I remember having to build 10 systems a day for three weeks solid to fill a (huge) customer order in the 90's, every last one of them used this kind of socket and they all needed IO cards and display adapters/soundcards. None of the jumpers came pre-set, everything had to be manually set up. I was a zombie by the end of it, at least 3 out of every 10 would have issues, IRQ conflicts, random gremlins, builder error (not setting the drive jumpers correctly for example) or RAM not seating properly. We had a single monitor, keyboard and mouse hooked up to a 5 way KVM switch with 5 systems on the go at once, installing software and configuring. Building systems today is boring by comparison 😁 When the order was filled I bought myself a 486 SX 25 CPU with my bonus, I couldn't afford a DX/2/4 but I was thrilled to upgrade from my old 8088 and finally play Wolfenstein 3d on my shiny new greyscale VGA monitor. Damn this stuff was expensive back then, it took me 2 months to save up for a single 4mb 72pin SIMM. Not long after that the industry boomed and your new PC would be outdated before you were done taking it all out the box it came in 🤣 Socket 5 Pentium, Socket 7, Pentium MMX, Pentium II/III and all the AMD/Cyrix/Winchip/UMC etc. What a time it was to be in IT.
Man talk about keeping busy! I can relate with how nuts those times were, between 1993 and 1997 I went from 486, to Pentium 90 (which was... disappointing), to Pentium II. Got way too expensive to go through PC's like that, and the gaming industry didn't even keep pace, I gave it a rest and turned to upgrading the Pentium II with more RAM and a Creative Savage 4 3D Pro, ran Max Payne on that, was able to keep it going for 6 years. Story goes on like that, lots of upgrades through a 4 year period, then gaming industry has to catch up so you get 6 years of high-end gaming on older setups, then boff, upgrade a million times in a mere fiscal quarter..
" Building systems today is boring by comparison " The hardest part is waiting and waiting because of broken supply chains, remember when companies used to have stockings in the 1990s, nowadays everything is "JIT" and logistics is unreliable after they played with the world too much in "respiratory-virus-2019".
That has got to be most thorough restoration / rebuild I have ever seen! Dismantling the P/S FAN even!! and then fixing the hard drive. wow! I'm impressed!
Saving that HDD was a job well done, sir. That Conner also brought my memories back regarding its notorious incompatibility with CD-ROM drives (I mean my old 420 MB Conner). Back in the day I had a Sony CDU-55E (a whopping 2.4x speed CD-ROM - not 24x!). I had no choice but to put the CD on the secondary IDE channel (which I luckily had in my system).
Ah the 90s , back when assembling computer is so much "fun" , you can choose what processor, memory, video card, sound and other controller boards to use, unlike nowadays, you're stuck on what's on them.. great videos
486 PCs like that are quite expensive these days. from 200€ Without HDD. Great Video, thank you. My First PC from my Uncle was a 486 DX2-66 16 MB RAM AND VLB Cards. And with Graphical AMI BIOS.
Sweet Retro build. I love these video old computers. It nice to see people that want to build and appreciate this hardware from the past instead of just looking at it like it's junk and throwing it into a landfill. Thanks for the upload. Look forward for more.
Love your videos and commentary! Very professional and to the point. Thank you. But I can't imagine working on that desk and losing screws falling in between planks LOL :)
Hehe :) That's my table outside, I only use it, when the weather is good enough to tinker outside. It's not the table of my choice to work on, but it's better than nothing.
the casual way you repair the harddrive board is so impressive. I watch a lot retro PC youtube channels and they just chuck failed harddrives right into the bin. You are one of the best hardware diagnostics guys I have ever seen. Thanks for the highly instructive videos!
Wow, I think this is probably the best build video I've seen. Really thorough, you have some great skills. Also probably the tidiest cable management in an AT system I've seen.
I put a front system fan and CPU heatsink and fan on ALL my retro builds. Keeping electronics cool never hurts. And when the last 486 dies, they'll all be gone forever, the longer we can keep ours alive the better :)
check FPGAs, and the Mister Project. They haven't come as far as 486, but they've got all major home computers and video cabinets covered. No, 486s won't truly be gone. That makes computers different than other technologies.
I find it so awesome that you even refurbish the fans! A lass patient man (like me) would have just thrown them out and replaced them instead of opening up the old ones and lubricating them...
The way is my aim, not the result on its own. I like to repair and restore old and broken things and usually I don't use them myself, once they are done. They get sold or exchanged for another broken stuff to start it all over again.
Insane to watch expert knowledge combined with such a great access to retro hardware....I mean the case or the floppies looked like brand new. Excellent work.
Yeah. The OEM DX2-66 chips didn’t come with a heat sink from what I can tell, but there’s definitely a reason the OverDrives did. I thermal-epoxied a small heat sink to my DX2, and later did the same to the video chip on my VLB Trio64V+. They’re expensive and rare enough that it’s worth every effort to keep them alive, even if they might hurt their resale value as they’re no longer “original.”
this is somewhat similar to a system I recently built, recreating my teenage gaming PC. I was so keen to build it that I have not yet reconditioned the case at all and it really needs it. I'm looking forward to my system looking at nice as yours does!
