24 Mar
1999
24 Mar
'99
1:23 a.m.
Date sent: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 23:39:08 -0700
Send reply to: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu
From: Mark Gregory <gregorym(a)cadvision.com>
To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers"
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Subject: PS/2s nicer than expected; some questions
Hi Mark!
Groan! I haven't yet found either 90 or 95!
when PS/2s were new, the media savaged them, mainly
due to high price and
the incompatibility with all existing ISA cards, RAM, etc.
That is the time where market is driven by price and ease of
upgrades by easily available and inexpensive parts. They realize
IBM is selling decent machines but kept to be pigheaded and
attack IBM for that. :-(
Some questions:
1) Why did Microchannel fail so completely? From a user point of view it
seems quite nice.
IBM pigheaded and high royality fee for anyone to build
motherboards based on MCA bus. Actually, I find this quality and
design beauiful.
2) Can MFM or IDE drives be used with an ESDI
controller, or do the drives
have to be ESDI drives?
That is 95 XP, you have scsi in there by standard when system is
built. Both HD and controller card are SCSI, you can swap the
controller board for ESDI MCA adapter and a ESDI HD, or
aftermarket IDE to MCA adapter card (harder to find!)
3) Anybody know if the 486DX33 on the processor board
can be replaced with
an Overdrive chip to make it at least a 486/66; or, does IBM still run
their parts depot in Boulder for old machines?
Yup, 5V only Intel or AMD DX2 66. Got cache slot there, that one
with brown connector running appox middle of the complex card?
fine, but the system won't boot from the hard
drive alone. If I boot with
a floppy in the drive, I can access the HD and run programs off of it. But
without a floppy, nothing works. Any ideas?
Check that HD for active partition by that pcdos fdisk program, if
not, add then reboot. No luck? try fdisk /mbr
Thanks in advance.
Mark.
BTW, I have a PS/1 (Still decent built using parity but no cigar to
likes of the 90/95 that I'm still looking for.) And a P75 (8573-401).
Wizard