"Brand new" IBM AT: Retro PC goodness

[Tr3vor]

Yeah, I spent too much money on an old computer, not gonna lie. I've wanted an AT since I got into old PCs, and now I have a new old stock computer. I am the original owner of a PC that's older than me.

 

 

Two big boxes, one for the system unit and the other for the documentation/keyboard

 

I didn't get a picture of the boxes before I opened them, but they were sealed with the original tape, although after 29 years, I can't say that the word "sealed" is an accurate one.

 

All the documentation is there, and the setup disks for the machine.

 

There's my very blurry shot of my "brand new" IBM Model M keyboard from 1989

 

There she is, never used, protective cardboard insert in floppy drive and everything.

 

There's the guts, they do not build computers like this anymore. It weighs a whopping 43lbs. Even in the 80s, they were painting the insides of the cases black. That MFM hard drive is the size of 2 5.25" disk drives stacked on top of each other and only has a capacity of 30MB. This machine has an 8Mhz 80286 processor and 512KB of RAM. At this point, the computer has no video adapter installed, they didn't come with one. Apparently back when these were new, you'd have to buy one seperately.

 

Back then, it wasn't uncommon to have issues with the motherboard after manufacturing. IBM often fixed the boards by hand, which is what those 3 orange wires are for.

 

After installing an ISA VGA card I've had laying around for a while and running the setup disk to configure the CMOS (this machine does not have the BIOS setup menu in ROM), it boots to IBM BASIC, which is stored in ROM, which is a good sign. The hard drive also roared to life.

 

The introductory disk that came with the machine shows the features of the computer and is peripherals in an entertaining manner, with ascii graphics all over

 

Old MFM hard drives like these do not have a side of any platter dedicated to store location data, so the read write heads will not know where to go to find tracks. These old drives must be low level formatted, which is where the computer writes that track location data. Also these drives do not use voice coils to move the heads, instead they use stepper motors to move them, which generates some interesting noises while being used.

 

After all that setup work, I installed MS-DOS 3.30 to the HDD. I also installed a network card so that I can FTP old games to this machine from my modern PC. I also installed a slowdown utility called AT-SLOW to the machine, because believe it or not, this computer is not slow enough for a few programs I intend to run. Back when the original IBM PC/XT machines were the thing to have, the computers did not have a real time clock, so all software timing was based off the CPU clock. This causes programs to run waaaaay too fast if run on anything faster than a 4.77Mhz 8088/86 CPU. 

 

This computer dwarfs my old 486 machine over there.

 

 

Hope you enjoyed your small trip through my 43lb steel time machine.

[FAQBytes]

Mmmmm bodge wires. 

 

[Zusafek]

I still have mine sitting in my retro gaming room. God I love the sounds of mechanical drives. And the big floppy disks were awesome. 

[FAQBytes]

This kinda makes me want to pull out my old stuff and tinker with it again.

[mad dudy]

i can never understand why people still like using these old stuff let alone buy it.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

5 minutes ago, mad dudy said:

i can never understand why people still like using these old stuff let alone buy it.

It's a hobby. You don't need to understand.

1 hour ago, Tr3vor said:

-snip-

Damn where did you find that? How much was it?

[Sprawlie]

I'm having flashbacks here.

 

 

[Tr3vor]

8 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

It's a hobby. You don't need to understand.

Damn where did you find that? How much was it?

 

There are still a few on ebay, and I spent $500 (lol, but hey, its better than buying a beat ass one for $250)

[Tr3vor]

8 hours ago, mad dudy said:

i can never understand why people still like using these old stuff let alone buy it.

 

Its mainly just for the experience of using a machine this old. They tend to be so different from modern computers its like exploring a whole new world of hardware and software.

 

Sure you can emulate the software with dosbox, that only tells half the story. It can't emulate the large whirring (sometimes beeping) hard drives and huge glowing CRT monitors, and the many variations of sound blaster compatible sound cards.

[Froody129]

It's only in the tech industry where you can go from a 5" floppy to a 2.5" stiffy and call it progress

[Hasle]

There's something mesmerizing about old unused tech in pristine condition. And that Prince of Persia shot brings back so many memories.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

Wow this brings back memories of my dad's first PC, the one I (and my older brother) cut our teeth on.   Ours was a 286-12 with 1 MB RAM, a 40 MB HDD, EGA graphics, DOS 3.3, bought from a local store.

 

I even came across the invoice a while back...

 

 

I wonder what we could get in a system now if we adjusted that price for inflation, and spent the same?   (It looks like it'd be a bit over $3600 according to one online calculator, so I'm guessing you could get a Titan XP & i7-6900K, or 1080 Ti SLI & R7-1800X, plus a decent NVMe SSD & other things.)

 

And here's a few pics of the system, from back in the day.

 

 

 

We don't have ours anymore, although a few years ago we still had the 5.25" floppy drive, and we DO have some 5.25" floppies laying around.

 

 

I'd love to see benchmarks on yours. And if at all possible, have the same ones run on a modern equivalent-priced PC.  (How much faster would, say, a Ryzen 7 1800X + 960 Evo SSD + GTX 1080 Ti be, for most tasks that could run on the old 286/AT?)

[Tr3vor]

41 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

Wow this brings back memories of my dad's first PC, the one I (and my older brother) cut our teeth on.   Ours was a 286-12 with 1 MB RAM, a 40 MB HDD, EGA graphics, DOS 3.3, bought from a local store.

 

I even came across the invoice a while back...

