IBM

Well I've gone and done it, I spent 4hrs in the car to go pickup a Baby S/36 system, with host PC, monitor, keyboard, 8 Binders of manuals, 2 boxes of disks, and spares.

So far I've powered on the 5170 to be greeted with a 161 error, Going to need to find a battery and reconfigure that before going any futher.

The 5170 is loaded with:

• 1x 5.25, 1x3.5 Floppy
• 1x ST238R HDD
• 2x Serial cards
• 1x MDA/Parallel
• 1x Memory card
• 1x S/36 "Driver Board"
• 1x FDD/RLL controller

The 5364 is loaded with:

• 1x 5.25 Floppy
• 2x 40MB ESDI?

I also got some spare cards for the 5364, Looks like a processor card, Memory card, and RTC card?

I'll take some pictures later if there's interest.

OMG.

Pics!!!

I had to look that up, but man, nice piece of kit! Have a pile of fun with it.

Pictures as requested!
Documentation and Disks:


Driver and Receiver cards:




5170 System:


5364 System:


There are a lot more detailed photos of a 5364 located here:
http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer/IBM/5364/01/

morpheus256 wrote: Pictures as requested!

Just in case you were wondering, photobucket sucks dead donkey balls ... bloated, rotting, hairy, stinking maggot-laden dead donkey balls.

hamei wrote: Just in case you were wondering, photobucket sucks dead donkey balls ... bloated, rotting, hairy, stinking maggot-laden dead donkey balls.

Hahaha! I was going to use my Google drive but didn't wan't to chew up space.

Found my DIN->PS2 keyboard adapter, hopefully tomorrow I'll have a battery pack put together so I can get the cmos settings configured and then see what happens.

Wow, that looks like some nice piece of retro kit. Again congrats!

It looks like a great system. It's too bad the embedded Photobucket pics in this thread only show about 66% of the great system.

Seriously, I'm jealous. Can't wait to see it in operation.

morpheus256 wrote: Hahaha! I was going to use my Google drive but didn't wan't to chew up space.

Google is dead rotting maggot-filled hairy donkey balls

Right below the text entry box is " Filename" with "Browse" to the right of it. Browse will open a file selection window on your local host. Choose the file, then "Add the file." If you want to add some notation, on the left is "File Comment."

If you use "place inline" after that, then you can arrange the files however you wish. Otherwise I think it just dumps them at the bottom of the message. You can resize to a rational size if you like, otherwise the php software will do it automatically, with a "click to full size" option, which can be nice for closeups of circuit boards or whatever.

The images are not easy for me to see without having to disable my firefox security / privacy extensions.

But now I did that so I can see the pics, I have not seen this system before, so I was surprised at the black coated metal on such a vintage computer. I just read that the fullsize model was 300 kilos?

How heavy, roughly, is your baby/36? It looks like a normal desktop computer case so I wouldn't think it would weigh that much. Can you carry it on your own comfortably? I just took delivery of an ultra45 today and although it is only 27 kg I think I must have lifted it incorrectly as my back is a bit aching now that I am in bed.

Just a quick update:

After rebuilding the battery, entering the cmos settings in basic and booting the 5170 it became very apparent the ST-238R was dying, I created copied everything (S36, PCS36,VDISK) from the drive minus dos onto 2x 1.44mb floppies and have everything backed up needed to restore onto a new drive, I have a ST-4038 drive at work I'm planning on using.

Questions:
Once the ST-4038 is installed, and the type (20) is configured, do I need to do a LLF or change the interleave? I don't know what the status is of the drive as it was pulled from a system many years ago.

Once I have the 5170 straightened out, what are the correct procedures for powering on and off of the 5364? I can't imagine that at the end of the day you could just flip them both off and expect the file-system to be too happy.

I fully plan on taking images of all the Disks for the 5170 and the 5364, the only problem I see and correct me if I'm wrong, which I likely am is the 5364 was the only S36 to use a 5-1/4 drive, and the format of the disks was not PC compatible. I'm not even sure the drive in the 5364 is a standard PC drive?

Thanks!

Oh, that's really nimble. I've only come close to this version:


Out of curiosity, what does the badge on the 5170 say?

Update,

I located an MFM controller for the ST4038 for the 5170, Installed, configured the drive type, LLF, HLF, installed dos and restored my backup. Back in business.

Turned on the 5364 for the first time..... Let it boot? (floppy light was on for a long time), and could see communication of some sort by selecting option 2.
Alt+ESC, and select station 1, Blinking terminal cursor in the top right, and the terminal info along the bottom. That's it nothing more. I never see the user login screen. select option 1 from the service screen I can change my service level from Normal to service, Password=password but not much more I can see or do. selecting options 3,4,5 result in: "reload the s/36 attachment program"

At this point, Either I'm doing something wrong (which is likely) or it's a big paperweight...

The 5170 just has a standard 5170 badge, nothing special there unfortunately.

I vaguely recall being here with my 5364 when I first started with it... but there was nothing wrong, it was just waiting for me to do something specific that I can't remember now. I will have to dig mine out from the shop to try again and see if I can remember something.

There were no "special" machines for front-ending a 5364. You could use any machine that meets the (trivial) requirements.

I have the same setup - 5364 + 5170. Acquired it around 10 years ago and have never attempted to fire it up. Have manuals and software as well. Did you ever have any luck getting yours going?

I recently acquired a 5364 System/36 and have finally gotten it back in working order.

Unfortunely the guy I acquired the machine from did not have any manuals or media.

I have the system IPLing and have a 5160 connected.

I have a SDLC card and a modem installed in the PC which I understand can be shared by the 5364. I need the communications software.

The system is also missing the RPG II development programs and Query. I did not see the DFU library when I catalogued F1.

I am seeking help in finding a copy of the SSP OS and accompaning utilities and development systems.

I would greatly appreciate any help in rescuing this vintage machine.

I do have a few contacts with some old IBM SEs I am going to reach out to about the SSP media as well as the Basic and Assembler. If I have any success I will post in this thread.

Jimmy

JimmyWTucker at Y a h o o