This takes me back. Growing up poor, all of my first computers were made from old POS micro ATX parts that I scavenged at the e-waste dropoff. I never had much luck keeping everything inside the case, so it all looked like a prop from a bad SciFi. Those computers, and fixing all that junk is what eventually led to a degree and career in Electrical Engineering. I can look back with pride where once there was just shame.
In my case, I got the hand-me-downs from my parents, and whoever they were fixing/upgrading computers for. My room was filled with them. Unfortunately, I ditched most of it years ago, something I'm still regretting, because you pay money to get that "junk" now. Fortunately, I saved a few systems (two of my Tandys), from that fate.
@@RdandTrk1 i grew up in rich family but then my parents kicked me out of house and now i used to beg and i am proud of myself and my life is now fully settled
Ah, the jumper settings for voltage. That takes me back! When I was 17 years old in early 1999, my dad’s coworker bought a 300 MHz AMD K6 in combination with a weird motherboard that only SLIGHTLY undervolted the CPU. He gave them to me and I built a very stable Windows 98/DOS machine from it. Almost never crashed on me. I still have the 16MB Voodoo3 3000 AGP graphics card I bought for that build. That also included 64 MB RAM, a SoundBlasrer AWE64 plus a DVD decoder card. I also bought a 17-inch CTX monitor to go with it. With the money I saved from my part-time job and my high school graduation money, I had a decently tricked-out machine for the time. I’ve been thinking lately about rebuilding something close to that system (without the motherboard and CPU mismatch). I think the case is still in my dad’s shed, too. Time to start gathering parts!
That is a really great rig. The Voodoo would benefit from a faster CPU, but the K6 isn't a bad chip itself. If you still have the parts nice, if not, well, et your wallet ready. Stuff like an AWE64 and basically all voodoo cards are expensive.
When you were talking about how hard it was to find small speakers, I literally thought to myself, "hey those old Cambridge Soundworks speakers I have would be perfect!" Imagine my surprise when you pulled out the exact same set!
Hi dude! I've only just discovered your channel. It's really great to see these old computers being set up again. I started doing this sort of thing for a living in 1995, and in 1997 I landed a job at Acclaim in the UK. A lot of my work involved trying out the latest PC hardware and testing our current games on it. We got sent things like the first 3d graphics cards to try out, including the first 3DFX cards. So seeing you doing what I was doing 25 years ago is a really nice trip down memory lane. Also, it's cool to see you running ReVolt and Turok - both Acclaim games. I worked at the studio that made ReVolt - some of my ideas are in that game. I got to play test some of the Turok games too. If you want a suggestion, if you've got an original copy of Forsaken give that a go - at the time it was the best looking 3D accelerated game available. It was developed as a multiplayer though, the single player game was an afterthought and isn't the best, but it does at least look really nice. Best wishes from the UK. James.
My Dad was a huge fan of the Socket 370 "Book PC" machines. We had one connected to each TV. My dad would sit on the couch and download movies and music from Kazaa on it.
I remember a colleague seeking me out to help fix his Book PC. Paid through the teeth to get a replacement PSU, and that was 15 years ago. I hate to think what it would cost now.
your dad and I would get along! I have hdmi and usb ports extended from my bedroom PC to the living room. Can watch movies, stream or play a few console ports with no lag and no large PC case next to the TV cluttering up the place
Just discovered your channel and I'm basically hooked. I started taking apart/rebuilding PCs as a young child during the late 90's and early 2000's, so these videos are a total blast of nostalgia. You've really rekindled my interest in retro builds. Keep on doing what you do!
39:53 If you run Quake directly from DOS, it will offer you resolutions up to 1280x1024. Because VBE 3.0 or something like that. On Windows, that doesn‘t work. Great system, fantastic video, subscribed! :D
I only ever had Quake on the Mac. If I remember it right, it had full video resolutions up to 1280x1024 available as well, but my Mac could only do software render because it was an all-in-one Power Mac. It didn't have discrete video, but it was weird to see him only have 320x resolutions on Quake in Software render. I subbed as well, great build.
13:35 there's actually a notch cut in the side of the fan housing directing air sideways toward the heatsink. There's arent any holes in the bottom so it won't be cooling anything beneath the fan.
Makes me thing about a low-profile cooler with a radial fan to the side. Might be a bit overkill, but better safe then sorry. I'd rather go bit bigger with the cooling if it means there is less risk of overheating.
Yeh and even if it were blowing down through any holes -- the metal part that the fan is attached to would cool down, so heat generated by the CPU still has a colder part to dissipate towards. I think it's kinda neat how "flat" they made the whole board!
Not sure what you're referring to. His PoS box definitely has EDO memory, it was clearly on the label, but i'm pretty sure Okurka is referring to the similar slightly smaller board used as a comparison that had EDO/SIMM (4 slots) as well as 2 longer SDRAM slots. You could use either, but not both types
Yeah, a lot of PC's during the transition period to Pentiums had both SIMM and DIMM slots on them, so people could use some of their old memory .. or be smart and get the new style memory. But hey, it was a bunch of point-of-sale PC's, so no wonder they used the old stuff first.
This was a cool project. Thanks for filming it and sharing it with us. I like that you told us about the all the problems you had. I'm sure behind the scenes most of these retro projects have a slew of issues. But all we ever see is the shiny finished product with everything working great.
Much respect sir! I would be swearing that whole time while putting it together. The last thing I would want is an audience or to worry about filming. Makes me regret I had no place to store the 15 to 25 POS systems that ended up getting scrapped when I helped close my local Sears. They were all wiped but nobody bought 'em in the liquidation sale. Great build! Thanks for sharing this one.
I repaired many of the Toshiba Librettos back in the day. They were a real POS to work on. Yes they're 100% laptop parts, they were a marvel of miniaturization back in those days.
Late Socket 7 with MMX is my favourite era for retro builds. You should follow through on some of those changes you thought of. A few additional tips: MMX is a middling Win98 platform, but is an absolute beast DOS rig. And ever since Phil showed MMX chips are very unique using setmul in DOS, that should be the target. The Voodoo 3 can be found in a short-board formfactor, leaving the space for an ISA soundcard. But they run super hot, so intake fans are called for, and maybe even dremel mod case venting holes. Test the CPU heasink fan flipped from Push to Pull. It may not matter. A replacement fan in the PSU too. LS120 SuperDrive runs on IDE, letting you lose the floppy ribbon cable in addition to the floppy drive istelf. It would limit you to one hard disk, but the LS120 storage (and USB) mitigates that. A CompactFlash instead of SD adapter may allow it to recognize and format larger HDD space. Check some drive tool software too.
The fan seems to be a rather regular axial fan with a hole in the side to get the air out, mounting some sort of duct over part of the assembly might help bringing the air into the fins. And while the LS120 is a nice idea, he needs another drive on the other end to have practical use of it. I'd rather go with a nice CF adapter for swappable storage and use the ethernet port at the back to transfer files.
