Found an old IBM 5160 XT that needs some fixes (part 1)

Hi, it has been a while but I am back .... super busy at work combined with some home renovations (garage / basement) have really hampered my video production capabilities.
I also had to move most of my stuff to different locations (makes you realise how much stuff you actually have).
But I did still have this IBM XT 5160 that I wanted to try for a long time ... no idea if it works so lets find out ....
#IBM #PC #XT

[@matthewplehn4271]

good to see you still in action...i was afraid you just gave up on you tube and i had lost another creator i like to watch...looking forward to watching more of your content!..be safe

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah more stuff coming ... but between holidays, busy work schedule and renovations I just couldn’t continue. Lots of my hardware shipped to different places and was left with an almost empty garage. But couldn’t leave you guys waiting for much longer :)

[@GreyWolfTowers]

The IBM XT is the first true PC my family ever owned and is what got me interested in the technology field. I'd love to buy it from you, but due to the pandemic and medical reasons I cannot afford to... I do hope it goes to someone who will give it a good home.

[@geschut]

Cool! That's from the Dutch European school in Bergen! Fantastic!

[@nick11927]

Good to have you back

[@RetroSpector78]

Thx a lot !

[@CRG]

Great to see you back, was genuinely getting worried but assumed you'd be working on the basement. Looking forward to the next part.

[@Stoney3K]

The monitor problem looks like it has a dead flyback or horizontal drive -- you can see the horizontal deflection collapse and the picture go black after.

[@alanharkleroad4376]

Welcome back! Nice to here from you again. It is interesting to see a Zilog and AMD chip next to each other on a board.

[@appwraith]

Hey, it's good to see you posting again! These old IBMs are such cool computers. I hope to have one someday.

[@RetroSpector78]

This one was sitting on a shelf for ages ... always nice to bring them back to life again. It's a shame about the monitor ... but it was on its way out according to several people who saw the footage. Not really good at fixing monitors... need to get over my fear of high voltage.

[@darkwind9000]

Welcome back bud and congratulations on the good news!!

[@BadManiac]

Awesome to see you back! Can't wait to see more. One day I'll find my on IBM to add to the collection :)

[@RetroSpector78]

When I started collecting I was also looking for IBMs and they were difficult to find ... they seem to pop up when you’re not looking :)

[@LewisR09]

Glad you are back. Missed your content.

[@wombat1238marsupial]

I have 2 of these and yes I have a 20 and 40 MB hard drives and they are still working. The hard drives are built like tanks. Good video and nice to see you back😊

[@RetroSpector78]

Indeed ... have had a couple of MFM drives failing on me , but most of them seem to run fine after all those years.

[@Johnny.Verplancke]

Nice to see it come alive even with the smoke from the popping capacitator on the floppy drive and the detailed info on the components list, curious what part two will bring now Groetjes, JohnnyV ;)

[@osgrov]

Hey man, I'm so glad you're back. You and your videos have been missed. :) It'll be fun to see you tackle the floppy drive. I don't think I've ever seen one of those disassembled so it'll be a learning experience. Keep up the great content, much appreciated!

[@Inject0r]

Lovely to hear from you again! Thanks for this awesome part 1 of the series!! I’m definitely looking forward to the next part. 😁

[@amaxamon]

I'd really love to get my hands on a vintage IBM PC, I grew up with them and now I really miss them!

[@Kundalini12]

You might be able to find one on eBay but the prices might put you off.

[@leesmithsworkshop]

It's good to see a new video :). I just built a Micro 8088 XT kit with xt-ide and adlib kits too. Everything was great until the caps on the old isa backplane i brought let out the smoke. Lucky for me nothing was damaged.

[@RetroSpector78]

Where did you get the backplane ? Are these easy to find or are there other alternatives ?

[@leesmithsworkshop]

@@RetroSpector78 you can find plenty on ebay, but a lot of them are risers or have pci too. So i setup searches until I found one cheap enough. You can buy them just for the micro 8088 kits, but I think the isa edge connector need to be ordered from china. search for sergey 8088 xt and you can see all the kits he designed.

[@undefinedperson7816]

Hello, Nice to see you again. Pretty cool to have this PC running w/o big issue apart from getting a video card, the death of monitor and dead floppy drive. Hope you were able to fix the floppy drive,no doubt about that. Edit : fixed grammar mistake

[@RetroSpector78]

It is fixed :) stay tuned for part 2.

[@rwdplz1]

I've taken apart a couple IBM 5154's and they had bad or near bad RIFA capacitors in the power supply. I also re-capped the 5150's main board and power supply to prevent exactly this kind of smoke show.

