The XT was my first computer. Soon they came out with the AT. I had already spent my money on an XT. I worked for IBM at the time and soon created a 20M hard drive, A 20m Hard Card like you have, CGA Graphics, Extended Memory card, then I added the Expanded Unit on to it (It looked like another XT unit). I took the XT to the max it could have added features and equipment. I finally got a second computer, a 300 mhz. That's how long I had the XT. I had lots of different IBM internal software tools and utilities to change memory options, etc. Thanks for the memories.
@@tony359 If I recall as well, later versions of DOS will utilize larger 2GB partitions without issue, but on an XT class machine, that sure makes running DIR for the first time........rather fun. Or should I say, rather slow in calculating free space.
Adrian also has an extensive autopsy video on these hard cards on his channel. All of them fail because of a disintegrating bumper to which the heads will eventually stick.
I haven’t got to that part yet, but I’ve had a ticking noise from an old drive before. It was a shattered platter. Could it also be a just a run of the mill crashed head?
Hi, The text editor that was supplied in DOS was called "EDLIN", but it was very very basic... Also that I think the network card is actually a IBM 3270 Emulation card, as I saw the PC3270 software install on the hard drive before you wiped it. And seeing Lotus 123 did bring back lots of memories, what we could do with 123 was way more that it was initally designed. The account team push the spreadsheets to the limits..
Someone mentioned the EDLIN and also mentioned it was awful :D I was too young for those things, I remember the school had a "broken" PS/2 and I felt brave and reinstalled DOS 3.3. I was scared to death, I thought I could make it worse... It was my first approach with DOS and DOS 5.0 was out soon afterwards. Thanks for watching!
So I worked at *the* IBM PC dealership in the late 80s-early 90s as a tech. I live in an island nation which makes most things here quite expensive. I remember we had a typed and photocopied list of spare parts which were supposedly on hand, and one was a 20 Mb fixed disk, as IBM would have it. It did sit there upon our shelves all the time I was there, I don't think I ever tested it, but I do remember it's price tag: $2,000. Yup, that's US dollars lol. And that would be double at least in todays money haha.
At least you lucked out on the big MFM hard drive. I picked up a 5162 (XT/286), which ended up having a massive head crash. To continue to use the original PSU (it requires the load of the MFM drive), I removed the heads from the drive, so it just has some pointlessly spinning platters :D. On the brighter side though, I was able to use the MFM drive's status led with my CF card storage replacement, so it *looks* like it still works. With the XTIDE universal bios in a rom socket on a NIC...I can have a rather absurd 2GB of storage. At this point I'm actually looking for more games and apps to run on it. So, the only original IBM card I got with the system was the floppy/MFM controller. (I would guess the previous owner had exploding tantalums on the display and IO cards). Now I'm not even using that card, but a all-in-one floppy/IDE/serial/parallel card. I guess a lot of the fun with the early PCs is figuring out all the hardware and software tweaks to make it run the way you want it to :)
I was thinking of doing the same with my PS/2 one - just leave the drive in, spinning, to make the familiar noise. Wondering if someone could come up with a little software which moves the heads stepper motor when the Compact Flash LED is signalling activity. Uhm... this sounds like a cool idea! :) Thanks for watching!
The first hard drives in those XT's were only 5MB, then they went to 10MB, then to the 20MB. The first floppy disks were single sided, double sided came a year later. 1M of RAM, only about 640K was addressable. 385K of it was used for system functions, talking to the peripherals. Each one of the memory chips (IC's) was only 64K in size.
if I stop and think that 5MB were A LOT back then and now I can't think of a file on my HDD which would fit on that disk... My first HDD was 40MB then I spent and arm and a leg to buy a 100MB which I thought would last forever and was impossible to fill! :D
My uncle gave me a Compaq Portable back in the late 90s with a Hard Card 20 in it. Even back then, the card had the exact same failure with the head fusing to the platter. I pulled mine apart and the head was so fused with the platter that when I eventually got it to pry off, it took a chunk of the platter with it, leaving a big crater. It's been so long that I don't remember if the HC20 has a head offload and park feature, but it sure needs it if you want to keep these drives working, if you can even find one that works anymore. Maybe if someone with more time than sense could come up with an emulator using a RPI or something to simulate the broken drive for the HC controller. It's entirely pointless with the advent of XTIDE, but those old HC controllers had some cool features, like onscreen display of disk access.
you're not the first one mentioning the on screen display access, very cool! Considering that the head was making that ticking noise when I switched it off, it looks like the heads did not park indeed. Which is weird, the drive is kind of modern and I am surprised. Thanks for watching!
