I've still got a few of the caddies lying around in my "junk" collection. Never any of the drives though. By the time I could afford them, trays were already the norm.
As it was games I'd access the most, the pack-in Headstart LX-CD Disc 2 would mostly stay in a caddy in the drive, while an encyclopedia, or the CBS audio sample disc, would occupy our only other caddy (rarely swapping out for other pack-in discs). I would have loved to have had just one more caddy back then. It's sad to see these things become rare-I love caddy drives.
Awesome! I like that you include small hiccups like the broken Molex cable into the videos, gives people more ideas for troubleshooting. Also I might finally tackle my own valuepoint system - even have the same monitor for it. :D (I know I say that about a lot of your PC's) I love the networking stuff too but I guess I need to set up some extra server for it - the awesome FreeNAS based system a friend built for me won't even connect to a Windows machine without some patching and hotfixing acrobatics to reach the required security level.
Gave up on FreeNAS and custom storage solutions. Just bought a Synology now and it just works :) Do have some nice retro storage solutions that I need to look at at some point.
Back in the old days, a lot of fix because the molex cable not tight, happens quite often on cheap psu... Sometimes i have to bend again the metal part of the molex to make it tight
No, but you DO need that 'set BLASTER" variable in the autoexec.bat file, so the games know where to look for the sound card. I never had a sound card until we were already running Windows, so it took me a while to figure that out. Mind you, there were a few games, like Prince of Persia, that could figure it out on their own.
@@BlackEpyon Not necessarily. Most games offered a setup where you can configure or auto detect the soundcard. If they rely on the environment variable alone, then yes...in that case, you have to set it.
I wanted to buy additional caddies. I love caddy drives (possibly nostalgia). My first computer was an 8088 Headstart LX-CD, which came with two caddies. I'm not sure if it also came with a Mini CD adapter, or if my uncle provided us with it; always nice to have, just in case.
I understand Commodore used similar CD-ROM drives for the Amiga 500 CD-ROM drive and the CDTV. That leading mechanism reminds me so much of a standard floppy disk drive.
15:31 I have a scratch-built DOS gaming PC with a new-old-stock black AT case (really cool looking with a light-up red LED power switch, MHz display, etc.) I wanted a caddy CD-ROM because that's what I have fond memories of, but it took me forever to find one in black. For a long time I had just a early 2000s era CD/DVD drive. Just didn't look right on a 386/486 era machine. However, by pure chance I was browsing my local electronics surplus store, and I stumbled upon a single speed caddy CD-ROM ... IN BLACK! Unfortunately it didn't power up, but fortunately for me it was just leaky caps. Recapped it, and it worked! The cool part is that it's a SCSI drive, which was serendipitous because I had a SoundBlaster 16 SCSI sound card installed in my PC. It was like it was meant to be! I bought a pack of multi colored caddies (one of which was red), and man does it look cool! With the red caddy installed, it looks rather sinister with a red line going across the front. It also has a smooth eject motor, so the caddy ejects nicely. It can even be ejected via the Jukebox app without having to press the button.
Neat - what drive is it? I have a few caddy loading drives - NEC, Toshiba, Sony.. all standard issue beige though. :-) Well, the Toshiba was actually made for Compaq, I think, and a little more of a dark gray.
My IBM PS/2 ValuePoint still works like a champ. If you need extra IBM memory, let me know. My PS/2 ValuePoint is maxxed out at 64MB. Sadly, IBM didn't offer any other BIOS updates besides the Y2K fixup. But one cannot be bothered by it since it still works. Great video.
