Micro-Channel Quadra 950 Liberated for $19.99 . . .

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

. . . again, it's not a Mac or Apple but this IBM PS/2 Model 80 Type 8580-111 will likely wind up housing either my 9700 PEx ProtoBoard or the 9500 MoBo the PEx displaced for so long from its POS Plastic Inner Chassis that I lost the Metal Outer Shell in the storage room fiasco.

I'll post some pics of the insides of this '386 behemoth, which has several cards in it and tries to boot, but hung on the RAM test the first (only) time I fired it up.

Coolest Case Design Award Winner! :approve:

My Radius 81/110 Clone excepted of course!

 

[Unknown_K]

What are you going to do with the guts of the Model 80 then (motherboard, PS, cards, drives, proprietary floppy)?

I have 2 working and restored model 80's, both with 486 upgrades (one is a PS/2 card with a 486 and the other is a CPU board that snaps into the 386 socket). Real nice machines, and fully stuffed with MCA cards plsu both have IBM WORM drives (130MB 5.25" hard cased opticals).

There are 2 funky RAM cards in a model 80 under the power supply. They have something like a PDS slot to connect to the motherboard and the RAM is in rows and columns of square metals cans soldered to the board (1,2,4MB max per card). Any other RAM would be on MCA cards and use either 30 pin SIMMs (3rd party boards Orchid made one) or 72 pin SIMMs (IBM made boards). If the CMOS battery (large 6V camera type battery) is low or dead then the machine will have booting issues but the hardware might still be 100% ok. If so you will need a MCA setup floppy to boot from and driver files for all cards installed.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

08064 KB OK

162

 

163

_

Flashing underscore, two BEEPS & then NADA!

Any clue?

 

[Unknown_K]

Dead battery is all.

162 => CMOS checksum error or adapter ID mismatch (Hardware configuration does not match saved information.)

163 => Date and time not set.

There could be more RAM in there but it will not show up without the machine being setup correctly and that means a reference disk and a working battery.

http://mypage.intergate.ca/~fspencer/8580prob.htm <== link shows the battery type you can replace it with.

http://www.walshcomptech.com/selectpccbbs/rf7080a.zip <== Reference disk for a normal Model 80.

http://www.walshcomptech.com/selectpccbbs/rf80plan.zip <== Reference disk for a Model 80 with a Reply motherboard.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I think this one is ALL IBM!

It has 2 FDDs . . .

2 Memory Cards above the HDD frame/below the PSU . . .

an IBM 72 pin SIMM card in Slot 1 . . .

Slot 7 has what appears to be an IBM SCSI Card connected to 2 STUCKtion (sticktion to the MAX!) afflicted 1/2 height HDDs in an adapter frame . . .

Slot 6 has what appears to be a heavy duty Double VGA Card (with what appears to be lots of VRAM on the full length Daughter Card) which mirrors the same info as on the MoBo VGA Port . . .

The front HDD Bay is empty and there's a missing cover plate on Slot 4, the balance of the Slots being covered by blanks.

Methinks the original Full Height 5.25" Boot Drive & its Interface Card may be AWOL.

Dunno, were these monsters smart enough not to spin up the HDDs until after they passed the POST(?) Tests?

I'll try to find a battery and give it another shot! :approve:

 

[Strimkind]

Wow. I had one of those years ago but never found a use for it so it found another home.

Think it has 30pin RAM with the original FH 5.25" 40MB drive. Nothing else as interesting as yours though from what I remember. It apparently ran for years without any problem until the company upgraded.

Nice find!

 

[Unknown_K]

Once you configure the cards AND point the system to the boot drive it might boot. Pictures would be interesting if you have time (especially of the video card you mentioned).

Some model 80's came with hard to find ESDI drives (pre SCSI types).

 

[ClassicHasClass]

That is a tank. Nice find.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

It sure is a tank, you've just gotta love a 40 lb. computer with a full length fold away handle and swivel feets! :approve:

I'll definitely be documenting this beast, but first I've gotta set up my compressor to blow about an eigth of an inch worth of dust off of EVERYTHING inside the case.