I went dumpsterdiving this week and found the same mainboard i had when i built my first gaming pc and a q8300 instead of the e6750 i had, my buddy ran de q8400, felt 10 years younger. P5n32-e-sli with ati 4870 and a whopping 4GB RAM, hopefully i'll find some Corsair ram and an ati 4870 + zalman 7700cnps cpu cooler to complete the build. Found some PII systems too but those didn't have the emotional value, still glad to save them from being scrapped :)
I am born 1980 and grew up with this kind of hardware. It touches my heart to see it alive again. The 90s were an adventure, and computers were a major part of it.
Interesting about front panel cables. I have always braided my own front panel cables since the 90s because I like the look and it keeps things tidy. I had no idea about the electrical advantage until today.
I love the extra effort to save the HDD rather than just throwing a CF card in it. It irritates me when retro builds do that. Is it really a retro PC without the classic HDD whining and grinding?!
I have that exact case with a PC Chips M915i / Amptron DX-9200I and a 486 DX4 100Mhz! It's so shiny and new on the inside, but the outside needs some TLC... When I was young I had a neighbor with a similar computer, I used to go over to play some games, solve boot problems, or whatever the excuse was just to have fun on his 486 computer. Great old times...
It's refreshing to see someone doing a retro build using an actual period-correct hard disk. Too many people just slap in a flash card and go. I understand that these old drives are getting scarce, but some do this even if they have a working drive to use.
To be honest, I personally prefer CF too, but a real HDD is a nice thing from time to time. Hearing the mechanical hard drive is a very nostalgic feeling, but especially the older ones are very loud and if you work with it longer, or do recording, it gets very annoying.
Nice comprehensive rebuild and restore of this compact mid tower 486! Bummer on the sound card. My first Foray into PC building started with 386DX 40 installed into a IBM 5170 286 case. Loved your attention to detail and subbed! Thanks for the fond memories Necroware!
That's amazing. I'd have never went that far to disassemble the fan, but I guess this is what dedication means. That and you have a Lot of space. And thank you for the whitening suggestion. Good to know there's one, when you need it.
In the past I had snap-on coolers, but I ended up sawing them apart to create mini-heatsinks for mosfets. And now whenever I have to plant an active cooler onto old ceramic chips, I end up gluing them on with thermal plaster.
Thanks for explaining the reason for using a ferrite ring on the case panel wires. A machine I just restored has a massive ferrite ring on those cables and I couldn't figure out why. Mystery solved. :) I also have this exact same case (bought it myself in the 90's), just with a different panel than the black insert.
Oh, I had 80486DX4 100MHz. Я когда смотрю такие видео - где есть старое железо в мозгу появляется его запах - этот запах старого железа. Кстати, х230 от леново у меня тоже есть... отличная машина на свое время - даже сейчас на нем можно работать.
*man experiences a single transient resetting his computer randomly and is scarred for life* *man now braids cables obsessively* I get it. I totally get it. "ha. not doing THAT again."
I just built a retro pc but prefer the mid 90s so went with 98se and xp. I installed an SSD as I don't think I could cope with an ancient idea HDD. You are a brave man but this was a beautiful job. If your soundcard has a wavetable port check out the mccake mt32
A very nice rebuild, clean and simple. I'm currently doing a rebuild of my old 486DX4, I have to repaint the cabinet because of rust and I'm going to put in a Gotek Usb floppy emulator with an oled display mod.
Thank you! I really like to do such retro rebuilds from time to time, but it costs a lot of time, even the simple ones, like this. There goes always something wrong with such an old hardware, like the broken hard drive in this case. You think, you are nearly there, installing the software and suddenly a black screen kicks you out of the procedure :) Anyway, this is, what is actually exciting about it and I'll definitely make more videos like this in the future.
Wonderful project! I am actually building a very similar project, also with a 486DX2 66Mhz CPU. And super coincidence: I have a WD Caviar drive as well, but a smaller one (Caviar 280, which is 85MB). However, mine made a pop sound immediately after I powered it up. I removed the controller board, and it looks the same as yours, and even the exact same capacitor blew up! But it's impossible to read the value of it. What did you replace yours with? I have some other drives as well, but I really want to use this one. I remember when I was young, I really liked the sound of these Caviars.
(17:16) Such a beautiful sound. I would have liked to have seen some of those repairs more in depth. This was still worth watching, and very enjoyable.
Thank you! I'll do more of such videos in the future, I think. It always makes fun to build a new old PC. Unfortunately, I usually have to cut out a lot of footage, because for most people details are boring and nobody watches it, if it gets to long. So eventually I always have to find kind of a golden middle and sometimes it feels a bit choppy, but I try my best :)
@@necro_ware: Agreed. For general viewing, the in depth repairs aren't necessary. Even if I was to pay somebody else to do all the work, it's still good information to have, and I wish I had a better education of computers when I was little-it would have saved some machines from being scrapped (dad did the scrapping; I'd rather hang on to these machines). I'd also like too see videos about CF drive replacements and emulations; a gradually failing HDD was one of the reasons I had agreed to donate our first PC to the school, and in retrospect, I _really_ wish I had hung onto our Headstart LX CD computer instead (the school had also since scrapped their old PCs).