@@RetroSpector78 I have a PS/2 Valuepoint 433SX/S with one: ps-2.kev009.com/pcpartnerinfo/ctstips/3aa2.htm. I bought it from an eBay seller in NJ directly for ~$50, he goes by the eBay name of ctsales and runs computertradeexchange.com/ where he has a warehouse full of this stuff. If you go to the contact us, there's an email for the owner/sales and that is who you want to contact. I have to run do some things, but I'll double check FRU for mine. I came across this seller because he was selling motherboards for Valuepoints on eBay and one of them had the cache chip. I messaged him asking if he would split up the auction and he said he had the chips in stock and we agreed to a price outside of eBay. I've bought from him a few times. I love these valuepoints because most of them will take a Pentium Overdrive and will fly. I know for sure that at least 433SX/X can run CDROM drives off the IDE controller even though it's not spec'ed anywhere. With the right driver in the config.sys, it will detect. I also managed to find a video memory upgrade on eBay, though I run a 2MB VLB card as it's just a tiny bit faster. I can look up that FRU too.
@@RetroSpector78 at 2:45.. like i said to Adrian (@Adrian's Digital Basement).. put some Deoxit d5 (or similar contact cleaner) in the slot's.. they will gets in and out a lot easier.. and clean/protect from oxidation the contacts of the slot and board...
@@Ramdileo_sys Any idea how to get one of these going? I have a 1x IBM drive similar to this (SCSI) and the bus can see it, it registers in software, drivers load, but I can't get it to read any discs. Is it perhaps limited to some kind of format?
@@the_kombinator .. better ask to @RetroSpector78 .. but less see... you have a IBM 1X SCSI CD drive??... did I understood you okay..?? Old CD drive like that one... probably reads CD "Mode 1" only... More new format like Mode 2 or Mode 2/XA or UDF.. almost certainly NO.... So check in a newer drive .. the "Mode" your CD has been burned.. can be format problem.. but.. first of all.. the drive read anything??... Like Audio CD for example?? Connecting only power (Molex connector) and put in a silver original stamped.. (not burned) CD... should read and play music.. if it doesn't .. and just keep trying to read it.. then the drive does not work.. Remember that our youtubers friends here.. they all borrow Mat's (@Techmoan) time machine to go get working drives :-DD Usually get a working.. 5 or 10 year old used CD or DVD.. is more difficult than winning the lottery.. so imagine one of around 30 years old.. if you drive do not even read CD Audio... you can try to repair it ... with the classic stuff... you know.. - clean and lubricate the gears and guide bars that move the laser assembly.. make sure it moves nice and free.. - clean the CD holder at the tip of the spinner motor ... makes sure the disc rotate nice and free.. and that the disk gets grounded firm.. and does not slip.. - clean the the lens leaving it nice and shining... (unfortunately the other side of the lens.. cannot be cleaned.. and that's the death of these drives.. it always has been.. dirt gets into that hole under the lens.. and prevents the laser light from passing through correctly) So you can blow compressed air on the sides of the lens.. hopefully it will remove some dirt from the other side of the lens.. and from the prisms that reflect the laser light .. (if the laser works at all obviously) Beyond this.. there is little that can be done .. - make sure that each and every one of the traces inside the ribbons cables has electrical continuity... reinsert them with some contact cleaner to ensure electrical continuity in those ribbon cables ... and also in any other connector that you see.. both inside and outside the drive.. in the Molex connector.. in the SCSI pins conector.. in the jumpers.. all that ensures good electrical conductivity in those rusty old contacts.. - check the chips in the logic board.. that they are not overheating.. usually some of them hitsink against the CD case.. put fresh thermal compound there... - check the capacitors.. or if there is any obvious broken or overheating component that can be replaced ... Beyond this.. is even little that can do.. - in the laser assembly there is usually a potentiometer (two on DVDs) to adjust the brightness of the laser.. and force the light pass through the dirty inside of the lens ... you can adjust those potentiometers to increase the laser light a little.. contact cleaner in that potenciometer.. also a good idea... and up to this point... is where i run out of wisdom... :-\
LOL! I thought someone started hammering something outside when I heard the beat from the game music at the end! Anyway, always interesting to see these old machines get a new lease on life. I remember when my school got their first PC with a CD-ROM drive, I'm pretty sure it was the exact same model as this one since I remember it had the MPC logo on the front. It was amazing that I could just stick the caddy in and load up an encyclopaedia, and I could just search the index and jump to an entry, rather than having to flick through books. It was just so much easier, especially if I didn't know the exact title of the entry I was looking for!
