The awe sound card is a really great find. One of the best cards before nice sound cards went away. The ram sockets aren't for a cache as such but for storing sound fonts!!!! You used to be able to buy sound fonts for the card and use it as a rompler style synthesiser. You could even play the sounds with a midi controller keyboard with a midi sequencer such as cubase or something. You can't buy sound fonts any more but there may be some hidden on the internet somewhere. I think the card also has built in general midi sounds.
I've used a Dremel like tool to go into the top of the Dallas chip right above where the battery is many times without issues. I go ahead and go "crazy" and make the hole wide enough to remove the CMOS battery completely. I've used 2 "AA" batteries that I Velcro to the case somewhere. It's really safe to go "crazy" on these chips. They have a normal chip with the battery and crystal soldered to the pins and encase the whole thing in a bigger epoxy shell. It's rather hard (if not impossible) to go too far and drill into the actual chip embedded inside. The chip inside is still being made and sold (without the epoxy shell) and people have made their own Dallas chip with a battery socket that fits in the original place.
I cut into a chip like that on a Commodore PC board. I regret cutting the internal frame to do it though. But everyone makes mistakes. I've never damaged a old computer computer on purpose
Suggestion for the AWE 32 card: Adhere a stick-on heatsink to it to help preserve that unreplaceable chip. Also, the RAM slots on that card are related to the MIDI functionality. If those slots are broken, upgraded replacements with mteal locking tabs can be had from Jameco or PE Connectors. As for that Asus specific media bus slot, I've only seen a picture of a sound card that uses that slot from an Ebay seller in Bulgaria. Just look for that motherboard and you might find that sound card.
@@churblefurbles That's a good question but very hard to precisely answer unless you have a datasheet for the respective chip. I would therefore approach this from a more general angle: Silicon chips that aren't high performance CPUs or RAMs are often specified for operating temps from 0 to 70 degrees. You will find a maximum spec of 70 degrees on the datasheets for the venerable SID sound chip and also for Yamaha chips. That is the temperature on its outside and of course inside the chip, the silicon itself, gets much hotter. And while there is a safety tolerance included you would need a thermometer to check how hot it really is. But even if it is "only" 70 degrees we have another problem: This stuff has been made about 30 years ago and chips do degrade over time. And we aren't even talking about subpar manufacturing processes like with some of the early 80ies Commodore MOS chips. A cooling sink would therefore still be a good idea to prevent driving this chip near its maximum spec and thus reduce the risk of failure. Also, a bit of airflow these old cases never had (or needed) in the early 90ies would certainly help.
I do this in NYC (keeping the place disclosed lol) & I often come out with a gem every once in awhile. Best recent find was a full board that was chucked that still had a 10900K in it & 32GB of DDR4 ram. Assumed it was someone that had more money than patience as the box it was in was found in was that of a Asus Rog Z690 board. The board the CPU was in was shot but the CPU & Ram worked perfectly.
Note on storing the battery: it can still die and leak even when not connected to anything. I had to clean out what appears to have been a 'spare' CR2032 battery in a holder that had no connections at all in an old electronic bathroom scale from a garage sale.
the 2x 30 pin simm slots on the AWE were for loading the sound patches - other cards that allowed that were the roland ones as well as the Gravis ultrasound cards
About 5 years ago I was tasked with cleaning out our IT closet at work. And there were AWE32's. Also 5 1/4 in 360, 1.2 floppy drives that are hard to come by these days.
I know you've commented on it before, but I'm not sure you truly realize how lucky you are that your local e-waste allows items to go back out. Where I live, I think it requires bribes and coercion.
The thing not booting from the A drive is indeed a problem with the Dallas chip. They do not at all hold any settings, not even through a warm reset and you ether get to boot from the Floppy - when the Harddrive is disconnected, or from the harddrive when both are connected. This problem did my head in just weeks ago when I was servicing and reassembling a similiar system. I though I had a broken Floppy drive because of the seek also being switched off.
4:53 As cheap as it looks, that's an Intel-brand network card... I looked up the FCC ID to be sure. I do not know why they didn't brand the PCB itself, maybe this product was intended for OEM distribution.
the AWE32 is a mega score! and the RAM slots were for WAVE tables aka improved instruments for music, was really sweet. mobo is neat as well for the early MMX Pentiums
I had one of those AWE32 cards, with 2MB of RAM in the 30pin SIMM sockets (Used for MIDI sound fonts from memory), but I also had the Yamaha XG wavetable daughterboard. It played a mean game of System Shock 🙂 (System Shock properly used the XG to generate some creepy dynamically changing background music)
@@RetroHackShack It does! It just doesn't have an Yamaha XG card but the AWE-32 was a wavetavble synth! You can add more wavetable sounds if you add that ram to the board. I think there was even once a not very legal XG soundfont... Now lost to time. The AWE-32 stuff was still something to do with ensoniq too??? (who made hardware midi synths)
You could have the segmented display display HI/LO instead of numbers. Also, I know you're north of SF, but if you ever are near the Hayward area in the East Bay, there is an e-waste place I frequent. I've found some real gems there. One being the Apple Extended Keyboard I I'm typing on right now with the orange Alps switches. I've found two IBM 5151's a bunch of XT's and a 5154. Also found a broken SE/30 which I recapped and got working. There was also Excess Solutions in San Jose, but sadly they have closed their doors. I'm glad I bought a bunch of caps and resistors and a bunch of other "junk" before they closed. Replaced many RIFA caps because I bought 20 of them. Awesome video. I learn a lot from your videos. Keep them coming!
