IBM AT 5170 - The most beautiful PC in the world

In this video I am going to give you a high level overview of the interiour and exteriour of my IBM AT 5170 machine. In my view the most beautiful machine IBM every created. Paired with an IBM EGA monitor, lets explore the machine and see what we can do with it.

0:00 - Introduction
01:02 - Exteriour
02:40 - Keyboard
03:00 - Front
04:22 - Back
05:45 - EGA Monitor (5154)
07:12 - Starting her up
08:36 - Some games
10:24 - Some apps
12:22 - Opening her up
15:43 - The motherboard
17:06 - The CPU
19:25 - The expansion cards
22:47 - A real hard drive Vs flash storage
25:00 - Outro

#IBM #PC #Retro

[olivierpericat]

This video and title are the most exact and accurate ever ! And this is a proud owner of 2 AT 5170 that says this !! :) Great video again !!

[chriswareham]

That case is a beautiful piece of industrial design, pure functional elegance!

[retro-futuristicengineer]

Very nice one. On the CPU clock: Right next to the CPU you see the crystal oscillator at 16MHz. The CPU runs at half crystal clock. So a 16MHz Crystal makes a 8MHz CPU Clock. My Headland 286 board uses a 32MHz crystal for a 16MHz CPU. The 286-8 runs at 2/3 CPU Clock (1/3 crystal clock), so it will run on 5.something MHz. On my 16MHz, it would run at 1/3 Crystal/2/3 CPU meaning little above 10MHz. My 287-8 can still handle this but I put a little heatsink on it.
However, I assume if you put a 32MHz Crystal in this board, you will massively overclock the ISA bus, as it is coupled to the CPU clock. Enhanced ATs like with NEAT or Headland Chipset use CPU clock dividers, so e.g. a 16MHz 286 on a Neat will again work perfectly with an 8MHz ISA Bus with a CPU/2 clock divider

[angieandretti]

My own IBM 5170 has been my Winter project - and I agree about it being one of the most beautiful PC's ever built! Mine has the original MFM HDD still intact and working w/ its original controller card! I also have one 5.25" 1.2MB FDD and one 1.44MB GoTek connected and configured via the original IBM BIOS. I did add a 512MB CF Card via XTIDE as secondary storage. 6MB RAM takes forever to check during POST but it's lovely to watch. Best part is I found an "Intel SnapIn 386" upgrade board on eBay, in the original box! It connects to the mobo via the original CPU socket and provides a 20MHz 386sx plus 16KB onboard cache. The speed of the system in most tasks still feels more like a fast 286 than a real 386 due mainly to the slow RAM access speeds, but it can run everything that requires the 386 architecture - which had quickly become a sticking-point for me after restoring this machine. I didn't realize how many things, even so many drivers, require at least a 386-class CPU! I've owned an XT-class PC and a Dell 386, but had very little experience with the weird in-between architecture that is the 286. The easy fix (suggested by many on Vogons) would have been a 386 motherboard swap but I really wanted to keep the IBM heritage in my IBM! For me it's a functional piece of art and I worked very hard to preserve certain aspects like the quirky original IBM BIOS. That crystal next to the CPU does set the system clock speed, but you're also correct that the IBM BIOS found on 8MHz AT's performs a "speed check" during POST and will hang the system if it's "too fast." The QuadTel BIOS upgrade fixes this - and eliminates the need for a "setup program" to configure BIOS settings - but that's taking too much IBM out of this IBM for my taste. I did read about hacked versions of the original IBM BIOS that simply bypass the speed check - and I'd love to experiment with that option if you ever come across one! My 386 CPU still derives its clock from that original crystal (16/2=8, 8*2.5=20) and I'd love to see what would happen with, say, a 20MHz crystal and faster memory chips! Fun times :)

[denniseldridge]

I am one who came of age in the computer industry at the very time the IBM PC, TX, AT, et al were also coming of age. I actually worked for the local IBM dealership, so I was tasked with fixing these things, along with the PS/2 line (this was the late 80s-early 90s). I didn't think of them as anything particularly special, except that the build quality and keyboard were exceptional.

FFWD to today, and I lust after those early machines, and I'd give anything for an AT, with either the original keyboard or M series.

Edit: I fell even deeper in love with this machine while watching an episode of Rumpole of the Baily, shot in the mid-80's. On scene at the front desk of a hotel had a very prominently displayed AT with green screen in all it's glory, only for half a second, but enough to make me feel very nostalgic lol.

[thomasburns]

A very nice IBM you have there. Back in the 80's I maintained a bumch of these running AutoCAD. They came configured with a Hercules monochrome video card, and an Artist Graphics video card that supported a resolution of 1024 x 768. A dual monitor configuration back in the 80's. Dos on the Hercules monitor and the AutoCAD graphics on the color monitor using special drivers.

