Fun fact: we had to re-flash a BIOS on a regular old PC from around the late 2000s a few months back, only to find the new BIOS we'd flashed to it has a Commodore splash screen lol.
I am still PISSED that our first 486 (Biostar mobo in a Pionex desktop) was ruined by a God damned Varta barrel battery. I removed it and the board worked a decade ago but it stopped recognizing the keyboard as the damage had been done and I didn't know about using vinegar. I intend to practice soldering with a microscope and learn trace repair so I can fix it so DOOM and DOOM2 will pump through it's veins again some day.
people hate dallas chips because not everyone has a desoldering station and replacing a 24-pin(it's less but still) IC without one is a massive pain in the ass.
That looks similar to my 486 SX 33Mhz computer from 1993. It would have been so much better if it was a DX or an Intel. Oh one would dream to have an Intel Pentium 75mhz. My machine had 160mb of store and 4mb of memory. The computer store charged me $600 to get 16mb. Rocked Windows 3.1. I remember too much about this computer lol.
"Oh one would dream to have an Intel Pentium" Truer words have never been spoken. I STILL remember feverishly lusting for a God damned Pentium in the mid 90s. We made due with a 486sx25 from December 1992 till January 1997 until we got the guts of the computer replaced with a Pentium 133 and we were blown away with how fast it was. I feel really bad for the poor bastards who had a 386 for a long time and cannot imagine trying to play DOOM with low detail and smaller screen size.
I started my career as an 18-year-old Escom PC technician in 1993, I have assembled and sold hundreds of these machines. I recall the Batman mainboard and the Pentium 60 MHz recall from Intel. I haven't heard the metallic sound of removing the cover of an Escom large PC case for over.. 30 years! So nice to hear this again. In the days, there was good competition between Vobis and Escom, fought in the newspaper ads, to have the best deals. PCs were so popular, there were days, we sold hundreds of them.
@@Epictronics1 Yeah! I upgraded from a Taiwanese no-name mini-tower case to an Enlight back in the late 90s. It was a huge improvement, and felt so modular and high-end -- although the bar was pretty low at the time. I have since rebuilt those two (and coincidentally, they're set up side-by-side on my desk here next to me!), in exact duplicate cases, and love them both.
Great video! A couple of months ago a German UA-camr had Pentium Processor with that bug, and after a long and tideous communication process with Intel he got a (unbuggy) replacement chip after telling them, that he needs that processor for games in order to work correctly. He had to physically destroy his chip and send pictures in, in order to get the replacement. Intel still sticks to their promise to replace all the faulty processor from the 90s. Optionally he was offered a newer Intel processor or 50 bucks 😂
Haha, that is hilarious. Personally, I'd prefer a Pentium with the bug, It makes it more interesting from a historical perspective, but I completely forgot to check my chip!
@@Epictronics1 Gosh yes. I think it would kill me to destroy an original buggy Pentium chip. Although... I guess.. once.. it's acceptable to do it, for science, to see if Intel would honor their guarantee. Mind-blowing that somebody was able to find one to send as a replacement. (I wonder if they actually still have some, NOS, or if they had to buy one off eBay .. LOL)
"I wonder if they actually still have some, NOS" I would love to know if Intel still has Pentium 60 and Pentium 66 CPUs in inventory. I have 2 socket 4 machines with the FDIV bug and am keeping them forever, one a 60 and the other a 66. I remember one day in 1993 or early 1994 riding with my father in the family minivan (1990 Plymouth Grand Voyager) and he was listing to the news on the radio and the "new Pentium chip" was reported to have a flaw that affected large numeric calculations. I was in my very early teens and I was DYING to have a Pentium because we were suffering with the 486sx25. We finally got a Pentium 133 in January 1997 and the performance increase was MIND BLOWING. @@nickwallette6201
For serial, I bet that it's not that it's nonstandard. Serial ports on motherboards are standard, the issue is that there are two competing standards and both have the exact same connector (wired differently). I guess you got lucky with that one :D
1:28 - I had one of those little tower cases, though it was unbranded, just a square indent where the escom badge is. I had forgotten about it until i saw it in your video, brought back lots of good memories of building computers with my dad, thanks you!
Nice video. We got a new Escom p60i in 1995 with windows 1995 in november ord december that year in the exact same case. It was build around an intel batman (not the revenge) Recently i bought a commodore pentium 60 from that same time period but with a batman's revenge motherboard. I used that motherboard to rebuild our escom from back then in its original case. Good old days.
The intel batman only supported the pentium 60 and de pentium overdrive 120, and only had 1 ide port. Thr batman's revenge had en extra buggy ide controller on the pci bus, and support for both the pentium 60 and 66 ad well as the pentium overdrive 120 and 133
@@arnovanderheiden1458 Interesting, did the Commodore have the same case as the Batman ESCOM in this video? Thanks for clarifying the differens between Batman and Batman's revenge
I don't know to what extent this was relevant for the purchase at the time, but Escom resold Amigas under its own label and even further developed Amigas, the Amiga Walkers. In the beginning it was the A1200 and A4000T. I'll post a link under this comment
I had a 486-SX-25 in this exact case bought from ESCOM back in the day. Wrote my Medical School Thesis on it. Using SPSS/PC+, DbaseIV relational database. Within 6 months I upgraded the system to a 486-DX2-66, added a soundblaster 16-ASP, and a 2x Panasonic CD-Rom drive with two of those 80Watt powered speakers (round bottom, square top) that everybody had. Combined with a Star-LC20 dot matrix printer and GhostScript - outputting TTF on the old dot matrix but eating through print-ribbon like crazy. Dial op 2400Baud, later 14k4 and 56K modem dialing into a SLIP connection.
