The last Goodwill PC I found was an old Pentium 4 HP Compaq desktop, and I was absolutely floored to see a PC at all in their electronics section. I've typically found loose components like motherboards, empty cases, heatsinks, power supplies, but very rarely a fully assembled PC. I'm glad to see this one was saved from the landfill/recycler. I happen to have a Pentium era machine with very similar specs. MMX 200, 32 MB RAM, PS/2 mouse port... Although I have a Rage 128 Pro PCI card in it with a Sound Blaster AWE32. The sound card in your machine is pretty modest, sounds like it's only an FM synth card, but the saving grace it has is the wavetable header. Something like an Dreamblaster or similar would work great with that card, which makes it worth holding onto.
Definetly plan on using this machine for everything in the mid to late dos era. I have an Xt clone machine that I might do a video on for the really early dos stuff, looking forward to sharing more of my machines in some videos. Such a fun hobby!
I used the K6-2 200 growing up. Still have that system; contemplating something different in it, maybe Cyrix (since it's an IBM Aptiva, and IBM made those chips). I actually never had the Intel until about 5 years ago !
It was good time :) . I had AMD K5 133MHz . It was more fun than having a powerful computer today. We played Blood, Warcraft, Duke3d etc using connection via COM port (rs232)
I still have my working Pentium III, but it's boxed up now along with the 21" monitor (tube) I used with it. It just wouldn't die, unlike computers now days.
Very true! I think many modern electronic items will be outlived by their older counterparts. Both from cheaper manufacturing, and because the smaller electrical paths will corrode more easily.
I'm in the UK, this brings back memories, my 1st rig was a 386 and I too had Wolfenstien 3D, we had it installed at work too and I had a cheat (god) mode I never told anyone about and I had the top score and finished it lol.
Enlight made many cases back in the day. I owned several AT and ATX style cases they made. I currently have the case you just found. I’ve got my Super Socket 7 pc in it. Nice clean designs.
My first hard drive was a whopping 10 megabytes, took 2+ hours to format, and plugged into an ISA slot on the motherboard. It also sounded like a centrifuge with a bad bearing.
A great video and thanks for sharing! I still have and old PC At Beige in pretty good shape. It has and Asus Super Socket 7 AMD 550+ CPU 384MB of RAM. Motherboard is the Asus P5A-B Motherboard. Those motherboards on ebay are pretty pricey nowadays.
Glad you enjoyed it. I don’t come across many retro finds like this one, as you mentioned this era of systems has moved into the retro/eBay market and get pretty pricey!
Nice to see old systems like this still being found in the 2020's. I was about 10 when this gear was modern & have a couple of them on hand cos of good ol' nostalgia! Surprised a system this age would fail the Y2K test, 2000 wasn't that far off when you think about it.
I was working phone tech support for Micron right about 1999, and they still had a number of systems needing bios updates that were only 3-4 years old. Surprising no one seemed to be on top of that.
Dude, had a very similar PC back in 1997. It was configured pretty much like yours. My first Intel/Windows PC, back in 1992 was a 386DX 40, 4 MB of RAM, 120 MB of storage, 1x CD player, 512MB graphic card, a generic sound card and, oc, 2 floppy disk readers, one 5 1/4" and one 3.5". I paid for it 1800 dollars - it was a lot of money back in the 90s. BTW, I'm a new subscriber to your channel
I think the first PC my family bought was a Packard Bell 386sx it was 20 or 30 mhz, within a year or two I had saved up to build my own 486 from parts. Thanks for subscribing, hope to make a lot more videos as a way to document various retro computing stuff I’m playing with!
@Joel Explores Tech by the time we had the 386 each 1 megabyte of RAM would cost 50 dollars, that would be 102 dollars in 2023. I recently purchased 16 megabytes of DDR 4 3200mhz Kingdom Fury Beast for 100 bucks what means 6.25 bucks per meg. A CD player costed 600 dollars in 93, 1200 nowadays... I suggest you to shoot videos of PCs like the MSX, the first one to have a mouse, I believe. The games msx run was much better than those an IBM PC could handle during the 80s. Good luck with your channel, it'll be 100,000 followers by the end of the year
Yeah, I never see any pcs these days, this just happened to be at the bulk location where you are just digging though piles of broken junk before they send it off to the dump/ e-waste I think. It’s a great spot to find random old cables/connectors, but not full working electronics usually. See a lot of monitors that would have been nice but are scratched up or cracked from being thrown around in the piles.
Très cool! Swap the hard drive before it dies, & INSTALL LINUX! I still have a Pentium 800 & a Pentium 1,000, a P-1,133, a P-1,400, all kinds of old RAM, some mobos, an old 486sx Packard Bell (in pieces), & some other old computers & parts. I think I'll toss most all of it, save the cases to build some portable camp/rocket stoves. When the grid dies so dies all the computers, too. At least the light pollution will be gone so we can see the stars. Have a GREAT day, Neighbor!
