Here is nearly 40 minutes of IBM Personal System/2 goodness! It's a lot of time, though there is a lot to cover. WARNING: This video contains flickering and strobing patterns. (I could have reduced it by changing the scan rate and shutter speed of my camcorder. I forgot to do that, and I'm sorry for any trouble it may cause.) This is an IBM PS/2 Model 53 486SLC2. It was IBM's answer to a market that wanted a "value" choice that was more capable than the common-as-dirt IBM PS/2 Model 55SX. IBM responded at first with "special bid" versions of the 55SX, and later this machine. With a slightly redesigned front case and Reply upgrade motherboard as standard, this was quite an improvement over a stock 55SX. In this video I give a complete walkthrough from the 55SX and its beginnings all the way up to the software I've used on this system. It was also fairly popular. I saw these systems come up on eBay as recently as 2008. My PS/2s are NOT FOR SALE (unless you have a ridiculous amount of money to offer, and probably not even then). The supply has dwindled, but you can still find one with some persistence. Maybe a lot of persistence. Don't pay too much for a plain machine, either. More than $20 or $30 is too much for all but the very rarest things. I thought at one point it was possible to get the CD-ROM installation kit from a company known as PS/Solution. They are still in business today but do not list the part. When I ordered a CD-ROM installation kit for a PS/2 Model 90, they had a minimum order of around $7. If you are looking for hard drive mounting kits for other PS/2 models, they still carry such things. I found the fit and finish of what I bought from them to be pretty good (though not perfect). ChipChat's sound card was very expensive when available new. Any example of a similar card from Reply, Piper Research or ChipChat will hold its value quite well. ChipChat is the only company of the three still in business, though they no longer retail their Microchannel sound card. I'm not sure what they do now to remain in business. Their old sound card page (showing a card complete with its wavetable daughterboard!) is available here: I replaced the stock ~200MB IBM hard disk with a 1GB Seagate. IBM's drive still worked well. I just wanted more space. The Microchannel Mafia (or "Microchannel Enthusiasts") page may be found at There is a reason why the hard drive LED stops working. A special software mechanism actually strobes the LED by checking for activity on the IDE bus. This mechanism was patented by IBM (and Reply used it as well, since the chipset on this board came from IBM). I'm sure that when protected mode takes over, the real mode BIOS code can no longer operate. Even if it did, it would impose a performance penalty due to constant transitions between real and protected mode. So, the BIOS code likely just "backs down" until the protected mode software is done running.