Uncreative Labs

Joined: 18 Mar 2009 Posts: 6 Location: UK

hi all my name is andrew and got my xt about 4 years ago could not see it being binned
any way dug out from the attic 3 days ago stripped cleaned put back together again.
hit the big switch a few beeps later and dos booted fron the hard drive first time in many years.
got the 5 1/4 in floppy working again and the external 3 1/2 in floppy working again
quiet happy all in one day !!
a few little questions
1. there is a full length quadram board inside does it need drivers for it work if so where from
2.the 2M program for 1.44 mb floppys how big is it!
3. the XEBEC card is that just for hard drives or floppys aswell because the other card has both floppys runnimg from is 3 1/2 ,5 1/4 from 1 edge connector
spec off the xt is 5160
1 5 1/4 halve height
10mb hard drive
1 XEBEC board
1 quadram board
1 hercules graphics card 9 pin d
1 floppy controller 8bit 1 edge connector
1 A SYNC CARD whats that for !!
and now the learnig begins Very Happy

thanks in advance fot any repys
andrew

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

the asynch card is a serial port
may not be true for clones, but the slot nearest the power supply has "diffgerent timing characteristics" and should be used for the serial card.
any serial/papallel card even one from a AT can be used in other slots. but the adreess of the paprllel port on the hercules card
or the original IBM mono card is 03bc the lowerst adress.
ND A cga CARD OR AN at I/O CARD will have a higher non interfering address.
remember there is NO plug and play.
thre xebec card is hd only and is considfered by many to be a dog,
the switches are at the rear by the bracket
if set wrong, when you low level format the drive a 10m will try to be a 20 m and fail.
the ll format then must be repeated.
the wd cards are better but not authentic if you want your machine to be "original" xt's later used the wd cards.

some early later keyboards would work in a pc /xt
most had switches but som,e were auto.

some of the mechanical arrangements were not to my liking esp early [c/xt hardware.
I will look for the drivers I may have them.

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

Andxt wrote:

hi all my name is andrew and got my xt about 4 years ago could not see it being binned
any way dug out from the attic 3 days ago stripped cleaned put back together again.
hit the big switch a few beeps later and dos booted fron the hard drive first time in many years.
got the 5 1/4 in floppy working again and the external 3 1/2 in floppy working again
quiet happy all in one day !!

andrew

That system is a very similar config to my former old reliable, anyway that external 3.5" floppy if IBM branded is almost certainly a 720kb drive, your XT should use it as 360kb natively I believe. That program you speak of is relatively small so it should only use maybe 4kb but perhaps someone else can say.

That quadram board is probably just the 640kb memory expansion and will only need the jumpers on your board setup to recognize the amount of system ram installed (that card+whatever is on the board = total ram)

Good Luck

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

RIGHT THE RAM WILL NOT NEED DRIVERS BUT THE CLOCK WILL
the software might even be in basic
the battery may be dead
a coin cell cr2032 3v or better 3 aa or aaa cells in a holder would be even better. depends what you can do inexpensively.
if you wanted to stay "authentic" you could put 3 small clock cells inside the black domed rechargable battery assy.
the newer assemblies are blue and purple and not is a formed metal housing. some older mb have them
wash off the crusty salts and try it an old one may still work.
the time software has to be loaded at bootup.
booting from a floppy w/o the clock sw will result in files dated 1-01-80.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

2M comes with all kinds of different utilities, and I think the package as a whole takes up a few hundred kb on disk. But, the TSR that is used for driving high density floppies is only about 4kb when loaded into conventional RAM.

Keep in mind that if you want to use 2M you will need to replace the original floppy controller with one meant for AT systems. This will likely mean losing the 37-pin external port, so you will no longer be able to have an external floppy drive.

