IBM 5170 AT Restoration
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- Опубликовано: 21 июн 2024
- Adapters here: www.pcbway.com/project/sharep...
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Tools I regularly use
DeoxIT D5 Contact Cleaner
Hanstar 861DW Rework Station
Pro'sKit SS-331 Desoldering Station
UNI-T UT61E Auto Ranging Multimeter
UNI-T UT890D Manual Ranging Multimeter
MESR-100 mk2 ESR meeter
PINECIL Soldering Iron
PinePowerPSU
TS-100 Soldering Iron
AMTECH NC-559-ASM Flux
Kester 951 Flux pen
MaAnt Grinding Pen
Multicore 60/40. 0.38mm and 0.5mm solder
TL866 II Plus Programmer
RIGOL DHO800 70MHz four-channel digital scope
Tektronix 2246A 100 MHz four-channel analog scope
FNIRSI DPOX180H 180MHz Handheld Digital Oscilloscope
InfiRay P2 Pro Thermal Camera
PCBs from PCBWay.com
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Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio 
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The cleanliness of the inside of these machines depends largely on the environment they were used in. I work for a semiconductor manufacturer that is often mentioned in most of your videos (including this one). We have literally thousands of computers that are on 24/7, but because of the environmental requirements here, they look brand new inside despite having years of continuous usage.
That would explain it. Unfortunately, there are no clues on the hard drive where it was in service
You work for rifa? 😂😂
I was thinking semiconductor clean room environment too, could be medical too, I've worked on machines used in cytotoxin administration laboratories and they're all pristine. They don't leave the lab their whole life and any hardware repairs have to be done in situ with parts that have been quarantined before they can enter the lab.
@@izools I have an IBM P60 that came with software installed for some lab. It looked like it was brand new
that technology needs to make it into the home.
Remember, for IBM PCs and compatibles, all the floppy drives should be set to DS1. It's the twist in the cable that determines if it's drive A or B. IBM changed the Shugart specification, as the original Shugart specification would allow up to 4 floppy drives with a straight ribbon cable, but all drives connected would spin whenever any diskette was accessed. IBM's twist reduced the number of connected drives to 2, but made it so each drive could spin independently. I am not sure about the floppy drive termination, though. That's something I've only learned about recently, and never messed around with floppy drive termination in my vintage machines.
The controller on the original 5150 had a large plug on the back for external floppy drives, those would've been the 3rd and 4th drive. They dropped this feature and thus more than two floppies in PCs went away also.
@@Nukle0n very true, and some floppy controllers have a second internal header to support 4 drives as well.
@@Nukle0n Yep. I would argue the real limiting factor in PCs (re: number of floppies) was the drive lettering convention. Probably not much of a problem in the MS-DOS 3 days, but once HDDs got to be ubiquitous, and C: became de-facto for "the hard drive," the poor 3rd and 4th floppy drives were forever evicted.
Even when controller cards provided a physical interface, having an "E:" floppy just felt like such a hack, and most applications that worked with floppies never considered anything beyond A: and B: to be relevant. Contrast that to, e.g., Linux where it would just be dev/fd2, regardless what other fixed, removeable, or optical media existed.
@@nickwallette6201 Yeah, it does feel odd while the 3rd and 4th floppy drives would still be accessible, they would be assigned letters after C:. I find it odd that they made a decision to hard code the first hard drive letter like that. Other OSes that didn't have their roots in DOS or Windows don't have that limitation. Also, in other computers as well. The Amiga, for example, has capacity for 4 floppy drives, which are designated df0: to df3:. Hard drives start at dh0:. The X68000 is a bit weird, as drive A: is the boot drive, whether its a floppy or hard drive, and then other letters get assigned after.
IBM never used the DS jumpers for floppies, all floppies must be set for DS1, and the drive order is determined via the order they're plugged in, before or after the twist. This ended up becoming a standard across all clones, some early Tandy TRS-800 Model 1000s used the original Shugart method with the jumper but in the end it was only Amiga that used it.
I have a Commodore XT clone that uses a strait cable and jumpers. But yeah, it's rare
Great video. Steven now repair a IBM 5170 for a customer. It have some motherboard issues. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands
Thanks, Good luck with the board!
You might want to invest in some cable-making bits! :-) You can get crimp pins and housings for the Molex (5.25") power connectors (although I think I use a TE Connectivity clone that I find fits better due to a slightly optimized design), Berg (3.5") power connectors, the DuPont-style pin headers, and even ribbon-cable IDC connectors for card-edge and pins.
