Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing! An LGR restoration thing. [PS/2 sliding into your video] This right
here is a machine from 1987: the IBM Personal System/2 Model 30. And as you can see it has seen better days. I got this pretty cheap on eBay a while back. It's just not in great shape, it needs a good
bit of work. But that's okay, I was just happy to get one
of these early models of a Personal System/2. They had the Model 60 and 80 and stuff like
that. I have those but I did not have one of the
quote unquote “cheap” ones that IBM was selling in ‘87. So I thought this would do nicely for an upcoming
video that I have planned on the Personal System/2 line and as is obvious it's covered
in all sorts of grime and gooey residue and tape and marker. And somebody even scratched out the little
sticker on the front here that would normally show like the serial number and the precise
model number and everything. I don't know what this thing went through
but I found it sad. And this power switch is not doing what it's
supposed to either, it's just kind of flopping around. [floptaplop] There's no give in it whatsoever,
so that's gonna need to be fixed and then there's this empty bay in the front here which,
depending on the model of Model 30 that you got from IBM, would have had either a second
floppy disk drive or it would be filled up with a 20 or 30 megabyte hard disk drive. And that is what this one originally had because
the model number exactly that IBM referred to this was the 8530-021, meaning that it
came with the hard disk. It also has some sort of networking card installed
around back. Not really sure what that is exactly yet but
I suppose we'll see inside and perhaps that'll be a clue as to what this did in a past life. Getting inside the Model 30 is pretty simple,
all you need is a Torx head screwdriver with the correct head size. And there are four of these screws around
the edges of the case. Then once they’re undone they actually don't
come out of the case, which is kind of nice, you're not gonna lose anything. They just sort of dangle in there and they're
spring-loaded, these have individual springs on them. And then the top of the case just slides off
here, and yes: this is all plastic. The bottom of the chassis is metal but yeah,
this is one of the cost-saving measures that IBM went to for these models of Personal System/2s. Speaking of cost-saving measures, I assume:
here's that power switch and as you can see there's just a metal rod that goes between
the power switch on the front of the case and this toggle on the power supply itself. It looks like that just sort of popped out
of there at some point so whatever man. All you gotta do is pop it back in place and
it works just fine! Not the most robust power toggle I've ever
seen but hey, at least the rod is metal and not plastic. Unlike some of my Packard Bells... All right over in the drive bay here we have
the double-sided double density three and a half inch floppy disk drive over here, it's
a Mitsubishi model. And then on the right we have the other side
of the floppy disk cable just in case we want to put another floppy drive there. But we don't, we're gonna be putting a hard
disk if all goes well. And unlike many earlier IBM personal computers
the 8530 has a hard disk controller built into the motherboard. However, look at that 44-pin connector. That's not any of the usual suspects like
SCSI, IDE, or even MFM. A bunch of PS/2 machines used something called
ESDI or Enhanced Small Disk Interface, which looking online it seemed that's what this
came with. Not only is it a little strange in that regard
but there are no power cables coming from the power supply to plug into a hard drive,
assuming I could find the right one. On this machine the power actually goes through
the connector on the hard disk or floppy disk controller through the cable directly into
the drive. So there is no separate power cable, meaning
that if I do put a hard disk in here It's going to have to be one that is compatible
with this and I'm gonna have to find the correct cable. Anyway right here on the board you can see
the CPU, it's an Intel 8086-2 on this original Model 30. There's also a later one with a 286 installed. And this blank socket right here is for the
optional math coprocessor, the 8087, which I probably won't be putting in here. Over towards the middle of the motherboard
you'll see this riser card. And this provides the expandability options
for this machine, which comes in the form of three ISA slots. And it also has a battery on the riser as
well, I was not expecting to see this kind of thing on there. Most of what I read online said that these
normally came with like a Dallas real time clock chip but this came with one of these
barrel batteries. And yeah, you know, I don't like keeping these
things around but we're gonna see if it works first. And then here is that gigantic networking
card. This was not standard to the machine, whoever
had this or -- whatever company used this had installed it at one point. We'll find out what it is a little bit later. But enough looking around, let's go ahead
and get to some cleaning! Starting with a little compressed air and
tossing these dust bunnies out of the way. And I'm not gonna give this an *extremely*
deep cleaning because really, I have a lot of Personal System/2 units that I want to
show in an upcoming video and I just kind of want to get this one in a presentable shape
and feeling nice and clean, relatively speaking. I'm just going over everything with an assortment
of anti-static brushes and getting all this stuff kind of cleaned up and feeling decent. Because really, other than the caked-on dust
it's not in bad shape. I was really hoping there were no weird leakages