Was there really nothing in the documents? The existence of Morpheus and visual studio suggests the machine was used for something more interesting than the usual fare. No weird music choices, super low quality pirate movies or one of a kind programming projects?
Or porn??!! I can't tell you how much porn I used to find on PCs' that people used to leave out for garbage collection back in the day! Most people would simply forget to destroy or at least make an attempt to erase their hard drives before they disposed of their PCs' back then! Some times I would find some...ahem..."interesting" and even INCRIMINATING things on them! They were lucky that I am an honest guy.....well.....mostly anyway.....😂😂👍👍
Yeah. I always check for it because it's so funny when you find it. Most of the system I have checked lately have been repurposed for kids to use at some point in their life so no such luck.
Here in Poland it’s not allowed to take anything from recycling center. Unfortunately. The good part is that they often don’t look… and just weight your car when you enter and leave (it’s free service to leave equipment there)
The point of NT is that it does not boot to MS-DOS and it does not use real mode, it goes to 32bit protected mode. Take the drive and connect it to another 2000 Pro system or higher as drive D or higher and if it is not encrypted you should be able to see the contents if you log on using administrator access. Might have to set some directory/file permissions.
I still have my Soundblaster AWE 32 that my late mom bought as a gift for me way back in the day in it's original box with all driver disks and manuals. It was a really cool card for its time. That and the AWE 64, if I remember correctly which was the better upgraded version. The extra memory slots were an interesting feature on the 32 that extended the sound banks or something like that...I think if you wanted. Eventually I started to get some compatibility issues with certain games if I remember, and was forced to go to a PCI slot sound card with newer supported drivers, but I really missed using that card with all its cool features! It's still a really great card for retro gaming rigs! 👍👍
@@RetroHackShack I am afraid I don't because it was such a long time back, but it is possible that I may still have the receipt in the box or somewhere in my room. Often too, I notice that many of the receipts that I have kept has had the "ink" actually vanish from the paper because they were probably using an inkless printer that uses heat to print on heat sensitive paper. It kind of works in reverse as the paper is the ink, so to speak, instead of an ink nozzle or keys that strike a ribbon to print on paper. Either that or they use REAL CRAPPY ink! I will try and find the receipt if it's still around and actually visible to read and let you know if I find it. Thanks for the reply and be well! 👍👍
@@RetroHackShack Actually, I just found the receipt! It WAS still in the box! I bought it in an old LONG gone electronics store called The Wiz in 1997 for exactly $106.73 and my mom paid for it as a gift for me afterwards. Wow...25 years ago already! I'm getting old.....😕
@@RetroHackShack I also just found the box for my original 8 bit SoundBlaster 2.0 card that my girlfriend, now my wife, bought me as a birthday present years before I got the AWE 32. The price tag on the box says it was $59.97 at the time. I still have that card somewhere around, probably in one of my old PCs'. I lost track of it but I know I should still have it too.
Yeah I was gonna say you could have easily cracked the user password! I still have the Linux boot cd I used to use back in the xp days. I think you can still get it - offline NT password utility or something like that.
The floppy seek is left over from very long ago, when the drive head(s) could stick to the floppy medium if the disk was left in the drive long enough. The seek would break the head(s) loose so the disk could spin.
The ethernet card is actually made by Intel and should be decent ... long name is Intel PILA8460 Pro/100+ Network Management Adapter Card ... you can find it by searching for the product code at the end of the bar code sticker.
It is a common misconception that NT stood for New Technology. This has never been stated in any Microsoft documentation. One of the lead architects of NT came from DEC, where he designed VMS. Windows NT or "WNT" is each letter of VMS incremented by 1.
@@RetroHackShack probably because he was a master of marketing above all else. It sounds better to give it its own meaning than to acknowledge the brilliant engineer's connection to non MS software.
Dear Erin, thank you for this entertaining travel along the memory lane. As a MD, (in the last video I found out that you have diabetes type 1), I feel obliged to suggest to you to look into D-r Robert Bernstein (has a book named "Diabetes solution") . IMHO must read for any diabetic, especially those that have type 1). Best regards, D-r Riste Sekuloski, cardiologist.
