[thunk] [thud] [plunk] [plop] [crinkle, thwap] [splurnk] Agh, okay! Greetings and welcome to an LGR
thing! As you know, I'm very much a fan of older IBM computers and this is going to
be one of them that I have never used before. I've used Personal System/2s,
or the PS/2, but never used this particular model which is the Model 25. It is the
all-in-one version of their lowest end PS/2 introduced in August or so of 1987.
So the low end of the machines are the Model 25 and also the Model 30. Which
this one is in horrible shape, that's gonna need some refurbishment. I am
planning some videos that are more historical retrospectives kind of
hardware videos but I wanted to get the lowest end of the series to compare to
the more higher-end PS/2 models that I already own. But yes the one we're gonna
be looking at today is still new in the box, more or less. Some things have been
done to it by the person that I got it from so I guess it's not new in box
anymore, but it was up until I ordered it. And I know someone's gonna ask "where did you get it from?"Tthe company was NYCE Distribution -- or Distributors, something
like that. I saw someone post that they had bought some brand new PS/2 machines from them in, I dunno, 2015, 2016 something like that. Several years ago. So
I jumped on it. You know you get like a whole complete system for two to three
hundred bucks. This one was a little more since it came with some extra goodies
that I wanted to check out, but suffice to say last time I looked they're like
asking seven or eight hundred dollars now for the same systems. Because I mean, the supply that they had I guess is running lower. I thought I got a
pretty good deal on this one, and one reason for that is because it came with
this space-saving keyboard. In fact let me just go ahead and get to that because I had wanted one of these for a very
long time -- and my refrigerator just came on. Ugh anyway. Check this out: this is a
IBM Model M SSK. July 29th, 1987. Yeah man. This is a pretty friggin desirable
buckling spring keyboard. It's a tenkeyless, you know, smaller layout here so there's no numpad or anything. And while I do prefer to have a numpad on my
everyday kind of systems, I just like collecting Model Ms. And this is a
pretty major one that I did not have and I just think it looked great.
So yeah this is new. [sniff!] Yeah, still smells like new and it's got the cable right
here. This is a PS/2 cable, which makes sense but yeah. This was a big reason
that I wanted this whole system because these on their own today like, I don't
know how much they're going for. Last time I checked something like three or
four hundred bucks for a good example. I don't know man prices fluctuate for SSKs. However let's go ahead and start unboxing this thing which yeah, I don't
even remember exactly what it came with. It's been sitting around in my storage
for a long time ready for this video. In fact the tape has started to come off.
And this has the system unit and the monitor because it's an all-in-one
computer, it sits all together, so there's no separating those. It's kind of
appealing to me, I quite like all-in-one units and this one in particular is not
color, it's monochrome, which is doubly interesting to me. I don't have any all-in-ones that are monochrome. Well unless you count like classic Macs. As far as PCs
though this is the only one, so yeah. Gonna leave that tape. Hmm I really don't
want to move my camera. So we're just gonna move over to my phone for a second. Yeah
this is what you get on the inside, it's very similar to a lot of other IBM units
that I've unboxed. Er, well, you know I've just bought. I haven't unboxed every single
one of them on camera but, check it out. You get the PS/2 Guide to Operations
and starter diskette, and then pretty much the rest of it is just going to be
the computer itself. Oh man. Okay. Whoa. Styrofoam noises... And a nice little power cable right there. Well it's not little, it's
substantial as you'd expect. Oh there's something else down here. Huh.
What is this... PS/2 Software Sampler. "Bonus!" "Thanks!" Lorenzo. Yeah Lorenzo's the guy
that runs NYCE, or at least he deals with the sales.
Oh yeah, check this little thing out. Oh that's neat. Alright wow, this is interesting. So you get this little stand back here and it's got
these notches and springs. You can adjust it that's kind of cool. Yeah the monitor design in general very much reminds me of my PS/2 8513 monitor. And check it out. That is a lovely machine. I have always just been one to
admire this design. Some find the PS/2s rather ugly. The PS/2 line just has this "oh
it's a very... it works" kind of aesthetic. It looks like on the back
here we've got a question mark which makes sense. That's usually found on new
IBMs just to let you know that you're supposed to be able to switch the
voltage there to whatever, because they ship these just all around the world. And
then right here is where we're gonna be plugging in the power cord, so that's
that. And so it looks like we have a serial and parallel that's about it. This is
probably gonna be the SCSI option because that's one of the things that's
been done to this before I even got it. Lorenzo installed SCSI, upgraded it to
640K RAM, I think installed DOS on there. I think, I
don't know exactly... I mean yeah, we've got some my I/O there and what is that? It
looks like a quarter-inch audio connector. Anyway we've got PS/2 connectors, we'll figure out what that does. And yeah, that's pretty much it as far as I know.
