IBM Personal Computer/AT

IBM PC AT (model 5170)

Type	Personal Computer
Release date	1984[1]
Discontinued	April 2 ,1987[1]
Operating system	PC-DOS 3.0 and later, OS/2 1.x
CPU	Intel 80286 @ 6 and 8 MHz
Memory	256 KB ~ 16 MB

The IBM Personal Computer AT, more commonly known as the IBM AT and also sometimes called the PC AT or PC/AT, was IBM's second-generation PC, designed around the 6 MHz Intel 80286 microprocessor and released in 1984 as machine type 5170. The name AT stood for "Advanced Technology", and was chosen because the AT offered various technologies that were then new in personal computers; one such advancement was that the 80286 processor supported protected mode. IBM later released an 8 MHz version of the AT.

AT features

• AT bus: The AT motherboard had a 16-bit data bus and 24-bit address bus (16 MB) that was backward compatible with PC-style expansion cards (which were 8-bit data, 20-bit address).
• Fifteen IRQs and seven DMA channels, expanded from eight IRQs and four DMA channels for the PC. IRQs 8–15 are cascaded through IRQ 2, which leaves 15 active instead of 16. Similarly, DMA channel 4 is reserved for cascading 0–3 leaving seven channels active. Some IRQ and some DMA channels are used on the motherboard and not exposed on the expansion bus.
• 16 MB maximum memory (because of the 24-bit address bus of the 286), compared to the PC's 640 KB maximum.
• Battery backed real-time clock on motherboard with 50 bytes CMOS memory available for power-off storage of BIOS parameters. (The basic PC had required either manual setting of its software clock using Time and Date commands, or the addition of an accessory expansion card with real-time clock, to avoid the default 01-01-80 file date.) A disk-based BIOS setup program took the place of the DIP switches on PCs and PC/XTs. Most AT clones would have the setup program in ROM rather than on a disk.
• 84-key AT keyboard layout: the 84th key being <SysRq> i.e. System Request; numerical keypad now clearly separated from main key group; also added indicator LEDs for Caps lock/Scroll lock/Num lock. The AT keyboard uses the same 5-pin DIN connector as the PC keyboard, but it uses a different, bidirectional interface (the PC and PC/XT keyboard interface is unidirectional) and generates different keyboard scan codes. The bidirectional interface allows the computer to set the LED indicators on the keyboard, reset the keyboard, set the typematic rate, etc. Later ATs had 101-key keyboards which featured integrated numeric keypad with Num Lock key.
• 1.2 MB 5-1/4 inch floppy disk drive (15 sectors of 512 bytes, 80 tracks, two sides) stored over three times as much data as the 360 KB PC floppy disk (nine sectors of 512 bytes, 40 tracks, two sides). However, they had compatibility problems with 360k disks. 3.5" floppy drives became available in later ATs.
• A 20 MB hard disk drive that was twice as fast (seek times of about 40 msec) as the PC XT's 10 MB drive, although the early drives manufactured by Computer Memories (CMI) had a 25–30% failure rate after one year. This was attributed partly to failure to automatically retract the read/write heads when the computer was powered off, and partly to a bug in the DOS 3.0 FAT algorithm.^{[citation needed]}
• Early ATs (1984–1986) could be equipped with CGA, MDA, EGA, or PGA video cards.
• PC-DOS 3.0 was released to support the new AT features, including preliminary kernel support for networking (which was fully supported in a later version 3.x release.)
• The AT was equipped with a physical lock that could be used to prevent access to the computer by disabling the keyboard.
• Just like its IBM PC predecessor, the PC/AT supported an optional math co-processor chip, the Intel 80287, for faster execution of floating point operations.

Challenges

In addition to the unreliable hard disk drive,^[2] the high-density floppy disk drives turned out to be problematic. Some ATs came with one high-density (HD) disk drive and one double-density (DD) 360 kB drive. High-density floppy diskette media were compatible only with high-density drives. There was no way for the disk drive to detect what kind of floppy disk was inserted, and the only clue the user had was the disk label and an asterisk molded into the 360 kB disk drive faceplate. If the user accidentally used a high-density diskette in the 360 kB drive, it would sometimes work, for a while, but the high-coercivity oxide would take a very weak magnetization from the 360 kB write heads, so reading the diskette would be problematic.

