Well, diary… Here I list all the changes in my collection, new things I learned, and so on.
Updated the 8514/A page, adding links to programs I have meanwhile put on Download Central.
I finally took a closer look at the two 77s I bought five years ago in that bundle and set up a 77 page.
I installed Windows 1 (not sure about the exact version at the moment) on the 57 SLC3, where it runs quite well. I haven't found a way to take screenshots yet.
And I have given the page yet another makeover. The model pages are now restructured in the following way:
I also added a link to my main homepage to the navigation, and put the top navigation right on top of the page.
Gave 8514/A a seperate page. In addition to the info that was previously on the cards page, I have found a few more programs that supported this standard, even one game!
After nearly five years, I went through all the links again and removed the broken ones. The Antique Computer Virtual Museum is gone, so is Karol Chlasta's collection. Louis Ohland's site has a new address. The reference disk downloads have all been redirected to ps-2.kev009.com, an archive of old documentation and sites centric to IBM systems, the only link that I have added to the linklist.
Then there are some cosmetic changes. The outdated buttons at the bottom of each page are gone. I moved some text from the index page to the collection, and instead put up a paragraph that should explain why these pages are rarely updated any more. On the peripherals page, I made subheaders for the two monitor series, corrected the number of PS/2 keyboards I own, and fixed the stylesheet so that the mouse pictures won't harress the nav bar any longer. Links are now underlined and darker when visited, except in the navbar.
Otherwise, there's not much new. Since I started Download Central, I have occasionally booted up the 57 SLC3 again, to take a screenshot of a 16-bit Windows game that won't run in DOSBox. I tried to boot the 55 SX to run Guy Quedens' 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe, a 1986 Windows game that won't run on 3.0 any more, but I got 161/163 errors at startup. That's not really bad, it just means that the battery is dead or at least low. But on a PS/2, you can't just go into the BIOS. You have to fish out the reference disk again.
I got an interesting email about the disks in the 30-286 manual (one of them is missing in my copy, and I thought it might have been PC-DOS) from Dirk Broer:
Dos 3.3 came seperate, in another manual like plastic case (94x9573), containing both 3.5" (80x0939) and 5.25" (80x0735 and 80x0929) floppies, the user guide (80x0933), the quick reference card (80x0683) and the (abridged) reference (94x9575).
Though the two diskettes are missing from my model 30-286 manual as well, they do appear in my model 80 and 95 manuals. The other diskette is most probably "Exploring the IBM PS/2 Model 30-286" or "IBM Personal System/2 learning about your system", but it might also be a diagniostics disk. As my manual can hold up to four diskettes a combination of the above mentioned is also possible.
An overdue update. Probably due to the sale of the personal computer division, the vintage helpware pages on IBM Canada are gone. The reference disks can still be downloaded from the IBM FTP server.
I have added a list of my PS/2 collection, simplifying the navigation a bit. Instead of linking to all the models from all the pages, they are linked from the collection page.
In December, I bought a collection of ten PS/2s on eBay. Not ten different models unfortunately, only four, but I had none of them previously: five 76i with OS/2, two 77 486DX2, two 85, and one 95. For now they are listed on the collection page, but do not have seperate pages yet.
Louis Ohland sent me an email that he had updated one of the mirrors of his site, the Ardent Tool of Capitalism. Of course I checked all the links now. I had to remove one computer museum, and I noticed that ChipChat do not mention their MCA soundcards on their homepage any more. A google search however turned up some seperate pages, so they might still be available.
I bought a couple of small computer desks and am in the course of reorganizing my computer collection, most of which just sat in piles along the wall up to now. One of the computers thus reactivated is the 57SLC3, which is currently the only one that I have running Windows 3.1. I corrected some factual errors on its page, and finally brought all the PS/2 pages to W3C standard.
A while ago IBM changed the name of the FTP server where you can download the reference disks, and I removed the links since they were broken. Now I've added the updated links to all the model pages again.
Found an instruction how to modify PS/2 keyboards to work with some newer Pentium 4 motherboards. The link is on the peripherals page.
Yesterday the IBM Convertible 5140 arrived. I didn't do a lot with it yet, just booted it up (it is in perfect working condition) and cleaned it a bit. Then I went through all the links here on the PS/2 site and found I had to remove all the reference disks — I hope IBM just moved them elsewhere and didn't take them down completely.
I bought an IBM Convertible 5140 on eBay yesterday. While it isn't part of the PS/2 series, it came out nearly exactly one year earlier, it can be considered a fore-runner. It was the first IBM computer with 3.5" floppies, and these drives look just like those used in the slim tower PS/2 models. I won't make a page about it until the package arrives, but you can take a look at the model here: Yet another computer museum
This isn't really related to the PS/2 series, still i feel it belongs here… Along with the Performa 6400 I recently added to my Macintosh collection, I got a stack of disks, most of them of course Macintosh disks, but not all. Among the latter is MS-DOS 3.3, on a single 3.5" floppy, for the Sharp PC-4600, an ancient notebook from 1987 that won't boot on anything else.
