...Yeah, kinda mean to preload Doom onto a 386. For the young-uns curious enough, it's like getting a PS4 preloaded with Cyberpunk. Doom was basically made for the 486 onwards.
One quick note - it's not necessarily OLD hardware but new hardware that's meant to be compatible with old software. A lot of companies have software that only runs on hardware like this so it still requires this type of hardware to be made. My company has their entire system running on AS/400 green text on black screen software. Thankfully it's emulated because I still like to cruise reddit from time to time while at work.
Well, this is really old hardware. The SoC inside is ALi M6117 that is old and discontinued (afaik). The M6117 integrate an 386SX core and most peripherals needed to have a PC (memory controller, ISA bus, IDE, etc.).
@@sebastian19745 Well, 'old' and 'new' is relative when it comes to this, and as such the M6117 is very much 'new'. Not new relative to some other things, but it is relative to the 386sx core that it includes, since the M6117 is 10 years newer, or more, than the original i386, depending on variant of the ALi chip. Wouldn't surprise me if it is one of the newest 386 integrating chip designs around since there is likely not much drive to create new 386 based SoC designs.
You know you are old when Bob is referencing the software that started me on this crazy PC journey . Keep up the fantastic work fella . Why is it no one else does the sponsors like Bob ? Keep em entertaining and I don’t skip them .
While watching you be annoyed at the latest and samest from Anbernic or whatever is always entertaining, these kinds of videos are my favorite of yours. Your process really lends itself to scratching the "tinkerer itch" in my brain - seeing the frustrations and wonders of a piece of tech unravel - without me having to invest the energy, money, time, or winding up with a useless (to me) object in my house. I know this kinda stuff doesn't perform as well, but it's really a joy to watch.
This was awesome!! As a 46 yr old, DOs brings back memories!! I so remember going over to friends house and playing low res Doom and loved Xwing on my parents 486!!!!! Old school nostalgia man
I had to look that one up, because i was confused. In the country where i live people use normal devices and the prisons have fully furnitured single person rooms. I think the clear devices are only used in maximum security prisons.
@@hyperturbotechnomike theyre used in US prisons to ensure non-permitted objects or substances arent being transmitted using the devices without having to do a full teardown each time
Right, but they also had crt tvs in the prison. One could cut the neck off which will let all air put and kill the tube and then hide stuff inside the tube, put the yoke back on to hide the opening. As long as no one powers it on and is asking why transport a dead tv, it could be still used to smuggle.
I used to snooze to that Wii globe music. It was so relaxing to play with the globe and see weather in such a cute and chic representation, with that lovely ambient music.
Grew up with 95 and 98, I have no problem using 3.1, in fact that's probably the best to use on a 486. Meanwhile he is running 95 on a 386, that's terrible.
I had Doom on my 386 33mhz 4mb RAM. I had to run it at the lowest res, it shrank the viewable area down to a quarter of the screen. And taht was on a 12 inch monitor. I needed my face right up next to the screen to see what was going on...and I loved it :)
You know your old when you remember buying your first PC and it was a 386 because you could not afford the new 486. In hindsight I should have got a 486 as the cost when I payed back the 386 on credit was astronomical.
@@mukiex4413 No, not at all. The 486SX was MUCH better clock by clock. In Doom it's more than 2x faster. The lowest end 486SX performs as good as a 386DX 40. Your video card was likely the problem. A 486SX in Doom peforms the same as the 486DX, as it doesn't use the FPU. Ideally you'd want a PCI board, though an ISA ET4000 was fast enough not to be bottlenecked by the lower end 486.
15:15, you're wrong there, there have been different versions of Chips Challenge and the one on Steam is NOT the same as the one you were playing on, that one is the Windows 95 version which is extremely rare to find and play.
@@Theonedesire41 Dude, if you don't point out where people are giving the wrong information people will continue to give that wrong information. Just like how he states it comes with a VGA port but it is actually a serial port. Pointing out someone is giving wrong information is not an attack on them or on you.
It is strangely comforting to hear someone else share their tech struggles to know you are not alone, they seem impossible and unlucky sometimes but they always seem to happen.
If you want a modern version GPD has some mini form factor laptops and handhelds that run modern hardware. The Pocket 3 runs around $600 and has 16gb Ram and a decent intel chip in it. It would make a great little Linux pen tester.
I would absolutely love something like this, a small UMPC, but built around a higher-end Windows 98 gaming machine but with a firmware tweaked to support USB boot and USB optical drives. I would love to have something like that, Have my childhood dream laptop! Who wouldn't want a portable Age of Empires machine?
@@standyro Aside from paying upwards of $500 for a Toshiba Libretto, there's really no other option for a Win9x/DOS PC in this form factor. Even if you do find one that doesn't require you to mortgage your house to afford, its likely still going to have bad caps and a bad screen and its definitely going to have a dead battery with no replacements available.
@@Peb02497 That's true, but I was imagining something like this, brand new, mass-produced retro PCs, rather than a second-hand unit that may have suffered damage, or degradation over time, you know?
I remember for X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter my dad actually started up the game and wrote down every possible startup code/copyright code prior to playing. We made copies of the sheets and copies of the games. Served me and my brother well as kids.
I think the reason for the megaman game to be too fast is the clock speed of the processor, on the old days you will have to increase or reduce the processor clock speed to adjust the speed of a game. That's why some computers come with a "turbo" button back in the day, which basically does the thing to adjust the clock speed of the CPU
With all the hazzle you had during making this video, it's quite interesting to get a bit of insight how a video is produced, as one usually only gets to see the polished finished product.