26:10 I had the two Escom Big towers on the left. The one in the middle was from around 93 (originally bought with a 486DX66, the case design was a few years old at this time). The one on the left is the newer design from slightly later, early pentium era. As far as I remember this design was rather short lived. The small tower on the right is even later, probably mid to end of 90s - I was out of Escom machines at tis time and built my machines from shelf parts.
that "batman" tower case is the exact one i had on my first pc with a pentium 133, had a different label tho. 8mb ram is quite possible to run win95 on, i did and after a few years doubled it to 16mb.
I knew ESCOM was about to die when I bought a PC from them here in Germany shortly before x-mas and the price for all included compenents of said PC was significantly lower than buying the same components separately. There were so many PC discounters here in Germany at that time and competition was insane. Good memories though, it was a customers paradise. PC hardware anno 2023 is a nightmare especially if you want a Gaming PC.
Indeed. This case has also been used by the (also defunct) german PC manufacturer SCT (Schadt Computer Technik) in their Pentium P54C Proline Series (this was my first PC, and still looking for that case to restore it according to my childhood memories - all the parts are in place except for the case)
Interesting to know there are other weirdos "hunting" for that exact case. My family's first computer was a Cyrix 166 in that Escom midi tower. The board broken some time in the early 2000s and the case has been lost ever since.
My first PC was an Escom Socket 4 machine. It was the first and only new PC I ever bought. For most years since then I've upgraded component by component like Trigger with his broom, but recently I've been buying old workstations instead.
I remember in 97 when I worked as a bench repair tech, I was removing a socketed Dallas module incorrectly (using my bare hands) and the Dallas module came out oddly and impaled itself in my thumb.... That was one painful time (pun).
Back in those days, Enlight cases were some of the best you could get, they had lots of different models and configurations for manufacturers and home builders of PCs
Hi ! Super nice video ! For me, the first Socket 5 Intel motherboard was the Intel Plato (Premiere PCI). All the Batman boards were socket 4 for Pentium 60/66... Actually my first Pentium machine was the first socket 5 ever system from Gateway 2000 (P5-90 back in June 1994).
RIFA catastrophe averted. 😁 Those full towers bring back memories of lugging mine to LAN parties. I believe I had 6 hard drivers in mine which had any game (plus MODs because DOOM - hehehe) we would be playing. That thing was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HEAVY but was worth every sore back.
That sounds amazing. Also, it was always worth it go lug a heavy ass AT desktop and 17 inch monitor to and from the family minivan whenever we went to the grandparent's house for the summer or Christmas. We could not live without playing DOOM daily.
I remember I had an Escom 486 DX/2-66 in that mini tower case 😊 I always wanted a Pentium big tower, but it consoled me that I didn't have to deal with the FDIV bug...
Yes exactly it was Escom that bought out the rights to the "Amiga" brand, and what was left of Commodore somehow got into the hands of the Dutch company "Tulip", which in 2008 changed its name to "Nedfield NV", a year later it went bankrupt.
@@Epictronics1 Man... Only the "Amiga" brand is cursed. I've lost count of what went into whose hands. After Escom there was Gateway 2000 was finally taken over by Acer. Amiga was sold to some strange company "KMOS", then "Amino" and then renamed "Amiga Inc". Along the way there was still Hyperion, Cloanto and heck knows what else. That's it roughly.
When I was a kid, one of my rich friends had a beast of a computer which was in an Enlight case (it had a ATI 3D Rage in it if I recall). Nice case, but I couldn't imagine how difficult it was to build given the build unfriendly nature of Enlights.
I have the exact same case. The PC (Pentium 90MHz) was built by a company named Tricom in Sweden, the company still exists to this day and have stores in Stockholm and Gävle.
That stamp on the bottom of the case could've been the date of when the sheet metal was originally fabricated... maybe ESCOM came across some New-Old Stock. 🤣
That was the exact same 486sx25 (desktop machine) I had as I was a Commodore nut....c64, Amiga, 486... that case is the same on they used for the Amiga 4000
I actually won a auction for one of these cases yesterday, although not having the same case badge. Specs. (case badge and model + sticker at the bottom) Pinus Trend Line PE 200 MHz MMX - Intel Triton OEM Motherboard (HT12888B Houston Tech) - ATI Mach64 GT (3D Rage II) Missing HDD and 3.5 disk drive, sound card, the case looks good though, and has stickers on the bottom for the CD-ROM drive, 3 year warranty and Pentium 200 MMX etc.
@@Epictronics1 Thanks :). I have from before all the parts needed to make it complete again, also several other retro PC computers in my collection :). Keep up the good work and channel 👍
I had an Escom 486 DX2 which fitted the timeline between the PCs on this video. No CD rom and a different case to both of these. Came with Win 95 but they hadn't loaded all the drivers for the video card so the first time I changed res it black screened! Not great for a first time PC user! Escom had a series of showrooms in various UK towns so I suspect that is why they went bankrupt!
8:05 because they are Y capacitors, they wouldn't have exploded when you plugged in, your RCD would have tripped. Y class capacitors are set between live-earth and neutral-earth, the larger X class capacitors are between live and neutral and will absolutely explode. Still not a ba idea to cut them out!
We had a simular case in the days... With a intel pentium running at a whopping 100mhz.. And it came with a 1gigabyte harddrive and a quadspeed mitsumi cdrom drive... Cant remember much else... But i do know that it had a COAST module in it
I have a very early Batman board from late 1993 in a Gateway 2000. It lacks the primary IDE channel altogether (although the markings for that and the controller can be seen on the board). It is incredibly fussy, will not work with 3rd party IDE controllers and requires SCSI for additional drive expansion, even with the newest available firmware. A very interesting piece of history.
Our first Pentium based PC was an Escom. One of the smaller towers, P75, i think 16mb ram and Windows 95. I learned fairly early on i needed to keep things backed up in case Windows needed reinstalling AGAIN. Didn't help that it was the OG retail release and not OSR 2. We bought it from an Escom store in the UK. They weren't around for very long...