Joined: 18 Mar 2009 Posts: 6 Location: UK

thanks to all replyed
very good point about the battery on the board going to do 1st to get mem sorted.
2.would like 3 1/2 in floppy to be internal less messy looks better not ibm
3. ithink 3 1/5 in drive is on last lits last legs work when it wants to
the cable has a switch in it not sure what that does. formatted a 1m disk
4. i see the dip switches which one shoud it be set at for the ram board
not to bothered about it being orginal just working and useable
has enybody put dos 5 or above on there xts if so how did it run!
many thanks andrew

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

dos 5.00 is a good dos and better than 4.0 dos 3.30 is also ok but has a 32m drive size restriction.
there was a FLAP when dos 5 came out that some older programs would not run.
if you have a 1.44 drive in a wide frame ( a 720k will do) the xt will never know the difference.
but will do 80 tracks with the proper drivers .
the bite is it will do only 9 sectors ( 720k) and not 18
(1.44) unless you have a speial controller.
Yiou will have to use 720k 3.5" floppies.
1.44 floppies (MIGHT) work if you tape the other hole..
the interleave on ide drives is 1:1.
best on an xt is 3:1.( wd controller)
the xebec will do 4 or 5 or 6:1 ( slower)
SPINTEST.exe will set and try for the best inmterleave. ( just test)
actually with a mfm drive and a wd controller 4:`1 or 5:1 is 3-4 tim,es FASTER.
either spinrite or a low level format is required.
the xebec is VERY slow and ., I think, requires an ibm program diags disk..
the wd controller has a program in the bios.
it may take 10 min.

Joined: 18 Mar 2009 Posts: 6 Location: UK

hi all i found the battery on the ramboard it has 3 pins on it 1 pin- 2 pins+
says 2.4v 100ma so i was thinking that is 1+ pin 1.2v 2+ pin 1.2v or are they both 2.4v. that 3aa or 3aaa baterys would be 4.5v will the board handle that
or not as i doint want fry it with to much volts .or will the board take only what it needs and the extra battery is for how long it will last.
many thanks andrew

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

possibly 3-aa cells would be too much
try any "coin": type cell cr2023 owo watch / camera cells ( 1,.5v each)
it will be awkward to make a holder
a small tube may work with a spring and a screw
soldering is not a good idea.
a used cordless phone battery may work.

Joined: 18 Mar 2009 Posts: 6 Location: UK

hi all
the hardest job will be soldering the wires on the board
yes 3v on each + pins sounds better . i have 2aa battery holder so i will use that. so that should be the hardware done hopefully !
about wednesday i should find out about some isa cards 16bit ones let you
know what i get.
mant thanks andrew

Joined: 18 Mar 2009 Posts: 6 Location: UK

Hi all just an update
i managed to get a multi i/o card 16bit brand new in box cables were stil
sealed in bags. 1 sound card 16bit .1dailup modem 16bit . 32 megs off edo ram. Not had chance to have proper look at moment other stuff going on
ohh yes price was £10 so i got!!
managed to get the battery on the ramboard only just with alittle soldering
but provides power not tested yet but soon in couple of days time
keep you posted

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

if you mean cards with 2 sets of fingers- the xt and other 8088 class pc's only have 8 but slots
However" a 16 bit vga card will work if motherboard switches are set to NONE. not all boards will work.
the intel memory expansion card, the one with jumpers and switches, has a jumper for " 8 bit operation"
But any memory above 640 meg has only limited usefullness. like a ramdrive.
some of the boards designed for the 16 bit AT are useful in a XT. I have used i/o boards and they co-exist with a mono video card with a parallel port.

since there is no kind of plug and play, you may have to figure out what is wrong when a IRQ or address conflict occurs. One of the biggest headaches was the modem that conflicted with one of the serial ports. That's why I tended to use an external modem Plugged in a serial port.

remember the 8088 has fewer adresses so you have to avoid adding too many things.

Intel had a PNP software package so a non-pnp system could use an isa jumperless PNP device like some of the old hayes optima ISA modems.
or the creative labs soundblaster cards with no jumpers.