Where to find parts for 1980's IBM

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Dan_J

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Hi guys,

I have come to consult with the experts yet again. I'm working at a manufacturing plant that uses many old ibm series machines with the 5 1/4 inch floppy drives. One of the units has a faulty drive and i'm struggleing to find a potential replacement. Any ideas on where i can get such a part?

Thanks so much guys.
 
Have you tried the Smithsonian?

Seriously, though, I think your best bet would be Ebay for this one. I'm not sure if anyone even manufactures these anymore. You may check with some local colleges to see if they have anything in some storage room they've forgotten about.
 
I just recycled a bunch of those earlier this year when I moved my company from NY to VA. If I had more time I would have put them on ebay. I have been in the computer business since the IBM PC XT or PC jr days in the early 80's.
 
Thanks guys, I've worked a lot with DOS in the past however this unit was way before my time. I managed to get the unit back up and running by resoldering a few things with the floppy drive. I've also had to create a new powersupply for the machine by using a multimeter to test voltages and then using a modern supply to create a replica. Working for this client has kept things interesting to say the least.
 
You need one of these...

back-to-the-future2.jpg
 
HAHAHA! That is awesome. You have inspired me to re watch those movies while i do some laptop motherboard swaps today.

Thank you!
 
Is the defective unit completely dead or does the disk spin and the heads attempt to read the disk? If not completely dead, have you tried cleaning the rails and the head in the defective drive?

Ebay would be a possible source but be prepared to pay thru the nose. You might try asking if anyone has one they'll sell you from here: The Vintage Computer Forums.

Depending on what version of DOS you are using, it's possible to install a 3.5" floppy drive in place of the 5.25" drive. Are the disks copy protected or is there any other reason why you couldn't copy the software from the 5.25" disks to the 3.5" disks?
 
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If he had to copy the disks, wouldn't he still need the drive in order to read them? I'm assuming these are cnc machines. We had to deal with something similar a few years ago at a small factory down here. We wound up having to fly someone in from South Carolina to install some new interfaces so we could upgrade the control computers and software.
 
angry_geek said:
If he had to copy the disks, wouldn't he still need the drive in order to read them? I'm assuming these are cnc machines. We had to deal with something similar a few years ago at a small factory down here. We wound up having to fly someone in from South Carolina to install some new interfaces so we could upgrade the control computers and software.
Click to expand...
Since the OP mentioned that there were multiple machines and only 1 had the floppy failure, there are other machines with working drives where the disk could be copied.
 
If these are really old PCs there may not be hard drives in them. And if they run custom software no one may have an old copy of DOS to boot from.

No reflection on anyone in this topic but I bet many here haven't actually been in front of a real IBM AT PC.

Found this site on Google:

http://www.davesvintagepcs.com/
 
Whether the machine's have a hard drive in them or not is irrelevant. If the machine's have a bootable DOS diskette then it can be copied. However, it's possible that the disks are copy-protected or otherwise not copyable.

I personally have spent plenty of time in front of the old IBM hardware, still have 2 IBM PCs, an XT and several other old IBM machines in my collection.

The full-height 5.25" drives are a little hard to come by but the half-height 5.25" drives are not hard to find.

That ebay store you linked to is a joke. I have more vintage computer parts in my spare bedroom then that guy has in his entire ebay store!
 
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Hey guy's. Yeah they are CNC machines and upgrading them is a cost the company doesnt want to take on. I'll get the part numbers for you guys.

I actually took a drive from another unit that was a known good and tested it out. No go, the system actually posted "configuration too large for memory" however. Still working on this and hopefully i'm able to get something going soon. Can't even get it in to DOS. It all happened when the company had another IT personnel come out to work on the system. They failed to get it going and now i'm trying to figure out what the initial problem was caused by and perhaps what the other company may have introduced.

Thanks for all the help :)
 
In reference to previous post's. these systems are pretty interesting to work on. No hard drives at all. Just memory that is temporarily used when booting from a disk. The system run's PC-DOS which is MS-DOS just rebranded.

I've worked for this company for a while, they were one of my first clients. I met the owner of the company when i was working at *GASP* (gets ready to be flamed) Geek Squad.

All these problems came about when the company decided they were going to try and save some money and test out a guy who's rates were cheaper than mine for a problem they figured was too simple to call me out on site for. well the long and the short of it was that somehow the PSU ended up fried.. i had to custom make one using a modern supply. I did so by testing all the voltage outs on a working supply and then replicating it by removing the connector from the dead supply and soldering accordingly. After that was done the system powered on but the Floppy drive was constantly trying to read, even if no disk was in the drive. I dissassembled the unit to find that the ribbon cable had been attached upside down. amongst several other things that were improperly assembled.

I flipped the cable and the drive stopped running constantly but still had an issue. I dissassembled the drive and found some soldering work. Drive now works on other machines, not on this one.

So i'm finally to the point where i think there may actually be some irrepairable damage to the machine.

Thanks guys was an interesting conversation!
 
I think you said these were IBM machines, what model? 8-bit or 16-bit bus?

Sounds like the floppy controller in that machine may have gone belly up. They are available on Ebay and other places.
 
You will probably laugh, they are IBM 5150's. I've done a bit of work with them however to increase their efficiency. I've upgraded them all to the NEC Zilog v20 processors and maxed out all their memory.

I'm heading back out on site on monday to do a little more work with the machine. I may potentially pick it up and bring it back to my shop. If i bring it back to my shop ill post here so we can see about testing a few things out.

Dan
 
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