I have this old 1980's model pc here......

[delorean700]

I found this old pc in the attic of my great uncles house after he passed away. I have looked on the net to see if I could find any info about it, but there is none.
Does anyone here know anything about this computer? The only thing that I know about it is that it is made by a company named Mid South Data.

http://img244.echo.cx/img244/7577/oldcomputer9rb.jpg

[Enablingwolf]

Since you mentioned old I went to Altavista.
This is what I found.


Company Name: Mid-South Electronics Inc.
Firm Type: Importer, Private Subsidiary, Headquarters Location
Location: United States
Phone: 256 492-8997
Fax: USA (256)492-0625
Employees (Company Information): 350
Revenue(Estimate):$185.90 M
Fiscal Year End: 31-DEC-03
Year Founded: 1978
Primary SIC: Electronic Components, Not Elsewhere Classified
Primary NAICS:
Description: Manufacturing: Contract manufacturing; electronic PCB's, plastic injection molding, electronic housewares, office machines and turnkey assembly ...
Last Updated: 24-FEB-05

[freeagent]

:drool: coool, turbo buttons ROCK!! wish i had one :attn: :burn:

[SolidxSnake]

:drool: coool, turbo buttons ROCK!! wish i had one :attn: :burn:


overclock what?

[hibner]

what did turbo buttons do anyhow?
They were on all my old computers, but never seemed to do anything when i pushed them.

[Enablingwolf]

Do you have the lockout key for it. On them older rigs it seems they are lost right after they came out of the box. Or some admin has it in his huge keychain from the 80's.

[Enablingwolf]

what did turbo buttons do anyhow?
They were on all my old computers, but never seemed to do anything when i pushed them.


It helped compatabilty for programs that would not run, or something like that. I think it slowed down the clocks. That is if you turned the turbo feature off.

[SunRedRX7]

The turbo button on my Amdek 286a allowed me to go from 8mhz to a blazing 12.5mhz!

Which enabled Falcon 3.0 to almost not look like a slideshow.

[delorean700]

Heh yeah I still have the lockout key.

When booting the computer, it checks the memory which takes like 20 seconds, if I press the turbo button it checks in about 10 seconds. So it does make it faster.

Thanks for the info enablingwolf, but I was looking for info that was more about this computer.

[four4875]

you could lways pull ope the case and look.and id say it was early 90s. but i could be wrong tho.

[delorean700]

Well when I setup the computer, the default date was January 1, 1980.

It is 10mhz, not sure what kind of microprocessor it has though.
20mb hard drive
It doesn't have a place to plugin a mouse

And to top it all of, I have a nice orange text monochrome monitor to go along with it lol. Its a 9 pin.

[Enablingwolf]

LOL an old 9 pin monochrome.
Does it have my fav OS of all time Windows 3.1 on it, or just DOS?

[Enablingwolf]

If you give some part numbers and other info like serials/models it would make it easier to locate info on it. :D Not much to go by right now, 'cept some pix. It is either a Cyrix or Intel I am guessing. Any takers...
I am still lactating seeing a working dino-pc.

[delorean700]

It has DOS 3.2 on it, I will look up the numbers and crap later

[batboy]

I'm just guessing, but with a 20 meg HDD and 10 MHz clock speed, that sounds like a 286 from about the 1990 era. The 1980 date was probably just the default BIOS date since the battery is probably low and lost the settings, so it reverted back to default when you booted.

It might very well lack a mouse port, since some of those old machines just used a serial port mouse. Think I still have one of those too.

The turbo feature was actually an early version of overclocking. If you enabled the button, you got a couple extra MHz of power.

Got you beat though, I have an old Tandy 1000 AX that still worked last time I tried it a couple years ago. It has two 5.25" floppy drives and no HDD.

[delorean700]

Ah crap lol.

This thing was still brand new in an unopened box when I found it, maybe I should have left it that way.

[batboy]

Keep the box. Antiques that still have the original box are worth double.

[delorean700]

Wow, I have the moniter box also

[NsOmNiA91130]

So, how much memory does it have? 648K or something?

[Gnufsh]

So, how much memory does it have? 648K or something?
Well, it almost certainly has 640K or less (probably less).

[electrorcamd]

I am still lactating seeing a working dino-pc.
I have a Source One Systems with an Intel/Fujitsu 8088-2 @ 8MHz, 640KB of RAM, a 10MB hdd with a 2:1 interleave, 5.25in 360KB fdd, CGA graphics card, and an IBM CGA monitor. The computer is from 1984 and works perfectly. It had DOS 3.2 but I installed DOS 6 on it.

[delorean700]

Yes, it has 640k of memory.

