 of 3 (SET B) MailMerge/Datastar + DBase II
Sanyo MCB 550/555 #5 Disk 3 of 3 (SET B) ReportStar
Sanyo MCB 550/555 #5 Disk 3 of 3 (SET B) ReportStar
Sanyo MCB 550 SYSTEMS/DISK/GAMES
SYSTEMS DISK TWO
System Disk I MS DOS V2.11 BASIC Sanyo V1.32 Multiplan/Gman

So just boring backups of install disks, will look what is on the two "SYSTEM DISK" disks now, maybe something interesting on there.

Edit: opened the systems disks - both are labelled "SANYO_SYS" and contain MS DOS 2.11, Connerman, Multiplan (I think), and an odd version of BASIC with demos. Nothing Sanyo specific so false alarm there

[SpidersWeb]

Oh, it's SANYO MS DOS 2.11
Someone might like that.

[SpidersWeb]

Will image those Sanyo system disks this weekend- sure someone out there will find a Sanyo MBC and not be able to boot. I checked an io.sys is written by Sanyo 1984 and crashes my poor 286.
Really need to make a webpage to upload this stuff :/

Something else I plan to do, is to (using blanks as practice to begin with) replace the magentic donut in a disc casing without causing any noticable external damage.
The idea is to get a brand new 360Kb disk, write to it, open it and carefully remove the donut. Get faulty disc, and use a craft knife to carefully pull up the lower folded seal, remove mouldy/dead donut and replace with the fresh one. If I get good at this - it means I can give some of my original disks new life which will make me very happy.

Just won auctions for another 150 disks. Hopefully I find more than ten working disks in the next lots.
Two garage sales + visiting TrashPalace again (amazingly cool stuff I find there) this weekend - like a USB floppy drive for $3

Arrived is my 200Mb IBM SCSI drive and controller, although I'm not sure what to do with it at the moment :S Whatever machine it goes in to will also be getting an internal Syquest drive.
Don't have any SCSI cables, hoping to find some otherwise I can order them.

[SpidersWeb]

Ugh having 5.25" floppy nightmares tonight.

FDC in the 386 seems to be playing up, or maybe the cable, so those two drives are out.
In the 286 the disks I must've slipped some bad disks in because the 360K drive is eating disks now something horrid, which leaves the 1.2 which is formatting/viewing fine.
The XT will read my old 360Kb disks, including the Sanyo disks mentioned above, but will not format, write, or read disks made in my 286 on the 1.2 drive (using a brand new 360K floppy btw). Wont format unformatted original floppies either - need to investigate that, could be a loose cable.

Frustrating :/ Know what I need to do, but bah so annoying. No 5.25" cleaning disk either, so that 360Kb drive needs to come right out for a clean, hopefully it's on rails (I can't remember, I think it is). Hoping the Tandon is something simple as well.

Edit: Went to TrashPalace, nothing new really but I did dig out MS Mouse + Paintbrush - mouse was missing but all disks, reg card, manuals, box are there. Disks are 2 x 720Kb and 4x360Kb and it appears to be a DOS version of MS Paint for two bucks - dated 1989. Went to garage sales, both were filled with children's clothes

[SpidersWeb]

Ok so my pile of goods from the land of the free have arrived.

I'm yet to test the ST238R or MFM and RLL controllers but did test the pair of 360Kb drives and 5150 system board.

I'm now the proud owner of a WORKING 5150:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwHCuZRM ... e=youtu.be

To do - Tandon A drive is having trouble with reads/writes - may be alignment or just need a head clean - hopefully that is all. It was working fine previously.
Original keyboard needs attention - having electrical issues - maybe cord or the controller chip.

The two 360Kb drives arrived, the first worked perfectly, the second had some issues which appear to have been caused by the shipping process. To begin with the Track 0 sensor was not working, forcing the drive to bounce off the stopper, not boot, and cause a 601 error. By firmly pressing on the wire connectors for the sensor, the problem went away. Next I formatted a disk with it, 180Kb, wtf? The second head isn't reading any data (checked with ImageDisk aignment test) but the first is perfect - so possibly a bad connection between the head and board (I hope). These 360 drives are for the 5160, so the 5150 can have both it's Tandon's back.

[SpidersWeb]

I've taken a week off work (starting in two weeks), so will be going through all these machines and finishing them off.
Some of which will be retrobrighting, as you can tell from the video, that 5151 isn't exactly museum quality.

