As a 20 year IT veteran, make sure you use downtime for downtime things, burnouts a fucker, and your mental health is gonna suffer like you wouldnt believe, its why at not even 40 im retired
@@AnIdiotAboard_Not true in my case. I am 53 and have been involved in computers for over 35 years and still adore it today. It's all I have ever done. Build computers, use computers, got jobs involving computers etc. I never got married, never had any relationships at all, still a very proud virgin, my life has been as much as 100% computers as close as possible. I haven't ever been on holiday either unless I had some form of computer with me. My last holiday was 1996 and I brought my Amiga 600 with me, so at least I had something to do. I have also never been abroad. No point. So, well burnout might be with some, it definitely never happened to me. I could use computers forever and still adore it. Also, was swearing really necessary?
@@therealyogibear2k225 I think it depends on what you do. I was responsible for approx. 15 data centers spanning 15 sites, approx. 1.3 million servers, 1200 MW of power, 220 staff, all the software departments and other departments that fall into the management of that. Not to mention our own operations where at one time or another we have over 100,000,000 in crypto currency's securely hosted online for example. I assumed i could burn the candle at both ends cos i always had, i loved my job, i loved the 18 hours a day every day for years, i loved that we started at OVH with 1 server before selling up the whole thing, all 15 DC's, i loved the people i worked with, loved it loved it loved it. I never took time off nothing, i fucking loved what i did, and over time my MH Deteriorated to the point id isolated myself in all aspects of my life, and pushed away much of my family, i woke up one morning and my world changed, i just couldn't face it anymore, and after seeking help, and MH Support, i took the decision retire and tackle my life and i did great fixing alot of it. But the thought of going back to work now, for me, is not appealing, i had the right job at the right time, with the right people, i made a fortune, more than enough to retire, i was always working, i never spent a penny. You gotta use downtime things for downtime things.
Seriously, I can hear your excitement from you when explaining and playing the game, you sound rather passionate about these kind of games! Keep that stuff in I rather enjoy it. You are such a joy to watch because it gives me that nostalgia of when these systems came out and oh boy were these machines exciting in their time, and even now. Thank you for the video and cannot wait to see what else you have in store for this unique PC, and which distro you may or may not try. Maybe Puppy Linux would work great in this build.
I used to always see old consoles and computers at garage sales, flea markets, and thrift shops. I think because online became so accessible, people are less willing to sell electronics for cheap. I NEVER see them anymore
@@Code7Unltd That's not why second hand shops don't have old electronics anymore. The reason is the 2017 Chinese ban on the import of "eWaste" and other hazardous and/or difficult to dispose of waste streams. For decades, recycling programs around the world heavily relied on China being a dumping ground for electronics and other hazardous wastes. While they extolled their lies about environmental responsibility and them properly disposing of old electronics and hazardous wastes, what was really happening is that that waste was being shipped from recycling companies to ports around the world, loaded up in cargo containers and shipped to China. When it got there, it would be sent around the country to small towns where it was dumped and the locals had a cottage industry of dangerous scrapping. They'd break open electronics waste and burn it in open fires to get the metals out to sell on. It created zones of hideously toxic contamination that poisoned the ground, water and air. Rivers became so toxic that nothing could live in them, and no amount of processing could make the water safe to drink. In 2017, the Chinese government had enough and instituted the waste ban, which sent shockwaves around the world. Virtually overnight, these fraudulent recycling companies no longer had a cheap destination for their waste, so they stopped accepting it. This quickly had a knock on effect on industries that relied on it, one of them being second hand stores. They stopped accepting things like CRTs and bulky rear projection TVs, then later other electronics that they knew wouldn't sell well. I did a lot of thrift store shopping in the mid to late 2010s and the change happened in the span of a few weeks. Where there had been rows of old CRT monitors and TVs, was just empty shelf space. The aisles of computers also disappeared, being replaced by other things. I asked around and some employees at the store said they had gotten their ewaste out on one of the last cheap "recycling" shipments before they ended up being stuck with unmovable inventory. I managed to snag one last Sony Trinitron CRT TVs before it got taken to be unceremoniously broken apart for scrap.
The only PCs I ever come across in thrift stores these days look like they were sitting in some basement or garage for several years, or are stripped of some essential part (PSU, CPU, RAM...). Then the store wants $100+ for it.
Many years back I found an Atari PC3 (8088, XT) and a Commodore 8096-SK (late model PET) in a skip (dumpster). I watched someone put them in, luckily he didn't throw them in. I asked if they still worked he said he didn't know and that I could take them if I wanted them. I got them home and both machines worked but the PET needed a recap. I fixed it up and kept both machines for a while but ended up selling them on to a collector in 2008.
Proto...I found 4 Laptops the other week including 2 Gateways..and some Dell mid towers..other 2 Laptops are Toshiba Satellites..all from the Millennia..the Gateways were missing caddies..they booted..but i took them to eWaste depot..the Toshibas are complete and all it took was an eBay 15v power supply..I had to smile when Michaels XP booted..one Toshiba booted into XP..I hadn't seen XP in a few years at home..plenty of times on UA-cam..I had a quick go of MS Pinball..ran ok..
