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IBM PS/2

This section goes about IBM's PS/2 computers. These machines were designed as a follow-up to the earlier PC, XT, and AT computers. IBM created various great enhancements over these predecessors that made it into the mainstream PC clones only years later or never at all.
PS/2 stands for 'Personal System/2', where '/2' probably doesn't mean 'divided by 2', but presumably 'second generation'.
Most PS/2s (and all of those described here) have as most distinguishing mark the then all-new bus system called the Microchannel Bus (the underlying architecture is known as MCA, Micro Channel Architecture).
Other marks are the use of SIMMs, exchangeable processor cards in some systems and the general build quality, which is best characterised with 'built like a tank' ;-).

IBM PS/2 8565

(See Picture 1 and Picture 2) This one was used at my school for displaying function graphs in math lessons. We got it because it was replaced by a newer computer (486). The one we have is equipped with a mathematical co-processor, VGA and 8514/A graphics adapter. It has a 80MB SCSI harddisk and 4MB Ram. M$-Dos was installed.
As you can see in the picture, the computer is quite big. It has eight slots for MCA cards, a huge power supply, and there is space for 6 harddisks.
A problem was that the real time clock and bios data battery was dead after 13 years (Picture 3). The battery is inside the Dallas 1287 Real Time clock chip and can't be replaced - you're supposed to buy a new chip. We solved the problem by opening the chip and installing a new battery. [TBA]

IBM PS/2 9577 (Picture 4)

In summer 1998 a school close to mine moved to another location. They threw away all their old stuff they had collected over the years and that were two PS/2 9577, too. We have just one running because the other's case was destroyed when the computer was dumped in to trash container... We still have the electric parts of the second unit as spares.

IBM PS/2 9590

This is one of the PS/2 we bought (used!). It was probably used in a pharmacy. The VGA plug didn't work anymore but it could resoldered to the planar. It was equipped with a eight port serial connectors card and an ITBU (streamer). The complex card it has is type 2 with a 486DX2 50MHz processor.
This machine is equipped with two graphics adapters: an XGA on the planar (with the formerly broken plug), and an XGA-2 card. On system startup, the computer detects to which plug a monitor is attached and enables that adapter only.
A problem caused by the presence of two graphics adapters is that the xgapos utility (to determine the correct parameters for your XFree86 config file) doesn't work right.
Luckily, the utility is open source, so we changed it to be able to deal with multiple XGA cards in one computer. You can download a copy here. This machine is used as a filedump with a 9GB Diskette.

IBM PS/2 9576i

When I went the last time to a local computer recycler to get a PS/2 2.88 Diskette drive I came back home with this machine. The guy there was happy that he found someone to sell a whole PS/2 to because he couldn't sell the parts alone.
The computer is inside a quite small box. Because of that, there fit only three drives inside. Currently there is the original 270MB Quantum SCSI harddisk and a 2.88 Floppy inside. The special thing about that PS/2 is that is has no on bord SCSI but IDE what isn't usual at all. It also has not the standard XGA-2 but a S3 VLB image adapter. IBM probably didn't trust IDE harddisks and put a Future Domain SCSI controller inside... Doesn't that show that IDE isn't the best choice?
Luckily the company where it was used had TokenRing, so we didn't have to search for a card to integrate it in our local network.
This is one of the late PS/2s that didn't use the reference partition where the BIOS is stored on anymore. It already has a flash BIOS but it still features the reference partitions. It was manufactured in the second half of 1994.
The only problem of this machine is that the Magnetek power supplys use to collapse and then can't be repaired anymore. Some resistors that get too hot and so they destroy themselves. If they don't work anymore, the controlling ICs of the power supply are destroyed by a power surge. The one that is build into our 9576i still works but there are four resistors on the pcb where the area is brown because of the heat the they produced. We have to find out if we just need to replace these by better ones... On the Internet, the latter issues of these power supplies are said to be longer lasting - ours seems to be the last issue (issue 6). Because of the unresolved power supply issue, this machin cuurently isn't in regular use.

IBM PS/2 Server 95 XP

Finally we got one of those, too. It just happened when a friend bought a computer at a recycler. The shop offered us a Siemens Pentium computer plus a free computer. So we decided to buy this offered machine and after we convinced the seller to add an IBM computer we got this one. Aquired: 2004/07/08

Technical Aspects

The model is 9595-ALG, which was only available in Europe, I think. From the FCCID it can be seen that it is still mostly the older 9585. The PS/2 came with 8MB RAM, a Type 2 complex with a 50MHz 486. The harddisk is made by Maxtor and has 540MB.
It is equipped with a XGA-2 card, another Comtrol serial networking adapter and an IBM SCSI with cache (2x256Kb chache). It's fun to use the LED panel to put out text, or use it as a digital clock. We still have to decide what to use this one for.

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