1983 IBM XT 5160

[Xelyx]

A while back I picked one of these up at a yard sale. I got it free because there was no monitor/keyboard/etc. The guy told me it was his work computer when he worked for IBM, and that during his time there he upgraded it as far as he could. I'm planning to open it up tomorrow (I'll take pictures) and am wondering if there's anything I should look for when I do. I'm also interested in learning about the best route to get it hooked to a monitor and keyboard. Is it mouse compatible? Is it possible to run any games on it? Any help is greatly appreciated, as I really know nothing when it comes to computers.

[Exhuminator]

Any help is greatly appreciated, as I really know nothing when it comes to computers.

You can download PDF versions of the 5160's technical reference and guide to operations here:

http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/manuals.htm

I just checked the links and the PDFs are still up.

If you check the 5160 section of the main site, you can find much more information:

http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/

Long live old computers.

[Xelyx]

Sweet! Thank you! I actually found an old guide at Goodwill on programming Basic for the system, so I might try that out once I get it going.

[Kidpanda]

The biggest problem with PCs from this era was the lack of games being made. You might find a couple of gems but nothing really worth noting. Apple II/C64 was dominating during this era and really is the best place for games. PCs took a couple of years to come into their own. Nice machine though

[Exhuminator]

The very first computer I owned way back in the 80s didn't have any games for it. I had to program my own games for it using BASIC. I would get the code out of printed magazines, and spend an hour or two keying it all in, and then actually be able to run a game on said computer. I had no way to save the program though, and once it powered off that was that.

[noiseredux]

The very first computer I owned way back in the 80s didn't have any games for it. I had to program my own games for it using BASIC. I would get the code out of printed magazines, and spend an hour or two keying it all in, and then actually be able to run a game on said computer. I had no way to save the program though, and once it powered off that was that.

I did the same on my Tandy. Though that did have actual games on it as well. The coding out of magazines seemed to end with an error more often than a game unfortunately haha.

[CRTGAMER]

If I remember right, the XT I worked on at my daughter's preschool (she now is in college) had two 5 1/4 floppy drives and no hard drive. Even so there were programs including games (a pacman derivative) and some educational programs such a whole line of Sticky Bear Alphabet an Numbers. Everything displayed in CGA and EGA with the limitation of beep sounds from the small speaker inside the huge desktop case.

Yes, even the ancient XT has games, just have to search for them. Most will be on the low density 5 1/4 floppies.

I remember typing in Basic and partial machine language games on the Commodore Vic 20 and C64 from Compute! and Gazzette magazines. Both Commodores had a lot osf games on cassette, cart and many on floppy disk on the C64.

[noiseredux]

reminds me of the 286 I had when I was younger. Two 5.25" drives and no HDD. I have no recollection of what it was specifically, but I remember being bummed when I realized I couldn't run Doom on it

[Anapan]

I too started on a Tandy 1000 with a green CRT. I wanted an NES so my mom gave me that, and some programming books. I had to type the games out to play them.

Here's a dump of the files I have sitting on my HP 200LX's PC-Card - mostly games, but there's some utilities and hardware tech-demos too.

http://www3.telus.net/a6120536/200LX.zip

I searched fairly extensively to gather all the best of what it could pull off.
If they'll run on my 200LX (2 AA batteries and a grey CGA-LCD, tho slightly faster CPU), they should run on your computer.

A fair amount of the content (directories in capitals) is off of xtfiles.rar:
ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/misc/
In particular, you'll want to get familiar with FastLynx for transferring files through Parallel or Serial onto the computer.

[MrPopo]

The biggest problem with PCs from this era was the lack of games being made. You might find a couple of gems but nothing really worth noting. Apple II/C64 was dominating during this era and really is the best place for games. PCs took a couple of years to come into their own. Nice machine though

Yeah, pre-DOS there wasn't really much, and even after DOS the PC port frequently was an afterthought compared to the Apple II or Amiga release. It isn't until near the end of the 80's that DOS really came into its own as a proper platform.