What is it like to own and use a 1986 XT in 2021 ?
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- Опубликовано: 1 июл 2024
- In this video we're visiting our DTK 1000 XT clone machine again but in this video we're going to be talking about the XT ownership experience.
What can you do with an XT these days and what do you need to take into account when buying one.
For those interested in the MCE2VGA solution, check out www.serdashop.com/MCE2VGA
0:00 : Intro
1:15 : complete system vs standalone computer
2:15 : storage : floppy drives
3:05 : storage : hard drive
4:57 : storage : flash storage
5:55 : keyboards
6:43 : monitors
9:19 : MCE2VGA solution
11:11 : software : checkit3
13:08 : software : dBase
13:57 : software : Banner Mania
14:56 : software : WordPerfect
15:29 : software : lotus 123
16:17 : software : AutoCAD
18:38 : games : Crazy Cars
19:22 : games : Jett
21:12 : games : Blockout
21:55 : Outro
#retro #xt #retrocomputer 
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Amber monitors reminds me of relaxing light of nixie tubes.
I think the Seagate ST-225 is the most reliable hard drive ever made. And I love the noises it makes. Sure, an XT-IDE card is silent and fast, but I like having an old computer that squeaks and rattles.
Hook it up to an RLL controller and you have a whopping 30Mb instead of 20. Then put stacker on it and you have 60Mb!
The only thing I would recommend adding is a head parking program. Since the heads were servo motor control they would stay over the platter at the last location they accessed and bumping or moving the machine around could cause a head to strike the platter.
I feel a bit old when hearing Pentiums, Athlons are now "retro". I do regret recycling my parents old Zenith 286 around the turn of the millennium though....
I regret recycling my Tandy 1000; actually, I think I ended up with two of them at one point. (my 386SX that replaced it went through so many changes, parts, cases, etc that I couldn't determine a particular place in it's lineage to keep).
But as much as I regret getting rid of mine, I wouldn't bother finding another one. If I were picking up a retro machine now, it would have to be an Apple IIgs (I had wanted one when it first came out, and couldn't scrape up the money or financing).
@Green Mamba Games Yes I'm aware..
@Green Mamba Games TVs existed when I was born, but my parents could not afford one until 1953.
@@alexdhall dude, are you living under rock, or ? :)
Even LGA775 is now considered retro. And AM2/ AM2+.
It's called modern retro, but it's still retro. It is end of modern retro era, usually people mark it like LGA775 platform, AM2/AM2+ platform and some X58 Nehalem stuff.
Yes. That's still retro today, considered as retro computers.
Pentiums? Like Pentium 1? It's long long considered retro, I mean like minimally 15 years.
Not sure, how can you be suprised. And yes, Athlons just marking the beginning era of "modern retro"
It is more than easy to find a VGA card that will work in an XT. Even 16 bit cards will often work in an 8bit slot.
True ... should have mentioned that ... have a couple of them that work out of the box and a lot of Tridents have jumpers that can make it work in an 8 bit slot. But 8 bit VGA cards are pretty rare ... only have 1 or 2 myself.
It also used to be pretty easy to find VGA cards that would emulate Hercules and CGA pretty accurately, if you told them to (I think the Paradise and later Video Seven cards could do it). The trick is finding a card with a single VGA BIOS ROM, since a card with a 16-bit ROM (two chips) won't boot in an XT unless it has a jumper to enable 8-bit BIOS.
@@RetroSpector78 I have both - Trident 9000 with 8/16 bus selector and wonderful 8 bit Trident 8800. Enough for my 2 PC/XT machines in collection.
yup I did that in a 5160, much nicer and cheap.
Oh, man. That ST225 really brings back the memories. I had so many of those back in the day, along with other MFM drives. I can clearly recall the rise of IDE hardware. And, if I’m being honest, I’ll admit that I thought it was some thing of a flash in the pan at the time. History clearly disagrees. In that era, Amber did look a bit out of place next to the much more common green monochrome displays. But, importantly for me, it was so much more comfortable for software development. Borland C forever!