The HC20 does autopark (Quantum even took out a patent on the "return spring" circuit it uses), but it's also a contact start-stop drive, so the heads can still stick to the platters in the landing zone.
When I was at work in the '80s we bought a 10MB hard card like the one you showed. The best thing about it was the guarantee. It failed after about a month and we got our money back (after a lot of argument). Very doubtful yours would have worked for long. I also remember the 32MB HDD (?partition) limit and had my 30MB drive partitioned to 20MB and 10MB just in case.
I was too little then but I do remember similar situations when I got my first 386/DX 25Mhz machine! Things were super expensive and "customer service" was meh! :) Thanks for watching!
About the big drive's model number: IBM made that drive themselves, and the "WD" in this case means "Winchester disk" (an old name for hard drives in general that was common back then). However, Western Digital *did* buy (most of) what was left of IBM's hard drive business from Hitachi many years later. I suspect IBM may have had some assistance from Toshiba on these early models, since they all have a lot of Toshiba chips, but I can't prove it conclusively.
Very nice 8088 computer, i has symilar problem with tantalum capacitors on my 286, when I run them three cap explode, I replace every 36 capacitors on this motherboard and today it works fine ;-)
5:20 When using an xtide with an XT PC be sure to configure the partition sizes to no larger than 32MB otherwise it will take forever to calculate the free space after every dir command.
Oh well, Fdisk didn't allow me to make partitions bigger than 32MB anyways! :) And yes, I did see that when I typed "DIR" on the newly created 32MB partition, amazingly slow!
@@tony359Use DOS5. It is faster and it has slightly more free conventional memory when run on an XT. Plus it allows larger partitions, although you really don't want that anyway because of the calculating free space thing. For an XT set up 10MB partitions or something. You can have letters from A to Z if you want and it will work fine. Don't use DOS6 because it will eat more conventional memory on an XT.
The first computer I had was like this one, I was born in 1985 and we probably got it in the early 90s. It ran commander keen and 2d duke nukem...slow. Grandfather always said it was an 8086. Memory is hazy, I know I never opened it.
I believe the XT were all 8088 - IBM introduced the 8086 on the PS/2 line. My computer was also very slow - and it was a 386! :) Didn't know there was a Duke Dukem 2D version! Thanks for sharing your memories!
SERC - If in the UK, this was the Science and Engineering Research Council. It was a government body that funded - well I will leave that as an exercise for the reader to work out 🙂
I like this channel. I like this Video. I'd like to see more :D And it's amazing how such an old PC still works with a bit of encouragement :D Thank You ^_^
it does, doesn't it? I think Adrian had the same noise but couldn't find anything that would justify it so I'll be curious to take a look myself! Thank you!
Did you actually LLF the hard drive?, if not, hit it with spinrite or one of the other tools that can do a dynamic LLF if you don't want to re-install... there was even one that could work out the optimum interleave. Also, you really need a park command for those old drives, to place the heads onto the parking zone when it stops
you know I thought about that, wondering whether a dedicated software would be able to do a better LLF. I don't see a mention of parking the head on the IBM manual, any chance that HDD was auto-parking using the residual energy from the platter spinning? Thanks for watching!
@@tony359 Not sure which drives had autopark and which didn't. Old versions of Spinrite could optimize interleave, I think maybe old versions of Norton did as well. Too low = very slow, it will only get 1 sector per revolution, while for each step too high, it could have read a track in one less revolution. It seems 6:1 was standard for XT and 3:1 for AT, but XT may be able to take 5:1. Norton calibrat.exe would test them all on the test cylinder and report the results, allowing the best to be chosen
I've looked into that and it seems that as long as the system is not being moved, parking is not necessary? Clearly I moved it so I should have parked those heads... :) But for where it's going to be it should be fine without apparently.
