IBM 5170 - Known Problems/Issues
Floppy disk drive - Pin 34
In the IBM 5170's predecessors, the IBM 5150 and IBM 5160, the supplied IBM floppy controller (photo) does not 'care' about pin 34 - because the controller does not monitor pin 34 of the cable connector.
However, in the IBM 5170, the pin 34 situation is much different. The controller supplied in the IBM 5170 monitors pin 34.
1.2M floppy drives in an IBM 5170 are required to generate a DISK CHANGED signal on pin 34, a requirement of the IBM 5170's BIOS. Failure to observe the requirement can result in corrupted floppy disks.
360K floppy drives in an IBM 5170 are not required to generate a DISK CHANGED signal on pin 34, possibly because the BIOS authors knew that most 360K drives cannot generate such a signal. However, some 360K drives generate a READY signal on pin 34. A READY signal is a problem for the 5170. If you intend to connect a 360K drive, the simple rule is, disconnect pin 34. Some 360K drives have a jumper that can be removed to achieve that (e.g. the JU-455-7 has an 'RY' jumper). Some connector adapters, such as those shown at here and here and here, have a jumper that controls whether or not pin 34 is connected.
More information about this subject is in the 'Diskette Changeline' section on pages 781 and 782 (PDF pages 814 and 815) of the document here. In the first sentence of that section, 'standard PC floppy controller' should have instead been 'standard AT floppy controller' to avoid confusion.
Deteriorated lubrication in floppy disk drive
It is often found that in 5.25" floppy drives that have not been used in many many years, that the lubrication in the drive has deteriorated to the point where it 'gums up' and stops the drive from functioning properly.
This is commonly seen on the rails that the head carriage slides up and down on. Deteriorated lubrication there results in the inability of the head carriage to move properly, or in extreme cases, not move at all. By hand (and with power off), you should be able to freely move the head carriage along its rails. You will experience some slight resistance presented by the stepper motor.
What is required is to clean the rails of the old lubricant, then followed by application of new lubricant. Myself and others have found a silicone based lubricant to be satisfactory. I sometimes use silicone spray, but there is a tendency for the spray to get to areas where it should not go. Otherwise, I use silicone grease, something that I also use to get rid of any squeak sound from the drive's front panel latch.
If in any doubt, clean/relubricate the rails. The clean/relube is a worthwhile maintenance activity even if it doesn't fix a faulty drive.
Some cards designed for the 5150 and 5160 do not work in a 5170
Yes, it happens. One of the reasons is that the timing used in the 5170 slots is different to that used in the 5150/5160. Some cards can tolerate it and other cards cannot.
Some cards designed for the 6 MHz 5170 do not work in an 8 MHz 5170
Details of an example is in the document at here.
Another example is at here.
"I cannot fit a third half-height drive into the right cage."
That is because IBM did not design the 5170 for that. IBM designed the right cage for:
1. Two half-height floppy drives, or
2. One half-height floppy drive with a full-height hard drive (the 5170's optional second hard drive) underneath.
Nil or unreliable operation when using an XT-class power supply
Powering a 5170 motherboard using an XT-class power supply can sometimes cause problems.
Some possible symptoms:
* Type 1 motherboard with 01/10/84 BIOS does not start at all, with a POST card revealing failure of the 'Verify shutdown byte' test. It is discovered that upgrading the BIOS to either the 06/10/85 or 11/15/85 revisions (where the test gets done later) is a workaround. Of course, the proper solution is to use an AT-class power supply.
* Intermittent start-up of motherboard.
* Intermittent loss of CMOS SETUP configuration.
An AT-class power supply has a wire on pin 2 on plug P8; an XT-class power supply does not. Diagram at here. That is not the only difference.
Loss of time
SYMPTOM: Upon powering on the 5170, it is discovered that the clock has lost some time during the period that the 5170 was off. If left untreated, the rate of time loss gets greater and greater.
CAUSE: Low battery voltage.
NOTE: A 3.6 volt battery may be unsuitable for some 5170 motherboards (technical info)
TECHNICAL:
On the 5170 motherboard, the real time clock (RTC) circuitry is essentially two blocks: an RTC chip and an oscillator that feeds (ticks) the RTC chip.
Of the two blocks, the oscillator is more sensitive to battery voltage.
When the battery voltage drops below a certain point, oscillator operation becomes intermittent - most of the time operating (ticking) but sometimes not.
