Subject: IBM 5285

From: Alan Greenstreet <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon Jun 30 17:44:01 2003

Hi All

Another recent addition to my growing collection is, as the title 
suggests, an IBM 5285. It has a 12" display and dual 8" floppy drives. 
The separate keyboard is connected at the front of the machine by a 
large 25 pin connector.

Originally passed to me as "working" the machine fired up to display 
what looked like a single ASCII code at the top centre of the screen 
and a column of blocks on the far right. The keyboard is laid out very 
much like a terminal keyboard and testing the keys the keyboard buffer 
quickly becomes full. This results in what looks like a series of 
memory addresses along the bottom of the screen.

All the while the two 8" drives are merrily spinning away. I have one 
disk with the machine which when inserted in either drive fails to read 
or alter the state of the display.

My initial thoughts were faulty connections. I took the covers off to 
reveal about a kilo of dust liberally spread around the inside. I 
cleaned each component carefully and replaced the boards. Now I don't 
get anything on the display and the drives still whirr around oblivious 
of disk or no disk...

So... my questions are:
1. Has anyone come across this model before and is it a dumb terminal?
2. What checks would you suggest to solve the disk access problems?
3. Can anyone point me towards a repository of information about it?

Thanks in advance

Alan

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From: Tarsi <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon Jun 30 21:57:00 2003

> 3. Can anyone point me towards a repository of information about it?

Wow, this sounds almost exactly like my IBM 5324.  Let me see:

The tower case is about 3' tall and beige, the 8" floppies are in the front 
top with a power switch.  The back is closed with a turn-key type thing that 
allows the cover to swing open on hinges.  The monitor attaches to the 
computer through a round three-prong plug.

And mine behaves similar to yours.  It starts up and displays incrementing 
numbers across the top, about three rows, then jumps to a hex dump on the 
bottom, about 2 or 3 lines, and stops.

The little information I've found out about it has been provided by Wayne 
Smith (wmsmith at earthlink dot net), and he writes:

"I have full documentation on the 5324, although I've never seen one
other than the monitor (I had one which I used to replace the blown
monitor I had in a 5322).  It is a reconfigured IBM Datamaster, aka
System 23 or IBM 5322.  You don't see them that often.  It boots to
Basic.  ... Processor is an 8085.  Comes with anywhere from 32K to 128K RAM.  
I just moved to a new place a few days ago so it will be a while before
I can lay my hands on anything."

I haven't heard whether Wayne had found his documentation or not.  In the 
meantime, I've opened up the box and peeked around.  It has a mem card and a 
disk controller card for the 8" drives, that's about it.  Big power supply on 
the bottom.

Let me know if you find anything and I'll do the same, it's likely these are 
things of the same type, different flavour.

Tarsi

---

From: Alan Greenstreet <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon Jun 30 22:51:00 2003

> computer through a round three-prong plug.

Not quite... this seem to have been designed as a desktop box with the 
monitor built in on the left and the two 8" drives mounted vertically 
to the right (the power switch is on the front as is the keyboard 
connector). Dimensions 24" Wide, 15" Tall and 20" Deep. The separate 
keyboard is also on the large size, a tapered shape 2" thick at the 
front and 4" thick at the back (about 19" wide).
The whole thing takes two people to pick it up... I recon about 50kg 
total weight.
> bottom, about 2 or 3 lines, and stops.
Exactly what mine is doing. or rather was doing. It seems to have given 
up all together at the moment...

> disk controller card for the 8" drives, that's about it.  Big power 
Huge power supply! There is a manufacturers sticker on the power supply 
stating made in October 1980 and a weight of 35lbs (just the power 
supply).
Having taken the thing apart there seems to be an Intel 8045 chip on 
one of the smaller boards. There are two full width boards and four 
smaller boards. There appears to be plenty of room for expansion with 
four "slots" (I use slot in the loosest sense) running across the main 
board.

> things of the same type, different flavour.
So far all my searches on the web have lead to nothing, but as soon as 
I find out anything I'll let you know.

Alan

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From: "Wayne M. Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Jul 1 02:44:00 2003

> > I haven't heard whether Wayne had found his documentation 
> or not.  In
> > the
> > meantime, I've opened up the box and peeked around.  It has 
> a mem card 
> > and a

Haven't progressed that far in the unpacking yet.  I'm sitting in a room
with about 85 unpacked (and largely unlabeled) boxes - my project for
the 4th.

-W