Watched through your Command & Conquer gameplay and surprisingly, I want more! To see you actually having some fun interacting with a game that you know much about is entertaining. Would want to see more of it if it becomes the new rule.
That would make a perfect Batocera arcade box. Might not be good enough to do PS1 or above, but it would certainly play almost any Arcade rom without issue. Plus, it being low power (if you can source a new PSU) makes it even better.
Why a new power supply? Just recap it, doesn't take long at all and is easy/cheap to do. If not, just get a pico, probably even uses the same pinout for the barrel jack connector.
Cathode Ray Dude would love this Little Guy :) Pentium-M was pretty great, it was pretty much a continuation of the Pentium 3 if I remember correctly and the basis for later Core/Core 2 chips.
What a find! I built a bunch of mini-itx PCs when the form factor was pretty new. I used a few cases manufactured by the same company, including this one. Most were for hosting MP3 libraries, connected to the home hi-fi stack and either a TV or small monitor … those cases were well made.
I think, since it came with XP on it, it's the $5 XP PC, so it doesn't usurp the $5 98 PC. I kinda dig that little thing though, with the acrylic front panel and being such a lil guy.
It couldn't hurt to try a 2GB stick though. Some boards unofficially supported higher capacities. I had an old Dell laptop that had a 2GB limit supposedly, but worked with and acknowledged 4GB! 😎
I love this. I love watching you explore and tinker with the older computers. It brings back so many memories. Especially like C&C Red Alert 2 Yuri's Revenge. My little brother and I played that against each other using an ethernet crossover cable. We spent most of the mid 2000's playing that and other network RTS games against each other. I have to say Yuri's side was my favorite. Not so much for the mind control, but the cloning vats.
It was good to see Command & Conquer, finally. Until now, I had only seen it at a distance since my cousin had it on the Playstation 2, and I always heard the audio at a distance. All that I could hear was "Yes sir!" "I'm on it!" "Moving out!" "Yes sir!" "Right away!"
I got one of theese about 10 years ago. Different motherboard, different power converter - but the same case. I think this was a nice looking generic case for mini-ITX boards. Mine also had a DVD-drive inside. I changed the board (to an D3003 by Fujitsu-Siemens) at the time and it runned well on Windows 8. It was fanless and I installed a SSD, so quite nice as a component in my music equipment. Actually I was in a ballroom dancing club back at the time and we had a yearly event, there groups showed their skills. So the PC basicly was to store and organicing the music for the events, with USB-port and CD-drive allowing to make last-minute changes. Between I used it at home, connected to my home entertainment system. The design realy fits for that usecase. Of course this was before you did everything on a smartphone or tablet. Sadly on the last event I used it, it dropped. While it still works, the acrylic panel got´s damaged. While everything still works O.K., without the acrylic it does not look as nice anymore. However, as ATX-board are still available and get more powerfull every day, I would still buy such an mini ITX case if available for an reasonable price. You got a real good bargain getting it for only $5. It´s a perfect media center for TV´s or projectors. Having CD/DVD/BlueRay drives has become rare. So while other solutions for use on TVs are more common nowerdays, they mostly use streaming, maybe they can also use NAS, but barely any device have support for physical DVD/BlueRay anymore. Setting up a pretty standard noiseless PC in a nice case for this imho is perfect. Of course, with mouse and keyboard (best: wireless of course), you also still can use the PC as an PC to write eMail, surf the Internet and doing office work. Not great for actual games of course, but perfect for normal office usage.
These special-purpose machines are always interesting to look at. This looks like a pretty standard Mini-ITX case, there's even a removable backplate. I wonder if that old setup could be replaced with something more modern...
I thoroughly enjoyed this video. I found it quite interesting to watch you go over an old system and give it some purpose (it makes me want to do the same with mine).
I used to do restaurant IT support, as well as installing digital menu systems. The amount of rust in that system is not at all surprising. Those PCs are usually installed above the ceiling behind the display TVs, or in the back office. They're exposed to constant humidity, aerosolized grease, smoke and corrosive chemicals like sodium hydroxide (commonly used to clean cooktop grills), bleach and other cleaning agents. Anything electronics did not survive more than a few years at most. I was always replacing monitors, bump bars, wires, computer parts and fans.
One of these was my daily driver in the 2005-2006 timeframe. I ran Damn Small Linux from a compact flash card with an IDE adapter, no spinning storage.
This has got to be the most convoluted Let's Play channel on UA-cam. Before playing each game, he needs to find a vintage machine and install an OS on it, often with extra steps. :P
I rather like the case. I've been wanting to build an HTPC with a DVD drive, and this has reminded me that maybe a thrift store is selling old computers for $5 with optical drive bays. That whole thing is WAY cheaper than an empty Silverstone.
i feel like mjd should start something like the $5 chain, like $5 computer or $5 windows stuff, but another great video as usual! keep up the good work mjd!