Well, I had quite good education about computers as I was a child and still I got rid of all the old stuff back in the days. At that point I just didn't realize, that I would be nostalgic about it one day :) Anyway, if you interested in HDD topics, may be you should take a look at my series about XT-IDE. It is not primarily about CF, but also about that and how to get it running on machine, which doesn't want to run from it. Just in case, you didn't see it yet.... stay tuned, may be I'll make the one or another video in the future, which you'd find interesting as well. Cheers!
I have one of those ct2230 that is less populated. Meaning it has only one CDROM connector and the upper left Qfp has an empty socket. I was also surprised to find some caps put in backwards at the factory. Two of them had minor leaking. That was a reason why one channel was very distorted and noisy. It works good now aside from that hanging note hardware bug.
don't forget that after whole retrobright process plastics start to yellow all over again unless you scotchbrite it and spray with a few clear coat lacquer
Nice setup and I especially like your attention to detail and care. You're a classic computer saint for this hardware compared to many of us mortals. By chance you or anyone else wouldn't happen to have any ideas with an issue I'm having? My 486 VLB motherboard is giving me a video memory tone error on boot without display output regardless of trying various video cards, and I can't get past this point, not even to flash the BIOS with the firmware on a floppy. Just wondering as it's been a lost cause for my 486 build so far. Cheers.
I tend to set those 7 segment display to show HI / LO, so it stays accurate for whatever CPU you use :-) Edit: at 6:50... oof, I had a K7 what hang every time I attempted to close the lateral case panel (without any contact). Quite the party trick, being able to freeze the computer without touching it :-D
My brother in 1997 gave me a broke IBM 286 with a 8Mhz processor, 640k base memory and no extended. A FMX 20Mb hard drive. It wouldn't start and with help I figured out it was start up files and got it working. I searched every part of that 20Mb hard drive running Double Space, mostly help.com which gave a ton of information about DOS commands. 3 months later I was building a new computer, an AMD K5-133 with Win95 :-)
haha mate, just saw it when you washed the steel casing, if you ever asked yourself about the origin of your PC it was build for the "Deutsche Post" (German Post Office). I needed to check it twice as I saw the label with the horn at the back haha but as I wrote the first sentence I checked your YT and noticed that you are also from German so my hole comment is useless but I will post it anyways hahah Guten^^
There is indeed a German Post sticker on it, but the conclusion is not necessary correct. I assume this case is from early 90's, may be 91-92'. The German Post and German Telekom were one big company back in the days named German Post and Telecommunication until it went through reorganization around 1990. This company placed their stickers on all of the communication devices, which could be connected to the telephone network. Modems were no exclusion and got such stickers as well. The splitting of Post and Telekom was a continuous process over couple of years, until may be around 1993 (?). And all that time the company continued to put their stickers with the horn on the telecommunication devices. So if this computer was sold around 1991-1992 with a modem in it, it would have gotten such a sticker as well. So, it's not quite clear, if it was used by the German Post, or just had a modem.
Yes, it's a strange model. The led lights all the time green and blinks yellow, when it's reading. Or was it the other way around? May be I mixed the colors now, but it's lighting all the time.
I see your CD-ROM is working fine. I wish I was in your shoes right now, as us English say! I think I will obtain a hard disk under 500 MB and see if this helps.
While I don't have too much of the old hardware, I believe I have some old software. I have MS-DOS 6.22 floppy ISO's downloaded from Microsoft Dream Spark program. I have DA Menu 5.1 which is a dos based gui menu program. I believe I also have Word Perfect 5.1 and Wolf 3-D
Well, may be it wouldn't be bad to have one. However, this machine is in my opinion already too new for 5,25" floppy drive. This drives were widely used from 8086 to 80386 and even in the early days of some 486 machines, but with 486DX2-66 and VLB they almost vanished from the market. Furthermore, I had no spare 5,25" floppy drives at hand anyway :)
If you compare the CPU power today with the CPU power back then, it's no magic. By the Moore's Law the amount of transistors in the CPUs increases by factor 2 every 18 months. That means, that the CPUs today have about 2^20 (more than million times) more transistors, than around 1992. It's a technological wonder, that you still simply need just a cooler and a little bit of thermal paste to run them.
Thank you! The HDD led is not always active (19:59), but only on IDE access. The CD-ROM is really unusual, the led lights green all the time and is yellow, when it reads the disk.
Yes, it is. It's an old EIZO 15" with integrated Speakers, analogue VGA and digital DVI (!) input. Got it from a friend with original box and manuals :)
Hi!! What a nice restoring job you have done to the case :) I love this restoring videos. How did you find the correct value for the HD capacitor? It looks very toasty and crispy :D it was a shame that the SB16 with real opl3 went bad. I have only one with a true opl3 chip. I like to use some ESS based cards for DOS, low noise good ESSFM sound. They are very cheap here in Portugal in flea markets about 1€ or 1,5€ each. Please do the fix sb16 video fast :D
Hi Jorge! Thank you very much, this was really a nice project and I was more, than happy with the result. On the capacitor you still could recognize 105, which means 10µF, so it was enough, furthermore, I have another same HDD with a short circuit somewhere on the board, so I validated there once again. The SB16 is really a shame, I have two of them and both seem to be dead in a same way. However, I have currently no idea, what could be wrong. I tested all the traces for short and everything seems to be just fine. I'll try to recap it and hope this will solve the problem. If some of the ICs are dead, I don't think I'll be able to fix that. Anyway, if I have something to report regarding this, I'll do a video. And about ESS, I also very much like that chip, the sound cards are cheap as dirt, but the sound is really good indeed, the compatibility is perfect and FM sounds very good, even if it differs sometimes a little bit from the original. Would I have one ESS at hand, I'd probably prefer that one over SB Vibra16XV, at least because of the FM quality. But well, as I told it's still an OK sound card for DOS, I guess. Cheers and thank you following my stuff!
