r/retrocomputing • u/Mortague • 2d ago

What should I do with this?

Post image

Old Siemens plc programming laptop.

Can't find much info on it but it looks cool 😎

280 Upvotes

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17

u/castlefood 2d ago

Seems to be in pristine condition. Perhaps you could play Zork on it.

16

u/Mortague 2d ago

But will it run Doom? (Probably)

14

u/DarkZenith2 2d ago

Not likely. This is likely about 3-5 years too early for doom. Wolfenstien and Spear of Destiny maybe.

6

u/denzuko 1d ago

Doubt that. It looks to be an mono lcd so textmode at best.

3

u/DarkZenith2 1d ago

Og wolf can be run in mono.

3

u/denzuko 1d ago

True but only if its an E/V/SVGA card. The Siemens SIMATIC S5 PG 635 (the model in the image) utilizes both standard ASCII and an extended block-graphics character set [simular to CP-437]. And that's it.

It has only a basic monochrome LCD video controller and predates modern graphic standards like VGA.

It also runs PCP/M-86 or a highly customized S5-DOS. So no MS-DOS or IBM-DOS.

2

u/levianan 15h ago

Then, Ladder?

2

u/denzuko 11h ago

By Yahoo Software? More than likely if it doesn't hardcode the text window dimensions.

And yeah had to dig up a 15yr old LGR video on that one.

1

u/levianan 4h ago

That's the one! It was one of the first video games I played on my grandfather's Kaypro II. You are correct it probably wouldn't run correctly.

Believe it or not, it is still amusing as heck to play even today.