[four4875]

i used to hve an epson QX-10, actually 2 of them. we got them from my great aunt who bought them back in 81 and 82. unkle got one and she liked it so se got one of her own. it was a 2 mhz z80 cpu with 640 k of ram, and had the 2 5 1/4 drives. for the one we had the "dos compatibility card" that upped the ram and used a different KB but we didnt have the dos disks for it. we werent gifted enough to have a mouse, but we did have the BA dot matrix printer. Fr the OS we had valdocs and CP/M. from what i recll CP/M was somewhat like dos, but i never figured it out... it was like 8 years ago that i played with it... i wish i still had the code for a couple of the games in basic it had... there was one titled dungeon, where you went through a castle with text discriptions and you could get a sword and a gun and moldy cheese and a bunch of fun stuff....... pops tossed it when my brother bought his packard bell back in like 98. miss that beast... if i still had it i'd try to put a 3 1/2 inch floppy in it.. and find dos disks to use and see if they worked...

oh well... not much i can do now :-(

[shellshock]

I had a old packard bell w/ dos 3.1 on it, It worked like a champ till tore it apart and pulled anything worth keeping (which ended up bieng 1 fan out of the psu) then I threw it and the monocrome monontor in the garbage.

[Elif Tymes]

I had an OLD Dec Rainbow :) My First REAL computer :)

[Gnufsh]

[QUOTE=four4875]Fr the OS we had valdocs and CP/M. from what i recll CP/M was somewhat like dos, but i never figured it out... /QUOTE]
DOS started when Bill Gates bought a clone of CP/M and sold it to IBM, so I would think they would be a little similar.

[Sshadow]

How many of you still got DOS 3 on originaldisk... :D DOS 5 was the greatest DOS ever made, best memory functions and all, DOS 6, 6.1, 6.2, 6.22 etc destroyed all memory saving functions... just my 0.02 ;)

//Christian

[shellshock]

How many of you still got DOS 3 on originaldisk... :D DOS 5 was the greatest DOS ever made, best memory functions and all, DOS 6, 6.1, 6.2, 6.22 etc destroyed all memory saving functions... just my 0.02 ;)

//Christian


i have dos 3.2 on a 5 in floppy if you want it

[Athlonight]

I found this old pc in the attic of my great uncles house after he passed away. I have looked on the net to see if I could find any info about it, but there is none.
Does anyone here know anything about this computer? The only thing that I know about it is that it is made by a company named Mid South Data.

http://img244.echo.cx/img244/7577/oldcomputer9rb.jpg

Maybe you can sell it as a haunted computer for 40,000 on ebay ?

[1cem4n]

I have an old Pentium(ORIGINAL) with MMX Technology. It ran Windows 95 after I upgraded from some weird OS(I don't know the name). 5gig hd which I turned into my linux computer's hard drive. ATi VGA and the only reason I know that is because the ATi logo is everywhere on the board. I used the CPU to make an awesome keychain

-1cem4n

[Gnufsh]

OS/2? Windows 3.1? Linux?

[subtotal]

I have an old Pentium(ORIGINAL) with MMX Technology. It ran Windows 95 after I upgraded from some weird OS(I don't know the name). 5gig hd which I turned into my linux computer's hard drive. ATi VGA and the only reason I know that is because the ATi logo is everywhere on the board. I used the CPU to make an awesome keychain

-1cem4n

lol, one of these days i'm going to turn my one into a paperweiight

[delorean700]

Ok, this is pretty much the only info I have on this computer, I do not have the manuals for it.

Manufacture: Mid South Data
Serial #: MA8715781
Model: Magitronic
And theres a sticker on one of the black chips that says Toshiba 1986.
Anyone know any other info on it?

[Enablingwolf]

All I am finding is information related to a long ago shut down company. Magitronic made monitors and laptops it seems. Also other communication devices. Thats about it for Magitronic.

Mid Data South leads to a firm. I am sure this isn't the actual maker of the PC. Unless it was made for them and given a Mid Data South label per the PO. Most high end machines back in the day were not just pulled of a shelf like current computers. They were made as they were ordered, since the cost of them were rather high.
Could it be that this is a totally old school custom machine. That was obsolete before the dawn of the internet became a clearing house of information.

What kind of chip are you refering to? Is it on the board and what kind is it, and location. I assume it has some technology that may look unfamilar to you. If you could give locations of the chip that would help narrow it down or post a pic of the innards of the machine.

[delorean700]

Ok heres a pic of the insides.

http://img125.echo.cx/img125/4987/dsc002411bn.jpg

I am really trying hard to get the HDD to work, the green status light blinks and lights up but whenever I run fdisk.exe it says "1 Fixed Drive Detected" "Error reading Fixed Drive"

[electrorcamd]

That looks sort of like a PC-XT or AT clone, with either 8088 or 80286. The psu definitely looks like the XT formfactor. The hdd looks like an old MFM style with the two cables out the back in addition to the power. As for it reading the hdd in fdisk, the hdd might need a low level format. It is easy to do on that type of computer; it usually involves finding the address for the interface of the controller card, and then accessing it through debug in DOS. It usually will then come up with a menu asking what you want to do, one of the choices being to low level format the drive. Select that, then choose the disk, then the interleave (probably 2:1 on that drive) and let it format. I had to low level my 20MB one because it kept losing data. I'm not sure how to find what address it would be, I looked in a book for mine.
GL with it.
Edit:
I just looked at my old computer. I also have the ST-225 hdd. It is 20MB and made by Seagate, with an MFM interface, and uses a 2:1 interleave. Here's the specs for it:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/mfm/st225.html
That computer looks very similar to my PC-XT clone. Look around the motherboard for companies, and also for the cpu. It should be fairly close to the psu, or up towards the front left.