@@necro_ware Yes, sound cards are a hard topic on retro-computers, those that we want are ultra expensive and rare, those that we can afford there is always something missing or not so good like noise levels or opl emulation. One that I like is an Opti based chip OPTi 82C929 (MAD 16 PRO reference design), not easy to find for reasonable prices. One card that is designed and finished by a friend of mine here in Portugal is this: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=70682 I dont know how much will it cost but ticks all the boxs that you could want for a sound card
@@JorgeCarvalho_web_dev I have some very interesting sound cards in my collection, but I didn't want to install one of them into this machine, since it is going to another retro fan and I wanted to make a video about sound cards one day, where I'll need the examples, you know? :)
So, I'll admit I don't completely understand retrobrighting as I've never had the chance to do it myself, but I've heard after doing so, the material will get yellowed from sunlight at a dramatically faster pace. So wouldn't leaving it outside to dry be a BAD idea? I ask in genuine curiosity.
Yes, many people say that, but I guess it depends on plastic. From all the cases, which I retrobrighted so far, only one turned back yellow after a year, but it didn't get worse, than before in my opinion. And actually nobody really knows if it is because of the sun (only). This is an open question, which many people were trying to answer, but it's still unclear. There is a lot of old hardware which was stored in boxes in dark places, and though it yellowed. I think sun is only one possible reason, but it's more about the plastic ingredients which were used to make it.
I don't think, it's an entire myth, but I don't think, that it's complete truth as well. It just depends on the plastic your parts are made of. At least I can say from my experience, that it doesn't instantly turn yellow again, even if you put it into the sun. And sometimes after a longer period of time (months, years?) it can get back yellow again, but not worse than before.
The HDD capacitor replacement was unexpected, yet delightful. That's one skill that sets your channel apart from others. Nicely done sir.
I remember having to build 10 systems a day for three weeks solid to fill a (huge) customer order in the 90's, every last one of them used this kind of socket and they all needed IO cards and display adapters/soundcards. None of the jumpers came pre-set, everything had to be manually set up. I was a zombie by the end of it, at least 3 out of every 10 would have issues, IRQ conflicts, random gremlins, builder error (not setting the drive jumpers correctly for example) or RAM not seating properly. We had a single monitor, keyboard and mouse hooked up to a 5 way KVM switch with 5 systems on the go at once, installing software and configuring. Building systems today is boring by comparison 😁
When the order was filled I bought myself a 486 SX 25 CPU with my bonus, I couldn't afford a DX/2/4 but I was thrilled to upgrade from my old 8088 and finally play Wolfenstein 3d on my shiny new greyscale VGA monitor. Damn this stuff was expensive back then, it took me 2 months to save up for a single 4mb 72pin SIMM. Not long after that the industry boomed and your new PC would be outdated before you were done taking it all out the box it came in 🤣 Socket 5 Pentium, Socket 7, Pentium MMX, Pentium II/III and all the AMD/Cyrix/Winchip/UMC etc. What a time it was to be in IT.
My childhood PC :)
Yes, there is a reason why amiga and older home computer were so popular.
Man talk about keeping busy!
I can relate with how nuts those times were, between 1993 and 1997 I went from 486, to Pentium 90 (which was... disappointing), to Pentium II.
Got way too expensive to go through PC's like that, and the gaming industry didn't even keep pace, I gave it a rest and turned to upgrading the Pentium II with more RAM and a Creative Savage 4 3D Pro, ran Max Payne on that, was able to keep it going for 6 years.
Story goes on like that, lots of upgrades through a 4 year period, then gaming industry has to catch up so you get 6 years of high-end gaming on older setups, then boff, upgrade a million times in a mere fiscal quarter..
" Building systems today is boring by comparison " The hardest part is waiting and waiting because of broken supply chains, remember when companies used to have stockings in the 1990s, nowadays everything is "JIT" and logistics is unreliable after they played with the world too much in "respiratory-virus-2019".
this is my old one that was recently sold on ebay! have fun with it!
Really? The world is a village. Yeah, I did have my fun with it, but now it went further to another retro fan :) Thank you!
Thanks for that boot sound section... Brings back many childhood memories. Had XT, 286,368,486 i upgrade/swopped parts over the years. ♥
Back to the future!! The rebirth of an awesome piece of classic PC history!! Awesome job!! 👍👍
Bro you are simply the best, never seen plastic colour recovery, so simple and so powerful. Great job! Thank you for this insights. 🤝
I really enjoyed that and the bonus HDD repair!
Thank you very much!
That has got to be most thorough restoration / rebuild I have ever seen! Dismantling the P/S FAN even!! and then fixing the hard drive. wow! I'm impressed!