Awesome score from the bins! The hard drive is super loud, so it's probably on the way out. The machine cleaned up nicely too. The only thing it's missing is a case badge and some stickers from Geekenspiel.
P.S. I just realized after watching your video a section time that the specs are very similar to a MS-DOS and Windows machine I build in the mid to late 1990s which I still have an plan to show on my channel this month for #DOScember.
Yeah, I backed up what little was on the HDD and ended up dropping a CF adapter in there after I wrapped up the video. A ~450mb drive wouldn't really hold much anyway even if sticking to DOS gaming. I totally need to find a good case badge and just now realized I totally forgot to mention the motherboard in the machine, an FIC PT-2006 for anyone interested.
@@joelexplorestech try seeing if you can get your hands on an industrial DOM (Disk on Module). It’s an industrial SSD that emulates an IDE hard drive, and has an IDE connector. The tech center at my local community college is running a 16 GB one in a Packard Bell machine, as a direct drop in replacement for its original 1.2 GB hard drive. You can get them off eBay real cheap, but make sure you get one with the correct connector I didn’t know much about IDE drives at the time and got a DOM that had a 44-pin connector (turned out to be a laptop drive). Then I learned that most desktops use 40-pin IDE connectors, and provide power to the drive with a Molex cable. Laptop drives on the other hand receive their power through four of the 44 pins. Fortunately though I was able to find a 44-pin to 40-pin adapter so we could still use the drive in the Packard Bell
It actually was the Pentium cpu I installed later in the video, but filmed that shot out of order. Good eye ion noticing it in there, almost re-filmed that when I realized I forgot to remove it!
@@joelexplorestech thank you!! Hey, for some reason, this vid isn't getting picked up by my playlist generator.. I'll add it by hand to the #DOScember2022 playlist. Not sure why, sorry about that!
I have a pc almost as old as this one with usb ports. I took the hard drive out and connected it to a pc with a sata to ide adapter, formatted it, and installed plop boot manager on it. Then put the drive back in, booted off of it which then allowed it to boot from usb and I installed xp from a flash drive. Also, why did so many people use those goofy fonts? I use to see that all the time and it just makes text hard to read. That's one part of those days that I don't miss.
On the fonts, I think it was the novelty factor. A lot of people were still getting their first computer, of the first one that had fonts as a thing you could play with. I have plans to do an do machine, but it will likely be much later like a pIII based machine.
In this area we have bulk trash pickup twice a year where the city will haul away almost anything that you put on the curb for free. People use it to clean out their closets, basements, etc. I've seen many older computers. At one time I was bringing home every decent system that I saw, but they'd just sit here and I'd never do anything with them, A few were complete, but most were missing something, like a hard drive, or a video card, or they only had a tiny a amount of memory, etc. From looking through the few that were complete, I rarely found any games on them, and the one time I did, they weren't cracked and couldn't be run without the disc. I did look for a patch for them, but at the time, I came up empty. If there are any photos on the system, you're almost guaranteed to find at least three copies of every one, usually in different directories. I found home-made porn on two of the computers I brought home. Last pickup, I found two i5 systems. While both had 16GB of RAM, neither had a hard drive, they were both small form factor systems (so not much expandability) and had weak power supplies. One of them doesn't seem to post. I had intentions of using the one that does POST to make a decent upgrade for myself along with a very beefy graphics card that I also found in the trash, but I don't have case large enough to hold the card (it's huge), or a power supply heavy enough to power it.
I only got back into retro computers in the last 3-5 years. I love when I can save things from the scrapyard, but I've started becoming more selective as I've seen a few times where a local collector/hoarder ends up with a house piled with old computers and their family has to deal with the mess when they die. If I won't have time to actually enjoy them, then I'll pass them on instead of building a collection that will be a burden later.
@@joelexplorestech I'm kind of a hoarder myself. At one time, I was bringing home almost every keyboard I could find, reasoning that it was better than them going to the dump. I would test them, clean them and add them to the collection. I figured I'd have plenty of spares if anyone ever needed one. Of course nobody ever did and I couldn't even give them away. Ironically, after I got rid of most of them, I bumped into a guy looking at some of the stuff I'd put out and he wanted PS/2 keyboards, but all I had left were USB. I've never found a mechanical keyboard though, just membrane ones. I did find a cheap, white "gaming" keyboard with LEDs under the keys though. I have a ton of mice I've brought, including one RAT7 gaming mouse. I need to take it apart though, as the buttons started double-clicking. I usually take any laptops that aren't mutilated, although about 98% of the time, they don't have a power supply with them, and I only have Dell power supplies. I know I can buy a universal one, I just haven't wanted to spend the money. I have a complete Dell i5 laptop from the last pickup that just needs a new CMOS battery. Unfortunately to change it, you have to disassemble the whole damn thing. I haven't yet had the ambition to do it.