On the fan, if you look closely, you'll see it has an intake opening on the side with the fins, and it's solid underneath. So it will draw some amount of air through the fins and exhaust them on to your soundblaster. The S3 is completely out of the airflow. Edit: after seeing the final build...well, I was assuming there was a way to get air into the fan to begin with :D
I come back to this video every few months and. Honestly? My appreciation for what you've managed only grows over time. You took essentially a cash register, and turned it into a dos era gaming monster.
When I first started in IT we sold a lot of systems like this (486s at the start then later pentium), basically, if you went somewhere in the 90's/early 2000s and encountered a touch screen, something very similar to this was powering it. Fast food places in particular. The "3d capable" integrated graphics was to facilitate the touch screen PoS software which was actually pretty demanding on 2d, especially when you consider places like McD's used custom icons, logos and menu images to help make the transaction process more smooth and efficient. This was the dawn of the modern GUI and the ease of use movement. The CPUs were often high end because the last thing any company wanted was the disruption of upgrades and down time every 3 - 6 months (tech moved fast back then) so you got the best and hoped it would stay relevant for at least a year or 2. These things were also expensive, the custom PCB and proprietary connectors alone added a bundle to the cost. Modularity in the PC space was well under way in the main stream by then but in the niche markets we still saw a lot of proprietary hardware. Looking at this thing brings back nightmares of spending weeks trying to get a whole chain networked and updating/reading from the central database at the chain's HQ, a disgusting hodge podge of LAN, 24.4 modems and coaxial that all had to play nice together, respond to wake signals and be updated and ready to use at 7am when the staff came in to work. Networking is a bit of a chore even today but back then you needed to be a programmer, tech and experimental physicist just to get everything working right. Being a tech back then people thought you were some kind of magician and honestly, there were not far wrong. Most people today have no idea how far we have come and how easy tech is to set up an use by comparison.
Years ago I had a "Book PC II" which appears to be the successor to this design: ua-cam.com/video/b8VnW5Po7A4/v-deo.html It uses the weirdo VIA C3 "1 Giga Pro" processor, which despite its name, does not actually run at 1 GHz.
I watched this video when it first came out and set up an Ebay alert for PDA 2000. After years of waiting, (and lots of motherboard-only and unrelated Personal Data Assistant alerts later) I finally found one for a very reasonable price and purchased it moments ago. I just had to pop back here, re-watch the video, and celebrate the end of my quest! I am planning on building a Win 3.1 box and replaying some of my old cd-roms that resist emulation on modern hardware. I am certain I wouldn't have a chance of getting this in working condition if it were not for your hard work and resulting video. Thanks for igniting my obsession with this little PC!
That dumbass heatsink probably doesn't help. It doesn't even look like there's and room under the fan for the air to blow. If you want to under-clock a CPU, you use the clock and multiplier jumpers, not the voltage jumpers.
@@BlackEpyon I'm so glad we don't have to do that anymore. I went from a Pentium III 500 to a 1ghz and had no idea about the jumpers back then. I eventually got it working but I'm lucky I didn't fry it.
More likely the unit had an issue and someone changed the cpu with whatever thay could find at the time without changing any of the jumpers. it kinda worked and probably drove cashews nuts for years. i've seen it happen more than a few times. Bad power cycle in the store takes out the psu and cpu they fix it without fully configuring it.
@@BlackEpyon Look at the fan closer. Mainly between the fan and the fins on the heatsink. There's an opening. It presumably draws air down and out that hole towards the fins effectively blowing air over 'em. It does not, however, have a lot of room to draw air in as i'm sure it's damn near touching that Voodoo2 card, but that's how it works. It doesn't draw air 'through' it, so it doesn't matter what's underneath.
A time ago I found a P4 slim machine and made a whole process to clean and bring back to life. Although it's small, yours is way more than mine, and a perfect Console PC to put on a collection.
I remember in 2004-08, I would get a lot of old, junk point of sale and kiosk computers. They were mostly designed in the mid to late 90s, but as time advanced, the companies would slap whatever parts they could find in there. In 2008, I can remember finding this weird, low profile case. It had a date stamp of 1994 on the back. Inside was an underclocked Pentium 3 650Mhz, in a gigabyte 440BX baby AT motherboard, with an ATI Rage Fury Pro AGP card crammed into a weird, crooked, right angle AGP adapter, a single 64MB stick of RAM, a generic IDE CD drive with no face plate, that couldn't be accessed unless you opened the case, and a 200ish MB flash drive that plugged directly into the primary IDE header on the board. Here's the kicker. The system was manufactured by some company to run some kind of big screen display to show static images, and this particular one was made in 2004. It was less than 5 years old at the time.
Thats a dual plane cpu (MMX extension plane 2.8v) which means if you had it setup as a p54 rather than a p55 then you were putting 3.45v through that plane rather than 2.8v and thats why it was not stable. I know 2 year old vid but it played in the back ground while I was working and figured I'd mention this for anyone else looking to find out that issue. BTW with proper cooling you can run that @266.
Wow! I certainly see the love/hate relationship with this thing! I was so happy when you said Voodoo2 - I was thinking it and you did it!! If this rig was mine, I would choose to remove the mechanical HDD because of the thermals. I could also see adding a 2nd SD card device to replace the missing storage space due to the BIOS drive size limitation... that and I like having my games installed onto a separate drive from the OS. FYI you can swap 3dfx splash screen by migrating some files: 3dfxspl*.dll I believe. I say this because I've seen the FastVoodoo2 4.6 driver vastly outperform the reference one, albeit on a Pentium III system. 3dfx Glide is said to have a much lower CPU overhead than Direct3D so I would expect the "3dfx custom driver" to run better than Direct3D on socket 7 machines. There's so much I'd like to ramble on and ask about with this really neat PC but I'll cut myself off and just say I WANT ONE!
Great find! Shuttle used to make super small cases and motherboards for small builds. They were focusing on the multimedia pc in your entertainment center market, but that never really took off like the industry seemed to think it would.
Cambridge SoundWorks! Maaaan, my dad had a quadraphonic pair of those exact speakers, that brings back memories. They were absolutely incredible for their size! Unfortunately ours started having connection issues and in the end, we got a whole new computer setup which included new speakers. They were a pair of Dell 5.1 speakers that my dad still uses today, though the rear wireless dual-speaker...thing sucks. You have to turn it up until you go deaf for it to connect properly.
I hope you know on that smaller board you can only run 4 30 pin simms or 2 72/168 pin dimms. Those 2 you thought were expansion slots are actually ram slots. That cpu fan is absolutely redundant. It needs a blower type low profile fan. It's not gonna move any air along that sink. Goofiest desktop I've ever seen. This company didn't think the design through very well. Of course components got hot back then but not quite as hot as they started getting in the early 2000's. I'd find a way to modify that case and try to add in 2 80 mm fans.