Makeshift DIY works fine, of course, but it's really nice when all of your cables are the perfect length, and don't have any kludgy splices. All you need is the right crimper (or a couple, for different size pins), and an IDC crimper. (Or a table vice. That works too.)
Yeah, I definitely need to get some crimp tools
Somehow, this IBM design is truly full of art.
Never had a 5170 myself, but my first PC was a 286 at 16 MHz with 1 MB RAM, Trident TVGA 8900 (?) with 512 KB VRAM, 40 MB harddrive, and the old Award BIOS where you press CTRL-ALT-ESC (or for me STRG-ALT-ESC) to get to the setup. We bought it in 1990 or 1991 at Karstadt Hamburger Straße in Hamburg. I miss that machine to this day. 💔
I got a Trident TVGA8800, two or three 8900 and a huge stack of 9000s. I prefer the 8900 as it's usually upgradeable to 1MB of video RAM (but god is it slow).
Then there's 8900D which actually isn't slow any more and very usable.
Ending look, I think it visually is outstanding looking piece of industrial IBM 1980s masterpiece of machinery. I love this one, it's a favorite!! What a beast sitting there so proud on your desk, almost shaming the other systems beneath it. So nice! Too bad back in the years this thing was out - even being an AT, all my friends and I just saved and saved and saved to build the next generation of faster machine.. every year or two we'd all upgrade, pass down parts to one another, buy things at shows quarterly when they came around. One good thing about living where I grew up (just outside of Philly in NJ) we had computer shows (kind of like gun shows haha) but we would save our pennies all year and go buy whatever the newest parts were. Oh what fun!! It was later than when this machine was out though, 90s really.. but still.. the memories are so strong, thank you for doing this for us.
The AT commands presence. Surrounded by all sorts of computers in the studio here, It looks like it's the big boss :)
I've said it a few times, but i love your simple intro. Never change it man. Love your vids.
Thanks :)
Perfect timing with this video for me since I just got myself an AT in pieces from some of my friends that I'm trying to make into a more or less complete and period correct 5170. Got a case in good condition except för the plastic around the power-LED and a first generation motherboard with 512k ram.
Excellent. Good luck with the project
Great Video Again!! I like the Atari ST reference!
I remember a few years ago Adrian's Digital Basement mentioned that SpinRite II is better then later versions for full and 1/2 height drives. I have tested this a couple times and it seems to be true. ADB or NZD may have mentioned that later versions of Spinrite are more geared towards IDE, and kind of 'forgot' about MFM/RLL drives.
SpeedStore 6.5, as you used, is best for AT's, but I have not had good luck with it.
The Debug command or the cards BIOS seems to do a better job of low level formatting HD's. Then run SpinRiteII to change interleave (if recommended by SpinRiteII), and then it finds and maybe fixes bad sectors. fyi
Thanks!
10:21 I am of the same mind as that guy, fuses almost never blow without a reason, too many people change a fuse and quickly forget about it without investigating why it blew, even in house electricals people with electrical experience would scold you for haphazardly replacing a fuse.
That being said, designers usually leave a (singular) way in which you can fold the PCBs apart without de-soldering anything, sometimes you have to twist things around a few axis, but in general stuff of that generation/quality was made to be easily serviced somehow.
You might not be aware... The PC AT case is designed to also stand upright like a tower. The IBM PC AT bezel/logo/sticker thing on the front of the case is spring loaded, and and may be rotated 90 degrees.
Thanks, yes there even was an optional vertical enclosure. I'd love to find one of those someday
@@Epictronics1 There’s a rack mount, too, with filter on the fan.
@@billlewis9740 Sweet. Gotta have one of those
@@Epictronics1 I had one of those somewhere around 25 years ago. Sold it at some point.
Look up "IBM Industrial Computer: $10,000 PC from 1985" on the LGR videos.
These were workhorse machines in their day, but I don't see much of a clamor for them nowadays. Even among 286 machines they're among the slowest, both in terms of clockspeed as well as the added wait state. On top of that they weigh 6,871 pounds and are the size of a Cybertruck.
Looking forward to see how fast we can make it
Don't forget their initial poor reputation with failure-prone hard drives. Took a bit to shed that stigma.
this is the model we had when i was in school. they're truly beasts compared to their little brothers.
The PS/2 286 I had back in the day looks like a toy compared to this monster IBM :)
5170 with a grey 5 1/4” drive was always my dream machine. The first one I used had Xenix with 8 terminals
I remember back when you could buy adapters for edge connectors, but also the ATs I worked on were this clean that long ago :)
Awesome video as always! One day I would love to see you check out a Coleco Adam computer!
taped-down caps: isolation to the pcb above
thanks for the "spinrite" demonstration. 28:40
Spinrite by that time was (is) most bullshit.
