IBM PS/2 Model 8530-021

This computer has been retired after enjoying a 25-year career as a glorified PLC for a plasma etching system.

[CondoreComputing]

It's pretty cool to see these old machines still in service and reliable, with my experience with hard drives is that it's usually not continuous use that kills them, it's the power cycles

[CobraGTXNoS]

I love your Goosebumps reference. It made me chuckle.

[vwestlife]

The hard drive uses a proprietary 8-bit IDE-XT interface. Those drives are hard to find and are not replaceable with a standard IDE drive unless you disable the built-in controller and use an ISA card, so it's good that the original hard drive is working fine. The video on the Model 30 has MCGA graphics, a stripped-down version of VGA which doesn't support EGA modes and can only do 640x480 in monochrome. But it can do the 256-color 320x200 VGA mode used by a lot of DOS games.

[Halterung]

The product lasts forever, the wear parts last forever, the company is still in business
This reminds me of my 1968 Philips EL3302 cassette player
The player itself works perfectly to this very day, the rubber belts and pinch roller is still good and Philips itself is still in business

I love devices like these that are built to last and fulfill this concept.

[bmwrijder]

The IBM PS/2 model 30 8086 version uses MCGA graphics adapter.
MCGA is a striped down VGA card that can display some VGA modes but not all of them.

I had also the same PS/2 model when i was a kid but mine had a Hard drive that was bad.
I toke the hard drive 1 hour to complete the formatting because of all the bad sectors it had.

[lmull]

Wow, that machine is a trooper! The only part of a PS/2 I've ever had the pleasure of using is a keyboard.

[Lachlant]

I suppose this machine is one of the reasons why people said you never got fired for buying or using IBM equipment.  I love the sound of the hard disk in that computer, especially when it spins up.  

[catgirl_eva]

I didn't need to go to bed anyway.

[turnermedman]

after I stopped using micro computers, this was my first pc. had it over 5 years till it got dropt. until then. never went wrong. great system

[cr]

40:30 You can't plug in a VGA monitor to a CGA port. Voltage representations of the color for the current dot to be placed on screen are completely different.

If I had to guess, perhaps this is simply a CGA controller (Motorola 6845) and color ROM run thru a DAC to create VGA voltages?

[THEtechknight]

I can recall when these things were somewhat modern, we delt with the same headaches then, as we are now, with floppy disks.

[HazelTheHare]

6:09
That way your face came in at that angle made me smile

[FubarMike]

is the 8086 the predecessor to the 80286?  My highschool had a machine that etches things into wood that was dependent on an old machine like this but it looked like it didn't have long to live.  It was just sitting in the open in the back of a shop where all sorts of saw dust and debris could be sucked into it and the screen had a permanent silhouette of some dos based gui menu program stuck on it.  I can't remember the brand of computer probably one of those off brands

[WaybackTECH]

25 years young and still working like new.  It would be interesting to see how long the new system that replaced this lasts before its first melt down. I am guessing 25 years will be quite a stretch for any modern computer.

[andljoy]

Some machines are just built to never die, most of the PS2 line are tanks they go on and on and on. I bet you that thing lasts another 25 years easy. I have IBM keyboards form the 70s and 80s ( model F 122key and older beam spring terminal keyboards) and they still work just fine to this day, stuff was built better back then. However you do get some more modern stuff that will keep on going, Compaq Dekpro EN SFF P3, they are also built like tanks and will never fail, i have one in my server rack at home right now for when i need windows XP, you never know when you need a real serial port or a floppy drive.

[FuzyK]

I forgot exactly what they were making, but on How It's Made, I saw a machine that was still controlled by an Apple IIe.

[Trvor]

Its not CGA, its MCGA. CGA is not compatible with VGA monitors, if you were to get a 9 pin to 15 pin adapter to hook up a CGA card to a VGA monitor, you'd probably destroy the monitor.

[thetechiesworld]

A friend of mine had one of these machines. He didn't want it, and I was going to take off his hands. Unfortunately, someone else beat me to it. Kicking myself for not acting sooner. These are great machines. 

[Saaj]

At our local roman museum they still have IBM PS2s running windows 3.1 that run those interactive screens

[DaltonTk]

Thank you for making this video! My dad gave me his old IBM PS2 with original monitor, keyboard, microsoft mouse and tons of software. I literally have no clue how to even boot DOS other than to put the original diskette into the drive and turn it on. Im going to copy the contents of the original DOS diskette to the hard drive and then boot from that! and run PCTOOLS!