I'm so glad they do. For one, security should be the onus of the original owner. For two, if you're going to provide the service of anonymizing 25-year-old data, just wipe the disk -- don't destroy perfectly good vintage hardware "for security." Preferably, anyone handling old PCs that knows enough to understand they have resale value and is concerned about privacy would also be aware that some OEM systems can't be restored to fully working condition without the original software. I've gotten a few Sony laptops that had their hard drives wiped or removed, and I've had a bear of a time tracking down restore discs. I've resorted to contacting sellers of OTHER laptops on eBay to ask if they would sell a copy of their original media. A lot of times, there's a utility (either in Windows or a boot option) to restore the drive to factory new condition, which is good enough to remove any potentially identifying information, but keeps the machine's original software load intact. This carte-blanche "wipe or destroy the hard drive" advice that was going around for a while has really gotta stop! :-D
💯 Luckily this particular ewaste place doesn't have a wipe policy. If I am lucky enough to find a system before they disassemble it, the hard drive has probably not been touched.
I hated those IDE connectors and cables back then. I was so happy when SATA came along. As I recall, NT introduced the registry, something I learned to loathe.
First network server deployed on my own was in fact Novel Netware 3.12 *file server* First network and everything else related done exclusively by myself *previous one was working for someone else* was in fact a Windows NT4 Server, this was around the same time I started getting into Linux actually.
Nice video and great scrap save. I remembered there was a way to use a linux bootloader to reset the Windows admin password? That would save the work in needing to get rid of the Win 2000 and install Win 98.
It's really not worth jump-starting those Dallas RTCs, IMO. For one thing, it's just not a great idea to parallel cells like that. It's "probably" fine, but really not good form. For one, there is an updated part, still in production, that is a drop-in replacement -- DS12884. There are two 8s in the part number now, and it's branded by Maxim instead of Dallas. In addition to the potted modules, you can also get them as bare ICs where you provide your own battery. I use a 12885 and made my own PCB with a CR2032 coin cell holder on top, so it's serviceable down the road. I wasn't the first, and there are a few different versions available online pre-built or as kits. No Dremel required. :-)
And about the video - are you trying to run the higher resolutions in hi-color mode? You need at least 2MB of VRAM to run 1024x768 in 64k colors, and 4MB to run in 24-bit color. It's entirely likely that card only has 1MB VRAM, so you can do 800x600 at hi-color, or 1024x768 @ 256 colors.
@@RetroHackShack Haha.. hey, the word's getting around these days that options exist, and that's why I posted -- just in case. I know a lot of people still like to do the in-place mod, but that just makes me wince, dumping charge into an old, non-rechargeable battery like that. But who knows. It could go 50 years and be totally fine.
@@RetroHackShack but one thing, ring tone, dont remember when cards would generate that itself, of course one card could be the dial tone, if required in any case, or even a source to an analog phone ring tone generator
@@RetroHackShack It was perfect. So much like life and all. I think it's better to show what works and what doesn't, of course. That getting things from e-waste sound like a dangerous idea for what space I have left around heh.
I thought it was interesting they were running visual studio which would have been rare back then. There might be a developers source code on the computer.!! You also didn't look in my downloads or my music!
Boot up Floppy Seek.? i'm only at that point in the video so I don't know whether or not you figured this out later.. If so then please accept my sincere apologies for my inappropriate outburst LOL. ;) My first PC was an all ISA 386DX2 No CPU Fan required and 1 pancaked (Flat) CMOS Battery so setting all CMOS settings Every power flip was literally second nature.. I THINK data sheets could reveal either multitool grinding locations or the details of the external pins for an external 2032 button cell. I still have the PC in the Attic and stumbled across the 8 x Quarter Meg Simms all donated me of course I can't throw them away i'm sure a mate of mine gave me a dual CPU 486 I'll have to look for just to see if it works. :) Cheers (Richard) < That's Me.. Don't worry I'm not getting confused and calling you, me.. Oh Dear.. Nurse...!!! It seems an age away despite the knowledge and skillset I had with this era of PC and electronic tech I don't feel I'd trust building and sourcing the parts for a PC from the last 5 years. So I'm happily resigned to a Shop Bought P.C. now so I don't have to read and match the interface clocks, pin details and all those unfeasibly complicated job it now seems to be. TTFN
Nope not 1 486 or 586 for that matter *AM 5x86 DX/3/4 etc BUT, it will take Pentiuns, Pentiuns MMX, AMD K6, K6-2 and K6-3 *though some may need some voltage regulator tricks or adapters.Oh yeah, almost forgot, them Cyrix CPUS of the age as well, though those should have water cooling, no I'm not joking I had a PR200+ LITERALY MELT ITSELF when the FAN broke down while using Autocad for renders. The metal top of the CPU was about 45 degrees sideways, not centered at 90 degrees angles as expected.
no need to crack windows passwords even since you're not looking for covert access, in future try reseting password using chntpw (easiest perhaps with SystemRescue livecd)
You can bypass the W2K password by deleting the SAM file. Just rename it. Boot with your Freedos and change to the \systemroot\System32\Config folder. Enter ren sam sam.old to rename the SAM, or simply delete the file. Restart the system. At the Windows 2000 logon prompt, enter the Administrator account with no password.
