Cleaning & Restoring an IBM PS/2 Model 30

Clint did you get the hard drive cable yet?

Colm

Where do you get the antistatic brushes?

That box is very ( beige Mac Like ) with the snap in parts.. Ill never forget these old IBMs my friend had one his mom used for work it had ProComm Plus and a 1200baud modem.. We found BBS's for the first time. Then later down the road we got another one I was all ready to add an internal modem or video card ( I forget ) and then found out what MCA Bus was lol.. These were built like tanks and had all kinda neat for the time proprietary formats and connections ( lots of blue internal parts ) If I remember correctly on the 286/386 models. It was hard to find some parts than and nowadays with ebay but the stuff being old its probaly equally as hard.

QUiKSR20

Edit- Oh, it's an NCI Coax adapter.... Hmm. I'd had that part of the video paused for a while when I commented.. Oops!

Robert Butler

How about you put the word up on Twitter about the cable you need?

Rick Green

I've been an LGR "free stalker" for a while now, being a Techmoan patreon, and just became a $5 LGR patron. Now I'm inside - nice to see how well you treat your patrons. So much content to view here. I really appreciate the effort you take to create interesting and well researched (and nicely edited) content. Well done! I'm a fan who finally realised I should throw a few bucks your way to keep this going :)

After more research it seems like this machine *would* have used a hard drive with a smaller edge connector, the one I got is actually for a higher-end MCA PS/2 of some kind. It's been tricky to track down reliable info!

LGR

I have a bunch of the esdi drives that I acquired while trying to get my model 50 working. It was the kind where the hard drive slid right into a card edge connector on a riser card, but the interface is not as wide as the drive yours takes. I gambled on a few different drives that we’re dead before I scrapped the ps/2. It was too frustrating getting correct parts. Hard disk was impossible to get a working one

Flushing Noodle

Oooh, An ARCNET LAN card. You don't see those very often. At all. I've only ever seen one of those in my entire life in person.

Robert Butler

LGR has gained a point of cleaning skill by cleaning the PS/2 Model 30 by IBM! (+1000 Aspiration) (+500 Influence)

Tim

It's true, sometimes the only way forward is through blood.

LGR

Thank you! It's definitely an MFM-compatible set of cables, but I've seen a few ESDI drives like the IBM 15F6730 that use the same connection so it's *technically* correct in saying it fits ESDI. Just, only one particular kind argh. MCGA is fascinating stuff indeed! I look forward to testing out the limitations and capabilities now that I have MCGA-capable machines running both color and monochrome displays.

LGR

That's a slightly different cable than what I'm looking for! The cable you have fits a WDI-325Q drive, which has a shorter edge connector than my drive and fewer pins on the motherboard end. A comparison: <a href="https://i.imgur.com/G6BMdML.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://i.imgur.com/G6BMdML.jpg</a> 61X8903 is the part number I'm after :)

LGR

Hey, I have an 8530-021 in my collection awaiting restoration. I don't have a working hard drive, but do have the cable - it's labelled "Burndy 68X2828 E/O A49787". It's 19cm long (between the connectors).

True story, I still have a scar from opening a 90's era Compaq case. Sometimes the retro hardware gods require a blood sacrifice I guess.

Tanner Schultz

So relaxing, I miss restoring machines but am not allowed to collect them now.

JennaKay

Ah, or a SGI Indy style case

JennaKay

Great video.. worthy of one of my restoration videos! :-) Anyway, I think that cable you received is actually an MFM hard drive cable set, not ESDI. To be honest, I've never even seen one of those ESDI hard drives and I'll actually be amazed if it really works when you do find the right cable. MCGA is an interesting video setup, in many ways it has some of the same drawbacks as the Tandy machines. If your game doesn't happen to support MCGA then you have to drop it all the way down to 4-color CGA to play it.

The 8-Bit Guy

I ever find the term "antistatic" missleading. Because most often it just says that it doesn't add static charge but the word anti implies that it would removes static charge from the thing. So do you have any tipps for getting static charges off of something without resorting to water or other Liquids?

Ezydenias

Also, kinda cool to see such an old "boot from network" device. I didn't realize that dummy terminals were a thing back then.