or rust bits or yeah you know, who knows. There's all sorts of junk that can go wrong
on these older computers depending on how they've been stored and for how long and where. But all things considered I mean, it's mostly
the outside that looked really bad, the inside was just dusty. Alright I'm curious about this other half
of the board and this gigantic networking card is in the way so we'll get that out of
there. And here we go! There is a lot more dust over here, that's
for sure. Oh well, nothing a bit of brushing and some
time can't help. And gonna go ahead and take out the RAM sticks
here. And from the factory my Model 30 came with
640 kilobytes of usable conventional memory with some on the motherboard and these sticks
providing 256k each. Just gonna dust these things off because it
makes me happy and hey look at that. Already looking a lot better compared to how
it was. The contacts in there actually looked pretty
good, so just sort of spraying them down with some compressed air and stick the RAM sticks
back in there with some highly satisfying clicks, mmm. [satisfying clickity clicks]
Welp time to brush down the rest of this and spray it and all that good stuff. [compressed air sounds] Oh Yeah, that is way
better. It's a rather attractive looking board with
those yellow chips and a kind of amber theme going on, I like it. And I'm just gonna stick the networking card
back in there, although I don't anticipate using it. I'm just curious what it'll do, if anything,
on startup. I'm pretty pleased with the interior of the
machine for the time being so I'll go ahead and start wiping down the exterior starting
with the rear of the thing here. And just using a microfiber dusting cloth
and my anti-static brushes again, just sort of loosening up all the dirt and grime as
much as I can. Ah, and one of the simple but great pleasures
of restoring and cleaning up an older computer: exhaust fans + compressed air. [compressed air rapidly rotating the fan] Yeah I don't know why that's fun but it is. And yeah, this is completely unnecessary but
I got one of these little detailing brushes because they're kind of cool. just has these rubber tips and you can go
over all the little nooks and crannies and crevices and -- I don't know if it's actually
helping but it makes me feel better. Now let's start addressing some of these stupid
stickers and junk on the rest of the case. Thankfully this one peeled right off of there
and didn't seem to leave much residue at all, just sort of came off in one go and I used
the sticker to unstick the rest of it. Then there's this unfortunate little serial
number label that has been scraped off for whatever reason. So I'm just gonna try to finish the job with
a light scraping of a screwdriver and since it was already scraped into I didn't feel
too bad about doing that. Not the most ideal outcome but it'll do for
now. Then there's this permanent marker in an “L”
shape and this can be tricky due to the texture on IBMs from this era. Ink like this and really grime in general
tends to sink into that powder-like coating and ugh. First thing I tried was some high-strength
alcohol and that didn't do much. Next I tried the old dry erase marker trick
which often works on fresher, permanent ink but had very little effect here on this textured
surface. Next I tried some goo remover and while that
loosened things up after a few minutes, it still wasn't going as deep as I wanted. So it was down to one of those “magical”
melamine cleaning sponges. And while this has the potential to smooth
out the coating if you scrub too hard -- and I don't like doing that -- just taking it
slow and steady seemed to do the job nicely you can hardly tell that L-shaped marker stain
was there. Next I'm just gonna wipe down a lot of the
rest of the outside of the case with a bit of distilled water and vinegar mix just to
get the loose grimy crap off of there. And I got another one of these detailing brushes
to get in there with the power switch. This was probably the dirtiest part of the
front of the case actually, just a lot of gunk built up over time with a bunch of fingers
and storage conditions doing their thing. And then also near the power switch on the
front of the case here there were these little spots where it looked like the machine had
been bumped up against something kind of hard and it had left like a blue smear just on
the tips of these corners. And I'm just kind of going around the outside
of it here very lightly to get rid of a couple little spots that were annoying and it did
pretty well, I thought. There's only one little area here, looks like
there was a sticker there at one point that was preventing more yellowing. But yeah overall I'm pretty happy with the
way this is turning out already! And now to get to the top outside portion
of the case here. And we're gonna start with that big ol’
wide masking tape strip that's been torn off and is just looking ugly at this point. And I'm just gonna use one of these decal
removers with a plastic razor blade just to kind of get it started so I can hopefully
peel it off in one go, and that piece worked just fine. And the second one proved to be a little bit
more challenging but again, just taking it slowly and carefully and there we go! It came off as well pretty much in one piece. And that plastic blade is soft enough that
it didn't do any damage to the case plastic itself. And before we start going all elbow grease
and trying to get rid of that gooey stuff, I’m just kinda gonna wipe down the rest
of this a little bit. It's kind of a light layer of dirt and griminess, made the whole thing feel really kind of gross to touch. And yeah, a bit of goo remover here and it
