mykrowyre
Experienced Member
Hello all, this is my first post, I can't believe I hadn't found this forum in the past.
I was doing my daily check for vintage (usually Commodore, TRS-80's, Atari, etc) computers on CL, and I stumbled upon an IBM 5155 (something I'd never actually seen before). It was still available, but not working according to owner. Would not power on, but would try if video card was removed.
I convinced the seller to meet me that night, and all looked good until I noticed one floppy had been removed. I asked and he said "oh I decided to keep one, I mentioned that in the ad!" at which point I got very upset because the ad pictured both floppies and no mention of one being removed. After some begging and pleading on my part and showing him his ad, he relinquished the drive which was still in his trunk. Apparently he forgot to click save after changing his ad.
Anyway after that we had a nice long chat about vintage machines and all good.
Got the machine home, and fan would spin if I removed the video card, but no beeps. I was just watching it waiting for any signs of life when "pop" it went dead cmopletely, no fan nothing.
I stripped it down, and removed the power supply. Looked inside and it looked fine. Connected a light bulb across the 5V lines plus two IDE hard drives, and it fired right up. Yay! PS is good!
Then I started looking for busted caps and I found one, C56. I figured it must be a 12V filter cap for one of the card slots but wasn't sure. Removed it... but still no luck.
Googling lead me to minuszerodegrees where I found a wealth of info! Holy cow! His info lead me to C58 which I tested and found shorted also. Removed!
Then, remembering the it would not work with video card installed, I went over the video card carefully and found another 10uF Tantalum shorted, and decided to replace that one with a 10uF electrolytic (all I had on hand).
Put it all back together, turned it on and was rewarded with BASIC on a beautiful amber monochrome screen! I have always loved amber monochrome!
Unfortunately neither DOS boot disk I have worked. I lubricated the rails and still no luck ... I'll clean the heads with alcohol and try again, failing that I guess I'll need to buy some disks.
Then of course an XT-IDE card : )
I was doing my daily check for vintage (usually Commodore, TRS-80's, Atari, etc) computers on CL, and I stumbled upon an IBM 5155 (something I'd never actually seen before). It was still available, but not working according to owner. Would not power on, but would try if video card was removed.
I convinced the seller to meet me that night, and all looked good until I noticed one floppy had been removed. I asked and he said "oh I decided to keep one, I mentioned that in the ad!" at which point I got very upset because the ad pictured both floppies and no mention of one being removed. After some begging and pleading on my part and showing him his ad, he relinquished the drive which was still in his trunk. Apparently he forgot to click save after changing his ad.
Anyway after that we had a nice long chat about vintage machines and all good.
Got the machine home, and fan would spin if I removed the video card, but no beeps. I was just watching it waiting for any signs of life when "pop" it went dead cmopletely, no fan nothing.
I stripped it down, and removed the power supply. Looked inside and it looked fine. Connected a light bulb across the 5V lines plus two IDE hard drives, and it fired right up. Yay! PS is good!
Then I started looking for busted caps and I found one, C56. I figured it must be a 12V filter cap for one of the card slots but wasn't sure. Removed it... but still no luck.
Googling lead me to minuszerodegrees where I found a wealth of info! Holy cow! His info lead me to C58 which I tested and found shorted also. Removed!
Then, remembering the it would not work with video card installed, I went over the video card carefully and found another 10uF Tantalum shorted, and decided to replace that one with a 10uF electrolytic (all I had on hand).
Put it all back together, turned it on and was rewarded with BASIC on a beautiful amber monochrome screen! I have always loved amber monochrome!
Unfortunately neither DOS boot disk I have worked. I lubricated the rails and still no luck ... I'll clean the heads with alcohol and try again, failing that I guess I'll need to buy some disks.
Then of course an XT-IDE card : )