Vintage Computer Forum > Genres > PCs and Clones > IBM 5162. Upgradeed to AMI BIOS. I feel a little dirty now!
View Full Version : IBM 5162. Upgradeed to AMI BIOS. I feel a little dirty now!
I've been reading here that some have upgraded the BIOS in their 5162s and/or 5170s to the AMI BIOS found HERE (http://minuszerodegrees.net/bios/BIOS_5170_30APR89_AMI_D286-1277-043089-K0.zip)(linked from Minuszerodegrees.net, Thank you Modem7). I guess there's no turning back now. I decided to try it out and must admit that, so far, I LIKE IT!! So I can't say that the old girl is a screaming hot rod, but, she's far from stock now with the VGA display adapter in place of the MDA, multi I/O adapter with a DOM instead of the 20MB MFM HD, and now the AMI BIOS. I really like the ability to skip the memory test( oh yea, I have 8MB of ram on a Intel AboveBoard Plus 8 ) . I hate the ticking noise during the memory count that becomes greatly accelerated when the memory test is skipped. I remember that some newer BIOS's had an option to turn of the ticking sound. I might have to put a switch on the speaker wire. I also like the built in CMOS configuration utility.
So now I'm putting it through a multitude of tests to see if I can find any compatibility issues. Does anyone here know of any?
I haven't noticed any issues with mine, At first i didn't like the ticking during memory count either but i have got used to it now and it doesn't bother me, I have VGA / Multii I/O adapter with CF, I'm not adverse to doing these little mods because they are easily reversible and it's given new life to the old girl.
I really liked the Quadtel BIOS, it just look nicer when booting up, has no ticking and seemed to count the RAM much faster than the AMI, but it seemed to have an issue with my 80287 which caused the "Press F1 to continue" message at every post. So I put the AMI bios in it instead and have been very happy with it. I thinking about doing the same in my 5162 when I get back to it. I also plan on yanking the MFM drive and replacing it with a small DOM or CF card for storage.
I also like having a BIOS with a built in setup, because I tend not to leave CMOS batteries installed when I put my systems in storage. After several years when I pull the machine out of storage for testing, the last thing I need is the headache of finding the setup disk, only to find that the drive or disk is now bad.
What would be even cooler than Quadtel is if there was a MR-BIOS available. I don't think I've ever seen MR-BIOS for anything less than a 386.
Excuse my ignorance, but what is a MR-BIOS?
An extinct company: was Microid Research.
I was thinking of replacing the bios in my 5162 as well in order to try a faster oscillator. I guess 8 MHz would be possible.
However, I don't have an eprom burner so I can try it as I assume the newer bios this machine has won't accept overclocking.
1. Do you think it would be possible to overclock the 5162? With the old BIOS, I know it works with the 6 MHz AT.
2. Any recommended cheap eprom burner I can buy from eBay for instance? Doesn't have to be phenomenal as it probably won't be used too much.
3. Or perhaps even someone would be willing to burn the EPROMs for me?
I tried out the Quadtel Bios yesterday. All was fine until I ran Checkit and it failed the RTC test. After re-boot it passed the RTC test. Then later it failed again. It seems that the Quadtel bios some times fails to initialize the clock correctly. It will either fail the alarm test or the elapsed time test or both. Sometimes the time will be WAY off after a cold boot. However, after switching back to the AMI bios, the RTC works perfectly and test OK with Checkit every time. So, it looks like I'll stay with the AMI bios because I can't live with a flakey clock.
It did not always work with the 6 MHz AT.
In some cases, the 6 MHz rated motherboard chips (note 2 at [here (http://minuszerodegrees.net/5170/motherboard/5170_motherboard_revisions.htm)]) would have been a problem.
This guy's got quite a collection, however.
Is this site working for anyone else?
Yes. Opening up for me in Firefox, and I can download the ZIP files there.
Did anyone else do this kind of thing back in the day too? I remember swapping out the BIOS in my Compaq Portable II with one from some scrapped toasted Samsung 286, I was never a fan of Compaq's BIOS and the config disk, this Samsung BIOS had built in setup. That BIOS chipset is still in my Compaq Portable II (http://www.acrpc.net/compaq-portable-ii/) to this day, over 2 decades later, comes in handy still since the battery has been out of that computer for ages now, I don't need to hunt down a setup disk when I want to boot it up.
I've just finished my upgrade of the XT 5160 64-256 motherboard to 640K.
The biggest problem was to find a contemporary 74LS158 and 41256-15 chips.