got rid of most of that residue from the tape. There was still some more stubborn junk that
I ended up using a magic eraser on so yeah, that's what I ended up doing for most of the
rest of the top of the case here. And unfortunately it's not gonna get rid of
absolutely everything, there were some deeper scratches and a couple spots with just some
really stubborn stains. But thankfully it's not terribly noticeable
when it's all cleaned up like this. At least on camera, you can notice a little
bit more in person I think. And let’s go ahead and put it back together
here, and yeah man, I'm pretty pleased. I can tell that the front of the case here
has yellowed just a bit compared to the top of the case in, you know, a couple little
spots. I'd say that's a pretty decent improvement
for having spent just a couple hours using very basic cleaning stuff. And now that I have that power switch hopefully
fixed up we can try and plug this thing up and turn it on and see if it actually works! I have not actually attempted to power this
thing on yet. Now this does use MCGA graphics but a normal
VGA monitor will work as long as you have the proper cable -- you just kinda have to
remove one of the pins. But yeah let’s power it on and see what
we get! [CLICK of the power switch, whirring of the
fan] All right well, that's a good sign! No concerning explosions or smokes or beeps
or anything like that. And we have the full 640k, nice! [BEEP!] And well, it looks like it is doing the networking
card things. “Network Controls International 4700 PCI.” Well, that's not a PCI card, that's kind of
odd. And yeah, it just goes to this no matter what
I do. I could put a disk in there, I can try to
do anything on the keyboard. Nope, it goes directly to this interface every
single time I start it up. So it turns out that the card that's in here
is a 3270 coax adapter which provides the NCI 4700 services. There's a PCI version and all sorts of stuff,
but basically what this does is it allows your PC to fully emulate IBM 4704 and 3278
display terminals. So yeah it's just some kind of a terminal
emulation thing going on and I guess this is probably what this was used for at some
point in the past. And while that's kind of neat and I will be
holding on to the card, just on the off chance I can do something with it someday, I'm gonna
go ahead and take it out here because it is preventing me from booting the computer how
I want to. [CLACK!] Ouch, that hurt a little bit. Ended up cutting myself on the edge of the
case when I was pulling that card out so uh. Yeah. The perils of working with PCs. That thing was bleeding pretty good. [BEEP!] Anyway, as soon as the card was out of there
and yeah this is what I was expecting to see at the very start. Just the standard startup screen that you
see in a lot of PS/2s and it's just telling you to insert a disk because yeah. There's no hard drive right now, no operating
system, so it needs something. And there we go, I mean. Honestly I could stop right here and just
leave the computer as-is because you can't just run this straight from a floppy disk. I could put DOS in there and boot right from
it and then maybe just get another faceplate and cover it up, but you know? I really do want to get a hard drive installed
so let's see what we can do about that. Unfortunately, I do not have the proper hard
disk on hand, so while we're waiting for one to show up from eBay let's go ahead and address some of the yellowing going on with the front of the case. We're gonna start with this floppy disk front
panel here. And this just pops right off, there's two
little pins on the back that you push down and the floppy drive itself pops out with
this little tab -- you pull up on that and the whole thing slides out just like that. Unfortunately getting the front assembly of
the case off is a little bit more of a challenge. There are these little plastic bits that you
have to squeeze together and then pull. That's not too bad, but there are seven of
them and several of those seven are in really tough to reach spots. Once you do get them all squeezed down the
entire front of the case just lifts off, and around back here you can see each of those seven plastic tabs that you have to squeeze together. The ones towards the middle and the bottom
were the ones that were hardest to reach because they were actually underneath the cage that
holds the drive bays. That was just a pain. Oh well, it worked and I was able to source
a replacement hard disk panel right here on the right. But as you can see it is a slightly different
color than the rest of the front of the case and this was the largest reason that I wanted
to try and get the rest of it to kind of match that replacement panel. Which means it's RetroBright to the rescue! And by that I mean some of this 40 volume
clear developer stuff. Basically hair bleach, and I’m just gonna
pour that into some hot water and then submerge the parts and leave them out in the sun for
about combined total of 12 hours is actually what I ended up doing. About six hours over the course of two days. And after all that it lightened up a good
amount. I didn’t want to completely bleach this,
I wasn't trying to get it white. These PS/2s were always kind of an off-white
beige. And then comparing it up against that hard
disk panel and well, it's still not exactly the same color temperature. It's better though and that's all I was hoping
for. Really it's just gonna be a little bit different
anyway because there were a lot of slight variances in the way that these PS/2s came
out. Like I have 9 or 10 of these things and each
one of them is a slightly different color temperature. Oh well though, just putting the panels back
in place and yeah, I'm pretty pleased with how this came out. It's certainly less distracting than it was
