Rusty Bits Ep. 001 – KT Technology Personal System AT – Replica of my 286 computer
Hello Friends! HanJammer here, and this is Rusty Bits. A new channel about vintage computers. In the pilot episode, we will build and test the replica of
my first PC KT Technology Personal System AT. So let's get to it! [Mysterious music] [Sounds of the floppy drive reading] I got interested in the vintage computers few years ago. I new right away that I would like to build the replica of
my first PC. I had several original parts for it, but finding the other
stuff was a bit of a challenge. However, today I can finally get to work on this project. The computer was manufactured in 1990 or 91. I got it in August 1995 and I had it for two years. Beside the VHS clip from 1996 which you can see right now, I
don't have any photos of it, and I forgot some details. Fortunatelly there was no problems with the technical
specification. I got this computer along with the dot-matrix printer, which
I used to print anything I could with the Print Screen
button. Prints included the "CheckIt" screenshots or the hard drive
directory tree.
I found these print-outs while preparing the episode. Along with the prints, there was also a drawing of my
computer, which I made probably in 1996. I drew the computer's case and the Sendon UPS quite
accurately. I also sketched the floppy drives. I never had a CD-ROM in
this computer, although it is on the drawing. SVGA monochrome monitor, made by TVS was bought in May 1996. Of course there are also some peripheral devices. An this is the excellent EPSON FX-1050 9-pin dot matrix
printer.
On this BIOS Setup printout we can see the BIOS version, RAM
capacity and the port addresses. Here we can see the "CheckIt" printout with more details,
like a DOS version which came with the computer. After a system failure which I caused in the late 1995, I
replaced DOS with the most recent version. Computer still had a single harddrive back then. Detailed information about the system resources and the TSR
programs which were in use can be seen on these printouts. And here is the configuration summary from another
diagnostic program. CPU installed in this PC was 286 16MHz, which from what I
remember was made by AMD.
Also, a configuration which I wrote down myself. As you can see MDA and CGA graphic cards make use of
different memory addresses. This information will be useful in a minute. I also documented Seagate ST-157A and ST-351A/X which I had
in this computer. Furthermore I found an original build sheet with which one
of the hard disks was delivered from the factory in 1991. I had a hard time remembering the machine's brand. I knew, however, how the logo looked like. I asked at the VOGONS forum, but nobody helped me there. Fortunatelly I found help on the Polish 3dfx forum. I got the answer the same day I posted the question. Callahan, who is one of the most experienced
people, I know, when it comes to vintage PCs, referred me to
a page with computer's photos. The link in the response led to pc-history.com, where I
found exact pictures of the computer like mine, including
the motherboard and the case. Let's say a few words about the KT Technology PTE LTD. Company was established in 1987 in Singapore. According to SGPBusiness.com portal, KT's main activity was
retail sales of computer hardware (including handheld
computers), peripheral devices, computer software (excluding games and
cybersecurity solutions), but also wholesale of lifts,
escalators and air conditioning equipment as secondary
activity.
Company went bankrupt in 1997, which led to liquidation of
it subsidiaries worldwide, which is confirmed it at least
two independent sources. It's main sales markets were probably Australia and Oceania,
the Far East and Central and Eastern Europe. I draw this conclusion on the basis of the location where I
found the KT equipment and traces of the activities of it's
subsidiaries. Look at this hardware presented by Ronin82 and quicknick at
the VOGONS forum.
Both users from Romania. Or these computers owned by badmojo from Australia. I suspect that the company apart from selling was also a
producer of computer systems and peripherals like this early model of a protable hard drive which
description I found on the Internet, or expansion cards that you will see in a moment. Although the company also had a Polish branch, and quite
often you can find computer components marked with it's
characteristic logo it's still a bit of a mystery to me. With this information I was able to start searching for the
components needed to build the replica. The first thing I managed to get was a motherboard equipped
with 12MHz 286 Intel processor and the Headland G2 chipset.
