I bought the machine in March of 1998 for the sum of $15. I also picked up an original 83-key XT keyboard with it for $8 and a monochrome monitor for $10. This is how it all started out. The stuff originally inside included a ATI EGA Wonder card, I/O Plus Card II, Floppy Controller and a WD HD Controller. Installed was 640k of RAM on the motherboard but only booted with 256k. This was the first of many problems I would have to solve
My next big problem came when I get BASIC loading instead of it going to the hard disk. So, I run upstairs to the IBM Aptiva Pentium 75 upstairs and make myself a boot disk for it. I don't know if DOS 6.2 works on an XT but I am going to try. It loads up fine after blowing all the dust off my old 5.25" inch disks which probably haven't been used since 1993 and running sys.com the load the system onto the floppy. Thank god I didn't throw out the old 5.25" inch drive I had laying around.
Well, to summarize, I have no working HD, only 256k RAM, I have to borrow the power cord from my monitor upstairs to plug the XT in because it came with no power cord. Really annoying running up and down the stairs with a power cord so that I can copy files I need. Continuing, the 5.25" drive makes this clicking sound every time I stop reading from the disk. But it works, and I am not complaining. Ok, lets run Fdisk and see what is wrong with this HDD. "Error Reading Fixed Disk". "Oh Great, now what do I do". Well, let's see, throw the damn thing out! But I decide to at least run something on it, I go upstairs and copy a text-based poker game I have and play a few rounds.
Oh, fun, well I have to take a closer look at things and open the case again. The HDD I discover is a ST-225 with a really old looking metal cover over the disk itself. I see the processor, ah, yes, the AMD 8088. There is the slot for the co-processor and there is the funny memory. At first I think that maybe the system is stealing the 384k for its use, but then I remember that early IBM pc's had the system memory built into the motherboard somewhere. I don't know where to go from here now. The motherboard was 256/640k on it, does that mean 256k user memory or 640k total or what!!! I find alot of thid stuff out later after alot of picking.
After consulting the Computer Helpline, I decide to try to Low-level format the drive using debug and typing G=C800:5. It brings up this text that says "Low-Level Formatter Copyright Western Digital" Ok, I have the right thing here. Ok, low-level format the thing. So, I come back 30 minutes later, still going. After 3 hours I give up and goto bed. I wake up in the morning and it is done. Well, lets reboot and see what luck we have. Run Fdisk and "Error Reading Fixed Disk". Well, I guess this one is for the trash heap!! I decide that the HDD is probably toast since it has always made a funny grinding noise and occasionaly causes a 601 or 1701 error on reboot.
I begin to remember how much I really hate these things! Flimsy, prone to errors, and very large and bulky for the paltry amount of information they hold. I hope to find a MFM HDD in town but no luck. I do get a power cord so no more running upstairs anymore, yay!
Let's see what software do I have. So far, I can get Poker, a basic text editor, and sometimes I can get Lotus 1-2-3 to load also. I really am beginning to wonder what is going to become of this device.
This proved to be the ONLY thing so far that proved easier to do than I thought it would be. I just plugged the printer cable into the port in the back of the card and the other end into the printer reboot, run print.exe and presto, it prints! Albeit it is only a Star NX-1020 Rainbow, a "color" dot-matrix printer although I only have a black ribbon installed in it now. It is left over from our PC before the Pentium, and Acer 386SX/20 w/3.5 & 5.25HD drives and 100 meg HDD. Glad to get rid of that and it is nice to still have something that can access the internet. I mean can you see an XT running on the internet. This would be done and even amaze me in the process once I got my hands on a good HDD.
As time went by, I found misc. parts for my XT, some proved useful, others not at all. I got my hands on an extra EGA Wonder card thinking that if the current one failed, this one could serve as backup. I also bought another HDD controller which I will hopefully find some working HDD to hook up to it. Then came the first good thing I would find so far. I got my hands on another 5.25" drive at a second-hand store. 10 bucks sounds ok, sure I'll take it. I get it home only to find that it is not working on the XT. So I take it upstairs and hook it up to my Pentium. Well, behold, it is a HD 1.2meg drive. Good for the Pentium, since I only had a 360k in it before. But what does this do for the XT. Well, I can replace that old clicking floppy with this good one. And so I did , and I saw that it was good!
After putting that one in I decided to see if I could get twin 5.25" going. Unfortunately, the cable is too short to daisy chain them together. Looking for a replacement drive cable proves fruitless, all the cables carried are different than the one I have. So I will have to stick with the one drive for now.
Then I come across what looks like an old XT motherboard. Let's see 8 expansion slots, memory in the same place, there is the power hook-ups. Well, for 5 dollars I will take my chances. I decide to pull out the motherboard in my XT and plop this one in and see if it works. No, it doesn't. Big suprise! Well, let's try this memory in my motherboard. So I pull out Bank 3 and put the 256k total chips in. Turn the machine on, still 256k, damn. So I put it in Bank 2, then Bank 1, wait a sec here, now I have 512k total. Well, I see my problem here, a case of bad memory! So I pull out Banks 2&3 and put in the 256k chips from the donor board and reboot. There, now I have 640k total memory.
Hard to believe that it was all stemming from bad memory. It would not read past Bank 0 because Bank 1 was bad. And Banks 2 & 3 were bad anyway, so it would not have got more than 256k anyway. I actually have 1024k installed (4 banks full of 256k), but since the XT only reads the banks 2&3 as 128k max (64k ea), I only get 640k total. And that is all that can be addressed once you factor in the 384k system memory and the address bus which limits memory addressing to no more than 1meg (1024k).
Have a 2 good controllers (I think), so I go looking for a used MFM drive. A friend of mine offers me a heavily used ST-238R. I tell him that I need the controller for it also so that I know it works. He offers me than too in return for the old controller and ST-225 drive. He wants to pull them apart to use for decoration in his room and doesn't care if it works, so long as he gets something. So I figure something is better than nothing and take him up on the offer.
Well, hooked it up and the same thing, "Error reading Fixed Disk". Nice try I say and decide to go upstairs and do something else. I come back down and decide to play poker on it one last time before I put it away for awhile until I can find a working hard disk. So I reboot it in the hope that maybe it will find the disk and since I am not stopping my writing now you know that I decided to work. Boy, what a slow drive. It was loaded up to about having 5meg free of 32meg total. I am amazed at the total size as I knew that the ST-225 only offered 20meg. Well, the reason I think the drive worked was either because it needed to warm up or the fact that it is just need to be re-formatted to clean up any bad sectors.
...Well, I have been writing this for 2 hours now and am going to continue it on another day. Until then, enjoy the rest of the site.