That's how the Headstart LX-CD desktop computer was laid out-3.5 inch on top, caddy CD-ROM below. Sometimes things did get in the way, and I'd have to move something to access the drive, but that only change with which desk we used. I wish we also had a 5.25 inch drive at that time.
I bought that exact MPC upgrade kit back in the day after seeing (and saving for it) for many months in my copy of Sierra On-Line's Interaction Magazine. The Cdrom drive was a 1x (you can check the model # against the doc in your video) :D. It was super reliable and I used the heck outta it until I replaced it with a 6x Teac in the later 90s. The software that comes with it is a lot of fun, there is "Dr Sabito", a voiced psychiatrist and software for a talking parrot too!
@@RetroSpector78 I think you have it! The software was on floppies. Check your C:\SBPRO\PARROT directory! :) The cdrom that came with the kit was Microsoft Encarta? I think it also came with a copy of MS windows 3.11. Oh and also a midi adaptor, but I hacked mine to provide a 2nd joystick port instead :D
I don't like molex connectors, they're such bad design. Sometimes you can feel that the connector is loose in place. That's not good. You may carefully squish the tubular contacts in the plug to make them tighter for better connection.
Yeah, I hate molex connectors with a passion. They are always a pain, literally. They are always either too loose or too tight. The tight ones always hurt my fingers when I try to inplug them. Some cheap molex connectors have really loose pins causing bad connections. Those modern sata power connectors are much more gentle.
7:00 I have 2x SBPros and a Ensonic Soundscape 2000 with this interface. I ditched it for IDE after a couple of years using them in the 90's once the standards stabilized as it was easier to get compatible CDROMs as well as less memory hungry drivers. You could try QEMM for memory management. It was very aggressive and could load almost everything into high memory. It was/is a fascinating tool. However it could cause severe memory lock ups with Ultima 7 and the original Great Naval Battles of the North Atlantic game. I have a bunch of old LAN cards...I guess that is something I could mess around with however CFs/SDs and USB have been my go to usually with these systems.
I'm surprised at how many IBM machines of this era use the exact same internal chassis, although the front plate styling changed quite a bit over the same time.
The days with my Intel 466DX2-50Mhz cpu and VL-Bus. Having different 3.5" boot disks in order to play games. Each disk was used in order to have the right amount of memory in the pc for certain games.
You can always swap the power button from the old PSU. That's why they used spade connectors. Just be sure you don't screw up which colour goes where, because that could be spectacular. Also, like many of the early 16-bit cards, that Sound BLASTER Pro 2 doesn't use the later address or data pins, and can be used in an 8-bit slot if you were mindful of which IRQ and DMA settings you used. Actual 8-bit sound cards can be a bit hard to find, but which pins are present on the 16-bit end of the edge connector can be a clue as to whether it will work in an 8-bit slot.
With all these old machines you can use the driver collection from FreeDos as improvements. For ex. UMBPCI will give you fast upper memory blocks for TSRs and drivers without loading EMM386, and the CD-ROM driver can also be replaced. You can have ~626k conventional memory if I remember correctly. Command.com can also be replaced with 4DOS to make an actually useful system, I still have a universal setup somewhere that works with just about everything.
hey I love the videos! Please keep 'em coming. As clunky as they seem - in my experience, CD Caddy-based drives are quite reliable b/c there's no tray loading mechanism to fail. As they age, I've had multiple tray-loading CD-ROM drives have issues with the tray due to broken gears. The caddy-based drives though work great - it's a simpler design. YMMV of course :)
Hey - what driver are you using to power that CDROM? I have a similar IBM 1x drive that keeps getting CDR101 errors (won't read) - Adaptec cards see the drive but I can't get it to read.