Motherboard works under the control of quite rare Quadtel
BIOS programmed in two EPROM chips. 1 MB of RAM in DIP chips will be replaced with SIP modules
like I had in my computer. Fortunatelly the leaking battery didn't caused too much
damage. The motherboard is not equipped with an FPU, but in this
case we don't need one. Most of the settings are configured with DIP switches. Designation on the board is 12/0 HT101A 286. This is a fairly common model of 286 motherboard, although
it usually comes with the popular AMI BIOS and other ISA bus
connector configurations. It's not exactly the same model I had, but it's very
similar. And this is another specimen from my collection – with AMI
BIOS and AMD CPU.
Total Hardware 99 refers to this motherboard as BABY-286. I will install not one, but two graphic adapters in this
computer. The first one is Hercules clone from KT
Technology, exactly as it was in my 286. The second one is the Trident 9000 – it's the original card
from my 90's machine. I have an original user's manual for it. The warranty card was also preserved. The card was purchased in May 1996 together with the SVGA
14" monochrome monitor. I bought it from the Emiter company
in Warsaw. Trident 9000 is quite underrated, but they are pretty much
the best cards for 286 and 386 builds. They have excellent compatibility with previous standards,
which can't be said for example about Tseng ET4000, and they work without problems in the 8-bit mode too.
This particular card has 9000i chip and half MegaByte of
memory. The computer must have an IDE controller and Multi I/O card. This typical floppy drive and IDE hard drive controller will
fit this build nicely.
It's serial number also begins with KT letters although it's
probably Kentech Computer product. By accident I found another Hercules clone card in the box
with the controllers. Probably also a KT Technology or Kentech product. In my 286 I used COVOX Digital-Analog Converter at first,
but the Sound Blaster 2.0 was quickly introduced when I
bough it from my classmate. Nobody doubts that the Sound Blaster is "The Original Sound
Standard" Creative Labs must have felt threatened by the increasing
competition however, if they decided to put this intrusive
slogan on the packaging. Along with the card we received a large software package. The card has 11-voice FM synthesizer, allows you to play and record PCM sound, is equipped with MIDI interface, a joystick port and so on.
It was one of the first sound cards that offered such a rich feature set. Let's take a look inside the package. As many as eight double density floppies with drivers and
additional software. Colorful instruction for the Lemmings game. Indianapolis 500 game manual. Registration card. Information how to obtain the software on a different media
format. Supplementary worksheet for using Indianapolis 500. Supplment to the sound card's user guide. Comprehensive card user guide, And Text-to-Speech user guide. In addition we have a TRS to RCA cable. And finally, of course, the card itself. We will look at it in a moment. Every inch of the box is filled with the specifications and
marketing information. This is hardly ever seen today. The card itself is an early revision 2. The changes between subsequent revisions were minor and have
no effect on how the card sounds. In case of this particular card I installed the replica of
the C/MS chips which adds the Game Blaster compatibility to it.
Here for a comparison, is a later revision 6. As I said the
changes are cosmetic. As a mass storage I will install a Seagate ST-157A hard drive. These drives were the pinnacle of Seagate's hard drives with
servo-driven heads and are very reliable and durable. Additionally they sound great. As you can see I have quite alot of them. According to the specification I should use Seagate
ST-351A/X as the secondary drive.
I still have the original
drive from my 90's machine. A in the symbol stands for ATA interface, while X for XTA. This drive supports both of these standards. These disks are quite rare, in high demand and their prices
are crazy. In practice this hard drive will be much more useful in a
computer that requires an XTA drive. Like this Commodore
PC20-III or Tandy 1000TL. So instead I will use more recent, larger Seagate ST3144A. Another option worth considering would be the Compact Flash
card adapter like this one or this one in the housing I designed.
Probably I will use it in the future for the sake of
practicality. I also still have the original floppy drives from that PC.
