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IBM 5155 luggable with all the stuff

O

Ole Juul

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Aug 15, 2008
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Location
Coalmont, BC, Canada
Someone brought me a very nice present today. (Thanks Fred!) An IBM luggable with all the peripherals and disks. The owner used to work for IBM and had it since new. Lucky me! Here is what I got with it:

IBM 4863 monitor
IBM proprinter Type 4201 001
IBM external modem 7855-10
Blue denim IBM carrying bag (I'll be the coolest dude at Starbucks. W00t!)
IBM Analog Input Card (uninstalled)

It booted up right away and I could see it has an ST 238 R with ST11 bios revision 2.0.0 1988, but it seems a little flaky since it lost it after a bit. Tilting the machine allowed it to boot again. I guess I'll have to do a low level format. It's been sitting for quite a few years.

The rest of the specs are 640K RAM, serial port (8250 UART), printer port, and of course the IBM floppy card with the external connector. I haven't opened it up yet, so that's all I know about the cards. The Bios version is IBM 11/08/82.

What shocked me, because I never thought anybody would actually use it, was it had MS-DOS v4.01 installed! It also had a dosshell menu - something which I've never tried before. Menu items are: Lotus v2.2; Quick DOS; IBM Assistant Series v2; Print Magic; WP 5.1; QAPlus Diagnostic; HomeTax Plus; and Quicken Version 5.0. So I guess the machine was still used in 1991 since that's the date for Quicken v5.

The amber built-in monitor looks perfect, but I plugged in the 4863 just to see. Wow! They both work at once. I have never been fond of CGA but I guess it's been so long that it looks pretty cool to me now. It's certainly an interesting monitor. The 4863 is made specifically for the PCjR and I see someone has made an adaptor to make it work with the IBM CGA adapter. Do those monitors actually accept EGA? - that's what I read somewhere. If anybody has more info on these monitors I'd be interested.Anyway, it looks great in all it's garish CGA glory.

Another great thing about this haul was the software that came with it. Along with the usual copies of games and odd stuff, there were original disks for HomeTaxPlus, Quicken, DBase III Plus, and five IBM 3270 Personal Computer disks which I don't quite know what are yet. "Exploring the IBM Portable Personal Computer" (1984) should be fun, but the real gems were original disks for PC-DOS v3.10 (1985) and PC-DOS v2.10 (1983). I'm really glad for those. BTW, for anybody reading this who is not familiar with old 5 1/4' floppies - they always work.

For now, I'll just play a bit with it, but since the HDD probably should have a LLF anyway, I might install the original DOS 2.1 or (since I have it now), 3.1. I like to fix a vintage computer at a specific year. However, in this case the state of the computer is actually pretty genuine. We'll see.
 
Very nice, I like these machines perhaps because it's an XT that doesn't get in the way. Obviously the HDD wasn't original, DOS 2.1 may or may not see the lot (I've read there was a 16MB limit, although I have a flash card fomatted with it at 32MB).

I'm particularly envious of the carry case, something I'd like to have for mine.
 
re: 4863->CGA adapter, IBM made an official adapter. I have a few.

FWIW, you can also wire up your own - in my high school, we were a good 12 years behind the times, and didn't receive the computer lab upgrades until 6 years after every other school in the county had received theirs (we were the red-headed step child, I guess). We were running 5150's with 5151's on a Hercules card as a standard until 1995, my Junior year. At the end of that year, they upgraded us to 386's (IBM PS/1's, IIRC). However, at the beginning of my sophomore year, a former student actually donated a slew of equipment to the lab to help us upgrade, and among them were about 2 dozen PCjr monitors. My computer teacher brought in his iron and spent his in-class down-time over the course of two weeks clipping the Berg connectors and soldering up 9-Pin D-Subs so that we could enjoy CGA for use with our annual "graphics projects," which, up until then, were developed using SimCGA (Thanks, Chuck!) and our bog-standard Hercules cards (he would load each project up on his 5160 w/ CGA for the "show" after the projects were complete)

Congrats on the addition, btw :) It's one of the few things I'm on the moderate "look-out" for (as in I really don't need it, but want one, just for around the same price as you paid... hehe)
 
pearce_jj said:
Very nice, I like these machines perhaps because it's an XT that doesn't get in the way. Obviously the HDD wasn't original, DOS 2.1 may or may not see the lot (I've read there was a 16MB limit, although I have a flash card fomatted with it at 32MB).
Click to expand...

