stuff for trade

From: Starling <starling_at_umr.edu>
Date: Mon May 19 12:22:54 1997

> One of the IBM PCs is an oddity: it is actually labelled the IBM 3270
> Personal Computer and inside it has three cards connected together to form
> the video card. It has one 9-pin male 'D' connector on the back (like a
> standard monochrome monitor adaptor). I was told this was for an enhanced
> graphics monitor. It also had a card in the slot next to the CPU. The
> card has a CPU on it, and has a ribbon cable going from the card to the
> socket on the motherboard where the CPU used to be. Any ideas what this
> is? I don't know if I want to trade this just yet. But if anyone is
> interested in a genuine IBM PC for trade, I can get more.

I've heard about these before. It's no graphics adapter. Boot the
sucker up and most likely you won't see DOS.

It's an IBM 370 mainframe emulator. Here's what I've heard:

There should be a "P" card that should have two Motorola 68000s, both
modified in varying ways and produced under license by IBM on it, plus a
8087. It should attach to the M card that has 512K of ram on it. And
then there's a PC3277-EM card that is just a 3270 terminal emulator that
should attach to the mainframe.

I don't know much more about this, since I'm just getting all this
information second hand. It's allegedly in a book called _Upgrading and
Repairing PCs_, but I don't know the author.

It'd be very interesting if this sucker could run VM/SP like a real 370
and stuff. I learned assembly on those damn things... back when my
university still had dumb terminals in the computer labs. Heh.

chris
Received on Mon May 19 1997 - 12:22:54 BST