@@RetroHackShack I've been an MCSE and an MCT since 2000 as well, and I was repeating the same stuff! But Dave wrote Task Manager, so I believe his word over others. :D
No. I still have my OG AWE32, and I used to leave my computer on back in the day for remote access (mIRC shell scripts). It's totally fine. Although, I don't remember it being THAT hot. Still, if it's hot enough to need a heat sink, something's wrong that will either sort itself out (by blowing another component that you can then locate and fix), or the chip is going to fail anyway, and that'll be that. If you can touch it at all, it's not heat that's going to kill it.
Obviously an MSDOS boot disk will not see an NTFS partition. Linux will *well one that is not too early that is* Or the NT install disks/cds which do have a console
There were downloadable boot disks that would let you reset passwords on win2k and let you into that users account without destroying the win2k install. Oh well 😔
I once was paid to smash 100's of computers open from a big water logged pile and extract pcbs and copper from vacuum tubes. I remember vividly breaking open a silicon grafix indigo with a pick hammer because of how heavy it was. If I knew what I knew back then what I've learned since then, I would have dragged it home and attempted to salvage it
Gee, I thought that NT stood for "Never Tested." Have you heard of Windows CEMENT? It's the convergence of Windows CE, Windows Me, and Windows NT into one operating system.
By the way, will you sell that AWE32? If so please contact me via the tube contact details or reply here! (Had exactly that model long ago and I miss it)
For me old hard drivers are very important if they work. Changing hard drive to SSD or Flash removes soul from retro hardware. You need to hear HDD head for full retro experience!
@@RetroHackShack spinning hard drives remind me of so many times in my IT career that my heart was broken by a failed one (even in RAID arrays) and had to pull an all nighter to recover something 😕. If you can't tell, I'm a huge fan of SSD's
The awe sound card is a really great find. One of the best cards before nice sound cards went away. The ram sockets aren't for a cache as such but for storing sound fonts!!!! You used to be able to buy sound fonts for the card and use it as a rompler style synthesiser. You could even play the sounds with a midi controller keyboard with a midi sequencer such as cubase or something. You can't buy sound fonts any more but there may be some hidden on the internet somewhere. I think the card also has built in general midi sounds.
Cool
Yeah they had some basic samples in ROM, but you could load much better ones if you had the extra RAM installed
Nice. I have acquired replacement RTC of that format from ebay. Took 2 tries to get a working one, but the computer was happy in the end with it.
I've used a Dremel like tool to go into the top of the Dallas chip right above where the battery is many times without issues. I go ahead and go "crazy" and make the hole wide enough to remove the CMOS battery completely. I've used 2 "AA" batteries that I Velcro to the case somewhere. It's really safe to go "crazy" on these chips. They have a normal chip with the battery and crystal soldered to the pins and encase the whole thing in a bigger epoxy shell. It's rather hard (if not impossible) to go too far and drill into the actual chip embedded inside. The chip inside is still being made and sold (without the epoxy shell) and people have made their own Dallas chip with a battery socket that fits in the original place.
I cut into a chip like that on a Commodore PC board. I regret cutting the internal frame to do it though. But everyone makes mistakes. I've never damaged a old computer computer on purpose
Suggestion for the AWE 32 card: Adhere a stick-on heatsink to it to help preserve that unreplaceable chip. Also, the RAM slots on that card are related to the MIDI functionality. If those slots are broken, upgraded replacements with mteal locking tabs can be had from Jameco or PE Connectors.
As for that Asus specific media bus slot, I've only seen a picture of a sound card that uses that slot from an Ebay seller in Bulgaria. Just look for that motherboard and you might find that sound card.
Yeah. There were about a dozen or so cards made for it.
what about the asus media card itself?
How hot is it supposed to get?
@@churblefurbles That's a good question but very hard to precisely answer unless you have a datasheet for the respective chip.
I would therefore approach this from a more general angle:
Silicon chips that aren't high performance CPUs or RAMs are often specified for operating temps from 0 to 70 degrees.
You will find a maximum spec of 70 degrees on the datasheets for the venerable SID sound chip and also for Yamaha chips.
That is the temperature on its outside and of course inside the chip, the silicon itself, gets much hotter.
And while there is a safety tolerance included you would need a thermometer to check how hot it really is.
But even if it is "only" 70 degrees we have another problem:
This stuff has been made about 30 years ago and chips do degrade over time.
And we aren't even talking about subpar manufacturing processes like with some of the early 80ies Commodore MOS chips.
A cooling sink would therefore still be a good idea to prevent driving this chip near its maximum spec and thus reduce the risk of failure.
Also, a bit of airflow these old cases never had (or needed) in the early 90ies would certainly help.