Love Red Alert 2 and Yuri.. We used to play LAN game at friends house for hours and hours back in the 90's. 4 players with Nukes off would go for hours.
I loved Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 and Yuris Revenge, played countless hours with some of my friends at that point! So glad to see it again, ill probably need to setup my old Win XP pc with CRT screen to get that same feeling again!
The Vinyl Deck program was included on VIA audio drivers in general, from what I recall, you couldn't really make the thing NOT install that program, so whenever you had a PC with a VIA chipset, that program would be installed whenever you got the drivers in, from what I remember they also had a utility that replaced the regular Windows volume mixer as well. Oh, and I used the My Videos folder a lot back in the day, for those crappy Movie Maker creations and I had Fraps set to save videos to that directory too!
You might want to try a larger RAM stick just to see as you would be surprised how often the OEM lists a smaller max RAM than a unit will actually take. For 2 examples in my own collection I have a Presario which is listed as max 8GB of RAM that is happily running 16GB and an AMD based EEE PC that lists 4GB as max RAM that is purring along with 8GB of DDR 3 with 0 issues.
The Pentium-m CPU is essentially the next generation of Pentium III. Desktop motherboards with that CPU are pretty rare. It's about the latest system that you can put Windows 9x onto. It's pretty much the final boss of Win9x. I know you already have 9x systems, but this is the best use case for that hardware.
loved the gaming at the end of this video, you should just play some retro games with the same old monitor pov its really really cool and id for sure watch it. Love the videos!
Messing around with old computers is fun. Recently, I got a Sossaman Xeon with 2 ES chips in it, and I was super surprised to see that a Windows 10 Pro 32 but was attached to the motherboard. It didn't see all my cores on the 2 CPUs but it was neat to see. I thought for sure that this $5 PC would have a VIA CPU in it. Pentium M is actually pretty awesome.
Absolutely make Command and Conquer a recurring thing. You can rotate between the different games depending on the era of PC you're using. I spent way too many hours on the family PC playing Red Alert 2 as a kid.
I have that one too! Or at least a small PC with the exact same case. Mine was used as a small file server at my work, and we retired it like 12 years ago. I don't think mine has anything to do with the company Impart, and I'm in Europe too, so the case is probably some generic no-name case used for many different small computers. Mine had 512 MB RAM, not sure about the other specs, as I haven't looked inside it for almost 12 years.
Gotta love the references to other TechTubers. edit - Nice, Red Alert 2/YR. Younger me would have loved a relatively portable PC to play some games on.
I've had plenty of machines where the manual makes the claim it only supports up to 1 gig or something like that but were able to address more. It won't hurt to try a 2 gig and 4 gig in there.
i dont think this is touched upon much but this is a laptop cpu and chipset on a itx board. I also think this a good insight into how low the requirements were for XP... at the start XP ran on single core 256mb systems... towards the end it was running on Q6600 quads with 8Gb ram... i remember companies were using single core laptops with 512mb on xp running office 2003 and getting along just fine.
I have this exact same case. Bought it sometimes around 2005 from a Mini ITX specialized online shop, just the case. Think I first put a VIA C7 mainboard in it. Was slow as hell. Later put an AMD based Zotac E350 motherboard with WIFI in it to use it as a MediaPC. That project never went anywhere when I moved and didn't really had the use case for it. Still have it laying around and worked two years ago. Will definately take a look on those capacitors on the power converter board. Still miss those times when this neeche ITX stuff was the hot thing but at the same time quite cheap. Today you're getting ripped off for stuff like this in a modern form.
I had one of those cases in about 2005? My brother bought me the case as a present and I had an Atom mini-ITX inside running Linux. Similarly it probably also had a Samsung 2.5in drive in. I think it was a fairly well known brand itx case.
if such old PCs still have a working internal DVD drive (maybe blu-ray), Smooth Video Project, and have a projector it can make a sweet lifelike movies and shows machine
It's not like these motherboards outright refuse to boot with extra RAM, most of them just didn't fathom having these humongous memory sizes in the shitbox bolted to a cashier table. Most of them actually follow the DDR2 spec and would boot and use fill 2 gigs per channel, especially after the bios update
I think these may also have been used to display ads alongside roads in those big screens. Which might also explain the rust, if it was sucking in moist air from outside. And it would make the caked on dust all moist and make a perfect environment for dust to form on the aluminum. And I think the VIA Vinyl program was included with the VIA audio driver. P.S. Can you do some more videos of you playing C&C? I loved watching you play with the commentary.