A modem, OMG it's been 30 years since I touched a modem. I remember fighting IRQ conflicts with my Courier HST modem 4 days and days and days. When I heard about USB ports I almost wet myself. Like, _there's no setup and no IRQs? And you can put how many devices on each USB port? And they configure themselves?_ It was like dying and going to heaven. If you've never dealt with old style serial and parallel ports, count yourself as lucky!
I did phone tech support for Micron PCs around 1998, I think much of it was pnp modems, but certainly a lot of removing devices from device manager and rebooting, driver issues, etc. and there was the occasional older machine where we would have to walk them through changing jumpers over the phone!
The date was correct in windows though even though the benchmark programme displayed the millennium bug issue. I have a pc which show exactly the same bug but the date is correct in the bios and the OS.
I can't recall the exact details, but on many systems, software would resolve the issue, knowing that obviously the date wasn't early 1900's, but also if the date gets set after 2000, it often will track it correctly as well. I worked in tech support for Micron Computers right around 99/2000 and remember tons of calls about that bug!
@jimmys1164 I just looked at the guy and calmly said take it out.. Theres nothing I or anyone can do about it.. He returned after few days and gave the cpu to me and said 'you keep it and see if you could sell it'🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I go to Goodwill from time to time and found a Dell (Gateway?) Pentium 2 system. I haven’t tested it out yet but i keep hoping to fine a Pentium. ;) The back slider for the motherboard was something I never saw before but it would’ve been great for upgrades. I’m sure it’s been brought up before, but I’d wipe that drive and reinstall Win98 just to be safe.
I definitely cleared it out before actually using it for my own stuff and reinstalling windows fresh. The tray was interesting, had various versions of that in the past, but none with the spring loaded latch like this one.
Definetly might try that at some point! My first Linux was Slackware back in the day, can’t recall which version, but would have been a Pentium 1 or 2 I was running at the time.
I think generally the Goodwills around me do also. They sometimes end up at the Outlet locations where they put out big blue table/bins filled mostly with broken junk, but you find a lot of random interesting stuff. This was the first older pc I had found in there.
About the same for me. I had a 386 with a 107mb hdd if I remember correctly. Later moved that drive into a 486 which was the first machine I built from parts.
✅ My GoodWill had a bunch of stuff out back they were recycling or throwing away or something, they told me they weren’t selling it and they were putting the stuff in the regular dumpster. So I was looking through some of the stuff and they told me I couldn’t look at their trash either!!! So I asked the guy if he was going to come over and stop me and he said no, so I said I was going to keep looking while he stood there and stared at me. By the time I was done I had 2 managers and the original guy telling me that I wasn’t allowed to touch their trash while they were just standing up on their dock area staring at me. I loaded up my car and said bye and one of them said bye back to me as well, while I could hear one of the managers yelling at him to shut up as I left.😂😅🤣
The first computer my family purchased was a Packard Bell 386. Wasn’t super fast even for the time, but finally being able to play wolf3d at my own house was glorious!
In high school I got to visit the Intel campus in Oregon pretty often around the time Pentium and usb was being worked on! I know a few people who work in wafer production, but never got to see much of the chip production itself.
@@joelexplorestech We had a fire alarm go off once at the fab and everyone had to evacuate........never seen anything sillier than a whole lot of people standing around outside in their white bunnysuits, what we called the clean suits.
I would have to go back and check, but in that first shot, it was filmed a bit out of order. The machine definitely didn’t have a processor when I found it. I do have a few k6-2 cpus, but can’t recall if I tried one in there or not.
I will have to check what mb setting there are for voltage/clock speed. The only time I dabbled much with overclocking was when I had a dual cpu Celeron board, I think it was somewhere in the 3-400mhz range, but can’t recall how much the overclock was.
@@joelexplorestech ofcourse the board has to support 233 , but they usually do if they go to 200. i think it was just setting the multiplier. dont remember changing voltage. don't think that was a thing yet :)
I’ve been keeping an eye out for an older beige crt. I have a 2003 dark grey one, but didn’t want to move it for this video as it didn’t really match the system anyway. Crts are awesome, especially for retro gaming!
Great video! Watch the Weird Al Yankovic Song! - "It's All About the Pentiums" A Parody of All About the Benjamins (Rock Remix) Also the case needs a Pentium MMX sticker!
Glad you enjoyed it! I’ve see the music video, but it has been awhile. Am looking for a good case badge, I know there are some good modern reproduction ones to buy.
@@joelexplorestech used to have a friend that fixed all kinds of electronics stuff valves radios the list goes the one day he said to me have you ever seen a trf radio receiver this was before the day of superhetrodyne receivers he explained how it worked i was blown away as he rebuilt part of it the guy was a good friend and genius
Does anyone know who made that case? I made about a million computers back in the day, and this was my favorite case to use. Was it an Inwin? Looking at the components which it had in it, it looks like a typical one of my builds from that time period. I'm sure those components were fairly common back then, but what trip down memory lane this video is.
Not sure on the brand. I’ve got the two versions shown near the end of the video, one mini tower and one full, but can’t find branding on either one. Glad you liked the video!
