Finally, a Home Fit for a ’90s Packard Bell | Trash to Treasure Part 5
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- Опубліковано 29 тра 2024
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Our vintage '90s Packard Bell computer restoration has taken some time but finally we can finish it up and give it a fitting home here in The Cave. Today we complete the restoration and then some interior design is needed to finish everything up!
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● Chapters
00:00 New Parts for our Restoration
08:06 Packard Bell Restore Media and Peripherals
17:15 Creating a New Home for the Packard Bell
● Episode Links
Part 1: • Packard Bell Restorati... - The Packard Bell Arrives
Part 2: • Packard Bell Restorati... - Testing and Cleaning Inside
Part 3: • Packard Bell Restorati... - Finding a Working Monitor
Part 4: • 1996 Packard Bell Rest... - Plastic Fantastic
Part 5: • Finally, a Home Fit fo... - A Home Fit for a '90s Packard Bell
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Buying a new computer was a big event in the 80's and 90's. So many memories.
For me it still is, I mean, especially if its going to replace my current gaming PC or fill a niche I wanna use something for (like a media PC or a as a spare computer/NAS thingy)
The only new computer I've got was a netbook in 2009, everything else I've got used. To me the last time getting a new (used) computer felt like a big thing was in 2013 when I upgraded from a Core2 Duo E6300, Intel GMA 3000, WinXP system to a 4c/8t i7-920, Quadro FX 1800 (which I upgraded to a GTX 660 half a year later) and Windows 7. That was the first time I had a PC which was capable of running modern games.
While my current main PC (X5670 6c/12t @ 4.4GHz, 24GB RAM, GTX 1080) isn't a fast system by todays standards upgrading from it wouldn't be anywhere near as big as upgrading from the C2D to X58 was back in the day.
I have built more powerful systems for people (i5-12400F + RX 6700 and R5 5600 + RTX 3060) but the difference to my system didn't felt anywhere near big enough to even justify spending that much money to upgrade mine. I think I'll stay on X58 for few more years
I feel like my dad went computer shopping every weekend for a solid 12 months before he pulled the trigger on our first PC in 1992 😂
@@andocobo Yeah doesnt surprise me, my Dad and our family did the same in 95 ish. Tbf PC bundles were thousands back in 92, except that £2k could buy so much more back then. £2k then is the same as £4k now.
And tech was moving so fast and people didnt want to make a mistake and get stuck with something that would be outdated in a couple of months.
Was such a fun era. Not for the wallet though ahha.
The software bundles were great too. Encarta and the various other atlas/ecyclopedia programs, bundled games like tomb raider , rollercoaster tycoon. All the educational programs and all the random productivity software. Weird stuff like ''Body Works: A 3D Journey Through The Human Body'', ''space station simulator''. Architects programs, office programs , art programs etc etc. Was so much fun going through exploring it all.
It still is, computers are spendy.
Mind you, whenever I get given a new dev laptop at work it's not so much "Ooh new bundle of power" it's "hello, next victim..."
"i'm not sure how long 20 hours' free internet access would last me these days"
20 hours
That karaoke app will become a HIT of The Cave for sure!
That recording has a very 'dystopian Packard Bell controlled future'-vibe to it.
Got my first PC with a 120 MHz CPU back in 96, so this brings back memories! :)
have to admit, I have loved this series, brings back so many memories of the early 1990's
did your Pacard bell computer go to heaven or hell??
@@raven4k998 kind of a personal question, no? haha
Came for the Packard Bell...stayed for the singing!
@RetroManCave
These Trash-to-Treasure series video are one of the reasons I keep coming back. Thank You for the fun adventures! Please continue doing them!
Having worked 12,5 years at Dixons in the Netherlands (growing from parttime help to store manager), seeing that logo always brings a bit of a tear to my eye. They went bankrupt in 2014 and was sold off for parts basically.
When I was a kid my step-grandmother (married my mom's father) had the first PC, I believe it was an HP, that I ever really touched. It had the Encarta software, and there's something burned into my mind about this ENCYCLOPEDIA on a computer. To a small child with a deep curiosity and drive to learn, I loved going on it and just clicking on the multimedia pictures, or listening to the low-quality sounds of animals.
It's just such a core memory for me, that even though I played video games like Diablo, WarCraft, Deus Ex, and more on PC, the thing that makes me immediately remember early 90s PC use is grainy Encarta images and midi files of frogs croaking.