Yeah, I read ESCOM bought some retail stores in the UK but ran out of money. I wonder what they were thinking, something clearly went wrong with their plan to expand
There was a company called rumbalows, a national chain that sold electricals that went bust, escom bought I think all of their stores, so quite a large number of stores suddenley re opened as escom stores. I remember them advertising in nearly every pc magazine as well at the time.
@@Epictronics1I used to work at an Escom store here in the UK while I was an impoverished university student. Nice machines that came pre-installed with OS/2 Warp and Windows 3.1 IIRC
@@EdCourtenay Sounds like a fun job. I read somewhere that the deal with IBM(OS/2 Warp) may have had something to do with ESCOM's decision to buy Commodore
The Case looks like the early Cases from the Manufacturer InWin, the Harddrive Holder seems to be the same . The Mainboard looks like from Intel "Plato" AT-Mainboard.
i had that case on a pentium 60 system. i send it in for service and when i got it back, they had used a sledge hammer to pry the case open. the chassi was all bent. i was baffled. its a hard case to remove but come on :)
They seem to be OK, in my experience. Not the fastest or quietest. It's the silver Quantum drives that are a bit of a gamble, due to the rubber bumper inside. And Western Digital drives are hit-and-miss, but that might just be the sheer number of them, and luck of the draw in how they were used (often, to the brink of death) and stored (usually in a giant cardboard box, along with a river rock collection, as far as I can tell.)
@@Epictronics1 Pentium pc I built in 1995 when I also bought win95 had 16MB of ram but 8MB was much more common at the time and I just wanted to double it for the futurre.
@@Epictronics1 You are spoiled, sir! I suffered through a short eternity of running Windows 95 on 8MB, until I finally had the good fortune of doubling it to a whole 16MB! Can you imagine ... you click the Windows Explorer icon and it just pops up, without gnashing away at the HDD for 15 seconds first? It was euphoric! I think, for a true Windows 95 launch experience, you have to limit the RAM until minimizing a full-screen application requires streaming the background wallpaper image back from disk, painting one new line at a time, from top to bottom.
I think you installed your front case fan in reverse. Air usually gets in by that front port. With the lid on, both this fan and the PSU fan are going to fight each other. Nice job overall! Oh I like these full towers! I recall these often had very annoying vibrating lids ;) And sorry for your main gig :(
@@Epictronics1 I have it, you can use standard Enlight drive rails. Commodore has a different front, not sure if that was made by Commdore or that they gave the design to Enlight and said "make this" but the metal chassis is the same and Amiga Technologies front plastic is I guess the standard Enlight PC design (it also says "TURBO", a PC feature, but is connected to the speaker). The Commodore may not say Turbo, I'm not sure now. ESCOM mainly wanted the brand and name and patents from Commodore, they wanted to use the brand as it had 95% recognition in Europe or Germany or so. They also tried to get a 2nd independant platform with Amiga. The main plan was to make Amiga to a "smart" home entertainment console to do smart functions on your house, but all that did not really work out. In the end, they just made 2 new logos by frog design and used the Commodore brand for the former ESCOM PCs and made Amiga Technologies. Original plans was to manufacture C64, A600, A1200, A4000T and CD32, but only A1200 and A4000T came to production. Some equipment and molds and plans got lost or it was scraped, so only the newest products were made again. They even showed the A4000 DESKTOP with a ESCOM/Amiga Tech logo. Something that never happened, probably just a rebadged Commodore to show something at least. They had luck that the 4000T was a standard PC board form factor, thus it was probably easier to get production up and running again compared to the special commodore parts and cases. There is a rare German interview of Manfred Schmitt (owner of ESCOM) and there he goes into some early details of what I wrote above: Video is called "Amiga - Escom beim WDR Computer Club 1995" on UA-cam Maybe you can translate it or something if you want to dig more into the End of Commodore / ESCOM era
@@ZUUL74 Oh, yeah, the deal with IBM. I didn't have time to look into it, but I think maybe, the explanation to why ESOM bought Commodore may have something to do with the IBM deal.
Escom buy Commodore and Amiga. They claim this allows them to position theirselves favourably in the new multimedia market. Two subsiduaries are formed, Commodore BV in Nieuw-Vennep, Holland, and Amiga Technologies located in Bensheim The main headquarters in Germany goes bust. UK operations closed, at least 2 European subsiduaries attempt a successful management buyout, the Commodore name is brought for badged PCs, Amiga is to be sold to Viscorp. Due to financial diffculties Viscorp drop out of the bidding by November of that year. After months of waiting the rights to the Amiga were bought by Gateway 2000. That’s the story I found
Thanks for the clarification. I checked and you are of course right. The Batman/Batman's revenge names seem to be heavily misused online, creating much confusion
@@Epictronics1 yes it is quite confusing. Most of the time i use the info on the retroweb website as a reference... It has so much information about retro hardware..
I'we built my first ever PC in a case like that! Unfortunately I don't have the case anymore, I threw it out when my wife moved in with me. Yes, I know it was a stupid move... I'm looking to buy one for more then 4 years, but with no luck... :(
Cool conputer, curious to know if its one of the earlier buggy pentiums. We were fine with our 486 until the K6-2 released and finally upgraded from DR-DOS 7.x and WFW3.11
I have some socket 4 boards and none came with a heatsink. I actually found the same solution (I used some chocolate aluminium foil folded to measure) and added a fan with some hot glue.
@@Epictronics1 exactly your solution, took a flat socket 7 + adapted a bracket from a Pentium 3 raising it with aluminium foil folded many times to fit the height. Before that I had a 486 metal clip. There isn't a solution, just DIY... :)
@@Epictronics1 I found a reference on Vgamuseum website to two cards having 54M40's, and in the specs it mentions that they have hardware MPEG1 decoding. If that's not it, then maybe a mobile version with lower power consumption?
Hey Epictonics, what happened to your main computer and what are the specs? I am running a 13900KS, 64 GB DDR 5 RAM, ASUS Pro Art, Asus Tuff 4090 RTX, Samsung 990 Pro M.2 for OS and VMs. Also, with some of my vintage computers I have teh same issues where I have to run the CD ROM as a slave on the same IDE controller. I don't know why either.