That system reminded me of my first system my dad owned. It had a pentium e2140 dual core and 1gig for ddr2 on a gigabyte 945gcmxs2-f4 motherboard. That system survived with us till 2018. He upgraded the ram only in 2017 to 2gigs. I literally ran every single os on it windows 95 98 me 2000 XP vista 7 8 8.1 10 and that thing survived like crazy. It had an 80gig hdd which then died and got a 1tb wd blue drive. Whenever I would coax him to upgrade it he would get angry and tell me to be happy with it. After it died and no parts available, he then got me my gaming PC with a Ryzen 5 1500x and a 1050ti and an SSD and holy shit the speed of the system. The cpu that is the pentium e2140 now sits in my key chain after I delided it and drilled through the PCB. It sits alongside my 1050ti GPU that also died reminding me of the good old days of CS 1.6, condition zero, half life 1 and GTA SA and gaming with onboard graphics.
I have an iBase MB800 (P4 3GHz) that I use as a DOS machine. Or did, til the caps went (at age 22 years), but I'll be replacing 'em. Hard to replace a fully-DOS-compatible P4 with ISA slots. They go for about $600 now, with bad caps.
@MichaelMJD That 1GB limit is artificial. The actual memory limit of the chipset is 2GB, per Intel's own specs PDF. Stick in a 2GB DIMM and enjoy. EDIT: Loved the C&C-RA2 run!!
I hate the fact that my country have $100 shipping fee from amazon and 60% fee from the government to buy stuff from outside, and because technology didn't spread that much here you'll never find such stuff, you can only find the commons like a PS2 or an Xbox 360 I literally searched for an AGP motherboard for months and couldn't find any in this continent
I appreciate content like this deeply because it inspired me to pursue a career in IT and networking. I love breaking apart and fixing old machines
As a 20 year IT veteran, make sure you use downtime for downtime things, burnouts a fucker, and your mental health is gonna suffer like you wouldnt believe, its why at not even 40 im retired
@@AnIdiotAboard_Not true in my case. I am 53 and have been involved in computers for over 35 years and still adore it today. It's all I have ever done. Build computers, use computers, got jobs involving computers etc. I never got married, never had any relationships at all, still a very proud virgin, my life has been as much as 100% computers as close as possible. I haven't ever been on holiday either unless I had some form of computer with me. My last holiday was 1996 and I brought my Amiga 600 with me, so at least I had something to do. I have also never been abroad. No point. So, well burnout might be with some, it definitely never happened to me. I could use computers forever and still adore it. Also, was swearing really necessary?
@@therealyogibear2k225 I think it depends on what you do. I was responsible for approx. 15 data centers spanning 15 sites, approx. 1.3 million servers, 1200 MW of power, 220 staff, all the software departments and other departments that fall into the management of that. Not to mention our own operations where at one time or another we have over 100,000,000 in crypto currency's securely hosted online for example.
I assumed i could burn the candle at both ends cos i always had, i loved my job, i loved the 18 hours a day every day for years, i loved that we started at OVH with 1 server before selling up the whole thing, all 15 DC's, i loved the people i worked with, loved it loved it loved it. I never took time off nothing, i fucking loved what i did, and over time my MH Deteriorated to the point id isolated myself in all aspects of my life, and pushed away much of my family, i woke up one morning and my world changed, i just couldn't face it anymore, and after seeking help, and MH Support, i took the decision retire and tackle my life and i did great fixing alot of it. But the thought of going back to work now, for me, is not appealing, i had the right job at the right time, with the right people, i made a fortune, more than enough to retire, i was always working, i never spent a penny.
You gotta use downtime things for downtime things.
I almost thought Cathode Ray Dude released another "Little Guys" video
Someone tell Gravis
this is literally something we'd find on a Little Guys video
SAME!!
The algorithm is not kind to CRD. I haven't seen his vids pop up anymore.
@@Pawnband I always get his vids on my homepage (maybe because I watch his channel so much)
Seriously, I can hear your excitement from you when explaining and playing the game, you sound rather passionate about these kind of games! Keep that stuff in I rather enjoy it. You are such a joy to watch because it gives me that nostalgia of when these systems came out and oh boy were these machines exciting in their time, and even now. Thank you for the video and cannot wait to see what else you have in store for this unique PC, and which distro you may or may not try. Maybe Puppy Linux would work great in this build.
“The First Decade” is how long you’ll be entering CD keys
entering CD keys sure beats "online download disappeared".
@@dascandyI wish don't be evil was a proposal for more companies to live and die by 🫠.
I used to always see old consoles and computers at garage sales, flea markets, and thrift shops. I think because online became so accessible, people are less willing to sell electronics for cheap. I NEVER see them anymore
You can thank Texas-based Heritage Auctions for that one.
They're quite famous for inflating prices on various hobbies since auctioning ship tokens.
I do alot you just gotta look a lot
@@Code7Unltd man, after auctions and the foundation is there anything good with "heritage" in front >.>
@@Code7Unltd That's not why second hand shops don't have old electronics anymore. The reason is the 2017 Chinese ban on the import of "eWaste" and other hazardous and/or difficult to dispose of waste streams.
