Lawrence Walker wrote:
The PS/2 is one of the lines I collect. They were a remarkable machine.
Unfortunately IBM goofed in charging exhorbitant liscensing fees for the
MCA which gave birth to the EISA consortium. I have an 8530 (XT model),
8557 (386,SCSI and fast UART), 8560 (tower 286), 8570-A21 (386, my fastest
at 25mhz with coprocesser and cache) , 8580 (386, introduced PS/2 MCA line
and VGA (on planar), tower, built like a tank-my favorite) and several spares.
Want a P70 and 95 to fill out the line.
MCA was PnP before it became a "feature" The major drawback is the
availability and price of the cards. Virtually all the PS/2s were easily
disassembled.
I'll have 2 P70's in immaculate shape and I have 3 various 8595 configurations to
get rid of either in trade or sale. I also have 8565's, 8555/56/57's and
8590's and
others. Get with me off the list and we can see what we can work out.
Usually the trick is to make them fit. The P70 has one long and one short slot.
IBM still supplies but as in all things IBM at hugely inflated prices. There
are several alternate sources which the "MCA Mafia" on the PS2 newsgroup
can apprise you of.
There's stuff all over the place dependant on the model.
There was a discussion regarding this recently (and earlier) on the newsgroup.
Some models have info re set-up on the HD, and if you erase this when fomatting
there are certain steps you must do to reinstall the reference info. Can't
remember the details but the "MCA Mafia" are quite helpful. You could also
check out Peter Wendt's site to see if there's anything regarding this problem.
lwalker(a)interlog.com
The P70 isn't one of them. The SCSI models have the "system partition" of
1mb with
the reference disk on it. Some utilities will let you delete it (Disk Manager for
one) and others will show it but protect it (Fdisk is one).