Hope it is ok for me to post here. I bought this pc from Ebay. I want to put an internal 5.25 floppy drive in there but for the life of me cannot get the case open! There are no screws or anything if anyone can help I would be most grateful it is the model where the front panel can slide across to cover the drive bays.
HI and thx so much for the reply! I believe the lock is to lock a panel into place that slides across the drive bays. I think it is a sales gimmick that IBM came up with at the time. It seems to be in the unlocked position. The guy I bought the pc from said it never had a key and he opened it up to clean it and put a new hard drive in etc but was a long time back and couldn’t remember exactly how he did it.
Really odd as the on-line manual shows how to replace drives/CPU etc but not how to actually open the case! I will try and post some pics in an hour or so during my break at work.
The top cover looks a bit like it may slide towards the front. Meaning, just lift it gently at the back end and give it a try? (I recall some units working like this, but can’t remember the make or vendor.)
I have managed to get the rear plastic bezel off… almost broke it. You have to sort of pluck it out and shift it to the left? Who knew. This is what it looks like now but still cannot open it…
I would expect the top cover to slide backwards - so, as noted, there must be some latch or release, perhaps accessible through the holes in the back panel, or perhaps at the front underneath.
It actually looks to me like it might slide forward, as the channels at the bottom of the top cover are open all the way to the rear. I’d certainly start looking underneath for a latch, though.
You are quite right I have been such an idiot! There is indeed a tab underneath that let’s releases the case cover and let’s it slide out through the back. But why oh why didn’t IBM state how to do it in the manual!? Anyway I have left a pic thank you all so much for replying so kind I could not have done it without you all thank you all so much! I still have to install the 5.25 floppy
great result! (I had found a couple of service manuals and they just said “remove the top cover” which was no help at all. I do like the zero-tooling approach to design.)
This is like my Honda CMX250C service manual which, for some carb-related activity, simply says “remove the carburetor”. That’s a sufficiently involved process that I made a YouTube video about how to do it without removing the fuel tank.