to my eye so whatever, as long as it looks alright I can deal with that. And after a couple weeks the hard disk that
I ordered for it showed up! This is a WDL-330R 30 megabyte model. It's not the original 20 megabyte one that
I think came with this machine, but this was available later on from IBM for the Model
30 so it works in my mind. As you can see on the bottom it has the rails
to slide into place and around back is the very wide ESDI edge connector. Unfortunately, I was not able to find the
cable that was needed to plug this thing into the motherboard. This larger header over here on the right
is where the drive would plug in with a ribbon cable but the cables I ordered ended up being
these MFM-compatible cables, even though they were described otherwise. I was striking out for weeks trying to find
a Model 30-compatible hard disk cable with that wide edge connector on one end and a
44-pin IDC connection on the other. Oh well, let's go ahead and get the floppy
disk drive installed once again, that just slides back into place and clips there and
we’ll get the cable connected. And then the hard disk will slide right into
place right next to it minus the cables required, dang it. And then the front face plates will just clip
right back into place there. Looking all nice and tidy with that hard disk
assembly and yeah man, it's looking pretty good. Just really bums me out how tricky it's proving
to be to find the proper cable with the proper connectors and the correct length and everything,
ugh. So in lieu of being able to get that properly
set up let's do something fun! This is the LGR AdLib sound card clone. Obviously this is not original to the machine
and it did not have a sound card, just that little PC speaker in the bottom right corner
there. But I figured why not do something to test
some things out because I’ve got computer restoration blue balls with that elusive hard
drive cable situation. And we'll just get the rest of the case put
back on there and there we go! I'd say this Model 30 came together rather
nicely, I'm glad that I got the rest of the case bleached. It matches pretty closely at this point, not
perfect. And the bottom right still unfortunately has
that little scratched off area where somebody tore into the serial number. But compared to how it was beforehand I mean,
I think this looks pretty fantastic. When we started it had marker and tape and
goo and grime and all sorts of nastiness. And now, ahhh! Look at that fresh looking Model 30, for the
most part! We'll just ignore that hard drive for the
time being. Besides it's not gonna stop me from playing
games because you can indeed boot DOS and play a number of games directly from floppy
disks. I'm gonna try out Sierra’s Silpheed right
here because it not only runs in MCGA, which is the native graphics mode of this machine,
but it also supports the AdLib sound card and will run directly off of floppy disks
and is fine with an 8086 processor. So enjoy a bit of Silpheed here playing on
the mostly-restored Model 30! [Silpheed theme music plays in AdLib mode] [PC speaker sounds
and AdLib music triumphantly plays] Yeah man, it's good stuff. And to my great pleasure it runs rather well,
all things considered, on this 8086 CPU. Certainly better than on an IBM PC or XT with
its 4.77 megahertz 8088. Totally playable and it sounds pretty friggin
good with that AdLib card. Anyway, that was just for a bit of fun, I'm
not gonna keep that AdLib card in there because it's not original to the machine and I wasn't
trying to soup this thing up or anything like that. Because again, I do want to use this in a
video that I'm gonna be putting together on the IBM Personal System/2 line. To that effect though I do want to answer
the question as to why don't I just put another hard disk interface in here since I can't
find the correct cable for this one right now. Well again, it's due to the power supply situation
because if you remember: the motherboard sends power through the ribbon cable, so that's
why I'm not plugging in a hard disk controller card or a flash memory adapter because without
power I'm still out of luck. I could use an alternate power supply or rig
up my own cable or adapter to draw power from the pins on the motherboard, and there are
also devices like the XT-CF-Lite that would let me install a Compact Flash card as a hard
drive that draws power from an ISA slot. So I do have options but I'm still going to
be looking for the original cable since my goal with this is to get this as close to
factory fresh as possible for my upcoming retrospective videos. If you're curious the exact cable I'm looking
for is IBM part number 61X8903. I think. It turns out there's a lot of misinformation
online about the Model 30 hard drive interface and the exact drives it can use. Turns out this one doesn't utilize ESDI at
all and instead it's a proprietary 8-bit IDE-like interface that IBM used in order to get on
my nerves 30 years later. So yeah, after all that, I probably don't
have the right hard drive for this revision of the Model 30 but hey: live and learn. If I'm lucky I'll have already figured things
out by the time you're watching this. But if not it's no big deal since the rest
is working perfectly fine for what I have planned. So I hope that you enjoyed this restoration
episode, and stay tuned for the follow-up in the future where we'll be taking a closer,
more historical look at the Personal System/2 line -- specifically these lower-end offerings,
the Model 30 and 25. And if you can't wait then I've got plenty
more along these lines uploaded already with more stuff popping up every Monday and Friday
here on LGR. And as always, thank you very much for watching!