I love it! I remember when this stuff was still being sold, and how I was the coolest guy in school with my Pentium 2 based system
I do this in NYC (keeping the place disclosed lol) & I often come out with a gem every once in awhile. Best recent find was a full board that was chucked that still had a 10900K in it & 32GB of DDR4 ram. Assumed it was someone that had more money than patience as the box it was in was found in was that of a Asus Rog Z690 board. The board the CPU was in was shot but the CPU & Ram worked perfectly.
Good grief. That's crazy. Share that place with your friends at least. I give away some of the stuff I find or at least for what I paid.
Note on storing the battery: it can still die and leak even when not connected to anything. I had to clean out what appears to have been a 'spare' CR2032 battery in a holder that had no connections at all in an old electronic bathroom scale from a garage sale.
the 2x 30 pin simm slots on the AWE were for loading the sound patches - other cards that allowed that were the roland ones as well as the Gravis ultrasound cards
About 5 years ago I was tasked with cleaning out our IT closet at work. And there were AWE32's. Also 5 1/4 in 360, 1.2 floppy drives that are hard to come by these days.
AWE-32's a great find!
I know you've commented on it before, but I'm not sure you truly realize how lucky you are that your local e-waste allows items to go back out. Where I live, I think it requires bribes and coercion.
For sure!
The thing not booting from the A drive is indeed a problem with the Dallas chip. They do not at all hold any settings, not even through a warm reset and you ether get to boot from the Floppy - when the Harddrive is disconnected, or from the harddrive when both are connected.
This problem did my head in just weeks ago when I was servicing and reassembling a similiar system. I though I had a broken Floppy drive because of the seek also being switched off.
4:53 As cheap as it looks, that's an Intel-brand network card... I looked up the FCC ID to be sure. I do not know why they didn't brand the PCB itself, maybe this product was intended for OEM distribution.
I can tell you from first hand experience that Windows would see that card as an Intel PRO 10/100 by default and work perfectly.
the AWE32 is a mega score! and the RAM slots were for WAVE tables aka improved instruments for music, was really sweet. mobo is neat as well for the early MMX Pentiums
That AWE 32 sound card often go for $100 or more alone on eBay so a nice find.
I had one of those AWE32 cards, with 2MB of RAM in the 30pin SIMM sockets (Used for MIDI sound fonts from memory), but I also had the Yamaha XG wavetable daughterboard. It played a mean game of System Shock 🙂
(System Shock properly used the XG to generate some creepy dynamically changing background music)
I wish it had a wavetable
@@RetroHackShack I regret giving it to someone who has since thrown it all away 😞
@@RetroHackShack It does! It just doesn't have an Yamaha XG card but the AWE-32 was a wavetavble synth! You can add more wavetable sounds if you add that ram to the board. I think there was even once a not very legal XG soundfont... Now lost to time. The AWE-32 stuff was still something to do with ensoniq too??? (who made hardware midi synths)
You could have the segmented display display HI/LO instead of numbers. Also, I know you're north of SF, but if you ever are near the Hayward area in the East Bay, there is an e-waste place I frequent. I've found some real gems there. One being the Apple Extended Keyboard I I'm typing on right now with the orange Alps switches. I've found two IBM 5151's a bunch of XT's and a 5154. Also found a broken SE/30 which I recapped and got working. There was also Excess Solutions in San Jose, but sadly they have closed their doors. I'm glad I bought a bunch of caps and resistors and a bunch of other "junk" before they closed. Replaced many RIFA caps because I bought 20 of them. Awesome video. I learn a lot from your videos. Keep them coming!
Eddie's?
@@RetroHackShack YES!
Been there several times. His prices are a little high and I don't like the haggling. However, I am glad that he saved that stuff for us.
Was there really nothing in the documents? The existence of Morpheus and visual studio suggests the machine was used for something more interesting than the usual fare. No weird music choices, super low quality pirate movies or one of a kind programming projects?
Not that I saw.
Or porn??!! I can't tell you how much porn I used to find on PCs' that people used to leave out for garbage collection back in the day! Most people would simply forget to destroy or at least make an attempt to erase their hard drives before they disposed of their PCs' back then! Some times I would find some...ahem..."interesting" and even INCRIMINATING things on them! They were lucky that I am an honest guy.....well.....mostly anyway.....😂😂👍👍
Yeah. I always check for it because it's so funny when you find it. Most of the system I have checked lately have been repurposed for kids to use at some point in their life so no such luck.
Here in Poland it’s not allowed to take anything from recycling center. Unfortunately. The good part is that they often don’t look… and just weight your car when you enter and leave (it’s free service to leave equipment there)
Nice
The point of NT is that it does not boot to MS-DOS and it does not use real mode, it goes to 32bit protected mode. Take the drive and connect it to another 2000 Pro system or higher as drive D or higher and if it is not encrypted you should be able to see the contents if you log on using administrator access. Might have to set some directory/file permissions.
Yeah, but my way is more fun 😊 at least for me.
