Recently picked up a new old stock 5170. Bone stock just the way I like to start.
I've got a mountain of parts to go into the machine. The goal is a bit of a paradox. I want to expand the machine as far as it'll go while still retaining it's soul.
Some things will stay period correct (EGA and EGA monitor).
I do want to preserve the 30mb hard drive though so I want to remove it from the system and go IDE
I have a future domain IDE controller with its own BIOS. It's dual channel so I'll be running an old Conner ide drive (small enough not to need LBA even though the controller supports LBA).
Option 1. Install the ide controller, disable the MFM HDD controller and remove the MFM drive. The problem is I'm looking at the IBM controller and I don't see any way to disable the drive, just change the address.
Option 2. I prefer not to go this route because at this point I would have removed too much of the original machine. Install the future domain IDE controller, remove the IBM controller and IO card, install a clone ide multi IO card (disable the ide on THAT card since I have the future domain card ) and use it just to drive the floppy's and serial parallel. Not sure how the IBM setup or gsetup would react to that. Perhaps I'd have to swap out the original IBM bios as well ..Which at that point I've got this Frankenstein 5170 bastardization....Which is totally reversible , so I'm not sure if that's the worst thing.
Thanks in advace
I've got a mountain of parts to go into the machine. The goal is a bit of a paradox. I want to expand the machine as far as it'll go while still retaining it's soul.
Some things will stay period correct (EGA and EGA monitor).
I do want to preserve the 30mb hard drive though so I want to remove it from the system and go IDE
I have a future domain IDE controller with its own BIOS. It's dual channel so I'll be running an old Conner ide drive (small enough not to need LBA even though the controller supports LBA).
Option 1. Install the ide controller, disable the MFM HDD controller and remove the MFM drive. The problem is I'm looking at the IBM controller and I don't see any way to disable the drive, just change the address.
Option 2. I prefer not to go this route because at this point I would have removed too much of the original machine. Install the future domain IDE controller, remove the IBM controller and IO card, install a clone ide multi IO card (disable the ide on THAT card since I have the future domain card ) and use it just to drive the floppy's and serial parallel. Not sure how the IBM setup or gsetup would react to that. Perhaps I'd have to swap out the original IBM bios as well ..Which at that point I've got this Frankenstein 5170 bastardization....Which is totally reversible , so I'm not sure if that's the worst thing.
Thanks in advace