Again I will be doing a more involved video on this and the Model 30 in the
future. So this might be a little sparse on technical details but I will
be revisiting these. Hey and it does have a 2.88 megabyte three-and-a-half inch floppy disk drive. A lot of PS/2s did. Not all of
them did, but this one apparently does. Anyway let's open these things up. Before
we do that let me get to this huge thing. So yeah this is the IBM Personal System/2 SCSI storage enclosure. Yeah let's just go ahead and get this open so you
can see what's going on. All right that's packaged quite nicely. Nice foam, they're
not styrofoam. So yeah check it out, this is the IBM 3510 external SCSI
enclosure. So you've got your drive which can go right here, it's a five and a
quarter inch bay for hard disks, or you know, whatever else. Nice power button.
We've got a key lock there, the key is taped to the top still. And then around
back you've got the spots for plugging it
into the computer itself and then terminating the drive, so that's pretty
awesome. And a sweet power cable, mmm. Alright so
yeah let's open the Guide to Operations. I always love doing this whenever I get
a new-old-stock IBM machine. And there we go, a technical directory
and the operations, no diskette in here. [sniff!} Mm yep, smells new.
"The Personal System/2 Model 25 consists of a system unit" "and keyboard. The system unit contains a
processor and memory, a display, and one" "or two diskette drives. The diskette drive
reads data from and records on 720K" disks." So I guess this has been upgraded
to the 2.88 if it normally took 720 on this model, that's interesting. This is
good to knows, this is stuff that I you know, I want to know whenever I'm
actually going to be doing a more in-depth review/retrospective kind of
thing. Oh look at this I love these kind of illustrations like that. Put the
starter diskette in there, which we probably won't have to do since I
believe it has already been, you know, had DOS installed to it and all that kind of
good stuff. So yeah. And then we have the Technical Directory.
Books, reference materials, and software products for IBM PC products and PS/2
products. Here we go, we've got some prices here for manuals, hardware
maintenance libraries, technical reference manuals. Graphics development
toolkit: $556. OS/2 graphics development toolkit: $1155 dollars. COBOL/2: $1010
dollars. Oh that's nice, Fortran/2: $666. Same for Pascal Compiler - that's a nice
round number. Oh hey there's the diskette, I knew I have to be in here somewhere.
Yeah check that out. All right and this is nice to have, I don't -- I don't think
I've ever looked through one of these before, at least not the PS/2 Software
Sampler. So I'm intrigued to see what this is exactly. All right. Oh yeah, this package contains three three-and-a-half inch diskettes.
Education programs: These United States, Matrix Madness, Electronic Grammar,
Algebra Drills, and some productivity stuff: an introductory editor, daily
organizer, phone directory, print buffer, PC checkbook, and PC print. As well as
entertainment programs: Verso, Solitaire, nice. Freddie's Rescue
Roundup, Blackjack, Word Seeking, and Kaleidoscope. This is a lot of stuff,
maybe this was like an extra set of software that was only available as an
option. I don't know, the thing from the guy I got it from said 'bonus' so I'll
have to look up and see whether or not this came with the system by default. Anyway, but I just like these little disk packages, check it out. I like
this here: "Note to US government users." "Restricted rights legend. Use: duplication
or disclosure is subject to restrictions" "stated in the contract of the--" holy crap
that's a lot of stuff. IBM was serious about their demo disks. Hopefully these
are still readable and we can check them out once we get this thing set up. Oh
yeah so we still got a couple other things here. This right here is the
future! Well, rather, Future Domain. It's manufactured exclusively for IBM and
this is the rather catchily-named TMC-850IBM SCSI adapter option for IBM PS1 and PS/2 and PC AT bus systems. Check out the way that this opens up, it looks like a shoebox or
something. For very long, large shoes. In fact I used to have size 15 feet for a
bit, like seriously they were 15. And then they like shrunk but anyway. Lost a bunch
of weight my feet shrank. But the boxes for the shoes were about this big. What's
in here? Got a SCSI cable package. That's literally a SCSI cable
in a package. And we got the adapter card plug and play, and yeah. That has
already been installed in the machine. Got some substantial stuff right here,
we've got a terminator as well as the connector for the SCSI cable, plugs in
the back of the computer right there and that plugs into this or whatever else.
