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SELLING: NEC Powermate SX Plus (PM-80-1150 LX) in GTA Only

F

fmis

Member
Joined
Jan 21, 2011
Messages
33
Hello,

I recently acquired an NEC Powermate SX Plus (model number PM-80-1150, base model LX) with all the bells and whistles (VGA daughterboard, math co-processor) from a recently retired lab machine (for high-performance liquid chromatography, in case you were interested). I am still looking for the original manuals. I will likely sell if anyone is interested AND you live in Toronto or the Greater Toronto Area and would be willing to pick it up yourself (downtown area). Before I sell, however, I would perhaps like to add in a 3.5" floppy drive, an IDE controller and Ethernet (perhaps a little ambitious?). Any helpful tips or advice is most appreciated, and as I am unsure what it may be worth, quotes are also welcome.

Further details (to the best of my memory; I forgot to write it down):

RAM: 2MB, expandable to 10MB(?)
HDD: original 42MB NEC D3142 MFM HD
Comes with original 12" color VGA monitor, PS/2 mouse and keyboard
As it was a lab machine, used recently (6-8 mos.) only until a new machine was brought in, it is in excellent working order and condition. I've turned it on, had a poke around the hard drive and nothing seems to be out of place.

Best,

F
 
Just wanted to note that after much tinkering, I got a 3.5" 1.44MB floppy to work! Out of sheer joy, I'll post the process below.

These NEC computers have bizarre BIOS-es that can only be edited by use of a system diskette, and luckily NEC still hosts them ftp://ftp.necam.com/pub/desktop/PowerMate/Old.PowerMate/Other.PowerMate/Utilities/. As you can guess, utilities for other systems of the Powermate series are also on there. However, the only floppy drive installed was a 5.25" 1.2MB drive (for which I have no media!) - so I swapped it with the 3.5" one and formatted a 1.2MB diskette (Windows XP wouldn't do it itself and the NEC wouldn't accept a 1.44MB formatted floppy). The rest is self-evident. Figuring out I needed such a diskette was the most difficult part, as the web was not the most elucidating on the matter; hopefully this will help anyone else starting out with an NEC system.

Additionally, I'd like to note that the hard drive has no bad sectors marked (the lab paid top-dollar for this machine!) although I haven't run chkdsk to confirm this is still the case.

However, I have been unable to get an IDE hard drive to work (not that it's important, though). I can get a secondary MFM drive (a trusty ST-251) on the controller card to work fine (it's a jumperless WD1003WAH iirc), but configuring the BIOS for an IDE drive doesn't work. I've disabled everything on the IDE controller (which is a Goldstar MKIII Plus) except the secondary IDE. Does the order of cards in the system matter? Should I try the primary IDE channel despite my presumption that it will conflict with the MFM controller? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

F

PS - it's a 15" monitor, not 12". My memory clearly makes things shrink. :p
 
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