9 Mar
2023
9 Mar
'23
5:16 p.m.
On 9-Mar-23 10h36. Grant Taylor wrote:
On 3/9/23 6:20 AM, Bill Degnan wrote:
> First and foremost, try to boot the computer to make note of the
> configuration, if there is one still stored in the system.
Nowhere do I see any mention of a Model 80 Reference Disk. If you don't have one of
these, you will not be able to configure the machine. I _should_ have a copy of one lying
around (or already imaged/archived) - the main problem is finding the ADF (Adaptor
Description Files) for the added features/cards. My copy of the Reference Disk would not
likely have any ADFs from obscure cards, but should have the common files. Let me know if
you need a copy. I recall that I had a 'master diskette' with many collected ADFs
which came through the lab. Would have to look for that one, if interested. ADFs were text
files with descriptions of hardware addresses and the like.
Hum. That sort of surprises me. I naively assumed
that there would be some work that I should do before powering the system on to make sure
that there >weren't any spicy components that would make me regret my choices. Did
IBM not use Rifas? Is there any other hardware concerns?
Not sure of what you mean by 'Rifas' in the last question. Probably an acronym or
other abbreviation of something I may know about, but nothing comes to my foggy brain
presently.
I am somewhat worried about stiction on the old hard
drives.
"Stiction" is probably not your biggest concern regarding the hard drives. The
real problem could be stuck bearings - depending upon HDD model installed.
"Stiction" is the condition where the spindle motor did not have enough torque
to free the head from the platter surfaces - the drives used in all of the PS/2 Model 80
machines that we saw were beefy enough to overcome any "stiction" condition. We,
in the repair lab (years ago, of course), used to see this on the original Apple Mac SE
and SE/30 machines where a Sony 20Mb drive was used (the model number has long since been
forgotten and is irrelevant to our discussion, of course) but we used to give them
assistance to last a couple of startups (or at least one!) for backing up data by using
our "inertial rotation" technique to physically spin the drive using hand
motion. We would (wrist-strap grounded, of course) grab with our free arm the drive in
axial alignment over the spindle and rotate the drive a few times around back and forth in
a snapping action. 95% of the time it would work to retrieve the data before we would RMA
the drive back to Apple.
But I tend to not work on systems this old that have
been sitting for a long time often enough to know what I should check.
I'm guessing this system is from about a decade (or
more) before failing capacitors were common place on ... economy systems.
> I don't expect the battery to have held the
config but there is always
> hope.
Agreed.
This is far from my first time working with IBM PS/2s,
so the lack of a configuration isn't a big concern to me. I'm well aware of
reference disks / option disks / >convenience partitions on models that support them.
> Make detailed notes if you're lucky enough to
have the configs saved.
> Otherwise get a new battery before you do anything or you'll be
> spinning your wheels.
It's been just long enough since the last time I
worked on a PS/2 that I can't remember if the battery was required at any power off or
just power removed from >the PSU. I've had different systems behavie differently
in this regard with a dead BIOS battery.
The battery used is one of the old 6V photoflash types (cannot recall the model,
unfortunately). I have a few of them left in my collection - just ran into them in a box
(with 2 or 3 left) a few months ago. Each still had over 6v (no load) at the terminals. No
idea how long they would last in application under load, though, even though the Model 80
didn't use too much current to hold things in config memory.
Just my $0.02 (not even sure it was worth that much). Good luck with your 80.