I would have reprogrammed the 5170 with an axe if I'd faced all of these frustrations!

IBM PCs machines are notoriously non-IBM PC compatible.

"601-Diskette Error" No doubt Adrian was seeing this error in his sleep for days 😕

You know that one Simpsons episode with Homer trying to assemble a grill and he runs at it screaming, impaling it with an umbrella? That would have been me with this computer troubleshooting nightmare.

Adrian was THIS close to return this computer to the dumpster whence it came 😅 Great job fixing this up!

BTW, your final solution is exactly what we would have done in the day, that is, upgrade the BIOS at the same time the modern disk drive was installed. I know that AT is a pain, but it's a magnificent machine and it defined the modern PC world.

Yes. Let the hate flow. Feel the power it can give you.

I remember from the old days, that to overcome the 1024 cylinders limit you would use the LBA addressing, which was multiplying the heads on expense of the cyls, to keep the overall capacity unchanged.

PS - Besides the 'Dead parts tell no tales' t-shirt, I think you need a '601-Diskette Error' sticker. ;)

Flashbacks from working on PC's from this era. The frustration is real.

Your struggles reminds me of some of the struggles my father would often run into when he fixed pcs as a side business (his day job being installing and repairing sun computers for Sun) and he would always be in a bad mood if he'd had to deal with any of the following: amstrad computers, Packard Bell computers, compaq computers, IBM computers and problems that turned out to be yet another problem with oracle (at work, oracle had a rather bad reputation amongst sun engineers as they'd always blame it on the Sun hardware when 9/10 times it was oracle).

Adrian's struggles brought back the nostalgic feelings of what it was like trying to troubleshoot PCs back in the day, but much more difficult because the likelyhood a that a replacement component is defective is roughly 50÷ 😄

I know LGR was having issues with setting up a 1.44M drive back when he added one to his 5170, he actually used GSetup to set the drive in the BIOS but I think he also had a later BIOS and/or different version of GSetup. Otherwise I love the look and sound of the AT, glad you were able to rescue it!

27:12 That cut into another cut made me imagine you had some choice words 😀

For totally unknown cards, taking a picture and reverse image-searching for it may be worth a shot.

Glad you showed IDEDIAG! I have shared that with so many people that are having a hard time using a CF card because they don't know what to use for the geometry. Great little tool.

Don’t feel bad for modernizing this PC. This is the exact reason I don’t fool with old computers - but love to see other people do it!

I like going back and wathcing this over and over. Reminds me of the proplems of the olden days. I started working on computers professionally in 1993. We still had lot of customers with the older machines trying to upgrade them and use them. I really bugs me now, because over the years I upgraded whole companies, and I literally sent 1000's of these off to recyclers.

And this video demonstrates why I preferred the Compaq DeskPro 286's over the 5170, although I did prefer a Model M over the standard Compaq keyboards. Never had any of these issues with a DeskPro 286 and they ran faster overall than the 5170s

I had one of those on my desk at work in the mid 90s for the express purpose of managing the company telephone switch. The PC people said they hated that machine more than any.

@Adrian If I recall correctly, the BIOS settings only apply to on-board ports. Add-on cards didn't rely on BIOS settings to operate. Early in your video, when you first connected the 1.44 stiffy drive, it's LED came on during post, even though it wasn't configured yet. I may be wrong, but it's possible those BIOS settings only apply to motherboards with on-board IDE/FDC interfaces. What I would suggest, is that you completely disable the IDE/FDC ports in the (original IBM) BIOS and check if the ISA cards detects the drives automatically. One interesting thing I noticed, is that the BIOS "swap drives" setting seemed to make a difference. But then again, the first 1.44 stiffy drive didn't work with that setting. It could be that it's actually operating in 1.2MB mode, which in most cases will read/write to the disk, but you'll run into corruption issues. I would love to see the system work with its original BIOS and controller cards 😊

I have vivid memories of my dad trying to install a 1.44 MB floppy drive on an XT that he had and I definitely remember that he ultimately gave up on it.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane! When I got hired to my first programming job while finishing my master's degree, I asked the boss/owner if I could come in over the weekend and familiarize myself with the system I would be using. I had never touched an IBM PC! I read over the reference books with awe. That's a great memory :) Good work! Gotta be persistent!!

