IBM 5170 PC/AT Upgrades

 

For the last few days, I set aside the IBM 5160 PC/XT and put the 5170 PC/AT back onto the bench. I got another AST Advantage! card with 2MB on it. I also got the IBM Model M with silver badge and status indicator LEDs as a permanent match to this PC.

I added one row of 256 megabit chips from another AST card to the newly acquired one and put it in. It has the daughtercard in the picture above. The remaining Advantage card has 256K on it and it's bolstering the machine at present but hogging a 16 bit slot.

I moved some cards around. The IDE hard drive controller is at the far left with a CompactFlash card with lots of software on it. I tried to use a new bracket mounted CF card holder but it didn't want to play. I swapped the modern produced 8-bit Ethernet card for a vintage 3COM 509B 16-bit model I found in my storage unit. With that, only one 8-bit slot remains. I found a Vortex2 2500 card in storage too, and that might replace the least-used memory expansion card.

Networking isn't working yet, I'll look to do that later when I get a wired network up and running (I have plans there).

With things sorted well to this point, I'll button it up again and resume with the IBM PC/XT.