Restoring a PC Server 500 P/390

[Dave Wade]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Guy Sotomayor Jr <ggs at shiresoft.com>
> Sent: 15 May 2018 21:39
> To: Dave Wade <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com>; General Discussion: On-Topic
> and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> Subject: Re: Restoring a PC Server 500 P/390
> 
> 
> 
> > On May 15, 2018, at 1:29 PM, Dave Wade via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > That’s, in effect, what I did. Whilst there were Microchannel IDE Controllers
> I have never seen one. There are no IDE interfaces on the "Planar" so every
> thing must be on the MCA bus.
> > So I bought a BusLogic BT646 SCSI card on E-Bay. I also bought an Adaptec
> card as a spare.  I think I struck lucky with the BT646. It is a simple SCSI/2 card,
> no raid but it does have a BIOS with support for two bootable drives and a
> >4GB drive option.
> > OS/2 has drivers for it so it works out of the box. The OS/2 boot disks find
> the drive and install the proper drivers.
> > To compensate for the slower "narrow" drives I bought a SCSI2SD card that
> puts an SD card on the bus. OS/2 just sees it as a up two four drives
> depending on how I configure it. At present I have two 4gb drives. The card
> in it is 32gb so I can add 2 x 12gb drives or 1 x 24gb or some other mix. The CD
> ROM sites on the same bus. I haven't tried the tape drive yet..
> >
> 


Well I found an XGA2 card in the pile of bits so now I have 1024x768 display resolution. I have swapped the CDROM for a SCSI DVD drive. 

I managed to boot MTS and there are a few pics here:-

https://flic.kr/s/aHsmc1pkB1

next job is to tidy up and re-assemble the case..

Dave

> Some time ago I acquired a PCI P/390 card (along with the various LIC files).  I
> went down the same path as you to build a P/390 system with OS/2 but I
> kept running into problems with OS/2 versions and supported hardware.
> 
> I finally gave up and acquired a PCI based RS/6000 that I’ll install AIX on and
> have an R/390.  ;-)  I haven’t had the time yet to make any progress on it.
> 
> But it’s good to know that you’ve managed to do this if I decide to go back
> and attempt the PC route again.
> 
> TTFN - Guy