As the battery voltage drops lower and lower, the percentage of time that the oscillator operates becomes lower and lower.
RAM failure in motherboard bank 0
Vintage RAM chips have a relatively high failure rate.
If your 5170 suffers a failure within the first 64K of any chip in the motherboard's first bank of RAM (bank 0), the resulting symptom depends on the type of video card/monitor fitted. If MDA or CGA, you will see a '000000 xxxx 201' error on-screen, where the xxxx value indicates the bit (or bits) that have failed. If instead, EGA or VGA is fitted, you will have what appears to be a 'dead' motherboard.
Note that rather than a RAM chip actually failing, what might have instead happened is that a RAM chip has developed poor electrical contact with its socket. And so an early thing to try is to simply to reseat all of the chips in bank 0 (wiggle each chip in its socket).
EGA/VGA
If you are in the latter position (EGA or VGA), diagosing a faulty RAM chip in bank 0 of a 5170 can be done via the use of a POST card (one that monitors port 80h). If there is a failure in the first 64 KB of bank 0, the POST code of DD will be shown on the POST card. A breakdown of POST code DD is shown here.
The use of Landmark/Supersoft diagnostic ROM's (see here) is another option.
If your 5170 motherboard is of type 1, then it has two banks of RAM, and therefore what you could try is swapping the bank 0 and bank 1 chips. If the motherboard then 'comes to life' and generates a 201 error on-screen, then a faulty bank 0 chip was the problem. Of course, this method relies on all bank 1 chips being good.
If your 5170 motherboard is of type 2 or 3, then it has only one bank of RAM. Swapping chips around within the bank will not identify a faulty chip (though the removal/insertion of chips may fix a poor electrical contact problem).
CPU appears to get very hot
Note that it is normal for the 80286 CPU on the 5170 motherboard to get quite hot, beyond what you may think is acceptable.
So that you can guage what I am writing of, look at the following table.
| |
Approx. temperature
on chip top |
How long I can hold my
finger on the chip |
| 80286-6 (6 MHz) |
38 degrees Celsuis |
About 30 seconds |
| 80286-8 (8 MHz) |
50 degrees Celsuis |
About 5 seconds |
The measurements were made about 30 minutes after power on (from cold), and during those 30 minutes, the 5170 was sitting idle at a DOS prompt. Ambient room temperature was about 20 degrees Celsuis.
It was interesting to see that the temperature ratio of 38:50 degrees matched well with the speed ratio of 6:8 MHz.
Of course, the finger measurement technique is very subjective, and therefore is not to be relied on as an accurate way of determining temperature.
POST error of 601
With the second (06/10/85) and third (11/15/85) BIOS revisions, removing the IBM Fixed Disk and Diskette Drive Adapter and substituting a third-party floppy controller can (can, not always) result in a 601 error during POST (power-on self test).
More information on that is in the 'Known problem - POST error of 601' section at here.
Incompatibility with the XTIDE Universal BIOS
You may have a problem getting an XT-IDE card to work in an IBM 5170. See the corresponding entry at here, including its note.
5170 may not start if hard drive removed
The 5170 may not start if the hard drive is removed. With the hard drive removed, there is no +12V loading of the power supply. The 5170 Technical Reference indicates that the minimum power supply loading is 7 amps on the +5V line and 2.5 amps on the +12V line.
For the situation of no hard drive in a 5170, IBM provided a load resistor for the +12V line. See here.
Any BIOS expansion ROM in sockets U17/U37 must be 64 KB sized
If you wish to populate sockets U17 and U37 with a BIOS expansion ROM (of course, split into odd/even ROM's), note the special U17/U37 requirement that the code must be 64 KB sized. If the 5170's power-on self test (POST) does not see an 8-bit checksum of 00 for the entire 64 KB, the POST will ignore the BIOS expansion ROM. More information at here.
No progress past POST's RAM count-up on screen
At power-on of a type 3 motherboard, it is observed on-screen that the POST (power-on self test) is testing and displaying base RAM. Eventually, it finishes that, then displays '00512 KB OK' (or some other amount), then nothing else. The cursor is at the far left of that. No futher progress shown on-screen.
The cause is having an MDA card (monochrome) fitted, but the motherboard's video switch SW1 is set to the CGA (colour) setting.
More ...
More issues are listed in the 'Some known issues' section in the Vintage Computer Forums' wiki entry for the 5170.