Yeah, you are mostly limited to playing 386 games out of the box. I recommend installing and learning to use AT-slow. It's a 90s era dos program for slowing down 286 and 386 PCs so they can play older XT and 286 games at the correct speeds. With AT-slow you will be able to play Megaman at the correct speed. As well as classics like Death Track, Sopwith, Space War etc. I use it on my own 386 sx-40 pc. With slowdown software a 386 is pretty awesome, being able to play pretty much anything from the ordinal IBM XT to the 386. That covers the early dos games. For any Dos games that are newer a Fast Pentium 1 mmx, or any Pentium 2 is a good fit. They'll handled the rest of the DOS games and Windows 95 games. Even some Windows 98 games.
FYI. If you're installing from multiple disks images, you can often just copy everything into either a single disk or separate by folder on the same disk. Usually worked - as I'd used this method to copy floppies onto a CD, for instance.
Coming from the "people who do play with old PC hardware" side of UA-cam, I have to say that old hardware required a lot more time time getting set up with setting your card interrupts and driver installations and editing your boot.ini to do all of this automatically for you on boot. There is value in not having to deal with that level of shenanigans. And I might suggest stuff like the OG SimCity or maybe Wing Commander if you enjoyed Star Wars back in the day.
To be fair it works pretty good if you tweak around, for example the small memory can be compensated with QEMM. Old Logitech optical PS/2 mice work fine. Sound can be partially fixed with modern Adlib drivers or you connect a Covox to the LPT port which is cheap and easy to use, it even plays MOD files that way with a high quality output. Via RS232, you can actually connect it to the internet and there is enough space inside to hide the "wifi card" inside the laptop. This laptop was created for ppl who love old hardware and enjoy getting the most out of it. What surprised me is how well Flight Simulator 5.0 and Microsoft Golf runs on it, even all sound effects work just fine. Windows 95 runs acceptable if you use the B version, but Win 3.11 or DOS with a proper launcher is the better choice for this hardware.
This video gave me so much joy as my family's first PC was an IBM PS/2 running Windows 3.1. The coolest part of that PC to my middle school self was the new technology of CD games like King's Quest VI. Early Internet services like Prodigy & AOL really wanted to keep you in their walled gardens also.
I'm so interested in dos as someone who hasn't like grown up with it, like this windows 92 was made 12 years before i was born. I love playing with it cos it's like satisfying and fun to get stuff to work on something when it's a pain in the ass to get work. Also old tech to me is like weirdly novel.... like Toshiba laptops remind me of a toy laptop I had when I was like 6, so it's mad to think this was the BIG THING in the mid 90s 😅
About "they should have added a trackpad/point/nipple", ironically those modules are usually still internally connected via PS/2 even on brand-new laptops, so they wouldn't even have to get specialized hardware to make it happen. Interestingly enough, you can still get brand-new (optical!) mice for a few bucks that support PS/2 (the Cherry M5400 is a USB mouse but comes with a PS/2 adapter), might have saved you some headache. I snagged an old PC from work a few years ago that we got for scrapping, came with Win NT4 and DOS installed. I wanna keep it alive so I can try our my Lego Interface A, an ISA card for interfacing with (old) lego technic models and controlling them via software.
Old Windows doesn't run well on virtual machine unless I setup 24-bit True color mode and then everything would run smoothly. Maybe you can see if that can help your situation here.
The speakers DOOM's music intended to play on were also only for beeps and boops, they figured out if you beep and boop at a certain frequency you can make tones
the guy who makes these needs to make one with a vortex86 chip inside, basically a modern version of the 486 that can be clocked quite high (up to 1ghz with some even having 2 cores). this would allow you to run a lot more dos games and even go so far as some windows 95 gaming (although i'm not sure if they made a chip that supported MMX instructions so 3D gaming could be quite painful with a lower clocked chip). what would be even cooler is if they made a chassis that allowed you to drop in a pc/104 board (embedded single board computer standard) so you could upgrade the cpu inside (pc/104 is still around today) or even if you wanted to, make your own cpu board and put something like a pi or a risc-V cpu
This does take me back to Windows 3.1 and getting floppy MSDOS games from the dollar store, "A Buck or Two" like Commander Keen, Hugo 2 & 3, and Offshore Fishing.
You probably had a 486 when you were playing Doom as a kid, they were super popular for quite a while. You could also make the render size smaller to get a few more frames out of it.
I love the Toshiba Libretto, got my hands on one of the 100CT models back in 2012 and used it in school etc. Sold it and somewhat like to get it back but I got into using a Toshiba Libretto ff 1100v that's been overclocked to 300MHz and 128MB RAM. This little guy has so much power for it size and age, plays Doom no problem and can play some 3D games from the 90s very well.
I wanted one of those old "netbooks" that basically were miniature laptops that can only browse the internet and maybe save some files. They still make them, but as stupid luxury items. So I bought a $100 Samsung tablet and a $5 clip-on keyboard that fits it instead. It's nice that it can play N64 and PS1 roms. But not ideal.
386SX was pretty poor for Doom. I had a buddy who played on one with the play area shrunk (big borders) and that Low Detail setting. Also didn't have a sound card so the sounds in the game resembled a 2600 or Intellivision. You really wanted a 486DX minimum for Doom. The earliest Pentiums were even better.