DBase really was excellent for its time - it was a really effective tool. With a new “paint job”, I think it would still be effective in the modern era. 1-2-3 was a tremendous improvement over paper ledgers. But, unlike DBase, it doesn’t really stand the test of time. The commands used for that super vintage version of AutoCAD are still the ones used for modern versions. With a much faster processor, I feel that contemporary users would probably be surprised with its genuine utility for 2D CAD works.
Very nice video - especially for contemporary users.
I was a little surprised to hear ISA as “I. S. A., instead of eye-sah (not to be confused with ee-sah, EISA). Although I have heard the former pronunciation in the US, it was rare. Maybe it was more popular in Europe.
Word 5.5 is my choice. Works great on an XT. Only requires 384K and has menus you can use with or without a mouse. It is also damn powerful. Also it you add an 8087 that cad software would be WAY faster.
I am very happy to announce that I will be collecting an Epson Equity XT on Wednesday. Also, early CAD imagery is incomparably beautiful.
That ones looks really cool ... pretty modern for an XT class machine. Hope you have a lot of fun with it !
Although this would be totally lost on modern users, AutoCAD looked absolutely brilliant when run on a 286 with a color display a few years later. At that time, I think the included 3D demo was a fire hose valve/nozzle, and it was just awesome to behold.
@@a1nelson I'm gonna need to see this.
@@RetroSpector78 thankyou it was a nice find. It came with a pristine CGA monitor which looks incredible. Unfortunately the HD only booted once and now gives a boot error. Time to follow some of your HD guides! (Or just get a XTIDE…)
I used to have a portable XT system, but now I have a Samsung AT clone that I got from work. Came with a VGA card, IDE drive, and the matching keyboard.
Installing a math coprocessor (8087) really did a lot to increase the performance of Autocad, and Genericad making them workable software solutions to making drawings. I recall that a file that would take about 5 minutes to load and display would load and display in about 30 seconds with the math copro.
Yeah need to do some research on that and see what kind of software really benefits from that.
@@RetroSpector78 The use of a math coprocessor was quite limited on XT-class machines. CAD, DTP, spreadsheets and probably some academic software used for research purposes; that's all I can recall. Games definitely did not benefit from the presence of an FPU up to the 486 era.
OH, YEAH! I totally forgot about that, but you’re so right. I can clearly remember dropping in the coprocessor (and years, later a 387 into my 386) and discovering just how magically fast those same programs seemed to be. As you said, that only applied to math-heavy apps that were prepared to use those instructions, but wow, it was so worth the added cost.
I think that using old computers makes you realize how much we have taken for granted hardware and software today. Old hardware when new could have a high failure rate at the time as things such as harddrives and cards for example were in their infancy. Software at the time was more basic and concise and not packed with the bloatware that we have come to expect today. I love the amber monitors also, great video😊😊
Yeah these amber screens are really cool ... very soothing ... and combined with a nice clicky keyboard a very enjoyable typing / working experience.
I was listening while reinstalling W98 and I jumped thinking the HD had failed...
LOL
haha ... that one cracked me up ! :)
@@RetroSpector78 hey retrospector, did you know that there is a version of linux that can run on a 8086/88 and 286, it is called ELKS, and it could be good to see it in action running on one of your machines, here is the link : github.com/jbruchon/elks
@@automatedinsanity That seems quite interesting.
I can remember running multi user minix on a 8086 at 10MHz.
Minix was also an inspiration for Linux
Ask the boss of a guy I know from the arcade museum. His boss used an IBM XT to manage his company as late as 2017. I was supposed to fix his 5151 monitor but couldn't, I gave him one of mine instead. His one got the circuit boards from a smashed Vectrex to create the Wrectrex.
All this shows is that with some of the very nice DOS applications that were written in the past it is still possible to use such a machine to manage a business today. It might seem archaic but it is possible with the right software from the XT era.
