I occasionally rehab old PC's for a charity organization I am affiliated
with, so that low income families can have limted access to the Internet.
And so the kids can do their homework on a PC.

A customer brought in an IBM PS/2 Model 30 with an ancient MFM hard drive,
30 MB or so, you know the antique with the two cables to the drive.  It
won't boot so I went to Google and found some PS/2 web sites and eventually
downloaded the image for the start disk.

I also eventually found a one hole 3-1/2 inch floppy (capacity 720 KB) in my
junk box and transferred the image so I can fire the PS/2 up and copy the
programs and data off with Lap Link, so I can transfer it to the "new" PC I
am going to replace it with.

My customer had conencted up to the printer port, a printer that was turned
on, an old HP 540 inkjet, so I think maybe he fried something, cuz he said
it crashed after that and it won't boot.

Problem is, I can't figure out how to put the floppy in.  Is this one of
those machines, like the old Apple, that sort of semi automated the floppy
insertion process, you kinda start it in and then the drive grabs it?  Or is
the floppy fried also.  I just can not mechanically insert the floppy disk.
And I don't want to force it.  Shucks, you can't force it, it just won't go
in!

Is there some way I can hook up a 1.4 MB floppy to the drive cable or am I
stuck with ancient history tech?  I am tempted to just take one of my junk
IDE-HDD ISA cards from the old days, that I got when IDE drives first came
out, and install it a newer machine and just copy the drive, but I would
like to fire up the old IBM if possible.  I really don't want to go through
the gyrations of turning off lots of switches for IDE selection in the CMOS,
unless I absolutely have to.

I think the PS/2 is a write off, but I don't give up too easily.  I always
like to look at a machine in its native state, if possible.

Robert B. Hemming
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