The 386 was pioneering at the time but man it was aged in a couple years (as was the fashion at the time) having actual hardware definitely has it's advantages at times, but this, specifically for the gaming side of things, could have used a 486 or newer, get back to the days of the "Turbo" button so you have a shot of running some things and keeping most compatibility still. These are definitely parts made for industrial markets and the like that NEED that one piece of software they bought in 1994 for their computer from 1992 that the company went under 3 months later but it worked so it stayed. Maybe intended for that purpose, might be just moving some excess parts. but having a few slightly newer bits and bobs and a slightly nicer package would make this thing killer.
Quite happy about my Toshiba Libretto CT70 I got on a fleamarked for 7 bucks. Win 95, MMX 166 Mhz, small enough to fit in a pocket, has a mouse-pressure pad "early joycon". Life is good.
SKIFREE!!!!!!!!! I Remember playing that on my gradma's computer in my EARLY childhood. I never would have found it again if you hadn't mentioned it in this video. Thanks!
7:45 that looks like a 9 pin serial port, not VGA. VGA would be 15 pins with 3 rows of pins in the same shape. I might be CGA or EGA too, but I'd bet it's serial.
Yep, that's serial. Also 10:21 he said it's a 640x480, but can go up to 800x480 and said "but it just stretches". Um. Yeah dude. That's what 800x480 is. The vertical didn't change - still 480. The horizontal changed from 640 to 800 so it's just wider.
Imagine going back in time and showing everyone this video or just this device. Everyone will think you're an Alien with so Advanced Technology trying to make contact with Humans
There is an old version of (IIRC) Norton Desktop for Windows that contains a bunch of games including one called "Killer Crayon," a multiplayer Snake/Tron Lightcycles clone where a goofy sound plays whenever one of the snakes/lightcycles bites the dust. My brother and I thoroughly enjoyed it when we were kids and only had Windows 3.1/95 and no other PC games.
A gpd win 1 with dos box is a pretty cool experience, and you can still run modern aaa games and apps like skyrim whilst having 32 bit and older capabity
Doom ran well on a Pentium 1 at 75 mhz with 8 MB of RAM and a 1 MB PCI video card. It ran worse on a 486 SX with 4 MB of RAM and an ISA video card. People with 486-es used to be very impressed with how fast it ran on my machine back in the 90s.
It’s really a bummer that that doesn’t include either gameport connectors for vintage joysticks, or the PCMCIA ports so I can add whatever ports it’s missing such as gameport, lan, or a Wi-Fi card to network files over.
the button to the right of the spacebar is what you use to enable mouse controls, i can't remember if you press it or hold it but that's how you enable it
Before this video, I wouldn't have been able to fathom a motherboard beeper doing tone changes, let alone make an attempt at The Only Thing They Fear is You
Find the original X-Com UFO Defense (and Terror From The Deep, both DOS games), available on Steam. The Steam download can be copied to a USB and put on the machine and run. I did that with an old Toshiba Satellite A15 laptop with Windows XP. Oh and for the mouse, there are adapters to make a USB mouse work with the PS2 port.
OK, it's not in a laptop format, but for this kind of money, I'd personally go the FPGA route and run the AO486 core on MiSTer FPGA. It certainly runs the 486 era games like a champ, and it's still in a small form factor with the modern conveniences of running on MicroSD cards or being able to transfer files via LAN. Also, it works with your modern peripherals.
It might be niche but I enjoyed your struggle with this. Much better than another rundown of whatever incremental improvement of a retro handheld that has been shat out this week.
yeah 486 would make more sense with turbo on/off feature and possibillity to use external usb cd-drive. also there would be fairly good ammount of old graphics chips available like ATI Rage XL (with lower clockspeed it might be very power efficient too) and the system would operate with better speeds allover without (+ if it would have its own 8mb vram it should perform decently)
I started with computers back in the 80's when you had MS-DOS with command line. Black screen with green text. I hated computers in those days. I didn't really start to like computers until Windows 95 came out.
“I wish there was some sort of UI in DOS mode” - you know, you can just use Volkov/Norton Commander like everyone in the DOS era instead of bumbling with text parser like some kind of savage:)
OK. That is kinda a neat toy that I'd love to try out for nostalgia's sake. Though for that price tag, maybe i should just try and fix up the old Windows 95 machine I built as a teen that I recently found at my parent's place.
You know you can get a PS/2 to USB converter on Amazon for like 7 bucks right? I'm shocked Microcenter didnt have like a box of them on a shelf somewhere for 1.99 (for the whole box). Linux folk might be okay will all the DoS doings. But yeah, 200 bucks for the "privilege" of reliving the days of OLDE with one of these is a niche of all niches. Also I totally agree with the sentiment about using some of this old Retro game tech to emulate a PC, especially since I'd been looking for a new mini pocket computer for a while, and then someone got desktop linux running on a Anbernic xxSP.
I kinda really want one of these. I love to tinker and would love to go back and play some old DOS games on actual old hardware. And Windows 3.11 was what was on my first family PC. I learned so much about PCs and technology from that old Packard Bell computer. I don't think $200 is awful, either. I do kinda wish the CPU was more powerful though. A 486 in here instead of a 386 would open this up to so much more hardware and make it much snappier for gaming. So I'm on the fence on whether I should buy one of these or wait and see if a version with a 486 comes out soon. I also agree with you that it'd be pretty awesome to see more modern hardware in a package like this emulating DOS, Windows 3.1/95, etc. that basically acts as the retro PC equivalent to the retro handhelds we've been getting lately. There has to be an ARM CPU that can emulate this stuff pretty easily that's not super expensive you could put in a tiny little laptop like this. Just not sure if the emulation is there.
iDOS 3 on iPad is a great way to experience DOS again. Just connect a keyboard and mouse, get Norton Commander, some old games and ideally MT32/CM32 ROMS for the best music and you're set.