The 3.5" drive is the unique Canon MD3621. Unfortunatelly it stopped working some time ago and I
couldn't fix it. 5.25" drive fell victim to unsuccessful retrobright few
years ago, but we will fix it in a moment. This is a Canon drive as well model MD 5501. Some time ago I found another one on eBay, but it is very
yellowed. I still have a Logitech Mouseman which I used back in the
90s. Today we can only buy GPUs or Motherboards in boxes of this
size. The documentation itself is very extensive too and includes
a Logitech product catalog, a quick Installation guide, a comprehensive User Guide and the MouseWare floppy disks.
I repaired the mouse recently by replacing the DB9 connector
at which the cord broke in the 90s. I also have another mouse which I used after the MouseMan
broke down. But it's cheap, low quality mouse that I definitely won't
use anymore. This keyboard is identical to the one I used with my 286.
The micro-switch buttons make it enjoyable to use. It supports both XT and AT standard and was manufactured by
NTC. Last, but definitely not least is the computer case. I
looked for it for two years and finally it was found by my
friend. The front panel has typical elements like keylock, reset
button, turbo switch and LED indicators. This emossing on the front panel is a charactersitic
feature. Another characteristic feature are those plastic, white
buttons used to lift the top cover. Power switch is located on the side of the case. The emblem was missing when I bought the case. The original
emblem was donated to me by badmojo, from the VOGONS forum.
Big thanks to you brother! Inside, you will find a typical layout.
Unfortunatelly there
is no frame for mounting 3.5" drives. We will fix that in a
moment. A typical, L-shaped, 200W PSU is inside.
I remember very much enjoying these warnings in multiple
languages. On the back there is another KT Technology logo, along with
the computer's serial number. I have another KT Technology case. I think this one will be
perfect for building a Turbo XT-class computer. Inside, both cases are identical. A few minutes of playing around with the caliper and
watching photos and I designed the missing frame in 3D. It's time to unleash the plastic-melting monster. The printout will take several hours. In the meantime, let's do something about the look of 5.25"
drives.
I will paint the discolored one in the original color. To choose it I use RAL color palette chart. Time to dismantle the station. Removing the lever requires pushing out the retainer pin. Before painting let's once again compare the colors. This
time I use paper strips which I have sprayed with paints I
have. The elements should be degreased. I use IPA because acetone
would dissolve the ABS plastic. The paint should be shaked well. [Duke Nukem's voice: Shake it baby!] We use painting tape to mask the elements. Instead of paper
tape I prefer vinyl one.
It provides better adhesion and is
a bit flexible. We are applying the paint in many, thin layers, leaving each
one of them to try before applying the next one, to prevent
the stains. We will bleach the yellowed drive in around 12% hydrogen
peroxide solution. 35% hydrogen peroxide is a very aggressive substance. To
avoid splashing it on your clothes or skin, remember to
always pour it into the water and not the other way around. We will use a piece of wire, so that the element doesn't
float to the surface. Let's place the container with the element in the sun. Heat
is more important here than the UV radiation. Every 15 or 20 minutes we check the progress and remove the
oxygen bubbles accumulating on the element. In the meantime it's worth carrying out a routine
maintenance of drives by applying a thin layer of silicone
or Teflon grease to the mechanical parts. You can also clean the heads with isopropyl alcohol.
Drive panels are ready. The retrobrighted one has a perfect shade to match the case. I will use the second one painted in the original color in
another project. Meanwhile the 3D printer has finished it's work. And here is a finished 3.5" drive frame. It looks a bit like a medieval building. We start assembling the computer. The first thing is to
check the board for a potential short circuits. Thanks to this we will avoid fireworks from exploding
tantalum capacitors. Everything looks OK. My 286 had 2 MB of RAM, but we will equip this motherboard
using 4MB in SIP memory modules. This is a bit too much for 286 machine, however I don't want
to split this set of identical Intel modules. First we need to pull out the memory in the DIP chips. The
board doesn't support configuration with the SIP modules and
the DIP chips installed simultanously. Modules should be installed so that the first pin of the
module connects to the first pin of the socket.