Laughed really hard at the karaoke bit at the end there 😂 Neil, you're a delight!
Makes you want to restore one of these things just to sing along to karaoke! Haha!
My 19 month old would love that Old Macdonald karaoke program! 😂
That looks like a nice streamer setup. It has the mic, it has the "stream deck" and remote. :)
I used to repair these things at component level.
I'm glad they're history.
You and the team should get an MBE order for the hard work in preserving retro legacy. I will visit the mill as soon as possible. Have a great summer.
Thank you SO much for this series! My first ever not just PC but computer was the 75MHz version of this PB. That 'for kids' GUI/shell you showed sure did give me a good and proper nostalgia-smack. Prodigy, Encarta 97, 3D Body, etc. are what I remember most from the US bundled bloat. The pièce de résistance was beating Myst on this thing...which was so hard for me as a kid. Recently re-played it and it only took a couple of hours, if that haha. Time is a trip.
Thanks again for taking the time to lovingly restore what to a lot of people is trash but what is certainly a treasure to me. Cheers Neil!
In 1996 I would have been mesmerised by watching the multimedia on the Packard Bell. Echo The Dolphin would have had me captivated for hours, not to mention all the other things. It's an excellent home PC and the styling is very attractive as well. I like the idea of networking all the PCs. Leave it reasonably stock I say. 😊👍
"Not sure how long 20 hrs of free access would last me these days"
I have a pretty good idea how long it would last ;)
Beautiful work, love these Packard Bells! The days of pack in software enticing you in to buy new computers in Computer Shopper magazine and the like - those were the days!
We all bought a Packard Bell once….never twice. We all wished we had bought something better. Mis-sold a dream, ending up with a nightmare.
Would love an episode on everyone’s favourite X-Copy.
One man's Packard Bell is another man's Packard Hell!
I cut my computer teeth on a friends Packard Bell he got for christmas. Our minds were blown to see actual video on a PC in the form of a mime in the introduction, we would scour Grolier's Encyclopedia for any video clips. CD-ROM was new to the world and all was great.
The first PC my family got as a kid was one of those 486 (66Mhz) all in one Compacs. Looked exactly like that one. Either I or my parents still got it stored somewhere, we added a 10mbit network card to it as well. What a great machine that was. So many memories that are brought up by this series. Keep up the good work!
Awesome nostalgia trip, we had a slightly earlier version of this PC (Pentium 75, 8 whole megabytes of RAM, no modem) when I finally persuaded my parents that the world was leaving my beloved A500+ behind. Brutally underpowered and shockingly overpriced to be sure, but the skills and enthusiasm I started cultivating on that machine still puts food on my table today almost 30 years later, so I've got nothing but fondness for this kind of machine.
Supporting these when I worked for PC World, the restore CDs were the cause of, and the solution to most Packard Bell problems. I seem to remember replacements being surprisingly expensive.
These pizza box pentiums have actually became my favorite. Small, compact, enough horse power to run any dos game and early windows games. ISA slots for old sound cards, PCI slots for new graphics adapters. They were originally for business but now days make fantastic retro gaming rigs.
Seeing those voodoo boxes sparks a sense if childlike joy in me, I remember seeing them on the shelf in the typically brown computer store we used.
I was unaware that the graphics card we had was much newer and more powerful, the packaging made those things look genuinely badass.
I would also would later realise that having a graphics card means nothing if you plug the monitor into the on board graphics. Not something I learned until many many years later...
I miss working at Packard Bell. That was a fun place to work.
I got chill seeing the whole thing set up on a desk. It looks _exactly_ like the one I had in junior high school. I spent _so many_ hours sitting in front of that computer. Such nostalgia. I wish it were mine. I would never be able to afford to source all this stuff. Thanks for making these videos. I can at least see it again.
I got another chill when you mentioned trying to network all these computers together. Well, it was more of a shudder than chill. Oh, the nightmares and horrors of trying to do networking in Windows period, much less very old Windows.
So I've got a weird recommendation Neil - Encarta is PERFECT, but I think you should have an unboxed/open version there so people can look at the manual while they give the program a go. If I remember correctly the Encarta manual was a big thing that you consulted while using it, so that would be a big part of the nostalgia.
red windows 95 brings back memory's🤣🤣🤣
I had completely forgot that I could use my Gateway P5-75 to make phone calls and keep voice messages. My future brother in law got a similar PB and I would call my future wife on my computer to talk to her on his computer. Living in the future.