A DOS game you should check out is the original Shamus. One of my favorite computer game to play in the 80's. Also liked the original DOS Duke Nukem games.
Hmm. Random thought / video suggestion. So, a Raspberry Pi 4 is decently powerful. Further, Box86 is an emulator that allows the Raspberry Pi to run software that was programmed for x86 hardware. On the subject of mini Retro PCs & Emulation, I had a thought. What if Bob purchased a Raspberry Pi 4, used Box86 to install Windows 98 on it (if that is possible), and then put it in a case that is designed to look like an old Desktop tower... That seems like it could be a fun project. Like a DIY retro PC emulator box thingy. Also, I think that there's something called a C64 Mini and a C64 Maxi, which is an emulation device mimicking the Commodore 64 (the Mini requires an external keyboard, while the Maxi has a built-in keyboard and it can emulate the OS. Both devices support loading your own Commodore 64 ROMs). Oh, and Atari has their 400 Mini (which emulates old Atari computer games), the 2600+, the 7800+ (the 2600+ and 7800+ seem to be Analogue mini versions of Atari Consoles, but officially licensed by Atari), and the VCS (which is like a Linux PC / Console / thing. IDK, I have a Steam Deck and that's good enough for me, lol). That's an interesting rabbithole to go down... I also will sometimes use the Legend of Zelda Game and Watch as a novelty emulation handheld. I bought it at the Nintendo store at a mall in Tel Aviv and it is actually pretty neat, like I probably play it more than I play my Switch, lol. I guess I really like Zelda 1, haha. IDK, this is just a whole interesting rabbithole, IMO. The officially licensed emulation handhelds. We all know about the NES Classic Edition and the Sega Genesis Classic, but there are so many weirder emulation devices on the market...
...Yeah, kinda mean to preload Doom onto a 386. For the young-uns curious enough, it's like getting a PS4 preloaded with Cyberpunk. Doom was basically made for the 486 onwards.
Ahoy, I bought a Compaq Prolinea 4/25S just so I could play Doom. Wolfenstein 3D was great on the 386 but not Doom. Cheers, daveyb
No one thought Doom on the SNES was a bad idea, look how far we've come since.
Or Doom on the 3do now that was a painful port. The SNES Doom was a miracle that anyone got that game to work on the SNES hardware.
@@Fender178 They didn't. Had to have extra hardware on the cartridge, a Super FX 2 chip.
@@Kumimono oh my mistake. Thanks for the info.
One quick note - it's not necessarily OLD hardware but new hardware that's meant to be compatible with old software. A lot of companies have software that only runs on hardware like this so it still requires this type of hardware to be made. My company has their entire system running on AS/400 green text on black screen software. Thankfully it's emulated because I still like to cruise reddit from time to time while at work.
My job in alaska had POS software meant for like windows 3.1 or something. It was also running on new hardware just still old af software
i did not expect to see AS400 referenced in a wulff den video LOL
Well, this is really old hardware. The SoC inside is ALi M6117 that is old and discontinued (afaik). The M6117 integrate an 386SX core and most peripherals needed to have a PC (memory controller, ISA bus, IDE, etc.).
@@sebastian19745 Well, 'old' and 'new' is relative when it comes to this, and as such the M6117 is very much 'new'. Not new relative to some other things, but it is relative to the 386sx core that it includes, since the M6117 is 10 years newer, or more, than the original i386, depending on variant of the ALi chip. Wouldn't surprise me if it is one of the newest 386 integrating chip designs around since there is likely not much drive to create new 386 based SoC designs.
Is it possible to get a link for us weird millennial tinkerers?
That manual referencing Planet X3 is crazy. Thats a new game made by The 8-Bit Guy. Zero chance thats officially sanctioned.
Oh shit I forgot to migrate 8-bit guy to this account's subs 😮
@@TheoRae8289 wut?
@@onedeadsaint bot probably
@@onedeadsaint I used to be subbed to him on my old account, and apparently I didn't sub on this one. That's been rectified though lol
You know you are old when Bob is referencing the software that started me on this crazy PC journey . Keep up the fantastic work fella . Why is it no one else does the sponsors like Bob ? Keep em entertaining and I don’t skip them .
He's one of the only ones whose sponsor spots I don't skip. He gets it.
i'm surprised he hasn't been picked up to write actual commercials
@@Gage_Danger right? Though, I've heard writing commercials professionally is harder than it looks.
nakey jakey does decently funny sponsor spots too
Internet Comment Etiquette also does great sponsor ads.
While watching you be annoyed at the latest and samest from Anbernic or whatever is always entertaining, these kinds of videos are my favorite of yours. Your process really lends itself to scratching the "tinkerer itch" in my brain - seeing the frustrations and wonders of a piece of tech unravel - without me having to invest the energy, money, time, or winding up with a useless (to me) object in my house. I know this kinda stuff doesn't perform as well, but it's really a joy to watch.
7:45 "A VGA port" but it's a serial port.
There is a ESP based wifi adapter which works fine with this laptop, speed is limited to 110kbit though.
@@cptcrogge we used to surf on the web at 56kbps! my first modem was a 14,400 ! for this hardware 110kbps is crazy fast!
@@sh0ckwaveVR6 Yeah I started with 56 and remember the good ol dial in sound :D
This was awesome!! As a 46 yr old, DOs brings back memories!! I so remember going over to friends house and playing low res Doom and loved Xwing on my parents 486!!!!! Old school nostalgia man
Clear shell makes it look like a computer inmates can purchase
I legit thought that's what the video was going to be about.
