Greetings, LGR here, with a... a bit of an update to a previous video that I did.
You may remember a while back I got this huge lot of IBM PS2 computers for 300 bucks,
and see the old video if you'd like some more details there, there was a bunch of great stuff in there,
but included was, this monster here.
This is a model 60 IBM PS2 computer, it was, it was so much money back in the day, and,
you know, it wasn't exactly meant for home consumer type of people, I mean...
Servers and stuff like that was more of its usage.
Huge, huge steel case here, this carrying handle, just to help it move around.
And, ah, yeah it's a 286-machine an we'll be taking a look at some of the insides and what I did to fix it up here
in a little bit. But, yes, let's go ahead and take a look at it turning on, first let me get the monitor...
Alright...
And here we go.
Very nice, smooth sounding startup there, and yes it does have the lovely model M keyboard with it.
It came with a bunch of model M's in that lot but this is the one I'm using right now, the 1990 model.
And I was able to source an original PS2 mouse.
I just, I just really like these designs.
It's just a cool design for a mouse, I think. And it works well with this machine because it's meant for it.
So yes, I didn't exactly have to do a whole lot with it as far as far as putting anything on here,
it still had IBM PC DOS 3.3. I just cleaned it up a little bit and put some games and junk on here that I enjoy.
So, as you might be able to guess from the little sticker on the front that says,
"PLEASE DO NOT TURN THIS MACHINE OFF!"
It was used as some kind of a server at one point, and according to the software that was left on the hardrive,
it looks like it was also used as a CNC machine controller.
And some of the hardware that it also came with as far as like, extra, there was another card that went in here,
I took that thing out
It has this CNC to PC interface, so that you can control the motors and all sorts of cool things
But there wasn't really anything else on this, so I just installed a bunch of things that I happen to enjoy.
And, let's go to one of my favorites here. Gotta try out some Crystal Caves,
First game I ever played, and it plays very well on a 286.
So, of course I had to install it and give it a shot.
Let's just get past the little cutscene thingy, here, once it loads.
Yeah, I know. Milo, you're cool.
So as fas as the performance of it, it does take a little while to load some things. But these are older games
and it's not like it's going to take too long to load anyway, so it doesn't matter.
And as you can see it pretty much runs full speed, you could have a slightly smoother framerate
on a faster computer, but, it's more than playable.
Commander Keen in Goodbye Galaxy is also surprisingly playable.
I mean, I know this it's pretty much made to run on a 286, so it's not terribly surprising, but,
The fact that it runs as well as it does is interesting to me.
And it does take, of course, a little bit to load here. Look at this...
C'mon! Hnnng! Thumbs up Keen! Thumbs up, you can do it!
You can do it! There ya go! But yeah, the actual gameplay, I mean, it's great as usual.
Another thing I quite enjoy on this is the actual floppy drive itself, so...
It's very smooth feeling. Let me actually copy something to the disk here.
You can't hear it, can you? There's hardly anything going on there and it's
actually copying stuff. There's just none of that ... [fake vocal clunky machine sounds] ... going on, it's the quietest 3 and a half inch drive
I think that I have ever heard, and it seems just as efficient, if not more so, than any other 1.44 meg drive
that I have, it's really impressive.
But of course, I have to let you hear this thing turn off.
Man, that hard drive spinning down is an event unto itself.
And I'm pretty sure the room is now lighter now that this is not drawing power!
We got brighter lights going on in here. Anyway, let's go ahead and look inside!
Now to actually get this thing apart is a little bit of an ordeal. Not to bad though.
I keep a little screwdriver here on my keychain.
So you basically just unscrew your little things here which I've already loosened up a little bit earlier.
And, once that's done...
I'm assuming this is unlocked up here, which thankfully, it was.
You lift this entire assembly off, and here is the inside of the beast. Hehehe this is comedically huge.
I love this, I mean you could tell this was used as a server back in the day, there are so many expansions.
Just to give you an idea of scale, this is a 3.5 inch floppy disc and, I mean, it's huge.
Even just the hardrive itself is positively massive, I mean this, it's a 44 megabyte MFM drive,
a wonderful IBM original drive here. I have another one just in case this one craps out, but...
It's, this is a monster machine here.
And check out this power supply.
You got all this up here, and then you have this sort of modular thing going on.
´Cause this here plugs into the hardrive, and then of course that just goes straight into the
motherboard right there. That's cool. This is probably the oldest machine I have
that has any sort of modular power supply design like that.
See down here, we've got some memory sticks, for the RAM here, from Texas Instruments, interestingly.
A spot for another hardrive. I do like these mounting things here, look at this,
It's like a piping system, and you just, you just screw that in to mount the hard drive in place here.
So we can actually take two of these giant things.
Lot's of expansion ports here too, and these actually are not PCI, they are IBM´s micro-channel architecture,
that I will have to do a video on sometime.
Only one right now is filled, and that is for the hard disk controller.
The floppy disk controller is actually integrated into the motherboard. As is the video card,
There are some other basic functions, a pretty far cry from earlier IBM machines.
Where you had a lot of cards for everything. So you got your PS2 ports, serial, parallel, VGA right there.
All ready to go. I did have to actually replace the floppy disk drive.
The one that it came with was dead.
This is 1.44 Meg, and you can put 2.88, like some of my other PS2 machines do have those,
but I stuck with the 1.44 for this one for now. I might upgrade some time later.
And of course down here, we do have, very important, if I can get it to focus,
the 286, 10 MHz CPU, as well as the 287 math coprocessor.
And this is kinda cool, you have this little bit right here, that connects over to the battery and the PC speaker,
integrated into the same unit. And yes, this is a modern battery.
The one, that I had in here when I first got it, of course was dead, and the CMOS was erased as a result, but,
I've actually been able to take it to "Batteries and Bulbs" or whatever, ya know, you've got batteries kind of store.
"Batteries Plus". I don't remember what it's called.
They have those batteries in stock still, because these are actually still used in a lot of cordless phones.
Like home telephones, so...
It still worked just fine in here.
Well that's it for the IBM PS2 model 60 for now,
I'm sure I'll revisit it at some point, whenever I clean up the outside a little bit more, and maybe put together
a more professional style of a scripted video on it.
And the other PS2 machines, as I get them up and running fully.
Most of them are working, it's just things like floppy drives and hard disks and RAM and batteries and,
ya know, everything that goes wrong in a computer that's approaching 30 years old.
So yes. Thank you very much for watching.