IBM PS/1 preload software

Club PS/1!

I don’t think it’ll do anyone any good, but for some reason I’ve gotten two requests since I’ve mentioned that I’ve got a PS/1 and if I could dump all the weird software that it comes with…

Not that prodigy even exists anymore, or there is anything you can do with it, so I figured I’d just add it in with jdosbox, and you can just click along..

I guess it was unique at the time when most OEMs just slapped together some stuff and shipped without going that extra crazy mile of doing some custom programs, or even trying to foster their own online community even if it was just too forward looking, and too much of an Island for 1991.

So pastel, so Miami Vice!

There is some very 90’s feeling Learning Windows that also came with the system.. I’ve never heard of it before.  What is more interesting is that it is a Windows program, unlike the later introduction/tutors for Windows that were MS-DOS programs.  It’ll even run in real mode, which makes me wonder was it just such a major pain to put together that they swore to never do again, or was it specially made for IBM?

Introduction to the PS/1

At any rate most of the programs are MS-DOS based, there is a version of AOL that sits in between the time of Quantium Link & AOL called Promenade.  Again since the service is dead there isn’t much you can do with the dialer software.  It does use GEOS like the later AOL software, but its skinned to look like Windows (SAA?).

Oh well its a look at a distant OEM past, now IBM doesn’t make PC’s and I would almost guess that OEM’s would be forbidden or heavily shunned to make their own online social type thing, as of course everyone would be on face book ….

PS/1 2121 doing what it does best..

At any rate, I’ve upgraded mine with a semi compatible sound blaster, and a network card.. With rlfossil an Conex, its a nice BBS terminal, with good ansi support.  Sadly the bigger DJGPP stuff won’t run as I don’t have a math coprocessor, and I’m just not going to go through the motion of finding an 80387sx .. Assuming the PS/1 even has a socket for one (I haven’t seen it, but I didn’t look too hard).  But I’ve found it good with old era games, as there is some things that just don’t seem to cooperate just right with emulation.. And sometimes it is nice to have some real machines… Sometimes.

18 thoughts on “IBM PS/1 preload software

  1. Uhm, anyway, thanks to you because at least I saw the tutorial. Now I’ve got 2 questions:
    1) There is a way to dump the firmware? 2) Somewere in some IBM Ps/1 tutorial (or a tutorial of some software that comes with it) there was a part in which you have to click on a magician hat to make something come out from there… Can you remember anything similar (maybe is bounded with Works tutorial)? There was (I think, I’ve seen it just one day when I was a child) moon, stars, an house, and/or the magician hat. If you can help me, it will be great 🙂

    • 1) it’d require you to have access to a PS/1 which I no longer do have

      2) I can’t say that I recall, I didn’t use the built in firmware for much of anything, more so to run Windows 3.0 as it wouldn’t run Windows/386 and 3.1 ran poorly, and OS/2 1.21 just crashed. Xenix wouldn’t see the hard disk, nor would 386 BSD so it wasn’t much use to me.

      You can check the windows tutorial it has some weird stuff in it, that much doesn’t need the PS/1 firmware.

    • if you check the post there is a java dosbox version with what software came with my PS/1. I never did get install diskettes so that is about as good as it is going to get, I’m affraid. I suspect that later PS/1’s came with works for windows, as the works on my PS/1 was for MS-DOS.

  2. Hello, sorry for this but….
    can you reupload somehwere the ps1 dump?
    Files are not accessible anymore ! They disappeared 🙁
    Please, it is important……. thanks

    • Sorry Oracle screwed up java so bad that it’s become impossible to run jdosbox anymore (and well pretty much any and all java). I’d all but given up, and not bothered to fix the links or anything else.

      But I still have the files.

  3. Man I miss my PS1. First computer, got it in 1992. Paid more than two grand for the collection; PS1 (4 meg ram, 285 meg hard drive, 3.5 in diskette drive, Super VGA color monitor, 24-pin dot matrix printer (color). WHAT an expense! I wish I still had it. Sigh….

    I did have my whole hard drive put onto a CD. It’s on another hard drive somewhere in my basement. Is there anything on there that could be of any value? I am unable to follow any of the conversation above. I learned a little programming in DOS on that thing but not much.

    • I had a PS/1 model 2121 back when I wrote this. I scored it for cheap on fleabay. Sadly I had to move countries, and was unable to keep it. This one had 2MB of ram, and a 40MB disk. But the software was more interesting to me, so I made a copy of the harddisk before I had to let it go.

      But it was full of various IBM branded prodogy clients, MS Works for MS-DOS, and IBM DOS 4.00 / Windows 3.0. Nothing all that stellar, but kind of cool for a machine of that era.

      It felt more like a better OEM packaging experience then you’d get from any of the clones of the day, that is for sure. And I really liked the iMac form factor.

    • I still have my old working IBM ps/1 been trying to find a compatible cdrw disk to dump my data on then don’t know what I’ll do with it. I got it in like 1991/2 and starts right up still after being in the garage for 20 years lol

  4. I just dug up an old IBM PS/1 (2155-NM1) that seems to be untouched still, so all the software I received on it is still there. If anyone feels like walking me through the steps, I can attempt to snag these files if anyone wants. So far after all these years all it seemed to suffer was a bad RAM chip..

    • For me, I put a NIC in mine, along with a netware client, and simply xcopied the contents out.

      So the hard part as always will be looking at the model you have, and what ways you have to move data off of this machine. Floppies? ISA network cards? Modem? Parallel port?

      The harder issue is so much has changed that finding a modern enough machine can be a chore.

      So what do you have on hand?

    • I’d like to get a copy of that software for a system that I restored. I can send you a ROM dump of the 2133-W13 ROM files (386sx with VLSI Chipset) if it helps.

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