The XT Part 6: Hard Disk Woes
The hard disk installed in my 5160 is a Seagate ST-238R. It appears to be a full-height 5.25″ hard drive with a 33MB capacity. It is always amazing to think…
The XT Part 5: Repairing the Floppy Disk Drive
The 5160 came equipped with a single Tandon TM-100-2A 5.25″ floppy disk drive. The 5150 had come with two of these, but the 5160 eschewed the second drive in favor…
The XT Part 4: Adapting a Modern(ish) Keyboard
Because the IBM XT uses a keyboard protocol that is no longer used by any newer hardware, my small collection of computer keyboards was useless for this project. At least,…
The XT Part 3: Powering up the Beast
It was finally time to get this machine cleaned up and try to get it running. But first, a visual health check. Smoke testing I took some cotton swabs and…
The XT Part 2: The System
Though the machine was not in a terribly pretty state, I was confident and excited that it could be revived. The first order of business was to examine exactly what…
The XT Part 1: Preliminaries
Why I care about a computer older than me When I was growing up, I thought my dad was a tech god. I remember spending hours with him on some…