Ardent Tool of Capitalism

Model 5510

5510sre.exe Reference Disk for 5510-S v1.01 (DOS/V)
5510tref.exe Reference Disk for 5510-T v1.41 (DOS/V)
5510zref.exe Reference Disk for 5510-Z v1.10 (DOS/V)

Model 5510-Z/S/T Brochure

PS/55 Type 5510 (Schwarzschild Cafe)
PS/55 Type 5510 Anatomy (Schwarzschild Cafe)
The IBM Personal System/55 5510 (EN translation by McRetro)

General Information
5510-Z 286-16
5510-S 386SX-16
5510-T 386DX-20

General Information

The 5510 series was introduced to the consumer market to spread IBM Japan's DOS/V technology. PS/55s (with 386DX processor and Japanese Display Adapter) were mainly targeted to the business market and they were very expensive. Especially the display adapters designed for high resolution graphic environment were very expensive and pushed up prices of the PS/55s. In order to confront NEC PC 9801, and to extend the superiority of DOS/V architecture against Japanese specific "closed" architecture of handling Japanese characters. DOS/V architecture enabled any IBM PC/AT and PS/2 based computers to use Japanese characters just with a regular VGA video sub-system, 80286 or higher CPU, and with 2MB of system memory. IBM needed cheap and competitively priced PC for their new DOS. Thus PS/55Z 5510 series was released to the market shortly after the IBM DOS J4.0/V announcement.

DOS J4.0/V was based on PC DOS 4.0 with some special programs allowing for use of Japanese characters - such as $FONT.SYS, $DISP.SYS, $IAS.SYS and Japanese Font Files. If these drivers are not loaded, DOS 4.0/V acts just like a regular (pure) PC DOS 4.0 and is compatible with all software written for it or earlier DOS versions. Once those drivers are loaded they provide an environment for Japanese software. A special CHEV command allows the user to switch between the Japanese and English mode (basically within the Japanese environment). Another command - SWITCH - reboots the system to a real English (PC DOS) environment without the special DOS/V drivers.

The following version - DOS J5.0 included a PS/55 high resolution mode for existing PS/55 Display Adapters and softwares written for IBM DOS J4.0 along with DOS/V drivers. DOS J5.02 was the last release which supports PS/55 High-Resolution together with DOS/V VGA resolution. There are two versions of J5.0 and J5.02 with "/V" extension which does not contain PS/55 High Resolution mode. PC DOS 6.1/6.3/7.0 and 2000 are all based on DOS/V only and do not support PS/55 High-Resolution.

5510-Z (Z02/ZJ2, Z04/ZJ4) Released May 1991, AT bus

Model 5510-Z Brochure

5510-Z was an AT bus system with 80286-12MHz CPU and was defined as "Entry model". As you can see, front face of 10-Z looks like PS/2 model 8576.

Price 5510-Z02 (basic model) JY198,000
ZJ2 and ZJ4 were shipped with DOS J4.0/V

5510-S (S01/SV1, SV4, SW4) Released Dec 1991, AT bus

Model 5510-S Brochure

5510-S was not an MCA system. It was based on AT architecture. 10-S was introduced to the market to take over 5510-Z (286 CPU) model and as a reference machine to test compatibility of hardwares and softwares for DOS/V specification.

SV1 (FD model) came with set of floppies of IBM DOS J5.0/V

5510-T First model released May 1991, Micro Channel

Model 5510-Tx4 Brochure
Model 5510-Tx8 Brochure

The 5510-T was not as cheap as the other 5510 PS/55Z machines but was cheaper than the MCA-based PS/55 machines with Japanese Display adapter. This model was equipped with a 386DX CPU though it was classified under PS/55Z. I do not know difference between this model and 5540-T aside from the fact that 40-T can't take XGA while 10-T can.