I don't know yet. I only had time to check the PSU, RAM, and the graphics card. Probably the MOBO. Luckily it's nothing too crazy, just an msi h110i pro. Luckily the GTX Titan X is ok!
I don't think I've had any trouble on Pentium boards -- even my P60 boards. But I've definitely fought 486 motherboard / controller card / HDD / ATAPI CD-ROM drive combinations trying to get them to work. I've had them refuse to work on the same channel with certain HDDs -- and the other way around, inexplicably, failing to recognize the CD-ROM if it was on a secondary IDE channel. Even if the primary channel was VLB and the secondary was (on the same card, but connected via) ISA. If I connected JUST the HDD or CD-ROM, it would work. But not both. Very strange. I guess that's just first-gen ATAPI CD-ROMs for you.
Thanks, unfortunately, I don't know. It is an official name given by Intel. Wiki only tells that it was in fact named after the fictional superhero Batman.
@@Epictronics1They brought out the A1200 again, with a modded pc floppy drive that wasnt quite compatible, and they also brought out 2x A4000 towers, an 040 based one and a 060 one as well using somebody elses cpu card.
Shit. Thanks for your video here, but it's just made me understand that I'm yet another "market" for algorithms to sell to. "Commodore retro computer enthusiast" is enough people to make it profitable for SEO AIs to manipulate video suggestions. I don't really care about escom, and i definitely don't care about escom pc clones. Yet this video make it to my recommendations. Capitalism is going to kill us all.
Fun fact: we had to re-flash a BIOS on a regular old PC from around the late 2000s a few months back, only to find the new BIOS we'd flashed to it has a Commodore splash screen lol.
Interesting! What PC was that?
What?? OK, I really wanna know what board that worked with.
Coin cell battery holder > Dallas module in socket > Dallas module soldered to board > Literally anything else > Varta
This is correct.
I am still PISSED that our first 486 (Biostar mobo in a Pionex desktop) was ruined by a God damned Varta barrel battery. I removed it and the board worked a decade ago but it stopped recognizing the keyboard as the damage had been done and I didn't know about using vinegar. I intend to practice soldering with a microscope and learn trace repair so I can fix it so DOOM and DOOM2 will pump through it's veins again some day.
people hate dallas chips because not everyone has a desoldering station and replacing a 24-pin(it's less but still) IC without one is a massive pain in the ass.
That looks similar to my 486 SX 33Mhz computer from 1993. It would have been so much better if it was a DX or an Intel. Oh one would dream to have an Intel Pentium 75mhz. My machine had 160mb of store and 4mb of memory. The computer store charged me $600 to get 16mb. Rocked Windows 3.1. I remember too much about this computer lol.
"Oh one would dream to have an Intel Pentium" Truer words have never been spoken. I STILL remember feverishly lusting for a God damned Pentium in the mid 90s. We made due with a 486sx25 from December 1992 till January 1997 until we got the guts of the computer replaced with a Pentium 133 and we were blown away with how fast it was. I feel really bad for the poor bastards who had a 386 for a long time and cannot imagine trying to play DOOM with low detail and smaller screen size.
I started my career as an 18-year-old Escom PC technician in 1993, I have assembled and sold hundreds of these machines. I recall the Batman mainboard and the Pentium 60 MHz recall from Intel. I haven't heard the metallic sound of removing the cover of an Escom large PC case for over.. 30 years! So nice to hear this again. In the days, there was good competition between Vobis and Escom, fought in the newspaper ads, to have the best deals. PCs were so popular, there were days, we sold hundreds of them.
That must have been a really fun job :)
Gotta love the Enlight cases; super high quality for the time!
Once I figured out how to actually get inside, I really liked the case :)
@@Epictronics1 Yeah! I upgraded from a Taiwanese no-name mini-tower case to an Enlight back in the late 90s. It was a huge improvement, and felt so modular and high-end -- although the bar was pretty low at the time.
I have since rebuilt those two (and coincidentally, they're set up side-by-side on my desk here next to me!), in exact duplicate cases, and love them both.
Great video! A couple of months ago a German UA-camr had Pentium Processor with that bug, and after a long and tideous communication process with Intel he got a (unbuggy) replacement chip after telling them, that he needs that processor for games in order to work correctly. He had to physically destroy his chip and send pictures in, in order to get the replacement. Intel still sticks to their promise to replace all the faulty processor from the 90s. Optionally he was offered a newer Intel processor or 50 bucks 😂
Haha, that is hilarious. Personally, I'd prefer a Pentium with the bug, It makes it more interesting from a historical perspective, but I completely forgot to check my chip!
@@Epictronics1 Gosh yes. I think it would kill me to destroy an original buggy Pentium chip. Although... I guess.. once.. it's acceptable to do it, for science, to see if Intel would honor their guarantee. Mind-blowing that somebody was able to find one to send as a replacement. (I wonder if they actually still have some, NOS, or if they had to buy one off eBay .. LOL)
"I wonder if they actually still have some, NOS" I would love to know if Intel still has Pentium 60 and Pentium 66 CPUs in inventory. I have 2 socket 4 machines with the FDIV bug and am keeping them forever, one a 60 and the other a 66. I remember one day in 1993 or early 1994 riding with my father in the family minivan (1990 Plymouth Grand Voyager) and he was listing to the news on the radio and the "new Pentium chip" was reported to have a flaw that affected large numeric calculations. I was in my very early teens and I was DYING to have a Pentium because we were suffering with the 486sx25. We finally got a Pentium 133 in January 1997 and the performance increase was MIND BLOWING. @@nickwallette6201
For serial, I bet that it's not that it's nonstandard. Serial ports on motherboards are standard, the issue is that there are two competing standards and both have the exact same connector (wired differently). I guess you got lucky with that one :D
Oh, that was lucky indeed! Thanks for sharing
@@Epictronics1 well at least if you get the wrong one, the worst thing that'll happen is a non functional mouse, it's not destructive
I used to work for Escom in one of their shops (UK, Leicester), i seem to remember us being the first to release a P60 for £999 in the UK.