@@billlewis9740 Spinrite has a Wikipedia page, it can't be bull.
Keys were always the challenge with these! Hard to open without damaging if you don't have keys.
I'm glad it came unlocked
Very nice, also interesting about the interleave finding.
Thanks. I've done some more tests with the drive since the upload. It works fine :)
@@Epictronics1 Maybe you need to Low level format the drive with the new interleave?.
@@GuillermoFrontera Yes, I did
This machine would be a great candidate for installing Xenix if you fancy something very different to MS-DOS.
Maybe we'll explore it someday
I put a 386sx upgrade board with 16kb cache and 2.5x multiplier in place of the 286 CPU in my 5170, and then swapped-out the original crystal for one that yields 10mhz. So 25MHz 386sx in the end. I'd love to see how fast you could make a 5170 with one of those really special Ti 486 upgrade CPU's, the one with 8KB internal cache - I forget the exact name of the chip, but that's what I always wanted to try with mine! We could compare benchmark results :)
I need one of those cards :o
I watch your videos because they're just so interesting and enjoyable. I don't know DOS so I have no personal connection with these old systems beyond nostalgia and an appreciation of history and industrial design.
6:30 or so, you know.. I kind of wish computers of all makes had an hours meter on them like a piece of heavy machinery does. I know today you could probably figure out the hours with the S.M.A.R.T. data, and heck the processor probably records time up, maybe even in BIOS, but even still, it's not like there's a little clock or meter you can just look at and see how many hours the machine has been powered up. This one looks like it's been in the box it's entire life, maybe to have been used a few times then someone went to a 386 and forgot all about this one. Wow.
I was thinking. With the two cards missing. Maybe it was a backup machine for a critical application?
Yes, when i was a teenager in the early 90s i helped out at a local insurance agent's office. The agent was a family friend, he had MS, and i was a do person, it was a nice gig for easy cash. Anyway he has 2 insurance agent's and 2 clerks they had a few IBM AT machines out in the office, and i don't remember what model they were, i wish i could get them today but there were 2 backup systems, identical to the ones in the office over in the store room. They were plugged in and all set up but never turned on. I bet that's exactly the same idea. What a great find for you!
I think size wise, the Model 80 tower is in a totally different class of machines. That is a massive system, crazy proprietary case with the weird feet on it, but a beast of it's own nature of course!
edit: oh wow you just opened up the case and at first glance WOW it looks SO clean inside (looks like very low hours to me at first) and even missing the 2 cards where the slots are gone and no cards there, the original hard drive and floppies, the controller card.. yes this is a great system to start with, no doubt!! I'm so happy to see this one getting another chance at life!
I find it fascinating that a crazy expensive machine like this wasn't used more. I wish it could tell the story
Nice job. It’s a great looking machine. But, IIRC, IBM compatible disk drives are ALWAYS DS1. The twist in the cable ensures the correct drive is selected.
Thanks. Yeah, If I remember correctly, it shouldn't matter if the cable has a twist
@@Epictronics1it does, you need a cable with a twist for a second drive on PC and both drives should be set for DS1 if it even has the option to change that. Most 3.5" drives don't even have those jumpers because PC didn't use that.
4:19 the huge card is based on older electronics. 1983 design date, while the smaller card has a big WD11C00C chip on it which has a 1985 design date, and looks like it integrates a lot more tiny shits on it and of course also has higher pin density. Though the older-design card being made in 1986 is a little weird, why would they do that. Maybe because it's from very early in 1986 and they couldn't get the new chip in or had a small number of SKUs of old chips they really wanted to use up?
It is very strange indeed!
Great video as always! Thank you!
You already added an EGA video card, which I think is the best option for this machine. You could add more RAM, serial and parallel ports, and maybe a good Adlib sound card, but please keep this beauty at its original CPU clock speed.
It would be very interesting to compare it with the PC/XT 5162, as we all know that it uses a 0 WS for the memory.
Thanks. So much happened during the AT's lifespan. We can either go "classic" with EGA and lower specs or go nuts with VGA and a CD-ROM drive!
I really want to see which board will win the overclock battle. I can always go back to stock!
@@Epictronics1 To each their own, of course. I know you love to see what the hardware can do! :-D
For me, it's more about, "where does this machine fit?" Like you, I have a 5150, 5160, 5170, and 5162. They all have a hardware loadout that I find most representative of their characteristic role.
