I just found a Laser Compact XT at a Goodwill with its power supply, but I have absolutely no idea how to use it and would love to learn. It powers up and displays its self test but I get stuck at a please wait screen, where I think I need to insert a dos disk of some sort. It is an IBM compatible computer as far as I know, and it has a single 5 1/4 drive. No hard drive to my knowledge. Thanks so much for any advice!
Hello, I am new to the retro-laptop scene and got an IBM A21m Thinkpad. It's missing its hard drive and I am looking to repair it and use it as a retro gaming rig. However, I am unsure as to what to look out for and where to start lol. I have found the manual for the A2 series and have begun reading about the parts, but I have a question regarding the A21m's capabilities. Can it run Windows 3.1? Which operating system (Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, or Windows 95) would be best for running old games? What are some things I should look out for when I take apart the laptop to test some of its components? The laptop came with everything, but the charger and the hard drive, but looks to be in good condition. Any help for a noob would be great!
We have an IBM TS3200 Tape Library that has LTO5 drives. We purchased LTO6 tapes for it. Are they compatible?
Our storage backup software solution does recognize them as LTO6 drives and scratch tapes. Will the library be able to read/write to these tapes?
A very good friend hunted down one of these keyboards for me on ebay. I noticed some wear on one of the letters and research shows that the original keys don't use dye-sublimation so I'm wondering where I could find some compatible keycaps that are preferably double-shot or dye-sublimated as I'd love to use this thing.
Just as the title says... there is a spesific game I am interested in.
EDIT: REPOST FROM A COMMENT I MADE BELOW:
>It was the DSKCHG issue! The drive only supported a ready signal, but I forced the pin high using a jumper cable for it to assert a permanent DSKCHG ready status, and I was able to then format a 360k floppy to 720k using the drive! All it took was a TSR and some probing with a multimeter to find a stable 5v source accessible from the topside of the board.
>
>The drive itself has no jumper to switch between READY and DSKCHG, which is why I had to use a cable to patch it in myself.
>
>On top of that, I've learned that the top read head's retention spring is pretty much dead, so I have to apply a small amount of pressure to the read head for it to properly read at all.
I know that they were more commonly used with CP/M systems, but the only computers I have with floppy drive interfaces are x86 machines, and I'd like to figure out whether or not the quad-density MPI Model 92 drive I have actually works or not.
I was able to get it to at least detect by configuring it to be seen as a 1.2MB drive (rather than the 720k that quad-density actually support), but it fails to recognize any disk actually being present in either the BIOS or in an OS when I've inserted a 360k low-density floppy.
For now, I'm going with the assumption that the failure to recognize a disk being inserted is due to incompatibility with the floppy drive controller, as outside of that issue, the drive seems to be in fully-working order still, and has clean heads. The jumpers are configured correctly according to its manual as well.
Thoughts? I'm half-tempted to believe that one of the 74-series logic chips has gone bad, but I have no way to test that idea aside from pulling the chips and testing one-by-one.
https://preview.redd.it/zs2vgebkf1w61.jpg?width=1946&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5d65186dac6eb6c1be85208d09512e353fbd925e
https://preview.redd.it/5vny7xbkf1w61.jpg?width=1812&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9c9ac4f78ffd68ba47c203272e35e00cf00dcabb
In the olden days, when buying a pc, the important thing to ask was how compatible the hardware was to the IBM standard. As time went on, this became less important. At this time, I was a country level expert on the IBM AS/400 and we shared the floor with the IBM customer support line. One of my interests (not part of my job) was these new fangled pc's. One fine day, we received a call from a future customer which was handed to me.
$cust: Hi, I want to find out if your pc's are IBM compatible.
$me: Sir, IBM are the brand that everyone is trying to be compatible with.
$cust: But are they IBM compatible?
$me: Of course they are, they are IBM.
$cust: Ok, do they run all the IBM compatible software?
$me: I cant make any guarantees about that, but this is the system that most software writers use to create their software.
$cust: Why cant you make any guarantees?
$me: We don't write most of the software and we can only suggest that our system has the highest chance of working properly with this software.
$cust: So, if I have a problem, will you support it?
$me: We support all our hardware and operating system software. We cannot support software that we didn't write and have no technical skills with.
$cust: So, you wont support the software, your competitor's say that they will.
$me: I cant respond to that, I can only say what we do.
$cust: Hang's up.
$me: goes to next AS/400 support call.
(This is the short version of this call. It actually took over thirty minutes and several repeats before we got to the end)
Hello r/mm
I'm looking for an IBM Beamspring keyboard. No matter the condition. Also, I'm looking to buy some keycaps that are compatible with IBM Model M/F keyboards. ISO layout keycaps are preferred but I'm interested in buying ANSI layout keycaps too.
European sellers preferred but I'm willing to pay for international shipping too.
Hit me up with your offers! Thanks for stopping by!
Hello, I am new to the retro-laptop scene and got an IBM A21m Thinkpad. It's missing its hard drive and I am looking to repair it and use it as a retro gaming rig. However, I am unsure as to what to look out for and where to start lol. I have found the manual for the A2 series and have begun reading about the parts, but I have a question regarding the A21m's capabilities. Can it run Windows 3.1? Which operating system (Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, or Windows 95) would be best for running old games? What are some things I should look out for when I take apart the laptop to test some of its components? The laptop came with everything, but the charger and the hard drive, but looks to be in good condition. Any help for a noob would be great!