Love your channel and I love your cave! You are a terrific host!
Thank you Bob
My family got one in 1994 that was a bit stripped down from this one, but it did include an offline CD-ROM based "multimedia" encyclopedia of animals where the main draw was 144 (maybe 200 something) video of exotic creatures.
Also, some obscure Jurassic Park game. Arrived w/ a dead soundcard, which took months to get replaced.
No modem, but did have a printer.
Total in 1994: $2,500.
Honestly... I just love how you say Packard Bell ..
It really was the whole package back then!
I remember as a teen in the Pentium era, when a Packard Bell salesman came to our house and setup a PC to demo for us. It was a pretty cheesy sales pitch, and we ended up buying a custom built instead from computer salesmen who also visited us at home. Weird times lol.
Thanks for rebuilding this. Loved watching. That's a really cool feature with the analog phone. This was honestly the golden era for computers. There was so much creativity and new features. Nowadays it's all the same thing, nothing new or creative
90's beige PCs have always looked smart to me, I'd love the style to make a comeback.
Commented on the previous video but if you want the skinny microphone look for a 'Telex PC Microphone' it's the company who manufactured the microphone for Packard Bell. I think their 'M40' model has the same shape as the one that came with the PC, I tried looking for my Packard Bell microphone but couldn't find it.
Got my first family PC back in 94. Was a Compaq Presario which had a case identical to that Presario at 20:09 in the video. It was a 486 66mhz, 4mb RAM later upgraded to 16MB RAM, 200 ish MB hard drive, 2x cd rom. Had it for years and absolutely loved it. Wing Commander III & IV, Tex Murphy adventure games, Descent, so many classics. I miss the 90's.
Great content! I just finished the series, found a lot of info here that I couldn't find anywhere else.
And the timing... it's just out of the ordinary. Right about at the time of the release of this episode (without me knowing the existence of this channel) I acquired a complete Packard Bell Executive Multi-Media system.
I love the way you have all of the PC compatibles together.
The amount of packard bells from that era that i restored for friends and family because of someone or something accidently wiping windows or windows hanging on boot sequence was unbelievable.
That machine was in more homes (uk) than any Dell or Time pcs at the time.
Oh, and please.... No more singing!
Those packard bell execution sounds brought back some memories, ours was a later model though, but remember it having a similar box of software and the missing red boot floppy disk.
You can test the IR remote by pointing it at your phone camera and pressing a button. The phone camera will show the light flashing if it's working.
I won’t give up on it, thanks for the tip
@@RMCRetro I don't recall seeing you put any batteries in it!
Some cameras filter out IR, so you’d have to find one that doesn’t.
@@jamesdecross1035That was my first thought as well!
This was our families first computer. Cost a ridiculous amount of money. Something like 3 grand in 1998-ish. I have absolutely no nostalgia for it because it was crap lol. I remember we 'upgraded' the graphics to a matrox mystique, which was also equally crap. I remember my Dad being on the phone to Packard bell support to get advice on getting Flight Simulator to run, having to add stuff to the autoexec and config.sys for extended memory. What a ball ache. I think the phone call cost him £90.
I love Comix Zone; I had no idea it had a Win95 port, but finding out it did makes a whole lot of sense.
So good to see the final package all together. Great work as always.
Soft-spot for PB machines; met the wife on AOL Chat, both of us using PB machines. Constantly having to rebuild the damn things, but good times.
I'd been looking for that yellow box of software for ages! Lovely to see one find its way to the Cave.
I had a Packared Bell just like that. I loved and still love the waved design asthetic. I also love the way the speekers mounted on the monitor and were designed to to so. I truely miss this age of computing. So much excitement. Thesedays computing just dosent seem as exciting.
This series does bring back a lot of 90's memories for me, as in high school I took computer network technologies, and we cut our teeth working on so many Packard Bell systems. 👍
My 1st PC was a PB in 1998. I financed it via credit card. Shortly after bought me a Gateway Desktop, and next was a IBM Thinkpad...I remember buying 1st ram upgrade. Now our USB Thumb drives are under $50 for 512gb...LoL
Aaarrhhg kicks an Amiga out for a bunch of PC’s and starts singing at the end😮 🐱🐱 🐮🐮, give me my computers back now…
Joking of course 😊.
