On Wed, Aug 12, 2026 at 4:33 PM Jim Brain via cctalk <[email protected]> wrote: > ...I am sitting here looking at a pretty clean 5160 XT that has > been significantly stripped... > ... I am trying to decide how important it is to have both a 5150 > PC and a 5160 XT, since the XT was such a marginal update to the PC > (-cassette, bit newer BIOS, 8 slots instead of 5). The PC setup I have > already has 11 slots combined, an HDD, and full memory, video, and KB. > > Still, it is an original IBM PC XT, there's some history there.
The usual first-line is how much personal nostalgia there is for a specific machine or configuration. Lacking that, from a more objective utilitarian approach is those differences made the XT a lot more usable for real-world work over the original PC. It was trivial to max out the 5 slots in a PC with minimal essential peripherals (FDC, multi-I/O-and-RAM expansion, serial, video, and a printer port, in various combinations of boards and options). 8 slots in the XT plus a newer motherboard meant more open slots for devices and a bigger PSU for cards and a hard disk. Compute-wise they are in the same class but you can load more software and get more jobs done with the XT, and even after the AT first came out, the XT was still quite viable for some time (and the XT you already had was pretty attractive compared to the $5,000 color-monitor-and-printer bundle from IBM in 1985). > I'm struggling with how much importance to apply to this "needs a lot of > TLC" unit, and I would appreciate constructive points. VCF MW is coming > up, and if I want to get this into someone else's hands to > restore/enjoy, then would be an ideal time. If it's important to keep, > VCF MW is probably a great place to grab the pieces needed to restore it. If your 5150 does the things you want an 8-bit IBM machine to do, then keep that and focus on making the 5160 appealing to the next guy. That said, a few years back I tried to sell a 5160 in original boxes with some small historical tie (it came from the founder of Grammar Engine, makers of the PromICE ROM emulators that were once all the rage). I had everything ready to hand over, working, in boxes, and was asking $375 (Model F keyboard included!) and got no nibbles whatsoever. It probably isn't the most collectible model by number, so there it is. -ethan