Very nice! Would love to see it after a retro bright treatment though. Also curious if it could get a Silverstone FPS01 integrated for ease of future use.
I was a field tech in POS around 1995 and most of the stuff was 386/486 but I remember seeing a pos system running Windows 95 with a mouse and wondering WHY. One retailer was still using a 1970's system with dual 8 inch floppies
Damnit the cooling compulsive person in me had a difficult time watching this system being put together. I really love your idea but I would modify the crap out of that case, use a different CPU cooler with a blower, install heatsinks on the voodoo, remove the HDD and use dual SD cards, increase the airflow of the PSU or replace it with a PICO one. Thanks for the video I will keep an eye for one of these!
And all of that would be absolutely foolish and pointless. Shit back then didn't need insane cooling to perform correctly. Anyway it'd ruin the entire legitimacy of the build.
@@whoevertf back then I had a PII 300 in big tower case full of 80mm Nidec fans and 2 big blowers pointing directly to my voodoo2 sli and tnt2, its a little bit of a stretch calling non legit whatever you decide people were or not doing back then... also back then I didn't gave a crap about my hardware longevity new and faster 3d hardware appeared every 6 months that's not the case any longer.
this is where i started :D Im 33 now but i remember being around 10 years old and my grandma would take me to good will and other thrift stores weekly and id pick up 486 and pentium computers every week! i didnt know much about computers back then but it was a blast taking computers apart and piecing them together, it was a simple time and felt great joy in doing the most simple tasks on a computer! i really miss that time!! now i have an i9 gtx1070ti, 32gb ram 2 m2 ssd drives in raid 0 and the feeling i get from it is like nothing that i got from those old 486 and pentium computers running dos games and early windows apps!! we were poor and got free dial up internet from kaymart.. i was only a kid but back then i knew enough to use a dedicated server to dial up to that connection then route it through the network to my main pc to avoid all the ads that came along with that free internet software on the host pc,, waiting 3 mins to load a pic of a naked girl lol im stoned and rambling GREAT VIDEO!
Not all Win98SE CD-ROM discs were actually bootable - in fact, I don’t think any of mine ever were. There was this El Torito standard allowing PC BIOSes to boot from CD-ROM, but the CD disc had to have the filesystem laid out properly supporting it. Windows 2000 was the first Windows install CD I owned that booted, and was very neat! Maybe the Windows ME disc is a bootable CD?
The point when having a boot floppy is essential. I'm actually working up "updating" the 98 SE cd to include basic drivers and updates to save myself the trouble
Haha i use a 4.1 set of those speakers on my TV, they do sound pretty sweet for their size. Equally do not have the stands for them, so they're just sat flat on the tv bench with the rears on top of the front speakers
I haven’t seen a lot of your content, but for me, this video solidified your place right alongside our boy at LGR in the UA-cam Tech Channels royal court. Great work on the machine, and just as importantly, excellent work with the production.
This is like a wet dream for me. I dream of one day having a whole stack of tiny vintage computers. Just get old thin clients and pos systems, and itx systems or similar if available and or new enough. Clean it up, upgrade the cpus as high as you can, max out the ram (when needed) and replace the storage with flash. By doing this you could cover every single era of hardware needed to play every computer game ever made natively, all in one small corner of the house. Hook everything up to a few different monitors from different eras to cover all the resolutions and colors combos, and use display switches to instantly choose what system and monitor you want to use. It would be a beautiful thing.
Those "expansion slots" on the "normal" socket-7 motherboard are PC-66 or PC-100 RAM slots. I've had a few that had both 72-pin EDO and PC-100 RAM slots. You can't use both sets at once, but these super-7 motherboards were really nice for upgrading.
As long as you're not using cable select, and most 40-pin cables didn't support it anyways. The motherboard is probably ATA-66 anyways, in which case, the cable you use doesn't really matter.
This video has warranted a subscribe from me! I love old PC’s but hate old cases, this looked to be a huge pain in the a** and I’m incredibly impressed at the results 👏
What a brilliant design and you were able to cram so much into it too. The CPU cooler was very clever and quite adequate for a Pentium 1 chip. I have a thing for SFF desktops. Cheers
The compact, no wasted space compression of parts of this build gives me flashbacks to my "Tacky" build... It was an Apple Color Classic (the CC and CCII were the only of the original compact all-in-one form factor Macs with a color screen) modified to have a DVD/CDRW drive, the Apple TV/Video/FM system, a PCI DVD decoder, a Power PC 603e motherboard, ethernet, and a connector for an external floppy drive... All packed into the heavily modified analog+motherboard chassis. I've been itchin' for a retro Mac again, something to run Mac OS 9 on, and I feel like I should dig that thing out of mothballs and restore it. It could use some nice upgrades, like flash storage. I used an IDE controller so I could support larger hard drives and the DVD/CDRW drive, but maybe a USB card would be better suited. I could drop a thumb drive on the inside of the computer as a storage drive, and use a small CompactFlash IDE adapter on the built in IDE port and boot from that. That, or I could try finding one of those USB/IDE combo cards, but I have no clue if any were ever compatible with macs that old.
30:18 those speakers caught me totally off guard. Those are the same speakers my dad has for his PC to this day, so when I was thinking tiny speakers, I immediately thought of them. It was almost like you read my damn mind. Bravo, good sir.
I have wonderful memories of those years, I feel much more connected to computer graphics from the 70s/80s than today where everyone is chasing FPS and getting lost in a glass of water, at the same time this reminds me that I'm getting old. ...
When he was complaining about the Sound Blaster speakers being too big I literally thought "man he should just use the Cambridge Soundworks speakers I got", and then he does just that! Been using those speakers for all eternity and still am! They sound amazing! Great video!
The two expansion slots you mentioned are 168 pin SDRAM DIMM Slots :) Many Socket 7 boards were in the transition stage from EDO SIMM slots to SDRAM DIMM slots so you could choose between EDO or SDRAM. Really cool time in computing.
Working on that machine reminds me of my Packard Bell 486 PC I first got in 1992. It was in a fairly compact desktop case which was roomy enough with only stock components. It too had a riser card for 4 ISA slots with the CPU socket nearly centered right below the ISA cards. Over the course of its life I replaced the 5 1/4 floppy with a CD-ROM drive. Added a small SCSI card for an external SCSI ZIP drive, a NE2000 BNC 10 mbit NIC card, a USR 28.8 bps modem & a sound card w/ CD-ROM interface to the ISA slots (IDE CD-ROM drives were not a thing yet.) Added more RAM, added 128 KB of L2 directly onto the motherboard, added a 2nd 1.2 GB HDD which had to be double sided taped to the top of the PSU and there was no-where else for it to fit in the case! I also had to use disk management software for the 2nd HDD as the BIOS would only see up to a 528 MB HDD properly. And I also replaced the 486 DX2 66 mhz CPU with a AMD 5x86 133 mhz chip which also required a 5 volt to 3.3 volt adapter be sandwiched in the CPU socket. I had to place a small piece of rubber between the top of the heatsink & fan and the modem in order to keep the modem from grounding out onto the heatsink! Cable management was an absolute nightmare too. Amazingly that machine lasted until around the time the PC in this video was probably made as the Pentium MMX chips were just about to be released when I finally scraped together enough money to build a new PC with at first a super cheap AMD K5 chip and later an AMD K6 233 mhz CPU.
