IBM 5285

From: Tarsi <tarsi_at_binhost.com>
Date: Mon Jun 30 21:57:00 2003

> 1. Has anyone come across this model before and is it a dumb terminal?
> 2. What checks would you suggest to solve the disk access problems?
> 3. Can anyone point me towards a repository of information about it?

Wow, this sounds almost exactly like my IBM 5324. Let me see:

The tower case is about 3' tall and beige, the 8" floppies are in the front
top with a power switch. The back is closed with a turn-key type thing that
allows the cover to swing open on hinges. The monitor attaches to the
computer through a round three-prong plug.

And mine behaves similar to yours. It starts up and displays incrementing
numbers across the top, about three rows, then jumps to a hex dump on the
bottom, about 2 or 3 lines, and stops.

The little information I've found out about it has been provided by Wayne
Smith (wmsmith at earthlink dot net), and he writes:

"I have full documentation on the 5324, although I've never seen one
other than the monitor (I had one which I used to replace the blown
monitor I had in a 5322). It is a reconfigured IBM Datamaster, aka
System 23 or IBM 5322. You don't see them that often. It boots to
Basic. ... Processor is an 8085. Comes with anywhere from 32K to 128K RAM.
I just moved to a new place a few days ago so it will be a while before
I can lay my hands on anything."

I haven't heard whether Wayne had found his documentation or not. In the
meantime, I've opened up the box and peeked around. It has a mem card and a
disk controller card for the 8" drives, that's about it. Big power supply on
the bottom.

Let me know if you find anything and I'll do the same, it's likely these are
things of the same type, different flavour.

Tarsi
Received on Mon Jun 30 2003 - 21:57:00 BST