8088 PC Computer

Under the hood of a 8088 XT PC desktop computer
Under the hood of a 8088 XT PC desktop computer

A friend of mine was moving and no longer had room for this treasure. I generally only like to collect older computers in particular I’m fond of S-100 equipment or CDP1802 based items. This was too much to pass up though. On the top you’ll see the 5-1/4″ floppy to the left, followed by the (I believe to be) 20MB MFM hard drive which is tiny (in physical size, typical for memory capacity) for it’s day… the DIP memory to the right, I’m fairly certain by memory part numbers I’m looking at 640kB of memory. .. then in the 8 bit ISA slots on the bottom you have the MFM hard drive controller card on the left, then the floppy… a serial port adapter (25 Pin D-SUB) and finally 9 pin monochrome video adapter with a built in parallel port. Unfortunately the monitor he gave me has a 15 pin D-SUB which I thought they started at VGA but perhaps it’s an EGA monitor–it’s poorly marked. At least it came with the 5 pin DIN keyboard. As soon as a built an adapter for the video I’ll give it a chance at a boot-up. I’m considering a trip down to Alphatronics this weekend to see if they have an 8087 co-processor since they weren’t typically installed and that seems to be the only stuff Alphatronics has any more (old chips everyone’s long moved past, try getting an OP Amp there released in the last 5 years). After my visit there I’ll hit upĀ  RE-PC in Tukwila; perhaps they will have some spare cards and extra memory if I’m really lucky. Another score for my personal museum collection.

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