IBM 5170 PC/AT advice wanted.

[RWallmow]

I was just given a PC/AT (among other things) by a coworker who is moving and downsizing, sometime in its past life it was upgraded with a generic 386 DX40 board, and I am torn on what I should do with it, wanting some advice if I should keep the generic 386 board in there, or if I should try to hunt down a proper IBM AT board and make this thing correct.

Part of me wants to keep it as it is, since I don't have many 386 boxen (just one in fact, and it's a laptop. I have several other 286's, so not lacking there), but part of me wants it to be a proper "true blue" IBM PC/AT, lol

 

[Stone]

Are there any other 'proper' IBM AT parts in it? Or is it just a case that was used to build a completely different machine? The AT had an IBM serial/parallel card, and an MFM 20MB or 30MB drive and a CGA or EGA card as well.

 

[RWallmow]

Are there any other 'proper' IBM AT parts in it? Or is it just a case that was used to build a completely different machine? The AT had an IBM serial/parallel card, and an MFM 20MB or 30MB drive and a CGA or EGA card as well.

Case, PSU, and 5.25" floppy all seem to be original, I did not look close at the Serial/Parallel board to see if it was IBM, but it was a full length card, so it's probably the right vintage that it could be. Beyond that its got a VGA card, and an unknown IDE card (didn't look close), with a 290MB Seagate drive, so that's not IBM original either. That said, I do have an IBM CGA card lying around I could use, and I would probably keep the IDE card and replace the Seagate drive with a CF card or DOM for solid state storage (I like the idea of being 100% original, but we all know old hard drives are quite failure prone these days, so that's one area I will usually "upgrade").

 

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it would be worth having the original motherboard. I recommend the Type III motherboard since it runs slightly faster (8 vs 6MHz) and uses standard DIP memories instead of the piggyback chips.

 

[Chuck(G)]

When the 386 machines came out, it was a revolution for me. The 80286 system of segmentation in protected mode was just plain awkward and probably kept the world stuck in the PC/DOS world for entirely too long. So, although I have an 80286 machine, it hasn't been used for many years--there's just no reason to do it.

I'd argue for leaving the thing as a 386 system.

 

[curtis]

Why not keep the 386 for now, but as you go along and you find parts to restore it to original pick them up.

Then if you decide to part with it, you can take it back to original and sell it that way. Keep your 386 and drop it into a generic box.

Problem solved!

 

[RWallmow]

When the 386 machines came out, it was a revolution for me. The 80286 system of segmentation in protected mode was just plain awkward and probably kept the world stuck in the PC/DOS world for entirely too long. So, although I have an 80286 machine, it hasn't been used for many years--there's just no reason to do it.

I'd argue for leaving the thing as a 386 system.

I have a bit of a soft spot for 386's too, my first computer may have been an Apple II, but my first "PC" was a generic 386-33 beige box, It was a very capable machine, ran it up to Windows 95, then I started upgrading it like crazy, first a 486-66 board, and later a K6-266 board which I ran up till like Windows 2000 era, got a lot of miles out of that beige box, lol

I think though, right now I am leaning towards restoring this back to IBM board and mostly "stock AT". I will find a generic beige box to put this 386 in ;-)