@@joelexplorestech I am fairly certain that case is made by either Inwin or Enlight, but I can't remember which... Everything about that build is familiar to me... Though there's no way of knowing, and the odds are against it because it's just a generic build using generic parts which were common at the time, it would be hilarious if it turned out to be one of my builds. You got a new subscriber, and I'm looking forward to see what you share in the future.
Considering Crysis needs a 2.2ghz dual core cpu, I have a feeling the 200mhz pentium might come up a little short! Might be fun to see how far I can push the machine with newer games from around 2000 or so!
I'm sure I'll find plenty of DOS games to fill it up. Can always add a second drive via a Compact Flash->IDE adapter if I need. This machine will mostly be for my older DOS stuff, so mostly the older pre CD-Rom games. Kind of nice to have a machine only loaded up with a nice selection of games vs having hundreds to try to choose something to play.
@@joelexplorestech you should try and get Chaos Control, Cyberia, corridor 7, Stonekeep, Magic Carpet, Alien Carnage, Descent, Cyber Dogs and maybe some police quest and space quest! i use to enjoy those games when i was a kid
200MMX - super cool. 430VX-- booooo :-((( EDO memory - boo :-(( Look for a super socket7 mobo and SDRAM, CPU you already have. :))) 430 is probably good enough for low freq Pentiums and Win3.11
Yeah, it's not the most impressive board. I've got a P5MMS98, and an Asus Spax socket 7 board, but no Super socket 7 board(yet!). I used the 200mmx as it was the only compatible CPU I had to test it.
@@joelexplorestech All it had was the MB and lucky enough a processor core 2 duo 3 Ghz I bought everything else for it new execpt the case, I stuck it all into an old case I already had from around the same era. I put windows 10 on it and it works like a charm, I'm using it now to message you, and yeah, I relly like it. I think it's cool too that other people are restoring some of the older hardware and having fun with it :) Cheers
The last Goodwill PC I found was an old Pentium 4 HP Compaq desktop, and I was absolutely floored to see a PC at all in their electronics section. I've typically found loose components like motherboards, empty cases, heatsinks, power supplies, but very rarely a fully assembled PC. I'm glad to see this one was saved from the landfill/recycler.
I happen to have a Pentium era machine with very similar specs. MMX 200, 32 MB RAM, PS/2 mouse port... Although I have a Rage 128 Pro PCI card in it with a Sound Blaster AWE32. The sound card in your machine is pretty modest, sounds like it's only an FM synth card, but the saving grace it has is the wavetable header. Something like an Dreamblaster or similar would work great with that card, which makes it worth holding onto.
This was certainly the first full PC I had seen, especially of that vintage!
The 200mhz MMX is a great all-around old gaming system! you can still play older games mixed with newer ones BTW!
Definetly plan on using this machine for everything in the mid to late dos era. I have an Xt clone machine that I might do a video on for the really early dos stuff, looking forward to sharing more of my machines in some videos. Such a fun hobby!
I used the K6-2 200 growing up. Still have that system; contemplating something different in it, maybe Cyrix (since it's an IBM Aptiva, and IBM made those chips). I actually never had the Intel until about 5 years ago !
Ah, yes! It takes me back to the good ol' days when I built my first PC. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Really cleaned up nice! Love that it has a couple of AT style ISA slots!
Certainly the oldest PC I've seen at Goodwill in a long time, and especially the bulk bins. Always keeping an eye out for the 80/90's beige!
It was good time :) . I had AMD K5 133MHz . It was more fun than having a powerful computer today. We played Blood, Warcraft, Duke3d etc using connection via COM port (rs232)
I spent many summer evenings getting nulls modem connections setup for playing locally with friends!
I still have my working Pentium III, but it's boxed up now along with the 21" monitor (tube) I used with it.
It just wouldn't die, unlike computers now days.
Very true! I think many modern electronic items will be outlived by their older counterparts. Both from cheaper manufacturing, and because the smaller electrical paths will corrode more easily.
Survivorship bias.
Now's a great time to pimp it out, before components become too hard to find. It's pretty amazing how fast Windows 98 on an SSD is.
I was the 200th sub. Keep up the good work.
I'm in the UK, this brings back memories, my 1st rig was a 386 and I too had Wolfenstien 3D, we had it installed at work too and I had a cheat (god) mode I never told anyone about and I had the top score and finished it lol.
I remember using a Wolfenstein 3D level editor back in the day, first played on a 386 as well.
Enlight made many cases back in the day. I owned several AT and ATX style cases they made. I currently have the case you just found. I’ve got my Super Socket 7 pc in it. Nice clean designs.
This is probably on the nicer end of cases I have. Have a few more generic beige ones, but this Enlight one has a bit nicer feel to it.
My first hard drive was a whopping 10 megabytes, took 2+ hours to format, and plugged into an ISA slot on the motherboard. It also sounded like a centrifuge with a bad bearing.
A great little machine for mid to late 90s/early 00s PC games, which was the best era for those games if you ask me.
