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I have an old IBM 5160 XT, it has a 5 1/4 drive, I was wondering how I would go about installing DOS and actually booting it (As of right now when I turn it on it boots to IBM Basic.)
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Hi,
Co> I have an old IBM 5160 XT... ...when I turn
C0> it on it boots to IBM Basic...
PS> You will need 360K MS-DOS Disks...I can see why you want DOS instead of Basic (which
dates back to days when 64 Kb was huge) but i like
3.5" 720 Kb drives/diskettes better; i still could
hope to get some related HardWare for my XT clones
a couple years ago, actually. Since you'll need a
Hard-Disk to install DOS, your next step may be to
bring the upgrade to completion: one 5.25" 360 Kb
drive and one 3.5" 720 Kb drive side-by-side or on
top of each other, it's your call. You might even
want to find it an 8-Bits compatible NIC, i keep a
pair of StarTech STNE 20002P (RealTek 8019 ChipSet
with jumper mode) around... It all depends if you
prefer to have a taste of the "state-of-the-art" a
PC-XT (or clone) could support in the eighties, or
if you'll go for the least possible configuration.Your post sort of reminds me that i could not boot
from the diskette until i moved my NIC's jumper to
I/O 0x300 & IRQ3 with COM2 UART socket empty/
disabled: otherwise, the floppy interface failed.One other nice touch, if you don't have it yet, is
a Real-Time Clock (usually found on an I/O board);
which reminds me why i had to move my NIC so high:
it happens my MM58167-based clock was set to 0x340
and 0x300 or 0x320 were not free, for some reason.To end it all with a bouquet, you may want to drop
your noisy MFM/RLL hard-Disk and remove it if luck
is to the rendez-vous: you should try an external
Hard-Disk with an IDE drive inside! A Mobile Disk
"Device Driven" unit simply connects to your line-
printer port, mine has a spare LPT port to which i
can attach a printer, or even a parallel InterLink
cable (in that case the printer goes to the second
PC). The MFM/RLL Hard-Disks were limited to 20 Mb,
typically, while Mobile Disk units (or equivalent)
could be twenty times that size - a practical size
for DOS often being less than half a Mega-Byte, as
i recall. I used these "Bicephale" configurations
for years and it served me well in the BBS days...8'-)
Salutations,
Michel Samson
a/s Bicephale
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Hi again,
Oups! Sometimes errors will slip thru even when i
read-proof my post and that's one of them! First,
the link i intended to make between installing DOS
on the Hard-Disk and replacing one of the diskette
drives with a 3.5" 720 Kb unit was that it will be
hard to find a modern PC with a 5.25" 360 Kb drive
installed (and still in good working condition)...The part about moving my NIC's jumpers to 0x300 is
quite wrong as well: i meant 0x360 to be exact!;-)
Salutations,Michel Samson
a/s Bicéphale
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Hi once more,
Oups again! I don't know what happened to me this
morning but when i wrote that a practical size for
DOS often was less than half a Mega-Byte i meant a
Giga-Byte instead, of course! That's one of those
days when i can't get my mind focussed, i guess!!!The need to redefine my profile continuously
must have got the best of me!... 8-o
Salutations,Michel Samson
a/s Bicéphale
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YES a later 5.25 drive would be preferable, but will the BIOS recognise 720K drives and being an IBM is it a standard connector??
It should already have at least a 10MB hard drive:
http://www.can.ibm.com/helpware/5160.html
My old Amstrad XT's will only read/write 360K SD SS Disks !!
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Sure - it's an 8 bit, 4.77MHz machine - likely with a 10 or 20 Mb (early, massive) HDD
All rambling aside, to work with this machine you'll need the 5¼" diskettes and a means to transfer information to them. I'm pretty doubtful that you'd be able to go beyond 360K on this model
Computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1 1/2 tons.
- Popular Mechanics, 1949
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Hi there,
PS> ...will the BIOS recognise 720K drives...
