Greetings, and here we are on LGR once again

with one of my favorite things, hehe.

We're unboxing yet another in-box IBM PC.

This one in particular being the IBM PC 5140,

otherwise known as the PC Convertible.

It was first released in 1986 for about $2,000,

although I think this particular configuration,

with all this stuff cost a little bit more.

And this was IBM's first laptop computer.

Now they had portables before this and, yeah,

some other various PC kind of spin-offs,

the PCjr and such, but this was the first one

to come as close to what we would call

a 'laptop' computer nowadays.

Of course, there's a ton of history,

and a bunch of things that go into this whole system,

and how it works, and what it was for

and what came before it and after it,

all these kind of things that I wanna do in a later video.

But just for today, because I am working

on some larger projects like that,

I do want to just talk about this in unboxing form

and get this thing opened up.

Because I found this some time ago.

Actually, I've had it sitting around for awhile

and just been waiting for an opportunity

to dive into it and see what's in here.

Because, yeah, it is new in the box

or at least as close to it as I could find.

It's definitely been opened up at one point or another,

but as far as I know, it's never actually been powered on.

So, yeah, we'll go ahead and get straight to it.

We're gonna start with this box here.

We've got a power supply,

and yes, there is a printer with this thing.

And (laughs) this is one of the most interesting aspects

of the computer.

We'll get to that, but, yeah for now, let's open up

this newish old stock machine and set it up.

(grunts)

I think actually this was the first IBM computer

to officially come with a 3 1/2 inch disk drive.

So that's another notable thing.

There's a lot of notable things, and like I said,

we'll be doing a more retrospective video in the future.

For now, I just wanna see what the experience was like

getting one of these from the shops back in the day.

(plastic crinkles)

Yeah, like I said, the seller did open it up

and do some other packaging, 'cause yeah,

I guess it was missing the original styrofoam inserts.

So yeah, that's unfortunate.

But alright, here we go.

I got one of those nice familiar chunky IBM PC power cables.

(plastic crinklage)

Oh, got an add-on card of some kind here and an IBM box.

What is this?

It's like a RAM upgrade.

(moar plastic)

So there is an IBM battery pack,

part number 2684331

Alright, looks like we have some instructions here

for installing that RAM card.

That's nice.

Oh yeah, the delightful guide to operations here.

That's a little different design than the other ones

that I've unboxed, still very nice

bit of IBM spiral-bound documentation.

And yes, there's the IBM PC Convertible Start-Up Diskette.

Oh yeah, love this stuff.

And I got a packet of

mm, something.

Okay, so interesting little registration card here.

Got a nice little adhesive bit that you can remove

and stick it together to, yeah,

let IBM know how much money you make and stuff.

Yeah, looks like a little quick set up guide.

Yeah, this little word-free, language-free thing

for, yeah, starting it up.

Basically, insert the disk and power it on and stuff.

Aw yes, (laughs) I love when computers come with this,

especially IBMs.

It's just nice classy stationery

and typed out welcome letter here.

And thank you for purchasing a personal computer from IBM.

Yeah, pretty standard stuff being like,

what is this though?

What is that?

Can you see that?

Yeah, if I shine the light through it, it says writing

and something else right there (laughs).

Oh and this fell out too, eh, license agreement, whatever.

Mm, I sense DOS.

Aw, now that is delightful.

We have a still-sealed DOS version 3.20

and this IBM PC DOS, not Microsoft DOS.

I mean, it's still by Microsoft, of course,

but yeah, this specifically for IBM PC Convertibles.

Interesting, so that means it probably, yeah,

doesn't come with any 5 1/4 inch disks (laughs).

Huh. (slides)

And just by comparison here, here's my normal copy

that I use of DOS version 3.3,

and you can see on the back there

that it mentions that it has, of course, 5 1/4 disks

but also, all these other computers supported.

I'm assuming this will support whatever computer as well.

It's just it doesn't, it's not made for them exactly.

Okay, time for the main event.

(rip and tear)

Oh, that's nice.

It's still in some kind of a shrink wrap deal here.

So I don't know, if it came like this

from the factory but either way,

it looks immaculate under that plastic which is nice.

'Cause I actually used to have a PC 5140, years ago,

and it was in just the worst condition

that I never did a video on it.

It was bad.

It just needed too much work, so this is lovely.

Alright, this is potentially the first time

this has been opened (laughs).

(pleasurable plastic ripping) Ooh.