Aside from internet stuff, most business requirements haven't really changed. Its just gotten easier to use. I had a business until 2021 still running spreadsheets I made in Office 2000. Very little has actually been added to Excel since then, mostly just UI design and collaboration features. Lotus 123 will still crunch numbers as well as any other spreadsheet.
When I was finally able to get a VGA card, VGA monitor, sound card and hard drive for my old XT way back in the day, I was happier than a "pig in sh*t!" I still have all of it...in separate places now, but it still works today! I got the XT with a course I took in digital electronics from the now long gone, NRI Institute of home study. It was a GREAT course that came with a LOT of equipment such as an oscilloscope, learning lab, numerous parts, and of course, the IBM compatible PC "turbo" XT with a Hercules card and monochrome monitor. They just don't have home study courses ANYWHERE NEAR as good as they did back then! Even Heathkit had a lot of great learn and "do it yourself" courses back then. I miss all of that now.....😕
PS: I think the very first game I played with a sound card (Sound Blaster 8bit) back then was SSI's "Veil of Darkness."
What an absolute thrill I got when I loaded it up and heard the really cool "creepy" music come out of my speakers! 😁
Thanks for showing off MCE2VGA !
Since I have been using most of the mentioned programs professionally, I now feel really old.
Remember the days, when optimized Harddisks gave a boost of 50% faster. The optimizing took the whole night.
So true on both counts. Lol. Thanks for the memories.
I was a programmer for a company back in the day that sold disk tune / defragmentation software for DOS. Gazelle Systems Optune. I remember running it on every computer I could put my hands on to fix the interleave then having my autoexec file run it in fast mode to quickly ensure things were contiguous at the start of each day.
Thanks for the video. I really enjoyed it. I had the same machine in 1985. Such memories.
Beautiful machine. Hope it will work for at least another 40+ years :)
Great! This serves as a great "howto" guide for anyone getting started with an XT. Love my Tandy 1000 HX (XT class machine), it's incredible how capable these machines can be!
Very nice video, brings back alot of memories 😃
Thanks !!
I like that you demo popular software at the time and not just games. Thanks for an excellent video!
Thx a lot ... appreciate it.
Dude, I am still using this hardware (286 laptop with DOS 6.22 and Kermit) to connect to satellites with a serial connected modem using packet radio at 1200 and 9600 Bauds over 145 and 430 MHz. Nothing better than connecting to a satellite older than myself looking at an amber Hercules screen in a dark room. (If Skynet goes live I'm not connected :)
which satellites?
@@coler154 HAM satellites listed at www.amsat.org/status/
Cool and rather rare (I’d say even unique) video idea. Great job!
Great video. Very informative. 👍🏾👏
Really glad you enjoyed it! Thx.
There is so something beautifully charming and mesmerising about a green on black CRT
I am crying. Good old memories popped up.
Amber monitors always has an incadescent feel to it, and the plasma ones look sleek and retro aswell
yeah ... have a plasma orange IBM laptop also and is really great.
I still sometimes use an "old" (1996) 500Mhz digital oscilloscope that uses an amber CRT. Its nice to look at.
Why didnt they use a LCD? The 10" CRT is driven at 1024x1024 and since its monochrome, super sharp. No LCD in that time would have come close, 320x240 at best, probably smeary passive matrix with small viewing angle.
@@semifavorableuncircle6952 and probably hideously expensive relatively, on top of the rest of the things you listed haha
Also what scope is it? a 500MHz digital scope but with a CRT just sounds wonderful. The only CRT scopes I have are all much older and purely analog
@@nicwilson89 LeCroy did CRTs for a long time until LCDs finally got good enough. 93xx series for example have the nice amber CRT and are rather high-end instruments for their time and still quite useful today.
@@semifavorableuncircle6952 ...aaannddd now I'm already browsing eBay ahaha :D
That's the perfect DB to used by my Micro Services... now I just need the driver 😅😂. Great video! I loved it!