I wouldn't worry so much about the colors of the drive matching. Not even IBM did that. I've got a PS/2 in my basement that has one drive in beige like the case and the other drive in white. Delivered like that from the factory.

Your video reminds me of the very early 1990's when I switched from Commodore machines to PC clones. BIOS and hardware compatibility nightmares. As I recall, when PCI came in things got way better.

Adrian, many thanks for this video. I enjoyed an hour of retro PC maintenance and deep dive into the struggles of the early PC era. Keep up the good work and again many thanks!

try FDISK /MBR on CompactFlash drives that do not boot first. Sometimes something goes weird with the MBR on compact flash cards.

33:37 Nice chip extraction tool. I recently bought one because of your usage of it on this channel.

This was a fine video. Don’t worry about anything. Always enjoy watching and learning from you

The problems you encountered are similar to ones I’m having, so this is very helpful to me. Thanks for making this video!

I just found your channel and saw the three videos for the 5170. What an introduction to your channel. OMG, the amount of frustration you put up with trying to solve that 601 error. I miss the old systems sometimes, but NOT the frustrations of configuring hardware to work properly.

I am glad to see someone post their struggles, instead of cutting together a perfect repair :)

55:58 Wow. It's been decades since I've done a low level format. I'd bet that not many folks would understand what a low level format does; its important for everyone to know that a low level format is not something that you want to do with today's 'modern' hard drives....

One of the best videos on the channel (even if you don't think so yourself, Adrian)! Brings back so much memories! Oh!

Nice job on this one! I would have been beating my head on the wall by day 2 or 3. But you're an unstoppable force when it comes to rebuilding these machines!

Back in the day I worked for IBM. I was given a 5170 for my desk. I remember adding memory and a 3270 adapter for mainframe access. I also added a 3.5 inch drive as the 1.2 meg drive was compatible with nothing. I certainly did not run into all your problems. But, I had access to all the proper period parts. Ain’t retro great.

You seem to be experiencing all the same issues and pitfalls that I fell in to when I was trying to setup my 5170 clone. Glad you were able to figure stuff out! Thanks for the info about that Quadtel BIOS. I ended up using a different Phoenix BIOS than you used and just dealt with the disk error, so now I got more options, awesome.

Love your videos since the begining, great work Adrian!

When you get around to working on the original 5170 power supply, don't forget the load resistor for the 12V rail, since you don't have a big old full-height MFM hard drive installed to draw enough amps on the 12V rail, and the power supply will shut off.

You deserve a medal for perseverance

You my hero I wouldn't dare go that far! the effort and the accomplishments I do salute! :)

Why are 25+ year old computers so fascinating to me? I was born in 1991.

i have really enjoyed watching this, and your problem solving ! great work and patience !

The three greatest computer industrial designs: IBM PC/XT/AT, Apple ][ and MacBook Air. PS/2 was bumped by the PC/XT/AT in my top three simply because IBM tried to close the gate after the horse had bolted.

Re: 601 - The original IBM combo card must have BOTH the hard drive AND floppy base IO jumpers set to default (primary) to satisfy the IBM BIOS. The previous owner perhaps changed the HDC base IO to accommodate the hard card?

By the way: It's easy to overclock the AT, just swap the clock crystal for a higher frequency. I used to run mine at 10Mhz and at one point had 12.5 MB memory in it for testing purposes. At the time the memory was so expensive that it was a lot more than the PC At itself, and the AT was not cheap either. All that memory was for customer network servers running Novell NetWare 286, one of the few things that could actually use the 286 and memory to its full capacity.

I can feel your frustration! Id love to see a disassembly and analysis of the 601 error. But the RPN calculator made me smile.

