LGR - Looking at the IBM PC XT

Comments · 599

• TH

  @therealmicksa · 10 years ago

  That ladies and gentleman is the sound of a ~30 year old hard disk spinning up.  A minor miracle.

  214

• AW

  @awdx4g63 · 5 years ago

  7 years later, I found one in my work place's dumpster. Thanks LGR for the inspiration.

  30

• WA

  @WAQWBrentwood · 9 years ago

  The XT originally shipped with a 10Mb full height HDD. at some point someone upgraded to that half height HDD and left themselves room for that 3.5" FDD. IIRC 3.5" floppies only became a "thing" in the IBM-PC world with the PS/2. Upgrading these were common in the mid '80s as the XT was a HUGE investment for a small business, let alone an individual! (I did the exact upgrade on my XT circa 1987.) Nice Find. If you get an HDD running in her, install Lotus 123 r3, dBase IV and WordPerfect 5.1! That would be the ultimate businessman's PC! All you need  is a Motorola DynaTAC and you're really rockin' Reagan Era  style!

  44

• JO

  @joethemanager1 · 12 years ago

  Whenever you type something with  the keyboard, it sounds exactly like your intro.

  61

• SE

  @SebbySenpai · 12 years ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfvGS7qJr4M&amp;t=196">3:16</a><br><br>Oh my GODDDDDDDD.<br><br>That mechanical keyboard sound is absolutely orgasmic.

  18

• CH

  @ching-chenhuang8119 · 9 years ago

  I think you are in luck, 4 years ago I saw the price tag of an IBM 5150 in a second-hand electronic store, it was $899.99.

  18

• BR

  @brunoacf · 7 years ago

  I love everything in old computers. The sound of the floppy drives and the amazing IBM keyboard. The fading effect of the &nbsp;lines in green phosphor monitors. The 80&apos;s look... just perfect.

  12

• ME

  @MegumiJones · 10 years ago

  The music the PC plays at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfvGS7qJr4M&amp;t=630">10:30</a> is the Toccata from Monteverd&apos;s Orfeo (1607). Somewhat surprising to hear it turn up in this context but at least shows some impressive culture on the part of the programmers :-)

  4

• IK

  @Ikifoo · 12 years ago

  The clicky noises of that keyboard make me happy.

  32

• NU

  @nukedathlonman · 12 years ago

  Nice find! Reminds me that it&apos;s time for me to bring out of the spare room my old 286 (a really fast 16mhz system that I built out of unwanted parts I collected in high school). It has some really odd stuff - an 80287 co-processor, 2.5mb system RAM (on the motherboard - can be expanded to 4mb on the motherboard, but I&apos;m not willing to try to find the chips), an &quot;industrial&quot; grade CDC Wren (85mb RLL, defect free - 10ms seek rate, 2mb transfer rate at a 1:1 interleave - exceptional performance for a drive manufactured in 1986), a Seagate ST-277-R-1 (60mb RLL, like the Wren it&apos;s defect free, but unlike the Wren it has a more average 28ms seek rate, and a measly 1mb sec transfer rate at a 1:1 interleave), a Data Processing Technology 1mb cached RLL controller (love the night rider status LED&apos;s on it), a Sound Blaster 16, and an ATi XL-II SVGA video card. Unlike your XT, my 286 isn&apos;t historical (except possibly for that rare DPC RLL controller that would normally be found in a server and the high performance (for it&apos;s time of course) CDC Wren HD), but it&apos;s sentimental for me as it was my first real high performance computer. ;-)

  8

• ER

  @ericjacobs5853 · 9 years ago

  great video, i remember my good old times when i was a young boy... dad bought one of these.... they were expensive. i learned how to write programs in basic in that pc. my dad has passed away.... every once in a while when i see something from my time...all the memories come back to me

  15

• FU

  @Fuzy2K · 12 years ago

  I love how the manuals of that thing come in binders.

  6