For decades, recycling programs around the world heavily relied on China being a dumping ground for electronics and other hazardous wastes. While they extolled their lies about environmental responsibility and them properly disposing of old electronics and hazardous wastes, what was really happening is that that waste was being shipped from recycling companies to ports around the world, loaded up in cargo containers and shipped to China. When it got there, it would be sent around the country to small towns where it was dumped and the locals had a cottage industry of dangerous scrapping. They'd break open electronics waste and burn it in open fires to get the metals out to sell on. It created zones of hideously toxic contamination that poisoned the ground, water and air. Rivers became so toxic that nothing could live in them, and no amount of processing could make the water safe to drink.
In 2017, the Chinese government had enough and instituted the waste ban, which sent shockwaves around the world. Virtually overnight, these fraudulent recycling companies no longer had a cheap destination for their waste, so they stopped accepting it. This quickly had a knock on effect on industries that relied on it, one of them being second hand stores. They stopped accepting things like CRTs and bulky rear projection TVs, then later other electronics that they knew wouldn't sell well. I did a lot of thrift store shopping in the mid to late 2010s and the change happened in the span of a few weeks. Where there had been rows of old CRT monitors and TVs, was just empty shelf space. The aisles of computers also disappeared, being replaced by other things. I asked around and some employees at the store said they had gotten their ewaste out on one of the last cheap "recycling" shipments before they ended up being stuck with unmovable inventory.
I managed to snag one last Sony Trinitron CRT TVs before it got taken to be unceremoniously broken apart for scrap.
The only PCs I ever come across in thrift stores these days look like they were sitting in some basement or garage for several years, or are stripped of some essential part (PSU, CPU, RAM...). Then the store wants $100+ for it.
This video is reminding me of the "Little Guys" series by Cathode Ray Dude
0:16 are you sure you didn't buy it because of the 5$ pc tradition in this channel?
Well.. that too, haha!
lol probably, creating a new legendary PC
@@MichaelMJD OMG FORGOT MATPAT SEEING MY COMMENT, MICHAEL SAW MY COMMENT, LIKED AND REPLIED
THX MICHAEL
@@MichaelMJD can you make a gaming setup out of cardboard and a raspberry pi
@@MichaelMJD i hace a Acer Aspire One ZG5, but the Bios is corrupted
I recently found a laptop and pc in the trash, 17870 gtx 870 and a Gateway 2011 laptop.
It's Proto
Many years back I found an Atari PC3 (8088, XT) and a Commodore 8096-SK (late model PET) in a skip (dumpster). I watched someone put them in, luckily he didn't throw them in. I asked if they still worked he said he didn't know and that I could take them if I wanted them. I got them home and both machines worked but the PET needed a recap. I fixed it up and kept both machines for a while but ended up selling them on to a collector in 2008.
@@mistabrown830Complete Security is his motto
@@mcborge1 sweeeet
Proto...I found 4 Laptops the other week including 2 Gateways..and some Dell mid towers..other 2 Laptops are Toshiba Satellites..all from the Millennia..the Gateways were missing caddies..they booted..but i took them to eWaste depot..the Toshibas are complete and all it took was an eBay 15v power supply..I had to smile when Michaels XP booted..one Toshiba booted into XP..I hadn't seen XP in a few years at home..plenty of times on UA-cam..I had a quick go of MS Pinball..ran ok..
Watched through your Command & Conquer gameplay and surprisingly, I want more! To see you actually having some fun interacting with a game that you know much about is entertaining. Would want to see more of it if it becomes the new rule.
Lol the old 5$ Thrift find PC series is back 😂
Your a menber !!!
That would make a perfect Batocera arcade box. Might not be good enough to do PS1 or above, but it would certainly play almost any Arcade rom without issue. Plus, it being low power (if you can source a new PSU) makes it even better.
Why a new power supply? Just recap it, doesn't take long at all and is easy/cheap to do. If not, just get a pico, probably even uses the same pinout for the barrel jack connector.
Cathode Ray Dude would love this Little Guy :) Pentium-M was pretty great, it was pretty much a continuation of the Pentium 3 if I remember correctly and the basis for later Core/Core 2 chips.
I love that at 17:00 this video makes a hard right turn into just playing Command & Conquer and Red Alert. 😅
What a find! I built a bunch of mini-itx PCs when the form factor was pretty new. I used a few cases manufactured by the same company, including this one. Most were for hosting MP3 libraries, connected to the home hi-fi stack and either a TV or small monitor … those cases were well made.
I think, since it came with XP on it, it's the $5 XP PC, so it doesn't usurp the $5 98 PC.
I kinda dig that little thing though, with the acrylic front panel and being such a lil guy.
Holy crap you just keep finding gems like these for a bargain. I'm jealous.
Gravis sounds different today... But hey, more little guys content!
It couldn't hurt to try a 2GB stick though. Some boards unofficially supported higher capacities. I had an old Dell laptop that had a 2GB limit supposedly, but worked with and acknowledged 4GB! 😎
My laptop officially supports 32 gig but unofficially supports twice that. It is common.