Definitely a great era for PC gaming!
A great video and thanks for sharing! I still have and old PC At Beige in pretty good shape. It has and Asus Super Socket 7 AMD 550+ CPU 384MB of RAM. Motherboard is the Asus P5A-B Motherboard. Those motherboards on ebay are pretty pricey nowadays.
Glad you enjoyed it. I don’t come across many retro finds like this one, as you mentioned this era of systems has moved into the retro/eBay market and get pretty pricey!
Nice to see old systems like this still being found in the 2020's. I was about 10 when this gear was modern & have a couple of them on hand cos of good ol' nostalgia! Surprised a system this age would fail the Y2K test, 2000 wasn't that far off when you think about it.
I was working phone tech support for Micron right about 1999, and they still had a number of systems needing bios updates that were only 3-4 years old. Surprising no one seemed to be on top of that.
i had that case back then when a kid and still learned about window's, really want the case but its super rare.
Yeah, I was pretty amazed seeing it mixed in with the random stuff at the thrift shop!
Dude, had a very similar PC back in 1997. It was configured pretty much like yours.
My first Intel/Windows PC, back in 1992 was a 386DX 40, 4 MB of RAM, 120 MB of storage, 1x CD player, 512MB graphic card, a generic sound card and, oc, 2 floppy disk readers, one 5 1/4" and one 3.5". I paid for it 1800 dollars - it was a lot of money back in the 90s.
BTW, I'm a new subscriber to your channel
I think the first PC my family bought was a Packard Bell 386sx it was 20 or 30 mhz, within a year or two I had saved up to build my own 486 from parts. Thanks for subscribing, hope to make a lot more videos as a way to document various retro computing stuff I’m playing with!
@Joel Explores Tech by the time we had the 386 each 1 megabyte of RAM would cost 50 dollars, that would be 102 dollars in 2023. I recently purchased 16 megabytes of DDR 4 3200mhz Kingdom Fury Beast for 100 bucks what means 6.25 bucks per meg. A CD player costed 600 dollars in 93, 1200 nowadays...
I suggest you to shoot videos of PCs like the MSX, the first one to have a mouse, I believe. The games msx run was much better than those an IBM PC could handle during the 80s.
Good luck with your channel, it'll be 100,000 followers by the end of the year
I have desktop, tower, and laptop builds going back to mid-90s.
That's awesome, I don't have any desktop style cases, only towers. I just did another video where I built a 486 machine from parts I've collected.
Really lucky finding vintage PC stuff at Goodwill for a decent price. Last pentium I saw at Goodwill was in a case for $150.
Yeah, I never see any pcs these days, this just happened to be at the bulk location where you are just digging though piles of broken junk before they send it off to the dump/ e-waste I think. It’s a great spot to find random old cables/connectors, but not full working electronics usually. See a lot of monitors that would have been nice but are scratched up or cracked from being thrown around in the piles.
Très cool!
Swap the hard drive before it dies, &
INSTALL LINUX!
I still have a Pentium 800 & a Pentium 1,000, a P-1,133, a P-1,400, all kinds of old RAM, some mobos, an old 486sx Packard Bell (in pieces), & some other old computers & parts.
I think I'll toss most all of it, save the cases to build some portable camp/rocket stoves.
When the grid dies so dies all the computers, too.
At least the light pollution will be gone so we can see the stars.
Have a GREAT day, Neighbor!
I do need to go back and explore older Linux versions. I played a bit with Slackware back in the day!
Awesome score from the bins! The hard drive is super loud, so it's probably on the way out. The machine cleaned up nicely too. The only thing it's missing is a case badge and some stickers from Geekenspiel.
P.S. I just realized after watching your video a section time that the specs are very similar to a MS-DOS and Windows machine I build in the mid to late 1990s which I still have an plan to show on my channel this month for #DOScember.
Yeah, I backed up what little was on the HDD and ended up dropping a CF adapter in there after I wrapped up the video. A ~450mb drive wouldn't really hold much anyway even if sticking to DOS gaming. I totally need to find a good case badge and just now realized I totally forgot to mention the motherboard in the machine, an FIC PT-2006 for anyone interested.
@@geekwithsocialskills Look forward to seeing your video!
@@joelexplorestech try seeing if you can get your hands on an industrial DOM (Disk on Module). It’s an industrial SSD that emulates an IDE hard drive, and has an IDE connector. The tech center at my local community college is running a 16 GB one in a Packard Bell machine, as a direct drop in replacement for its original 1.2 GB hard drive.
You can get them off eBay real cheap, but make sure you get one with the correct connector
I didn’t know much about IDE drives at the time and got a DOM that had a 44-pin connector (turned out to be a laptop drive). Then I learned that most desktops use 40-pin IDE connectors, and provide power to the drive with a Molex cable.
Laptop drives on the other hand receive their power through four of the 44 pins.