[JVHShack]

I know someone else already mentioned it, but here's the short version: change the crystal next to the cpu out for a 32 MHz one. You'll get 16 MHz out of the CPU.

[marksterling]

One of my first experiences of IBM PC was the 5170 running Xenix 286 with mono screen it was awesome, it was the first system i had ever used that had a hdd. 20mb and it was the whole world to me back then. I remember getting an 8088 clone pc and been disappointed when i realised i could not run Xenix on it.

[AncientElectronics]

ha, sometimes I think there is a bit of collective consciousness between retro PC Youtubers :) I've been working on my IBM 5170 video the last few weeks. You have the one thing I've never been able to acquire, a true EGA monitor and an IBM one to boot! Awsome video.

[Johnny.Verplancke]

That was another great watch... TNX for sharing :)

[_Ice]

It looks like it was brand new, gave me a big flash back to 1985 when I could use it the fist time. It was a realy fast computer at that time and it was very expensive too. But my XT looked like a snail compared to the AT.
That you taking care of this old treasures. 😊

[trr]

All versions of the 5170 bios had trouble with 3rd party disk and hard drive controllers. The common fix was to replace the bios roms with ones containing a generic clone AT bios. That also gave you the now traditional built in setup screen.

[joshpayne]

A agree with you; it's a classic design and I just love it.

[_derSammler]

The CGA monitor can display 16 colors as well and even so in graphics mode when used with an EGA card. The EGA monitor can actually display 64 colors, but almost no EGA software ever made use of that.

[dennisp.]

Many North American 5170's were made in Scotland as well. Both of mine are. As to the 8mhz clock speed, as many here have already said, it's controlled by the 16mhz crystal. You can bump it up some, but doing so also overclocks the ISA bus, causing undesirable results. In this day and ae of course, a few extra mhz isn't worth stressing 35 year old ICs.

[paulaxford]

I've kept a tidy 5170 Type 3 in my collection, the last revision with the baby AT size board. The Seagate 30MB linear-actuator hard disk still works to provide the original thumping sound. I have a Tecmar Graphics Master installed driving the 5153 monitor because it was a period-accurate upgrade to CGA, adding an interlaced graphics mode. I do agree agree that the industrial design is superb and it is my favorite vintage computer.

[JimLeonard]

If you update the crystal to speed it up, you'll need to replace the BIOS with an AMI BIOS. This is because IBM added code to the stock BIOS that intentionally prevents the POST from finishing if it notices the system is running faster than 8MHz.

[Alcochaser]

Nice system, a few points. The SCSI cable that is so short, is from a Macintosh LC pizza box (or similar form factor Mac). On the 286 system. The clock is determined not by the bios, but by the crystal. In this case it's the 16MHZ one next to the CPU socket. It's complicated as to why, but the clock will be half what the crystal provides. In this case 8mhz. Complicating this is you have an FPU. It's marked 8mhz. However the 287 ran async to the CPU, usually divided by three from the crystal. In this case 5.33mhz, so plenty of headroom here. Now you likely can't just plop a 32mhz crystal in here because these AT systems ram the ISA bus at that clock, and 16 is way too fast. 12mhz is the usual upper limit for ISA bus, but on some boards your lucky to get 10mhz. Yours having memory on the ISA buss will be EXTREMELY picky about how fast it will run. I suspect that a 20mhz clock crystal will be tops, this gives you 10MHZ CPU, and ISA bus. And 6.66mhz on your FPU. The jumpers on the AST card are kinda wacky. But it looks like it's providing a second GAME port. Likely via the pin header J4. J3 pin headed is for a second com port, but to use that you will need to populate the empty 16450N UART. It's good that the video has documented the switch settings on the AST card, as they configure the memory addresses to. Depending on if you had a 512K or 640K system board, you had to change those jumpers to move the memory start and end addresses around. So DO be careful when flipping them trying to fix the ports. As to the 601 error. The IBM system board and bios works with any floppy controller. In this case the Adaptec 1542CF has a standard floppy controller chip. It's throwing an 601 diskette error because it senses two drives on the cable, but only one is configured in BIOS. You can get that to go away by configuring them correctly in the BIOS. Speaking in the BIOS, some versions of the AT bios would lock the system if it detected too fast of a clock though.

[Shand]

What a stunner! Respect for Cosmo too, basically my childhood was Cosmo on my IBM AT, Loom also, awesome times. Still have mine and cherish it, my HDD is beginning to fail though. I also use Gsetup, but once I lost all settings due to loss of battery from which I ended up using the built in BASICA and OUT functions to configure the BIOS to get it to boot properly again!

[Homemade-Blurb]

Indeed one of the most beautiful PC ever made 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