5150: Dual 360K floppies, no HDD (obviously), MGA graphics (with a secondary CGA card, because I had it, so why not?), 640K RAM.
5160: 360K + HDD, CGA graphics (with a secondary MGA, again, because I had two of each anyway), 640K
5170: 1.2M + 360K (bridge machine! haha), HDD, 2MB RAM IIRC, EGA, AdLib
5162: 1.2M + HDD, I want to say this one has 1MB RAM?, Hercules
Then I have a PS/2 Model 30 with MCGA and an AdLib, a PS/2 M.30 286 with VGA and a Sound Blaster, an early Packard Bell 386 with a ThunderBoard, a 386 DX with a Sound Blaster Pro 1.0, and so on...
None of them are hot-rods. They're just "what you would expect to find," living their moment in the sun, telling a story of their glory days.
@@nickwallette6201 Excellent configurations. Although, Hercules to me is the perfect choice for the 5150.
Audio in the intro was very bassy, maybe it's not audible on some headphones or phone speakers but it was very rumbly. Luckily it got better once the episode proper started.
Thanks for the feedback
I believe I used this model of machine exactly as configured in a summer job in 1986.
Nice summer job!
@Epictronics1 I was involved in converting a beverage manufscturing plant trucking department from manual paper spreadsheets to Lotus 123 spreadsheets. I guess they were late to the game.
On PCs, the floppy drives are always set to DS1 and the cable twist sets the which drive is which. I'm pretty sure you knew that, but you sound a bit tired this week.
Drive A looks like a better fit (colour) to the case then the original Drive B :)
I actually swapped the 5.25" drive for one with a matching front but strangely enough, it looked better with the mismatch, so I swapped back!
An IDE hard drive would be a period correct upgrade for this system if the MFM HD completely dies. just need any generic 16 bit isa multi io card with ide headers that you'll probably be using anyway as the system was missing it's io card.
Definitely an option, but I'll keep the MFM drive as long as it's working
May I suggest you add a white or black outline to the text displayed over the video? That'd be a lot more readable, and classier! :D Also, have you found a suitable stand for your pinecil? I'm still looking :(
Thanks, I'll give it a try in the next vid. Unfortunately, no, I have not found a good stand yet
This is the sample of mainstream Wintel personal machine of 80's with all whistles and dongles of it. It's interesting whether the memory is standard not changeable or it can be modified with some kind of ISA add-on cards or something else (think not)... have had a deal with Robotron PC with just a such the add-on slot memory
I'm going to test it with an AST Six-pack plus in the upgrade video
You literally had to take the board out to find any dust in that 5170 & it's a thin layer under the clean board. Far cry from the dust bunnies you've seen living in others!
Very nice with a clean machine for a change. That nasty dead bug, however...
Hole in the front is for more cooling air input!
Great👍
Thanks
@@Epictronics1 thanks
So your AT came with a bug in it ;-)
Two bugs :)
Does the PSU Secondary side have something like 15 Output Filter Caps????
It's likely that the drive can't seek the heads fast enough for interleave 2. It might be an issue with old sticky grease in the head stepping mechanism, or just a heavy, slow mechanism.
I'll try with 2:1 again after I have used it for a while
Old glue, WD40. Let set for a few mins. Older the glue longer the sitting in WD40.
No one got fired for buying an IBM 😊
My type 1 came with monochrome so Hercules card if you want to go that way.
Does the original floppy controller support 3.5” high density floppy drives? That could be the issue.
Also very interesting that a bad interleave setting can cause the computer to think that sectors are bad… I always thought it just led to the computer having to wait for extra platter rotations.
And as far as which video card type this 5170 should have, being a late model, seems like EGA or VGA would be an appropriate match.
According to minus zero it should. However, there were two revisions of the card. Perhaps this early one doesn't. I'm leaning toward VGA at the moment but I'm not sure yet
32:30 "the drive is dead". Do you not remember changing the 3 to 1 ratio to 2 to one for a 50% improvement? Can you set it back?
I did and it fixed it
The first 386 machines were widespread by 1987 and PS/2 was the new thing for corporate users. Likely this machine was just a corporate P/O and was orphaned by upgrade cycles and stashed away. Possibly never used.
I think this is the ugliest PC IBM ever produced. It is just too big and too boxy.
I never thought about its looks before. Now that I have it on the bench, I think it looks awesome! :)
@@Epictronics1 Looks are highly subjective. I am happy that you like it.
But isn’t that the the point. It’s an IBM. It should be ugly. That’s what makes it beautiful.