(electrical floppy drive intro)
Greetings, and here we are on LGR once again
with one of my favorite things, hehe.
We're unboxing yet another in-box IBM PC.
This one in particular being the IBM PC 5140,
otherwise known as the PC Convertible.
It was first released in 1986 for about $2,000,
although I think this particular configuration,
with all this stuff cost a little bit more.
And this was IBM's first laptop computer.
Now they had portables before this and, yeah,
some other various PC kind of spin-offs,
the PCjr and such, but this was the first one
to come as close to what we would call
a 'laptop' computer nowadays.
Of course, there's a ton of history,
and a bunch of things that go into this whole system,
and how it works, and what it was for
and what came before it and after it,
all these kind of things that I wanna do in a later video.
But just for today, because I am working
on some larger projects like that,
I do want to just talk about this in unboxing form
and get this thing opened up.
Because I found this some time ago.
Actually, I've had it sitting around for awhile
and just been waiting for an opportunity
to dive into it and see what's in here.
Because, yeah, it is new in the box
or at least as close to it as I could find.
It's definitely been opened up at one point or another,
but as far as I know, it's never actually been powered on.
So, yeah, we'll go ahead and get straight to it.
We're gonna start with this box here.
We've got a power supply,
and yes, there is a printer with this thing.
And (laughs) this is one of the most interesting aspects
of the computer.
We'll get to that, but, yeah for now, let's open up
this newish old stock machine and set it up.
(grunts)
I think actually this was the first IBM computer
to officially come with a 3 1/2 inch disk drive.
So that's another notable thing.
There's a lot of notable things, and like I said,
we'll be doing a more retrospective video in the future.
For now, I just wanna see what the experience was like
getting one of these from the shops back in the day.
(plastic crinkles)
Yeah, like I said, the seller did open it up
and do some other packaging, 'cause yeah,
I guess it was missing the original styrofoam inserts.
So yeah, that's unfortunate.
But alright, here we go.
I got one of those nice familiar chunky IBM PC power cables.
(plastic crinklage)
Oh, got an add-on card of some kind here and an IBM box.
What is this?
It's like a RAM upgrade.
(moar plastic)
So there is an IBM battery pack,
part number 2684331
Alright, looks like we have some instructions here
for installing that RAM card.
That's nice.
Oh yeah, the delightful guide to operations here.
That's a little different design than the other ones
that I've unboxed, still very nice
bit of IBM spiral-bound documentation.
And yes, there's the IBM PC Convertible Start-Up Diskette.
Oh yeah, love this stuff.
And I got a packet of
mm, something.
Okay, so interesting little registration card here.
Got a nice little adhesive bit that you can remove
and stick it together to, yeah,
let IBM know how much money you make and stuff.
Yeah, looks like a little quick set up guide.
Yeah, this little word-free, language-free thing
for, yeah, starting it up.
Basically, insert the disk and power it on and stuff.
Aw yes, (laughs) I love when computers come with this,
especially IBMs.
It's just nice classy stationery
and typed out welcome letter here.
And thank you for purchasing a personal computer from IBM.
Yeah, pretty standard stuff being like,
what is this though?
What is that?
Can you see that?
Yeah, if I shine the light through it, it says writing
and something else right there (laughs).
Oh and this fell out too, eh, license agreement, whatever.
Mm, I sense DOS.
Aw, now that is delightful.
We have a still-sealed DOS version 3.20
and this IBM PC DOS, not Microsoft DOS.
I mean, it's still by Microsoft, of course,
but yeah, this specifically for IBM PC Convertibles.
Interesting, so that means it probably, yeah,
doesn't come with any 5 1/4 inch disks (laughs).
Huh. (slides)
And just by comparison here, here's my normal copy
that I use of DOS version 3.3,
and you can see on the back there
that it mentions that it has, of course, 5 1/4 disks
but also, all these other computers supported.
I'm assuming this will support whatever computer as well.
It's just it doesn't, it's not made for them exactly.
Okay, time for the main event.
(rip and tear)
Oh, that's nice.
It's still in some kind of a shrink wrap deal here.
So I don't know, if it came like this
from the factory but either way,
it looks immaculate under that plastic which is nice.
'Cause I actually used to have a PC 5140, years ago,
and it was in just the worst condition
that I never did a video on it.
It was bad.
It just needed too much work, so this is lovely.
Alright, this is potentially the first time
this has been opened (laughs).
(pleasurable plastic ripping) Ooh.
(quality plastic tearing) That's some quality plastic.
Man.
(sweep, swipe)
(inhales deeply)
Mm, yeah that smells fresh.
(plastic crinkles)
Oh, wow, aw, there's a little, tiny little broken chip
of something there, so it got knocked around at some point.