+1 for the MCE2VGA. It isn't cheap, but works very well. Most importantly, it works equally well for MDA/MGA, CGA and EGA, which is very important if you have more than one of these genre of PCs that might have any or all of those adapters. Compared to finding, buying, maintaining/fixing *three* bulky 40 year old CRT monitors, I don't think it's "wimping out"... just smart. :)
It is quite a useful device. It is interesting because at home I still have a Commodore 1084 monitor that I used for a long time with a C64. It is an RGB monitor as well so it also supports CGA RGBI which means its ready to go whenever I am able to find an XT class machine with a CGA or EGA (in 320X200 at 16 colors only) graphics adapter.
👍 for those amber monitors, they were so nice to work on.
Definitely!
I had an amber monitor with my Compaq Deskpro Model 1 in the early 90s. I loved that thing! I upgraded straight to a 486, though, and didn't have the space to keep the Compaq. Wish I could have it back now though....
Lovely video. It reminds me of my first real personal computer, a Line-Up Turbo XT (as a fellow Belgian, you will certainly know the company Roels :-)). It had a Hercules compatible graphics card and B/W monochrome screen which was ‘okay’ for games of the era. But things changed as soon as I discovered the little switch on the card. You could enable CGA mode! Then I could play even more games, the ones that required CGA. Oh, those were fantastic times!
We had that model Seagate 20mb hd in our old AT&T XT machine. Instead of making a clicking sound when it was reading/writing, it made a "beeping" sound. We were able to get an ATI EGA Wonder to work in it and it wasn't too bad with Sierra games and some racing games. When we upgraded to a Compaq Deskpro 386/33 WOW what a difference that was.
I still have my 386 Clone. Also Windows 286 disks.
When I was an IT Director. We has this very old executive admin who only new WordPerfect. She refused to give it up. Her executive was getting ready to retire. So we updated all PC’s to Windows 7 on the weekend. On Monday she was screaming to bet her PC back or put DOS WordPerfect on. Turns out she never used email or any browser company apps. Earlier in the year all executive admins were pooled. No one executive had their own admin for email, PowerPoint or word processing. In the end they both retired.
Great video
I have my 1988 Unisys PW/2 Series 300. Complete with everything, down to the original manual and software.
These machines were quite useful right up to the early 90's. There was (is) a lot of great software for DOS. With many expansions and upgrades these machines soldiered on for years. I remember them in Video Rental stores, at local offices in small businesses and for use by Secretaries, etc. 123, Dbase, and WP were the standards for a long time among many other very useful programs available. I still miss Reveal Codes in WP. I really liked the super crisp and legible text from MDA/Hercules Monochrome displays.
Thats a nice looking example of an XT clone. 😯
Ahh the memories... Had an IBM clone back in 1988-89 no hard drive, amber hercules and a blazing turbo of 12 or 14 Mhz... Then I had the chance to intall a 20 meg hard drive (wich was a real change in the performance of de machine) Cheers from argentina!
Greetings back from Belgium. Never got to experience an XT when I was a kid. We got our first PC in 1996 I think and that was already a 486
Wow, that brought back a lot of memories. After school I got into the IT industry and cut my teeth on these XT machines. The good old days of having to know what you were doing to ensure no IRQ conflicts etc. ST-225 were brilliant but would need 3 of them to store just one of my photographs from my modern camera. Kalok drives were shite! I also learn how to program using Clipper and dBase
Great video, very informative...I loved your software review on this machine as this is my field of interest these days. I like to run those old programs in virtual environments or on vintage hardware...geeky I know...but still... ;-)
the first computer in our house was an apple II, in the early 90's I was a freshmen in highschool and was able to get together enough money for my very own computer. My very first computer I ever owned was an ATT branded olivetti M24, "cga" on a green screen XT with a 20MB hard card. Sure my parents shortly thereafter got a 486 DX2/66 with a cd rom and the works but I spent most of my time on my computer ... cause it was mine to do with as I pleased. Very fond of XT class machines
And the thing was I am sure you were surprised at what you could do on that "limited' hardware. How could it seem incredibly limited when you could still run 10,000s of nice Dos programs and very good application software like 123 (or clones), Dbase, and WP, etc.