Fortunately though I was able to find a 44-pin to 40-pin adapter so we could still use the drive in the Packard Bell
I thought that I saw an AMD K6 CPU in the shot where the PC was on the turn table...
It actually was the Pentium cpu I installed later in the video, but filmed that shot out of order. Good eye ion noticing it in there, almost re-filmed that when I realized I forgot to remove it!
If it was a K6-2, ou might have "downgraded" the computer with a Pentium MMX. Good video otherwise.
My first computer was a Escsom 486-DX2 66MHz exactly in the same case of this PC.
Escom and Commodore make computers in this case in the 90's.
I plan to build a 486 in an upcoming video, just need a few more parts for the complete build.
Nice retro system, like!
Really nice find.
Nice find 👍
Enlight case! Thing of beauty!! I have the same case, system is a Pentium 233 MMX, so pretty similar.
I definitely love the case. Also, I watch your videos, they have been both entertaining and helpful!
@@joelexplorestech thank you!! Hey, for some reason, this vid isn't getting picked up by my playlist generator.. I'll add it by hand to the #DOScember2022 playlist. Not sure why, sorry about that!
I have a pc almost as old as this one with usb ports. I took the hard drive out and connected it to a pc with a sata to ide adapter, formatted it, and installed plop boot manager on it. Then put the drive back in, booted off of it which then allowed it to boot from usb and I installed xp from a flash drive. Also, why did so many people use those goofy fonts? I use to see that all the time and it just makes text hard to read. That's one part of those days that I don't miss.
On the fonts, I think it was the novelty factor. A lot of people were still getting their first computer, of the first one that had fonts as a thing you could play with.
I have plans to do an do machine, but it will likely be much later like a pIII based machine.
Dude , i just found few Free PC's... nice video!
In this area we have bulk trash pickup twice a year where the city will haul away almost anything that you put on the curb for free. People use it to clean out their closets, basements, etc.
I've seen many older computers. At one time I was bringing home every decent system that I saw, but they'd just sit here and I'd never do anything with them, A few were complete, but most were missing something, like a hard drive, or a video card, or they only had a tiny a amount of memory, etc.
From looking through the few that were complete, I rarely found any games on them, and the one time I did, they weren't cracked and couldn't be run without the disc. I did look for a patch for them, but at the time, I came up empty. If there are any photos on the system, you're almost guaranteed to find at least three copies of every one, usually in different directories. I found home-made porn on two of the computers I brought home.
Last pickup, I found two i5 systems. While both had 16GB of RAM, neither had a hard drive, they were both small form factor systems (so not much expandability) and had weak power supplies. One of them doesn't seem to post. I had intentions of using the one that does POST to make a decent upgrade for myself along with a very beefy graphics card that I also found in the trash, but I don't have case large enough to hold the card (it's huge), or a power supply heavy enough to power it.
I only got back into retro computers in the last 3-5 years. I love when I can save things from the scrapyard, but I've started becoming more selective as I've seen a few times where a local collector/hoarder ends up with a house piled with old computers and their family has to deal with the mess when they die. If I won't have time to actually enjoy them, then I'll pass them on instead of building a collection that will be a burden later.
@@joelexplorestech I'm kind of a hoarder myself. At one time, I was bringing home almost every keyboard I could find, reasoning that it was better than them going to the dump. I would test them, clean them and add them to the collection. I figured I'd have plenty of spares if anyone ever needed one. Of course nobody ever did and I couldn't even give them away. Ironically, after I got rid of most of them, I bumped into a guy looking at some of the stuff I'd put out and he wanted PS/2 keyboards, but all I had left were USB. I've never found a mechanical keyboard though, just membrane ones. I did find a cheap, white "gaming" keyboard with LEDs under the keys though.
I have a ton of mice I've brought, including one RAT7 gaming mouse. I need to take it apart though, as the buttons started double-clicking.
I usually take any laptops that aren't mutilated, although about 98% of the time, they don't have a power supply with them, and I only have Dell power supplies. I know I can buy a universal one, I just haven't wanted to spend the money. I have a complete Dell i5 laptop from the last pickup that just needs a new CMOS battery. Unfortunately to change it, you have to disassemble the whole damn thing. I haven't yet had the ambition to do it.
A modem, OMG it's been 30 years since I touched a modem. I remember fighting IRQ conflicts with my Courier HST modem 4 days and days and days. When I heard about USB ports I almost wet myself. Like, _there's no setup and no IRQs? And you can put how many devices on each USB port? And they configure themselves?_ It was like dying and going to heaven. If you've never dealt with old style serial and parallel ports, count yourself as lucky!
I did phone tech support for Micron PCs around 1998, I think much of it was pnp modems, but certainly a lot of removing devices from device manager and rebooting, driver issues, etc. and there was the occasional older machine where we would have to walk them through changing jumpers over the phone!
The date was correct in windows though even though the benchmark programme displayed the millennium bug issue. I have a pc which show exactly the same bug but the date is correct in the bios and the OS.