Sweet. I remember the first time I used a Pentium. I thought it was the coolest thing ever :)
ENlight was one of the largest case suppliers in the mid 80's to 90's and made cases for dell, E-machines and Gateway
1:28 - I had one of those little tower cases, though it was unbranded, just a square indent where the escom badge is. I had forgotten about it until i saw it in your video, brought back lots of good memories of building computers with my dad, thanks you!
Nice video. We got a new Escom p60i in 1995 with windows 1995 in november ord december that year in the exact same case. It was build around an intel batman (not the revenge)
Recently i bought a commodore pentium 60 from that same time period but with a batman's revenge motherboard. I used that motherboard to rebuild our escom from back then in its original case. Good old days.
The intel batman only supported the pentium 60 and de pentium overdrive 120, and only had 1 ide port.
Thr batman's revenge had en extra buggy ide controller on the pci bus, and support for both the pentium 60 and 66 ad well as the pentium overdrive 120 and 133
@@arnovanderheiden1458 Interesting, did the Commodore have the same case as the Batman ESCOM in this video? Thanks for clarifying the differens between Batman and Batman's revenge
@@Epictronics1 you're welcome! yes, exactly the same case!
My escom had a black case badge. I have a white one now, but i am still looking for a black escom case badge..
@@arnovanderheiden1458 Send me an email, I might be able to help you with a black badge. epictronicsyt@gmail.com
I don't know to what extent this was relevant for the purchase at the time, but Escom resold Amigas under its own label and even further developed Amigas, the Amiga Walkers. In the beginning it was the A1200 and A4000T.
I'll post a link under this comment
I guess it's possible that ESCOM wanted the Amiga brand, and the Commodore brand was just included in the deal.
The Escom tower was definitely a re-badge. We had a lab full of machines with the identical case with Pentium I guts. I don't miss those cases.
Why not? They felt solid
It's funny, because my intuition was that I had seen that case before, but I figured I was just imagining it. Maybe not.
Watching people do battery mods will forever be oddly satisfying to me for some reason.
:)
I had a 486-SX-25 in this exact case bought from ESCOM back in the day. Wrote my Medical School Thesis on it. Using SPSS/PC+, DbaseIV relational database. Within 6 months I upgraded the system to a 486-DX2-66, added a soundblaster 16-ASP, and a 2x Panasonic CD-Rom drive with two of those 80Watt powered speakers (round bottom, square top) that everybody had. Combined with a Star-LC20 dot matrix printer and GhostScript - outputting TTF on the old dot matrix but eating through print-ribbon like crazy. Dial op 2400Baud, later 14k4 and 56K modem dialing into a SLIP connection.
Fun times!
26:10 I had the two Escom Big towers on the left. The one in the middle was from around 93 (originally bought with a 486DX66, the case design was a few years old at this time). The one on the left is the newer design from slightly later, early pentium era. As far as I remember this design was rather short lived. The small tower on the right is even later, probably mid to end of 90s - I was out of Escom machines at tis time and built my machines from shelf parts.
One of my best friend's Pentium 100 machine, which he got in April of 1996, came in that small tower. I remember thinking it looked modern.
that "batman" tower case is the exact one i had on my first pc with a pentium 133, had a different label tho.
8mb ram is quite possible to run win95 on, i did and after a few years doubled it to 16mb.
Awesome. My first Pentium was a 133 too :)
I love your videos. You often motivate me to tinker with some of the stuff I cling to. I have a mountain of hardware I never have time to enjoy.
Thanks!
Enlight cases are nice. Not many sharp edges compared to other cases at the time.
WE had a bunch of Enlight cases, mostly this Baby-AT tower, but they also made a "Fatter" version of the tower.
I can't be totally sure, but I think I had that same case in my noname P5/133 built by some small PC shop in Finland in '96.
Very cool, my first Pentium was also a 133 MMX :)
Most of the early towers had those u shaped covers. It was only later that separate side panels showed up.
True, but at least most of them didn't require to pull off the front everytime you wanted to remove the cover.
I knew ESCOM was about to die when I bought a PC from them here in Germany shortly before x-mas and the price for all included compenents of said PC was significantly lower than buying the same components separately. There were so many PC discounters here in Germany at that time and competition was insane. Good memories though, it was a customers paradise. PC hardware anno 2023 is a nightmare especially if you want a Gaming PC.
Indeed. This case has also been used by the (also defunct) german PC manufacturer SCT (Schadt Computer Technik) in their Pentium P54C Proline Series (this was my first PC, and still looking for that case to restore it according to my childhood memories - all the parts are in place except for the case)
Very nice case, I hope you find one!
I have seen one of these exact cases badged as Osborne😁
Interesting to know there are other weirdos "hunting" for that exact case. My family's first computer was a Cyrix 166 in that Escom midi tower. The board broken some time in the early 2000s and the case has been lost ever since.
My first PC was an Escom Socket 4 machine. It was the first and only new PC I ever bought. For most years since then I've upgraded component by component like Trigger with his broom, but recently I've been buying old workstations instead.
I remember in 97 when I worked as a bench repair tech, I was removing a socketed Dallas module incorrectly (using my bare hands) and the Dallas module came out oddly and impaled itself in my thumb.... That was one painful time (pun).
Sorry for laughing out loud :) I hope you're ok now :)
Those guys have thin, sharp pins!!
Back in those days, Enlight cases were some of the best you could get, they had lots of different models and configurations for manufacturers and home builders of PCs
That Escom tower looks very familiar to me. Pretty sure I had one back in the 90s.