I wonder if opening those 20MB cards *first* is the right strategy? It's 20MB... you're not going to do a lot of damage if you have a good air filter on in your office. Then grab the head with needle nose pliers while trying to move the platter. You might misalign it sure, but it's again only 20MB and they're prone to failure. Best be gentle with them. Alcohol on the platter around the stuck head? IDK... alcohol on the sticky voice coil? Probably.
I am planning to build a small HEPA filter and set up a poor man's hood to open up the HardCard! The head can't be stuck on the platter as the platters are spinning. If a head has detached and it's stuck on the platter then it's game over I'm afraid. I'll tinker with it! Thanks for watching!
I was thinking that subjecting the drive to a few decent heat cycles before attempting anything mechanical could dislodge things a bit more gently. Obviously too late for this drive but maybe something to consider the next time around?
I have a feeling that there is not much that can be done if a drive is a goner but who knows, it might be worth trying next time! Thanks for mentioning!
The MFM drive in my XT also worked flawlessly, but I'm too afraid to use it on a daily basis. But I'm also afraid that if I just leave it unused then it will also fail. 😅😢
Yes it's a double sided sword. It WILL fail at some point, it won't live forever unfortunately. I say let's use it while it lasts. Thanks for watching!
Hi Tony. I have a question. What You use as source of UV light to erase eprom chips? I have bunch of eproms, but only have one eeprom compatible with old hardware, so I'm in a pickle.
I use a Chinese UV lamp I wouldn't recommend to my worst enemy and which is a fire hazard NOT to be left unattended! :D There is not much choice online and apparently it has to be UV-C and not many suitable solutions. But the one I have is a UV lamp glued to a plastic chassis with a driver PCB clearly stolen from another lamp, glued to the plastic chassis and soldered to mains in the most dangerous way I've ever seen! :)
What kind od hard disk is used on this card? Maybe there exist na adapter to use CF card on it? BTW you should park heads before shooting down the machine.
Thanks about the parking warning - I don't see a reference of parking the heads on the IBM manual, could it be this is automatically parking the heads with the residual spinning energy? I can't find much about it. Good point about the option to re-use that HardCard controller even though I am not optimistic, the connectors don't seem to be standard. The drive should be Quantum if not mistaken. Thanks for watching!
@@tony359 I remember using XT back in the days. The teacher was screaming on you when you power off the machine without executing parking command first :D
THe HardCards were entirely bespoke, basically an XTA or IDE hard drive that was "unfolded", given an ISA edge connector and bolted to a metal frame. There were a few competitors to the HardCard that used a more standard setup with a half-size MFM/RLL controller and a 3.5" half-height drive, but they weren't as thin as the HardCard and were not quite as desirable, especially in a PC or XT where most of the slots were going to be filled up.
The XT was my first computer. Soon they came out with the AT. I had already spent my money on an XT. I worked for IBM at the time and soon created a 20M hard drive, A 20m Hard Card like you have, CGA Graphics, Extended Memory card, then I added the Expanded Unit on to it (It looked like another XT unit). I took the XT to the max it could have added features and equipment. I finally got a second computer, a 300 mhz. That's how long I had the XT. I had lots of different IBM internal software tools and utilities to change memory options, etc. Thanks for the memories.
From 4.7 to 300! That's a long time but yes, those were expensive machines back in the days! Thank you for watching!
Beautiful hard disk! The 32MB limitation is not per drive, but per partition. You can have multiple 32MB partitions on one larger drive.
ah gotcha! Thank you!
That was because of the FAT limitations. (File Allocation Table).
@@tony359 If I recall as well, later versions of DOS will utilize larger 2GB partitions without issue, but on an XT class machine, that sure makes running DIR for the first time........rather fun. Or should I say, rather slow in calculating free space.
ahah yes, it takes forever! :)
Adrian also has an extensive autopsy video on these hard cards on his channel. All of them fail because of a disintegrating bumper to which the heads will eventually stick.
I watched it and still doesn't explain the ticking noise though. I'll take a look as well! Thank you!
I haven’t got to that part yet, but I’ve had a ticking noise from an old drive before. It was a shattered platter. Could it also be a just a run of the mill crashed head?
Or is the drive working. In which case ignore my comment.😅
Lol... 8:18 stand back! I love it!
ahah I always think things will explode on me! Thanks for watching! :)
i am amazed at the level of patience you had with the hard card....i would have thrown it out of the window on the first failure to spin up......🙂
ahahah! Maybe it would have been a better use of my time, particularly considering the final outcome! :) Thanks for watching!