I can't recall the exact details, but on many systems, software would resolve the issue, knowing that obviously the date wasn't early 1900's, but also if the date gets set after 2000, it often will track it correctly as well. I worked in tech support for Micron Computers right around 99/2000 and remember tons of calls about that bug!
My first PC
Perfect speed of machine for late DOS and win 95 and early win 98 games.
in my shop a dude came with this spec machine and asked me to update it..🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣.. I was flabbergasted..
Just need to add a rtx 4090 and you are good to go! 😆
@jimmys1164 I just looked at the guy and calmly said take it out.. Theres nothing I or anyone can do about it.. He returned after few days and gave the cpu to me and said 'you keep it and see if you could sell it'🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@joelexplorestech that would be a terrible blunder, then I have to explain what is that.. And why I can't put that it🤣🤣🤣
I go to Goodwill from time to time and found a Dell (Gateway?) Pentium 2 system. I haven’t tested it out yet but i keep hoping to fine a Pentium. ;)
The back slider for the motherboard was something I never saw before but it would’ve been great for upgrades.
I’m sure it’s been brought up before, but I’d wipe that drive and reinstall Win98 just to be safe.
I definitely cleared it out before actually using it for my own stuff and reinstalling windows fresh. The tray was interesting, had various versions of that in the past, but none with the spring loaded latch like this one.
Man, what a score! Jam in Linux 5.2.
Definetly might try that at some point! My first Linux was Slackware back in the day, can’t recall which version, but would have been a Pentium 1 or 2 I was running at the time.
I'm so glad we don't have those dodgy power supplies anymore lol
It can certainly be a chore sorting through what does and doesn’t work on these old systems!
Nice find! My local Goodwill recycles ALL computers, so I can't find anything.
I think generally the Goodwills around me do also. They sometimes end up at the Outlet locations where they put out big blue table/bins filled mostly with broken junk, but you find a lot of random interesting stuff. This was the first older pc I had found in there.
There’s a Goodwill in Houston that has a Computer Works in the same building as the Goodwill Outlet Store.
My first computer only had 84 megs of storage in it, total.
About the same for me. I had a 386 with a 107mb hdd if I remember correctly. Later moved that drive into a 486 which was the first machine I built from parts.
@@joelexplorestech The first computer that I built was a socket 7 Pentium MMX 200 mHz cpu with an 8.7 Gb hdd.
My first was a Tandy 3000NL with a 20MB hard card. That card alone was about $700.
✅ My GoodWill had a bunch of stuff out back they were recycling or throwing away or something, they told me they weren’t selling it and they were putting the stuff in the regular dumpster. So I was looking through some of the stuff and they told me I couldn’t look at their trash either!!! So I asked the guy if he was going to come over and stop me and he said no, so I said I was going to keep looking while he stood there and stared at me. By the time I was done I had 2 managers and the original guy telling me that I wasn’t allowed to touch their trash while they were just standing up on their dock area staring at me. I loaded up my car and said bye and one of them said bye back to me as well, while I could hear one of the managers yelling at him to shut up as I left.😂😅🤣
It’s a shame how much usable stuff gets thrown away, always appreciate when I can find a new life for an item that isn’t needed anymore.
Year 2000 bug actually claimed 1 victim. wow.
I suspect that the original hard disk failed - most likely it had a 3.2/4.3Gb drive and that 428Mb drive is out of a 486 class PC.
Yeah, it did seem like a pretty small drive for the machine, that would make sense.
I've got a Packard Bell Multimedia L198 with a Pentium 1 and 128mb of simm's memory
The first computer my family purchased was a Packard Bell 386. Wasn’t super fast even for the time, but finally being able to play wolf3d at my own house was glorious!
I might have helped make that old Pentium. Fab 12 in Rio Rancho NM
In high school I got to visit the Intel campus in Oregon pretty often around the time Pentium and usb was being worked on! I know a few people who work in wafer production, but never got to see much of the chip production itself.
@@joelexplorestech We had a fire alarm go off once at the fab and everyone had to evacuate........never seen anything sillier than a whole lot of people standing around outside in their white bunnysuits, what we called the clean suits.
Did anybody noticed that the mystery soundcard got a wavetable connector, not propritary cd-rom connector.
thumbs up for C+C near the end
That series was certainly one of my favorites!
Swear I saw a AMDK6-2 processor when you first opened it
I would have to go back and check, but in that first shot, it was filmed a bit out of order. The machine definitely didn’t have a processor when I found it. I do have a few k6-2 cpus, but can’t recall if I tried one in there or not.
You should be able to overclock the cpu to 233 , the max p1's could run at.
I remember doing that to my p1 200 mmx ages ago.
I will have to check what mb setting there are for voltage/clock speed. The only time I dabbled much with overclocking was when I had a dual cpu Celeron board, I think it was somewhere in the 3-400mhz range, but can’t recall how much the overclock was.
