On Thu, 5 Feb 2004, William Maddox wrote:
> A genuine IBM AT was up on EBay a week or two ago. Went cheap, too.
> Heres an PC, an XT, and AT in one lot: 2785591645 There's not as much
> stuff from that era as you might expect, considering how popular the IBMs
> were in their day, but there is stuff to be had. Go get it! :) :)
To get an honest-to-gawd, genuine original IBM PC you'll want to look for
one that has either one IBM (the IBM logo is embossed on the plastic
face) full-height disk drive and a cover plate over the second bay, two
full-height IBM disk drives, or even NO disk drives (I've got one like
this).
Another feature to look for that I don't know the significance of but it
was important enough to IBM to give it an FRU (at least I am pretty sure
it has one) is a one-inch wide strip of black plastic about 14" wide that
fits over the vent holes at the front udnerside of the chassis. I would
imagine this was a later modification to correct airflow? Anyway, I don't
know how critical it is to have that strip (historically speaking) but I
know they're a pain in the ass because the adhesive fails over time and
they invariably end up falling off.
Also, as has been mentioned plenty of times before, you want to look for
one with the original 64K motherboard, with 16K soldered in and the rest
socketed. A good indicator will be the presence of the cassette port in
the back next to the keyboard port, though not a definitive indicator as
it is entirely possible the machine would have been upgraded at some
point.
Finally, check to make sure the I/O boards inside are original IBM (the
video and I/O boards and disk drive controller at a minimum).
For extra points, find the plastic cover that fits over the drive bays.
It's a smoked cover with a little handle in the middle and has a felt(?)
lining around the edges.
Make sure you get the original IBM keyboard and find a nice IBM monochrome
display to round it out (these are not terribly hard to find).
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Thu Feb 05 2004 - 10:08:40 GMT