Hi ! Super nice video ! For me, the first Socket 5 Intel motherboard was the Intel Plato (Premiere PCI). All the Batman boards were socket 4 for Pentium 60/66... Actually my first Pentium machine was the first socket 5 ever system from Gateway 2000 (P5-90 back in June 1994).
Thanks! Information about Batman/Batman's revenge/Batman II is rather confusing online
RIFA catastrophe averted. 😁
Those full towers bring back memories of lugging mine to LAN parties. I believe I had 6 hard drivers in mine which had any game (plus MODs because DOOM - hehehe) we would be playing. That thing was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HEAVY but was worth every sore back.
Thank god!
Add the old 21" CRT and I had to go twice between the car and the table at the dreamhack. 😅
That sounds amazing. Also, it was always worth it go lug a heavy ass AT desktop and 17 inch monitor to and from the family minivan whenever we went to the grandparent's house for the summer or Christmas. We could not live without playing DOOM daily.
I remember I had an Escom 486 DX/2-66 in that mini tower case 😊 I always wanted a Pentium big tower, but it consoled me that I didn't have to deal with the FDIV bug...
Yes exactly it was Escom that bought out the rights to the "Amiga" brand, and what was left of Commodore somehow got into the hands of the Dutch company "Tulip", which in 2008 changed its name to "Nedfield NV", a year later it went bankrupt.
That's pretty insane, The Commodore brand must be cursed
@@Epictronics1
Man... Only the "Amiga" brand is cursed. I've lost count of what went into whose hands. After Escom there was Gateway 2000 was finally taken over by Acer. Amiga was sold to some strange company "KMOS", then "Amino" and then renamed "Amiga Inc". Along the way there was still Hyperion, Cloanto and heck knows what else. That's it roughly.
When I was a kid, one of my rich friends had a beast of a computer which was in an Enlight case (it had a ATI 3D Rage in it if I recall). Nice case, but I couldn't imagine how difficult it was to build given the build unfriendly nature of Enlights.
Enlight was one of the "nice" brands at the local computer shop back in the day.
I have the exact same case. The PC (Pentium 90MHz) was built by a company named Tricom in Sweden, the company still exists to this day and have stores in Stockholm and Gävle.
cool. Most white box manufacturers back then couldn't compete with big brand names and disappeared
That stamp on the bottom of the case could've been the date of when the sheet metal was originally fabricated... maybe ESCOM came across some New-Old Stock. 🤣
Nice Escom computers. Escom was my first computer i have as a child. Much memories. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands
Excellent choice of a first computer :)
I had a 60 MHz ESCOM tower like that as a kid. Shame I no longer have it.
That loose IDE cable @31:33 is making my teeth itch
That was the exact same 486sx25 (desktop machine) I had as I was a Commodore nut....c64, Amiga, 486... that case is the same on they used for the Amiga 4000
Nananananananana BATMAN!
I actually won a auction for one of these cases yesterday, although not having the same case badge.
Specs.
(case badge and model + sticker at the bottom) Pinus Trend Line PE 200 MHz MMX
- Intel Triton OEM Motherboard (HT12888B Houston Tech)
- ATI Mach64 GT (3D Rage II)
Missing HDD and 3.5 disk drive, sound card, the case looks good though, and has stickers on the bottom for the CD-ROM drive, 3 year warranty and Pentium 200 MMX etc.
Very cool find, good luck with the project
@@Epictronics1 Thanks :). I have from before all the parts needed to make it complete again, also several other retro PC computers in my collection :). Keep up the good work and channel 👍
So ... is that pronounced "Pye-nuss"?
Mum bought me a Escom P90! It had OS/2 warp with Windows 3.11 in a special mode launched from OS/2 Warp
Very cool, I think the riddle here has something to do with ESCOM's deal with IBM
I had an Escom 486 DX2 which fitted the timeline between the PCs on this video. No CD rom and a different case to both of these. Came with Win 95 but they hadn't loaded all the drivers for the video card so the first time I changed res it black screened! Not great for a first time PC user! Escom had a series of showrooms in various UK towns so I suspect that is why they went bankrupt!
I had to laugh when you said 500MB wasn't much for Win95. I ran it on a 40MB drive for about a year in the mid-90s 🤣
omg. I had issues running Win 3.11 on my 40MB drive back then :o
@@Epictronics1Dude I had to ZIP the Windows directory just to install Duke3D. Then reverse the process when I wanted Windows back.
@@PJBonoVox 😆
8:05 because they are Y capacitors, they wouldn't have exploded when you plugged in, your RCD would have tripped.
Y class capacitors are set between live-earth and neutral-earth, the larger X class capacitors are between live and neutral and will absolutely explode.
Still not a ba idea to cut them out!
I didn't know that, thanks!
We had a simular case in the days... With a intel pentium running at a whopping 100mhz.. And it came with a 1gigabyte harddrive and a quadspeed mitsumi cdrom drive... Cant remember much else... But i do know that it had a COAST module in it
oh my goodness this is the first pc case I've ever had :D and the bad news is you just made me miss it as hell :(.
Ahh the old finger slicer cases. Good times.
Countless cuts and memories
That's a bog-standard Enlight case of that era...
I have a very early Batman board from late 1993 in a Gateway 2000. It lacks the primary IDE channel altogether (although the markings for that and the controller can be seen on the board). It is incredibly fussy, will not work with 3rd party IDE controllers and requires SCSI for additional drive expansion, even with the newest available firmware. A very interesting piece of history.
Our first Pentium based PC was an Escom. One of the smaller towers, P75, i think 16mb ram and Windows 95. I learned fairly early on i needed to keep things backed up in case Windows needed reinstalling AGAIN. Didn't help that it was the OG retail release and not OSR 2. We bought it from an Escom store in the UK. They weren't around for very long...
Yeah, I read ESCOM bought some retail stores in the UK but ran out of money. I wonder what they were thinking, something clearly went wrong with their plan to expand
There was a company called rumbalows, a national chain that sold electricals that went bust, escom bought I think all of their stores, so quite a large number of stores suddenley re opened as escom stores. I remember them advertising in nearly every pc magazine as well at the time.