Hahaha
Packard Bells of this era were just so beautiful.
On the outside.
Adding all that echo immediately brought to mind Neil addressing a stadium full of people - can we make that happen? :D
My first computer was this chassis. P100, 8mb RAM, 1GB HDD. Couldn't ask for more back then.
OMG, we had that printer with the Packard bell we had as a kid.
So many warm memories. Thank you 🙏
Brings back so many memories. I had that exact same cd collection.
My first computer was a Packard bell.
I've really loved this series. We had a Quantex but my neihgbor had a Packard Bell of this vintage.
Man this is a huge nestalgia hit for me. I remember our first computer. It was a packard bell. Man it was garbage lol at the time i thought it was the most amazing thing in existance, but it was outdated in the blink of an eye. I remember the mic that came with ours was rediculously sensitive. I used to play arouns with wave recorder recording things, slowing them down, speeding them up, and playing them backwards. One time i was recording dead silence and i saw sound waves displayed like it recorded something. I knew it was silence so i played it back and i heard an alarm clock alarm playing in the recording. I thought it was odd so i walked through the house and found my parents alarm clock was going off in their room all the way across the house and their door was closed. I couldnt even hear it till i opened their bedroom door.
Wow, you brought back some memories! I remembered owning Civnet, but also remembered seeing the advisors with funny videos, which was only in Civ 2, so now I know how I played it. The Batman & Robin Cartoon Maker and Magix Music Maker were amazing.
And even though the PC was new, I remember that we had to upgrade the RAM to play FIFA 97.
I had a Packard Bell just like that, loved it.
This was my first own computer in 1995 with a pentium 120. I remember all the funky software that came with it :) It came with 1mb graphics card memory that I could upgrade to 2mb. My favorite game was Mechwarrior 2.
thank you for sharing this
Unreal Tournament - Facing worlds! Fantastic level :)
Great video! As an aside, that Compaq 486 All-In-One is the PC I've been hunting for years. 😂
Ah yes, I think may still have a partial bottle of Archived by Robert Young somewhere in my bathroom.
i've enjoyed this series a lot, computers like this one might be boring to some but to me my very first computer was a packard bell just like this one. that machine even introduced me to the world of computers i have vivid memories playing dos and windows 95 games on it hell i even experienced dial up internet and made a geocities site on it. that crt monitor with the terrible speakers that clip onto the sides is instant nostalgia to me lol
Nice. I love the new "PC corner", too!
I had a similar remote back in the day, you should be able to see the remote codes coming in over the serial port with something like hyperterminal, if you don’t get codes it could be your remote or your receiver, you can try other IR based remotes with your receiver to half split the problem.
These master CDs are far better and less hassle than their master CDs for Windows 98/ME, let alone XP! I used to support Packard Bell machines for PC World/Curries/Dixon's tech support line back in 2004/5 and you had to have a tattoo on the motherboard which told the recovery program which drivers to install. For 98/ME systems it used a none-bootable recovery CD that required Packard Bell's boot floppy to run and for XP systems it was a recovery partition accessed by holding a key during boot, that could be burned to a bootable CD but it would nuke the partition afterwards.
The tattoo was only a problem if the motherboard was replaced, unfortunately these were cheap motherboards during the dreaded leaky capacitor era so a lot went dead. If you had to tattoo an XP system they'd still have to download and make a PB floppy because that's where the tattoo program was! Then we get into the joy of cheap 5400 RPM IDE drives for the XP systems and when they fail having to tell the customer the hard drive will be replaced but they'd have to contact Packard Bell themselves and pay for the recovery media because they hadn't burned their recovery media.
Finally got the Packard bell remote working today! with uICE software has preset for the packard bell remote control
I was a IT tech in the late 90's, and Packard Bell computers drove me nut. They always ran slower, and buggies, particularly with Windows 3.1, than any other machines with identical hardware specs. They got such a bad rep with the staff at the facility I was working at that nobody wanted to use them. We spent so much time dealing with users complaints about them, management had to stopped purchasing from them.
I don’t think anyone would put them on a pedestal for build quality but for many it was their first point of entry into the PC and those frustrations became part of the learning experience, so I understand the nostalgia but also the techs hating on them
That was pretty much my exact first computer. Also as far as the mic goes, a tin can and a string would have been an improvement. I never knew about the remote.