Thanks I might play a bit tonight with memory.
Oh man that C&C screen brought back some memories of when I was a kid and we somehow installed this onto some school computers. Good times.
I love this. I love watching you explore and tinker with the older computers. It brings back so many memories. Especially like C&C Red Alert 2 Yuri's Revenge. My little brother and I played that against each other using an ethernet crossover cable. We spent most of the mid 2000's playing that and other network RTS games against each other. I have to say Yuri's side was my favorite. Not so much for the mind control, but the cloning vats.
"Krazy Ken Confirmed?" That's what I was thinking when I saw the user account! Great video!!
Both a Krazy Ken and Action Retro reference in one video,amazing.
A Computer Showcase turned into a gameplay video, love it! The Adult child definitely came out of you during this video.
It was good to see Command & Conquer, finally. Until now, I had only seen it at a distance since my cousin had it on the Playstation 2, and I always heard the audio at a distance. All that I could hear was "Yes sir!" "I'm on it!" "Moving out!" "Yes sir!" "Right away!"
Same here
I got one of theese about 10 years ago. Different motherboard, different power converter - but the same case. I think this was a nice looking generic case for mini-ITX boards. Mine also had a DVD-drive inside.
I changed the board (to an D3003 by Fujitsu-Siemens) at the time and it runned well on Windows 8. It was fanless and I installed a SSD, so quite nice as a component in my music equipment.
Actually I was in a ballroom dancing club back at the time and we had a yearly event, there groups showed their skills. So the PC basicly was to store and organicing the music for the events, with USB-port and CD-drive allowing to make last-minute changes. Between I used it at home, connected to my home entertainment system. The design realy fits for that usecase.
Of course this was before you did everything on a smartphone or tablet.
Sadly on the last event I used it, it dropped. While it still works, the acrylic panel got´s damaged. While everything still works O.K., without the acrylic it does not look as nice anymore.
However, as ATX-board are still available and get more powerfull every day, I would still buy such an mini ITX case if available for an reasonable price. You got a real good bargain getting it for only $5. It´s a perfect media center for TV´s or projectors.
Having CD/DVD/BlueRay drives has become rare. So while other solutions for use on TVs are more common nowerdays, they mostly use streaming, maybe they can also use NAS, but barely any device have support for physical DVD/BlueRay anymore. Setting up a pretty standard noiseless PC in a nice case for this imho is perfect.
Of course, with mouse and keyboard (best: wireless of course), you also still can use the PC as an PC to write eMail, surf the Internet and doing office work. Not great for actual games of course, but perfect for normal office usage.
I love watching you browse old used PCs. Seeing the random stuff left on them is like digital archeology.
These special-purpose machines are always interesting to look at.
This looks like a pretty standard Mini-ITX case, there's even a removable backplate. I wonder if that old setup could be replaced with something more modern...
Nice MAME machine.
Nice Raspberry Pi replacement.
Nice Console emulator machine.
Nice Octoprint machine for 3D printing.
I thoroughly enjoyed this video. I found it quite interesting to watch you go over an old system and give it some purpose (it makes me want to do the same with mine).
a PC from Seattle huh? always love to see stuff local to me lol
ok is it just me or did this guy supposedly comment before the video was made?
@@MichaelBosworth-y9r Channel members must get early access to videos
@@MichaelBosworth-y9r members got this video early
@@MichaelBosworth-y9r it is available for members 12 hours before it is posted
Why is that funny??
I used to do restaurant IT support, as well as installing digital menu systems. The amount of rust in that system is not at all surprising. Those PCs are usually installed above the ceiling behind the display TVs, or in the back office. They're exposed to constant humidity, aerosolized grease, smoke and corrosive chemicals like sodium hydroxide (commonly used to clean cooktop grills), bleach and other cleaning agents.
Anything electronics did not survive more than a few years at most. I was always replacing monitors, bump bars, wires, computer parts and fans.
did not expect to be watching a command and conquer let’s play video today, but here we are
One of these was my daily driver in the 2005-2006 timeframe. I ran Damn Small Linux from a compact flash card with an IDE adapter, no spinning storage.
Came for the The $5 Mid-2000s Mini PC, stayed for the Command and Conquer LP.
26:17 FINALLY. You were driving me nuts not taking over the buildings.
This has got to be the most convoluted Let's Play channel on UA-cam. Before playing each game, he needs to find a vintage machine and install an OS on it, often with extra steps. :P
I rather like the case. I've been wanting to build an HTPC with a DVD drive, and this has reminded me that maybe a thrift store is selling old computers for $5 with optical drive bays. That whole thing is WAY cheaper than an empty Silverstone.
i feel like mjd should start something like the $5 chain, like $5 computer or $5 windows stuff, but another great video as usual! keep up the good work mjd!
Little Guy confirmed!
Great video! You should do some more command and conquer gameplay!
I definitely would watch a full recap video on that system!
