🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <6550@cps3xx.UUCP> draper@cpsin1.UUCP (Patrick J Draper) writes:
>In article <19768@nuchat.UUCP> seven@nuchat.UUCP (David Paulsen) writes:
>>Attention computer archeologists: HELP!
>>I recently rescued an ancient IBM-PC from the dumpster.. and it works!
>>
>I don't believe you can do too much in the way of a hard disk, at least
>not a full or half height drive. There may be a possibility that you can
>upgrade the bios. I'm not familiar with hard cards, but my impression is
>that they need to be supported by the bios the same as regular hard
>disks.
>
>According to <begin underline>The Winn Rosch Hardware Bible<end
>underline> (how do you underline anyway?) the original IBM PC introduced
>in 1981 cannot handle advanced video adaptors (presumeably EGA) or hard
>disks.
>
>Patrick Draper   ----  Michigan State University

Hey, don't be so negative!!!

I'm using an original PC to write this.  It has a 1982 BIOS from IBM (the
only thing that had to be upgraded), two hard drives totalling 97 Meg (one
at 28 ms), a SuperVGA card, a 9600 baud datalink, an optical mouse, a 24-pin
printer, two high-density floppy drives, and a 386SX accelerator card!

All of these items worked first try - none required any workarounds for the
fact that this is a PC-2 (256K motherboard), and it probably wouldn't have
mattered too much if it were a PC-1; I think the accelerator card has a
workaround for that.

The only big problem is that I can only get 640K (at least, I haven't
investigated expanding it), and it has to be cached for the accelerator, but
that works fine.  I've had no problems with video or harddrive access.

Typing d f000:fff5 in debug gives me the BIOS date: 10/27/82.  You should
still be able to order this chip (or any of a number of clones of it) from
a dealer, or through mail-order.  That is, if you don't already have it -
it's required, I think, to have 640K in the machine, so if you have that
much already, you're OK.

You *will* need to upgrade the power supply, in case I forgot to mention that.
150W is a good size, although 125 or more is plenty.

Sorry I've taken up so much space here, but I wouldn't want to see his PC
go back into the dumpster.  Most undignified.

Kevin Martin
sigma@pawl.rpi.edu
-- 
Irving Arlevine Falls Twenty-Two thousand feet out of 747 ... and survives.