(quality plastic tearing) That's some quality plastic.

Man.

(sweep, swipe)

(inhales deeply)

Mm, yeah that smells fresh.

(plastic crinkles)

Oh, wow, aw, there's a little, tiny little broken chip

of something there, so it got knocked around at some point.

It seems like there's just some fragile bits of plastic

here where this really high quality metal handle

goes into place.

It just sort of bumps up against that.

Anyway.

Aw, haw haw haww.

And there we go.

This is the IBM PC Convertible,

and it's awesome (laughs).

Look at that.

You don't see these too often, at least I don't,

like the inserts for the little 3 1/2 inch drives.

Typical, that's only a 5 1/4 inch thing,

but these, that's awesome.

Wow, and they're nicely shaped and everything.

It's really cool.

So yeah, I see like a film or something on here.

I don't know if that comes off or what

or if that's like inside.

Hopefully, it's not coming apart in there or something.

I don't know.

Like I said, the seller said,

they'd never turned it on before, so who knows,

who knows what's going on here.

Yeah, it should go like that 'cause

that's where the little latch goes,

so get that reattached real quick.

Yeah, just a little bit of Gorilla Gel should help.

Being that this is an actual functional latch piece though,

I wanna be careful in the future for sure.

Alright, gonna let that dry, but as you can see here

it's just the sort of mechanism

where the whole thing lifts up like that

and brings up the disk drives and everything.

Not gonna latch it fully,

'cause it's still drying that little part,

but yeah, it's just a really cool design, I think.

And this whole screen actually comes off.

Let's see, where is it?

There it is.

(laughs) Like this.

So here's the convertible aspect of this thing.

So you could actually take this off,

and there was a monitor mount.

You might've seen it on the box earlier.

And you could put a full CRT in here,

and there you go, you've got this neat looking little thing.

Almost looks like a Tandy 1000 HX or something here,

a little smaller, narrower anyway (keys clicking)

yeah, no numpad but still very, very nice keys. I mean...

Haw.

It's not exactly like a clicky keyboard, but pretty quality.

(inhales deeply)

There's just something about the way

these old keyboards smell,

especially when they've been sealed up like that, like new,

'cause it seriously still smells new.

It's that slight new car smell.

It's wonderful.

It's probably just toxic plastic and paint though (laughs).

Okay, and put that over there for now,

and let's get those other two things opened up,

because of course, gotta have some power.

(tape pops apart)

(laughs) That old Scotch tape.

(plastic crinklage) It's so yellow now.

And here we go, this is almost PCjr-like

but thankfully, not as weird proprietary crap going on.

(laughs) But yeah, just a nice little brick here.

(plop) I think it's a 15 volt, 2.7 amp.

Yeah.

And that just goes in the side, right here.

Well. It should. There it is.

(laughs) And look at that, it's even got a little,

tiny little orange power button,

instead of the big red orange switch

that the PCs typically had.

But yeah, look at that, it's still orange, red, whatever.

And lastly, hey, hey, hey, this is one of the things

that has always interested me about this machine

and that is the PC Convertible Printer,

another convertible aspect.

They called this the Convertible,

instead of just a portable or whatever for multiple reasons,

and this is one of those reasons.

Aw man, look at this little guy (laughs),

a little tiny ink ribbon cartridge.

Now, this is pristine.

Ahh.

Okay, got a little feeder tray here.

Yeah, man, so this is a,

it's like a full dot matrix printer,

and it's just in a nice little compact unit.

Look at that.

The PC Convertible Printer.

I love all the little original inserts and stuff.

(satisfied sigh)

So the way this works (laughs),

you've got a little plastic piece

that comes off the back here,

and this, it just connects in place

almost like a PCjr sidecar,

but this is a laptop computer.

Oh, okay, I gotta move the little latch there.

Okay, there we go, and once that's in place, yeah,

you have a computer that is really, really long (laughs).

It just becomes this absurd deal

when you start adding these expansions on the back,

but the fact that you can have

a laptop with a built-in printer is just great.

And of course, there were other laptops later on

that had built-in printers and portables

before and after this with built-in printers.

It's not the only thing that does anything like this,

but it's one of the coolest, I think,

just in terms of its overall form factor and design.

And I don't know.

I just think this looks really great, as well,

just from a design perspective, and it should considering

this was an industrial design by Richard Sapper.

Well, let's go ahead and get DOS going on this things

and see what it can do really quick.