Today we are addin this gem to our collection. The IBM Personal Computer XT, often shortened to the IBM XT, PC XT, or simply XT, is a version of the IBM PC with a built-in hard drive and floppy drive. It was released as IBM Machine Type number 5160 on March 8, 1983. Apart from the hard drive, it was essentially the same as the original PC, with only minor improvements. The XT was mainly intended as an enhanced IBM PC for business users. XT stands for eXtended Technology.

This IBM Personal Computer XT came with 512 KB of RAM, a 360 KB double-sided 5¼ inch floppy disk drive, a 10 MB Seagate ST-412 hard drive with Xebec 1210 Modified Frequency Modulation (MFM) controller, an Asynchronous Adapter (serial card with 8250 UART), and a 130-watt power supply. The motherboard had an Intel 8088 microprocessor running at 4.77 MHz, with a socket for an optional 8087 math coprocessor which I have yet to find if is installed here.

Above is the floppy drive that looks like it was molded in lava, it got slick black textures and reeks og quality build. And it also is, nearly 38 years later this drive performs like it was made yesterday. But that was the quality IBM introduced in the 80´s home and business market. These computer were not cheap either, this computer setup would have cost around $7000 at that time. 

The IBM we got here did have a special keylock system that was locked over the power button. So there is no other way to power up the computer without a key. It´s like powering up a car and it feels awesome. The keylock option also locked the system unit cover, but I will be showing this in more detail in an upcoming video soon. 

One of the most awesome thing about this computer we got is that included an IBM Color Monitor 5153 and inside the computer is also  IBM's first graphics card and first color display card. The Color Graphics Adapter (CGA), originally also called the Color/Graphics Adapter or IBM Color/Graphics Monitor Adapter introduced in 1981, which became that computer's first color computer display standard.

The standard IBM CGA graphics card was equipped with 16 kilobytes of video memory and could be connected either to a dedicated direct-drive CRT monitor using a 4-bit digital (TTL) "RGBI" interface, such as the IBM 5153 color display, or to an NTSC-compatible television or composite video monitor via an RCA connector. The RCA connector provided only baseband video, so to connect the CGA card to a standard television set required a separate RF modulator unless the TV had an RCA jack though with the former combined with an amplifier sometimes was more practical since one could then hook up an antenna to the amplifier and get wireless video.

We also got some floppy disks which included some games and programs. In there I saw Flight Simulator 1.0 and I can confirm that it worked ! 

​The operating system usually sold with the XT was PC DOS 2.0 or, by the time the XT was discontinued in early 1987, DOS 3.2. Like the original PC, the XT came with IBM BASIC in its ROM. Despite the lack of a cassette port on XTs, IBM's licensing agreement with Microsoft forced them to include BASIC on all their PCs, and the BASIC program that was included with DOS depended on the BASIC ROM. The XT BIOS also displayed a memory count during the POST, unlike the PC. Here are both DOS 2.0 and DOS 3.10. 

And also we got empty unused floppy´s, so we could make copy´s of DOS and other important software and keep the Masters stored elsewhere. 

IBM Proprinter with software and manual. The Proprinter is a dot matrix printer designed and manufactured by IBM in the 1980's. The Proprinter was designed to be a low cost printer for use with the IBM personal computer (IBM PC). It embodies a new design trend in industry - developing products without screws, springs, pulleys, or belts; and with as few parts as possible. These steps make manufacture on an automated assembly line possible.

The new design has translated into lower manufacturing costs, higher reliability, and increased capabilities over existing printers in the market. Not only did the Proprinter win numerous awards; but also, became the best selling printer in the personal computer printer market. We have yet to test this one !

Above is the original boxes the machine and monitor came in ! We will release a video with a little more in depth on this computer and we are also going to look inside the monster and poke it :) You can look at our youtube page and check if it is out yet.  : ​https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrY-jHwWg7iCPZ8scdlXXgw

The Sound Blaster family of sound cards was the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system platform, until the widespread transition to Microsoft Windows 95, which standardized the programming interface at application level (eliminating the importance of backward compatibility with Sound Blaster), and the evolution in PC design led to onboard motherboard-audio, which commoditized PC audio functionality. By 1995 Sound Blaster cards had sold over 15 million units worldwide and accounted for seven out of ten sound card sales

with added a "mixer" to provide a crude master volume control (independent of the volume of sound sources feeding the mixer), and a crude high pass or low pass filter. The Sound Blaster Pro used a pair of YM3812 chips to provide stereo music-synthesis (one for each channel).

​The Sound Blaster Pro was fully backward compatible with the original Sound Blaster line, and by extension, the AdLib sound card. The Sound Blaster Pro was the first Creative sound card to have a built-in CD-ROM interface. Most Sound Blaster Pro cards featured a proprietary interface for a Panasonic (Matsushita MKE) drive. The Sound Blaster Pro cards are basically 8-bit ISA cards, they use only the lower 8 data bits of the ISA bus. While at first glance it appears to be a 16-bit ISA card, it does not have 'fingers' for data transfer on the higher "AT" portion of the bus connector. It uses the 16-bit extension to the ISA bus to provide the user with an additional choice for an IRQ (10) and DMA (0)m channel only found on the 16-bit portion of the edge connector.

Here at the Museum we just assembled a PC computer from the 2000 era. It´s a IBM Aptiva with a Pentium !!! 600 Mhz cpu, 10GB Harddrive with Windows 98 installed. It´s a great system to showcase most of the games from this time period.  ​Computers were still young in in 2000. The generations of computers existing in 2,000 were primarily of the Pentium 3, K6-23D, and Athlon line, by AMD and Intel respectively. Cyrix processors were still being manufactured in 2,000, but they were not very competitive performing less work per clock cycle. Cyrix died out completely soon after.

Games where mostly all released in CD-ROM and sound capabilities where no longer midi files which relied on a good sound card, we where getting the full professional recorded music on wav files. So having a good speaker system was almost an standard to enjoy this quality sound. 

​We got a stack of CD-ROM games from this period to test out on our "new" computer :) PC gaming remained popular throughout the decade, but was in an overall decline as console graphics technically advanced. Publishers also liked the standardisation that consoles provided, whereas PC game performance was dependent on the graphic capabilities of a player's hardware. Nevertheless, the PC remained the device of choice for many popular strategy, simulation, and online games.

​Here is a shot if the CPU that is inside the computer. It´s the first Pentium III variant the Katmai (Intel product code 80525). It was a further development of the Deschutes Pentium II. The Pentium III saw an increase of 2 million transistors over the Pentium II and it has the same cartridge based design. The philosophy behind it was that anyone could just plug in and out a new CPU as they evolved over time. Just like games for NES consoles.