Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!dino!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!rpi!sigma From: sigma@pawl.rpi.edu (Kevin J Martin) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Dumpster diving pays off (sorta) Message-ID: Date: 22 Feb 90 20:06:41 GMT References: <19768@nuchat.UUCP> <6550@cps3xx.UUCP> Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY Lines: 50 In article <6550@cps3xx.UUCP> draper@cpsin1.UUCP (Patrick J Draper) writes: >In article <19768@nuchat.UUCP> seven@nuchat.UUCP (David Paulsen) writes: >>Attention computer archeologists: HELP! >>I recently rescued an ancient IBM-PC from the dumpster.. and it works! >> >I don't believe you can do too much in the way of a hard disk, at least >not a full or half height drive. There may be a possibility that you can >upgrade the bios. I'm not familiar with hard cards, but my impression is >that they need to be supported by the bios the same as regular hard >disks. > >According to The Winn Rosch Hardware Bibleunderline> (how do you underline anyway?) the original IBM PC introduced >in 1981 cannot handle advanced video adaptors (presumeably EGA) or hard >disks. > >Patrick Draper ---- Michigan State University Hey, don't be so negative!!! I'm using an original PC to write this. It has a 1982 BIOS from IBM (the only thing that had to be upgraded), two hard drives totalling 97 Meg (one at 28 ms), a SuperVGA card, a 9600 baud datalink, an optical mouse, a 24-pin printer, two high-density floppy drives, and a 386SX accelerator card! All of these items worked first try - none required any workarounds for the fact that this is a PC-2 (256K motherboard), and it probably wouldn't have mattered too much if it were a PC-1; I think the accelerator card has a workaround for that. The only big problem is that I can only get 640K (at least, I haven't investigated expanding it), and it has to be cached for the accelerator, but that works fine. I've had no problems with video or harddrive access. Typing d f000:fff5 in debug gives me the BIOS date: 10/27/82. You should still be able to order this chip (or any of a number of clones of it) from a dealer, or through mail-order. That is, if you don't already have it - it's required, I think, to have 640K in the machine, so if you have that much already, you're OK. You *will* need to upgrade the power supply, in case I forgot to mention that. 150W is a good size, although 125 or more is plenty. Sorry I've taken up so much space here, but I wouldn't want to see his PC go back into the dumpster. Most undignified. Kevin Martin sigma@pawl.rpi.edu -- Irving Arlevine Falls Twenty-Two thousand feet out of 747 ... and survives.