For me, it took seeing it next to a 24" LCD monitor to really understand just how small this system is. Very impressive considering the use of standard sized components. And oh, by the way, the CPU fan blows sideways, not down. Look at the casing of the fan itself.
I was really sceptical when you first said it was a PoS system, but it turned out great! That tiny monitor and the Voodoo 2 are a perfect match. 640x480 is just right, you might get away with 800x600 for a few games, but you really need SLI to get smooth performance. And I love that it comes with the onboard S3 chip for 2D. That was actually the same combo I had back in the day! I originally had an P166MMX with an S3 card that I added a Voodoo 2 card to. I remember Quake 2 only just ran on the S3 card, but after I added the Voodoo 2, it was so much smoother, and the lighting just blew me away! I showed my friend who had a 233MMX with an S3 card, and he wasn't impressed, so I switched back to the S3 and he was shocked at the difference. He didn't even notice the lighting until I switched back to the Voodoo 2. Anyway, great video as always. The presentation and flow in this one was very good, really takes you on a journey!
Another great video. 10:54 My great uncle, who was a field tech for POS systems like this in the 90s, said these design decisions were made in order to force buyers into service contracts.
I love it, absolutely awesome build. Big computers are great but these little machines are just special to me. Reminds me of my own Olivetti 386 and HM Systems 286 in terms of size all be it yours is even smaller and of course multiple times faster. That wee monitor just sits to well also. A true period correct sleeper as you said. Its amazing just how many games run fine on this system. So many people are building pentium 4 windows 98 machines. I think some have forgotten just how well all these old games play on the period correct hardware. Tempted to head to ebay now and start looking for POS systems
Great video! Just find your channel and subscribed. I was 14 in 1998, so this is right in the middle of my PC gaming playground chats... HL, Quake, Red Alert, Kingpin, MDK, System Shock 2, Age Of Empires 1+2... Good Times.
Thats a very cool and unique processor cooler. Not sure why you called it dumb as it's actually a pretty clever bit of engineering. It must've been adequate enough to have made it into the final product. It's a turnoff seeing retro PC enthusiasts laughing or scoffing at the very things that make vintage computers so interesting
thats fun this is your first time! yeah things have come a LONG way, i don't really miss having to spend a whole day loading drivers, but you can't really match the true excitement of your downloads finally finishing. like we actually used to have stuff download over night.
Point of sale computers have extra cache built-in.
But do you have to open the drawer to use it?
It took me a while lol.
But isn't it requires additional casher?
Downvoted due to punnery.😁
get out
that tickled me
This takes me back. Growing up poor, all of my first computers were made from old POS micro ATX parts that I scavenged at the e-waste dropoff. I never had much luck keeping everything inside the case, so it all looked like a prop from a bad SciFi.
Those computers, and fixing all that junk is what eventually led to a degree and career in Electrical Engineering. I can look back with pride where once there was just shame.
cool. what games did you play.
In my case, I got the hand-me-downs from my parents, and whoever they were fixing/upgrading computers for. My room was filled with them. Unfortunately, I ditched most of it years ago, something I'm still regretting, because you pay money to get that "junk" now. Fortunately, I saved a few systems (two of my Tandys), from that fate.
I love your story.
@@RdandTrk1 i grew up in rich family but then my parents kicked me out of house and now i used to beg and i am proud of myself and my life is now fully settled
@@arpitagarwal9891 I´m crying rigth now for you brave soul. Tell us more!!!!
Thought this was LGR when I saw the thumbnail and that's fine by my book.
It took me until the end of the video when I scrolled down to smash like... now I discovered a new channel :')
@@keyspirits95 This channel used to be called "AkBKukU"
@@RWL2012 old times, eh
I was confused and thought this was Technology Connections. Forgot he changed the channel name a while back.
@@RWL2012 Makes sense why I don't remember subscribing to Tech Tangents.
Ah, the jumper settings for voltage. That takes me back!
When I was 17 years old in early 1999, my dad’s coworker bought a 300 MHz AMD K6 in combination with a weird motherboard that only SLIGHTLY undervolted the CPU. He gave them to me and I built a very stable Windows 98/DOS machine from it. Almost never crashed on me. I still have the 16MB Voodoo3 3000 AGP graphics card I bought for that build. That also included 64 MB RAM, a SoundBlasrer AWE64 plus a DVD decoder card. I also bought a 17-inch CTX monitor to go with it. With the money I saved from my part-time job and my high school graduation money, I had a decently tricked-out machine for the time.
I’ve been thinking lately about rebuilding something close to that system (without the motherboard and CPU mismatch). I think the case is still in my dad’s shed, too. Time to start gathering parts!
Давай!
That is a really great rig. The Voodoo would benefit from a faster CPU, but the K6 isn't a bad chip itself. If you still have the parts nice, if not, well, et your wallet ready. Stuff like an AWE64 and basically all voodoo cards are expensive.
When you were talking about how hard it was to find small speakers, I literally thought to myself, "hey those old Cambridge Soundworks speakers I have would be perfect!" Imagine my surprise when you pulled out the exact same set!
"Heat may be an issue"
*puts all the cables in front of the only exhaust fan*
It's not like he had any choice in where to put the cables
Blackadder75 could have made a shorter cable though
31:47
>[SD card access sounds]
This is a fantastic little build. Masochistic, but it's got everything anyone would want from that era. I dig it.
masochistic is so the right word. plug and PRAY!
It obviously came with 3D integrated graphics so you can have the 3D Maze screensaver running when you're not using it lol.
I know someone who’d point out that screensaver makes use of raytracing lol
That screensaver is actually software rendered, doesn't use 3D hardware at all.
Hi dude! I've only just discovered your channel. It's really great to see these old computers being set up again. I started doing this sort of thing for a living in 1995, and in 1997 I landed a job at Acclaim in the UK. A lot of my work involved trying out the latest PC hardware and testing our current games on it. We got sent things like the first 3d graphics cards to try out, including the first 3DFX cards. So seeing you doing what I was doing 25 years ago is a really nice trip down memory lane.
Also, it's cool to see you running ReVolt and Turok - both Acclaim games. I worked at the studio that made ReVolt - some of my ideas are in that game. I got to play test some of the Turok games too. If you want a suggestion, if you've got an original copy of Forsaken give that a go - at the time it was the best looking 3D accelerated game available. It was developed as a multiplayer though, the single player game was an afterthought and isn't the best, but it does at least look really nice.