It seems like there's just some fragile bits of plastic
here where this really high quality metal handle
goes into place.
It just sort of bumps up against that.
Anyway.
Aw, haw haw haww.
And there we go.
This is the IBM PC Convertible,
and it's awesome (laughs).
Look at that.
You don't see these too often, at least I don't,
like the inserts for the little 3 1/2 inch drives.
Typical, that's only a 5 1/4 inch thing,
but these, that's awesome.
Wow, and they're nicely shaped and everything.
It's really cool.
So yeah, I see like a film or something on here.
I don't know if that comes off or what
or if that's like inside.
Hopefully, it's not coming apart in there or something.
I don't know.
Like I said, the seller said,
they'd never turned it on before, so who knows,
who knows what's going on here.
Yeah, it should go like that 'cause
that's where the little latch goes,
so get that reattached real quick.
Yeah, just a little bit of Gorilla Gel should help.
Being that this is an actual functional latch piece though,
I wanna be careful in the future for sure.
Alright, gonna let that dry, but as you can see here
it's just the sort of mechanism
where the whole thing lifts up like that
and brings up the disk drives and everything.
Not gonna latch it fully,
'cause it's still drying that little part,
but yeah, it's just a really cool design, I think.
And this whole screen actually comes off.
Let's see, where is it?
There it is.
(laughs) Like this.
So here's the convertible aspect of this thing.
So you could actually take this off,
and there was a monitor mount.
You might've seen it on the box earlier.
And you could put a full CRT in here,
and there you go, you've got this neat looking little thing.
Almost looks like a Tandy 1000 HX or something here,
a little smaller, narrower anyway (keys clicking)
yeah, no numpad but still very, very nice keys. I mean...
Haw.
It's not exactly like a clicky keyboard, but pretty quality.
(inhales deeply)
There's just something about the way
these old keyboards smell,
especially when they've been sealed up like that, like new,
'cause it seriously still smells new.
It's that slight new car smell.
It's wonderful.
It's probably just toxic plastic and paint though (laughs).
Okay, and put that over there for now,
and let's get those other two things opened up,
because of course, gotta have some power.
(tape pops apart)
(laughs) That old Scotch tape.
(plastic crinklage) It's so yellow now.
And here we go, this is almost PCjr-like
but thankfully, not as weird proprietary crap going on.
(laughs) But yeah, just a nice little brick here.
(plop) I think it's a 15 volt, 2.7 amp.
Yeah.
And that just goes in the side, right here.
Well. It should. There it is.
(laughs) And look at that, it's even got a little,
tiny little orange power button,
instead of the big red orange switch
that the PCs typically had.
But yeah, look at that, it's still orange, red, whatever.
And lastly, hey, hey, hey, this is one of the things
that has always interested me about this machine
and that is the PC Convertible Printer,
another convertible aspect.
They called this the Convertible,
instead of just a portable or whatever for multiple reasons,
and this is one of those reasons.
Aw man, look at this little guy (laughs),
a little tiny ink ribbon cartridge.
Now, this is pristine.
Ahh.
Okay, got a little feeder tray here.
Yeah, man, so this is a,
it's like a full dot matrix printer,
and it's just in a nice little compact unit.
Look at that.
The PC Convertible Printer.
I love all the little original inserts and stuff.
(satisfied sigh)
So the way this works (laughs),
you've got a little plastic piece
that comes off the back here,
and this, it just connects in place
almost like a PCjr sidecar,
but this is a laptop computer.
Oh, okay, I gotta move the little latch there.
Okay, there we go, and once that's in place, yeah,
you have a computer that is really, really long (laughs).
It just becomes this absurd deal
when you start adding these expansions on the back,
but the fact that you can have
a laptop with a built-in printer is just great.
And of course, there were other laptops later on
that had built-in printers and portables
before and after this with built-in printers.
It's not the only thing that does anything like this,
but it's one of the coolest, I think,
just in terms of its overall form factor and design.
And I don't know.
I just think this looks really great, as well,
just from a design perspective, and it should considering
this was an industrial design by Richard Sapper.
Well, let's go ahead and get DOS going on this things
and see what it can do really quick.
(laughs) I've been itching to try one of these
that actually works properly.
Time for some of that DOS.
(plastic crinkles)
I've never actually had this version of DOS
brand new like this.
Ooh. (deeply sniffs)
Sorry, I know my smelling and stuff
of these things can get creepy for some people,
but I, man, this is just still so special to me.
Look at all this.
Okay, got some things here, and what is it?
Yours free.
The Directory.
Yeah, I've showed the actual directory
in one of my other unboxings.
I gonna read this first.
