IBM Industrial Computer: $10,000 PC from 1985

Playing Wasteland on a dystopian retrofuturistic industrial computer with a green monochrome monitor from the nuclear department of a public energy service. That's immersion.

I miss the days when turning on a PC felt like launching an ICBM.

For some reason, to me your giving this industrial computer a home and the pleasant task of running games feels like a Grampa who worked hard his whole life getting to putter around his house and play with his grandchildren whilst wearing a comfy sweater.

That gigantic card (9:15) is exactly what it says it is, it's an old IBM Channel Adapter. It is indeed used to connect a PC to a mainframe's "Channel I/O Architecture" which is the original implementation that IBM engineer Chet Heath then reused to create the Micro Channel Architecture of the PS/2 line. It's a bus designed to connect the various components of an IBM mainframe but that could also be used to connect to anything with the right adapter.

That power switch looks and sounds satisfying as hell.

I love the cameo from the thrifts lamp.

Playing OG Duke Nukem on a 1980's industrial computer connected to a monitor from a nuclear facility... Just sounds freaking awesome!

I’m just here to say that the lighting in this video’s thumbnail is absolutely gorgeous. That is all.

I’ve actually repaired computer equipment in the data center in Salem. I’m not surprised the equipment was that clean. I think the most ominous thing was all of the evacuation signs near and around the town.

Is anyone else, like, incredibly impressed at how well those little foam filters did their job?

Wouldn't want to drop that solid beast on your foot 😅

Back then, Industrial was the magic word for making things expensive. More so than Gaming these days

we need more coverage of these commercial/industrial pcs , they’re so interesting!

Dude! When you said the Nuclear Department of the Salem New Jersey Power plant I was freaking out, what a small world. I work there currently! Very cool!

You know a computer fan means business when it's made of solid cast aluminium.

That channel adapter card is definitely for connecting to a System/370. It's the key component of the IBM 8232 LAN Channel Station. Depending on if you ordered the model 001 or 002 LAN Channel Station, you got either 1 or 2 7532 Industrial PCs with the channel adapter card, a CGA card, and a choice of host network adapters (MAP, Token Ring, Ethernet, etc). The purpose was to act as a bridge between the System/370 and one or more non-SNA LANs to allow desktop PCs to connect to the mainframe with the appropriate software. Considering how common a need this would have been, I'd be willing to bet most 7532s that you find will have this card, since most of them sold were probably sold as part of an 8232 purchase.

Lets not pretend LGR isn't more excited about that glorious wooden case.

This is like something you would see in an 80s scifi film

Came across one of these recently running a very old SCADA System for conveyors in a bailing wire mill. They are pretty bullet proof.

I still have the Compaq 386/33 with 16mb RAM and THREE external MFM drives 300mb each. Monsters. About $13,000 each, new. We had to have 3 of 'em.