Best wishes from the UK.
James.
You truly had the best job ever, in the best moment ever.
"And Maybe two expansion slots"
Those are RAM slots for SDR DIMMS....
I've had a few of those super-7 motherboards. Great for upgrading.
My Dad was a huge fan of the Socket 370 "Book PC" machines. We had one connected to each TV. My dad would sit on the couch and download movies and music from Kazaa on it.
I remember a colleague seeking me out to help fix his Book PC. Paid through the teeth to get a replacement PSU, and that was 15 years ago. I hate to think what it would cost now.
your dad and I would get along! I have hdmi and usb ports extended from my bedroom PC to the living room. Can watch movies, stream or play a few console ports with no lag and no large PC case next to the TV cluttering up the place
@@mashakos1 You need Plex in your life lol
@@GTFour you dont get it. Plex doesnt magically make latency disappear. Streaming is garbage for games
Just discovered your channel and I'm basically hooked. I started taking apart/rebuilding PCs as a young child during the late 90's and early 2000's, so these videos are a total blast of nostalgia. You've really rekindled my interest in retro builds. Keep on doing what you do!
You need to get a matching cash drawer to hide upgrades (like more storage or relocate a hidden optical drive so you can move your cards around)!
39:53 If you run Quake directly from DOS, it will offer you resolutions up to 1280x1024. Because VBE 3.0 or something like that. On Windows, that doesn‘t work.
Great system, fantastic video, subscribed! :D
I only ever had Quake on the Mac. If I remember it right, it had full video resolutions up to 1280x1024 available as well, but my Mac could only do software render because it was an all-in-one Power Mac. It didn't have discrete video, but it was weird to see him only have 320x resolutions on Quake in Software render. I subbed as well, great build.
For me, installing Display Doctor gave me more options with limited video cards.
All those cards and drives fitting perfectly into the tiny case is so satisfying to watch. Talk about the elaborate work to get it all connected!
13:35 there's actually a notch cut in the side of the fan housing directing air sideways toward the heatsink. There's arent any holes in the bottom so it won't be cooling anything beneath the fan.
Makes me thing about a low-profile cooler with a radial fan to the side. Might be a bit overkill, but better safe then sorry. I'd rather go bit bigger with the cooling if it means there is less risk of overheating.
Yeh and even if it were blowing down through any holes -- the metal part that the fan is attached to would cool down, so heat generated by the CPU still has a colder part to dissipate towards.
I think it's kinda neat how "flat" they made the whole board!
Little 3d printed clip over plastic shroud would help direct air entirely over the heatsink too
@@HappyBeezerStudios *think *than
@ch282 How is a fifteen year old graphics card modern?
A decade and a half is an eternity when it comes to computers.
5:57 Those are PC100 SDRAM slots on your PCCHIPS MB-M550-512K motherboard.
I've got a PCChips M570. I used it for a Pentium 120 build. I've got better processors, but that kinda defeats the point of the build.
Yeah, how does he not know that? O_o
Looks like EDO SIMMS sticks to me
EDIT: yeah those are EDO and not SDRAM
Not sure what you're referring to. His PoS box definitely has EDO memory, it was clearly on the label, but i'm pretty sure Okurka is referring to the similar slightly smaller board used as a comparison that had EDO/SIMM (4 slots) as well as 2 longer SDRAM slots. You could use either, but not both types
Yeah, a lot of PC's during the transition period to Pentiums had both SIMM and DIMM slots on them, so people could use some of their old memory .. or be smart and get the new style memory. But hey, it was a bunch of point-of-sale PC's, so no wonder they used the old stuff first.
This was a cool project. Thanks for filming it and sharing it with us. I like that you told us about the all the problems you had. I'm sure behind the scenes most of these retro projects have a slew of issues. But all we ever see is the shiny finished product with everything working great.
Much respect sir! I would be swearing that whole time while putting it together. The last thing I would want is an audience or to worry about filming. Makes me regret I had no place to store the 15 to 25 POS systems that ended up getting scrapped when I helped close my local Sears. They were all wiped but nobody bought 'em in the liquidation sale. Great build! Thanks for sharing this one.
2:50 Wait until you see the Pentium-based Toshiba Librettos. They're slightly bigger than a VHS tape. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_Libretto
I think his point is this is one of the smallest Socket 7 boards, the Libretto still used laptop grade components, right?
I repaired many of the Toshiba Librettos back in the day. They were a real POS to work on. Yes they're 100% laptop parts, they were a marvel of miniaturization back in those days.
There was a twinhead laptop that used the same pentium chips as in the desktop variant and even had a noisy fan.
Late Socket 7 with MMX is my favourite era for retro builds.
You should follow through on some of those changes you thought of.
A few additional tips:
MMX is a middling Win98 platform, but is an absolute beast DOS rig.
And ever since Phil showed MMX chips are very unique using setmul in DOS, that should be the target.
The Voodoo 3 can be found in a short-board formfactor, leaving the space for an ISA soundcard.
But they run super hot, so intake fans are called for, and maybe even dremel mod case venting holes.
Test the CPU heasink fan flipped from Push to Pull. It may not matter.
A replacement fan in the PSU too.
LS120 SuperDrive runs on IDE, letting you lose the floppy ribbon cable in addition to the floppy drive istelf. It would limit you to one hard disk, but the LS120 storage (and USB) mitigates that.
A CompactFlash instead of SD adapter may allow it to recognize and format larger HDD space.
Check some drive tool software too.
The fan seems to be a rather regular axial fan with a hole in the side to get the air out, mounting some sort of duct over part of the assembly might help bringing the air into the fins.
And while the LS120 is a nice idea, he needs another drive on the other end to have practical use of it. I'd rather go with a nice CF adapter for swappable storage and use the ethernet port at the back to transfer files.
On the fan, if you look closely, you'll see it has an intake opening on the side with the fins, and it's solid underneath. So it will draw some amount of air through the fins and exhaust them on to your soundblaster. The S3 is completely out of the airflow.
Edit: after seeing the final build...well, I was assuming there was a way to get air into the fan to begin with :D
Other way around I would think, take in air from above and blow it out the side through the fins
I swear! 5 hours before you posted, i checked your channel to see if there is something new!
Glad to see you back 😁
I come back to this video every few months and. Honestly?
My appreciation for what you've managed only grows over time. You took essentially a cash register, and turned it into a dos era gaming monster.
I would still place a couple of tiny fans pointing to the voodoo card and to the cpu, just to prevent problems. Nice build.