[@HuntersMoon78]

That slow memory count would be annoying as hell on today's PC's. It would take AGES to count up 32GB of RAM.

[@RetroSpector78]

haha .... yeah imagine that ... the original IBM PC didn't even had a memory count ... just a blinking cursor that kept blinking ... blinking .... blinking .... with 640kb ram it took ages.

[@ncot_tech]

Oh it was frustrating back then too. Even right up to Core2 CPUs there was a very noticeable delay just for the machine to power on, before doing *anything*. You'd click the power switch and the PC would just sort of sit there for a few seconds before anything at all happened. Then you had to wait for the CRT to warm up, the HDD to spin up, the BIOS to do its thing, the RAM count, grinding the floppy drive, showing you the things the BIOS had found. And then Windows would start booting. It could take a full 30 seconds just to see Windows beginning to boot.

[@nekomasteryoutube3232]

Imagine if you had 64GB of RAM like I do... or even worse, imagine having a server or workstation PC that can take up to 1TB of memory.

Tonto

[@Kalvinjj]

@@ncot_tech That classic floppy grind followed by the beep is iconic tho, probably the only cool thing about that whole boot sequence

[@mark12358]

Welcome back, see you soon again.

[@tony359]

The monitor seems to have lost its horizontal deflection signal. I have no idea what could cause that but for a 40y old board I would start looking at capacitors as usual :)

[@chriswareham]

Great to see a new video! That graphics card is very neat, with the choice of CGA or Hercules mode. I'll have to see if I can track a similar one down for my 5150.

[@jasmijndekkers]

Steven work much with the IBM 5150 and 5160 to configure them for customers. What a nice machines are they.

[@MrLurchsThings]

Having a *proper* air compressor is such a useful tool to have in this hobby. I use mine all the time.

[@spartanx5806]

glad your back! i been really wanting to see you fix these computers again!

[@TrustNo1sz]

Missed your videos a lot, but work is always good!

[@RetroSpector78]

Thx a lot !

[@ncot_tech]

I've never seen a CRT with image persistance that intense before. It's like it wants to get screen burn!

[@douro20]

Typical with the P1 green phosphor.

[@Kalvinjj]

Yeah, felt like an old LCD

[@tw11tube]

MDA refresh rate is 50Hz, non-interlaced. You *need* this persistence to get a flicker-free image. And it works! Working on an XT with an MDA card might make you tired because of the hard drive noise or power supply fan noise, but the monitor image is completely stable without noticeable flicker.

[@spwim]

Love the video! I once had a tantalum catch fire when it blew, it would continue to burn after I switched off the power supply, like a birthday candle haha. I want to see more IBM5160 videos 😜😂

[@---777---]

4:50 i love this "i'll do it again" moment

[@RetroSpector78]

yeah why not .... as long as the fans are spinning and there is life in the machine I don't mind doing that. I'm not the type of person who will go ahead and disassemble everything and look at each and every individual component in isolation before I start her up .... Time is limited and these things can take a hit ....

[@kasimirdenhertog3516]

@@RetroSpector78 I like this approach. Other retrotech ‘tubers spend hours recapping boards, killing the fun of discovery and adventure.

[@ThePCPitChannel]

Such a beautiful machine. Not many around in the UK unfortunately

[@someguy872]

BTW, at the beginning, the red label says "Europese school". Which means European school in dutch. so that makes me think it's an old school computer. Also, around 9:00. It shows a Dutch menu like a sort of calender. Names of staff working there at the time and if they were available

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah it came from a school in Holland. Probably used to each programming or something ... didn't find any games on it except the one I compiled myself :)

[@someguy872]

@@RetroSpector78 I once bought an old laptop. Came with old accounting software and the battery even worked for a couple hours :) (laptop came from '93 or something. Battery lasted atleast 1,5 hours playing Doom, etc).

[@TopVersnelling]

@@RetroSpector78 Tiny, maybe nitpicking, FYI but Holland isn't really what the country's called. There are two provinces called North Holland and South Holland. Now that is where the most important stuff happens, true, but it isn't the be-all end-all. If you also take into account the other provinces, it becomes The Netherlands.

[@andrewgwilliam4831]

@@TopVersnelling He's Dutch! 😁

[@TopVersnelling]

@@andrewgwilliam4831 Oh no. Oh noooo. My apologies then @RetroSpector78. The Holland/The Netherlands is a big pet peeve of mine...

[@rhfweb]

Good stuff that it's working! :) I would have personally probed the rails on that PSU before powering the board/components with it though.