I love waching videos like this. all that troubleshooting and trying to make such an old hardware warking.... Just love it I wish I was able to play around with such great machiness as well Great job. Look forward to seing part 3 :)

I really loved this one . Just goes to show that even the best get challenged every now and then .

been trying to track one of these down for years...finally got one for a small fortune but man, what a good looking machine!

A little testing with QEMU and 4 MB RAM: the "Largest EXE Size" in MS-DOS 4.01 was 574992 bytes, but in PC DOS 5.0 (probably because it made use of XMS) was 636816. Confirming that even on 286 you're likely to get more efficient use of RAM from 5 than 4. (With 6.22 it's 607872 - still better than 4 but 5 may be your best choice.)

I think this could work as well with the CF card: - Install your favourite BIOS - Reformat the CF card with the 1570 having its new BIOS installed - transfer the contents back on the CF, careful not to use an image for this. The card was working with the AMI BIOS, so that indicates a problem with the geometry match-up. And that could be solved by reformatting the card on the configuration (i.e: disk controller, system BIOS and system motherboard) you're actually going to use it with. This should _always_ be your first step in troubleshooting this issue. Even some 386 boards I encountered with the exact same issue (drive would read small files fine, not larger files; drive would not boot) had it vanish after doing this.

I remember those days. It was bad enough when compatible hardware was available, although the hardware did get better for several years even after the 386 came out in 1987. Once the 386 achieved dominance, and especially once the 486 landed, there wasn't much further boundary-pushing on the 286 front. Frankly I wouldn't try to put any IDE solution in a 5170, not even one using spinning rust. (SCSI and RLL are certainly fair game though.) If I can't get hardware appropriate to the time, then I'd just have no hard drive at all, even if that makes the machine essentially useless for more than games. IDE did not exist when this machine came out, so if the machine balks at using IDE, I would prefer to keep it stock and lose the functionality because _none of these machines are particularly useful_ in reality. The same is true of the 1.44 MB drive. If the hardware wasn't amenable to supporting it, I wouldn't install one no matter how convenient it might be, because that's just not how this machine would have ever worked in its useful lifespan. If I want a 5170, I want a 5170. If I want a machine that represents a souped-up 286 rig, then I'll make one out of clone hardware that isn't so buggy. But this machine is now neither. The only thing really original at this point is the motherboard and its 6 MHz clock rate, which is a negative, so basically we've ended up with the worst of both worlds -- a slow 286 that doesn't behave anything like a stock 5170. I admit that stock 5170 behavior is infuriating, but I feel that if that's what you're building, those are the constraints you have to work with. Otherwise it's just another 286 build in an IBM case, at which point you'd enjoy using it a lot more if it had a 12 or 16 MHz clone board in it instead. Once I established that I would never be able to enjoy using a period-correct 5170 because it's buggy and slow, I'd get it minimally working with as much original hardware as possible, and only period-correct replacements when needed. No modern workarounds. Then I'd send it off to a museum or collection, and build myself a clone rig that actually works with the stuff I keep around. Sadly, this build ends up being neither of those things, especially given the amount of work involved.

Ahhhhhhh love the idea of the CF reader led pins !!!!

Remember these times, when I need to mess with new HDD Head and cylinders settings in BIOS.. 😂 Nostalgic, especially, when these settings wasn't on HDD sticker.. Yeah, BIOS issues may take time to figure it out.. Try, just for fun, connecting IDE CD ROM drive.. I think, that BIOS wouldn't recognize it (back in day's, I run in that issue)..

Now you are seeing why Intel dumped the '286 so fast. Here's a fun fact, in order to use all the memory you have to go into protected mode, which is incompatabe with DOS. You can't go back to "DOS mode" once you start Protected Mode without halting the CPU. The 386 can go back and forth so you can use things like use things like DPMI to use all the ram you have for DOS.

You have more patience than I do, that’s for sure. Nice job on getting it working.

Great work Adrian

Old computers are like old cars they need a lot of time to get them working and the parts are hard to find and it comes to a point you have to use newer parts that are more reliable

Well, I have to commend you for sticking with this one, I would have probably stopped and used this one for parts long before your time into it. :) Glad I was on the Amiga back then, fjew. :)

This takes me back. My first impression of troubleshooting PCs felt like this coming from Amiga which "just work". Though in hindsight my opinion was very biased, Amigas can be just as frustrating when you're dealing with obscure problems.