Love Red Alert 2 and Yuri.. We used to play LAN game at friends house for hours and hours back in the 90's. 4 players with Nukes off would go for hours.
I have a twin to this oddball PC complete with power supply. Used it for years as a DIY digital photo frame.
I spent a solid quarter of my childhood playing RA2 online... still one of the first things I install when I do a new retro build.
I have that C&C set, I should dig that out and install it on something. Love those games.
I loved Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 and Yuris Revenge, played countless hours with some of my friends at that point! So glad to see it again, ill probably need to setup my old Win XP pc with CRT screen to get that same feeling again!
Andddd yet again another AMAZING video by Michael. This guy never fails pal, keep it up
Thank you!
The Vinyl Deck program was included on VIA audio drivers in general, from what I recall, you couldn't really make the thing NOT install that program, so whenever you had a PC with a VIA chipset, that program would be installed whenever you got the drivers in, from what I remember they also had a utility that replaced the regular Windows volume mixer as well. Oh, and I used the My Videos folder a lot back in the day, for those crappy Movie Maker creations and I had Fraps set to save videos to that directory too!
Similar to Realtek's HD Audio Manager.
Any MJD day is a good day. Thanks for the content!
Michael, you call this PC $5 Windows XP PC
Is this a Lasktop? (A desktop with laptop hardware).
It's odd the CPU is mobile, but the ram is desktop
Yes but it also got slots for Laptop ram
The desktop I picked up from goodwill for 6 bucks is literally a laptop inside it even uses a laptop like charger for power
I heard it is called thin client workstation.
It can be like the desktop in the video or a lower tdp desktop cpu with laptop ram
@@LucaMo-q8f i wondered about those slots like what are they for. looked like ram slots.
So funny to see this! I have two lying around that I got from a liquidation years ago but it was put aside and forgotten
You might want to try a larger RAM stick just to see as you would be surprised how often the OEM lists a smaller max RAM than a unit will actually take. For 2 examples in my own collection I have a Presario which is listed as max 8GB of RAM that is happily running 16GB and an AMD based EEE PC that lists 4GB as max RAM that is purring along with 8GB of DDR 3 with 0 issues.
The Pentium-m CPU is essentially the next generation of Pentium III. Desktop motherboards with that CPU are pretty rare.
It's about the latest system that you can put Windows 9x onto. It's pretty much the final boss of Win9x. I know you already have 9x systems, but this is the best use case for that hardware.
Command and Conquer reminds me a lot of Submarine Titans. I love RTS like that
I feel so happy when MJD posts a new video
loved the gaming at the end of this video, you should just play some retro games with the same old monitor pov its really really cool and id for sure watch it. Love the videos!
Messing around with old computers is fun. Recently, I got a Sossaman Xeon with 2 ES chips in it, and I was super surprised to see that a Windows 10 Pro 32 but was attached to the motherboard. It didn't see all my cores on the 2 CPUs but it was neat to see.
I thought for sure that this $5 PC would have a VIA CPU in it. Pentium M is actually pretty awesome.
Sossaman Xeon... They're Pentium M based, aren't they?
Oh! It looks like Michael finally got his own Little Guy! :D
One of my cousins has a copy of C&C: RA1&2, and I used to play with his late younger brother back when I was over at their house.
Did not expect to see RA2 Yuri's Revenge gameplay here. Ahhh so many memories
Didn't know you were a C&C fan, a further reason to appreciate your videos even more!
Very nice, didn't know you were into Command & Conquer! 😄
Absolutely make Command and Conquer a recurring thing. You can rotate between the different games depending on the era of PC you're using. I spent way too many hours on the family PC playing Red Alert 2 as a kid.
For anyone wondering, the case is a Morex Cubid 3688.
I have that one too! Or at least a small PC with the exact same case. Mine was used as a small file server at my work, and we retired it like 12 years ago. I don't think mine has anything to do with the company Impart, and I'm in Europe too, so the case is probably some generic no-name case used for many different small computers. Mine had 512 MB RAM, not sure about the other specs, as I haven't looked inside it for almost 12 years.
do you know the brand and model of case? im in love with it lol, id love to do a tiny build in it!
@@Topaz1112 It's packed away somewhere in storage, so I can't easily check, but I don't remember seeing any kind of branding at all on it.
@@Topaz1112 The power supply is branded Morex. From a little digging the case appears to be a Morex 3688.
@@eDoc2020 hell yeah! Seems hard to find though lol, all the links I'm finding are outside of the US, and pretty expensive for what it is
@@Topaz1112 It's a 21 year old case that probably hasn't been made in a decade.
This is so nostalgic! I LOVE windows XP... i wish i could have a computer like this...
I think a retrospective or quick look on command and conquer could be a fun video series
Every time I see a mjd video I instantly watch it
Good findings, MJD! Maybe you should try and do an upgrade saga on this machine, perhaps?
Gotta love the references to other TechTubers.
edit - Nice, Red Alert 2/YR. Younger me would have loved a relatively portable PC to play some games on.