[@nickwallette6201]

Yay! So glad you’re still at it! :-D

[@MichelHernaus]

Happy you are back

[@RetroSpector78]

Thx a lot

[@IDPhotoMan]

Amazing to find one with an old HD that actually works. Pretty cool. My dual-floppy 5160 also had the Smoke Of Death from one of the floppies first time i tried it lol

[@RetroSpector78]

yeah pretty common ... it's very time consuming to do a full recap of the machine before you start it up ... sometimes you just gotta take a leap of faith ... when these caps blow it seems very dramatic, but I've never had one taken down other components and do serious damage.

[@IDPhotoMan]

@@RetroSpector78 It's that smell that is amazingly strong, out of such a little cap.

[@NiPPonD3nZ0]

I got an IBM Aptiva 2176 and it too has those type of hex head screws! They must be imperial because a 4.5mm does not fit and a 5mm is slightly loose!

[@kasimirdenhertog3516]

Computer: smokes RS: ‘Well, at least there’s some beeps’

[@shamrice]

I'm excited to see the fix of the Tandon Floppy drive. I've had issues with mine as well (my two half height drives still work fine though). I ended up having to clean the heads, replace the belt and completely unstick the motor. After all of that, it went from not functioning at all to only being able to read floppies written on that drive. Trying a floppy from another PC fails. I'm guessing at this point the read/write head must be out of alignment.. From what I've seen online you need an oscilloscope to recalibrate them (which is currently beyond me).

[@wesley00042]

Nice system. That was originally a 64K-256K mobo that was upgraded to a 256K-640K with a replacement IC and some bodge wire.

[@RetroSpector78]

Indeed it was ... if I'm not mistaken correctly this was an IBM supported upgrade that they documented somewhere.

[@gremfive4246]

That floppy drive might be like the tandon one I got in one of my 5160s, the heads are out of alignment. It cant read any disk I try but if I put a blank formatted disk in it and write to the disk it will write to it and read back what was written but then that disk cant be read in any other drive. I havent felt like trying to realign the heads so I just replaced it with a pair of half height drives.

[@senilyDeluxe]

I had an IBM 5151 that had a dim, wobbly fuzzy picture. B+ was too low because current consumption was too high. Oscilloscope trace on the HOT indicated a bad LOPT, I couldn't get a new one, so I used it as a case for a Vectrex whose case was cracked, shattering the CRT in transit. So these two wrecked machines became the Wrectrex. (just enter Wrectrex in KZbin search to see the vectors on the long sustain green phosphor. It looks awesome but makes some games unplayable...) Btw. my offer to fix your videocard from hell is still valid ;-)

[@RetroSpector78]

hehe .. interesting concept ..... love the green phosphor look .... gonna take one more stab on the videocard and after that she's all yours :) feel free to drop a mail otherwise I'll forget (again).

[@SimonJ57]

That screen, especially the ghosting, reminds me of the ones from the N64 game "Space station, silicon valley".

[@mancavehobbies6213]

Yipppppeeeeeeeeee you're back hope you're safe.

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah all is well ... just super busy and lots of stuff going on here around the house ... and also took some vacation ... sometimes you just need a little break from everything :)

[@andreas9238]

That 5151 should most likely be repairable, as others mentioned, most likely the Horizontal drive or flyback-transformer.

[@grassulo]

Replace that tantalum capacitor and the coil (green resistor looking thing) and it will be fine if you clean and lubricate the drive, do it!! This is a common problem with these Tandon and also some Shugart 360k drives, and you can replace the tantalum with a small electrolytic capacitor and the coil too and it really will be OK! If you have to re-align the drive there's TONS of old school software to do that!

[@dfbess]

My first computer was an 8088.. this brings back memories..

[@RobTheSquire]

Tantalum capacitors aka Tanta-Kablam capacitors

[@elektron2kim666]

I wouldn't take those models home but there is some electronics aspects in these videos which I learn from.

[@aCivilServant]

Borland Turbo Pascal. Now that takes me back. :)

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

Strange but all those boards were integrated into two Custom Quad Pac integrated circuits on the AMSTRAD PC1512.

[@THEtechknight]

Hopefully we get to see what happened to the monitor and the potential of fixing it.

[@artursmihelsons415]

Spotted Z80 CPU on hard drive controller board.. Amazing! :)

[@chunye215]

The dip switches on the board can't do any harm when set incorrectly. They just tell the bios which card is the primary one in case you have MDA and CGA. You can then later switch in dos using the mode command. So when you set it to CGA and your card is MDA, the bios will beep because there is no CGA and the MDA will sit there showing a blinking cursor since that's its initial state and nobody ever puts anything into it's video memory. Poor thing.