I had to look that one up, because i was confused.
In the country where i live people use normal devices and the prisons have fully furnitured single person rooms. I think the clear devices are only used in maximum security prisons.
@@hyperturbotechnomike theyre used in US prisons to ensure non-permitted objects or substances arent being transmitted using the devices without having to do a full teardown each time
Yeah clear plastics really show just how cheaply it's made. I am surprised they didn't do SOC
Right, but they also had crt tvs in the prison. One could cut the neck off which will let all air put and kill the tube and then hide stuff inside the tube, put the yoke back on to hide the opening. As long as no one powers it on and is asking why transport a dead tv, it could be still used to smuggle.
14:10 major flashbacks to playing Alley Cat on my dad's 386 from work 🥲
I used to snooze to that Wii globe music. It was so relaxing to play with the globe and see weather in such a cute and chic representation, with that lovely ambient music.
if it was a 486, I would have bought it
14:08 DON'T YOU DARE DISS ALLEYCAT
Btw there's a modern fan re-released called Alleycat ReMeow, highly recommended
Windows 98 is as far back as I'd go personally, but for the novelty this does look pretty sweet! Thank you for documenting the struggles involved haha
Grew up with 95 and 98, I have no problem using 3.1, in fact that's probably the best to use on a 486. Meanwhile he is running 95 on a 386, that's terrible.
@@beardsntools Yeah, you'd want at least a Pentium for Windows 95. Just because you can run Windows 95 on a 386 doesn't mean you should.
Leg is the guy I go for windows 98 pc stuff
I had Doom on my 386 33mhz 4mb RAM. I had to run it at the lowest res, it shrank the viewable area down to a quarter of the screen. And taht was on a 12 inch monitor. I needed my face right up next to the screen to see what was going on...and I loved it :)
You get 20 FPS with Fastdoom on a 386
Miniature computers are so interesting to me... please make more videos like this!
You know your old when you remember buying your first PC and it was a 386 because you could not afford the new 486. In hindsight I should have got a 486 as the cost when I payed back the 386 on credit was astronomical.
The 486SX was quite affordable and much better than even the highest end 386.
I had a 486 SX which was damn near a rebranded 386. I 100% remember the performance that Bob was getting in Doom.
@@mukiex4413 No, not at all. The 486SX was MUCH better clock by clock. In Doom it's more than 2x faster. The lowest end 486SX performs as good as a 386DX 40.
Your video card was likely the problem. A 486SX in Doom peforms the same as the 486DX, as it doesn't use the FPU. Ideally you'd want a PCI board, though an ISA ET4000 was fast enough not to be bottlenecked by the lower end 486.
Well, its still less privacy-destroying than Windows 11...
Or windows 12 but still from what you said. But my question is what do you mean?
Blah blah something something windows bloatware steals data like every company ever blah blah
Hahahaha
As long as you never connect it to any networks.
a 386 is too slow for Doom but also too fast for the Megaman PC port, which is why its fast as balls.
God I do not miss that part about this era of computers 😂 ...most games being either too fast or too slow. Core memory.
I thought something like this should have a turbo button for these reasons
15:15, you're wrong there, there have been different versions of Chips Challenge and the one on Steam is NOT the same as the one you were playing on, that one is the Windows 95 version which is extremely rare to find and play.
Dude, just let him cook
@@Theonedesire41 Dude, if you don't point out where people are giving the wrong information people will continue to give that wrong information. Just like how he states it comes with a VGA port but it is actually a serial port. Pointing out someone is giving wrong information is not an attack on them or on you.
@@shangrilai1990 that's not what meant, I was telling hixxydubz to let wulfden cook
not trynna hate
It is strangely comforting to hear someone else share their tech struggles to know you are not alone, they seem impossible and unlucky sometimes but they always seem to happen.
A wulff den video about old tech? Hell yeah.
"this looks like something Wulff Den would review"
-looks at channel
"Oh, good."
Remember the 1995 movie hackers….this thing screams STRAIGHT outta that. SO COOL!!! 😮
I was like "movie hackers"? What's that. Then I realized. "movie, Hackers".
The monitor is pretty crisppy.
If you want a modern version GPD has some mini form factor laptops and handhelds that run modern hardware. The Pocket 3 runs around $600 and has 16gb Ram and a decent intel chip in it. It would make a great little Linux pen tester.
Hack the Planet!
RISC is good 😎
I would absolutely love something like this, a small UMPC, but built around a higher-end Windows 98 gaming machine but with a firmware tweaked to support USB boot and USB optical drives. I would love to have something like that, Have my childhood dream laptop! Who wouldn't want a portable Age of Empires machine?
it’s called a regular laptop
@@standyro Aside from paying upwards of $500 for a Toshiba Libretto, there's really no other option for a Win9x/DOS PC in this form factor. Even if you do find one that doesn't require you to mortgage your house to afford, its likely still going to have bad caps and a bad screen and its definitely going to have a dead battery with no replacements available.
While you cant get a higher-end experience, you can sort of achieve it with a Windows XP era UMPC
@@Peb02497 That's true, but I was imagining something like this, brand new, mass-produced retro PCs, rather than a second-hand unit that may have suffered damage, or degradation over time, you know?
@@steventechno nixsys makes (almost) brand new windows 95/98 systems.
I remember for X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter my dad actually started up the game and wrote down every possible startup code/copyright code prior to playing. We made copies of the sheets and copies of the games. Served me and my brother well as kids.