I literally had to wipe the dust off to be able to read ANYTHING on the cards. 8-o

 

[Unknown_K]

The one thing I hate about those towers is the black weatherstripping by the blower fan (on the door panel) turns to a black sticky tar when it ages and gets over everything.

 

[trag]

The one thing I hate about those towers is the black weatherstripping by the blower fan (on the door panel) turns to a black sticky tar when it ages and gets over everything.

The gasket between the two metal halves of the case on old Conner laptop drives sometimes turns to goo, leaving a big mess in the laptop and a (relatively speaking) big gap between the case halves. I haven't taken one apart to see if the goo ends up on the platters as well.

We're talking ca. 1991 drives here, with 60 MB of capacity and IDE interface. CP2064. They were used in Outbound laptops, or, at least, they're compatible with Outbound Laptops. Good replacements for the old PrairieTek drives if the gasket hasn't turned to goo.

 

[Unknown_K]

Speaking of goo and laptops, seems like all the rubber feet and other rubber parts on old NEC Versa laptops turn into a grey goo as well.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I got some pics, I just have to transfer them from HP_Mini to the DA to tweak 'em in GraphicConverter for posting.

I haven't got the hang of using the GIMP yet, but I'm'a gettin' thar! }

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Pics are up . . . whatcha think? Is that Cyrix Proc a '486 upgrade? :?:

Belly-o-da-BEAST

heart-o-da-BEAST

SCSI-or-ESDI_0

SCSI-or-ESDI_1

Memory-n-SCSI-or-ESDI_Card?

VGA/DaughterCard

Sorry about the load time, it's late and . . . zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz |)

 

[Unknown_K]

IBM 8514/A video card

Normal SCSI card (they have others with cache or wide)

Cyrix CPU is interesting, can you get a picture of the chip by sliding out that metal tray?

 

[Gorgonops]

I'm guessing the Cyrix chip is a Cx486DRx2 upgrade CPU. Those were strange hybrid chips that fit a 386 socket and lacked an onboard math coprocessor but had a small 1k onboard cache and understood the 486 instruction set. (Making them neither fish nor fowl, really.) The 8580-111 ran at 16 Mhz so that CPU probably clock doubles it to 32Mhz.

Sadly that's probably rare enough to count as a collector's item, assuming you could find the right crazy chip collector to sell it to.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

That was my guess, I remember lots of silly '486 upgrades from back in the day! )

 

[Gorgonops]

Looking at this find of yours I have to say I'd be torn what to do with it.

On one hand I want to say that it would really be a pity to gut/part out a PS/2 Model 80 like this since it's one of the first ones. (The 16Mhz models were the first 80386 produced by IBM, just beaten to market by the Compaq Deskpro.) Although the upgrade CPU sort of kills it so far as being a pristine "museum piece" in compensation it does have one of the rarer bits that would make it a marginally useful machine today (assuming you actually want a DOS or slow OS/2 machine for something), namely the SCSI card. Replacement MFM/ESDI drives for PS/2s are unobtanium these days. (The absolute worst were the completely proprietary "it's sort of like ESDI and IDE had a mutant lovechild" drives they used in some of their smaller desktop machines like the otherwise beautiful Model 55sx.)

On the other hand it's a huge hulking slug-slow beast that's getting pretty darn hard to find other parts for and if you lack the interest to dig into it for its own sake it's pretty much a huge, boring, if somewhat historically interesting paperweight. IBM did sell a lot of these things so they can't be *that* rare... can they?

Might be worth trying to hawk it on eBay before you gut it. One side effect of the PS/2's neat modular design is it would be something of a challenge to hack anything else into it without seriously butchering the case. (Witness a young John Dvorak bad-temperedly ripping a PS/2 apart if you need some inspiration, however.)

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I had that Cyrix Proc tagged for a DOS-Compatibility Card test . . . }