I was at a computer recycler the other day and there it was… An original IBM XT 8088 system in nearly mint condition. It was in the front window of “prized” old crap in this store. I asked the guy if any of that stuff in the window is for sale and he replied, “sure, sometimes it is”. So then I specified that I was interested in the XT. He asked what I’d pay for it and I told him $20. He said, “sure” and it came home in my trunk. Luckily on the way out the store I noticed the keyboard sitting there. I asked him if it was cool if I took it and he said it wasn’t a problem. Later I found out that it’s a good thing I grabbed it because an AT-style keyboard wouldn’t work.
After bringing it home, brought it out and popped it open to check what was inside. The system is actually fairly packed. Someone probably spent $5,000 or so upgrading it to the point it was at. The memory banks were full and there was an add-on memory card that had a realtime clock as well. Something else I learned was that originally these systems required you to enter the time and date every time you booted them up. How annoying…. Looking around further, the system has an unmarked graphics card with a printer port. I would have hoped it was a Hercules but I’m pretty sure it’s not a real one in any event. There is a 20 megabyte Seagate MFM hard drive and a MFM controller card in there too. Something else I learned is that IDE pretty much requires a 16-bit data bus to function at all and the 8088 has an 8-bit external bus so it can’t work with IDE without some major trickery so I’m crossing my fingers that the MFM drive still functions. Lastly, there is a serial port card.
I did plug it in and flip the power on. Sounds like the hard drive spins up just fine at least. I’m hoping that it works but I’m currently trying to hunt down an ISA VGA card to test it with.
You may ask why I bothered buying a nearly 30 year old computer. My original plan was to part it out and build a single board 8088 to learn more about computers but I’ve since changed my mind since this one is in excellent shape. I have a really cool old book called The 8088 Project Book
My alternative plan is to use the computer as it sits an attempt to learn some 8088 assembly language in the dos environment. Might also be fun to try some other operating systems like CP/M or Xenix if I could find copies of them.
If you like the content on this site, please support it by using this link to order from Amazon. You know you were going to go there and buy stuff anyhow so why not help me pay the hosting bill.
That’s a nice looking system. Looks in very good nick. I hope you have been searching the internet for the service manuals as there are lots of nice DIP switches in there 🙂
I didn’t actually think of that. Good point. I jumped into PC compatible computers around the time of the 386/33 being top of the line. I did have to deal with a lot of jumpers but perhaps not as many… IRQ conflicts, here I come!
Yep lots of fun conflicts to solve 🙂 when I was just starting out in business I worked for a company and one of the training courses they sent me on (not that I needed it) was a course on repairing and setting up PCs and XTs with nothing more than a screwdriver, a flashlight, a floppy disk and a roll of ducttape — still have my certificate from it somewhere 🙂
The “XT” was the platform that I first learned how to build peripherals on and I have many fond memories of interfacing with different ‘incompatible’ machiines and getting them to do my bidding. The only ‘bad’ part about building an 8086 system from IC’s I remember is hunting for the occasional stray wire; though I’ve never trusted the first few systems I assembled with hardware I paid for.
I believe that the Home of the Underdogs has copies of those old OSes; though I’ve never tried these.
http://www.homeoftheunderdogs.net/genre.php?id=2
re: “My alternative plan is to use the computer as it sits an attempt to learn some 8088 assembly language in the dos environment.”
Holy cow… you MUST be bored! lol..
Nah, not bored at all. Retro hardware gives you a good opportunity to interact with hardware directly opposed to newer systems with all of their hardware abstraction layers, etc. Also, assembly language is never a bad thing to understand. It gives you a lot more respect for all of the functionality of a modern computer.
That’s a good find. My brother and I found one of those in the trash when we were kids (~1990) and were able to get windows 3.1 to run on it (3.11 did not work). I could play the very popular archer hits balloons game with some lag.
Wow! I was about to argue that as being not possible but then I researched it a bit. I had no idea that you could run Windows 3.0 on an XT. That’s totally awesome and I’m going to have to try that for myself. I didn’t realize the substantial differences between Windows 3.0 and 3.1 but 3.1 appears to have entirely killed off the real and protected mode branches of code and gone with a purely 80386 enhanced version. That’s why you guys couldn’t get it running. Wikipedia has a couple of great posts on both of those versions of Windows. Thanks for the comment. You have resparked even more interest in this machine for me.
My understanding of the Windows 3.x versions is that it quickly ran through the gamut of CPUs that it would run on as the sub-version (pun unintended) numbers incremented.
3.0 would run on an 8086 or 8088.
3.1 required at least a 286.
3.11 wouldn’t work on anything less than a 386SX.
And I definitely agree with the idea of getting better aquainted with computer fundamentals by playing with these oldies. They do definitely require a closer understanding of the actual operation of the peripherals, interfaces and components–very unlike today’s Plug And Pray. LOL.
Addendum: Quite a while ago, maybe around the early ’90s, I remember a company that sold an IDE hard drive controller board that did enable regular IDE hard drives to work with PC and XT machines. It actually was an 8-bit ISA card explicitly made to add IDE capability to those computers. I’ve wanted to find one for a while to “upgrade” that problematic MFM drive in my elderly XT clone. BTW, the best source I know of for info on these particular computers is the *4th* edition of “Upgrading and Repairing PCs”–even gives info on DIP switch settings and the quirks regarding “slot 8.”