Cool video ! Grtz from Belgium :)
Hello there fellow countryman ! Noticed your excellent video on your 5170 clone. 286 machines in those cases are also pretty cool.
@@RetroSpector78 Hehe, thx, Did those video's a few years ago. I finished the project, but never uploaded the videos on it. The videos did not seem to get the views I was hoping for and now I don't have the time anyway. Collecting and repairing is enough of a hobby already. ;)
Indeed :) RUclips is brutal for newcomers especially the first year. But even after that it continues to be a struggle with lots of ups and downs. Best to just enjoy the hobby and not get frustrated by it.
Great vídeo
Weer een super video kerel ga zo door
Bedankt. Blij dat je het leuk vond.
Another nice video, cheers.
Just a comment on Word Perfect, it was actually quite advanced for its day. I used it a lot during my school years, we had WP 5.1 for DOS and I thought it was brilliant. :)
As for amber vs green screens - amber, every time. It just looks much more crisp, and I find the colour relaxing.
WP 5.1 was great! I still miss Reveal Codes. Very powerful and you still can't fix formatting issues in Word today like you could quickly and easily with WP Reveal Codes!!
I *really* struggle with the limitations of XT class machines (and I own a few 😂).
But I do incredibly respect them and what they a) stood for, and b) where they lead to.
And they’re generally built like tanks - which is impressive unto itself.
If you’re in the US, the Tandy 1000 series is probably the best in this class. They take the XT class and improve it in almost every way. Love mine.
I own a DTK 1000. It has an eight bit VGA card in it as well as a Soundblaster Vibra 16. It had a broken MFM drive in it but I put an XT-IDE and disk-on-module in it. I should probably use it more often.
There's another option for video output too if you use a CGA card - the Composite out to a TV or Composite Monitor. Most modern TVs won't accept the signal directly, but I found passing it through an old VCR does the trick for those. The only caveat is, the quality is as bad as you'd expect from a Composite signal but it does work.
Good video. :) You could also talk about some of the modern XT class systems such as the NuXT, or Sergey's Micro8088 etc.
7:20 Lovely trio of 1980s IBM desktops!
Yep, I remember the thrill of victory feeling I got when I installed a 300 baud modem into my XT compatible and made my first logon to Compuserve. Ahhhhhhhh, those were the days...
Depending where you live it can be a nightmare. But if you live somewhere that has a nice supply of old parts you can keep it up and running.
Anyone who has typed reports/letters on a typewriter, understands how awesome word processing was. No more WhiteOut, or KoRecType needed! And you even got to keep copies of your documents on disk! It was pretty exciting stuff at the time.
Yes. Also, you didn't have to waste paper as much like typing required.
I have one CGA IBM monitor of those, but i converted it to 15khz, RGB. which means basically remove and jump the TTL at its imput and decode the combo sync into separated vert/hor sync as the monitor expect . The last one is done with just a single BC547, AND two resistors and a single cap. Now removing the ttl and jump directly around it , will give problems with INPUT IMPEDANCE DON 'T MATCH OUTOPUT IMPEDANCE FROM THE PC LIKE ATARI MSX , ETC.
Now there's also the MDA/cga/EGA to hdmi adapter that uses a raspberry pi zero that works really well :D
It's funny you mentioned the challenges involved with XT machines. I started "retro-computing" on 68k AIO's like the Mac Classic and now I have an SE FDHD. Almost got into Sun hardware too. The XT class presents virtually no challenges when you are used to the 68k.