I think the reason for the megaman game to be too fast is the clock speed of the processor, on the old days you will have to increase or reduce the processor clock speed to adjust the speed of a game. That's why some computers come with a "turbo" button back in the day, which basically does the thing to adjust the clock speed of the CPU
Windows 95 was the first OS I ever used. Played Hunter Hunted alot on it.
Seeing "brand new" then "1992" then "2024" in one title is wild
With all the hazzle you had during making this video, it's quite interesting to get a bit of insight how a video is produced, as one usually only gets to see the polished finished product.
you've just unlocked in me forgotten memories. My god... I spent too many hours with my Pentium MMX, MS-DOS and Windows 95. Loved the video!
Yeah, you are mostly limited to playing 386 games out of the box.
I recommend installing and learning to use AT-slow. It's a 90s era dos program for slowing down 286 and 386 PCs so they can play older XT and 286 games at the correct speeds.
With AT-slow you will be able to play Megaman at the correct speed. As well as classics like Death Track, Sopwith, Space War etc.
I use it on my own 386 sx-40 pc.
With slowdown software a 386 is pretty awesome, being able to play pretty much anything from the ordinal IBM XT to the 386. That covers the early dos games.
For any Dos games that are newer a Fast Pentium 1 mmx, or any Pentium 2 is a good fit. They'll handled the rest of the DOS games and Windows 95 games. Even some Windows 98 games.
FYI. If you're installing from multiple disks images, you can often just copy everything into either a single disk or separate by folder on the same disk. Usually worked - as I'd used this method to copy floppies onto a CD, for instance.
That sponsor video was pretty fire
Oh the nostalgia... Thank you for taking me on this trip down memory lane.
Coming from the "people who do play with old PC hardware" side of UA-cam, I have to say that old hardware required a lot more time time getting set up with setting your card interrupts and driver installations and editing your boot.ini to do all of this automatically for you on boot. There is value in not having to deal with that level of shenanigans.
And I might suggest stuff like the OG SimCity or maybe Wing Commander if you enjoyed Star Wars back in the day.
Yeah, those DOS laptops got a bit of popularity.
8:30 USB support was brought in with Win95 C.... and that was HUGE for the day!!!
That's a pretty neat Puter there
To be fair it works pretty good if you tweak around, for example the small memory can be compensated with QEMM. Old Logitech optical PS/2 mice work fine. Sound can be partially fixed with modern Adlib drivers or you connect a Covox to the LPT port which is cheap and easy to use, it even plays MOD files that way with a high quality output. Via RS232, you can actually connect it to the internet and there is enough space inside to hide the "wifi card" inside the laptop. This laptop was created for ppl who love old hardware and enjoy getting the most out of it. What surprised me is how well Flight Simulator 5.0 and Microsoft Golf runs on it, even all sound effects work just fine. Windows 95 runs acceptable if you use the B version, but Win 3.11 or DOS with a proper launcher is the better choice for this hardware.
10:05 You used to be able to get USB to PS2 adapters back in the day.
Optical PS2 compatible mice work fine with this laptop, adapters as well.
This video gave me so much joy as my family's first PC was an IBM PS/2 running Windows 3.1. The coolest part of that PC to my middle school self was the new technology of CD games like King's Quest VI. Early Internet services like Prodigy & AOL really wanted to keep you in their walled gardens also.
I'm so interested in dos as someone who hasn't like grown up with it, like this windows 92 was made 12 years before i was born.
I love playing with it cos it's like satisfying and fun to get stuff to work on something when it's a pain in the ass to get work. Also old tech to me is like weirdly novel.... like Toshiba laptops remind me of a toy laptop I had when I was like 6, so it's mad to think this was the BIG THING in the mid 90s 😅
About "they should have added a trackpad/point/nipple", ironically those modules are usually still internally connected via PS/2 even on brand-new laptops, so they wouldn't even have to get specialized hardware to make it happen. Interestingly enough, you can still get brand-new (optical!) mice for a few bucks that support PS/2 (the Cherry M5400 is a USB mouse but comes with a PS/2 adapter), might have saved you some headache.
I snagged an old PC from work a few years ago that we got for scrapping, came with Win NT4 and DOS installed. I wanna keep it alive so I can try our my Lego Interface A, an ISA card for interfacing with (old) lego technic models and controlling them via software.
Old Windows doesn't run well on virtual machine unless I setup 24-bit True color mode and then everything would run smoothly. Maybe you can see if that can help your situation here.
I would love something like this as a writing device. But the old school ui of old windows versions really turn me off.
The speakers DOOM's music intended to play on were also only for beeps and boops, they figured out if you beep and boop at a certain frequency you can make tones
i love that you did this but also really shows how hard working with old tech is
What an amazing journey
the guy who makes these needs to make one with a vortex86 chip inside, basically a modern version of the 486 that can be clocked quite high (up to 1ghz with some even having 2 cores). this would allow you to run a lot more dos games and even go so far as some windows 95 gaming (although i'm not sure if they made a chip that supported MMX instructions so 3D gaming could be quite painful with a lower clocked chip). what would be even cooler is if they made a chassis that allowed you to drop in a pc/104 board (embedded single board computer standard) so you could upgrade the cpu inside (pc/104 is still around today) or even if you wanted to, make your own cpu board and put something like a pi or a risc-V cpu
Cats was one of my first PC games in the 80s. Still love it.
It was Alley Cat, and I ran to the comments as soon as Bob insulted it! That game is pretty deep for a DOS games from 1983.
@@EightPieceBox Alley cat, exactly.