As I recall that Hard Card was prone to that failure.
"Now that we've fixed it, let's break it"
Epic!
I love breaking things, that's how I learn how NOT to break them again :)
Hi, The text editor that was supplied in DOS was called "EDLIN", but it was very very basic... Also that I think the network card is actually a IBM 3270 Emulation card, as I saw the PC3270 software install on the hard drive before you wiped it. And seeing Lotus 123 did bring back lots of memories, what we could do with 123 was way more that it was initally designed. The account team push the spreadsheets to the limits..
Someone mentioned the EDLIN and also mentioned it was awful :D I was too young for those things, I remember the school had a "broken" PS/2 and I felt brave and reinstalled DOS 3.3. I was scared to death, I thought I could make it worse... It was my first approach with DOS and DOS 5.0 was out soon afterwards.
Thanks for watching!
So I worked at *the* IBM PC dealership in the late 80s-early 90s as a tech. I live in an island nation which makes most things here quite expensive. I remember we had a typed and photocopied list of spare parts which were supposedly on hand, and one was a 20 Mb fixed disk, as IBM would have it. It did sit there upon our shelves all the time I was there, I don't think I ever tested it, but I do remember it's price tag: $2,000. Yup, that's US dollars lol. And that would be double at least in todays money haha.
And that was just the HDD! Amazing! Thanks for watching!
At least you lucked out on the big MFM hard drive. I picked up a 5162 (XT/286), which ended up having a massive head crash. To continue to use the original PSU (it requires the load of the MFM drive), I removed the heads from the drive, so it just has some pointlessly spinning platters :D.
On the brighter side though, I was able to use the MFM drive's status led with my CF card storage replacement, so it *looks* like it still works. With the XTIDE universal bios in a rom socket on a NIC...I can have a rather absurd 2GB of storage. At this point I'm actually looking for more games and apps to run on it.
So, the only original IBM card I got with the system was the floppy/MFM controller. (I would guess the previous owner had exploding tantalums on the display and IO cards). Now I'm not even using that card, but a all-in-one floppy/IDE/serial/parallel card. I guess a lot of the fun with the early PCs is figuring out all the hardware and software tweaks to make it run the way you want it to :)
I was thinking of doing the same with my PS/2 one - just leave the drive in, spinning, to make the familiar noise. Wondering if someone could come up with a little software which moves the heads stepper motor when the Compact Flash LED is signalling activity. Uhm... this sounds like a cool idea! :)
Thanks for watching!
The first hard drives in those XT's were only 5MB, then they went to 10MB, then to the 20MB. The first floppy disks were single sided, double sided came a year later. 1M of RAM, only about 640K was addressable. 385K of it was used for system functions, talking to the peripherals. Each one of the memory chips (IC's) was only 64K in size.
if I stop and think that 5MB were A LOT back then and now I can't think of a file on my HDD which would fit on that disk... My first HDD was 40MB then I spent and arm and a leg to buy a 100MB which I thought would last forever and was impossible to fill! :D
My uncle gave me a Compaq Portable back in the late 90s with a Hard Card 20 in it. Even back then, the card had the exact same failure with the head fusing to the platter. I pulled mine apart and the head was so fused with the platter that when I eventually got it to pry off, it took a chunk of the platter with it, leaving a big crater.
It's been so long that I don't remember if the HC20 has a head offload and park feature, but it sure needs it if you want to keep these drives working, if you can even find one that works anymore.
Maybe if someone with more time than sense could come up with an emulator using a RPI or something to simulate the broken drive for the HC controller. It's entirely pointless with the advent of XTIDE, but those old HC controllers had some cool features, like onscreen display of disk access.
you're not the first one mentioning the on screen display access, very cool! Considering that the head was making that ticking noise when I switched it off, it looks like the heads did not park indeed. Which is weird, the drive is kind of modern and I am surprised. Thanks for watching!
The HC20 does autopark (Quantum even took out a patent on the "return spring" circuit it uses), but it's also a contact start-stop drive, so the heads can still stick to the platters in the landing zone.
Excellent video as always, missed the disassembly of the hard drive card at the end :-) Thank you!