I'd love to get a working Bernoulli Disk to plug up to this thing. The one
I covered years ago on Oddware never worked. All right so we got some software
here, I mean this would just be like SCSI drivers option diskette? Yeah
pretty much. "Notice for installation of stuff: you got
some problems potentially," hmm. Warranty information... We got the manual here with
three pre-punched holes to plug into your binder if you have one. Which this one
does not, I'm kind of sad about that. The documentation for a lot of IBM machines
came in binders still, three-ring binders. I'm assuming most of the PS/2s didn't,
or I don't know, at least this one doesn't. And while this one is not a
microchannel architecture machine I will be talking about the whole microchannel kerfuffle whenever I do a video about these machines and the rest of the
PS/2 line in general because that is a fascinating story of failure. On the
other hand yeah, that is one of the things that is rather appealing about
the Model 25 and 30: easier upgrades. Alright so yeah, I'm not gonna... well
actually, that kind of might need to install it...
installed off this drive and it doesn't do that... eh, let's just open the mouse
for now, see what else we need to do here. Yeah, IBM Personal System/2 Mouse:
not for resale! This is cool to have new in the box. I'm not a huge fan of this
mouse personally but it's still cool to have, especially brand new. So we have
some more documentation stuff, I feel a disk in there, I guess for the mouse. Yeah
mouse program diskette. As well as installation and cleaning instructions.
Yep. Don't forget to clean your mouse balls!
Another protective cardboard backing there. And there we go, mouse program
diskettes. Installing the mouse: plug it in there you go. And installing the mouse
program: install it. And yeah, cleaning, good. Turn it off, disconnect the
mouse -- who did that? Unlock the retainer, wash the ball in warm soapy water and
dry it well. Wipe the mouse and retainer with a damp cloth, install the ball and
retainer, lock the retainer by moving in [mumbling manual stuff] and connect
it again. Good times. Oh wow. That... that's just a
sight to behold. Oh yeah you see that dust coming off of
there? It's like manufacturing dust or something. Oh wow [sniff!] mmm that smells really good. A brand new rubber and plastic, you know, kind of a new car smell. I don't
wanna smell too hard cuz I don't know what that that dust is but anyway. Great
lovely example. I mean it should be, it's brand new. Okay not that we need to clean
the ball, but just look how clean my ball is! Yeah that's a satisfying
little click. Alright time to get all this stuff set up and working. And yeah
probably should have tested it back when I got it forever ago, but I wanted to
preserve my initial reactions unboxing this thing. For, you know, YouTuber reasons. So if it doesn't work I'll have to time travel and get a refund. So I'm gonna power it on before plugging in the SCSI drive first just to see
what we get. Mouse pad. Which one is the mouse? It
doesn't actually say, it just says "1 & 2." All right so according to manual it
looks like mouse goes in port number 2 and the keyboard will go into port
number 1. There we go. And last but not least that delightful
SSK. And the amusing thing really about this, I'm sure I'll mention it my later
video, but yeah. Amusing thing is that this was a cost-saving, like, more affordable
cheaper keyboard than the full-sized Model M that was available. And nowadays it's very much the opposite, like I said earlier this is quite the
collectible. All right let's use this mother! Everything should
be ready to go, let's turn it on. [some lovely PC startup noises commence] [rather quietly since there's no hard drive] Awesome it's testing the RAM there,
getting up to the full 640K. Alright so that's where it would need
the system or startup diskette. Because DOS is installed on that SCSI
hard drive over there, let's just go ahead and try that.
So yes much like the IBM AT that I did an unboxing a while back, this did not
come with an operating system built into it or even on the hard drive. That had to
be installed like if you got the hard drive as an option, but this is the
startup disk it so this should let us do things. All right, Starter Diskette 1987. So yeah, where we can do all of our diagnostic stuff: a
system check out, format diskette, copy diskette, set the date and time. Let us
set the date and time. So it is 17:27 and 27 seconds something like that. And what
is today, 2018. Cool, well awesome let's do the system check out just because we can.
Have some packaging dust on here still. 640K memory, keyboard and display, and
diskette drives, parallel and serial port, and the mouse. That is correct, I guess,
because it also has that SCSI drive in there. I'm, you know, yeah. Another
interesting thing though that it mentioned: display. Just very vaguely this
uses MCGA, it's not VGA or anything like that. And this is the monochrome
version of it. I think, I'm not entirely sure how that
works, because this is a monochrome screen but MCGA could also do what was
effectively like a VGA but it wasn't. So it could do color, I'm wondering if this
had a color monitor attached if it could do color. I'm assuming it probably would
I guess it's just an MCGA card that's outputting black-and-white. Which shape
is my main enter key? That would be number one, yeah. Testing for the typing.