Both are
marked. Another thing is to configure the amount of installed memory
using DIP-switches. We do this according to the
instructions from Total Hardware 99. With this processor speed and the speed of memory chips, we
can successfully set the board to 0 wait state mode for
better performance. The last jumper is used to set the parity check and is set
correctly. For sustaining the CMOS memory I will use – how else – the
Nickel Cadmium battery. I am always amused by the fear of using them some people
have. Properly used good quality battery won't damage the
motherboard and will serve for many years. And the battery is soldered in. We always test old power supplies before connecting the
electronics. The test should be performed under sufficient load, like an
older hard drive for example, sometimes two or more drives
may be required. Let’s see what happens when the power supply is not properly
loaded. After connecting only one disk, it could be concluded that
the power supply is out of order. Instead of 5V we have 3.
Instead of 12V, less than 5. The disk and the power supply fan won’t even start. The
situation looks much better with two disks – there is almost
10V on the 12V rail.
Exactly 5V on the 5V rail. The motherboard is mounted in the case using those horrible
plastic stand-offs. As always, you need to connect the cables from the keylock,
turbo and reset buttons and LED indicators. We will install this multi I/O card in my computer. Jumpers
allow you to select addresses and port interrupts. This card has everything neatly described. Also it doesn't
feature a gameport as we don't need one. We mount the IDE controller and graphics card. Before connecting the hard drives, the jumpers should be set
appropriately. Jumper settings are still available on the
Seagate website. And this is how drives look like in the 3D printed frame. The first hard drive will be mounted in the 5.25" bay using
adapters like this. As I mentioned the original 3.5" floppy drive doesn’t work
anymore. However we still need drive like this, so I will
use this Chinon drive in the adapter and the original Canon drive will remain unconnected. We will mount the 5.25" floppy drive in the upper bay.
As usual we will connect the hard disks and the floppy
drives with the ribbon cables. Finally, we mount the power supply, making sure that the P8
and P9 motherboard connectors are oriented with the black
wires facing inside, because, as the folk wisdom says: "red to red and you're
dead". The power supply does not have Berg connectors for
connecting 3.5" floppy drives. The solution is an adapter
like this connected to the standard large AMP connector. After connecting the power supply, we are ready to power up
the machine for the first time. [Computer starts, fan and hard drives spool up] And it works! Let's take a look at the setup program right away. The Quadtel BIOS setup is dated 1989. Compared to what
American Megatrends or Award offered at this time it looks
more modern. In the main menu, we have a choice of options such as
General BIOS settings, Extended properties, System
information, the possibility of password protection and options useful
with older MFM/RLL drives. In the general settings, we find what we would expect – real
time clock and memory configuration, floppy drives and hard
drives settings. We won’t find any options regarding LIM EMS memory, because
the Headland G2 chipset does not support it without
additional GC103 chip which this motherboard doesn't have.
The extended features let’s you enable automatic parking of
the MFM and RLL hard drives, a quick Power On Self Test, a
screen saver in the text mode and keyboard options including
speed and sound. The system information shows the port configuration, BIOS
version, amount of installed memory, and the type of
processor and coprocessor. After the initial configuration, we can start installing the
DOS and copying a few programs useful for further tests. My cat tells us that we need to boot the system from a boot
floppy. As you can see, I already created hard drive partitions and
formatted them in the past so we don't have to do this. It’s just a matter of transferring the operating system. I will copy the most necessary programs to the UTIL
directory using Volkov Commander which is a lightweight
clone of the Norton Commander. By the way, let’s see how the PSU performs when it’s
properly loaded. I wonder how many of you would scrap it after the first
no-load test or even when it was loaded with only a single
hard drive? As you can see the voltages are perfect.
The last thing for today is to add a second graphics card
and a sound card. Using NSSI let’s check if they are visible in the system. As you can see the Sound Blaster and both graphics cards are
properly detected by the program. Both serial and parallel ports and a gameport are also
detected. And that would be all for today. I hope you enjoyed this
episode.
In the next episode, we will test this PC. I will
install several games and programs I used in the 90s. See you soon, bye! [Dark, Miami Vice-style music].