When I first started in IT we sold a lot of systems like this (486s at the start then later pentium), basically, if you went somewhere in the 90's/early 2000s and encountered a touch screen, something very similar to this was powering it. Fast food places in particular. The "3d capable" integrated graphics was to facilitate the touch screen PoS software which was actually pretty demanding on 2d, especially when you consider places like McD's used custom icons, logos and menu images to help make the transaction process more smooth and efficient. This was the dawn of the modern GUI and the ease of use movement. The CPUs were often high end because the last thing any company wanted was the disruption of upgrades and down time every 3 - 6 months (tech moved fast back then) so you got the best and hoped it would stay relevant for at least a year or 2. These things were also expensive, the custom PCB and proprietary connectors alone added a bundle to the cost. Modularity in the PC space was well under way in the main stream by then but in the niche markets we still saw a lot of proprietary hardware.
Looking at this thing brings back nightmares of spending weeks trying to get a whole chain networked and updating/reading from the central database at the chain's HQ, a disgusting hodge podge of LAN, 24.4 modems and coaxial that all had to play nice together, respond to wake signals and be updated and ready to use at 7am when the staff came in to work. Networking is a bit of a chore even today but back then you needed to be a programmer, tech and experimental physicist just to get everything working right. Being a tech back then people thought you were some kind of magician and honestly, there were not far wrong. Most people today have no idea how far we have come and how easy tech is to set up an use by comparison.
Label: DO NOT OPEN, NO OPERATOR SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE.
Me: laughs in computer geek
My first thought - "Wanna bet?"
Turns out it was right
DO YOU THINK ME A MERE USER?!
steve jobs saw this sticker and smiled
@Norri Buvari remember that the iMac G5 exists
Most HDDs of that era had an extra jumper location, near the slave/master jumpers, which would enable a 32GB limit mode.
Years ago I had a "Book PC II" which appears to be the successor to this design: ua-cam.com/video/b8VnW5Po7A4/v-deo.html It uses the weirdo VIA C3 "1 Giga Pro" processor, which despite its name, does not actually run at 1 GHz.
600mhz as i remember
@Genesis Walter You were right spammer no one does
Spammer and obligatory sock puppet for signal boost in thread. Don't engage, report it.
That heatsink looks like a cooler on a GT 1030 GPU
I watched this video when it first came out and set up an Ebay alert for PDA 2000. After years of waiting, (and lots of motherboard-only and unrelated Personal Data Assistant alerts later) I finally found one for a very reasonable price and purchased it moments ago. I just had to pop back here, re-watch the video, and celebrate the end of my quest! I am planning on building a Win 3.1 box and replaying some of my old cd-roms that resist emulation on modern hardware. I am certain I wouldn't have a chance of getting this in working condition if it were not for your hard work and resulting video. Thanks for igniting my obsession with this little PC!
Congrats and good luck with it! This one is probably still my favourite PC I own and I use it regularly!
You mention the jumpers being wrong and it was picking up as a 166, I wonder if that was on purpose to underclock the cpu and cut down on heat....
That dumbass heatsink probably doesn't help. It doesn't even look like there's and room under the fan for the air to blow. If you want to under-clock a CPU, you use the clock and multiplier jumpers, not the voltage jumpers.
@@BlackEpyon I'm so glad we don't have to do that anymore. I went from a Pentium III 500 to a 1ghz and had no idea about the jumpers back then. I eventually got it working but I'm lucky I didn't fry it.
@@boltinabottle6307 Yeah, that's all in the BIOS now.
More likely the unit had an issue and someone changed the cpu with whatever thay could find at the time without changing any of the jumpers.
it kinda worked and probably drove cashews nuts for years.
i've seen it happen more than a few times.
Bad power cycle in the store takes out the psu and cpu they fix it without fully configuring it.
@@BlackEpyon Look at the fan closer. Mainly between the fan and the fins on the heatsink. There's an opening. It presumably draws air down and out that hole towards the fins effectively blowing air over 'em. It does not, however, have a lot of room to draw air in as i'm sure it's damn near touching that Voodoo2 card, but that's how it works. It doesn't draw air 'through' it, so it doesn't matter what's underneath.
I've been into computers since I was a kid, but it was this era of PCs when I started building computers. This takes me back, so thank you.
Did you call two SDRAM slots "expansion slots"?
Did you call 72-pin EDO SIMM slots SDRAM slots?
It has both!
186 pin SDRAM DIMMs and 72 pin EDO SIMMs
@@HappyBeezerStudios Yeah. Some boards had an option for both. You could only use one or the other though, couldnt use both at once
@@nelizmastr No I called the SDRAM slots SDRAM Slots not the SIMM slots.
I have never seen a computer with less airflow, including laptops and tablets and even smartphones. Well done.
Laughed out loud when you called it a "PoS."
ha HA ha HA soo FUnny HA ha HA
pacificStandard ikr
Point of Sale...
@@KlingonCaptain Yes, in fact that was my first thought. But I appreciated the double meaning.
“Piece of Shit”
I thought the system wasn't that small because you found all the other small components. Im Seriously impressed. Great video.
I love this build.
It's small, it has a MMX233, 3D accelerated graphics and functions great.
A time ago I found a P4 slim machine and made a whole process to clean and bring back to life. Although it's small, yours is way more than mine, and a perfect Console PC to put on a collection.
I remember in 2004-08, I would get a lot of old, junk point of sale and kiosk computers. They were mostly designed in the mid to late 90s, but as time advanced, the companies would slap whatever parts they could find in there.
In 2008, I can remember finding this weird, low profile case. It had a date stamp of 1994 on the back. Inside was an underclocked Pentium 3 650Mhz, in a gigabyte 440BX baby AT motherboard, with an ATI Rage Fury Pro AGP card crammed into a weird, crooked, right angle AGP adapter, a single 64MB stick of RAM, a generic IDE CD drive with no face plate, that couldn't be accessed unless you opened the case, and a 200ish MB flash drive that plugged directly into the primary IDE header on the board.
Here's the kicker. The system was manufactured by some company to run some kind of big screen display to show static images, and this particular one was made in 2004. It was less than 5 years old at the time.
Thats a dual plane cpu (MMX extension plane 2.8v) which means if you had it setup as a p54 rather than a p55 then you were putting 3.45v through that plane rather than 2.8v and thats why it was not stable. I know 2 year old vid but it played in the back ground while I was working and figured I'd mention this for anyone else looking to find out that issue. BTW with proper cooling you can run that @266.
When I saw the title I immediately thought about the UNISYS CWD Model 5001, but this one is awesome too! Now to watch the whole video!
Love this build! Was a joy to watch you assemble it and play games.
Wow! I certainly see the love/hate relationship with this thing! I was so happy when you said Voodoo2 - I was thinking it and you did it!! If this rig was mine, I would choose to remove the mechanical HDD because of the thermals. I could also see adding a 2nd SD card device to replace the missing storage space due to the BIOS drive size limitation... that and I like having my games installed onto a separate drive from the OS. FYI you can swap 3dfx splash screen by migrating some files: 3dfxspl*.dll I believe. I say this because I've seen the FastVoodoo2 4.6 driver vastly outperform the reference one, albeit on a Pentium III system. 3dfx Glide is said to have a much lower CPU overhead than Direct3D so I would expect the "3dfx custom driver" to run better than Direct3D on socket 7 machines. There's so much I'd like to ramble on and ask about with this really neat PC but I'll cut myself off and just say I WANT ONE!
you started showing up in my recommended - this is like everything else I watch already - how have I not seen this channel before?
subbed
Finally I really missed your content, great video tho
Great find! Shuttle used to make super small cases and motherboards for small builds. They were focusing on the multimedia pc in your entertainment center market, but that never really took off like the industry seemed to think it would.
