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Ibm 5170

D

David_M

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 1, 2016
Messages
647
Location
Melbourne, Australia
I picked up a 5170 today and took a quick look at it tonight.

The case has some surface rust.
The motherboard (Type 1) is dead (FF on the post card)
The power supply is dead.
The Maxtor XT-1085 hard drive spun up once but wont spin up again.
The AST Rampage 286 is fully populated but untested.
The floppy drive is full of spider webs and dust.
The archive 5945c is also full of spider webs but it has no controller card.

I also picked up another Type 1 motherboard, it is missing one RAM chip from the first bank, the second bank is unpopulated.
The 2nd motherboard apparently used to work but had random crashes, its current status is unknown.

Is it worth the effort and cost to repair or should I just part it out?
 
Depending on how far the corrosion has got at the innards ie: Mobo etc, I'd certainly look at getting it working, The rusty case i wouldn't waste my time or money on, Unless you wanted to keep it to use, It's not going to be worth a great deal, You'll probably make more parting it out depending on if all the parts work.
 
There is no corrosion, just light surface rust on the case cover.

I checked the other motherboard, it has no post activity either.
So it looks like the only thing that might work is the AST memory card. The power supply I can fix easily enough, it is probably worth fixing.

Update: The power supply is fixed. Two of the 10W resistors had never had one lead soldered, the they were wrapped on the top of the metal support post and due to heat changes over time the wrap had expanded to the point they no longer contacted the post. Cleaned them up and soldered them like they were meant to have been. One of the X2 RFI suppression caps had a large crack that was opening up but not quite leaking yet, so I replaced all three X2 caps to avoid trouble in the future.
Now to find the motivation to take a closer look at the two motherboards.
 
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I managed to get the 2nd motherboard up, one of the ROM's and one RAM chip were dead. The dead RAM preventing it firing up even with a good set of ROMS fitted.
I swiped some RAM from the board in the case and its ROM's, the two RAMS were good but both ROMS were bad.
It currently reports a keyboard error so I'll have to look into that.

I'll pull the other board from the case, give it a good clean and then try it with known good ROM's

At least I'm making some progress.
 
I'd love to see the progress pictures on this, as I am sure, would most of the people on this forum.
 
lutiana said:
I'd love to see the progress pictures on this, as I am sure, would most of the people on this forum.
Click to expand...

Once I start to reassemble the machine I'll post some pictures. So far there are no dramatic exploded components or anything fun.

Another update..
The extra motherboards keyboard issue is solved. Two ferrite beads FB1 and FB2 were missing (broken off), so I put a couple of wire jumpers were they were meant to be and the board works 100%.
Having gotten the spare board working I pulled the other one out of the case to work on and found the problems pretty quickly. One of its RAM's was faulty and the CPU was dead. That is annoying because the CPU was IBM branded and not a generic Intel like the other board. A quick ebay search found an IBM branded CPU... but at $300 I'll pass on it and settle for a $25 Intel branded chip.

The problems so far ... 1 dead CPU, 1 missing RAM, 2 dead RAMs, 3 dead ROMs, 2 missing ferrite beads, 1 cracked X2 cap and a major dry joint.

If anyone has 3 spare piggyback RAM chips to suit a 5170 type 1 board, l=please let me know.

Update: I found a suitable CPU on a board I bought cheap on ebay a couple of years ago. It came fitted with an 80287 for less than the cost of the coprocessor alone. The board is labelled NEC-16t but it has a non standard power connector. It surrendered its 80286-10
 
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I’ve got some NOS Samsung piggy back. I bought enough to replace all of the first bank but it turns out I only had one bad chip, so that’s all I used. Send me a PM of where to send it and I’ll send some your way.
 
I was able to clean away some of the case surface rust on mine with a product that cleans tires called iron free. My case was too bad off though to just leave it at that. I had to paint it, but it turned out great. I also used some acrylic on the marks on the front bezel and that also turned out well. I've been meaning to post some pics, but I'll post it in my 5170 thread. Hope you get it working!
 
What’s the paint color you used for the front bezel? I’ve got a couple of very light scuffs that I wouldn’t mind touching up someday.
 
My wife had some Delta acrylic paint that calls itself Ceramcoat. I started with the Sand Dune, but it was a little dark so I mixed in just a dab of "oyster white" to lighten it a bit. Once I did that it was perfect. You can test it on the underside to see how well it matches.
 
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