Neil, you can point the remote into a phone camera in low light to establish if the remote is actually transmitting IR. This might help narrow down where the problem lies. 😊
Edit:just spotted someone else has posted the same suggestion 😅
Great finale episode to a great series (
Definitely need a copy of The Way Things Work if you don't have one. I spent many many hours on that as a kid.
Oh my, I think my parents bought this exact model with the printer for me many many years ago (obviously). It was my first step up from the 386 I was using before!
pc room looks great, loved the nostalgia boxed goodies esp the sidewinder2
You NAILED IT for nostalgia hit... it's a GREAT start!
My family’s first computer was a Packard Bell in September of ‘94. Wish I could remember anything about it other than it was 33 mhz. I would love to find a machine like this to fix up. Alas, retro computing is becoming expensive.
I worked in the factory in Angers on these models when I.was à student. Haha it was something the smell there of fresh components packed
I remember after the archive was extracted to the hard drive you could boot win95 and when asked for serial number you could hit cancel and windows would boot.
A fitting end to the series. A Packard Bell End if you will.
It was very hard not to use that in the title
My wife had a multimedia Packard Bell setup back in the day. We both still miss the excellent Packard Bell Navigator software included with it. It made harnessing the power and capabilities of the PC really fun and easy.
Thanks for this series! The first PC my family had was a desktop Packard Bell and I have very fond memories of cutting my teeth on that. The Cave keeps getting better, wish I was in a position to visit. Keep it up!
Another wonderful restoration. Nostalgia overload
red windows brings back memory's yay I can make it red ok back the grey red looks bad🤣🤣🤣
I didn't see one.
But you need an Amstrad PC 1512 in there too.
Anyone in the late 80's to very early 90's who did any sort of computer course almost certainly did it on an Amstrad PC 1512 or the PC 1640
Yes! I have one in the store room maybe we can find room to have that out
Oh god the PTSD caused by my own Packard Bell back in 1996. Constantly having to restore the damn thing when it went wrong every two weeks 😑
Print Shop and a small selection of clip part CDs. As much as I'd like to say Microsoft Publisher instead (which I both used much more and, aheh, was on the dev team for), Print Shop.
wow, packard bell was my first pc in 1996 probably, i am from Russia) i remeber one of taht cds and OS with rooms and skiing game
Oh god, the memories. I used to sell these in the 1990's. I hated Packard Bell. They used to take almost 10 mins to reboot. Navigator was an absolute dog to use. Apricot was a much superior brand but customers were always taken by the software bundle. Packard Bell were a boomerang PC...They always came back!
Looks great and wow you definitely have a chance at winning The Voice
I remember those Packard Bell's being available new from Dixons. They always felt different to other PCs, but not in a good way. Somehow less flexible; less open. Worked just the same but they didn't feel like machines you could mess around with. Seemed like they were meant for people who weren't hobbyists.
They felt kind of like a poor man's Olivetti, if anyone can remember those...
Your video brings back many memories and frustrations; for I had a Packard Bell tower that I bought December 1997. The computer case was a very unique tower design shaped like an Art Deco skyscraper, with a broad base and a tall slim section that rose above, containing the CD player and floppy. The computer used fantastically expensive EDO-RAM that had to be installed as precisely matched pairs - the cost of maximizing the memory to 128mb was a staggering 1,400 dollars in 1998! I did have a mediocre matching monitor with speakers attached to the sides, a rather fragile looking microphone, and a keyboard with a few dedicated buttons. The computer had a restore disk that was maddening to deploy for 9 times out of 10 the restore program failed to boot. The computer developed a weird issue with the main IDE interface that caused the PC to take 15 minutes to cold boot - but I still had a lot of fun, actually installing Windows 2000 on it and then using it for five years as a server for my home network and it did not once crash despite leaving it on 24/7.
Oh dear, this was the era of the 'buoyant American female voice' from everything electronic.
I've loved watching this series, so many memories. My first pc was a Packard Bell in the mid 90's. It was an all in one that wasn't really an all in one. It had many of the characteristics of this one but the crt and pc were in one case, as an all in one would be, but they were separate. It had speakers like that on the side amd came with the sane mic. it had a Packard Bell media player that mimicked a midi hifi of the time. Pretty sure it was a 486 of some sort.