The IBM 5160: A few years too late...

The IBM 5160

// Oh no, another blog post about Big Blue....

I wrote this on 12/31/2020 and no longer have the machine nor any photos... Here's the post anyway I should of just posted it then...

     After 8 years of searching, getting scammed out of a complete system on eBay in 2016, and chasing local listing after listing I finally managed to get an IBM XT. Some of you may ask why though. To which I say it's my money to waste or rather, enjoy☺️

     The XT came out two short years after the IBM PC 5150, but was a grand improvement over the original. The 5150 was released with nothing more than a green monochrome monitor, a base system ran about $1,500 with 16KB of RAM and a cassette interface for saving programs, though this was quickly replaced with the introduction of Floppy Disks. Since it was released as a business machine this configuration never really changed. Save for the addition of 360KB Floppies, an optional MFM hard drive, or upgrading RAM to the cap of 640K. Would anyone ever need more than that anyway?

    Many companies wouldn't even upgrade to color screens until the introduction of the AT anyway. A change that really paved the way for Graphical Interfaces to take form. Could you imagine using a modern GUI in Monochrome? That concept just seems too foreign to modern PC users. 

    Hmmmm. PC? That's a term we use so frequently today, but we might not even have started to use it were it not for the IBM PC the first PC as we know the term. Even though IBM wasn't the first to state the name "Personal Computer" they had the notoriety to coin it. Enough about the history and fangirling though, It's time to get down to business.

    I got my XT on eBay from a local seller after I had asked them if it was alright if we did a local pickup. When they said yes, I promptly bid on it. Three days later from my hotel in Wisconsin while on a business trip, $200 later, and a whole lot of talking over email, the plan was set in motion. The day after my flight landed, I went 2 hours south of my home to pick up my winnings. 

I am very happy I did too. The seller packed the CRT in a box that was a little subpar and definitely would have had some damage from the Post Office. I feel a bit bad for my friend who I dragged along with me on the trip. He had to hold the computer on his lap the whole way home. 

I knew the computer turned on from the listing, but I was not expecting to be this impressed with it's condition. When I got home I immediately unboxed the machine. After removing the thin layer of  plastic bags, the system came with an IBM 5151 MDA monitor, 360KB Floppy, a original and functional 20MB MFM Hard Drive. 

    This was my first time ever seeing a full height HDD. The sounds it makes are like music to my ears. The system came without it's 83 KEY XT keyboard. Something that is easily worth what I paid for this system alone sadly. However all was not lost.

    Who remembers the Tandy 1000SL I own? Well if you do, go pat yourself on the back, and if you don't you should definitely check out my writeup on it. It's a good read. Not the point though, XT class computers have this fun thing called XT Scancodes. In laymen's terms IBM didn't want to have an 83 Key keyboard for their fancy new AT, so instead of expanding the exisiting PC protocol they changed all the key scancodes making AT and XT keyboards incompatible. Main reason has to do with a change in the logic circuitry going from logic chips to a full microcontroller. Not the point of the article though. Maybe I'll make a post about the differences between AT and XT class machines.      

    So I plugged the Tandy keyboard into the IBM and flipped the big satisfying red switch. The tube of the 5151 came on, hiding the slight burn-in from some random GUI. In the corner lit up some thing wonderful

64... 128 ..... 360.... 480.......

512.................

Loading The Menu...........

C:\NETBL....

What is your wish?

Current Drive: C

Available Programs

PowerBase

WordStar

Drop to DOS

etc.....

     I was amazed the machine not only booted first time, but it originally had a network stack over an LPT port? It had about 200 .LOD files in the drive, hosted a database, and was still running the original PC-DOS 3.20 that was factory install. At least I assume it was. I have since opened the computer and looked inside to see I have a later model produced mid 1986 with 640K MOBO.

     So what can you do with an IBM PC/XT. Well I am gonna tinker with it. Learn some legacy programming languages. Play some old games, etc. Something else I have done with it though, I wrote the whole post on the XT. I was sitting at my desk preparing to write and it came to me, why not write on the XT. 

    I have some big plans for the machine. I have already picked up some accessories and bought another XTIDE to throw inside the computer to make file transfers that much easier! That can all wait until next time though. I have some formatting to do in a proper word processor. EDIT can only do so much...

Short Update Number 2: I still have this!?

 

Short Update Number 2: I still have this!?

// Wow, I forgot this existed...

    

    Another Update, I have gone through many changes since I first wrote my last update. I got promoted at my job that required a lot of travel and lost all personal time for my hobbies for about a year. I ended up leaving there earlier this June.

 

    Hopefully I can now have a bit more time to write up on this. Probably wont, but who knows?

 

    My collection has changed a lot and I have a couple old posts still in draft mode. The coolest acquisition I made is a PDP-11/03, which I hope to write up on and then maybe later try making a video of. It took a lot of tinkering, but I managed to get it to boot and load up RT-11 and XXDP. 

    I will write up more later on that!

    Many systems I used to have have either been sold, traded, or given away. I wont say what is gone, but I can confirm it most definitely was not the Tandy. I have also become quite active in the VCF community, started docenting and working on some of the old equipment in the Mid Atlantic museum in Wall, NJ. I have also been fairly active in the Retro Tech discord server asking and giving help there. 

 

    I hope to have more stuff posted in the coming months. Maybe if I focus on it I can turn my hobby into a full time gig, but that might be too much wishful thinking, especially with my track record of just writing. 

 In the meantime I will focus on workshop days and building up my experience in vintage minicomputers of the 70s. I am gonna need more RAM for my 11/03 24KW is not enough to run UNIX like I plan to. Another item on my list is some kind of VAXen.

Can you tell I have moved my obsession away from Mac and to DEC? 

 

Last thing before I go, remember the Mac Mini that I baked, well the colors inverted funky when baked again turned blues to orange and whites to blacks it was kind of cool, but then it died again so it was recycled.