When I see an RPN calculator, I know I've found a friend. :-)

"BRITISH RAIL LOCAL SYSTEMS".... The place where I used to work maintained British Rail's systems for them... that very machine has probably been touched by some of my old colleagues.

I would have pulled all my hair out dealing with those issues.

I think this is my favorite cover picture for your videos so far. Like, "what?"

Man that thing was quite alot of trouble. Thanks so much for the video love watching them!!

The screen capture is really nice Overall cool diagnostic work, love writing my code to these

What an epic tale. I have had similar problems with a Pentium II based machine that just did not want to cooperate. In fact it's still acting oddly and I know I need to replace the floppy drive on it. Honestly I really admire Adrian's patience on this. I have a bit of a temper and I really do rage at these things, which is absurd I know. I need to remember Adrian's chuckle at the end of this video to recognise that it's just an old computer, be patient with it.

Good job. Thanks for the lengthy video!

Funny to know that "All in Wonder" was something different before it was the Graphics Card + Tuner combo that associated with that name when growing up.

What is still amazing me is your inexhaustible patiente. Perhaps because you don't take what expressions you do with your face with every issue, but your voice sounds so calm. I would be hammering some things! :D

Great job! I had the same problems with my 5170. But somehow loved the challenge..

thanks for sharing all the work. great video..

I just realized youtube hasn't fed your videos to my feed in a month. I was like dang it's been a while since I've seen Adrian. Hopefully binging your recent vids fixes it lol

12:05 I love the way the 5¼" green diskette teleports over to meet its 3½" cousins.

Remember when the 386 really had no target market. Radio Shack did a business computer with 8” drives I think, the lexicons in military were similar. They repackaged the pop 11/3 in case for “potable” artillery hub settings. I got to play forward observer and watch the fire for effect rounds landed.😀

Trying to fix a 35 years old IBM at midnight...hmm you are a braver man than me!

Best video ever 😍 what a story to get it running :)

""Recent" *From 2000* God, I love this community.

The ones you struggle on the most become your favorite ones

Absolutely compelling viewing. I'm sure we have all gone down a similar rabbit hole and it can drive you mad. The difference is that you actually managed to solve the problems. Fab. Don't worry about the purity thing. I think the purity police allow the swapping of peripherals for operational reasons :-) The motherboard, CPU and case are still there. BTW, you have put me off looking for a 286! :-)

Great follow up video. Would love to see a workshop tour video some day!

great video not to long, just great you did not give up

When you get around to testing the power supply, make sure you meet minimum load requirement for it to regulate properly. It needs 7A on the 5V and 2.5A on the 12V. For AT computers configured with no hard disk, IBM would install a 50W dummy load.

Great job as ever Adrian!! This time it was really an odyssey...but you did it!! (Y)