Alight!!! ... check at 7:11 that collection of dinosaurs... Awesome!! 😍
I have the pleasure of owning an early 5160 XT and all of it's... quirks.
ISA slot 8 is an oddball but worth mentioning. An expansion card has to support it specifically or the card or machine simply will not work any more.
The MFM controller card shipped with the XT ONLY supports the ST412. Depending on the version of the floppy controller, it could support 720k 3.5" floppies, but in general assume it can't and save yourself the headache.
For storage, since the ST412 fitted to my machine sounds like a sander that just found an offensive piece of wood while running, I opted for the XT IDE solution and a 512MB CF card which cut the noise level down dramatically.
Video on the other hand, I have the CGA card, but no CGA monitor. Finding one proved to be extremely costly, so while I was restoring the computer, I was using CGA composite output to a TV. I then acquired an 8 bit VGA card based around the Paradise 88 chipset and have been using an IBM monochrome VGA monitor with it.
For the most part, this computer sits on my work bench acting as a notepad while working on other projects. It's not an ideal job for the machine, but for the time being, I don't have anywhere better to put it.
I used to play blockout a lot in 199x when i has a xt clone almost 286, 19mhz with 1mb ram and 20mb hdd, green cga!! Lot of fun, i think I still have the computer without monitor
I like the idea of using CompactFlash cards *alongside* an older hard drive as a convenient means of file transfer. Instead I often see a trend of people simply using CF in place of a hard drive because they don't have/want a drive to go in there.
Great class of machines for running Borland Turbo C or Turbo Pascal. I run the former on an even less powerful 5150 and it's great fun to program MIDI applications.
had some footage on programming but didn't make the cut :) Perhaps I should do a separate video on that ... dual screen debugging :)
Yeah! Sounds like fun.
Chris - what are you doing with MIDI on an XT? Just curious..
@@nickwallette6201 I upgraded my 5150 with a clone of the Roland MPU401. That gives me support for a MIDI in and out, and the original Roland manual has details on how to access them programmatically. I've so far been messing about with simple note on and off messages as well as SysEx stuff based on what I've learned from programming MIDI applications on Linux. In the past I've written quite a few patch editors on Linux, mostly in C but more recently in Java.
My Commodore Colt XT was the perfect BBSing machine. It was basically a "smart" terminal that was able to not only connect to ANSI BBS's, but also Commodore 64 BBS's, Amiga BBS's, and even machines like Kaypro and so forth. God, those were interesting days. But yeah, if BBS's still existed, the XT would still be the perfect machine for that.
This is why I love my NuXT so much. It's super convenient to have a 64MB CF card as my C drive, it has built-in VGA so I can use more modern displays with it, it has PS/2 mouse and keyboard so I can easily find peripherals, it's got a floppy controller that can take any floppy drive (which means I can use the super-common and easy-to-use 1.44MB disks), and it's basically a $100K setup in 1987. Hell, it even has a Wifi232 modem.
TL;DR, praise our Lord and Saviour, Sergei Kiselev. Also, the XT-CF card allowed me to resurrect a 386SX with a dead hard drive, so that's another thing Sergei's work has done for me.
For those of us not having this hardware, you can emulate it with the excellent PCem emulator which includes many variations of old hardware. Not the same as physical hardware I know, which this channel is about, but still a good way to experience the memory lane and play with old software.
Definitely … should really explore that also and do a video on it !
@@RetroSpector78 Quite true. I have played with PCem before and it is pretty neat.
Blockout was the first game I've ever played! Still like it. I tested running it on a Pentium 4 dual core and it worked just like on a 486. (beginning with 486s, the intro tune sounds really weird, it either plays way too fast or way too slow depending on what machine you have). But most games of the era start giving you trouble on machines as old as Pentium 2. (and then there's the 4,77 No Speedbrakes era of games which are totally unplayable on a 12 MHz 286 and hard as hell if you turn off the Turbo)
It would be fun to get my XT clone, which I bought new at Fry’s while in college, out from storage and see if I can bring it back to life.