@@joelexplorestech ofcourse the board has to support 233 , but they usually do if they go to 200. i think it was just setting the multiplier. dont remember changing voltage. don't think that was a thing yet :)
1:54 Megamytes? 🤭
I myte have misspoken there. 😄
You probably need a CRT monitor. Windows 98 never saw a LED monitor and wouldn't have been tuned for them.
I’ve been keeping an eye out for an older beige crt. I have a 2003 dark grey one, but didn’t want to move it for this video as it didn’t really match the system anyway. Crts are awesome, especially for retro gaming!
Great video! Watch the Weird Al Yankovic Song! - "It's All About the Pentiums" A Parody of All About the Benjamins (Rock Remix)
Also the case needs a Pentium MMX sticker!
Glad you enjoyed it! I’ve see the music video, but it has been awhile. Am looking for a good case badge, I know there are some good modern reproduction ones to buy.
I hereby deem this the Thriftium. 👍
I love it! Will have to make a case badge for it.
@@joelexplorestech Don't forget the wallpaper, "Thriftium Inside" haha!
Throw a ATI 3D Rage Pro and you have yourself a great system.
A better video card is certainly on the list for upgrades!
people don't realize what there throwing out but i suppose whats somebodies trash is a gold mind to another
Always sad to see retro stuff being sent off to e-waste and it's cool when you can rescue something to bring it back to a useful life!
@@joelexplorestech used to have a friend that fixed all kinds of electronics stuff valves radios the list goes the one day he said to me have you ever seen a trf radio receiver this was before the day of superhetrodyne receivers he explained how it worked i was blown away as he rebuilt part of it the guy was a good friend and genius
and you can show the kids what we used to use i that goes right back from the days of valves to the hybrid colour tvs
Does anyone know who made that case? I made about a million computers back in the day, and this was my favorite case to use. Was it an Inwin? Looking at the components which it had in it, it looks like a typical one of my builds from that time period. I'm sure those components were fairly common back then, but what trip down memory lane this video is.
Not sure on the brand. I’ve got the two versions shown near the end of the video, one mini tower and one full, but can’t find branding on either one. Glad you liked the video!
@@joelexplorestech I am fairly certain that case is made by either Inwin or Enlight, but I can't remember which... Everything about that build is familiar to me... Though there's no way of knowing, and the odds are against it because it's just a generic build using generic parts which were common at the time, it would be hilarious if it turned out to be one of my builds. You got a new subscriber, and I'm looking forward to see what you share in the future.
what pentium system is that with isa expansion bus, thought it was pci all the way by then
The motherboard is an FIC PT-2006. Many of the early Pentium boards still had isa, and even later boards.
@@joelexplorestech the pentium-100 I used did not have any isa cards, at max one isa slot down below, with no usage, only pci cards
Could this handle CRYSIS?
Considering Crysis needs a 2.2ghz dual core cpu, I have a feeling the 200mhz pentium might come up a little short! Might be fun to see how far I can push the machine with newer games from around 2000 or so!
what are you going to do with all that 428mb of space?
I'm sure I'll find plenty of DOS games to fill it up. Can always add a second drive via a Compact Flash->IDE adapter if I need. This machine will mostly be for my older DOS stuff, so mostly the older pre CD-Rom games. Kind of nice to have a machine only loaded up with a nice selection of games vs having hundreds to try to choose something to play.
@@joelexplorestech you should try and get Chaos Control, Cyberia, corridor 7, Stonekeep, Magic Carpet, Alien Carnage, Descent, Cyber Dogs and maybe some police quest and space quest! i use to enjoy those games when i was a kid
@@joelexplorestech you should check out exo-Dos also! the guy who put it together did an amazing job on the exo-collection
Nice little example of a generic white-box PC. Plenty of room for expansion. Who makes the motherboard?
I forgot to mention it in the video, should have pulled it out to show more details there. It is an FIC PT-2006.
theretroweb has a later BIOS for it
I’ll have to check out the bios update, always interesting to see if there’s any added functionality.
@@joelexplorestech Not much to be added, but maybe Y2K
Why is the background music in the video as loud as your voice? Perhaps a little better editing would help
Appreciate the feedback. Still new at this, so good to know where I can improve!
200MMX - super cool. 430VX-- booooo :-((( EDO memory - boo :-(( Look for a super socket7 mobo and SDRAM, CPU you already have. :))) 430 is probably good enough for low freq Pentiums and Win3.11
Yeah, it's not the most impressive board. I've got a P5MMS98, and an Asus Spax socket 7 board, but no Super socket 7 board(yet!). I used the 200mmx as it was the only compatible CPU I had to test it.
I pulled my retro out of the recycle bin, Asus P5Q-E
Awesome find. It always cool when you find a retro system to rescue!
@@joelexplorestech All it had was the MB and lucky enough a processor core 2 duo 3 Ghz I bought everything else for it new execpt the case, I stuck it all into an old case I already had from around the same era. I put windows 10 on it and it works like a charm, I'm using it now to message you, and yeah, I relly like it. I think it's cool too that other people are restoring some of the older hardware and having fun with it :) Cheers