Is the screen correct? Yeah the screen is correct for all the
characters, yes. 80 characters that is, yep. 40 and dark gray gray and white. Awesome. This is a very soft screen I'm
just noticing as well. It makes these gradients look friggin great but it's
very soft, this is not a very low dot pitch or anything like that, it
doesn't appear to be. 640x200 graphics Sweet 640x480. So yeah there's MCGA
in monochrome, it's just that's a wild thing to me. No I don't want to -- darn
thing is getting very up in arms about wanting to format a disk there. All right
so, cool we'll get a test of the PS/2 mouse right here, you can see the little
mouse cursor moving around. Yeah everything's fine. It should be this thing is brand new. All right I'm really curious to try
out some of those things from the software sampler and I'm going to assume
that these are all bootable programs. So we've got personal productivity programs up first. "Non-system disk," wow that's... ohh literally step one: "load
DOS." I guess we'll do that. Yeah this does not appear to have ever been used, that's
great. SCSI right there into the card. That I do not know if it's
configured to read from it or not. I mean, I'm assuming that it is considering the
seller supposedly set it up to work with this drive. And we terminate the empty
port in the back cuz I'm not daisy-chaining anything, it's just this
guy right here. Okay I'm assuming we're gonna turn this on first. Yep. Ooh. That hard drive is much louder than the
actual machine, which makes sense. The fan is not super substantial in the PS/2
itself but that drive -- that thing is speeding up something fierce. Ayy, starting
MS-DOS. So that answers that question, we are ready to go. Oh all right so around a
hundred and fifty megs. That's pretty great. Not a whole lot of
free conventional memory there but that's okay. Let's get that productivity programs disk up and running. Hmm what's all this
then. Install. Uh yeah, I guess, fine. What is it copying them to... it's
just copying to itself, don't do that! All right so apparently not supposed to do
that we're just supposed to run this "G" program. What uh, what's on, yeah. Phone directory, organizer, your introduction... okay so it's that group of stuff. Ah! So
this is a very very simple looking menu Introductory editor, oh good.
That is a very introductory editor all right. Yeah this is not BASIC, I just don't know what else to type. Uh yeah let's get out of here, let's try the PC checkbook. We
could set up an account, oh wow this looks boring. I will definitely be
playing around with these programs later but I just...
what is this, PC print? You can print a file, edit fonts, render parameters, well we don't have one installed. Sorry about that Gary Dix but we don't
actually have a printer, so let's just get out of here. Let's try one of the
more interesting disks, which is either one of them. All right, got Education and
Entertainment. We'll leave the best for last. Well, presumably the best and we'll
go to education, which hey why not. It's edutainment month here on LGR as
I'm filming this. Don't actually know when this video will go up.
Oh yeah I'm supposed to just type 'G,' so... Oh, I see educational-looking things.
Awesome, education programs. All right sweet. So we've got These United States, Matrix
Madness, Electronic Grammar, Algebra Skills. Let's try These United States. [PC speaker music plays] Ohh. This is already super charming! Oh
this is this great man, PC speakers! Okay Let's try it, my name is LGR. Oh there's no second name. Should we play the comparisons game
or the facts game? Let's go with facts, I don't want to compare United States
things that sounds stressful. Now let's see. Abbreviations, name, capital,
metropolitan, oh good grief I don't know. Let's just go with names. Oh good. Oops, I should have looked at what I typed. West
Virginia yay. Hmm it looks like it's meant for color, it's not displaying the
C's. Rhode Island! What. Oh that yeah. That's Delaware. Yay. Yeah all right okay,
Matrix Madness what is this. Something something Morpheus quote. Oh. [PC speaker music plays] I don't know about this man but we'll look at a demo. Well this looks positively atrocious.
I'm not entirely sure if that is actually even showing things correctly
because these games seem to be -- at least so far -- meant for color screens. Maybe
there's a way to change that in the options somewhere but yeah. I like the
music. [likeable sounds play through PC speaker] Yeah this is definitely meant for color.
