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LGR - Unboxing and Setting up an IBM PS/2 Model 25

🕑 Added 2018-04-12 00:00:02 +0000 UTC

Comments

John Covil

Manual says 720k floppy, system disk is 1.0M, and drive itself says 2.88 *boggle*

Oh wow, that manual dates to the month of my birth.

Never gets old. Getting excited with old instruction manual then trying to install the preview disc. Get an error and then refer to instruction manual.....Install DOS :D Interesting that your math is better than your American geography. Also your commentary is brilliantly funny

Nicholas Wilson

You mentioned your Bernoulli drive not working and I remember that video. I got lucky and picked up an internal Bernoulli 90 in unused condition and finally managed to get a couple of disks yesterday so I could test it, so if there’s anything you’d like to know please feel free to ask? :)

Money well spent, an absolute beautiful piece of machine.

Gary Leigh

Did IBM inspire Apple with their packaging or visa versa?

Reed Hansen

It's the only Ps2 I own. I may play some black and white text adventures on this. But MAAAAAAN the display on mine is crisp.

DOSGamerMan

Yes

No reason not to, either!

Thomas Fuchs

That’s so neat, Clint. I got a PS/2 25 with the color MCGA Display for a good price of eBay a while ago (just didn’t have the SSK). I upgraded with a NEC V30 CPU and a 8087 coprocessor, and a sound card. :) These little machines are awesome.

Eric Siegel

The PS/2 ports on modern PCs came from this line of computers, right? Does that mean that you could connect a modern PS/2 keyboard and mouse to this IBM? What about connecting the IBM keyboard and mouse to a modern PS/2 port?

Mukul Kewalramani

Awww what happened to the video?! It says not available!

Very interesting. Reminds me a lot of my old Compaq all in one that I used to have (and I believe you have). Love the work you do, Clint!

Steve Lovelace

Did anyone notice the music for the US game was Sousa's "Liberty Bell March"? Yes, it's a patriotic song, but I think it's better known nowadays (and in the 1980s) as the theme song for Monty Python.

Addison Chernow

Ha!!!! Those Model 25’s were all over my junior high.

Anders Enger Jensen

Oh wow! This takes me back to our first PC back in 1988/89. It was a Bull Systems Zenith something, actually a 286 10MHz with 1MB RAM, 20 MB HDD and a monochrome screen with Word Perfect 5.0 and DOS 3.3. It was so my dad could write his master’s degree thesis etc, but guess who’d immediately fiddle with stuff like the BIOS and enter a password to boot the machine... that he’d forgot and cause all kinds of hell and telephones to support hotlines..?! 😬😂 (it turned out I had entered seven out of eight space bars to try and clear out the password feature... silly me!) But anyway, it would be totally awesome if you could try Windows 2.11 on this little baby machine, because that was what we had back then (before I got a bootleg copy of Windows 3.0... mmm that Chessboard picture 💖)

If you want to easily transfer larger amounts of data to/from this machine, I recommend PalmZIP and a first generation parallel Iomega Zip Drive. PalmZip allows you to run a Zip drive on 8086 with Dos 2 or greater. I use one for mine, and it makes life so much easier. <a href="http://leute.server.de/peichl/palmzipe.htm" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://leute.server.de/peichl/palmzipe.htm</a>

I have the Model 25-004 MCGA Color model, I upgraded it from stock to 640k, 1.44mb drive (they shipped with 720k), and a XT-IDE boot drive. I'd love to throw an NEC V30 in it eventually, but part of me loves the originality of the 8086. I love these machines. Mine didn't come with the original keyboard, I'd kill for a Model M :D

LGR

I can imagine! Yeah, in general IBM stuff is chock full of legalese. I have several "manuals" for pieces of IBM software and hardware that are nothing but dozens of pages of what you CAN'T do with it, haha

LGR

Congrats on your new balls of steel!

avfusion

Also, for that Government section. IBM was CRAZY PROTECTIVE of their GSA agreement with the Gov't. Back when I did some contracting for a defense firm, IBM provided us their source code for a fair bit of their software to modify, and every source file was plastered with several hundred lines of legalese like you saw on the floppy.

Garoninja

I enjoy watching an old computer getting unboxed for some reason. I have also discovered the fun of Duke 3D recently

avfusion

I HAVE NO REASON TO FEEL THIS EXCITED ABOUT OPENING DUSTY 30 YEAR OLD BOXES AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

LGR

A sad state of affairs in retrospect, but a very common sight in the late 90s and early 2000s. I remember tossing tons and tons of 80s computers in high school when they upgraded, nobody thought anything of it then.

LGR

Nice! I'll have to try it on this when I get around to installing more software on there

LGR

Heh, someone always comes to this realization when I show that ad. Seems every big computer line had their own celebrity endorsements in the 80s

LGR

Ahh, soap bar mouse, that definitely describes the feeling and density of the thing.

LGR

I don't think anyone particularly enjoys that sound, which is why I edited out 99% of those harsh noises from this ;)

LGR

I'd love to get one sometime!

LGR

Sounds like a wonderful memory indeed. Mm, documentation smells

LGR

Glad to hear it! Definitely a fun kind of thing to do from time to time :)

LGR

Excellent!

Contreramanjaro

Oh man, this was one of the main computers I used when I first entered elementary school. We had both color and monochrome IIRC. You felt really lucky when you got to use the color computers. I actually picked a couple out of the garbage from the same school years later when we were passing by and I spotted probably 30 of them sitting by the dumpster. I don't have them anymore since I couldn't find a use but nowadays I wish I'd kept it. Stacks of keyboards too. Just tossed in the dumpster.

Kijikun

....I think I played Oregon trail on that thing in middle school

Vlaphor

I just did a bit of research, and at .53 in the video...that is Gary Burghoff in the middle there. Radar O Reilly from MASH. He served as a spokesman for IBM in the 80's. Did not know that until now.

JennaKay

Found my easy mark for Reversi

Jason Wellband

Haha at the government bit. Every time I call IBM for support for work stuff, they always ask if we are government-affiliated, even though we have a maintenance contract and have been with them for probably 30 years now. Luckily for me, their new stuff has a lot less cardboard, boxes, and random stuff. We installed some IBM 2145 SAN Volume Controllers the other day and I was amazed at the lack of junk in the box! Only 4 years ago, the new stuff had phonebook-like license agreements!!! CLEAN YER BALLZ!!!!!! (and enjoy the soapbar mouse :P)

Bastien Nocera

I’m sure this is a pretty uncommon problem, but you know how some people can’t stand the chalk-on-blackboard sounds, or felt-tip-pens-on-paper sounds. For me it’s those polyfills/styrofoam ones :/

Joon Choi

IBM PS/1 next please! My very first computer - w a whole 1MB of RAM!

J.R. Williams

Woot

I still have a fond memory of my dad opening his Apple II brand new plus all the extra's it came with. That sniff of new manuals is such a memorable moment. XD