Yesterday I bought a complete IBM PS/2 Model 55 SX for $5. After installing DOS 6, Windows 3.11, and Word 6 I found that I didn't have much room left on the small 60 MB harddrive. I opened the machine, and found the harddrive connection like one I've never seen before. I was under the notation that the harddrive was SCSI, but after some searching on the net I think that the harddrive is ESDI. I've never heard of ESDI, is it any different than SCSI? The webpage that talks about ESDI is: http://www.amphiskios.net/wiki/pages/ps2/ I also found this: "Fitting a SCSI hard drive The P70 comes with one of the IBM Direct Bus Attachment (DBA) hard drives; these are the black ones that have a single wide edge connector whicb is essentially the MCA bus; the controller is integrated on the actual drive. These are not compatible with anything else, so the opportunity for upgrading them is very limited. One solution is to fit a SCSI disk, at the expense of one of the two slots in the machine. This is what needs to be done: Open the case, and remove the disk cage (three screws, one on the bottom and three inside). Also remove the disk cable from the planar. Fit a SCSI controller card. I used a standard IBM SCSI controller, with the onboard terminator. It would be better to use one of the later ones with automatic termination, if you have one, to save using an external terminator or opening the case every time you want to plug in (say) a CDROM drive. Remove the old disk from the disk cage, and fit the new one. The disk I used was a slim 350MB one; I had to drill some extra mounting holes to secure it, and for safety I fitted a thin sheet of insulating material next to the electronics board (I used part of an old CDROM sleeve). Get, or make, a SCSI cable. This is a 50 way cable with a 50 pin header on one end, and a 50 pin edge connector on the other. I made a custom cable so that it could be exactly the right length with no extra folds; there isn't much room inside the P70 case. Install a power cable. This is the most fiddly bit. Obtain a standard 4 pin drive power cable, with a few inches of wire on it. Choose one where the wire isn't too thick, again to save space. Graft this into the output cables from the power supply; I did this using automobile crimp connectors for joining two wires together (just use a pair of pliers to close them). Fit the power cable to the drive, also the SCSI cable. Install the drive. Finish by connecting the other end of the SCSI cable to the controller. Boot from the reference disk and run autoconfiguration. Run diagnostic tests, and with luck that will be it!" Could this be done on my PS/2 55? I don't have good luck with putting things together inside computers. One other thing, if worst case senario I keep my 60 MB harddrive, and use DOS 6 DriveSpace. But I've heard that disk compression really slows down your computer. Any help, ideas, or shining a light on this gray area would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I forgot to add, where could I download the display driver for this machine, so I can have more than 16 colors.

I think you will find the expansion slots in this PC are MCA, therefore the chances of finding a SCSI card second-hand will be almost impossible. The drivers can be downloaded from IBM, you need the model No it is on the PC at the back it is a 4 digit code. Ditch Windows 3.x and use only DOS with Arachne web browser, and download M$ Word version 5.5 from M$ FREE. This way you will have a word processor and basic internet access PC, see: http://www.mwpms.uklinux.net/

The best alternative to fitting a CD is to find an older BACKPACK which sits on the Parallel Port. If your PC has MCA slots, IBM website still have details, then if you live in UK, I have both a MCA 3COM and INTEL NIC's, which I might be prepared to sell one.

I used to have a 55sx. Consider yourself lucky to have the 60 meg disk; I had a 40. I used to use disk compression on a 40 meg disk (different machine) with DR DOS 6, and it didn't seem to slow my computer down. I ended up netting about 60 Meg of space with the compression. In your case, I'm guessing that Word is what's sucking up your disk space, as 60 Meg would be plenty for DOS/WFW, assuming you haven't installed Internet Explorer. If you have installed IE 4, you might want to consider reinstalling with 3 (I use Netscape 4.08 on my WFW machine). That will save you space. Also, consider changing your swap file to temporary, if it isn't already. x86 is right. The slots are MCA. It can be difficult to find (and expensive) expansion cards. If you want a network card, I'd recommend taking x86 up on his offer (if it's reasonable). I agree, too, that an external CD-ROM drive (parallel port) is the way to go. Good luck.

Well thanks for all your help. I now know what kind of cards my PS/2 use. My PS/2 doesn't have a modem in it, so I don't have IE installed. I also don't live in the UK, sorry x86, but I can't take you up on your offer. Thanks for all the ideas, and I'm getting some of my own as to what to do to my PS/2. I've looked all over the US IBM website for a display driver and all I could find was: http://www-1.ibm.com/support/dlsearch.wss?lang=en&loc=en-us&ics=utf-8&cs=utf-8&rs=0&cc=us&pcd=8555-061 My model number is 8555-061. Is it that there is no driver on the IBM website, or the most colors diplayed is only 16.

Run the DOS version of the following hardware, it should detect the make of graphic card chipset: http://www.hwinfo.com/ as well as many other things....