SuperBunnyBun

There needs to be some company that makes computer chassis that look and feel like these classic AT or ATX models but designed to work with modern parts as well. At the very least, I want my compies to have a power switch that makes a lovely "KATHUNK" sound when you toggle the power

SuperBunnyBun

Very cool, I used to see these things at work, they were old even then. I used to work for a part of IBM that refurbished computers, wish we'd known that bleaching trick, we downclaimed a lot of machines for yellowed cases. Also, if you'd done this six months ago I could have gotten you a new serial number label, "chin label", we would reprint them when necessary.

Jeff DeWitt

Thanks man! Yours and 8-bit Guy's restorations have shown me just how enjoyable videos like this can be, so I appreciate the support

LGR

Ooh, I've never attempted any GPU restoration, that sounds interesting

LGR

I will never tire of it.

LGR

Aw yeah, I'll take that gold star.

LGR

Mmmm sweet adlib music 😀

PhotoSvein

Yup, I've seen that. It'd be cheaper to buy another entire Model 30 with a hard drive at that rate.

LGR

That was actually the first thing I tried but it had almost no effect on this presumably decades-old permanent marker. I'll add that footage into the next draft :)

LGR

you get an A+ on scrubbing grime

Evan B

I get rid of Sharpie by going over it with a yellow dry erase marker. They dry erase marker dissolves the permanent marker, and then IPA or glass cleaner makes short work of the dry erase

David E. Blankenship

I checked the manual and the part is IBM 8530 FIXED DISK CABLE P/N: 61X8903. I have found a website that states it has stock but it seems very overpriced. <a href="http://www.cheappcupgrade.com/61x8903.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.cheappcupgrade.com/61x8903.html</a>

Jamie Cruickshank

That network card is a monster! Very nicely cleaned up Clint

Neil (RMCretro)

just something about old hardware in the hands of people who can restore and revive them warms me. my own GPU restoration series is pretty popular for that too. nice video :D

Man we used to use these to learn how to type with early on. I actually had to learn how to type on a type writer in like 1st through 3rd grade and eventually we started using keyboards. We used the clicky kind and it would just be a lot of loud but silent classes. People look at me like I'm crazy when I said I learned how to type on a typewriter and I look at them like they're crazy because they can't touch type.

Justin Dotson

The XT-IDE card I showed in my Tandy 1000 video requires a power connection through the floppy disk power cable, which the Model 30 sadly does not provide. The XT-CF-Lite would work though if I can find one, I'll keep that in mind for future projects!

LGR

It's certainly a somewhat odd thing to see in an IBM of the time, that's for sure! Well, if you mean the rod that connects the switch to the PSU, that is. I mostly see that on cheaper mid-90s PCs.

LGR

Happen to recall if they used the original clicky keyboards? That'd be one loud typing class, hehe

LGR

My school had these, only a few had HDDs. The teacher had a stack of prepared floppies, one for each student, containing DOS 3.2 and the program we were going to use that day, like WordPerfect 4.2, VisiCalc, and a bunch of typical Dutch software (NS Reisplanner, De BAAS). I guess it wasn't that unusual to use these machine without a hard drive. If you really need some mass storage you could use an XT-CF-Lite, didn't you do a video on that a while ago?

Glad to hear it! Yeah I'm hoping so, but if not I'm not terribly worried since I have a fully-featured Model 25 to show too. And yeah, DOS Silpheed is pretty neat! Check out the NEC PC-8801 version as well :)

LGR

I have never seen a power switch like that. huh.

Kijikun

Thanks for the links to the cable solutions, will look into that if I go the XT-IDE route!

LGR

I admire your screwdriver.

Kijikun

Sadly not, what's on Ebay right now isn't gonna work. It doesn't need an edge connector on the other end, it needs the pin connector for the motherboard. The cable also needs to be the correct length and flexible enough!

LGR

This model brings back memories of typing class in middle school and high school! (Damn I'm old)

That was a strangely satisfying video to watch! Hope that you manage to find that elusive cable! On a side note, I've never seen a version of Silpheed other than the Mega CD version with all the FMV of flat shaded polygons... definitely piqued my interest now into the history of the game and other versions!

Pixels.Ltd (Samuel Victor)

And at 15:40.

Vaughn

Hopefully this is what you need to get that hard drive working. I actually sat there and counted the teeth on both the edge connectors.

Spotted an audio issue at 14:36.

Vaughn

I haven't watched the video yet, I know commenting before is a sin, but I still have my original Model 30 I got as a kid, and I still use it to this day. This video is going to be super special and awesome. :D

avfusion