Saving that HDD was a job well done, sir.
That Conner also brought my memories back regarding its notorious incompatibility with CD-ROM drives (I mean my old 420 MB Conner). Back in the day I had a Sony CDU-55E (a whopping 2.4x speed CD-ROM - not 24x!). I had no choice but to put the CD on the secondary IDE channel (which I luckily had in my system).
It's a beautiful system. Congrats on your hard work, and for fixing the things that broke along the way!!!
Ah the 90s , back when assembling computer is so much "fun" , you can choose what processor, memory, video card, sound and other controller boards to use, unlike nowadays, you're stuck on what's on them.. great videos
486 PCs like that are quite expensive these days. from 200€ Without HDD. Great Video, thank you. My First PC from my Uncle was a 486 DX2-66 16 MB RAM AND VLB Cards. And with Graphical AMI BIOS.
Sweet Retro build. I love these video old computers. It nice to see people that want to build and appreciate this hardware from the past instead of just looking at it like it's junk and throwing it into a landfill. Thanks for the upload. Look forward for more.
Thank you! There is more to come :)
Love your videos and commentary! Very professional and to the point. Thank you. But I can't imagine working on that desk and losing screws falling in between planks LOL :)
Hehe :) That's my table outside, I only use it, when the weather is good enough to tinker outside. It's not the table of my choice to work on, but it's better than nothing.
the casual way you repair the harddrive board is so impressive. I watch a lot retro PC youtube channels and they just chuck failed harddrives right into the bin. You are one of the best hardware diagnostics guys I have ever seen. Thanks for the highly instructive videos!
You clearly overestimate it, but thank you. Glad you like it.
Wow, I think this is probably the best build video I've seen. Really thorough, you have some great skills. Also probably the tidiest cable management in an AT system I've seen.
I love the balance of attention to detail and editing style this build video has! Subscribed before the end of the video.
I put a front system fan and CPU heatsink and fan on ALL my retro builds. Keeping electronics cool never hurts. And when the last 486 dies, they'll all be gone forever, the longer we can keep ours alive the better :)
True
check FPGAs, and the Mister Project. They haven't come as far as 486, but they've got all major home computers and video cabinets covered. No, 486s won't truly be gone. That makes computers different than other technologies.
I find it so awesome that you even refurbish the fans! A lass patient man (like me) would have just thrown them out and replaced them instead of opening up the old ones and lubricating them...
The way is my aim, not the result on its own. I like to repair and restore old and broken things and usually I don't use them myself, once they are done. They get sold or exchanged for another broken stuff to start it all over again.
Nice restoration work ! ❤
Ahh the good old days I remember so well, thankyou 👍
Thank you for these videos. This is how I learned, I now have a floppy with mTCP FTP server, a nice thing to have indeed!
You are very welcome!
That machine is beautiful.
Insane to watch expert knowledge combined with such a great access to retro hardware....I mean the case or the floppies looked like brand new. Excellent work.
good job with the build! It surely doesn''t harm to have that fan and heatsink installed!
Yeah. The OEM DX2-66 chips didn’t come with a heat sink from what I can tell, but there’s definitely a reason the OverDrives did. I thermal-epoxied a small heat sink to my DX2, and later did the same to the video chip on my VLB Trio64V+. They’re expensive and rare enough that it’s worth every effort to keep them alive, even if they might hurt their resale value as they’re no longer “original.”
this is somewhat similar to a system I recently built, recreating my teenage gaming PC. I was so keen to build it that I have not yet reconditioned the case at all and it really needs it. I'm looking forward to my system looking at nice as yours does!
I went dumpsterdiving this week and found the same mainboard i had when i built my first gaming pc and a q8300 instead of the e6750 i had, my buddy ran de q8400, felt 10 years younger.
P5n32-e-sli with ati 4870 and a whopping 4GB RAM, hopefully i'll find some Corsair ram and an ati 4870 + zalman 7700cnps cpu cooler to complete the build.
Found some PII systems too but those didn't have the emotional value, still glad to save them from being scrapped :)
Amazing, you know so much of the old tech.
I am born 1980 and grew up with this kind of hardware. It touches my heart to see it alive again. The 90s were an adventure, and computers were a major part of it.
Interesting about front panel cables. I have always braided my own front panel cables since the 90s because I like the look and it keeps things tidy. I had no idea about the electrical advantage until today.
I love the extra effort to save the HDD rather than just throwing a CF card in it. It irritates me when retro builds do that. Is it really a retro PC without the classic HDD whining and grinding?!
I have that exact case with a PC Chips M915i / Amptron DX-9200I and a 486 DX4 100Mhz! It's so shiny and new on the inside, but the outside needs some TLC... When I was young I had a neighbor with a similar computer, I used to go over to play some games, solve boot problems, or whatever the excuse was just to have fun on his 486 computer. Great old times...
Fun. Thanks! I like putting this old machines together myself. Lots of fun.
It's refreshing to see someone doing a retro build using an actual period-correct hard disk. Too many people just slap in a flash card and go. I understand that these old drives are getting scarce, but some do this even if they have a working drive to use.
To be honest, I personally prefer CF too, but a real HDD is a nice thing from time to time. Hearing the mechanical hard drive is a very nostalgic feeling, but especially the older ones are very loud and if you work with it longer, or do recording, it gets very annoying.
So many people fooled for years thinking the LED display was an accurate measurement of the CPU speed 🙃
Nice comprehensive rebuild and restore of this compact mid tower 486! Bummer on the sound card. My first Foray into PC building started with 386DX 40 installed into a IBM 5170 286 case. Loved your attention to detail and subbed! Thanks for the fond memories Necroware!
Haha.
Normal user: "Oh well, this old HDD is toast."
Necro: "Not so fast there, buddy."
That's amazing. I'd have never went that far to disassemble the fan, but I guess this is what dedication means.
That and you have a Lot of space.
And thank you for the whitening suggestion. Good to know there's one, when you need it.
That's the point, I don't have a lot of space, that's why most of the retro builds I do are not for me....
Very nice build! Greetings from Netherlands!
Finally! Someone who knows how to clean and do a righteous job.
Great video. I'm still waiting for that promised Sound Blaster 16 repair attempt!
In the past I had snap-on coolers, but I ended up sawing them apart to create mini-heatsinks for mosfets. And now whenever I have to plant an active cooler onto old ceramic chips, I end up gluing them on with thermal plaster.
Nice channel, I see a lot of devotion! Subscribed!
That was fun to watch! I hope we'll get to see a SB16 repair video some day.
Me either :) Unfortunately, I didn't have time yet to analyze the issue yet, but I definitely want to get to it one day.
Thanks for explaining the reason for using a ferrite ring on the case panel wires. A machine I just restored has a massive ferrite ring on those cables and I couldn't figure out why. Mystery solved. :)
I also have this exact same case (bought it myself in the 90's), just with a different panel than the black insert.
Oh, I had 80486DX4 100MHz. Я когда смотрю такие видео - где есть старое железо в мозгу появляется его запах - этот запах старого железа. Кстати, х230 от леново у меня тоже есть... отличная машина на свое время - даже сейчас на нем можно работать.
That HDD rebuild.... Nice! 😀
Great work , brings back a lot of memories ... of bruised and cut fingers... lol
Hehe, true :D
That is a heck of a disassemble. Fantasy job and great video!
*man experiences a single transient resetting his computer randomly and is scarred for life*
*man now braids cables obsessively*
I get it. I totally get it. "ha. not doing THAT again."
So much work cleaning and oiling the PSU fan. I'd have just replaced it with a modern, quieter one. But hey, good on you! Love seeing the dedication.
The one, which was there, was absolutely silent. And this applies to the whole PC, I could replace it with a new one completely ;)
wow I had the same case for my first ever PC (Pentium 120). Such memories thanks!
I just built a retro pc but prefer the mid 90s so went with 98se and xp. I installed an SSD as I don't think I could cope with an ancient idea HDD. You are a brave man but this was a beautiful job. If your soundcard has a wavetable port check out the mccake mt32
A very nice rebuild, clean and simple.
I'm currently doing a rebuild of my old 486DX4, I have to repaint the cabinet because of rust and I'm going to put in a Gotek Usb floppy emulator with an oled display mod.
Thank you! I really like to do such retro rebuilds from time to time, but it costs a lot of time, even the simple ones, like this. There goes always something wrong with such an old hardware, like the broken hard drive in this case. You think, you are nearly there, installing the software and suddenly a black screen kicks you out of the procedure :) Anyway, this is, what is actually exciting about it and I'll definitely make more videos like this in the future.
14:11
I love such machines, lots of extension cards, none of this "on-board" rubish, nowadays only the graphics card is offboard.
Your vid is cool, it make me remembet my old childhood. I rrally love ur vid, keep going!
Wonderful project! I am actually building a very similar project, also with a 486DX2 66Mhz CPU. And super coincidence: I have a WD Caviar drive as well, but a smaller one (Caviar 280, which is 85MB). However, mine made a pop sound immediately after I powered it up. I removed the controller board, and it looks the same as yours, and even the exact same capacitor blew up! But it's impossible to read the value of it. What did you replace yours with? I have some other drives as well, but I really want to use this one. I remember when I was young, I really liked the sound of these Caviars.
(17:16) Such a beautiful sound. I would have liked to have seen some of those repairs more in depth.
This was still worth watching, and very enjoyable.
Thank you! I'll do more of such videos in the future, I think. It always makes fun to build a new old PC. Unfortunately, I usually have to cut out a lot of footage, because for most people details are boring and nobody watches it, if it gets to long. So eventually I always have to find kind of a golden middle and sometimes it feels a bit choppy, but I try my best :)
@@necro_ware: Agreed. For general viewing, the in depth repairs aren't necessary. Even if I was to pay somebody else to do all the work, it's still good information to have, and I wish I had a better education of computers when I was little-it would have saved some machines from being scrapped (dad did the scrapping; I'd rather hang on to these machines).
I'd also like too see videos about CF drive replacements and emulations; a gradually failing HDD was one of the reasons I had agreed to donate our first PC to the school, and in retrospect, I _really_ wish I had hung onto our Headstart LX CD computer instead (the school had also since scrapped their old PCs).
Well, I had quite good education about computers as I was a child and still I got rid of all the old stuff back in the days. At that point I just didn't realize, that I would be nostalgic about it one day :) Anyway, if you interested in HDD topics, may be you should take a look at my series about XT-IDE. It is not primarily about CF, but also about that and how to get it running on machine, which doesn't want to run from it. Just in case, you didn't see it yet.... stay tuned, may be I'll make the one or another video in the future, which you'd find interesting as well. Cheers!
I miss good old full build videos
I have one of those ct2230 that is less populated. Meaning it has only one CDROM connector and the upper left Qfp has an empty socket. I was also surprised to find some caps put in backwards at the factory. Two of them had minor leaking. That was a reason why one channel was very distorted and noisy. It works good now aside from that hanging note hardware bug.
I had that very same Soundblaster card from 1997. Ah, memories! I'm pretty sure I beat Diablo with that sound card.
what is the monitor model?
Hi it's Eizo FlexScan L365
@@necro_ware Eizo it was a very very good monitor
don't forget that after whole retrobright process plastics start to yellow all over again unless you scotchbrite it and spray with a few clear coat lacquer
My first computer had that exact same case. Nice to see one again.
Nice setup and I especially like your attention to detail and care. You're a classic computer saint for this hardware compared to many of us mortals.
By chance you or anyone else wouldn't happen to have any ideas with an issue I'm having? My 486 VLB motherboard is giving me a video memory tone error on boot without display output regardless of trying various video cards, and I can't get past this point, not even to flash the BIOS with the firmware on a floppy. Just wondering as it's been a lost cause for my 486 build so far. Cheers.
finnaly a guy who washes the case!
I remember back in the day swapping out the LED colors.
I tend to set those 7 segment display to show HI / LO, so it stays accurate for whatever CPU you use :-)
Edit: at 6:50... oof, I had a K7 what hang every time I attempted to close the lateral case panel (without any contact). Quite the party trick, being able to freeze the computer without touching it :-D
Holy shit! My 486 DX2/40MHz had the same case! It was my first 32 machine. Huge upgrade over my ~10MHz 8088 :)
My brother in 1997 gave me a broke IBM 286 with a 8Mhz processor, 640k base memory and no extended. A FMX 20Mb hard drive. It wouldn't start and with help I figured out it was start up files and got it working. I searched every part of that 20Mb hard drive running Double Space, mostly help.com which gave a ton of information about DOS commands. 3 months later I was building a new computer, an AMD K5-133 with Win95 :-)
I do enjoy your videos, keep up the good work :)
i had that same case in 1995. and that video card too.. trident super vga
Wow, I have the same exact SB16 CT2230, down to the built in CSP chip
You need more attention on this website.
I learned the AT power supply connectors together as a mnemonic (in English): black to black, you've got some slack, red to red, your system's dead
Next upgrade of this board: Soldering a FPU socket, and populate it :P
Very nice! 👍.I am restoring my first PC from late 1994 that is this exact case, but i am missing the motherboard plate. Can anyone help me out??.
Wow, that took me back. Thanks man.
poking a stick into the lens of a CD. They didn't even do that in the early '90s
haha mate, just saw it when you washed the steel casing, if you ever asked yourself about the origin of your PC it was build for the "Deutsche Post" (German Post Office). I needed to check it twice as I saw the label with the horn at the back haha
but as I wrote the first sentence I checked your YT and noticed that you are also from German so my hole comment is useless but I will post it anyways hahah
Guten^^
or at least used by them :D Idk im a '95 guy :O
First machine was a 2.6GHz Pentium in 2004 if I remember correctly :D
There is indeed a German Post sticker on it, but the conclusion is not necessary correct. I assume this case is from early 90's, may be 91-92'. The German Post and German Telekom were one big company back in the days named German Post and Telecommunication until it went through reorganization around 1990. This company placed their stickers on all of the communication devices, which could be connected to the telephone network. Modems were no exclusion and got such stickers as well. The splitting of Post and Telekom was a continuous process over couple of years, until may be around 1993 (?). And all that time the company continued to put their stickers with the horn on the telecommunication devices. So if this computer was sold around 1991-1992 with a modem in it, it would have gotten such a sticker as well. So, it's not quite clear, if it was used by the German Post, or just had a modem.
This is my asmr 🙏
I have a question on the second cpu with the snap on fan. Back then did you have to use thermal paste?
no, you could even use the cpu for 10 minutes without a cooler at all
The LED on the CD-ROM drive is always on. You sure you don’t have the IDE cable in upside down?
Yes, it's a strange model. The led lights all the time green and blinks yellow, when it's reading. Or was it the other way around? May be I mixed the colors now, but it's lighting all the time.
this brings back memories....
I see your CD-ROM is working fine. I wish I was in your shoes right now, as us English say!
I think I will obtain a hard disk under 500 MB and see if this helps.
Love it!
I wonder what your top 5 picks would be for a motherboard on a DOS/Win95 machine?
It depends, it's not quite easy to answer, but I planned to make a video on that regards.
Back in those times, we had no Games! Maybe Space Invaders or Worm or Tetris😝
Back then, we had no games at all indeed. It was a very sad time, only paper planes and wooden cubes :(
I really enjoyed this video! You have some great skills, kudos... i'd just replace that hdd.