This does take me back to Windows 3.1 and getting floppy MSDOS games from the dollar store, "A Buck or Two" like Commander Keen, Hugo 2 & 3, and Offshore Fishing.
You probably had a 486 when you were playing Doom as a kid, they were super popular for quite a while. You could also make the render size smaller to get a few more frames out of it.
I love the Toshiba Libretto, got my hands on one of the 100CT models back in 2012 and used it in school etc.
Sold it and somewhat like to get it back but I got into using a Toshiba Libretto ff 1100v that's been overclocked to 300MHz and 128MB RAM.
This little guy has so much power for it size and age, plays Doom no problem and can play some 3D games from the 90s very well.
I wanted one of those old "netbooks" that basically were miniature laptops that can only browse the internet and maybe save some files.
They still make them, but as stupid luxury items. So I bought a $100 Samsung tablet and a $5 clip-on keyboard that fits it instead.
It's nice that it can play N64 and PS1 roms. But not ideal.
386SX was pretty poor for Doom. I had a buddy who played on one with the play area shrunk (big borders) and that Low Detail setting. Also didn't have a sound card so the sounds in the game resembled a 2600 or Intellivision. You really wanted a 486DX minimum for Doom. The earliest Pentiums were even better.
Great sponsor segment as always!
The 386 was pioneering at the time but man it was aged in a couple years (as was the fashion at the time) having actual hardware definitely has it's advantages at times, but this, specifically for the gaming side of things, could have used a 486 or newer, get back to the days of the "Turbo" button so you have a shot of running some things and keeping most compatibility still. These are definitely parts made for industrial markets and the like that NEED that one piece of software they bought in 1994 for their computer from 1992 that the company went under 3 months later but it worked so it stayed. Maybe intended for that purpose, might be just moving some excess parts. but having a few slightly newer bits and bobs and a slightly nicer package would make this thing killer.
Quite happy about my Toshiba Libretto CT70 I got on a fleamarked for 7 bucks. Win 95, MMX 166 Mhz, small enough to fit in a pocket, has a mouse-pressure pad "early joycon". Life is good.
SKIFREE!!!!!!!!! I Remember playing that on my gradma's computer in my EARLY childhood. I never would have found it again if you hadn't mentioned it in this video. Thanks!
Great video keep up the fantastic work 😃
7:45 that looks like a 9 pin serial port, not VGA. VGA would be 15 pins with 3 rows of pins in the same shape.
I might be CGA or EGA too, but I'd bet it's serial.
Yep, that's serial.
Also 10:21 he said it's a 640x480, but can go up to 800x480 and said "but it just stretches". Um. Yeah dude. That's what 800x480 is. The vertical didn't change - still 480. The horizontal changed from 640 to 800 so it's just wider.
Yes thats a serial RS232 port but this laptop also comes with a PS2 + VGA combo adapter which supports 800x600 resolution.
Imagine going back in time and showing everyone this video or just this device.
Everyone will think you're an Alien with so Advanced Technology trying to make contact with Humans
Japan made a few computers back in the late 80s to mid 90s that were similar to this.
At least on the surface level. Im sure this is slightly better
Japan made a few computers back in the late 80s to mid 90s that were similar to this.
At least on the surface level. Im sure this is slightly better
I felt that way seeing an RM tablet PC at my school in around 2003. An entire computer in a fraction of the space even the monitor took up
It’s actually really funny that the trackpads in modern laptops are a serial port connection run through a usb translator circuit.
5:25 that dog is like why this guy always talking to himself
That is dead-on amazing idek, if I remember when the Windows 95 was new & up-to-date, it looks developed remotely.
This device is kind of cool, imagine packing all the big PC we have in the 90s in one small device
This brings back a lot of childhood memories...it's kinda cool!
There is an old version of (IIRC) Norton Desktop for Windows that contains a bunch of games including one called "Killer Crayon," a multiplayer Snake/Tron Lightcycles clone where a goofy sound plays whenever one of the snakes/lightcycles bites the dust. My brother and I thoroughly enjoyed it when we were kids and only had Windows 3.1/95 and no other PC games.
Great job using the Wii Weather channel music! Miss things like that
A gpd win 1 with dos box is a pretty cool experience, and you can still run modern aaa games and apps like skyrim whilst having 32 bit and older capabity
Finally something besides the same old retro handhelds. 🎉
Doom ran well on a Pentium 1 at 75 mhz with 8 MB of RAM and a 1 MB PCI video card. It ran worse on a 486 SX with 4 MB of RAM and an ISA video card. People with 486-es used to be very impressed with how fast it ran on my machine back in the 90s.
It’s really a bummer that that doesn’t include either gameport connectors for vintage joysticks, or the PCMCIA ports so I can add whatever ports it’s missing such as gameport, lan, or a Wi-Fi card to network files over.
the button to the right of the spacebar is what you use to enable mouse controls, i can't remember if you press it or hold it but that's how you enable it
An old gpd pocket might be more to your liking. They're also not cheap. But they're built well & should be powerful enough to run a vm
Before this video, I wouldn't have been able to fathom a motherboard beeper doing tone changes, let alone make an attempt at The Only Thing They Fear is You
D/Generation was a fun action-adventure puzzle game that needs no mouse might be worth playing, have fond memories of playing it, that and Paperboy
Find the original X-Com UFO Defense (and Terror From The Deep, both DOS games), available on Steam. The Steam download can be copied to a USB and put on the machine and run. I did that with an old Toshiba Satellite A15 laptop with Windows XP.
