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Acquired a PS/2 Model 60 with Reply Corp PowerBoard planar replacement; need PS/2 FDD

aperezbios

aperezbios

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Santa Rosa, California
I recently acquired an interesting beast, a PS/2 model 60 with a Reply Corporation-manufactured, Socket 3 MCA Planar motherboard replacement, the PowerBoard 60. It came with no floppy drive, RAM, or CPU, but it came to life once the requisite components were installed. I found a replacement 6 volt '223' Energizer CMOS battery replacement at my local electronics store, installed it,

After enumerating the RAM, I get the following message: "Invalid configuration. Please run the setup program". I am assuming this only lives on a floppy disk, as none of the common non-PS/2 key combinations get me into anything resembling a BIOS. I'm aware of PS/2 style "POS/Programmable Option Select", but have no personal experience with it.

I'm now looking for one of two things...either a genuine (working or not) PS/2 1.44MB FDD unit, or some documentation on how to wire up a replacement from the 40-pin IBM-proprietary IDC floppy+power connector, to a standard legacy IDC PC floppy connector.

Photos at https://goo.gl/photos/XYMGDPU5CgTmyhck9

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/R/REPLY-CORPORATION-486-POWERBOARD-MODEL-60-65-80.html
 
Interesting little box.

The 60/ 65/ 80 all use the same PowerBoard. Also, Neointeractive bought all the remaining stock from Reply and sold them. That is why we go from Reply Corporation to Neointeractive...

http://ps-2.kev009.com/ohlandl/Reply/Reply_Files.html

http://web.archive.org/web/19990203225651/http://www.neointeractive.com/bios.htm

PowerBoard 50, 55, 60, 65, 70 & 80 117-PB.EXE
http://ps-2.kev009.com/ohlandl/Reply/117-PB.exe

REF367.EXE -- Ref Disk for all PS/2 Reply Motherboard Upgrades v3.67
http://ps-2.kev009.com/ohlandl/Reply/ref367.exe

http://web.archive.org/web/19990218174144/http://www.neointeractive.com/userdig.htm
PowerProBoard All 1.08 DG108144.EXE (1.44MB Image)

Reply said: User Diags Pentathlon Boards v1.08 while Neointeractive says PowerProBoard...

A bit of caution, the Reply files were snagged with the Internet Archive, some need to be rebuilt under ZIP or RAR, but so far, all I have rebuilt have been apparently successful.

http://ps-2.kev009.com/ohlandl/Reply/8580_Reply_power.html

I had a 80 PowerBoard for a bit before I decided to focus on 95s. Interesting.

Floppy
Controller supports 1.44 and 2.88MB floppy drives. Presently running a 2.88MB floppy from a 95.

You don't show a floppy cable, is there one in there? I assume from this snippet from probably ten years ago that a 95 floppy would work, fits on a 60 floppy sled, and that it takes a 34 pin header.

If you would be so kind to drop by comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware, you will find a few die-hard microchannel users. Many of which have piles of unused parts...
 
Last edited:
I have one floppy drive 2'88MB model mp-f40w-03. It hasn't power connector, just a 34pin connector for the data cable. Is it what you need?

Imagen0.jpgImagen1.jpg
 
Looks good, it is a non-star (no "*" on top of blue button). The other thing is a Model 60 65 or 80 floppy sled.

The original floppy bezel is for the big button floppy, but it will work fine.
 
ardent-blue said:
Interesting little box.

The 60/ 65/ 80 all use the same PowerBoard. Also, Neointeractive bought all the remaining stock from Reply and sold them. That is why we go from Reply Corporation to Neointeractive...
Click to expand...

That's good to know.

ardent-blue said:
Floppy
Controller supports 1.44 and 2.88MB floppy drives. Presently running a 2.88MB floppy from a 95.

You don't show a floppy cable, is there one in there? I assume from this snippet from probably ten years ago that a 95 floppy would work, fits on a 60 floppy sled, and that it takes a 34 pin header.
Click to expand...

There is a 40-pin IDC connector on a header on the motherboard, which goes to two 40-pin card-edge connectors. I managed to source a 15F7570 (Sony MFD-77W) 1.44MB floppy drive, but I have not been successful booting with it. Should this drive work?
 
aperezbios said:
I recently acquired an interesting beast, a PS/2 model 60 with a Reply Corporation-manufactured, Socket 3 MCA Planar motherboard replacement, the PowerBoard 60. It came with no floppy drive, RAM, or CPU, but it came to life once the requisite components were installed. I found a replacement 6 volt '223' Energizer CMOS battery replacement at my local electronics store, installed it,

After enumerating the RAM, I get the following message: "Invalid configuration. Please run the setup program". I am assuming this only lives on a floppy disk, as none of the common non-PS/2 key combinations get me into anything resembling a BIOS. I'm aware of PS/2 style "POS/Programmable Option Select", but have no personal experience with it.

I'm now looking for one of two things...either a genuine (working or not) PS/2 1.44MB FDD unit, or some documentation on how to wire up a replacement from the 40-pin IBM-proprietary IDC floppy+power connector, to a standard legacy IDC PC floppy connector.

Photos at https://goo.gl/photos/XYMGDPU5CgTmyhck9

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/R/REPLY-CORPORATION-486-POWERBOARD-MODEL-60-65-80.html
Click to expand...

NOTE: All IBM PS/2 floppy drives are supposed to be jumpered as DS1 NOT DS0 (Drive 1 NOT 0). This permits simple swapping into any position on the IBM standard cables. Also, if the configuration is invalid (CMOS battery backup lost, too low voltage etc.) it can take a VERY long time to determine the installed drive and media combination. I used to use a stripped-down 720KB (DSDD) Model 80 Reference Diskette to speed this process.

HTTH,
WBST
 
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