In this post I will write some notes on the Hyundai P5000M series PC. I recently aqcuired a machine from Swedish eBay, and I have conducted a few restorations and repairs on the machine, which I will describe here. The reason why I bought this particular machine was that my father bought one of these in the Swedish home PC government program in the mid-1990s. Essentially, government employees got a discount on PC:s, and this led to a high degree of adoption of personal computers and also, Internet users before the millennium shift. My goal with is to create a machine as identical as possible to the setup I had as a child, with a few quality of life enhancements.
Hyundai P5000M specifications
- The motherboard is a Microstar International MS-5129. It supports cpu speeds up to 200 MHz. More info: https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/M/MICRO-STAR-INTERNATIONAL-CO-LTD-Pentium-MS-5129.html
- These machines came in slightly different configurations, the main difference being the cpu speed. The PC we had back in the days was a P200MMX while the one I bought now is a P133.
- My machine has 32mb of EDO ram, upgradeable to 128mb.
- The graphics card is nothing to brag about when it comes to 3D-games (ATI Mach 64 Wincharger, see https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/wincharger.c3168) so I later added a 3DFX Voodoo 2 to the machine. If I find one of these cards for a good price I will add it, but I may settle for a less expensive PCI 3D accelerator.
- Regarding inputs, the Hyundai P5000M lacks USB-ports. It even does not have PS2-connectors (although the mainboard may support one), but uses an old DIN-connector for the keyboard, and supports a serial mouse. The mainboard has a header plus a BIOS setting to enable USB though, so if needed, I could add some ports.
- Back in 1997, we used to connect to the Internet with this PC via dialup. First, with a 14.4k Dynalink modem, and later with a 56.6k model of the same brand. I bought an identical 56.6k modem a while back, but I do not intend to perform any connectivity activities with this machine at the moment. To transfer files etc, I can rely on CD:s as I still have a CD-burner in my main computer.
Restoration
- The CD-ROM in this machine was broken. I have put a temporarily black cd/dvd-writer in it. Back in the days, I added a Mitsumi CD-burner in the machine, so something similar would be optimal in the future.
- The RTC-clock is out of battery, so the machine looses its BIOS settings when turned off. That is very annoying so I decided to fix the problem by adding a battery: see this post when I did a similar fix on my 386: Dallas RTC battery replacement. Although the RTC in my machine is not a Dallas, BENCHMARQ is a clone with similar function.
- As we had the P200MMX version when I was a kid, I upgraded the machine with one of these cpu:s supplied by a local seller. The cpu speed is configured via SW1 on the motherboard.
- I was not sure what sound card our machine had, I think it was some variant of Aztech Aureal Vortex or a Turtle Beach? As I want good compatibility with MS DOS games in this machine, I bought a Soundblaster CT4810 from a local seller. Nothing fancy, but it will do the job.
Software
I installed Windows 98 second edition OS.
I downloaded and updated BIOS from this site (AI78.EXE): http://ftp.mpoli.fi/pub/hardware/ROM/MSI/.
Upgrades in progress:
- To add: Voodoo 2 PCI card.
Todo:
- Reset button and hdd LED does not work.
- Replace the black CD-rom with a white / beige model.
- Post links to drivers.
- Replace hdd with a compact flash-card.
- Ram upgrade.