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Tips on 5170 restoration?

mindpixel

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Joined
Mar 25, 2021
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I have a 5160 that runs flawlessly, and a (hopefully) working IBM 5170 I'd like to get up and running.

Currently, it will turn on, the hard drive will attempt to spin up, go "clunk" and then spin down. I'm assuming the drive is toast. It has two 5.25 floppy drives; after the hard drive it will check both drives. Then beep. Given this activity, we can assume it's working as intended, minus the drive that needs to be replaced? Also, one of the floppy drives won't latch - the dial is stuck. And the battery seems to have corroded, but thankfully it hasn't spread to the motherboard. And, finally, I dropped a screwdriver into the PSU and broke the cooling fan, so that'll need to be replaced too. Go figure the 5160 works without hesitation right!

Ideally, what I want to do is replace the MFM hard drive with a small IDE drive, either fix or replace the floppy drive that won't latch, and install a VGA/EGA card so I can have more of a choice of monitors. So: What needs to be fixed, what should be replaced, and what upgrades would be recommended for a nice, but faithful restoration for my 5170?
 
Are the floppy drives original? If not, there are some models of drives that will not let you close the latch unless there is a disk in the drive.
 
* Replace the BIOS with the Quadtel or similar, so you can use other drive controller cards rather than the IBM MFM one
* Then an 8 bit XT-IDE works fine
* I've put a Trident TVGA-8900C in my 5170 for testing (It normally has stock CGA) and it works a-ok



-adrian
 
I have a 5160 that runs flawlessly, and a (hopefully) working IBM 5170 I'd like to get up and running.
Welcome to these forums.

Lots of IBM 5170 information at minuszerodegrees.net

... Then beep. Given this activity, we can assume it's working as intended, minus the drive that needs to be replaced?
It is certainly a good sign, but you really need to get a display going to get the full picture (pun intended).

... and what upgrades would be recommended for a nice, but faithful restoration for my 5170?
My suggested upgrades for a "faithful restoration":
* Assuming an IBM 5170 motherboard of type 1, if the motherboard has only 256 KB of RAM fitted, then adding the additional 256 KB.
* Assuming that the maximum of 512 KB of motherboard RAM is present, but there is no card providing the RAM between the 512K and 640K addresses, then the addition of the 'IBM 128KB Memory Expansion Option' (see [here]).
* The addition of a 360K floppy drive. See the bottom sentence of [here].
 
How I have my 5170 configured:
3Com Etherlink III ISA 3C509B-TPO ethernet (allows me to move files easily via FTP)
I also have a Gotek which I use to easily boot alternate OS
EGA w/ daughterboard
256/512K system board maxed
Memory Expansion 128K card
Memory Expansion 512K card (switches set to start at 1Meg)
5.25" drive
3.25" drive

I don't keep the Gotek in the system so really outside of the ethernet card, the system is period correct.

I always felt I can never have enough memory ;)

20210324_1356122.jpg
 
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There are lots of cheap 16bit ISA cards with an IDE/floppy interface you can get. You could attach a CD-ROM drive if you want. I use an old CD-ROM disk filled with old software to quickly move software to the hard drive. You can remove the CD-ROM drive when done.

Make sure the current MFM drive setting are correct in the CMOS. The drive might still be good or need LL formatting. Cabling has been found to be bad several times on my systems.

Have fun,
framer
 
* Then an 8 bit XT-IDE works fine
Why would someone put an 8-bit IDE card made for the PC/XT into an AT? That's nonsense.

You can use any 16-bit card with IDE (like a sound card) and, if needed, put the XTIDE Universal BIOS onto a network card. That way, you can also keep the original BIOS.
 
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