@@sneekeruk To bad they didn't have the cash flow to keep going. It seems they made some really solid machines
@@Epictronics1I used to work at an Escom store here in the UK while I was an impoverished university student. Nice machines that came pre-installed with OS/2 Warp and Windows 3.1 IIRC
@@EdCourtenay Sounds like a fun job. I read somewhere that the deal with IBM(OS/2 Warp) may have had something to do with ESCOM's decision to buy Commodore
The Case looks like the early Cases from the Manufacturer InWin, the Harddrive Holder seems to be the same .
The Mainboard looks like from Intel "Plato" AT-Mainboard.
You're right. Apparently the batman-looking board in the full tower is an Intel Plato board
i had that case on a pentium 60 system. i send it in for service and when i got it back, they had used a sledge hammer to pry the case open. the chassi was all bent. i was baffled. its a hard case to remove but come on :)
I had hoped to finally find out why that board is called "Batman" in this video, but I was disappointed.
I've used that generic case for building PCs in the 90s
Working Maxtor drives must be as rare as hens teeth.
They seem to be OK, in my experience. Not the fastest or quietest. It's the silver Quantum drives that are a bit of a gamble, due to the rubber bumper inside. And Western Digital drives are hit-and-miss, but that might just be the sheer number of them, and luck of the draw in how they were used (often, to the brink of death) and stored (usually in a giant cardboard box, along with a river rock collection, as far as I can tell.)
Minimum system requirements for windows 95 was only 4MB of ram. Many computers with only 8MB of ram were shipped with win95 in 1995.
I don't think I have ever tried running W95 with less than 32MB
@@Epictronics1 Pentium pc I built in 1995 when I also bought win95 had 16MB of ram but 8MB was much more common at the time and I just wanted to double it for the futurre.
My p120 Packard Bell got 1gb hard drive and 8mb Ram. It started 'Navigator' automatically, which used lot of virtual memory 😂
@@Epictronics1 You are spoiled, sir! I suffered through a short eternity of running Windows 95 on 8MB, until I finally had the good fortune of doubling it to a whole 16MB! Can you imagine ... you click the Windows Explorer icon and it just pops up, without gnashing away at the HDD for 15 seconds first? It was euphoric!
I think, for a true Windows 95 launch experience, you have to limit the RAM until minimizing a full-screen application requires streaming the background wallpaper image back from disk, painting one new line at a time, from top to bottom.
I think you installed your front case fan in reverse. Air usually gets in by that front port. With the lid on, both this fan and the PSU fan are going to fight each other.
Nice job overall! Oh I like these full towers! I recall these often had very annoying vibrating lids ;)
And sorry for your main gig :(
Oh, crap, I need to check that. Thanks!
Enlight also made the Commodore/ Amiga Technologies A4000 Tower case.
I'd love to get my hands on one of those Amigas :)
@@Epictronics1 I have it, you can use standard Enlight drive rails. Commodore has a different front, not sure if that was made by Commdore or that they gave the design to Enlight and said "make this" but the metal chassis is the same and Amiga Technologies front plastic is I guess the standard Enlight PC design (it also says "TURBO", a PC feature, but is connected to the speaker). The Commodore may not say Turbo, I'm not sure now.
ESCOM mainly wanted the brand and name and patents from Commodore, they wanted to use the brand as it had 95% recognition in Europe or Germany or so. They also tried to get a 2nd independant platform with Amiga. The main plan was to make Amiga to a "smart" home entertainment console to do smart functions on your house, but all that did not really work out. In the end, they just made 2 new logos by frog design and used the Commodore brand for the former ESCOM PCs and made Amiga Technologies. Original plans was to manufacture C64, A600, A1200, A4000T and CD32, but only A1200 and A4000T came to production. Some equipment and molds and plans got lost or it was scraped, so only the newest products were made again. They even showed the A4000 DESKTOP with a ESCOM/Amiga Tech logo. Something that never happened, probably just a rebadged Commodore to show something at least. They had luck that the 4000T was a standard PC board form factor, thus it was probably easier to get production up and running again compared to the special commodore parts and cases.
There is a rare German interview of Manfred Schmitt (owner of ESCOM) and there he goes into some early details of what I wrote above:
Video is called "Amiga - Escom beim WDR Computer Club 1995" on UA-cam
Maybe you can translate it or something if you want to dig more into the End of Commodore / ESCOM era
lol, that ide cable...
RIFAs in 1995? Not surprising. I've seen those on an Astec PSU for a PowerMac dated 9527...
You are clearly right. I thought they had stopped using them by 1995
I bought an pentium 60 from Escom back in the day, even been to Escom Hq to pick it up
That must have been a nice experience. I bet they had a nice showroom :)
It has os2/warp operating system on it
And my case is different than yours
@@ZUUL74 Oh, yeah, the deal with IBM. I didn't have time to look into it, but I think maybe, the explanation to why ESOM bought Commodore may have something to do with the IBM deal.
Escom buy Commodore and Amiga. They claim this allows them to position theirselves favourably in the new multimedia market. Two subsiduaries are formed, Commodore BV in Nieuw-Vennep, Holland, and Amiga Technologies located in Bensheim
The main headquarters in Germany goes bust. UK operations closed, at least 2 European subsiduaries attempt a successful management buyout, the Commodore name is brought for badged PCs, Amiga is to be sold to Viscorp. Due to financial diffculties Viscorp drop out of the bidding by November of that year. After months of waiting the rights to the Amiga were bought by Gateway 2000.
That’s the story I found
Back then full tower really was big 🙂
Massive!
The socket 5 board in the big tower is probably an intel plato motherboard..
Not a batmans revenge. That was strictly socket 4..