That's just it's barely showing up, which is fascinating. That's one thing I was
wondering about with this particular unit. But now I know it will just try to
display stuff whether or not it should. And it just puts it in monochrome, so if
it's not optimized for it that's just too bad. Circles and triangles. Circles. Is that not the most boring screen to start a
game you've ever seen? If the radius of a circle is 14 then the circumference is
28. Yay. If the diameter of a circle is 1 then the circumference is... wow this is uh,
let's get out of here. And lastly the entertainment programs. Let's hope
they're actually entertaining. All right. Let's see we got Verso, Solitaire -- I want
to try solitaire. Was curious as soon as I read that it came with solitaire.
I hope this uses a mouse, none of these have so far. Which makes sense, these
didn't come with a mouse by default. Okay, so this is nice, we can at least try
these different things here. Okay, well that works. Monochrome
display attached to color adapter which this is. Turn one, single pass. [PC speakers makes "shuffling" and "dealing" card noises] That's an interesting way of displaying
the stacks of cards there. All right, how do we control this? This is definitely
not mouse controlled. But yeah as I was saying this was an option, so
it kind of makes sense that these aren't made to use a mouse. Then again I haven't
actually installed the mouse have I? I didn't turn on the mouse driver. Anyway
let's figure this out. Ah crap that's re-dealing everything, that's not what I
wanted to do. Okay so you press the letter and it just -- it just does whatever
it needs to do whenever you press the letter. Well that's really simple. So in
theory you could just be like -- just press every letter and then see if something
works. Okay well that's the most limited version of solitaire I've ever seen.
Let's see what Verso is. Verso: play a one player game. "LGR." Oh reversi? Oh fun. Done with that. Freddy's Rescue Roundup! Let's try that and rescue some Freddy. [PC speaker music pleasantly plays] How pleasant. Oh this appears to be meant
for color as well because I can't see crap. It's a very Loderunner-esque thing
though. Aha! That's much better. There we go. Whoa that just teleports you to another
level entirely. This is interesting, I've never heard of this particular Loderunner-type thing. Alright that's cool. That's the most like game-like game so
far, I kind of like that. Blackjack, yes please. Yeah we'll go for the black and white thing. Mmm Las Vegas Strip, sure why not. Sure, fine. My max bet is 40 apparently. Oh yeah I
have 40 bucks, so. Oh great, we got 12... I pressed the wrong button and
I won so that's good. Place a bet of 80! Yeah! We got 17. Hrm, gonna stay cuz that's risky... Well. I lost. Word Seeking! Copyright
International Business Machines Corporation. Look how official that looks. I do like the way that they've designed that logo
though. "Type or change words," uh so is this like [typing] 'Edutainment.' 'Nukem.' Yeah okay let's just go with that. So yeah it's making a word search or
something, or like a crossword puzzle? I'm not really sure yet. "Play the game," what.
Oh yeah it's literally making a word search. [looking at controls] "Insert and enter." [lots of noises happen while selecting letters, geez] Wow that is a lot of noise Well I've had enough of that. And finally
we have Kaleidoscope! Which, that doesn't sound like the kind of thing you
want to run on a monochrome display if I'm honest. But maybe it'll be really
surprising! Nope, nope you can't see crap. And I don't even how to how to exit out
of here. Oh okay well I can kind of see that, that's neat.
[keyboard clicking noises] This would probably be pretty cool if it was in color. I'm gonna have to try that out
sometime. Now how do I get out of here? Disk drive is just freaking out so we're
gonna restart the computer, don't know what happened there. Ah anyway, this is the IBM Model 25, the Personal System/2. Which will be making another appearance
sometime in the future. Thanks for checking out this particular computer
with me as I'm setting it up for the very first time. I'm really curious to
try some different stuff on here, you know, we're gonna want to run like
Windows and other games and things, just to see how they are. Like, a monochrome
monitor that actually has MCGA underneath, that's neat and I just
think these systems are neat. Anyway so hopefully you found at least some
enjoyment from this completely incoherent video. When you see it again
it will be accompanied by actual research and effort and a script!
Anyway. [sounds of PC powering down] And if you did like this video
despite the lack of script and coherence I do this kind of thing every so often
just sort of sitting back and relaxing with an old computer and some software,
seeing what happens. Most of the time though it is much more structured so
yeah. Stay tuned for more of that coming soon, new videos every Monday and Friday
here on LGR. And as always thank you for watching!
Wait, wait, wait. Why is the cast of MASH in an IBM ad at 0:55? Some of those actors weren’t even on the show at the same time.
Wow, very different from my IBM PS/2 model 30 286 10 Mhz PC!