Great find! Let's hope they have a matching case in good condition next time : )
Yeah. Most of the time they are really dirty but at least cleanable. Nice channel BTW!
@@RetroHackShack Thanks!
I still have my Soundblaster AWE 32 that my late mom bought as a gift for me way back in the day in it's original box with all driver disks and manuals. It was a really cool card for its time. That and the AWE 64, if I remember correctly which was the better upgraded version. The extra memory slots were an interesting feature on the 32 that extended the sound banks or something like that...I think if you wanted. Eventually I started to get some compatibility issues with certain games if I remember, and was forced to go to a PCI slot sound card with newer supported drivers, but I really missed using that card with all its cool features! It's still a really great card for retro gaming rigs! 👍👍
That's awesome! Do you remember how much it cost at the time?
@@RetroHackShack I am afraid I don't because it was such a long time back, but it is possible that I may still have the receipt in the box or somewhere in my room. Often too, I notice that many of the receipts that I have kept has had the "ink" actually vanish from the paper because they were probably using an inkless printer that uses heat to print on heat sensitive paper. It kind of works in reverse as the paper is the ink, so to speak, instead of an ink nozzle or keys that strike a ribbon to print on paper. Either that or they use REAL CRAPPY ink! I will try and find the receipt if it's still around and actually visible to read and let you know if I find it. Thanks for the reply and be well! 👍👍
No worries. Just curious. I can look up the MSRP for it.
@@RetroHackShack Actually, I just found the receipt! It WAS still in the box! I bought it in an old LONG gone electronics store called The Wiz in 1997 for exactly $106.73 and my mom paid for it as a gift for me afterwards. Wow...25 years ago already! I'm getting old.....😕
@@RetroHackShack I also just found the box for my original 8 bit SoundBlaster 2.0 card that my girlfriend, now my wife, bought me as a birthday present years before I got the AWE 32. The price tag on the box says it was $59.97 at the time. I still have that card somewhere around, probably in one of my old PCs'. I lost track of it but I know I should still have it too.
Might as well stick a little heatsink on that creative chip.
I had a Hirens iso where you could easily reset a windows nt/xp/2000/7 password from a linux tool. Thank you for making these videos!
Cool. I used L0phtcrack back in the day.
Yeah I was gonna say you could have easily cracked the user password! I still have the Linux boot cd I used to use back in the xp days. I think you can still get it - offline NT password utility or something like that.
The reduced resolution back then was often a memory thing.
Try 1024 x 768 with 256 colors. That May work.
I cut into a Dallas chip like that. Crudely connected a newer tab type battery. Didn't do a great job but it seemed to work
The floppy seek is left over from very long ago, when the drive head(s) could stick to the floppy medium if the disk was left in the drive long enough. The seek would break the head(s) loose so the disk could spin.
I know you just misspoke about a sound card, but now I’m having fun imagining what a Creative Sound Cloud would be!
Lol. I didn't even realize.
@@RetroHackShack it was just once, not every time you mentioned it!
The ethernet card is actually made by Intel and should be decent ... long name is Intel PILA8460 Pro/100+ Network Management Adapter Card ... you can find it by searching for the product code at the end of the bar code sticker.
It is a common misconception that NT stood for New Technology. This has never been stated in any Microsoft documentation. One of the lead architects of NT came from DEC, where he designed VMS. Windows NT or "WNT" is each letter of VMS incremented by 1.
Yeah. I heard that too. I wonder why Bill Gates said it stood for New Technology in that Q and A he did?
@@RetroHackShack probably because he was a master of marketing above all else. It sounds better to give it its own meaning than to acknowledge the brilliant engineer's connection to non MS software.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane.
Same here. I had a very similar board around this time in one of my PCs that I built.
Dear Erin, thank you for this entertaining travel along the memory lane. As a MD, (in the last video I found out that you have diabetes type 1), I feel obliged to suggest to you to look into D-r Robert Bernstein (has a book named "Diabetes solution") . IMHO must read for any diabetic, especially those that have type 1). Best regards, D-r Riste Sekuloski, cardiologist.
A dremel and old pc parts always mean a 'like' from me.
LOL. Same here.
I had that exact same motherboard in 1996. First computer, p1 166mhz mmx
Awesome
I'm surprised the leave the hard drives in them (for security).
I'm so glad they do. For one, security should be the onus of the original owner. For two, if you're going to provide the service of anonymizing 25-year-old data, just wipe the disk -- don't destroy perfectly good vintage hardware "for security."
Preferably, anyone handling old PCs that knows enough to understand they have resale value and is concerned about privacy would also be aware that some OEM systems can't be restored to fully working condition without the original software. I've gotten a few Sony laptops that had their hard drives wiped or removed, and I've had a bear of a time tracking down restore discs. I've resorted to contacting sellers of OTHER laptops on eBay to ask if they would sell a copy of their original media. A lot of times, there's a utility (either in Windows or a boot option) to restore the drive to factory new condition, which is good enough to remove any potentially identifying information, but keeps the machine's original software load intact.