Cambridge SoundWorks! Maaaan, my dad had a quadraphonic pair of those exact speakers, that brings back memories. They were absolutely incredible for their size! Unfortunately ours started having connection issues and in the end, we got a whole new computer setup which included new speakers. They were a pair of Dell 5.1 speakers that my dad still uses today, though the rear wireless dual-speaker...thing sucks. You have to turn it up until you go deaf for it to connect properly.
This video is so cool! I really love computers from that era, so I'm glad you gave this machine another lease on life.
I hope you know on that smaller board you can only run 4 30 pin simms or 2 72/168 pin dimms. Those 2 you thought were expansion slots are actually ram slots. That cpu fan is absolutely redundant. It needs a blower type low profile fan. It's not gonna move any air along that sink. Goofiest desktop I've ever seen. This company didn't think the design through very well. Of course components got hot back then but not quite as hot as they started getting in the early 2000's. I'd find a way to modify that case and try to add in 2 80 mm fans.
You got me with that PSOne comparison , I thought it wasn't that small until you put the actual PSOne on top ...WOW
Very nice! Would love to see it after a retro bright treatment though. Also curious if it could get a Silverstone FPS01 integrated for ease of future use.
I was a field tech in POS around 1995 and most of the stuff was 386/486 but I remember seeing a pos system running Windows 95 with a mouse and wondering WHY. One retailer was still using a 1970's system with dual 8 inch floppies
Damnit the cooling compulsive person in me had a difficult time watching this system being put together. I really love your idea but I would modify the crap out of that case, use a different CPU cooler with a blower, install heatsinks on the voodoo, remove the HDD and use dual SD cards, increase the airflow of the PSU or replace it with a PICO one.
Thanks for the video I will keep an eye for one of these!
And all of that would be absolutely foolish and pointless. Shit back then didn't need insane cooling to perform correctly. Anyway it'd ruin the entire legitimacy of the build.
@@whoevertf back then I had a PII 300 in big tower case full of 80mm Nidec fans and 2 big blowers pointing directly to my voodoo2 sli and tnt2, its a little bit of a stretch calling non legit whatever you decide people were or not doing back then... also back then I didn't gave a crap about my hardware longevity new and faster 3d hardware appeared every 6 months that's not the case any longer.
this is where i started :D Im 33 now but i remember being around 10 years old and my grandma would take me to good will and other thrift stores weekly and id pick up 486 and pentium computers every week! i didnt know much about computers back then but it was a blast taking computers apart and piecing them together, it was a simple time and felt great joy in doing the most simple tasks on a computer! i really miss that time!! now i have an i9 gtx1070ti, 32gb ram 2 m2 ssd drives in raid 0 and the feeling i get from it is like nothing that i got from those old 486 and pentium computers running dos games and early windows apps!! we were poor and got free dial up internet from kaymart.. i was only a kid but back then i knew enough to use a dedicated server to dial up to that connection then route it through the network to my main pc to avoid all the ads that came along with that free internet software on the host pc,, waiting 3 mins to load a pic of a naked girl lol im stoned and rambling GREAT VIDEO!
Not all Win98SE CD-ROM discs were actually bootable - in fact, I don’t think any of mine ever were. There was this El Torito standard allowing PC BIOSes to boot from CD-ROM, but the CD disc had to have the filesystem laid out properly supporting it. Windows 2000 was the first Windows install CD I owned that booted, and was very neat! Maybe the Windows ME disc is a bootable CD?
All of mine were bootable, but not a single one was legit...perhaps there was a kludge in the pirated...err, borrowed versions?
@@Danglebarry62 hey buddy how you been?
@@michaelsworkshop9031 Good man, busy as hell, same old same old. Hope all's good by you.
OEM Win98 CDs are bootable
The point when having a boot floppy is essential.
I'm actually working up "updating" the 98 SE cd to include basic drivers and updates to save myself the trouble
I used to play Pod when i was 6 on my families first PC in 1998 and had forgotten the name till I saw it in your video. Thanks for the memories
Haha i use a 4.1 set of those speakers on my TV, they do sound pretty sweet for their size. Equally do not have the stands for them, so they're just sat flat on the tv bench with the rears on top of the front speakers
I haven’t seen a lot of your content, but for me, this video solidified your place right alongside our boy at LGR in the UA-cam Tech Channels royal court. Great work on the machine, and just as importantly, excellent work with the production.
8:02 So you really 3D-printed a holder especially to show extension cards on camera?
This is like a wet dream for me. I dream of one day having a whole stack of tiny vintage computers. Just get old thin clients and pos systems, and itx systems or similar if available and or new enough. Clean it up, upgrade the cpus as high as you can, max out the ram (when needed) and replace the storage with flash. By doing this you could cover every single era of hardware needed to play every computer game ever made natively, all in one small corner of the house. Hook everything up to a few different monitors from different eras to cover all the resolutions and colors combos, and use display switches to instantly choose what system and monitor you want to use. It would be a beautiful thing.
5:56 It's not expansion slots, it's slots for DIMM SDRAM memory.
OMG. Those speakers were my pride and joy. It made the games really come alive. That brings me way back.
This guy is so funny, the way he tries things and just say "Yeah, that just happend"
This video takes me back to my first PC. including all the issues and games you've demoed.
yes, please give that poor Voodoo2 some airflow ;u;
"It's a POS" "Yes, a Point-of-Sale"
Oh God do I love word play.
24:48 That fan in the PSU serves no purpose now ...
Those "expansion slots" on the "normal" socket-7 motherboard are PC-66 or PC-100 RAM slots. I've had a few that had both 72-pin EDO and PC-100 RAM slots. You can't use both sets at once, but these super-7 motherboards were really nice for upgrading.
Is it actually a Super 7? Would be interesting to see how it runs a K6-III+
I did not know IDE cables could work that way.
I suspect cable select doesn't work well, which is fine. I tend to manually jumper the devices anyhow.
As long as you're not using cable select, and most 40-pin cables didn't support it anyways. The motherboard is probably ATA-66 anyways, in which case, the cable you use doesn't really matter.
This video has warranted a subscribe from me! I love old PC’s but hate old cases, this looked to be a huge pain in the a** and I’m incredibly impressed at the results 👏
basically a small form factor in the mid 90's, I`m in love with this computer
Wow, I used to install these models (and similar) when I worked for a POS retailer/installer. Brings back MANY memories! Thanks for sharing!
