Uncreative Labs

Guest

I was recently given an IBM XT computer and now I need to know what to do with it. I was able to dial in to my ISP using the LSPPP program but once it's connected I need something to do. There is no hard drive so I'm limited in the size of program I can run. Also having an MDA display I'm having trouble finding any good games to run on it. I need help.

Here are the specs:

Display: MDA
Drive A: 360KB
Drive B: 720KB
Memory: 640KB

Rockwell ISA Modem
HP Ethertwist PC Link
Dual Port Game Card

Thanks for any cool ideas. Smile

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2005 5:07 am

If you're in to kinda bad programming and bad humor, try Wry from Nukem Enterprises:
http://www.geocities.com/nukemn0w/NE/qbfiles.html

You'll need Qbasic, which will easily fit on a 720k disk, but you may have trouble on a 360k disk.

Joined: 03 Oct 2004 Posts: 24 Location: Finland

This IRC client should work (the first program on the page):

http://www.rowan.sensation.net.au/programs.html

I have it on my XT. Works well Smile

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

If you want to play games on your XT, I would highly recommend replacing your MDA/MDPA adapter as it is not capable of displaying graphics. You need at least a Hercules monochrome adapter, or an 8-bit EGA card which is capable of interfacing with TTL displays. However, many 16-bit ISA VGA adapters will also function in an 8-bit slot. You can go that route if you wish to run a VGA display instead of your monochrome monitor. The best type of card to get is a VGA card that has both the 9-pin and 15-pin outputs so that you can interface with any type of monitor. I recommend the ATi VGA wonder (with both heads), or you can get an (ega only) ATi EGA wonder which are currently selling on eBay. If you don't buy now, you may not see more for quite some time.

Joined: 01 Oct 2004 Posts: 169 Location: behind you!

If you must keep that card you will need a program called simcga. It will allow a mda card to emulate a cga adapter. Not the best thing to look at but thats how my first system ran and I used it for 2 years like that.

simcga avalible in link below.

http://www.uncreativelabs.net/downloads/

Guest

gee sounds like my reply.
a decent 16 bit vga card like my wife's old tseng labs 1m vga works in a 8 bit slot as will many other isa vga cards. I have both herc cards and mono monitors and my son wants me to trash all this stuff.
jet can be run by typing jet/h and early flight somulator the same way.
the later flight simulator is too big for your drives.

Guest

many years ago " just for fun" i took out the herc card and installed an IBM mono card
( no graphics) then I tried several simple games to see what would run
a few with "stick" graphics did run
I carefullky set them aside and still have not found them
they may be on a forgotten box of floppies,
or in old backups to floppies,
this was well be fore i used tapes.

Guest

Thanks for the suggestions. So far I've had no luck with getting online in any way but I found some sites with tons of cool ASCII based games. Some of them still need colour to be playable but plenty of them work fine in monochrome. For you playing pleasure:

http://www.textmodegames.com/

http://members.chello.at/theodor.lauppert/games/ascii.htm

I have a Trident VGA card that does work in it but for now I'd like to keep it authentic. Plus it gives it a cool Wargames type feel using it in monochrome. Greetings Professor... Laughing

I have several I/O cards that I tried but none worked; I wanted to try installing a 1.44MB floppy drive or CD-ROM to give me more space to work with. I guess I need an 8-bit card though, mine are all 16-bit ISA.

Joined: 12 Feb 2005 Posts: 7

Brian wrote:

I have several I/O cards that I tried but none worked; I wanted to try installing a 1.44MB floppy drive or CD-ROM to give me more space to work with. I guess I need an 8-bit card though, mine are all 16-bit ISA.

you might consider the 8 bit SCSI controller. Theoretically you can use both CDrom and H/D with the SCSI controller. However, setup an old 8 bit SCSI controller would make you crazy sometimes.

If you just want a bigger space, using a parallel zip driver is simple but you need to find an early ver software to drive the zip on your XT. If you cant find the software, i have.

I personally suggest you to use CF card on your XT . an 8 bit IDE controller with a CF-IDE converter is what you need. I currently use a 64 M CF card on my 8088 with a silicon ADPL-50 8 bit IDE controller. low power consuming , no noize ( esp after i change the power fan with a modern noiseless fan) and stable. The only problem is that the 8bit IDE controller is hard to find. When it appeared , it usually goes up to 60-70 USD on the ebay.

Another way to use CF card on your XT is to build an 8 bit IDE controller yourself . the schematic is very simple . It takes less than 10 USD for the TTL ICs .and if you are familiar with soldering it takes you a fewl hours only . You can find the schematics easily by googling

Guest

[quote="lither"]

Brian wrote:

I personally suggest you to use CF card on your XT . an 8 bit IDE controller with a CF-IDE converter is what you need. I currently use a 64 M CF card on my 8088 with a silicon ADPL-50 8 bit IDE controller. low power consuming , no noize ( esp after i change the power fan with a modern noiseless fan) and stable. The only problem is that the 8bit IDE controller is hard to find. When it appeared , it usually goes up to 60-70 USD on the ebay.

Another way to use CF card on your XT is to build an 8 bit IDE controller yourself . the schematic is very simple . It takes less than 10 USD for the TTL ICs .and if you are familiar with soldering it takes you a fewl hours only . You can find the schematics easily by googling

Yes but is it 8bit IDE only or 16bit? 8bit IDE drives are hard to locate and only come in 20mb/40mb sizes.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Actually, there were some 8-bit IDE cards which had built-in BIOS. The Acculogic sIDE card I've got in my XT supported up to 540MB, but it's horribly slow...

Joined: 12 Feb 2005 Posts: 7

ryan no log wrote:

Yes but is it 8bit IDE only or 16bit? 8bit IDE drives are hard to locate and only come in 20mb/40mb sizes.

I have only the 8 bit IDE carde for ATA (16 bit ) and dont have a luck to find a Xt-IDE card ( 8 bit ) . The card ( silicon ADP-50) i used is a 8 bit card for 16 bit IDE (ATA ) driver . I used a 500M H/D with it previously and use a 64 M card with it now. The norton SI report 6 times faster than the disk of an IBM XT and 3 times faster than the IBM AT .
The data transfer rate is 554 Kilobyte per sec. The speed is acceptable to me

I believe CF card could be used under XT-IDE card , maybe with a homemade IDE-CF converter to instruct the CF card work in 8 bit .

For people who are interested in building their own IDE adapter (ATA ), i would recommend :

http://www.mylinuxisp.com/~jdbaker/oldsite/SmallSys/8bitIDE.html#XTIDE

The software and the schematic are both available there. I havent try it myself but i think it will work.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 377 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

T-R-A wrote:

Actually, there were some 8-bit IDE cards which had built-in BIOS. The Acculogic sIDE card I've got in my XT supported up to 540MB, but it's horribly slow...

That sucks, I had one of those and gave it away a few days ago for $1 because I thought it was just some worthless ide controller. I didn't know it had its own bios.