Jan "Jenkings" Škoda - blog

I have added a very nice piece of hardware to my collection. It's an IBM 365X. Even better, I got it for the price of shipping!



The only thing I was warned about was the cracked hinge. At first, I thought it was just a cosmetic issue from the photos, but when it arrived, I found out that it was impossible to open the notebook safely without damaging everything else.

I managed to come up with a solution. At first, I thought I would be able to glue it together somehow, but it did not work. So I chose the least aesthetic way, but it works. I used an engraving pen to melt the plastic and buried some bent nails in it to strengthen the joint. It's not ideal, but it holds the whole thing together.



Later, I would definitely try sanding it down and finding an old sticker — IBM or, even better, Y2K — to cover it up a bit. For now, though, it works, and I will do my best to make it look even better.



I was very surprised that the external floppy drive worked on the first try. I just plugged it in, put a floppy disk in it, and it started reading without any problems. Usually, there are damaged rubber bands inside and the drive needs a lot of care to work; however, this one is just perfect. I installed a couple of games from the floppy disks I have, and they all worked. Then I thought I would burn some games onto a CD-RW and transfer them to the PC via the built-in CD drive. However, the drive is not reading the CD. It spins and the status diode blinks, but it doesn't read them.

It's not a major issue. It's possibly a problem with the laser strength. It might read the originals — I haven't tried that yet. I will see.

However, to transfer files, I used my PCMCIA card with a slot for CF cards and one of my 256 MB cards, which I filled with games. The PCMCIA driver works without any problems on the pre-installed Windows 95, so that is the easiest way to do it.



The PC came with a really nice leather IBM bag, which I might use to carry my notebook to work every day. I'll see.

Oh, and I forgot one more issue earlier. The notebook came with a power supply. When I plugged it into the socket and the computer, it would not start. I was a bit worried about the notebook, but then I saw sparks coming from the power supply cable. It was damaged in several places and the bare wires were sparking everywhere. I unplugged it immediately and looked for another compatible power supply that I had at home. Fortunately, I have lots of spares saved for these situations. I found the equivalent power supply, so I used that one and will fix the one that came with the notebook later.

I wanted to install Total Commander, but I found that an older version called Windows Commander was already installed and licensed on the drive. I would use that one.



I have installed a couple of games — my favourites are Lost Vikings and Stunts, as well as GP2 and other well-known DOS games. I skipped the winter and summer games as I want to keep the keyboard, especially the Enter key, working.

I might add more games and try to fill the enormous 1 GB hard drive with as many as possible. Honestly, I really enjoy playing these games with the speaker sound. It's great to have these sweet memories of a time when games were really innovative and original, based on gameplay rather than fancy graphics and mainstream genres.