Installing DOS, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Got a nice little reference card here
for a lot of your most common DOS commands.
Well (laughs), a lot of these are not common at all,
but it has them anyway, because IBM.
So yeah, DOS Reference.
Oh, it's got nice little color things going on.
I dig that.
Look at the little DOS bird or whatever.
What is that guy?
Doesn't actually say who he is.
Just he's all through here though.
Here's a update package for the PC Convertible itself,
that's nice, 10 pages, five sheets and a label.
DOS also comes on two diskettes.
Both diskettes are in back of the DOS Reference
in a plastic (speaks gibberish).
They were really adamant about you keeping
that information in mind, I guess,
'cause they give you an entirely separate label to place
on here to remind you about that, but yeah.
Apparently, there's a couple little updates
in here for the Convertible itself.
So yeah, otherwise, it's just generic DOS 3.2 here,
but cool, nice that it came with that.
Here we go, PC DOS version 3.21.
I'm gonna keep that out, 'cause we're gonna be using that.
(plastic crinkles)
(metal clicks)
(pages rustling)
That's a lotta DOS.
Okay, let's get this thing started up.
Okay, just gonna try it unexpanded,
in its lovely original form for now.
Got everything plugged in, so let's power it on
and see what happens.
(computer beeps)
Ooh.
Doing the RAM check there, should have 256K by default.
(computer buzzes)
Nice.
(computer beeps) And there we go.
Got the little disk insert graphic there,
very IBM PS/2 like.
But yeah, this is a, sorry, it's kinda hard to see,
I mean, this just always gonna be hard to see.
This screen is never good, even when it's brand new.
(key clicks)
Non-system disk?
The heck (laughs), that's definitely a system disk, yo.
There we go.
Alright, so asking for the current date which is.
(keys clicking)
Alright, and there we go.
We've got DOS version 3.2
and yeah,
unfortunately, it does look like there is a bit of a line
through the display there.
That's unfortunate, but eh, so it goes (laughs).
But to be honest, I didn't buy this to use very much.
Mostly, I just want to do a video on the history of it,
and just show it in action and such,
because, yeah, it's just a fascinating machine.
If I really wanted to use an IBM PC,
I'd use any number of my dozens of other ones that I have,
because they're all gonna be better than this.
But it's just the fact that its form factor and design
and everything is just so friggin' cool to me.
So yeah, if I really wanted to use this better,
I can easily just swap out this screen,
for probably, I think my other screen actually
looked a little better than this.
So, I don't know.
There's extra parts and stuff online.
We'll see what happens when I (laughs) get around to it.
But yeah, hmm, got DONKEY.BAS, classic.
(computer buzzes)
Hmm, device I/O error.
(keys clicking)
(computer buzzes)
(laughs) Well, there may be some issues with this drive.
It just needs to be cleaned
or maybe it's a belt issue or something.
We'll see.
I still have the other ones, so if I really need
to start swapping out some parts and whatnot,
'cause that's always a thing (laughs), seems like.
I wanna try the other drive. (keys clicking)
(computer buzzes)
Well, I got a directory, perfectly, the first time there.
(keys clicking)
Let's run that Donkey.
(computer buzzes)
Alright, well, opened up that perfectly too, so
(key clicks)
it seems to the B drive is in better shape.
(game clicks)
(game beeps) (game clicks)
(laughs)
(game beeps) (game clicks)
(game over music)
Best game Microsoft ever made.
Yeah, that's the IBM PC Convertible.
(keys clicking)
Yeah, working nicely for the most part.
Unfortunately, with that little line through the screen
and of course, the A drive needs a bit of attention,
and this little thing is a bit weird,
and there's a slight bit of film or something
coming off around the edges of the screen.
Okay, so maybe this is not as brand new as
I hoped it would be (laughs).
Granted, it was never sold as brand new.
It was new, old stock, so you never know
how these things have held up
being in storage for over 30 years.
Always a complete and total crapshoot.
So, yeah, let's see if it boots again.
(computer buzzes)
Yeah, no, (laughs) it is an intermittent at best
when it comes to that A drive, for sure.
So, I'll take that apart and see what's goin' on with it.
And then hopefully, get this thing all nice and working,
so I can show it off in another video,
and do a proper retrospective with the printer.
Because seriously, that printer is the coolest thing,
so yeah, we'll get to that at some point.
But anyway, thank you very much for watching this video,
a bit of filler while I'm working on,
more involved videos of things that actually work.
So yeah, that's about it for this.
And if you'd like to see some other episode like it,
I've done quite a few IBM unboxings at this point,
and stuff like this.
This is what I do here at LGR every single week.
And as always thank you very much for watching.