Thanks for the clarification. I checked and you are of course right. The Batman/Batman's revenge names seem to be heavily misused online, creating much confusion
@@Epictronics1 yes it is quite confusing. Most of the time i use the info on the retroweb website as a reference... It has so much information about retro hardware..
This is another awesome video! Thanks for sharing
Thanks Rudy :)
Our first family computer (ca 1995-96) had that exact case, so it is indeed a generic one.
My fist Pc was a Commodore Evolution. Win95 i think. On the back of the booklet Head Office: Commodore B.V.. The Netherlands.
Awesome. First time I hear about it. I googled and found a picture. Looks neat!
I could never find any info about it online.@@Epictronics1
I do have one picture of the case. But no longer have the case.
My father had that middle one at "25:50" in 1994 for his CAD home office🥲
Alot of common parts from back in the day.
Pft, using a pry tool to open a case, its called a flathead screwdriver bro. :D
My Gateway p5-90 has almost the same socket 5 motherboard with dallas battery
I used to have an escom commodore pentium 66 mhz, 16 mb memory, 400 mb harddisk, tseng labs et6000, voodoo card, 3com 3c509
Same case, 1994
Nice rig!
New subscriber dedected. wuuhuu . i waiting ibm video 😁
I'we built my first ever PC in a case like that! Unfortunately I don't have the case anymore, I threw it out when my wife moved in with me. Yes, I know it was a stupid move... I'm looking to buy one for more then 4 years, but with no luck... :(
We all made the same misstake. I hope you find a case eventually
@@Epictronics1 by the way, I love your videos! Really premium retro content!
@@robertb165 Thank you :)
Windows 95B! Has to be B! No exceptions! :)
Heatsink bracket shouldn't be that difficult to make. Spring steel ribbon can be easily bought and the shape isn't that complicated.
I could try, but I don't know what tool to use to make a square hole at each end
@@Epictronics1 You drill a hole and then file the corners with triangular file.
40MB Conner drives were spectacularly unreliable, IMHO.
Indeed, what is everyone missing?
great video!
Thanks!
Fascinating.
Cool conputer, curious to know if its one of the earlier buggy pentiums. We were fine with our 486 until the K6-2 released and finally upgraded from DR-DOS 7.x and WFW3.11
I completely forgot to check, I'll get back to this somehow
I have some socket 4 boards and none came with a heatsink. I actually found the same solution (I used some chocolate aluminium foil folded to measure) and added a fan with some hot glue.
What did you use to attach the heat sink to the socket?
@@Epictronics1 exactly your solution, took a flat socket 7 + adapted a bracket from a Pentium 3 raising it with aluminium foil folded many times to fit the height.
Before that I had a 486 metal clip. There isn't a solution, just DIY... :)
@@Neksus-M06 Oh, ok, I'll try with a Pentium 3 bracket, thanks!
The Cirrus Logic datasheet for the 5429/30 series chips makes no mention of a 54m30. Weird.
very weird indeed!
@@Epictronics1 I found a reference on Vgamuseum website to two cards having 54M40's, and in the specs it mentions that they have hardware MPEG1 decoding. If that's not it, then maybe a mobile version with lower power consumption?
Hey Epictonics, what happened to your main computer and what are the specs? I am running a 13900KS, 64 GB DDR 5 RAM, ASUS Pro Art, Asus Tuff 4090 RTX, Samsung 990 Pro M.2 for OS and VMs.
Also, with some of my vintage computers I have teh same issues where I have to run the CD ROM as a slave on the same IDE controller. I don't know why either.
I don't know yet. I only had time to check the PSU, RAM, and the graphics card. Probably the MOBO. Luckily it's nothing too crazy, just an msi h110i pro. Luckily the GTX Titan X is ok!
I don't think I've had any trouble on Pentium boards -- even my P60 boards. But I've definitely fought 486 motherboard / controller card / HDD / ATAPI CD-ROM drive combinations trying to get them to work.
I've had them refuse to work on the same channel with certain HDDs -- and the other way around, inexplicably, failing to recognize the CD-ROM if it was on a secondary IDE channel. Even if the primary channel was VLB and the secondary was (on the same card, but connected via) ISA. If I connected JUST the HDD or CD-ROM, it would work. But not both. Very strange.
I guess that's just first-gen ATAPI CD-ROMs for you.
Did you determine if the Pentium was the early buggy version?
Oh, crap! I forgot to check!
LoL! Un-Subscribed!
Ok maybe not. I was wondering if I missed it but we are all human so no big deal
Nice video but... Why are they called "Batman" boards?
Thanks, unfortunately, I don't know. It is an official name given by Intel. Wiki only tells that it was in fact named after the fictional superhero Batman.
Just be glad you don't know what Eskom is.
Why are they called "batman" ? Is this the official name of the boards for the first Pentium ?
It is the official name of this Intel board. I have not been able to find out why unfortunately
@@Epictronics1
thx
I may be mistaken, but wasn't Escom's plan to continue the Amiga line of machines?
They did, I'm not an expert, but I think they made the 3000 and 4000. Hopefully, someone may add a more educated comment here.
@@Epictronics1They brought out the A1200 again, with a modded pc floppy drive that wasnt quite compatible, and they also brought out 2x A4000 towers, an 040 based one and a 060 one as well using somebody elses cpu card.
@@sneekeruk I'd love to restore one of those, but they are fetching silly money on ebay nowadays
you sound like Piers Morgan, you have kind of like the same speech pattern 🤣
haha, well, he's got 2.2M subscribers on his channel, sounds like a winning speech pattern to me! ;)
Shit. Thanks for your video here, but it's just made me understand that I'm yet another "market" for algorithms to sell to. "Commodore retro computer enthusiast" is enough people to make it profitable for SEO AIs to manipulate video suggestions. I don't really care about escom, and i definitely don't care about escom pc clones. Yet this video make it to my recommendations. Capitalism is going to kill us all.
Linux/Unix when ?
Case is totally generic case. I had exact same back in 1996 on my IBM/Cyrix 6x86 (pr150) build...