Let's teardown some vintage IBM computers!

Brings back memories of a PS/1 Consultant unit my uncle gave me back in the early 90's. It had a DX-33 and 8MB RAM, which I bumped up to a DX/2-66 and 24MB. Pretty dang good box.

I found some cables that convert the IBM floppy connector to a standard one (ordered two for the two PS/2 Model 30s that I have, though they are newer 286 versions with CPU upgrades to a 386 and 486!)

My first PC was a PS/1 with a 486SX/25 and 4MB memory. I used it until 1998, unfortunately, but I remember it fondly.

Xtide in one of those isa slots will sort out your hard drive whoas. I hope that floppy works cause they are expensive to replace. The caps are a common problem for those floppies. For the model 30.

Hey MikeTech and all, I just want to state for the record, even though everybody knows it. DOOM villains always die real good!

i really like your content, very chill reminds me of my childhood .... keep it up!

Man we used to have these kinds of computers at work in the '90s, I wonder whatever became of them! Wish I had a couple!

"the monitor is monitoring...." - best quote of the year 😅

It's so enjoyable watching people take the time to bring old devices back to life, and not just casting out. Also a quick complement, nice guns there buddy, you must work out.😊

I saw some Rifa caps in that PS2 PSU. I tend to replace them as I see them. Even if they are working now, it does not mean they won't take out the rest of the computer in a month. Even if they physically look alright, it is amazing what decades of rot can do to the things.

Styling wise I really liked the IBMs of the 1980s. Built to look clean and professional in an office environment, they were an expensive product that I very much wanted to buy, but never could justify. Fun fact: IBM never thought of making much of a profit on their PCs when they first launched them in 1981. They instead thought of these machines as a way to get small to medium sized businesses into the IBM ecosystem, then when something more was needed, they could integrate these computers with their mainframe. ,

Hey Cutie! I absolutely loved this video as it took me way back. The quality of your camera shots are amazing along with how pristine you make these systems! Brings me back to installing my 28.8 USR modem on my AST Adventure 6066D. Keep it up!

floppy drive on a stick, lol, love it! great channel & content :)

"My brain IBM!"

Got Mr. Roboto stuck in my head today! :)

whats the point in cutting the cables

My first work PC was a PS/2 Model 30 286, this brings back some memories!

Mike, it's great to see the lowly PS/1 getting some love, people like to dump on them but they are not bad systems, it filled a niche, a PC that could go along with the Performa series Macs that Sears sold(which also get a lot of hate).
That PS/2 Model 30 came in three different variants, the 8086 you have,m a Model 30/286 with a 12 MHz 286, and a Model 30 386 with a 16 MHz 386-SX 16 MHZ. One note about PS/2 Floppy drives and the 30/50 series 3.5" hard drives, there is a pair of capacitors (if I remember they are 22 Microfarad) they will go bad and cause the drive to act erratically or not function at all, and if they get bad enough they will leak and eat the PCB. They are a good candidate to replace using Aluminum Organic Polymer capacitors, which use a solid electrolyte so there is nothing to leak.
IBM used PS/2 machines as the Service Element or SE console machines on late 977x series and ES/9000 series mainframes, the early ones ran the SE program on bare metal and the later ones ran a captive version of OS/2.

model 30! i had one of these a long time ago. i scrapped it in 2006 when i moved out of my parents' and really wish i didn't now.

Every time I see a PS/2 like this it makes me so glad my model 35 has IDE onboard. Unlimited supply of drives. Sometime I should try an IDE to SATA adapter and use an SSD. It's 486SLC2 with XGA does OK running Doom1 on low graphics

Had a PS1, PS2 and Amstrad 1640, all good machines in their day

Makes me think back when I started with computers your videos are great

Love the lock picking lawyer reference

Love the channeling of LPL

the ibm ps2 use ESDI hard drive. i have a ps2 it a mine is a model 30. but it has different cable for floppy drive one you can find anywhere

Please don't turn machines into parts machines.

What is the tape that you used on the fan.

8086?! I thought PS/2 had 80386 at least! Boy am I wrong. 😮

Reminds me of my childhood. Had a 386 SX with 16MHz back then. To play Doom, i had to shrink the window to almost minimum size to have a playable experience.