 

 

 

I wonder what we could get in a system now if we adjusted that price for inflation, and spent the same?   (It looks like it'd be a bit over $3600 according to one online calculator, so I'm guessing you could get a Titan XP & i7-6900K, or 1080 Ti SLI & R7-1800X, plus a decent NVMe SSD & other things.)

 

And here's a few pics of the system, from back in the day.

 

 

 

We don't have ours anymore, although a few years ago we still had the 5.25" floppy drive, and we DO have some 5.25" floppies laying around.

 

 

I'd love to see benchmarks on yours. And if at all possible, have the same ones run on a modern equivalent-priced PC.  (How much faster would, say, a Ryzen 7 1800X + 960 Evo SSD + GTX 1080 Ti be, for most tasks that could run on the old 286/AT?)

 

Thats a cool AT clone there, I didn't think that 10mhz 286 cpus were that common. Looks like it has a turbo switch so that it can run software for older PCs as well.

 

As far as benchmarks go the only ones that would run on both old and new systems would need to be run within dosbox. I could run a few later and link them in the thread to whoever wants to try running them on modern PCs. back in the 80s, this kind of IBM AT (model 339) seems to have gone for around $3700 new, and that's without the video adapter, like mine.

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=nlbE7zYjfTMC&pg=PP83&lpg=PP83&dq=ibm+at+339+original+price&source=bl&ots=pA-Ds6iWmf&sig=1IO2wOXGFYYhmTsi64cuVy6ccNk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwinwYb9gMzSAhUIwWMKHQMdDfoQ6AEINTAE#v=onepage&q=ibm at 339 original price&f=false

 

although tbh, with the benchmarks that are available for a computer like this there wouldn't be much difference between a very high end system nowdays and a mid range system. I guess I could throw my modern system in the fray as well (6600k, gtx 970).

[NumLock21]

2 hours ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

Wow this brings back memories of my dad's first PC, the one I (and my older brother) cut our teeth on.   Ours was a 286-12 with 1 MB RAM, a 40 MB HDD, EGA graphics, DOS 3.3, bought from a local store.

 

I even came across the invoice a while back...

 

 

 

RGB!

And that 640kb is all because of Gates.

 

[ZX_SPECTRUM]

hey where did you get that machine?

i wanna get one too

could provide a link

[Guest]

This pc would have been a beast gaming pc back in its day. 

[Hugs12343]

but can it run crysis (Linus 2017) Maybe 2016 Idk

[Tr3vor]

On 7/25/2017 at 7:31 PM, ZX_SPECTRUM said:

hey where did you get that machine?

i wanna get one too

could provide a link

There was some guy who had a warehouse of old ATs and was selling them on ebay, I haven't seen any recently, so maybe he's out of them. you could probably get one used for cheaper on ebay anyway.

 

 

On 7/26/2017 at 4:27 AM, TheBeastPC said:

This pc would have been a beast gaming pc back in its day. 

well when this thing was made, PC gaming wasn't really a thing. There was computer gaming, but that meant home microcomputers like the commodore, ataris, etc. There weren't many PC games back then, and the ones made at the time of the AT's launch won't run properly on an AT anyway, since they used the CPU speed of the old IBM PC as the timer because all the old PCs ran at the same clock speed. But it was a monster office machine.

[flibberdipper]

I'M SO HAPPY THIS WAS NECRO'D. :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

 

Mind posting a video of how loud that old drive is spinning up? Haven't actually heard an MFM drive with less than a few thousand hours on it.

[Not_Sean]

I would love a old IBM just to gut it and build a Sleeper PC, but even I can say that finding a brand new one sealed is damn cool, Well done man thats one hell of a find ! 

[EPENEX]

Very nice! I've been thinking about picking up a Model M for a few months now, but with my current financial situation I am no longer able to spend that kind of money on one

[Tr3vor]

1 hour ago, tmcclelland455 said:

I'M SO HAPPY THIS WAS NECRO'D. :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

 

Mind posting a video of how loud that old drive is spinning up? Haven't actually heard an MFM drive with less than a few thousand hours on it.

I already have a couple videos on this thing, but iirc people aren't allowed to post their own videos on the forum.It seems the only place that its allowed is in status updates so I guess I could charge up my crappy little camera and record a video of me powering it up and link my status update here or something.

 

41 minutes ago, EPENEX said:

Very nice! I've been thinking about picking up a Model M for a few months now, but with my current financial situation I am no longer able to spend that kind of money on one

They aren't that expensive, like half the price of your average cruddy cherry keyboard.

[flibberdipper]

23 minutes ago, Tr3vor said:

I already have a couple videos on this thing, but iirc people aren't allowed to post their own videos on the forum.It seems the only place that its allowed is in status updates so I guess I could charge up my crappy little camera and record a video of me powering it up and link my status update here or something.

You're allowed to link them but not be all like "AYO DAWG DIS MA CHANNEL CHECC IT" if I'm not mistaken.

[Tr3vor]

2 hours ago, tmcclelland455 said:

You're allowed to link them but not be all like "AYO DAWG DIS MA CHANNEL CHECC IT" if I'm not mistaken.

Alright then, here you go 

 

 

If the mods don't like it I guess they can just delete it and I'll do it the other way or whatever. if you're bored enough you could also watch the other videos I made for this, which includes me being a dork when turning it on the first time.

[SCHISCHKA]

I have an old 19" CRT in storage. I dont have a table large enough for it. I think its about a meter from screen to back of monitor. I should find a vintage computer that matches it.

Is that computer so old that charlie chaplin is on the cover of the manual?