Amber monitors are superior to blue and green ones in my opinion. Just always loved that color.
Had a 286 DTK computer with Phoenix Bios and EGA monitor. Used 2400 baud modem tp hook up to other computers. Used it until graduated to Win 95 Gateway computer with VGA. Still use Gateway monitor on Pentium computer,
The company behind Jet, SubLogic also created Flight Simulator which was later acquired by Microsoft.
2:07 Hey, I thought you said there was no fancy 3D graphics! 😁
Amber and green add character to an old computer. Paper white just mocks you have having a monochrome monitor.
I have found that many cheaply available ISA VGA cards can do 8bit slots just fine, though I would recommend tracking down the TH99 entry before buying, to try to discern if jumpers need to be changed, and also some of the auto detecting ones have trouble with the things like the Xi8088, such as those ATIs.
That IBM 5151 either needs some new caps/resistors, or a new tube. That retrace during the racing game is super bad.
Some VGAs - even ones with 16-bit cardedges, like the Diamond SpeedStar (which I actually used in a 5160) - can be used on an XT, making them more useful if you can't find a 9-pin display.
I used to own a 1000HX.
3:19 Actually the original PC came with two 160 kB floppy drives. Soon they were made double sided and supported 320 kB. The ninth sector enabling 360 kB came with PC/XT though it likely was just the OS not hardware.
Many people do not remember how primitive the original PC was and instead think XTs, especially as later XT became to mean a machine with a hard disk. On IBM PC/XT hard disk was one of the options.
Firs pc i ever owned myself ^^ good memories.
gpcga, the reason why i am half decent at racing games today
All DTK. High School had a lab of those. 286 versions for the students and 386 for a few others.
ruclips.net/video/6To2s_4Zs-g/видео.html I used to have a portable XT system, but now I have a Samsung AT clone that I got from work. Came with a VGA card, IDE drive, and the matching keyboard.
I have am IBM PC/5150 with EGA, 640kb ram expansion, and ISA8->CF card. Hope to find some time make video about it, too... Display I use with it is Hungarian Videoton)
I had something similar. An ibm xt. 8mb HDD 5.25 floppy drive & 3.5 floppy drive. Played MegaMan 3 like a slide show.
I'm actually looking for a Sperry XT at the moment... preferably with CGA monitor
Mine cost 2,450 in 1986, lol. Blazing 8 mhz, massive 20 mb hard drive, DUAL floppies. :) Earl Weaver Baseball was my go to.
With keyboards, if an old keyboard lacks lights it is for XT, it it has lights and no switch it is for AT. PC/XT lacked lights and the connector was unidirectional. Clone keyboards often have lights and they keyboard handles them internally but it does not know if the computer set the numlock on (like a calculator program) so the lights can get out of sync. 102 key XT keyboards can get even worse out of sync and the dedicated cursor keys can actually give numbers.
I would love to get it to chat with at least some of my current hardware... perhaps find a way to run INTERLNK and INTERSRV ...but deffo I would create a local BBS just for IT...
- also, I would make sure it had an audio and a midi card...
You mentioned the XT universal BIOS has support for compact flash cards. Do you know if other BIOS systems have this? I have a compaq Pentium III running windows 98 and would love this SD solution as a backup. Would it support it and what type of compact flash PCI expansion card do you think I'd need?
Would any of the software run faster if the 8087 maths co-processor was installed?? I'm asking because my 1989 Compaq Deskpro 386SX (top spec) came with a 80387 maths co-processor and ran a lot of calculations heavy software, such as games, better than normal.
Back in the day, I had an XT with the Intel 80386 piggy back up grade card. It sat in an ISA slot & had a jumper lead that plugged into where the XT's 8088 processor would normally sit. Not exactly fast, for a 386SX, due to running a 16 bit data bus 386 on an 8 bit data bus motherboard, but it did allow 286 & 386 software to run on the XT.