[delorean700]

Sweet man, the HDD in my old computer is a Seagate Model ST-225.

I will try the low-level format.

[delorean700]

Im sorry, im a complete noob at this. I ran debug.exe off of the ms dos 3.2 disk, and it would only show a little dash symbol like this -. I can still type, but Im not sure what to do now.

[electrorcamd]

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=66706
You'll probably have to follow the instructions for an XT pc, unless you can get into the bios setup of the computer (in which case you probably have an AT). I would post the common addresses that you would use, but it was in a book that I don't have anymore. I would look at the hdd controller card, and see if you can find a manufacturer and model. If you can find it, post it here as well as Google it to see if you can find the address that it uses.

[delorean700]

There is a whole bunch of numbers on the HDD controller card (if I have the right card, pic below)

http://img114.echo.cx/img114/6201/dsc002438rz.jpg

If this is the card, then I will post all of the numbers and stuff on it.

Heres 1:
WDC' 85
WD11C00-JT
17-02 8745
943701105

Heres 2:
62-000128-060
WDC' 85

Heres 3:
Toshiba
TMM2016BP-10
8745NBK

Those are the numbers that looked most important to me, although I could be wrong.

[electrorcamd]

That looks like the right card, and the controller itself is the WD11C00-JT chip. I haven't found the address for the interface yet, but I will keep looking. Also, just so you know, a low level format will take several hours (I don't remember exactly how long, but it seemed like forever when I did it).
Edit:
Try this:
http://members.iweb.net.au/~pstorr/pcbook/book4/hdxt.htm
And this:
http://members.iweb.net.au/~pstorr/pcbook/book4/hdinter.htm
And:
http://www.abcresellers.bigstep.com/item.html?PRID=1286028

[delorean700]

Ok heres what I did

A> Debug.exe
-g=C800:0005

XT-GEN Dynamic Formatter Rev. 1.0 (c) Copywright Western Digital Corp. 1987

Current Drive is C:, Select new drive or RETURN for current.

Current Interleave is 3, Select new Interleave or RETURN for current.

Are you dynamically configuring the drive - answer Y/N n

Press "y" to begin formatting drive C with interleave 03
y
Formatting. . . .


Did I do this right? Or was I supposed to dynamically configure the drive?

[electrorcamd]

As far as I can tell that is right. I have never heard of dynamically configuring, so I would say that it is fine the way that you did it.

[delorean700]

Ok it is done formatting, I created the partition and it works!!!

Thank you very much for your help and all of the information.

[electrorcamd]

Awesome. Old computers are fun.

[delorean700]

Yeah they are.

Now I need to find some software for this thing, all I have now is this thing called Ability that is used to write reports, make databases, spreadsheets, graphs, and some other things. It was probably pretty expensive software back in the day, but what do I know lol.

[electrorcamd]

lol. I have a couple of golf games, Lotus 123, Wordstar, some board games, some strategy games, and a few BASIC programming environments. If you have a version of BASIC on it (I think DOS comes with one) then you can search Google for some programs that you can run, or you can see if your library has any books with programs in them. I'm about to try to remember how to play golf on mine now.

[delorean700]

Is there a way that I can install the DOS 3.2 Operating System right onto the HDD instead of having to boot from the disk every time?

[electrorcamd]

Yeah, it should be in the manual for DOS if you have it. If you don't have it, I can see if I can find my copy.

[LostInTennessee]

you have "Dumpster Food"

[delorean700]

No way man, this pc isn't trash.

[FlailBoy]

If you have a version of BASIC on it (I think DOS comes with one) then you can search Google for some programs that you can run, or you can see if your library has any books with programs in them.

IIRC, it's called QBASIC. Should be able to just type that in at the command prompt. There was this game that shipped with 5.0...gorilla.bas (I think). I think you threw bananas over buildings at another gorilla. Not sure if 3.2 had it.

DOS 5.0 could be hard to find on 5 1/4" but it might be worth it.

[Crash893]

i say you get your oregon trail on

[delorean700]

I don't know if I can even play games with this orange display monochrome monitor.

[electrorcamd]

DOS 3.2 had BASIC and BASICA. QBASIC didn't come out until 5.0 or 6. I've never had gorillas.bas except on one computer that had DOS 6.22 already installed.
The games you can play probably wouldn't look too good on it though.

[threeme2189]

so cool...
i had an old pc with the turbo button. went from something to about 66 mhz i think so it wasnt that old. plus it had a cd drive a 5.25 inch floppy drive and a storage/backup cassette drive !!
btw i still have an original copy of windows 3.11 in its box with the bigass instruction book for those who are interested...the funniest part is that it says New on the box!
il try to snap a pic and post it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Threeme2189/win1.jpg

check it out!!!

[larrymoencurly]

Except for the logo, it looks exactly like a case I once found. Does it have a flip top, where you press two buttons on the sides to swing it up like a car hood? Those old cases were made of much heavier metal than most of today's cases.