Reply Model 32


Reply 32

Reply Corporation was best known for their IBM and Compaq replacement planars/motherboards. Reply boards are at least somewhat common and can be used to give your PS/2 a nice performance upgrade. The Reply boards were popular enough that IBM offered at least one PS/2 that had one preinstalled--the PS/2 Model 53.

Reply Corporation also made at least one microchannel based computer in the form of the Reply Model 32. This is a four slot MCA machine with a 486 family CPU and support for a Weitek co-processor. Like many IBM PS/2s of the time this unit came with a so-called "direct bus attachment" ESDI hard disk drive. At 212MB, this drive was much larger than anything IBM ever offered for the DBA ESDI equipped PS/2 systems.

The planar in this computer is an interesting mix of features that IBM offered at some point during the PS/2 line's lifetime.

Louis Ohland sent me this system and the Conner DBA ESDI hard disk. I've gone so far as to install a SCSI adapter, DCA token ring card and test to see if a Kingston TurboChip CPU works in this system (it does). There is still a lot of work to be done with it.

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