This carte-blanche "wipe or destroy the hard drive" advice that was going around for a while has really gotta stop! :-D
💯 Luckily this particular ewaste place doesn't have a wipe policy. If I am lucky enough to find a system before they disassemble it, the hard drive has probably not been touched.
Not one of those Dallas chips! Who would throw that out? The sound card alone is worth keeping.
I hated those IDE connectors and cables back then. I was so happy when SATA came along. As I recall, NT introduced the registry, something I learned to loathe.
Most of all my computers were found on e-waste, I have three Gravis ultrasound cards that works and originates from this kind of place.
Gravis Ultrasound!
First network server deployed on my own was in fact Novel Netware 3.12 *file server*
First network and everything else related done exclusively by myself *previous one was working for someone else* was in fact a Windows NT4 Server, this was around the same time I started getting into Linux actually.
Good job man! thanks ! gained a subscriber!
Awesome! Thanks.
Morpheus and AudioGalaxy were the shiz back in the day!
Nice video and great scrap save. I remembered there was a way to use a linux bootloader to reset the Windows admin password? That would save the work in needing to get rid of the Win 2000 and install Win 98.
Just discovered your channel. Subscribed!
Awesome
Great project. Thanks!
How do you find the ewaste to salvage?
Google maps. Look for ewaste places. Bring donuts 🙂
The lan card is a genuine intel 82559 10/100 adaptor.
Nice job getting up and running.
How about putting a heat sink on the video card's main chip to keep it cooler?
Perhaps
It’s really sad what people throw away. A lot of new stuff but a lot of vintage stuff too.
Agree
God there's so much old stuff that gets thrown into recycling at work that I'm not allowed to touch at all. :(
Oh man. So sad.
It's really not worth jump-starting those Dallas RTCs, IMO. For one thing, it's just not a great idea to parallel cells like that. It's "probably" fine, but really not good form.
For one, there is an updated part, still in production, that is a drop-in replacement -- DS12884. There are two 8s in the part number now, and it's branded by Maxim instead of Dallas. In addition to the potted modules, you can also get them as bare ICs where you provide your own battery.
I use a 12885 and made my own PCB with a CR2032 coin cell holder on top, so it's serviceable down the road. I wasn't the first, and there are a few different versions available online pre-built or as kits. No Dremel required. :-)
And about the video - are you trying to run the higher resolutions in hi-color mode? You need at least 2MB of VRAM to run 1024x768 in 64k colors, and 4MB to run in 24-bit color. It's entirely likely that card only has 1MB VRAM, so you can do 800x600 at hi-color, or 1024x768 @ 256 colors.
Yeah. I like your version. I almost built it be up to show, but I didn't have time.
I tried with 256 color, but couldn't get that to work.
Now I am kicking myself that I did not mention the replacement options in the video. Next time.
@@RetroHackShack Haha.. hey, the word's getting around these days that options exist, and that's why I posted -- just in case. I know a lot of people still like to do the in-place mod, but that just makes me wince, dumping charge into an old, non-rechargeable battery like that. But who knows. It could go 50 years and be totally fine.
On your IIsi jam in a SCSI Disk On Module (DOM).
if you have two modems, you can do local call center, call directly to the other card
Are you baiting me to show that next time? 🙂
@@RetroHackShack just a free suggestion, but why not :)
@@RetroHackShack but one thing, ring tone, dont remember when cards would generate that itself, of course one card could be the dial tone, if required in any case, or even a source to an analog phone ring tone generator
@@RetroHackShack I happen to be trained into military analog-digital phone systems (as well), lol
Yeah. That's what I was thinking about.
Great vid. Thanks. Didn't hook up the power for the drive and floppy?! I resemble that! :)
Yeah. Not even the motherboard at that point. So much for the build up.
@@RetroHackShack It was perfect. So much like life and all. I think it's better to show what works and what doesn't, of course. That getting things from e-waste sound like a dangerous idea for what space I have left around heh.
Yeah. I try to leave my mistakes in whenever I can.
there is a trick to straightening pins in a few seconds using a couple of credit cards. I do know the struggle
I'll try that next time
Some say that the tip of a mechanical pencil works really well too, after you remove the lead from it of course! 👍👍
4:53 this Ethernet card is really a cheap one. Holding bracket is not even screwd to pcb. I see that it is hold only by those bend pegs.
Yep. I had boxes full of them back when I was doing support.
I thought it was interesting they were running visual studio which would have been rare back then. There might be a developers source code on the computer.!!
You also didn't look in my downloads or my music!
Maybe put a little heatsink on the hot chip? Heatsinks must be easy to find at the e-waste... old sat set top boxes etc etc
Yes. You could although I have since learned that this chip always ran hot.
Boot up Floppy Seek.? i'm only at that point in the video so I don't know whether or not you figured this out later.. If so then please accept my sincere apologies for my inappropriate outburst LOL.
