IBM 5285

From: Alan Greenstreet <aeg_at_paradise.net.nz>
Date: Mon Jun 30 22:51:00 2003

On Tuesday, Jul 1, 2003, at 14:53 Pacific/Auckland, Tarsi wrote:

>> 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.

Not quite... this seem to have been designed as a desktop box with the
monitor built in on the left and the two 8" drives mounted vertically
to the right (the power switch is on the front as is the keyboard
connector). Dimensions 24" Wide, 15" Tall and 20" Deep. The separate
keyboard is also on the large size, a tapered shape 2" thick at the
front and 4" thick at the back (about 19" wide).
The whole thing takes two people to pick it up... I recon about 50kg
total weight.
>
> 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.
>
Exactly what mine is doing. or rather was doing. It seems to have given
up all together at the moment...

> 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.
>
Huge power supply! There is a manufacturers sticker on the power supply
stating made in October 1980 and a weight of 35lbs (just the power
supply).
Having taken the thing apart there seems to be an Intel 8045 chip on
one of the smaller boards. There are two full width boards and four
smaller boards. There appears to be plenty of room for expansion with
four "slots" (I use slot in the loosest sense) running across the main
board.

> 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.
>
So far all my searches on the web have lead to nothing, but as soon as
I find out anything I'll let you know.

Alan
Received on Mon Jun 30 2003 - 22:51:00 BST