Best vintage computer content out there! Love the comedy, narration and editing 🎉

Great you got them working, to a certain level.
I once had an IBM PS/2 Model 55SX around 2001-2002 while living in NC and before returning to Upstate NY in 2003. I actually scrounged many to sell while working at my employer's business, so I knew which one to get while still working for him. A shame I no longer have one... yet.

I have spent the day binging your videos while modding a keyboard. Your level of detailed knowledge makes your adventures through these old systems really exciting. It is making me want to buy an unreasonable amount of machines to go through. For me, a really interesting part of the process is the possibility of preserving old digital art of all kinds that may exist on hard drives and disks. You ever get into that kind of stuff?

I wonder if you knew, but you can affect the floppy disk sounds quite drastically in Linux by changing the head step rate. I tried to find similar utility for DOS/Windows, but never did that. The head step rate is the rate at which the FDC (floppy drive controller) moves the floppy drive head to each consequent track when seeking. The floppy disks have a somewhat dummy system in that, so they just are getting basically control signals to advance the head, and the controller cannot even know if the operation succeeded or not. So to get an optimal value, you just have to try out. The default settings are usually very conservative, and thus the step motor has time to stop and wait for the command to move to the next track. The faster the step motor, the more there is time to wait - and usually, the noisier the floppy drive gets. I was completely unaware of such a setting until trying out installing OS/2 2.1, which during the installation made a very crunchy sounding floppy drive whisper quiet. I didn't know how I did until I found an utility in Linux (I think it was floppycontrol, but I'm not sure) that had this step rate configuration option - and sure enough, I was able to replicate what OS/2 did.

Just got my first PS/2 Model 57...I switched it on and....nothing... :(

Loved the LPL shoutout with the plastic tabs

You might need to set a jumper on the sound card to enable CD-ROM interfaces. Alternately, you might need to load a driver to enable CD-ROM interfaces (yes, separate from the CD-ROM device driver).

When you are looking for cd-rom drivers for dos, only one floppy disk can end your search: CD-ROM GOD. I use version 5.5. I don’t know if there’s a later version. There are no other set of cd-rom drivers that work better than this PERIOD.

So, you're not at all concerned about those Rifa power filter caps? I'm honestly surprised they didn't let out the magic smoke when you first powered it up.

Pretty sure I had a 386 PS/2 system back in the mid 90s. It had a b&w monitor with it. Ahh the memories.

As ever, we come for the gun show and we stay for the computers.

LOVE YOU MIKE! 🥰

That's paradise right here!

can you not run memmaker?

We had a 50z back in the day. Was our first PC after having a C64. It was stock 1MB RAM, 60MB HDD but we got a CPU upgrade board which plugged onto the 286 socket and upgraded it to a 386, the board was called 'hyper' something or other. Then our final upgrade was an IBM produced 486SLC2 50Mhz full drop in replacement motherboard for the 50z. Then the PS/2 was no longer meeting our needs because of the multimedia revolution taking place in the 90s as it was a pain to find multimedia solutions for and 50z had no space for an internal CD ROM so our next PC was an IBM PS/Valuepoint mini tower with a 486DX and soundblaster with CD ROM, eventually upgraded CPU to a Pentium overdrive, loved that machine, wish I still had it. I am also a big fan of the ThinkPad line and still have my Dads first laptop a 755CD in its original box. Sadly what makes the PS/2 bad for collectors these days is the proprietary parts, such a shame as they were great machines in the day.

The separate 3 pin connector from the power supply is for soft starting. If you notice that the power supply in that system doesn't have a large chonky AC power switch, it has a more normal DC power switch, like used in later ATX computers.

IBM and a few other manufacturers used that three pin header for soft start functionality. One wire is ground, one wire is +5vsb and the last is PS_ON. I believe the red wire is +5vsb, while the purple is PS_ON, but I'm not 100% sure. I've worked on three such machines with this soft start feature, but it has been awhile since I have. You can easily check which wire is which by looking inside the PSU, the wires are usually labeled on the PCB.

You can adapt an ATX power supply to take the place of one of these soft start units, if the original power supply has failed and isn't repairable for whatever reason. Or if you need more power than the original power supply can deliver. I had to do this in a customers' FM Towns PC that they had decked out, the original 200W PSU was too weak to power all of the extra boards and faster CPU and kept cutting out.