So a friend of mine finally located a good IBM Model 5150 for me to modernize. I have plans to make a custom DVD-ROM which uses the existing massive 5.25" drive face to keep it looking original, and will fabricate a way to use the 5.25" wide slot for inserting Optical Discs.
At first I was going to yank the optical drive out of an old Toshiba Qosmio G35 which had an optical DVD/CD-RW drive which accepts discs the same as a car stereo does in the slot, but thought that I should look online first to see if there is a better alternative than to destroy the old Toshiba Qosmio for its optical drive.
Looking online I found some external optical drives for MAC's that are USB .. as shown here which can be modified to hide behind the 5.25" floppy drive face and be able to insert and remove modern optical CD or DVD's from, but not sure if this drive is supported bu PC for drivers etc? :
http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-External-Slot-in-DVD-RW-Drive-Burner-Superdrive-For-MacBook-Air-Mac-mini/281052533677?rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222002%26algo%3DSIC.FIT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D163%26meid%3D9190943806458593393%26pid%3D100005%26prg%3D1088%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D4%26sd%3D170652192549%26#ht_2471wt_1170 BUT.... there is no information suggesting that these will work with PC with Windows OS. USB is usually pretty universal, but not sure if anyone has tried an external MAC drive on a PC to confirm it works? If I can go the route of using this external USB drive then I can just wire it directly via USB to the motherboard and make it the first boot device in BIOS.
The computer case for anyone who doesnt know what an IBM 5150 looks like is this:
http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5150.htmlThe outside of this computer is going to look all original, but I have plans to stuff my old gaming computers guts into it making it a 2600Mhz Quadcore with a ASUS ATI HD5450 Video Card with 1GB DDR3. I am going to hack the old original power supply with some custom electronics to use the large power switch lever as the soft power switch. To do this I am going to add a custom circuit that gives a relay a 1 second signal that acts like you are pushing the power button on for 1 second, and the relay drops out breaking the connection so that the computer doesnt shut itself down seconds later as if you held your finger on the power button. When the switch is thrown the opposite position ( normally off position on the original computer ) it will send another 1 second relay pulse to turn it back on again after the OS was given command to shutdown the computer and wait for soft power condition to be true to power again. * Otherwise I would have to flip it off when the computer is already off and back on to boot and that seems like too many motions when off position can also be used as the next soft power on condition.
The hardest part is actually going to be the metal work that needs to be performed. I am going to try to keep the rear of the computer looking as original as I can, but will have to cut out and weld a modern ATX chasis to the old case so that the IBM 5150 is ready to be populated with an ATX motherboard and cards. I am not the first person to take a 30+ year old computer and stuff it with modern guts into it, but others I have seen were modernized both internally and externally, and one of which went with nixie tube clock in one of the 5.25" bays to kind of steam punk it a little to look like a computer from Fallout the video game. I want this to look like a 30 year old dinosour and yet be a system that plays modern games.
Unfortunately I cant think of any cool mod for the original monochrome display, so this is going to be paired up with a modern flatscreen, however if I wanted to keep with the looks of the early 80s, I suppose someone could stuff VGA CRT guts into the monochrome monitor case and limit themselves to maybe 14" of display space. I need 17" minimum on 1024x768 or better these days.
Also if I have to stick with the same drive that is in my Toshiba Qosmio, I found an IDE adapter to run laptop optical drives into desktop computers as linked here:
http://3btech.net/noslideadco5.html The old gaming computers motherboard has a single IDE port for 2 drives if needed. I plan on using SATA for the hard drive(s).
I also want to locate a cheap 5.25" original to this IBM 5150 build Hard Drive bracket and face plate to mount the hard drive behind and tie the LED of it into the HD LED connection on the motherboard as for this system I was given has no hard drive, just the A: and B: 360k Floppy drives and it also only has 512k RAM, but that doesnt matter because its going to have all new internal guts.
Its going from:
CPU = 8088 4.77Mhz
RAM = 512k
OS = DOS
To:
CPU = Athlon II x4 620 2600Mhz
RAM = 4GB Corsair DDR2 800Mhz XMS2
OS = Windows 7 Home Premium
Was thinking about RAT FINK'ing the computer case with a decal since its an old Chasis with far more powerful modern guts under the hood, but decided not to at this point to keep it as original looking as possible.
http://www.ratfink.com/rat-fink-art.php