Ha, the BIOS... It has become customary for me to
load `BIOSPtch.SYS' (it says `IOPtch' internally),
along the years, but of the three XTs (a Tandy 25-
1000A, a Grid LapTop and a clone) which are on top
of the pile and in good working condition (in line
of sight), euh... it seems none of those resisted
to my repeated assaults: they all have their 3.5"
720 kB diskette drives functioning correctly. ;-)PS> ...being an IBM is it a standard connector?
I notice that if it's a model 267,268,88, or 89 it
is a candidate for the 3.5" 720 Kb diskette drive.Originally, Tandy's 25-1000A wasn't ready neither:
http://support.radioshack.com/support_computer/doc1/1021.htm
PS> ...Amstrad XTs will only read/write 360K SD...
I'm sorry to read that. It must be frustrating!!!
JB> ...to work with this machine you'll need the
JB> 5¼" diskettes and a means to transfer
JB> information to them. I'm pretty doubtful that
JB> you'd be able to go beyond 360 K...I wasn't aware that some genuine IBM XTs were sub-
standard! I was lucky to be able to have drive A:
changed to 3.5" 720 Kb on two of my XTs, it seems,
the third (the Grid) being already configured like
this by default (it's a single diskette drive PC).Thanks, i feel great now that i realize my luck!!!
8-)
Salutations,Michel Samson
a/s Bicéphale
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The original IBM floppy drive connector is the card edge connector, not the pin connector. I think jboy is right the original controller could handle up to 360K drives. I do have an add-on card that extends the BIOS and allows up to 1.2M floppies. I think the original hard drive controller was a XEBEC. Size was by jumper 10 or 20 MB. Format, Interleave set by DEGUG into BIOS.
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"PS> ...Amstrad XTs will only read/write 360K SD...
I'm sorry to read that. It must be frustrating!!!"
Absolutely not, it is easy for the one with the hard drive to go on the internet, so no size does not matter.
COMP01 where are you ? are you going to repond ?
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He appears to be pursuing other confounding(& more important) issues in General Hardware.
Yah - a true IBM XT is one thing - there were numerous clones made after the fact which sported higher density diskette drives and hotter processors, other enhancements. I had (still have, somewhere) one rated at 30MHz with an onboard HDD controller. Pretty snazzy in its time....
'The' original HDD was 10Mb (and nearly 10lb, a monster) - mine was also a Xebec drive
Computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1 1/2 tons.
- Popular Mechanics, 1949
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I think going with the adapter card to give 1.2 and 1.44 support, as wizard-fred suggests, is the only practical thing to do unless for some reason he wants to keep the original equipment.
Seems like the 8-bit hd controller cards only went to 20 meg for MFM and 30 for RLL. There was an 8-bit IDE card made by seagate (I think) but it only worked with their 40 meg drive.
I think by the time IBM got around to calling them XT the motherboards came with the massive 640 K of ram.
I've still got the 8088 I put together for myself. It's one of the generic turbo boards in an XT case. 1.2 and 1.44 drives, two 30 meg HDs and a VGA card.
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Where is our original poster and if he does have the original hard drive, how come DOS is not on it? It is probably possible to install any DOS that came on 3.5" floppies on any system that can support a MFM controller along with a drive controller for the 3.5 floppy. Probably a 386SX OR 286 system.
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Please can Comp01 (the original poster) advise exactly what the XT comprises in:-
floppy disc(s)
hard disc
memoryPlease remember XT's were sold as:-
single floppy (with or without hdd)
double floppy (with or without hdd)*GENERALLY* the bios supported 5.1/4" double density floppys, from which one could boot.
To install a 3.5" meant using a driver which was loaded after booting.
Should this be a XT with no hard disc, a early version of dos (such as 3.x or earlier) is best as it is much smaller and designed to work on such configurations.
Good Luck - Keep us posted.
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