A different problem occurred when using a double-density diskette in the 1.2 MB drive; the high-density drive's heads had a track width half that of the 360 kB drive, so they were incapable of fully erasing and overwriting tracks written by a 360 kB drive. Therefore, overwriting a DD disk that had been written to in a DD drive with an HD drive would result in a disk perfectly readable on an HD drive, but producing many read errors in a DD drive. Whereas a HD read head would only pick up the half track that drive had written, the wider DD read head would pick up the half-track written by the HD drive mixed with the unerased half-track remnant of the track written earlier by a DD drive. So, the DD drive would end up reading both new and old information together, causing it to "see" garbled data.

The combination of the faster clock rate, fewer clock cycles per instruction, and the 16-bit bus led to a computer that was in the marketing sense too fast. IBM was protective of their lucrative mainframe and minicomputer businesses and consequently ran the original PC/AT (139 version) at a very conservative 6 MHz with one wait state. They also used a three-to-one interleave on the hard disk, even though the controller supported two to one. Many customers replaced the 12 MHz crystal (which ran the processor at 6 MHz) with a 16 MHz crystal, so IBM introduced the PC/AT 239 which would not boot the computer at any speed faster than 6 MHz, by adding a speed loop in the ROM. This also introduced the Baby AT motherboard form factor. The final PC/AT, the 339, ran the processor at 8 MHz with one wait state, and was built as IBM's flagship microcomputer until the 1987 introduction of the PS/2 line.

Clones

IBM's efforts to trademark the name AT largely failed, and most 286-based PCs were modeled after it. The label also became a standard term in reference to PCs that used the same type of power supply, case, and motherboard layout as the 5170. Even further, "AT-class" became a term describing any machine which supported the BIOS functions, 16-bit expansion slots, keyboard interface, and other defining technical features of the IBM PC AT; in the case of the expansion slots, the term is largely synonymous with "ISA" (when the latter is not applied as a retronym to XT-class machines, as in the phrase "8-bit ISA slot".) As such, most systems with 486 and Pentium CPUs, and at least some with Pentium Pro and Pentium II processors, were describable as AT-class.

As of 2011, modern PCs still maintain nearly complete backwards compatibility with the PC AT from a software perspective, but AT mechanical and electrical compatibility is extremely rare. The AT power supply pins and its connectors, the AT motherboard form factor, and the physical ISA bus slots are no longer present on modern PCs outside of specialized embedded designs. The ATX standard from Intel has completely replaced the original AT power supply and motherboard design. Modern motherboards do not have physical ISA expansion bus connectors any more, but the bus signals live on in the modern LPC bus for software compatibility. Nearly all PC BIOS ROMs, even modern UEFI based ROMs, include code which is backwards compatible with the original AT BIOS interrupt calls. Even the 0xaa55 signature in the master boot record is still required by many BIOSes to be present on an attached hard disk for it to be recognized as a valid boot device. The PS/2 successor to the AT keyboard interface still survives in the modern market, though it is increasingly being replaced by USB in new systems. The PS/2 keyboard interface is identical to the AT keyboard interface except for the connector: the AT uses a 5-pin DIN connector, while the PS/2 uses a 6-pin mini-DIN.

See also

• Industry Standard Architecture
• AT form factor

References

1. ^ ^{a b} IBM PC AT at Vintage Computer
2. ^ IBM's official 1986 response to "What percentage of the 20 MB drives in PC ATs have failed?" was "We consider that information to be confidential. However, based on the several customer surveys on the AT that we have conducted for IBM, an overwhelming percentage of AT owners tell us they're satisfied with the system." (questions on page 110, answers on page 111, PC Magazine, April 29, 1986). The article's opening sentence, which reads "If you own an IBM PC AT and your hard disk hasn't crashed yet, don't worry -- it probably will." http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-3760999.html was described as "a rarity in computer journalism" by the Chicago Sun-Times http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-3760999.html and the Sun-Times called it a "badly flawed 20-megabyte" disk drive.

• IBM (1986). Personal Computer Hardware Reference Library: Guide to Operations, Personal Computer XT Model 286. IBM Part Number 68X2523.
• PC AT entry at old-computers.com

External links

• Wiki entry for PC AT at the Vintage Computer Forums
• Historycorner.de - The IBM PC AT (IBM 5170) German
• Manual Information for IBM 4860/5140/5150/5155/5160/5162/5170

Preceded by IBM Personal Computer XT

IBM Personal Computers

Succeeded by IBM Personal System/2