One of my favorite computers, hardly use it tho… My goal was to get it on IRC and only with 8-bit ISA cards.
So…. it’s connected to internet, can reach IRC.
And i made it faster with a PC Sprint PCB and a NEC V20 cpu
The computer was purchased by the wife of Peter from Zevenhuizen around the year 1987 via the ‘PC-Prive‘ project by Nationale Nederlanden for around 7 to 8 thousand Guldens.
The PC-Privé project was a dutch tax initiative to buy a computer tax-free. This was cancelled around 2004. As can be read on the website Tweakers.net. Which makes this one of the more later model XT’s. Which can be confirmed by the motherboard.
I’ve bought the computer from the second owner Jasper, because he was downscaling his hobby.
The XT is my second computer that was bought via this project, my first is a Sharp MZ-700.
This is a 256-640KB systemboard more information about this can befound on minuszerodegrees.net. The board is fully populated with 640KB of ram.
This motherboard was replaced around 2019 by Jasper because the previous owner had a blown-up power supply that blown the original board. Jasper sourced this replacement board as a new old stock from the US.
Power Supply:
And i’ve added a co-processor to the board:
It came with some software, but i purchased the WordPerfect and Terminal software later on.
This computer is attached to a 5153 monitor. And the original
And it came with a Model M keyboard. The 1390120 from 20-08-1986
I added a PTT Telecom mouse to use the Serial port in the IBM XT. But i also keep a ‘trackball‘ mouse that is period correct to the XT PC next to it for fun.
And a OKI MicroLine 182 Elite printer.
Little overview of the installed ISA cards:
- Prisma EGA MAX 860 8-bit ISA videocard
- RTC ISA 8 bits (Very Low Profile)
- IBM MFM Harddisk controller 62X0786
- IBM Diskette Drive controller card 6181682 987 V9116
- 3com Etherlink II ISA 8-bit.. in combination with a CentreCOM 210T transciever
- IBM Parallel card 1501987 340311 V0011
- IBM Asynchronous Communications Adapter
- Adlib Replica 1990 card
Original build, later changed:
It also came with a 20MB MFM harddisk Type 13, which i regularly spin-up to prevent the heads from sticking to one spot:
The default setup came with a 360k diskette drive:
And a replica Adlib card:
And i’ve got a little surplus of diskettes still in stock. I’ve managed to buy cheaply 12 of these boxes:
Software that i have for this IBM Computer which i’d like to offer to download as a backup for myself:
- WordPerfect (dutch)
- WordPerfect Library (dutch)
- Soft Terminal
- IBM DOS 3.20
- IBM’s reference guide to operation
And i’ve got Windows running on the XT:
And ofcourse mTCP with network running perfectly:
And installed a NEC V20 CPu with PC Sprint PCB to run at a faster speed:
