@@e1woqf It's not that UA-cam doesn't want to do anything about it. It's that these spammers have gotten good at figuring out ways to vary their message just enough that it slips past automatic detection. They'll figure it out eventually.
@@SpearM3064 I report a lot of them but they keep coming back ... it's really annoying ... and it's not like you can select 100 in one shot ... you need to click like 4 times and go through multiple screen transitions to report one ... don't understand why they don't make it easier for content creators to report them
This virus (Stoned) is notable as it was the first recorded instance of a computer virus having the ability to be asymptomatic. The virus only displays the message if the boot time is divisible by 8, certain machines actually have a fixed boot and could get infected but never show the message. Since the virus spreads by infecting boot sectors it meant every floppy used on that computer would get infected but the system owner would have no idea they were spreading a virus. Pretty clever stuff.
This reminded me of an old PC we found in our lab. It had been running on the network doing nothing for about six years and we forgot about it. Well, almost nothing. It had been collecting every virus that had ever gotten into our network.
Ah yes, this is known as a 'squab' and is what old time net guys did as a cheap form of security. You leave some old junk connected with an open door and see what you catch. It works every time.
Always love seeing old technology, crazy to think we all carry around something in our pockets that is way more powerful than a old PC like that could ever be.
I know when I am actively searching for stuff I never find it. It usually happens completely unexpected. I try scroll through local listing once in a while not really looking for something, and then at least twice a month something interesting enough pops up :) Like this one. And if the price is right I usually go for it but sometimes they are out of my budget.
@@RetroSpector78 I have an IBM 5150 with a HardCard 40 internally. It has a 5153 color monitor, the keyboard, the owner's manual, manuals on all of the internal cards, the operating system manuals, modem, all the cables, and a ton of floppy discs. Just tested it out and everything's in working condition, all original, single owner bought new and it's in amazing condition. Would you be interested? I can send some pictures and video if you'd like!
The “Grape” brand may have just been 2 guys in a garage assembling IBM compatible machines in the mid 1980’s and then slapping their company logo sticker on the case. I had one from a company called “Jet”. (Yep, “Jet” was 2 guys in a garage assembling IBM compatible machines)
@@gorilladisco9108 I highly doubt it. What I left out of that story is that one of the guys ended up in prison (and is probably now dead). He decided to make money on the side by being a killer for hire. It has been over 35 years and I am still in shock.
My first computer was an XT clone in one of those car-hood type cases. It was super easy to work in. I wish I had kept the case. But it was boat-anchor heavy.
Now that I've seen it, I'd like to see it in an ATX case for modern hardware. That's a way better way to get in than having to undo several screws to get the top off.
The stoned virus is pretty harmless. Just displays a msg one out of eight times and copies itself to floppy disks. The batch files were just shortcuts to apps and games. Much like how people now clutter their windows desktops with all kind of junk :)
This is the first video I’ve seen on this channel and I couldn’t stop watching! It was amazing to see the old tech working and realising how much it’s changed over time!
I remember discovering a virus because it changed the file size of one of the boot programs. This was by pure instinct, it took a while to get software to confirm it. Machines were slow enough back then that you could practically feel when a computer was infected because it tended to make the startup a tad bit longer.
@@RetroSpector78 (mumbles something incoherent about UA-cam and its stupid algorithm deleting my comments, yet they can't catch spammers) When I was in university, we had one that attached itself to every program file you ran. Oddly, the easiest way to detect it without running a scan was simply to log into the mainframe. We used a terminal emulator to log into the university's IBM System 370, and if you got a corrupted login screen, you knew the PC was infected.
We had some where I worked at the beginning of the 90s. The virus didn't bother to check if a file was infected and we'd get a program file ballooning, getting bigger and bigger (and slower and slower) as the virus kept re-infecting the already virus infected file! (The difference in size and performance of a clean installed program was ridiculous.)
The exact version of Mah Jongg on this PC is Arcanum Computing's Mah Jongg Solitaire from 1987, as indicated by presence of the MAHSTATS file in the C: drive root.
Some years ago, I found an old XT in the garbage that was also infested with old viruses. The funniest one was that every time you tried to open a file or run a program, it would make a strange noise and scramble the screen with a constant message that "Your computer is now stoned!" It was the then known Stoned Virus, I believe. The machine was rather easy to clean of viruses then. I now regret that I actually disposed of it a year or so later as it had some interesting features on it and some add on cards. 😕 PS: LMAO!! I wrote the top part of my statement BEFORE I got to the part of your video that said YOUR machine had the Stoned Virus too like the XT I found!! The only difference is is that mine actually started up into the hard disk!! I wish that I could remember what anti virus program I used at the time to remove it from the system! Funny how both my PC AND yours had the same old virus on it! 🤔😂
I really like those old power switches. Back then I used to call them flip-flops, because they make flip when switching on and flop when switching off.
Now you're putting the thought in my head of "What If I took one of my vintage PCs that is wipeable and purposely infected it to see what would happen, then cured it?"
I like to believe somewhere there is a office building with sleezy 80s con men waiting for people To use a old computer infected with one of their viruses.
Growing up we had a Tandy 1000sx without a hard drive, and everytime we booted it from the floppy it would say your computer is now stoned! If I remember correctly that did not harm anything we did on the computer.
Great video! back in the days I've had the same Taxan Monochrom KX12 monitor. Mine was a green one, if I remember correctly there was KX-1212 and KX12-1213, one was the amber, the other was the green version. The monitor worked with my Plantron XT16, which was a 8MHz Turbo XT with two floppies. At that time I couldn't afford a HDD :-)
Very cool! I noticed the 3 knobs and was hoping for a color monitor. The listing online had 1 single low quality low light picture and couldn't really see it clearly.
Modern ones weigh a LOT compared to old ones with all the fans and heatsinks etc, and consider that they were mounted upright in those days so less sideways stress. Modern ones should still be designed better tho
Haha. I Haven't seen stoned virus in such a long time :) Brilliant to see an XT still running. Must have been a powerful system in it's day 30Mb and 640K !
yeah its my second XT with that feature. I know a guy who collects these old XT cases and uses them to house his electronics projects :) He also finds them very handy as they don't require any tools to open / close, and they are sturdy as hell.
Had the 'Stoned' virus on my first PC, a luggable Cordata 286, bought a 'future proofed' anti virus software called 'Untouchable', yes it did clean the virus, no, it didn't last forever as the manufacturer claimed lol.
I would do a low level format of the hard drive using the Hard drive BIOS. Use a freshly created bootdisk to boot and reapply a high level format to the hard drive. Then you can spinrite to check it further. On a heavily out of whack hard drive, Spinrite will take forever trying to recover data, when it is clear that it is probably past that. Sad that the old data is mostly gone, but that cannot be helped, at least in a non-destructive and inexpensive way.
Wowa real genius, format the drive. He should have write protected his floppy. He can run fdisk /MBR to deactivate the virus. A copy of Mc Afee ScanClean would be era correct to remove the virus. I wonder if modern V SW wiil fix his MS Dos disk. Isure hop he has a CD backup of all his vintage SW
Very nice, always love your videos! You are in good company, I bought a computer with the Stealth.C virus recently. Did a virus scan on every retro PC in the house after that just to be certain!!
I believe the ST-238R was my first hard drive, an RLL drive+controller. From a bit of looking, this is the same but sometimes they left the R off. I asked for it for Christmas in 1988. Dad bought two, one for himself and one for me - with the catch I had to install his, too LOL. The Grape name sounds very value familiar. Either way, I had a case very much like this one. Fun, thanks!
LOL thanks so much for sharing this! My very first ever PC was an IBM 8086 XT same machine inside and out (although the one you bought has a monster huge HDD compared to mine.) This was a real trip in nostalgia for me. And wow, I've been playing Tetris for a loooong time lol.
Very cool. Reminds me of my first ever PC as I had a similar case with the buttons that opened like this. Not exactly the same around the keyboard but still a nice blast from the past. I really wish I still had my old XT.
Oh sweet memories. I probably built and sold 500 of these machines back in 86-87. The “grape” is just a made up name some store called them. They are all generic clones sold without a name badge which the store would add later. My store called our brand “maestro”. The hard disk controller is often mistakenly called an “MFM” controller but MFM is the encoding on the hard disk. In this case the encoding is actually RLL which could pack more data on the drive. The controller’s correct name is the “ST506/412” disk interface. I could tell right away the hard disk was RLL since it has a green LED. It was customary for MFM encoded drives to use red LEDs and RLL to use green. Equally, the floppy has a red LED which means 360k. If it had been a high density 1.2MB drive it would be amber. It also requires a different drive controller card. The amber screen leads me to believe that this would have been one of the last GRAPE XTs produced since green was earlier, amber was later. Paperwhite mono screens were last before colour became the standard monitor with AT class and beyond machines. The display card appears to be a Hercules graphics compatible card. They always had a million chips on a full length card. CGA EGA and later VGA were half size cards usually. The power supply is an XT 130 watt monster (for the day). Not powerful enough to mine bitcoin, but good enough to run Lotus 123!
This is hands down the most legendary video title I've ever had the pleasure to fall over whilst reading. It deserves to be in all caps and I can't believe I'm saying that but damn, it's the truth.
Cracks me up how huge that video card is. My RTX 2060 Super isn't even that big! Might explain my performance issues. Bigger is always better, right? 🤣🤣🤣 You truly have a retro computer, complete with a retro virus.
This is a "normal" sized card that fits in the grooves in front of the card. Sadly we lost those grooves sometime in the early 90's, modern graphics cards could use them..
Around 1980 when IBM made their PC computer, complex large chips wasn't common yet. Computer electronics then usually was built from microchips in DIP14 packages which determined huge circuit board size. Full size PC adapter card was actually small in comparing with similar cards in other computers.
Fun fact: Grape was a big advertiser in Computer Shopper back in the day (I got my PC repair start in 1987). The sold cases, power supplies and a small selection of prebuilts. The hot hack was to run MFM drives off of RLL controllers for 150% capacity. Having 30mb instead of 20 was a huge bragging points. I can still remember to this day: C:\> g=c800:5
It was fairly typical for the time for a random shop to slap on their own label. These IBM clones were essentially no-names that didn't come with a badge so you could put your own branding on it. So I am guessing there was a computer store with that name that sold it.
@@heedmywarning2792 Now there is an interesting combination! I think in the case of this specific PC, the yard may have been populated with another … weed :)
Cool machine. My first PC was a 286 10MHz with an Amber Hercules display. I was so happy to finally get my hands on a PC! I do remember the old hard drives had to be manually set up in the BIOS to configure the number of cylinders, heads and sectors. Is that something you had to do? I'm thinking that might be part of the problem with the drive.
Thanks for the video, brought back memories when I had a XT too, it was a 8088-2 @ 8MHz, with strangely 704kB of ram although 640 was only useable. I couldnt afford a HD at the time so had 2 x 360Kb floppy drives. CGA output to a monochrome monitor. It came with a CGA card. I also had an Epson LX80 printer with it.
Reminds me of my very first IBM compatible, a used XT clone with Hercules graphic, 20 MB hard disk, and a virus. I knew about the virus when I bought it as a second machine on which to learn MS-DOS. I also learned C on it. My main machine was a Commodore 128 which stayed my main machine until I got a used 286 computer.
You may be able to revive the data on the hard drive with SpinRite. It's hit or miss on drives of this age. Most of the time a fresh low-level format is needed to get the drive back to it's optimal state, but that will also wipe everything off the drive as well. I normally use MS-DOS 5 on older XT systems as 6.22 tends to be a much larger installation.
Haven't seen this channel before but was disappointed at the fact that the video title was about the virus yet nothing was explained about it... looking forward to the virus video.
I've owned a few of these old computers... Not this brand, but a few IBMs. I've always loved the amber screens. I don't own any now and wish I did. They are a great conversation piece.
I think this thing belonged to one of my friends here in The Netherlands. Not sure though, he was an collector of vintage machines, just like this one. Anyways, Nice to see it still even runs!
me grootvader had in de jaren 80 ze eigen zaak hij had echt veel van die IBM portables een paar jaar geleden hadden we zon IBM in zijn kelder gevonde same met een paar Andere we hadde de potable terug laten werken en nu staat die bij me op de kamer ma ik ben blij dat mensen zoals jij nog liefde aan deze prachtige dingen kan geven 100% geabonneerd
Boot on a clean dos disk and fdisk /mbr to rewrite the master boot record. That's all I remember from working on computers from the 80's, lol. Thanks for sharing!
I did run spinrite for a couple of hours but think the drive in its current state is pretty dead. Some have recommended to recap it so might take a look at that.
Grape was a Kaypro line of desktop computers, sold in The Netherlands in the mid nineties. Their 'portables' (25kg...) were the Apricot line, there was a fruity vibe going on in the company. I believe Wang bought them, or they were an independent Wang subsidiary. I worked there in the early nineties, there was a collaboration/joint venture/merger with National Advanced Systems re the development and manufacturing of IBM compatible systems. Production was in Mons and La Hulpe in Belgium. I have never seen the Taxan monitor while working there, these systems came with Braun or Grundig CRT displays.
My grandmother worked in a hospital and they let her take home something very similar of these which she never used so it got handed down to me. I tried to get some games going but it wasnt like the computers I was used to. It didnt have a GUI just a terminal and I did something that made everything go away and I couldnt get it to work again so I trashed it I wish I didnt throw it away.
My first own PC was a 486 DX-50 (NOT a DX2!!!), 4mb Ram, 350mb HDD. That was around 1994. The graphics card was a all-in-one controller card (FDD, HDD, parallel-/serial-/joystick-port). It was a GMIO 470....
@@MilanPutnik my was working perfectly. I couldn't use something else because my PC was running on a VESA bus. The bus was only designed for 40mhz (I had 50mhz)
Oh man, this brings back memories! I remember when the 586 came out and I was SOOO excited, it had a full 500 megabytes of ram!! Wow, time sure does fly too fast. oooh don't get me started on a 28 baud modem!
This looks like a PC from The Netherlands (or it has been in The Netherlands) as the directories "SPELEN" (plus subdir SCHIJF and file DAMMEN) and "NIEUWIND" seem to point that out :)
It might be worth running Steve Gibson's SpinRite on the hard drive. SpinRite has been around since MFM & RLL drives were in common use, so it might be able to restore at least some of the bad sectors.
It is fortunate that it wasn't infected with the butterfly virus that erases the FAT and creates four non DOS partitions. While the virus infected MFM and RLL drives only, it was the bane of my XT life back in the day.
That's a pretty nice case design with that push-button hinged top. Be nice if someone made an ATX case inspired by it. The four 5.25" bays would be enough for three hard disks in an adaptor, an optical drive and some USB ports on a machine with modern hardware.
Floppy drives. It was a trend in the XT era to twist the cable in the middle to identify drive and set both drives to device 1 IIRC. So if you desired 4 floppy drives you simply needed to invest in the ribbon cable WITHOUT the awkward twist and have the edge card/pin connectors in the right location and set drive ID to 0-3. This would always always have to be a custom cable. The only time I considered changing the drive ID was in the era 1988-1990 when the 5 1/4" drive was A: and the 3.5" was B: and I wanted it the other way around but couldn't get around edge card at the end edge pin before the end... or the other way around. Other machines used drive ID which I thought was a bit more elegant than a forced A and B at given cable locations.
It's a period correct computer virus. It would almost be shame to delete it!
🤣
And you got some period correct spam bots! Isn't that nice 😁
@@jontebos7290 UA-cam doesn't want do to anything about it, obviously. 😐
@@e1woqf It's not that UA-cam doesn't want to do anything about it. It's that these spammers have gotten good at figuring out ways to vary their message just enough that it slips past automatic detection. They'll figure it out eventually.
@@SpearM3064 I report a lot of them but they keep coming back ... it's really annoying ... and it's not like you can select 100 in one shot ... you need to click like 4 times and go through multiple screen transitions to report one ... don't understand why they don't make it easier for content creators to report them
I am a bit jealous. Both of the computer and the virus.
Eh fancy seeing you here 🙂
Funny seeing you here Dan. Hope you're doing well
-kamil from mu
oh hey, it's the dude whose birthday is october 1st
Fancy meeting you here Dan.
my hero
This virus (Stoned) is notable as it was the first recorded instance of a computer virus having the ability to be asymptomatic. The virus only displays the message if the boot time is divisible by 8, certain machines actually have a fixed boot and could get infected but never show the message. Since the virus spreads by infecting boot sectors it meant every floppy used on that computer would get infected but the system owner would have no idea they were spreading a virus. Pretty clever stuff.
Yes that's what caught me off-guard :) 33 yrs later.
standard
and eight eights in an oz.
If a computervirus is asymptomatic, should it start wearing digital facemasks over his ports? :P
I remember a friend in college made a harmless virus and then displayed it during our school expo. Everybody just wanted to copy the virus :D
"Turn on the brightness and contrast ", the amount of staff members I had to tell them to check that first lol
Wow a machine infected with the 1987 Stoned DOS Virus x)
(I think it has 12% chance that on boot it will show the : "Your PC is now Stoned!" message)
Indeed ... it caught me off guard :) Wasn't familiar with those things.
Grape? Brings a whole new meaning to “vintage” PC! 😄
I suppose _Apple, Banana, Citrus, Date, Elderberry_ and _Fig Computers_ must have been taken already.
at this point it's already wine
@@ropersonline I seem to remember seeing a European Apple II clone called Banana… 😄
@@5roundsrapid263 Apple II Banana. Boys II Men. What will they think of next?
I remember Tangerine in the 80's but they did not last long.
This reminded me of an old PC we found in our lab. It had been running on the network doing nothing for about six years and we forgot about it. Well, almost nothing. It had been collecting every virus that had ever gotten into our network.
Ah yes, this is known as a 'squab' and is what old time net guys did as a cheap form of security. You leave some old junk connected with an open door and see what you catch. It works every time.
@@hxhdfjifzirstc894 Leaving a PC open on your network is the opposite of security.
Always love seeing old technology, crazy to think we all carry around something in our pockets that is way more powerful than a old PC like that could ever be.
It's even better than that: your smartphone is more capable than legit multi-million dollar supercomputers from the 1980's and 1990's.
I'm just happy for you getting this machine at all. I can't even find a horizontal AT case, let alone a working hardware in it.
I used to gut them to use as external SCSI boxes, for those full hight Micropolis 1gig drives... Might have something left that didn't go to scrap....
The very first PC I built for myself I built in one of those boxes!
I know when I am actively searching for stuff I never find it. It usually happens completely unexpected. I try scroll through local listing once in a while not really looking for something, and then at least twice a month something interesting enough pops up :) Like this one. And if the price is right I usually go for it but sometimes they are out of my budget.
@@RetroSpector78 I have an IBM 5150 with a HardCard 40 internally. It has a 5153 color monitor, the keyboard, the owner's manual, manuals on all of the internal cards, the operating system manuals, modem, all the cables, and a ton of floppy discs. Just tested it out and everything's in working condition, all original, single owner bought new and it's in amazing condition. Would you be interested? I can send some pictures and video if you'd like!
@@johnz5359 shipping costs would be enormous unfortunately
The “Grape” brand may have just been 2 guys in a garage assembling IBM compatible machines in the mid 1980’s and then slapping their company logo sticker on the case. I had one from a company called “Jet”. (Yep, “Jet” was 2 guys in a garage assembling IBM compatible machines)
There was Jet motherboard in the 1990s. Related?
@@gorilladisco9108 I highly doubt it. What I left out of that story is that one of the guys ended up in prison (and is probably now dead). He decided to make money on the side by being a killer for hire. It has been over 35 years and I am still in shock.
@@michaelterry1000 Now that's a plot twist (☉_☉)
More like a local PC service store/company labeling a clone with their company name.
@@joefish6091 Yes, very possible.
@16:57 Man, it's been many decades since I last saw this virus message. I think these push-button flip-top XT cases are the best design ever made.
My first computer was an XT clone in one of those car-hood type cases. It was super easy to work in. I wish I had kept the case. But it was boat-anchor heavy.
Now that I've seen it, I'd like to see it in an ATX case for modern hardware. That's a way better way to get in than having to undo several screws to get the top off.
well we've had, Apples, Apricots and now Grapes, a great fruit salad of computers available in the 80's and early 90's😊😊
Acorn (UK Computer Company), Pineapple (Apple II Clone brand)
@@PKZAIT For keyboards we got cherry. Man, the computer industry is obsessed with fruits!
An honourable mention for Blackberry and Tulip
@@PKZAIT
How many fruit salads have you had with acorns in them?
@@anonUK I sneak acorns into fruit salad for a crunchy surprise.
Those damn Hippie PC's...Always stoned ! :D
Need to find the pianoman version of "i want to be a hippie and i want to get stoned" and let that one play on startup.
Those batch files on the main directory were a major red flag to me. I had the feeling that they could be part of that virus.
The stoned virus is pretty harmless. Just displays a msg one out of eight times and copies itself to floppy disks. The batch files were just shortcuts to apps and games. Much like how people now clutter their windows desktops with all kind of junk :)
@@RetroSpector78 Fair enough, but the file names were pretty suspect IMO. ;)
@@RetroSpector78 pretty harmless i remember that thing wasting kings quest back in the day. I did not have another copy.
This is the first video I’ve seen on this channel and I couldn’t stop watching! It was amazing to see the old tech working and realising how much it’s changed over time!
Glad to have you aboard !
I remember discovering a virus because it changed the file size of one of the boot programs. This was by pure instinct, it took a while to get software to confirm it. Machines were slow enough back then that you could practically feel when a computer was infected because it tended to make the startup a tad bit longer.
The good old days ... never have to deal with lots of viruses myself fortunately.
@@RetroSpector78 (mumbles something incoherent about UA-cam and its stupid algorithm deleting my comments, yet they can't catch spammers) When I was in university, we had one that attached itself to every program file you ran. Oddly, the easiest way to detect it without running a scan was simply to log into the mainframe. We used a terminal emulator to log into the university's IBM System 370, and if you got a corrupted login screen, you knew the PC was infected.
We had some where I worked at the beginning of the 90s. The virus didn't bother to check if a file was infected and we'd get a program file ballooning, getting bigger and bigger (and slower and slower) as the virus kept re-infecting the already virus infected file!
(The difference in size and performance of a clean installed program was ridiculous.)
The exact version of Mah Jongg on this PC is Arcanum Computing's Mah Jongg Solitaire from 1987, as indicated by presence of the MAHSTATS file in the C: drive root.
“Mom, I want an Apple II.”
“We can’t all have an apple, we got a grape at home.”
*The Grape at home*
Like being the boring kid at school with a PC and monochrome display and pc speaker when the cool kids had an Amiga with color and stereo sound.
@@RetroSpector78 haha you nailed it 😆
A random vintage 80s PC infected with an equally vintage virus in october. Danooct1 probably shed a manly tear. 😂
Was not aware of his channel but like it a lot ... he's got a new sub :)
@@RetroSpector78 Danooct1 is a legend when it comes to showing ancient malware.
Some years ago, I found an old XT in the garbage that was also infested with old viruses. The funniest one was that every time you tried to open a file or run a program, it would make a strange noise and scramble the screen with a constant message that "Your computer is now stoned!" It was the then known Stoned Virus, I believe. The machine was rather easy to clean of viruses then. I now regret that I actually disposed of it a year or so later as it had some interesting features on it and some add on cards. 😕
PS: LMAO!! I wrote the top part of my statement BEFORE I got to the part of your video that said YOUR machine had the Stoned Virus too like the XT I found!! The only difference is is that mine actually started up into the hard disk!! I wish that I could remember what anti virus program I used at the time to remove it from the system! Funny how both my PC AND yours had the same old virus on it! 🤔😂
I really like those old power switches. Back then I used to call them flip-flops, because they make flip when switching on and flop when switching off.
Much more satisfying than the dinky little micro switch buttons these days
Oh no! My friend's family had a 286 growing up and they got that exact same virus!
Now you're putting the thought in my head of "What If I took one of my vintage PCs that is wipeable and purposely infected it to see what would happen, then cured it?"
I like to believe somewhere there is a office building with sleezy 80s con men waiting for people To use a old computer infected with one of their viruses.
Love that amber screen, it takes me back. We dumped them by the dozens in the 2000s and now it's almost impossible to find one for a reasonable price.
Growing up we had a Tandy 1000sx without a hard drive, and everytime we booted it from the floppy it would say your computer is now stoned! If I remember correctly that did not harm anything we did on the computer.
Correct. Just gave you a scare when seeing the message and the pc speaker tone
@@RetroSpector78 Forgot about that beep from the speaker...oh the times.
Great video! back in the days I've had the same Taxan Monochrom KX12 monitor. Mine was a green one, if I remember correctly there was KX-1212 and KX12-1213, one was the amber, the other was the green version. The monitor worked with my Plantron XT16, which was a 8MHz Turbo XT with two floppies. At that time I couldn't afford a HDD :-)
Very cool! I noticed the 3 knobs and was hoping for a color monitor. The listing online had 1 single low quality low light picture and couldn't really see it clearly.
It's funny how these old PCs could reliably hold full size cards while in modern PCs the GPUs sag
Wouldn’t mind trading it for a new and shiny rtx :)
Helps that the old cases had support slots in the front to hold the full size cards in place.
Modern ones weigh a LOT compared to old ones with all the fans and heatsinks etc, and consider that they were mounted upright in those days so less sideways stress.
Modern ones should still be designed better tho
@@chefgeoffreyexcellence4254 I'd like to see some modern desktop gaming case builds!
@@JamesPotts Workstations still have them, but gaming PCs don't.
Watching this is so nostalgic. It brought memories of DOS 2.0 (before it even became MS-DOS).
As always....love your content.....great pacing and you have a great voice for this.
Thank you so much 😀 Glad you enjoyed it. Appreciate it !
Haha. I Haven't seen stoned virus in such a long time :)
Brilliant to see an XT still running.
Must have been a powerful system in it's day 30Mb and 640K !
That car hood action is pretty cool.
yeah its my second XT with that feature. I know a guy who collects these old XT cases and uses them to house his electronics projects :) He also finds them very handy as they don't require any tools to open / close, and they are sturdy as hell.
Had the 'Stoned' virus on my first PC, a luggable Cordata 286, bought a 'future proofed' anti virus software called 'Untouchable', yes it did clean the virus, no, it didn't last forever as the manufacturer claimed lol.
I haven't see that in 30 years... I started using it before I learned how to read. it was amazing
I would do a low level format of the hard drive using the Hard drive BIOS.
Use a freshly created bootdisk to boot and reapply a high level format to the hard drive.
Then you can spinrite to check it further. On a heavily out of whack hard drive, Spinrite will take forever trying to recover data, when it is clear that it is probably past that.
Sad that the old data is mostly gone, but that cannot be helped, at least in a non-destructive and inexpensive way.
Wowa real genius, format the drive. He should have write protected his floppy. He can run fdisk /MBR to deactivate the virus. A copy of Mc Afee ScanClean would be era correct to remove the virus. I wonder if modern V SW wiil fix his MS Dos disk. Isure hop he has a CD backup of all his vintage SW
Doing hard work to an ancient hard drive might stress it to breaking point.
Very nice, always love your videos! You are in good company, I bought a computer with the Stealth.C virus recently. Did a virus scan on every retro PC in the house after that just to be certain!!
I believe the ST-238R was my first hard drive, an RLL drive+controller. From a bit of looking, this is the same but sometimes they left the R off. I asked for it for Christmas in 1988. Dad bought two, one for himself and one for me - with the catch I had to install his, too LOL. The Grape name sounds very value familiar. Either way, I had a case very much like this one. Fun, thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it ! Lots of other stuff on the channel from around that period.
LOL thanks so much for sharing this! My very first ever PC was an IBM 8086 XT same machine inside and out (although the one you bought has a monster huge HDD compared to mine.) This was a real trip in nostalgia for me. And wow, I've been playing Tetris for a loooong time lol.
Grape computer? Judging from the color of the pc is looks more like a lemon...
This computer is almost as old as me. It's crazy to think how technology has advanced since then. Thanks for showing us the ins and outs, Retro.
Very cool. Reminds me of my first ever PC as I had a similar case with the buttons that opened like this. Not exactly the same around the keyboard but still a nice blast from the past. I really wish I still had my old XT.
Oh sweet memories. I probably built and sold 500 of these machines back in 86-87. The “grape” is just a made up name some store called them. They are all generic clones sold without a name badge which the store would add later. My store called our brand “maestro”.
The hard disk controller is often mistakenly called an “MFM” controller but MFM is the encoding on the hard disk. In this case the encoding is actually RLL which could pack more data on the drive. The controller’s correct name is the “ST506/412” disk interface.
I could tell right away the hard disk was RLL since it has a green LED. It was customary for MFM encoded drives to use red LEDs and RLL to use green.
Equally, the floppy has a red LED which means 360k. If it had been a high density 1.2MB drive it would be amber. It also requires a different drive controller card.
The amber screen leads me to believe that this would have been one of the last GRAPE XTs produced since green was earlier, amber was later. Paperwhite mono screens were last before colour became the standard monitor with AT class and beyond machines.
The display card appears to be a Hercules graphics compatible card. They always had a million chips on a full length card. CGA EGA and later VGA were half size cards usually.
The power supply is an XT 130 watt monster (for the day). Not powerful enough to mine bitcoin, but good enough to run Lotus 123!
This is hands down the most legendary video title I've ever had the pleasure to fall over whilst reading.
It deserves to be in all caps and I can't believe I'm saying that but damn, it's the truth.
Cracks me up how huge that video card is. My RTX 2060 Super isn't even that big! Might explain my performance issues. Bigger is always better, right? 🤣🤣🤣
You truly have a retro computer, complete with a retro virus.
This is a "normal" sized card that fits in the grooves in front of the card. Sadly we lost those grooves sometime in the early 90's, modern graphics cards could use them..
Around 1980 when IBM made their PC computer, complex large chips wasn't common yet. Computer electronics then usually was built from microchips in DIP14 packages which determined huge circuit board size. Full size PC adapter card was actually small in comparing with similar cards in other computers.
Fun fact: Grape was a big advertiser in Computer Shopper back in the day (I got my PC repair start in 1987). The sold cases, power supplies and a small selection of prebuilts.
The hot hack was to run MFM drives off of RLL controllers for 150% capacity. Having 30mb instead of 20 was a huge bragging points. I can still remember to this day:
C:\> g=c800:5
"This must be the gaming pc my son wants for his birthday!"
I can find nothing about a "Grape" PC clone. Motherboard markings might have been helpful in that effort.
It was fairly typical for the time for a random shop to slap on their own label. These IBM clones were essentially no-names that didn't come with a badge so you could put your own branding on it. So I am guessing there was a computer store with that name that sold it.
@@stragulus computer store, or vineyard?
@@heedmywarning2792 Now there is an interesting combination! I think in the case of this specific PC, the yard may have been populated with another … weed :)
I hope you had that floppy write-protected. The "stoned" computer virus is known to infect the MBR of any 360k floppy disk accessed.
Cool machine. My first PC was a 286 10MHz with an Amber Hercules display. I was so happy to finally get my hands on a PC! I do remember the old hard drives had to be manually set up in the BIOS to configure the number of cylinders, heads and sectors. Is that something you had to do? I'm thinking that might be part of the problem with the drive.
its even more archaic than that. he showed a shot of some jumpers on the disk controller, which you set when installing the HDD. all in hardware baby!
Don't know about you, but seeing the screwdriver scrape along the beautiful plastic.. I felt that 😢
Thanks for the video, brought back memories when I had a XT too, it was a 8088-2 @ 8MHz, with strangely 704kB of ram although 640 was only useable. I couldnt afford a HD at the time so had 2 x 360Kb floppy drives. CGA output to a monochrome monitor. It came with a CGA card. I also had an Epson LX80 printer with it.
If i were to get a virus at least can it be the “Your pc is now stoned!”
"Your PC is now Stoned!"
"Legalise Marijuana"
Never seen "Legalise Marijuana" string on screen though seen it in virus code. Seems virus didn't worked equally on all video adapters.
@@KrotowX Maybe there were a lot of variations?
@@quadrodcc667 It may be. Stoned virus had later modifications in free circulation made by random curious minds :)
im watching this 30mb hard drive pc while seeing next video thumbnail is " UNBOXING 3 PETABYTES of storage!! " by LTT
Computer virus gameplay: **No my files is gone nooo 😭😭😭**
Computer virus lore:
forget apple, i use grape
UA-cam, I watch a video on generating plasma using grapes, and now I'm watching you inspect a Grape computer; rearranged plasma.
Reminds me of my very first IBM compatible, a used XT clone with Hercules graphic, 20 MB hard disk, and a virus. I knew about the virus when I bought it as a second machine on which to learn MS-DOS. I also learned C on it. My main machine was a Commodore 128 which stayed my main machine until I got a used 286 computer.
You may be able to revive the data on the hard drive with SpinRite. It's hit or miss on drives of this age. Most of the time a fresh low-level format is needed to get the drive back to it's optimal state, but that will also wipe everything off the drive as well. I normally use MS-DOS 5 on older XT systems as 6.22 tends to be a much larger installation.
Yeah definitely try SpinRite 5. Probably need to run overnight though!
Haven't seen this channel before but was disappointed at the fact that the video title was about the virus yet nothing was explained about it... looking forward to the virus video.
I've owned a few of these old computers... Not this brand, but a few IBMs. I've always loved the amber screens. I don't own any now and wish I did. They are a great conversation piece.
"I'm not familiar with the Grape brand" 😂🤣 I love it.
@ 17:44
Gaben acknowledges your fossil digs merits, but the world of 3D has so many rubics cubes needing your help Batman.
Editor: How many times did you want to repeat yourself in the script?
Him: yes
I just discovered your channel, and I'm loving your content. Keep up the good work, you just got a new subscriber.
Pcbway is my go to. I just ordered 20 panelized pcbs for 40$. They are usually done in 3 days and at my house in a week.
I think this thing belonged to one of my friends here in The Netherlands.
Not sure though, he was an collector of vintage machines, just like this one.
Anyways, Nice to see it still even runs!
There were some Dutch names at the end of the vid, so yes.
Viel eigenlijk best wel op.
13:51 that beep brings an adrenaline rush.
me grootvader had in de jaren 80 ze eigen zaak hij had echt veel van die IBM portables een paar jaar geleden hadden we zon IBM in zijn kelder gevonde same met een paar Andere we hadde de potable terug laten werken en nu staat die bij me op de kamer ma ik ben blij dat mensen zoals jij nog liefde aan deze prachtige dingen kan geven 100% geabonneerd
Neat, Schijf and Dammen implies this pc was in Dutch hands in its life :-)
"your computer is now stoned" o the nostalgia run`s wild
Holy shit it found me, I don't how, but it found me. I can't believe I'm seeing the same error code from 25 years ago.
Boot on a clean dos disk and fdisk /mbr to rewrite the master boot record. That's all I remember from working on computers from the 80's, lol.
Thanks for sharing!
17:27 Ah yes that relaxing piano "music
Thanks for a very nice walk down memory lane.
This could be a good candidate for Spinrite - that might try to read, reformat and write back the data.
I did run spinrite for a couple of hours but think the drive in its current state is pretty dead. Some have recommended to recap it so might take a look at that.
15:33 - There's an insect crawling on top of your monitor xD
hehe ... nice catch
I can’t remember the name of that virus. “I 🤔 Kreeper” Stoned Virus. I had one for 286 386 back in early 90s.
Love it.
It has the additional ROM sockets. You could install a ROM BASIC in there, I think.
Also "elektor" is originally dutch ("elektuur" there) ;)
It was a German brand. Elektuur in Nederland.
havent seen that message since the early 90's. What a PIA.
Lovely system! Hope you can salvage some from that hard drive. So many old games I used to play in the late 80s and early 90s are on there :)
Wow, for some reason I enjoyed that right to the end, great key board skills!
A 33 year old PC with a 34 year old boot sector virus. Beautiful.
Grape was a Kaypro line of desktop computers, sold in The Netherlands in the mid nineties. Their 'portables' (25kg...) were the Apricot line, there was a fruity vibe going on in the company. I believe Wang bought them, or they were an independent Wang subsidiary. I worked there in the early nineties, there was a collaboration/joint venture/merger with National Advanced Systems re the development and manufacturing of IBM compatible systems. Production was in Mons and La Hulpe in Belgium. I have never seen the Taxan monitor while working there, these systems came with Braun or Grundig CRT displays.
Ahhhh good memories ^^ i have repaired so many machines like this and ofc all types of future pcs as well :)
My grandmother worked in a hospital and they let her take home something very similar of these which she never used so it got handed down to me. I tried to get some games going but it wasnt like the computers I was used to. It didnt have a GUI just a terminal and I did something that made everything go away and I couldnt get it to work again so I trashed it I wish I didnt throw it away.
My first own PC was a 486 DX-50 (NOT a DX2!!!), 4mb Ram, 350mb HDD. That was around 1994.
The graphics card was a all-in-one controller card (FDD, HDD, parallel-/serial-/joystick-port). It was a GMIO 470....
oh I hated those GMIOs
@@MilanPutnik my was working perfectly. I couldn't use something else because my PC was running on a VESA bus. The bus was only designed for 40mhz (I had 50mhz)
Oh man, this brings back memories! I remember when the 586 came out and I was SOOO excited, it had a full 500 megabytes of ram!! Wow, time sure does fly too fast. oooh don't get me started on a 28 baud modem!
This looks like a PC from The Netherlands (or it has been in The Netherlands) as the directories "SPELEN" (plus subdir SCHIJF and file DAMMEN) and "NIEUWIND" seem to point that out :)
Goed gezien ! :)
I absolutely love fliptop case on those old clones.
It might be worth running Steve Gibson's SpinRite on the hard drive. SpinRite has been around since MFM & RLL drives were in common use, so it might be able to restore at least some of the bad sectors.
It is fortunate that it wasn't infected with the butterfly virus that erases the FAT and creates four non DOS partitions. While the virus infected MFM and RLL drives only, it was the bane of my XT life back in the day.
That's a pretty nice case design with that push-button hinged top. Be nice if someone made an ATX case inspired by it. The four 5.25" bays would be enough for three hard disks in an adaptor, an optical drive and some USB ports on a machine with modern hardware.
There is a British company making a retro flat desktop case.
Lovely video! :) luv the old computers. Retro forever!
Floppy drives. It was a trend in the XT era to twist the cable in the middle to identify drive and set both drives to device 1 IIRC. So if you desired 4 floppy drives you simply needed to invest in the ribbon cable WITHOUT the awkward twist and have the edge card/pin connectors in the right location and set drive ID to 0-3. This would always always have to be a custom cable.
The only time I considered changing the drive ID was in the era 1988-1990 when the 5 1/4" drive was A: and the 3.5" was B: and I wanted it the other way around but couldn't get around edge card at the end edge pin before the end... or the other way around. Other machines used drive ID which I thought was a bit more elegant than a forced A and B at given cable locations.
Nice! my old 286 had the Michelangelo Virus... could never get it removed so we just had to remember not to use it on March 6th.
amazing to see how evrything managed to be remains dust free nd shiny even after 33 years..
Lol the Stone Virus. I remember getting that on our old XT computer when I was a kid.
mhm, I remember my first time of "OMG the monitor is broken!" as well.
I subbed! nice work, can't wait to see you fix it!!!