[@RetroSpector78]

yeah got a bit scared at first because I thought I fried the monitor .... the videocard is one of those dual switching ones that can also do CGA, but it was outputting a valid signal for the 5151. Really need to get over my fear of CRTs and just do it ... need to find someone with the time, patience and knowledge who can take me in as an apprentice :)

[@johnhansen4794]

I once made an IBM XT boot onto Netware 4.11, only had to switch floppies once. hehehe

[@johnhansen4794]

ps: this looks just like my dad's that I cut my PC repair teeth on In 1988.

[@temporarilyoffline]

I'd love to get my hands on that Pascal Breakout code!

[@chriswareham]

Perhaps RetroSpector could post it to GitHub if it's public domain.

[@thelovertunisia]

It is amazing what you could do with 521 kb! By the way I saw a trick on another youtube channel where Nintendo adapted a Playstation 1 Game of 1...Gb to a 64 mb memory cartridge! I wonder if pc programmers could theorhetically make a browser that compresses data and swaps bits etc so as to allow old computers to access the internet with minimal loss of quality.

[@zachz96]

What is that Z80 doing on the hard drive controller?

[@Captain_Char]

that monitor likely could get recapped and the resistors changed, it looks like the horizontal circuit may have died giving the center blinking line you had

[@RetroSpector78]

When this corona thing goes away I am going to find someone to help me out with this. Got a couple of monitors I wouldn’t mind seeing fixed.

[@JVHShack]

@@RetroSpector78 Even with the pandemic going on, maybe you could email Adrian of Adrian's Digital Basement. I know he's here in the USA, but he might at least be a source of insight for you. Or if you got a wild idea like me, you could retrofit something into the case of the bad monitor(s). I retrofitted a Chromebook LCD into a luggable PC last year so I could have a portable Windows 98SE/DOS system without the restrictions of a normal laptop.

[@itsmesb4399]

Please try and fix the CRT!!!!!

[@BollingHolt]

Well, mine won't even beep, but at least it hasn't given me magic smoke LOL. I need to find someone to whom I can mail the motherboard to hire to repair it. I don't have the time or patience to deal with it right now, but I want it back up and running. It was my aunt's, and I used to play with it when I was a little kid. Last time it ran was 2003. I think it got mildewed while in storage :/

[@pentiummmx2294]

are you going to fix that monitor or is it just going to get recycled?

[@RetroSpector78]

I hope somebody will ... I'm not going to trash it or send it to the recycler. If not me and I'm sure somebody will take a crack at it.

[@mito-pb8qg]

Lovely!

[@sRetroReviews]

I have an IBM PC clone that has the flashing curser what did you set the dip switch’s to to make it work

[@chriswareham]

A clone may not have the same switch blocks, but the best place to start is www.minuszerodegrees.net/ - a comprehensive set of information on early PCs.

[@victorsegoviapalacios4710]

When the PC is almost as old as oneself!!!

[@beatadalhagen]

I can smell the smoke from here. :) Altogether too common occurrence.

[@Magnedyne]

You said that you were selling it how much do you want for it

[@RetroSpector78]

Not really sure yet ... I remember the first XT class machine I ever bought (end 2018, complete with monitor and keyboard) set me back around 150 EUR. And that wasn't even an IBM. So it would be around that price range. This one needs some work (I fixed the floppy drive, but some would suggest the motherboard could do with a recap, and the RIFAs in the PSU might also pop.... and the monitor is broken. But other than that the machine is working, and it is all IBM material.....

[@Magnedyne]

@@RetroSpector78 yeah I could do 150€

[@Magnedyne]

@@RetroSpector78 just tell me as soon as you're selling

[@VK2FVAX]

WB. Hope the home rennovations end soon :)

[@RetroSpector78]

The end is unfortunately not yet in sight .... different contractors and an architect that doesn't know how to plan ahead..... rocky times ahead.

[@VK2FVAX]

@@RetroSpector78 My heart goes out to you guys. Hope it all comes together quickly. Really do.

[@jaybrooks1098]

You know whats crazy. The 8088 was basically a cheap terminal chip that was repurposed as a desktop computer.

[@IkarusKommt]

It still blew the 8-bit junk like Z-80 out of the water.

[@Mountainmonths]

she's a beauty

[@Geomanb]

You've got it all: IBMs, repairs and magic smoke! Perhaps Dave from EEVBlog is interested in this footage, since he is always in search of the magic smoke.

[@bradsmith8977]

Hey if you wanted to change the hard drive to a sd card or cf card is there a way too or not?