Hey Adrian... did you notice how there are 2 sets of holes on AT drive rails? the reason is, that "half height bay" for a second hard drive can actually be used for a full height hard drive on a single floppy system. You attach the rails in the second hole so the drive sits further back, allowing you to put the metal bracket and that blank drive slot cover back in place. Also, AT's never directly supported 1.44 floppies in the bios. You could use them on 5170's, but in order to be able to properly, you 1: had to tell setup it was a 720K drive. Dos would be able to boot from it, read to it, and even write to it. HOWEVER, in order to format it, you needed to use driver.sys, which was a device driver included with dos that would let you tell dos how many sectors, heads and tracks a drive had. (yes, it was literally named driver.sys) optionally, later versions of dos also let you specify the number of heads, sectors and tracks directly in the format command. If you did not do either of the above, when you formatted a disk, it would only format to 720K. (it would assume 80 tracks, 9 sectors instead of 18 sectors) 1.44 meg drives were not introduced for IBM systems until the PS/2s came out. And IBM simultaneously discontinued the 5170s when that happened. So there was never a BIOS for the 5170 that supported 1.44 meg drives. The bios used with the motherboards that have the 256k chips instead of the 128K piggyback chips (the third gen bios, the one you tried using) will support 720K (the 6mhz version was used in 5170-239 ATs, whereas the 8mhz was the 5170-339, both shipped with 512K, a seagate st-4038 full height 30 meg drive (bios type 8) Fun fact - there is a difference later revs between the 6mhz bios and the 8mhz bios. There is a timing check on the 6mhz one to make sure it is not running at 8mhz. This was because people were buying 6mhz systems for several hundred dollars less and then swapping out the 12mhz crystal for a 16mhz one. Most of the time a 6mhz 286 could handle 8mhz. If not, it was still cheaper to swap it out for an 8mhz part than it was to purchase the system as an 8mhz machine. Anyway, however, that 601 error you got was not a bios compatibility issue. Post should just see it as an 80 track drive and assume it is either a 1.2 or 720K. My theory is that Gsetup has options in it that the bios itself does not support, and you were getting the 601 because of some corruption in the bios ram due to using gsetup. Some extended bios ram byte, one AT setup does not set or use, was set to some value by gsetup, and it is confusing the POST because the IBM bios does not know what to make of it. Just a theory. Could be wrong. To test this, I'd suggest wiping bios ram (IIRC, there is actually a jumper to do this on the MB, or you could use that basic program you mention.), putting IBM bios back in, and try using ONLY IBM AT setup, and not even touching GSetup.. edit: also... that stand alone floppy drive card you tried... was that an 8 bit card? if so, bare in mind that these did not have the transfer rate needed to support either 1.2 or 1.44 meg drives. Those will work with 360 and 720k drives only. (although there are special 8 bit floppy controllers with buffering between the drive and the bus, which also have their own bios, that will allow the use of 1.2 or 1.44 meg drives on 8 bit systems... these are specialty cards, though. many of these also supported 4 floppies)

Jesus Christ. You have the patience of a saint. I would've given up on it and not touched the machine ever again.

Welcome to the good old days :D Struggle with such Problems each day in the past! It was the time of "Plug'n'Pray" :D

My but this takes me back I was 8080, 8086 and later 80286 BIOS programmer back in the day for IBM, Victor and then Apricot but then I found a life and drove trucks so much more fun 😂

cue the mail call mini liquor bottles for adrian's well-being from generous patrons for having to go through all this for us!

Who cares for purity when the funcionality is more important. You did a smart move using this fancy BIOS.

like LGR proved with his 5170, they work perfectly fine as long as you have the original hardware for it, or some that's close enough to match the original, but as soon as you want to go beyond that or replace any of it the machine no longer plays along. I've never used any original IBM PCs before the PS/2 and with those the biggest issue was MCA and the complete lack of hardware available for that bus

What a monster job. lol! Great success!

So many wonderful childhood memories/nightmares of diving into the innards of my 386 - setting pins, jiggling connections, manually entering hardware info into the BIOS... And when none of that worked, walking to the nearest computer store for advice.

So many issues.... Makes for the best videos :)

I remember when scan converters took up five 19” rack units and cost $30,000.

great vid , i have a early first gen AT comp with the orig hard drive , works good at first after setup , then as the harddrive is run for a bit than it cant read right , going too look for a seagate 20 meg . first gen bios dont alow for much higher . happy to just restore it to original 84 specs

Have you heard of Compaq MS-DOS 3.31? It's a special release of MS-DOS 3.3 with only the big disk support from DOS 4+ added. If you're tight on memory but still need big disks, or if you just want to avoid DOS 4.01 alltogether due to its reputation, this is the version to use.

Adrian, I like the giggle at the end...

My 5170 had an original IBM 128K card in it, so it had the full 640K. I sold the whole thing for spare parts a few years ago, after I turned it on (with the lid off) and it went bang in a shower of orange sparks - a shorted tantalum cap on the serial board. I removed the serial board and it still wouldn't power on, presumably another shorted cap, but I didn't have the time or space to repair it.