;) My first PC was an all ISA 386DX2 No CPU Fan required and 1 pancaked (Flat) CMOS Battery so setting all CMOS settings Every power flip was literally second nature..
I THINK data sheets could reveal either multitool grinding locations or the details of the external pins for an external 2032 button cell.
I still have the PC in the Attic and stumbled across the 8 x Quarter Meg Simms all donated me of course I can't throw them away i'm sure a mate of mine gave me a dual CPU 486 I'll have to look for just to see if it works. :)
Cheers (Richard) < That's Me.. Don't worry I'm not getting confused and calling you, me.. Oh Dear.. Nurse...!!!
It seems an age away despite the knowledge and skillset I had with this era of PC and electronic tech I don't feel I'd trust building and sourcing the parts for a PC from the last 5 years.
So I'm happily resigned to a Shop Bought P.C. now so I don't have to read and match the interface clocks, pin details and all those unfeasibly complicated job it now seems to be.
TTFN
Nope not 1 486 or 586 for that matter *AM 5x86 DX/3/4 etc
BUT, it will take Pentiuns, Pentiuns MMX, AMD K6, K6-2 and K6-3 *though some may need some voltage regulator tricks or adapters.Oh yeah, almost forgot, them Cyrix CPUS of the age as well, though those should have water cooling, no I'm not joking I had a PR200+ LITERALY MELT ITSELF when the FAN broke down while using Autocad for renders. The metal top of the CPU was about 45 degrees sideways, not centered at 90 degrees angles as expected.
no need to crack windows passwords even since you're not looking for covert access, in future try reseting password using chntpw (easiest perhaps with SystemRescue livecd)
You can bypass the W2K password by deleting the SAM file. Just rename it.
Boot with your Freedos and change to the \systemroot\System32\Config folder.
Enter ren sam sam.old to rename the SAM, or simply delete the file.
Restart the system.
At the Windows 2000 logon prompt, enter the Administrator account with no password.
Cool. I will try this next time.
The MAC address on the NIC is an Intel registered MAC
NT does not stand for "New Technology", that is a very popular misconception. See "Dave's Garage", he puts the record straight.
Cool. I'll check it out. That's what I was told in my official MCSE training 🙂
@@RetroHackShack I've been an MCSE and an MCT since 2000 as well, and I was repeating the same stuff! But Dave wrote Task Manager, so I believe his word over others. :D
For sure. I trust Dave to set the record straight.
Would it make sense to add a heatsink to the AWE32?
No. I still have my OG AWE32, and I used to leave my computer on back in the day for remote access (mIRC shell scripts). It's totally fine. Although, I don't remember it being THAT hot. Still, if it's hot enough to need a heat sink, something's wrong that will either sort itself out (by blowing another component that you can then locate and fix), or the chip is going to fail anyway, and that'll be that. If you can touch it at all, it's not heat that's going to kill it.
another channel necroware created an opensource replacement part for the dallas chip.
Yeah. I have seen that one.
Obviously an MSDOS boot disk will not see an NTFS partition. Linux will *well one that is not too early that is*
Or the NT install disks/cds which do have a console
The last time i looked at a pent2 Around the Dinosaur age
🔥🔥🔥
I remember using Windows 2000 instead of Windows 98 and its problems.
There were downloadable boot disks that would let you reset passwords on win2k and let you into that users account without destroying the win2k install. Oh well 😔
Yeah. If there was anything interesting on there I would have.
Hmm, on that age hardware I'd rather use LILO *simpler and would do the trick usually*
I once was paid to smash 100's of computers open from a big water logged pile and extract pcbs and copper from vacuum tubes. I remember vividly breaking open a silicon grafix indigo with a pick hammer because of how heavy it was. If I knew what I knew back then what I've learned since then, I would have dragged it home and attempted to salvage it
Ouch!
Gee, I thought that NT stood for "Never Tested." Have you heard of Windows CEMENT? It's the convergence of Windows CE, Windows Me, and Windows NT into one operating system.
Yes. Amazing what this country wastes.
Cool, now slap a voodoo 5 5500 pci gpu in there and load up some era correct games
Built on New Technology Technology? Lol
By the way, will you sell that AWE32? If so please contact me via the tube contact details or reply here! (Had exactly that model long ago and I miss it)
And forget not to add 8Mb of RAM to it you can do wonders with it :)
If I find another one I will let you know.
For me old hard drivers are very important if they work. Changing hard drive to SSD or Flash removes soul from retro hardware. You need to hear HDD head for full retro experience!
The sound triggers so many memories.
@@RetroHackShack exactly!
@@RetroHackShack spinning hard drives remind me of so many times in my IT career that my heart was broken by a failed one (even in RAID arrays) and had to pull an all nighter to recover something 😕. If you can't tell, I'm a huge fan of SSD's
I've been there.
721383-006 resolves to an Intel Pro 100 nic.