[@chriswareham]

Check out XT-CF and XT-IDE cards. They're available from a number of vendors, and it's even possible to buy a bare circuit board and build your own.

[@dykodesigns]

I wonder what the school have used the computer for considering it has a programming language installed on it’s harddrive. Those darn graphics cards.... I got a problem of similar nature but it involves a more modern machine. I got a Gigabyte socket 370 motherboard with a cpu (presumably a pentium 3) from my uncle. It was once his fujitsu siemens PC circa. the year 2000 that he disassembled. He kept the motherboard as a piece of art in his room and he gave it to me. However, it doesn’t seem to accept any graphics card, always giving 8 beeps and the AGP cards that I have tried (that are known) good won’t display any picture with it. The board has an AMI bios and a universal AGP slot. Tried a diamond Viper 550 from my Pentium 2 system and another diamond card (stealth 3). Whatever I card I try, the board always produces this error code, it’s like it rejects any graphics card, even if they should be compatible. My dad already tried resetting the bios but to no effect. Would this motherboard be kaput? It has been sitting in his room for a few years so it was subjected to dust and such.

[@only257]

💣nice

I need buy one.

[@badvoiceallnoise]

hi !

[@proxy1035]

while i love retro youtube channels i don't understand how they can just power up old machines without first checking for basic things like shorted power rails, the voltages on the power supply, etc

[@RetroSpector78]

You should check some of my other videos. That’s what I typically do. In this case I took a chance. In case of a short the psu immediately stops and it typically doesn’t damage anything. In this case however there were no shorts and despite voltages being ok on the psu (something you also need to check under load) you never know when old bad tantalum caps are going to pop. You could check all of them and do ESR measurements (but for proper readings you need to pull em out of circuit). But sometimes I just like to turn them on and watch them explode for dramatic effect :)

[@rubenhofman]

Hey its dutch!

[@Stjaernljus]

That monitor probably just has a capacitor problem.

[@ronniezzzz]

i would deffo give power supply a good clean

[@1nsanejochem]

Haha, the thing is actually Dutch :-)

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah ... the advantage / disadvantage of living in Belgium I guess :)

[@doublehappiness9889]

1:36 'made in Greenock Scotland'

[@cyberp0et]

That is a retro smoke machie.

[@JessicaFEREM]

rip floppy

[@edwardlujan1325]

I want this ibm so bad

[@andrewdupuis1151]

you lucky it didn't catch on fire when turning on again. i wont turn it on again if that happen

[@andrewgwilliam4831]

Just bad caps blowing, I think.

[@deleohostemnl8429]

THE MENU IS DUTCH!!!! 😁🥰

[@IkarusKommt]

Lol, a Polaroid filter.

[@Rafael-fw1xk]

35+ years

[@Hlupa722]

Bad what this is no IBN 5100)

[@ezquimal]

Old ibm pc have basic Microsoft on rom

[@linmal2242]

HotRodding the IBM 5160 XT - VGA, ADLIB, XT-IDE/XT-CF, and Orchid Tiny Turbo 286 Upgrade! - kzbin.info/www/bejne/hIm5iH94hJ5ja9U

[@thetaleteller4692]

False Fun Facts: The data density on a 20MB Harddisk is low enough for reading it using a hand compass! ;-)

[@phreapersoonlijk]

You saw several faults, including popping and smoke *twice* and the faults with the monitor, and you *still* kept on insisting to not only turn it on several times, but keep it running for much too long after all those warning signs. Poor machine. :/

[@RetroSpector78]

Some of these caps just gotta go. The machine was running, fan was spinning hard drive was spinning. I have no issue keeping it running at that point. That capacitor was going to go anyway.

[@RetroSpector78]

Regarding the monitor ... I did show the footage to a couple of friends and there was consensus that the monitor was already one its way out. It didn't die because I turned it on but most likely because this is a 30+ years old monitor that hadn't been turned on in a very long time. It wasn't even on for 1 minute before it went dark. Unfortunately I'm not that good at fixing monitors but I'm sure that the next person who gets it will get it up and running again providing he/she is willing to invest some time/effort/money into it.

[@phreapersoonlijk]

@@RetroSpector78 Ok, but I myself would've been a bit more careful, and try to minimize possible extra damage.

[@Breakfast_of_Champions]

@@RetroSpector78 I wonder if these old components become shorted without their smoke filling.

[@pentiummmx2294]

@@phreapersoonlijk gotta be super careful when working on CRTs because you don't want to get electrocute yourself.

[@SoundGamer345]

2nd comment lol

[@nneeerrrd]

Your best life achievement huh? Loser