Oh and for the mouse, there are adapters to make a USB mouse work with the PS2 port.
Only channel I don't skip the ads
OK, it's not in a laptop format, but for this kind of money, I'd personally go the FPGA route and run the AO486 core on MiSTer FPGA. It certainly runs the 486 era games like a champ, and it's still in a small form factor with the modern conveniences of running on MicroSD cards or being able to transfer files via LAN. Also, it works with your modern peripherals.
It might be niche but I enjoyed your struggle with this. Much better than another rundown of whatever incremental improvement of a retro handheld that has been shat out this week.
I really like this form factor.. if this was something modern with same form factor would be awesome
yeah 486 would make more sense with turbo on/off feature and possibillity to use external usb cd-drive. also there would be fairly good ammount of old graphics chips available like ATI Rage XL (with lower clockspeed it might be very power efficient too) and the system would operate with better speeds allover without (+ if it would have its own 8mb vram it should perform decently)
I started with computers back in the 80's when you had MS-DOS with command line. Black screen with green text. I hated computers in those days. I didn't really start to like computers until Windows 95 came out.
“I wish there was some sort of UI in DOS mode” - you know, you can just use Volkov/Norton Commander like everyone in the DOS era instead of bumbling with text parser like some kind of savage:)
OK. That is kinda a neat toy that I'd love to try out for nostalgia's sake. Though for that price tag, maybe i should just try and fix up the old Windows 95 machine I built as a teen that I recently found at my parent's place.
Member win a kid with a Pogo Stick and a blaster was wicked awesome.
For Chip's Challenge there's also a modern web-based clone called Lexy's Labyrinth.
I just came here from watching a JerryRigEverything video and I feel like Bob is yelling at me!
It looks like the tech that you get in prison
You know you can get a PS/2 to USB converter on Amazon for like 7 bucks right? I'm shocked Microcenter didnt have like a box of them on a shelf somewhere for 1.99 (for the whole box). Linux folk might be okay will all the DoS doings. But yeah, 200 bucks for the "privilege" of reliving the days of OLDE with one of these is a niche of all niches. Also I totally agree with the sentiment about using some of this old Retro game tech to emulate a PC, especially since I'd been looking for a new mini pocket computer for a while, and then someone got desktop linux running on a Anbernic xxSP.
I kinda really want one of these. I love to tinker and would love to go back and play some old DOS games on actual old hardware. And Windows 3.11 was what was on my first family PC. I learned so much about PCs and technology from that old Packard Bell computer. I don't think $200 is awful, either. I do kinda wish the CPU was more powerful though. A 486 in here instead of a 386 would open this up to so much more hardware and make it much snappier for gaming. So I'm on the fence on whether I should buy one of these or wait and see if a version with a 486 comes out soon.
I also agree with you that it'd be pretty awesome to see more modern hardware in a package like this emulating DOS, Windows 3.1/95, etc. that basically acts as the retro PC equivalent to the retro handhelds we've been getting lately. There has to be an ARM CPU that can emulate this stuff pretty easily that's not super expensive you could put in a tiny little laptop like this. Just not sure if the emulation is there.
I remember going to microcenter with my parents to pick up our family’s first windows 3.1 machine. Played a whole lot of ms paint on that bad boy…
iDOS 3 on iPad is a great way to experience DOS again. Just connect a keyboard and mouse, get Norton Commander, some old games and ideally MT32/CM32 ROMS for the best music and you're set.
14:58 Ski Free jumpscare, that Yeti used to freak me out
Chip’s Challenge, FUCK YEAH!!!!! Ski Free!!! I played the SHIT out of Tetris For Windows in 7th grade computers class!!!!!
**BUMMER**
the form factor of the laptop seems nice
A DOS game you should check out is the original Shamus. One of my favorite computer game to play in the 80's. Also liked the original DOS Duke Nukem games.
Hmm. Random thought / video suggestion. So, a Raspberry Pi 4 is decently powerful. Further, Box86 is an emulator that allows the Raspberry Pi to run software that was programmed for x86 hardware. On the subject of mini Retro PCs & Emulation, I had a thought. What if Bob purchased a Raspberry Pi 4, used Box86 to install Windows 98 on it (if that is possible), and then put it in a case that is designed to look like an old Desktop tower... That seems like it could be a fun project. Like a DIY retro PC emulator box thingy.
Also, I think that there's something called a C64 Mini and a C64 Maxi, which is an emulation device mimicking the Commodore 64 (the Mini requires an external keyboard, while the Maxi has a built-in keyboard and it can emulate the OS. Both devices support loading your own Commodore 64 ROMs). Oh, and Atari has their 400 Mini (which emulates old Atari computer games), the 2600+, the 7800+ (the 2600+ and 7800+ seem to be Analogue mini versions of Atari Consoles, but officially licensed by Atari), and the VCS (which is like a Linux PC / Console / thing. IDK, I have a Steam Deck and that's good enough for me, lol). That's an interesting rabbithole to go down... I also will sometimes use the Legend of Zelda Game and Watch as a novelty emulation handheld. I bought it at the Nintendo store at a mall in Tel Aviv and it is actually pretty neat, like I probably play it more than I play my Switch, lol. I guess I really like Zelda 1, haha. IDK, this is just a whole interesting rabbithole, IMO. The officially licensed emulation handhelds. We all know about the NES Classic Edition and the Sega Genesis Classic, but there are so many weirder emulation devices on the market...
i like the form factor, could be a little thinner but yeah id be down if it was more modern.
i want modern laptop with this type of form factor, this is a very attractive look