While I don't have too much of the old hardware, I believe I have some old software. I have MS-DOS 6.22 floppy ISO's downloaded from Microsoft Dream Spark program. I have DA Menu 5.1 which is a dos based gui menu program. I believe I also have Word Perfect 5.1 and Wolf 3-D
What did you use to retrobrite you plastic and where can I get it?
I know it's been a few months, but a 5¼" floppy would've been a logical choice for that open bay.
Well, may be it wouldn't be bad to have one. However, this machine is in my opinion already too new for 5,25" floppy drive. This drives were widely used from 8086 to 80386 and even in the early days of some 486 machines, but with 486DX2-66 and VLB they almost vanished from the market. Furthermore, I had no spare 5,25" floppy drives at hand anyway :)
top video !!!!!
I set my LED numeric display to read FU. I've not increased in maturity even to this day.
good retro machine, I have a similar one, but on a processor from AMD
Mega
PC in 1992 during summer: I will run games without a heat sink or thermal paste
PC in 2021 during summer: oh no, this desktop scary
If you compare the CPU power today with the CPU power back then, it's no magic. By the Moore's Law the amount of transistors in the CPUs increases by factor 2 every 18 months. That means, that the CPUs today have about 2^20 (more than million times) more transistors, than around 1992. It's a technological wonder, that you still simply need just a cooler and a little bit of thermal paste to run them.
@@necro_ware I appreciate this explanation and it sounds logical. But I was just joking 😂
Lovely machine :) However, I noticed that both cdrom-led and hdd-led on the case were constantly on. How come?
Thank you! The HDD led is not always active (19:59), but only on IDE access. The CD-ROM is really unusual, the led lights green all the time and is yellow, when it reads the disk.
This monitor is neat
Yes, it is. It's an old EIZO 15" with integrated Speakers, analogue VGA and digital DVI (!) input. Got it from a friend with original box and manuals :)
@@necro_ware wow amazing! Lucky you.
Nice 486 restoration :)
Thank you! You have also nice channel :D
@@necro_ware thanks :)
Hi!! What a nice restoring job you have done to the case :) I love this restoring videos. How did you find the correct value for the HD capacitor? It looks very toasty and crispy :D it was a shame that the SB16 with real opl3 went bad. I have only one with a true opl3 chip. I like to use some ESS based cards for DOS, low noise good ESSFM sound. They are very cheap here in Portugal in flea markets about 1€ or 1,5€ each. Please do the fix sb16 video fast :D
Hi Jorge! Thank you very much, this was really a nice project and I was more, than happy with the result. On the capacitor you still could recognize 105, which means 10µF, so it was enough, furthermore, I have another same HDD with a short circuit somewhere on the board, so I validated there once again. The SB16 is really a shame, I have two of them and both seem to be dead in a same way. However, I have currently no idea, what could be wrong. I tested all the traces for short and everything seems to be just fine. I'll try to recap it and hope this will solve the problem. If some of the ICs are dead, I don't think I'll be able to fix that. Anyway, if I have something to report regarding this, I'll do a video. And about ESS, I also very much like that chip, the sound cards are cheap as dirt, but the sound is really good indeed, the compatibility is perfect and FM sounds very good, even if it differs sometimes a little bit from the original. Would I have one ESS at hand, I'd probably prefer that one over SB Vibra16XV, at least because of the FM quality. But well, as I told it's still an OK sound card for DOS, I guess.
Cheers and thank you following my stuff!
@@necro_ware Yes, sound cards are a hard topic on retro-computers, those that we want are ultra expensive and rare, those that we can afford there is always something missing or not so good like noise levels or opl emulation. One that I like is an Opti based chip OPTi 82C929 (MAD 16 PRO reference design), not easy to find for reasonable prices. One card that is designed and finished by a friend of mine here in Portugal is this: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=70682
I dont know how much will it cost but ticks all the boxs that you could want for a sound card
@@JorgeCarvalho_web_dev I have some very interesting sound cards in my collection, but I didn't want to install one of them into this machine, since it is going to another retro fan and I wanted to make a video about sound cards one day, where I'll need the examples, you know? :)
So, I'll admit I don't completely understand retrobrighting as I've never had the chance to do it myself, but I've heard after doing so, the material will get yellowed from sunlight at a dramatically faster pace. So wouldn't leaving it outside to dry be a BAD idea? I ask in genuine curiosity.
Yes, many people say that, but I guess it depends on plastic. From all the cases, which I retrobrighted so far, only one turned back yellow after a year, but it didn't get worse, than before in my opinion. And actually nobody really knows if it is because of the sun (only). This is an open question, which many people were trying to answer, but it's still unclear. There is a lot of old hardware which was stored in boxes in dark places, and though it yellowed. I think sun is only one possible reason, but it's more about the plastic ingredients which were used to make it.
@@necro_ware So it's just an unproven myth?
I don't think, it's an entire myth, but I don't think, that it's complete truth as well. It just depends on the plastic your parts are made of. At least I can say from my experience, that it doesn't instantly turn yellow again, even if you put it into the sun. And sometimes after a longer period of time (months, years?) it can get back yellow again, but not worse than before.
I have a question.
Is it possible when I retrobrite my yellowed stuff, can the plastic lose its stability?
No worries, its fine.