Reminds me of a 1990's shuttle PC on a diet .
i agree that we should have a round of C&C in these older pc reviews!
Love You're Videos Michael Mjd
The $5 mini pc now. The cheap pc collection is growing
This is a good lesson to wipe, format, remove or destroy the hard disk in machines that are going to be donated/ sold/ e-wasted.
I've had plenty of machines where the manual makes the claim it only supports up to 1 gig or something like that but were able to address more. It won't hurt to try a 2 gig and 4 gig in there.
I remember wanting to try out that case in the mid 00's It was one of the smallest cases on sale at the time if i remember right.
i dont think this is touched upon much but this is a laptop cpu and chipset on a itx board. I also think this a good insight into how low the requirements were for XP... at the start XP ran on single core 256mb systems... towards the end it was running on Q6600 quads with 8Gb ram... i remember companies were using single core laptops with 512mb on xp running office 2003 and getting along just fine.
When you pulled out the old-school Command and Conquer games, I wished there was more than a like button.
I have this exact same case. Bought it sometimes around 2005 from a Mini ITX specialized online shop, just the case. Think I first put a VIA C7 mainboard in it. Was slow as hell. Later put an AMD based Zotac E350 motherboard with WIFI in it to use it as a MediaPC. That project never went anywhere when I moved and didn't really had the use case for it. Still have it laying around and worked two years ago. Will definately take a look on those capacitors on the power converter board. Still miss those times when this neeche ITX stuff was the hot thing but at the same time quite cheap. Today you're getting ripped off for stuff like this in a modern form.
I had one of those cases in about 2005? My brother bought me the case as a present and I had an Atom mini-ITX inside running Linux. Similarly it probably also had a Samsung 2.5in drive in.
I think it was a fairly well known brand itx case.
Ouch, an Atom? Your brother must have hated you.
if such old PCs still have a working internal DVD drive (maybe blu-ray), Smooth Video Project, and have a projector it can make a sweet lifelike movies and shows machine
I've been watching Cathode Ray Dude's series on little guys and he'd love stuff like this
love your videos man, unfortunately i dont have some time to watch more often
It's not like these motherboards outright refuse to boot with extra RAM, most of them just didn't fathom having these humongous memory sizes in the shitbox bolted to a cashier table. Most of them actually follow the DDR2 spec and would boot and use fill 2 gigs per channel, especially after the bios update
I always love seeing C&C. Grew up playing the entire series...but i was never any good at them.
this is a really weird episode of little guys
I have the original Command and Conquer on CD the install is so cool. I just installed it on my IBM thinkpad 600E
I think these may also have been used to display ads alongside roads in those big screens. Which might also explain the rust, if it was sucking in moist air from outside. And it would make the caked on dust all moist and make a perfect environment for dust to form on the aluminum.
And I think the VIA Vinyl program was included with the VIA audio driver.
P.S.
Can you do some more videos of you playing C&C? I loved watching you play with the commentary.
That system reminded me of my first system my dad owned. It had a pentium e2140 dual core and 1gig for ddr2 on a gigabyte 945gcmxs2-f4 motherboard. That system survived with us till 2018. He upgraded the ram only in 2017 to 2gigs. I literally ran every single os on it windows 95 98 me 2000 XP vista 7 8 8.1 10 and that thing survived like crazy. It had an 80gig hdd which then died and got a 1tb wd blue drive.
Whenever I would coax him to upgrade it he would get angry and tell me to be happy with it. After it died and no parts available, he then got me my gaming PC with a Ryzen 5 1500x and a 1050ti and an SSD and holy shit the speed of the system.
The cpu that is the pentium e2140 now sits in my key chain after I delided it and drilled through the PCB. It sits alongside my 1050ti GPU that also died reminding me of the good old days of CS 1.6, condition zero, half life 1 and GTA SA and gaming with onboard graphics.
1:00 Pretty sure Cathode Ray Dude will be looking at this drooling.
I still play a LOT of RA2:YR.... It was my favorite when I was younger.
Cool find!
C&C?? lets gooooooooooooooo
I have an iBase MB800 (P4 3GHz) that I use as a DOS machine. Or did, til the caps went (at age 22 years), but I'll be replacing 'em. Hard to replace a fully-DOS-compatible P4 with ISA slots. They go for about $600 now, with bad caps.
Digital signage eh? The Cathode Ray Dude virus is spreading!
@MichaelMJD
That 1GB limit is artificial. The actual memory limit of the chipset is 2GB, per Intel's own specs PDF. Stick in a 2GB DIMM and enjoy. EDIT: Loved the C&C-RA2 run!!
I hate the fact that my country have $100 shipping fee from amazon and 60% fee from the government to buy stuff from outside, and because technology didn't spread that much here you'll never find such stuff, you can only find the commons like a PS2 or an Xbox 360
I literally searched for an AGP motherboard for months and couldn't find any in this continent
This was a welcome RA2 video
A new chapter has born
The sequel of $5 PC