I still have the card stashed away.
oh my god i remember that tetris i almost forgot i used to play it back in the days besides test drive 1 and a flipper game
This was my first "computer at work" machine.
AutoCAD still takes ages to load on a modern system, Autodesk have a habbit of making bloated software. I bet the XT would be still perfectly usable for people that want to do basic word processing, there’s just something very satisfying to that monochrome amber/green displays. Some authors still use typewriters, and sometimes WP 5.1 because they get inspired from such a basic tool as it doesn’t have the modern distractions such as e-mail notifications and the like. Modern computers bug the users with all sorts of notifications, there’s something very zen about the pc’s of yesteryear in that regard.
The screen redraw time can be a bummer though. Even just paying down through a text document takes a little
bit.
By the 386, DOS-based productivity wasn’t bad. For Windows, you need an accelerated graphics card on a local bus, and then all is well. :-)
I like to use for typing - no, not an XT, but a 486 Compaq Contura 430CX laptop - using MS Word 6.0 - it can save in RTF format which can be recognised by modern office. Also MS Word 6.0 can be used even on a 286 with 4 mb of ram)
That keyboard is probably one of the best money can buy.
You forgot to mention the program you used most: Norton Commander!
Nowadays, 40+ years later, I still use the Windows look-alike Total Commander!
No Explorer for me, having started my computer life using 2 panels.
As little mouse as possible, still using the shortcut keys as in NC.
Found out that StingyGeek attended you three days ago of the same.
Are you looking for an FTP-supporting program on PC-DOS / MS-DOS, or on a modern computer?
Total Commander does on a Windows machine, but certainly NOT on a previous millennium computer ;-)
Still have my Laser XT. Harddisk died out, so I use to run it from flopy. Some years ago I used to play pacman, space invaders or paratrooper on it in EMS Expanded memorty board with a fast virtual drive, all files would be copied to this drive. Any other old systems snce i´d loved to retain but went missing or went into seperate pieces !
Could always use an XT-CF or XT-IDE card with it.
In these computers Turbo button did really matter. Although Digger with Turbo on became unplayable.
You used it without even mentioning it....norton commander. The best way to navigate the file system going. I suspect you didn't mention it because it was likely one of the first must have bits of software you load on every bit of retro kit. You probably use it so much it is second nature to you. Easy to forget...because it is that good.
It is. Wish it would also support ftp. Been looking for a good ftp client with a similar UI.
i love the green color more
Perhaps, demonstrating some code with gw-basic, Turbo Pascal, Turbo C or QuickBasic would be also very interesting. A computer very similar to this was one of the first ones I used back in 1985.
Been meaning to do a video on software development on these old pcs .. but haven’t gotten round to it yet
I do have a video on the channel where I do show some debugging using a dual monitor setup on an old ibm pc from 1983 (stepping through the code on 1 screen, and seeing the output in the other)
@@RetroSpector78 Well... I was taking about giving just a glimpse of such programming languages in this video, not for a whole video (but, well, that would be very interesting to have [at least, for me, to remember such days]). Perhaps, the video would go too long if you'd included such subjects. :)
XT is All Stars!
You probably should have talked about display adapters as the audience for this introductory video may not even know the options, much less know much about them. Much of the software shown seems to be Hercules or EGA, which would not have looked like that (or anything) on a CGA or MDA.
nostalgia :)
I used to have a neat 286 PC back around 1998. The power supply blew up, and my mother threw a tantrum.
I liked the amber monitors best. When I had a choice, it had to be amber.
I found the motherboard of my pc xt and another one on my closet, but it hasn't the processor nor the ram chips.
Also probably had not some of the Isa cards.
there are 8 bit vga isa cards out there. They are expensive. There are some 16 bit cards that will allow 8bit use though. There's a limited list out there.
beautiful pc. i regret not finding howto fix mine. i think i have the mtherboard and the pwer ource left. but who knows what works and how to fi it.