The notebook it belonged to is long gone, and it's kinda useless for me, but interesting, since I've never seen any DOS 3.x on a 3.5" floppy, they usually come on two 5.25"s. And it finally gave me a hint what the other disk in the 30-286 manual was.
I have meanwhile played quite a lot of games on my 50, so I put a list of them all on that page. They are ordered chronologically, with links to all the appropriate pages in the games section of this site. It is quite an interesting accumulation, ranging from 1984 to 1993.
It's been the better part of a year since the last entry. My PS/2 collection hasn't grown, but I own three PS/1 computers now and might get a fourth soon. Maybe I'll put up a similar page about that series, too, even if it isn't quite as interesting as the PS/2. Today, I just wanted to let you know that I'm still alive and kicking and haven't lost interest. I've added a page with all the Adapter Cards I own.
Today, I received the manual for the 30-286 I found on eBay. It is quite an impressive thing. A book-sized plastic case containing the manual proper, a likewise ring-bound keyboard layout booklet, some additional brochures and, originally, two diskettes. These are missing from my copy. One, of course, was the reference disk. I wonder what the other was. [Probably the PC-DOS 3.3 disk, as it dawned on me on 2004-03-16.]
Ah well… Not that I had been actually looking for it. But it's always hard for me to pass by a PS/2. I was almost prepared to do it this time, seeing that it had no cards of interest installed (after a time you realize it's easy to find the computers, but the cards are rare). They wanted 20. I offered five. They accepted, and I was owner of a perfectly functional 9557 486SLC3. Some people are awfully eager to get rid of their old computers.
I bought another monitor yesterday, a 14" 8512, for €5 at a local charity shop. It was a bit dirty, but fully functional. Not much else is new. Some time ago, I added a second floppy drive to the 50, about the only thing that can be added to this machine. I assembled a nearly working 70 out of those three I dug out of a trash container last August, but as yet it is not content with whatever RAM I give it.
I visited the fleamarket once again last Saturday and added a peripheral to my PS/2 collection, a 12" monitor (8513). This might hardly be worth mentioning except as an example how sturdy these things are: It was raining on that day. Actually I had little hope the monitor would really be working, but I bought it anyway. I turned it upside down for 24 hours to let it dry thoroughly, and voilá…it works.
A few days earlier, I had finally bought two of those batteries used in most of the PS/2 models. Each of them cost more than I usually pay for such a computer. And it did not help me with my 80, something else must be wrong.
I bought another 80 on the fleamarket today. Actually, this was quite a bit of fun in itself. Imagine the following dialog (my part in italics):
How much for this computer?
Sixty.
Ah-hrmmph.
How much did you want to pay?
Well, ten or fifteen maybe.
O.K., fifteen.
O.K. — oh, wait I have only ten left. I'll Have to get some money. I'll be back.
Oh, take it for ten!
I love the fleamarket. I love buying old computers.
Getting it home was the hard part. I had left my cell phone at home and could not call a taxi. I had to lug it to the bus. From the bus to the house. Up the stairs to my apartment…oh well.
I mean, this thing is heavy. Really heavy. Inanely and insanely heavy. And having two more bags with, among other things, a finally complete version of OS/2 3 Warp and a 500+ page book on the 386 does not necessarily make it easier.
But well, here it is. The battery is weak but otherwise it seems intact. The one I dug out of the dustbin two weeks ago was not in a salvable condition, but will be a good source for spare parts.
Ah, and I found out that these case locks are not real locks, the keys are all the same. So I'll have the 30-286 up and running soon.
On closer look, the 30-286 seems to be in perfect working order; however, it is caselocked, so it does not get beyond checking its 1 Meg of RAM. I have no experience with caselocks. If they actually have individual keys, it's bad. Well, I have a spare 55 that does not work and has exactly the same case. Swapping might be an option.
Why did this one get to keep its RAM? The 30 is one of the few PS/2 computers that still uses the old 30 pin SIMMs. Guess the previous owners checked that these would be of little use for them.
I found no less than five PS/2 machines in a dust bin: Three 70s, a 30-286, and an 80. One of the 70s had been upgraded to a 486. I do not know how many working parts I will find in them, seeing as some have been soiled in the most literal of senses, having some moist earth on top of them.
Before being dumped, they were ransacked for anything useful: Floppy drives, adapter cards, RAM. Everything except the RAM was then thrown away too, since it wouldn't fit in other computers -- I found some 8514/A video cards and even one of those rare cards for additional RAM.
I might even be able to create one working 70 out of the three. Check back for updates.