I think I’ll do that but on a separate video. I’m also curious to see what happened! Thanks for watching!
When I was at work in the '80s we bought a 10MB hard card like the one you showed. The best thing about it was the guarantee. It failed after about a month and we got our money back (after a lot of argument).
Very doubtful yours would have worked for long.
I also remember the 32MB HDD (?partition) limit and had my 30MB drive partitioned to 20MB and 10MB just in case.
I was too little then but I do remember similar situations when I got my first 386/DX 25Mhz machine! Things were super expensive and "customer service" was meh! :)
Thanks for watching!
Another wonderful project completed !
Thank you so much 😊
About the big drive's model number: IBM made that drive themselves, and the "WD" in this case means "Winchester disk" (an old name for hard drives in general that was common back then). However, Western Digital *did* buy (most of) what was left of IBM's hard drive business from Hitachi many years later.
I suspect IBM may have had some assistance from Toshiba on these early models, since they all have a lot of Toshiba chips, but I can't prove it conclusively.
ah, very interesting thanks! Nice coincidence that they chose WD and then sold it to WD :) Thanks for watching!
Another fun video to watch, thanks Tony.
Thank you!
Thank you very much for this one sir, great machine deserves taking good care of!
They do! Thanks for watching!
Thanks again for this awesome video!!!when this HDD is powered on what a sound it makes!this brings back old memories.
Absolutely! Also the "CLONK" from the power switch :) Thanks for watching!
Nice! I would love one of those systems sometime.
They are "good memories factories" :) Thanks for watching!
Nice job! Keep up the good work. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands
Hello Stephen! Thank you!
Very nice 8088 computer, i has symilar problem with tantalum capacitors on my 286, when I run them three cap explode, I replace every 36 capacitors on this motherboard and today it works fine ;-)
Yes, the Tantalum Fireworks are somehow expected from those old machines! :) Thanks for watching!
Well saved once again!👍👍
Thank you!
Thanks for another great video.
Thank you!
Great restoration, but a shame about the hardcard 🙂
Yes! I really would like to open it up to see what happened!
Very nice video, as always!
Thank you so much!
16:53 the C stands for Rachel Garret’s Enterprise. 😅
(dropping microphone) 😅
I would like to see more!
I've run out of XT's but I have more cool stuff coming, you asked for consoles right? :)
Awesome work! That was some dedication to keep prodding the hardcard. Too bad about that one, but everything else came back to life. Nice job!
Indeed! That why I was so impressed by the main HDD being so perfect :) Thanks for watching!
5:20 When using an xtide with an XT PC be sure to configure the partition sizes to no larger than 32MB otherwise it will take forever to calculate the free space after every dir command.
Oh well, Fdisk didn't allow me to make partitions bigger than 32MB anyways! :) And yes, I did see that when I typed "DIR" on the newly created 32MB partition, amazingly slow!
@@tony359Use DOS5. It is faster and it has slightly more free conventional memory when run on an XT. Plus it allows larger partitions, although you really don't want that anyway because of the calculating free space thing. For an XT set up 10MB partitions or something. You can have letters from A to Z if you want and it will work fine. Don't use DOS6 because it will eat more conventional memory on an XT.
Oh I know but I want to keep 3.3 on the XT! It's not a matter of usability but of experiencing what you had back in the 80's :)
Enjoyed the video!
Amazing, thanks for watching!
The first computer I had was like this one, I was born in 1985 and we probably got it in the early 90s. It ran commander keen and 2d duke nukem...slow. Grandfather always said it was an 8086. Memory is hazy, I know I never opened it.
I believe the XT were all 8088 - IBM introduced the 8086 on the PS/2 line. My computer was also very slow - and it was a 386! :) Didn't know there was a Duke Dukem 2D version!
Thanks for sharing your memories!
Thank you. A very nice video ❤
Thank you!
SERC - If in the UK, this was the Science and Engineering Research Council. It was a government body that funded - well I will leave that as an exercise for the reader to work out 🙂
I did found that online but I wasn't sure if I wanted to mention it on the video just in case :) Thanks for watching!
I like this channel. I like this Video. I'd like to see more :D And it's amazing how such an old PC still works with a bit of encouragement :D Thank You ^_^
Thank you for your kind words and happy you enjoyed the video!