What a brilliant design and you were able to cram so much into it too. The CPU cooler was very clever and quite adequate for a Pentium 1 chip. I have a thing for SFF desktops. Cheers
I loved seeing the DualShock 4 working with such an old machine. It’s neat how far back you can go with some USB hardware
The compact, no wasted space compression of parts of this build gives me flashbacks to my "Tacky" build... It was an Apple Color Classic (the CC and CCII were the only of the original compact all-in-one form factor Macs with a color screen) modified to have a DVD/CDRW drive, the Apple TV/Video/FM system, a PCI DVD decoder, a Power PC 603e motherboard, ethernet, and a connector for an external floppy drive... All packed into the heavily modified analog+motherboard chassis. I've been itchin' for a retro Mac again, something to run Mac OS 9 on, and I feel like I should dig that thing out of mothballs and restore it. It could use some nice upgrades, like flash storage. I used an IDE controller so I could support larger hard drives and the DVD/CDRW drive, but maybe a USB card would be better suited. I could drop a thumb drive on the inside of the computer as a storage drive, and use a small CompactFlash IDE adapter on the built in IDE port and boot from that. That, or I could try finding one of those USB/IDE combo cards, but I have no clue if any were ever compatible with macs that old.
It's really clear how much you love this machine, and what you can play on it.
30:18 those speakers caught me totally off guard. Those are the same speakers my dad has for his PC to this day, so when I was thinking tiny speakers, I immediately thought of them. It was almost like you read my damn mind. Bravo, good sir.
I remember breaking a CRT as a kid by setting the resolution too high. Good old times^^
I had those same speakers ages ago! They always sounded amazing. I wish I still had them.
I have wonderful memories of those years, I feel much more connected to computer graphics from the 70s/80s than today where everyone is chasing FPS and getting lost in a glass of water, at the same time this reminds me that I'm getting old. ...
That's insane. I'm surprised it didn't over heat. Nice build man. Thanks for sharing!
When he was complaining about the Sound Blaster speakers being too big I literally thought "man he should just use the Cambridge Soundworks speakers I got", and then he does just that! Been using those speakers for all eternity and still am! They sound amazing! Great video!
Happy to find another vintage computer channel! Subscribed!
The two expansion slots you mentioned are 168 pin SDRAM DIMM Slots :) Many Socket 7 boards were in the transition stage from EDO SIMM slots to SDRAM DIMM slots so you could choose between EDO or SDRAM. Really cool time in computing.
The picture-in-picture shots when you're using the computer are really cool. I imagine they were a bit difficult to pull off though.
That POD box in the background made me cry 😢 youth memories!
I own those cambridge soundworks speakers! They do sound great. Glad you're enjoying them too.
I love that little runt... What might be even cooler is an ITX build in that kind of case...
Working on that machine reminds me of my Packard Bell 486 PC I first got in 1992. It was in a fairly compact desktop case which was roomy enough with only stock components. It too had a riser card for 4 ISA slots with the CPU socket nearly centered right below the ISA cards.
Over the course of its life I replaced the 5 1/4 floppy with a CD-ROM drive. Added a small SCSI card for an external SCSI ZIP drive, a NE2000 BNC 10 mbit NIC card, a USR 28.8 bps modem & a sound card w/ CD-ROM interface to the ISA slots (IDE CD-ROM drives were not a thing yet.) Added more RAM, added 128 KB of L2 directly onto the motherboard, added a 2nd 1.2 GB HDD which had to be double sided taped to the top of the PSU and there was no-where else for it to fit in the case! I also had to use disk management software for the 2nd HDD as the BIOS would only see up to a 528 MB HDD properly. And I also replaced the 486 DX2 66 mhz CPU with a AMD 5x86 133 mhz chip which also required a 5 volt to 3.3 volt adapter be sandwiched in the CPU socket. I had to place a small piece of rubber between the top of the heatsink & fan and the modem in order to keep the modem from grounding out onto the heatsink!
Cable management was an absolute nightmare too. Amazingly that machine lasted until around the time the PC in this video was probably made as the Pentium MMX chips were just about to be released when I finally scraped together enough money to build a new PC with at first a super cheap AMD K5 chip and later an AMD K6 233 mhz CPU.
For me, it took seeing it next to a 24" LCD monitor to really understand just how small this system is. Very impressive considering the use of standard sized components. And oh, by the way, the CPU fan blows sideways, not down. Look at the casing of the fan itself.
I was really sceptical when you first said it was a PoS system, but it turned out great!
That tiny monitor and the Voodoo 2 are a perfect match. 640x480 is just right, you might get away with 800x600 for a few games, but you really need SLI to get smooth performance. And I love that it comes with the onboard S3 chip for 2D. That was actually the same combo I had back in the day! I originally had an P166MMX with an S3 card that I added a Voodoo 2 card to.
I remember Quake 2 only just ran on the S3 card, but after I added the Voodoo 2, it was so much smoother, and the lighting just blew me away! I showed my friend who had a 233MMX with an S3 card, and he wasn't impressed, so I switched back to the S3 and he was shocked at the difference. He didn't even notice the lighting until I switched back to the Voodoo 2.
Anyway, great video as always. The presentation and flow in this one was very good, really takes you on a journey!
Another great video.
10:54 My great uncle, who was a field tech for POS systems like this in the 90s, said these design decisions were made in order to force buyers into service contracts.
that size jump when you put the playstation on top tripped me out 😮😂😂 i thought it had a 5.25 drive at first
my dad has those cambridge soundworks speakers but with 4 of the little guys instead of just 2, they are brilliant
I love the build. Glad to hear that it is staying cool enough for extending play.
I love it, absolutely awesome build. Big computers are great but these little machines are just special to me. Reminds me of my own Olivetti 386 and HM Systems 286 in terms of size all be it yours is even smaller and of course multiple times faster. That wee monitor just sits to well also. A true period correct sleeper as you said. Its amazing just how many games run fine on this system. So many people are building pentium 4 windows 98 machines. I think some have forgotten just how well all these old games play on the period correct hardware. Tempted to head to ebay now and start looking for POS systems
Great video! Just find your channel and subscribed. I was 14 in 1998, so this is right in the middle of my PC gaming playground chats... HL, Quake, Red Alert, Kingpin, MDK, System Shock 2, Age Of Empires 1+2... Good Times.
I purchased the 4.1 version of those speakers back in the day for my first self-built PC. They were damn good for the size.
Thats a very cool and unique processor cooler. Not sure why you called it dumb as it's actually a pretty clever bit of engineering. It must've been adequate enough to have made it into the final product. It's a turnoff seeing retro PC enthusiasts laughing or scoffing at the very things that make vintage computers so interesting
thats fun this is your first time! yeah things have come a LONG way, i don't really miss having to spend a whole day loading drivers, but you can't really match the true excitement of your downloads finally finishing. like we actually used to have stuff download over night.