But this weekend it'll be floppy cleaning/repair time, and finishing the 5150 and 5160.

I was intending to remove the original Intel 8087 from the 5150 and move it to my 5160 (already has upgrades like V20 and extra HDD and Hercules graphics), but may leave it where is simply to avoid risk of damaging something when it's not necessary to move it.

My ST238R arrived with a faceplate, so I'm going to move the faceplate over to the ST225 (in the lower right drive bay of 5160) and refit the NEC plate back on to the NEC D5126 (upper right drive bay). Then use my IBM half-height blanking module + a single 360K drive on the left - since it's matching cousin is only working single sided at the moment :/ 5150 is less complicated since both floppy drives are full height beasts. The ST238R I think I will fit to the IPC 80286 since it's a big boy now with a CMOS battery. The hard drive bays on this case are enclosed, so no need for a faceplate (works out nicely!).

Still yet to arrive is my ST251-1 - but that's for the 5170 which still has no case and it wont fit in any other case because the motherboard is HUGE.

More importantly, I've finally got rid of my boarder who was living in the largest room, which means I can move in to the largest room with my partner and thereby freeing our old bedroom. This little procedure is letting me upgrade the vintage room from a single bedroom in to a large double bedroom - allowing me to fit a few more desks. The plan is to have the IBM machines (5150, 5160 and hopefully 5170) permanently setup.

[SpidersWeb]

Got another 150 disks delivered, some interesting originals here too but the only one of interest is original Sierra disks for Leisure Suit Larry (2 and 5 I think).
Also the WANG setup disks for the 200/300 series PC range might be worth imaging, provided these disks are cleaner than the last lot.

Question, 5150 with 256KB RAM + 2 floppy drives - what are some good programs I should fit on to disks and put in a holder next to it? Most of my DOS apps and games are really intended for 512-640K systems :/ I doubt most of them will run on a stock 5150.

[SpidersWeb]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlWOn4jc ... e=youtu.be

Still no idea what to put on to floppies for it, most the programs I have/used were late 80's where 512 or 640 was the norm :/

[Carcenomy]

Floppies? With 256K you should break out the cassette deck!

[Carcenomy]

Oh and just noticed how high that 5153 had gotten! Holy crap!

[tezza]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlWOn4jcGxY&feature=youtu.be

Still no idea what to put on to floppies for it, most the programs I have/used were late 80's where 512 or 640 was the norm :/

I would go with DisplayWrite. IBM marketed this for the basic PC (256k and under). You could buy it in the form of one of those boxed IBM disk and manual so it was really foundation software for that machine, even though people soon ditched it for something better. I could email you a disk image.

Other options could be something like ZORK, although that was popular on text only 8-bit machines also. Microsoft also sold Adventureland as a protected disk specificially for the IBM when it was resleased but I don't know where you could pick that disk image up from.

[Carcenomy]

Not sure on its memory consumption but I'd hazard a guess that IBM Alleycat would work on a 5150 with a 5153 and CGA...

[SpidersWeb]

5153 is for the IBM 5160 XT which I also finished off this weekend, nice faceplates and a Shugart 360KB floppy drive.
Will be fun loading the XT up with games when it gets CGA though - with two hard drives it has 20Mb free still. CGA card is still in it's original box after 20+ years, so crossing fingers it works and doesn't start popping caps.

So looking for some games that require less than 256Kb memory, run off floppy, and are happy with a monochrome display.

Cheers tez, will add DisplayWrite to my list - also spotted IBM Writing Assistant. PrintMaster should work too I beleive and guessing Multiplan since I found it on my Sanyo disks.
If you could flick me a disk image that would be awesome. I have PFS:FirstChoice and PFS:FirstPublisher in their original boxes, but not sure if they'll apreciate the memory conditions - haven't tested the disks either. Bought them years ago but keep forgetting to get the boxes from the garage :/

I recreated the original PC-DOS 160Kb boot disk with the BASICA samples, but I can only run 3 with monochrome. Music.BAS was a neat demo though.

[tezza]

If you could flick me a disk image that would be awesome.

Sure, pick it up from here. It's a temporary link so let me know when you've got it (if anyone else wants it grab it). It's in IMA format (readable by Winimage).

[SpidersWeb]

Done