It really does sound like something is stuck to the platter on that hardcard.
it does, doesn't it? I think Adrian had the same noise but couldn't find anything that would justify it so I'll be curious to take a look myself! Thank you!
Did you actually LLF the hard drive?, if not, hit it with spinrite or one of the other tools that can do a dynamic LLF if you don't want to re-install... there was even one that could work out the optimum interleave.
Also, you really need a park command for those old drives, to place the heads onto the parking zone when it stops
you know I thought about that, wondering whether a dedicated software would be able to do a better LLF. I don't see a mention of parking the head on the IBM manual, any chance that HDD was auto-parking using the residual energy from the platter spinning? Thanks for watching!
@@tony359 Not sure which drives had autopark and which didn't. Old versions of Spinrite could optimize interleave, I think maybe old versions of Norton did as well.
Too low = very slow, it will only get 1 sector per revolution, while for each step too high, it could have read a track in one less revolution.
It seems 6:1 was standard for XT and 3:1 for AT, but XT may be able to take 5:1.
Norton calibrat.exe would test them all on the test cylinder and report the results, allowing the best to be chosen
I've looked into that and it seems that as long as the system is not being moved, parking is not necessary? Clearly I moved it so I should have parked those heads... :)
But for where it's going to be it should be fine without apparently.
I wonder if opening those 20MB cards *first* is the right strategy? It's 20MB... you're not going to do a lot of damage if you have a good air filter on in your office.
Then grab the head with needle nose pliers while trying to move the platter. You might misalign it sure, but it's again only 20MB and they're prone to failure. Best be gentle with them.
Alcohol on the platter around the stuck head? IDK... alcohol on the sticky voice coil? Probably.
I am planning to build a small HEPA filter and set up a poor man's hood to open up the HardCard! The head can't be stuck on the platter as the platters are spinning. If a head has detached and it's stuck on the platter then it's game over I'm afraid. I'll tinker with it! Thanks for watching!
I was thinking that subjecting the drive to a few decent heat cycles before attempting anything mechanical could dislodge things a bit more gently. Obviously too late for this drive but maybe something to consider the next time around?
I have a feeling that there is not much that can be done if a drive is a goner but who knows, it might be worth trying next time! Thanks for mentioning!
The MFM drive in my XT also worked flawlessly, but I'm too afraid to use it on a daily basis. But I'm also afraid that if I just leave it unused then it will also fail. 😅😢
Yes it's a double sided sword. It WILL fail at some point, it won't live forever unfortunately. I say let's use it while it lasts. Thanks for watching!
👍
Hi Tony. I have a question. What You use as source of UV light to erase eprom chips? I have bunch of eproms, but only have one eeprom compatible with old hardware, so I'm in a pickle.
I use a Chinese UV lamp I wouldn't recommend to my worst enemy and which is a fire hazard NOT to be left unattended! :D There is not much choice online and apparently it has to be UV-C and not many suitable solutions. But the one I have is a UV lamp glued to a plastic chassis with a driver PCB clearly stolen from another lamp, glued to the plastic chassis and soldered to mains in the most dangerous way I've ever seen! :)
What kind od hard disk is used on this card? Maybe there exist na adapter to use CF card on it? BTW you should park heads before shooting down the machine.
Thanks about the parking warning - I don't see a reference of parking the heads on the IBM manual, could it be this is automatically parking the heads with the residual spinning energy? I can't find much about it. Good point about the option to re-use that HardCard controller even though I am not optimistic, the connectors don't seem to be standard. The drive should be Quantum if not mistaken. Thanks for watching!
@@tony359 I remember using XT back in the days. The teacher was screaming on you when you power off the machine without executing parking command first :D
My teachers were turning off the PS/2 from the main breakers... :)
@@tony359 Reach country! ;)
THe HardCards were entirely bespoke, basically an XTA or IDE hard drive that was "unfolded", given an ISA edge connector and bolted to a metal frame. There were a few competitors to the HardCard that used a more standard setup with a half-size MFM/RLL controller and a 3.5" half-height drive, but they weren't as thin as the HardCard and were not quite as desirable, especially in a PC or XT where most of the slots were going to be filled up.
My comment is edlin :)
Any
Wobble, wobble, wobble, yeah.
👍