An XT that doesn't get in the way - exactly. :) Of course, the HDD couldn't have been original. These came with two floppies and DOS 2.1 - support for hard disk drives up to 16.76MB. The other brain cell wasn't firing when I suggested that. Although I could bring it back to original. The other floppy drive came with the lot. Still DOS 3.* is probably a better choice historically and supports fat 16 and thus 33.55 MB . Version 3.3 came out April 2, 1987, along with IBM's line of PS/2 systems and the HDD bios here reports 1988 so it is a good match - although I won't need to do 24 partitions!

I'll be arguing in my head about the appropriateness of 3.1 versus 3.3 for a while. And then again, perhaps a two floppy system with 2.1 ... and so on. Or ... how about MS-DOS 4.01 since that's what it has and it's all original as found in the wild. Curatorial dreams never end.

@MikeS: You're a sharp one! So I fudged it a little. hehe. Actually, my house (the old Coalmont General) store is about ready to go for a Starbucks. On the corner and all, but I'd have to clear out all the boxes of stuff first.
 
The 3270 stuff is for an emulator card (well maybe a card or I suppose it could be an emulator over another card) to mimic a 3270 terminal to a mainframe type system.

Sounds like a great system though! Wasn't it Mike Chambers who was bored one day and stripped out a wireless router/repeater and mounted it into the case with an ISA nic so he could lug his Compaq Portable around and get on the wifi? ;-) Now there's your starbucks computer chattin on the VCF IRC board.
 
I'd be interested in the 3270 stuff if you have the emulator card as well :)

That is, unless you have an AS/400 at home waiting for a terminal :)
 
pontus said:
I'd be interested in the 3270 stuff if you have the emulator card as well :)

That is, unless you have an AS/400 at home waiting for a terminal :)
Click to expand...

Hi pontus. There are five 3270 disks, but there is no card. I did a search and I'm assuming that it should have a coax connector. I see no card with anything that I can't identify. Too bad. The disks are all labelled "IBM 3270 Personal Computer" and they are:
Control Program 1 of 2
Control Program 2 of 2
Online Tutorial
High Level Language Application Program Interface
Diagnostics

Anyway, I will ask my friend what the deal is with these disks. If he had a card, or a 3270 or what. Whatever happens, with or without a card, these are probably more useful to you so I'll keep in touch about that.

Edit: Could this software work over a modem such as the one I got?
 
Not sure if it would be the application over another network stack or if it's only for the 3270 card/computer. There's a model of the (5160?) which is specifically a 3270 card and keyboard added to the system which would probably need that software. Quite possible they may have had that system at one point in time and just bundled the rest of the IBM stuff together.
 
barythrin said:
Not sure if it would be the application over another network stack or if it's only for the 3270 card/computer. There's a model of the (5160?) which is specifically a 3270 card and keyboard added to the system which would probably need that software. Quite possible they may have had that system at one point in time and just bundled the rest of the IBM stuff together.
Click to expand...

I've been doing a bit of research and the InfoWorld 4 Nov 1985 announcement seems to imply that the IBM 3278/79 Emulation adaptor requires the 3278/79 Emulation Control Program. I think the 3270 software is specifically for the 3270 computer.

Edit: I just spoke with the original owner, and found out that there never was an emulator card nor a 3270 computer. The software was given to employees that might have a need for it. So there we have it. I'll be glad if it went to someone who had a good use for it. Pontus?
 
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Hey, you didn't tell me you had a PCjr monitor!! I've had a PCjr for years, but it's missing the matching screen.

Geez, what do I have to trade for that? Grumble grumble... ;)
 
lotonah said:
Hey, you didn't tell me you had a PCjr monitor!! I've had a PCjr for years, but it's missing the matching screen.

Geez, what do I have to trade for that? Grumble grumble... ;)
Click to expand...

Hi lotonah! I didn't realize just what a good find that was until I started looking into it. Sorry to report though, that I plan to hang on to it. It's also my only CGA monitor. Ya, I got a good haul there. :)
 
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