I just want to point out that build quality of those Valuepoints is awesome. Notice how the drives turned yellow and the case did not. I have one of these as well (325T/S) and none of the plastics yellowed through 28 years that passed from release date. Even the bezel of the original FDD in my unit is still pearly white.
That's a nice IBM that is! I have an IBM 'Personal Computer 340' Pentium 1 pc I need to sort at some point. Can't remember where I got it from, but it does work! At some point i'd like to recreate the first pc I ever built from scratch, it was a 486 DX2-50 using one of those 'It's ST' Cyrix clones but it may be better to get a proper AMD or Intel CPU - maybe even a DX2-66 as the DX2-50 seemed to be a bit slow on some games etc. Be nice to get the original motherboard I used but I can't remember the make or model, all I remember was it was manufactured in the time when some manufacturers were faking the pipelined burst cache - mine showed 256kb at bootup but it turned out (reading up on it a few years later somewhere) the "Write back" labelled chips were empty (soldered to the board) and the bios was hard coded as no test programme could actually find the cache! May be better that I get one with real cache ram!
(3:35) I'm assuming you already viewed the contents of the HDD with another machine. It would have been nice to know if you saw what was on the drive before you formatted it. Who knows what was lost.
I had used that hard drive for another project so I knew what was on it. The original hard drive that was in it didn’t work but got fixed in the final part of this series. In Part 1 you can briefly see the content of the 400mb drive I used in this video before formatting it :)
I actually have the CD for this multimedia sound blaster kit (we bought one for my parents packard bell 386 setup back in the day), if you want I can make an ISO of it
Oh dang. I used to have an SB Pro II in my 386, and wanted a CD-ROM drive. Bought a Mitsumi 4x IDE but that wouldn't work because the machine didn't have IDE. Was told I'd need an expensive SCSI controller and drive... in the end I never had an optical drive in that machine. How I wish I was more tech savvy at the time, I could just have hooked a Creative/Panasonic drive onto my Soundblaster! I just checked the card and it's identical to yours with the Creative CD-ROM connector... Dangit =)
I also just looked at my SB16 which did have an IDE port... I'm sure there were many ways to get a CD drive in that machine back then that were cheaper than going the SCSI route. Dangit again =)
@@nickwallette6201 I have but those don't contain all the SB Software that comes with the ones shown on RetroSpectors Video and have a different SB Mixer.
@@RetroSpector78 ahh i lost to tell blasphemy is to install Windows NT on a DEC Alpha machine which needs and fits a VMS system downloadable from winworldpc
Does it always make that sound or only in specific situations? I have a SB Vibra 16 that works perfectly fine in DOS games but as soon as I'm running any version of Windows with SB drivers installed, there's a weird, interference-like whining noise in the background every time the sound card is activated. The weird sound continues for a fraction of a second after the sound file has finished playing, then stops. I've tried Win 3.11 with original drivers, WIn 95 and 98 with MS-supplied drivers, always the same result.
@@Ragnar8504 It does it always all the time as soon as the PC has started. Its got to be a hardware issue for sure but I am unable to diagnose it as I have no idea where to start with fixing physical board-level issues.
Am I the only one who almost got a heartattack when the sudden bios-screen came up full screen? Back in the day I had a similar looking machine with dual Pentium Pro´s. And as a first sign (i guess) of a bad CPU power regulator, it started to do random reboots. One second you were doing your stuff, and the next you saw it post with that IBM-logo. I guess I haven´t fully recovered from that.
They’re on Ebay. You just need to know what connector types to look for. The small white kind is the Sound Blaster style. The larger 4-pin plastic plug with the spring clip is the MPC style. The drive end will be either MPC (ATA and late SCSI), or brand-specific for the proprietary and early ATA/SCSI drives.
I always hated when some power supplies has shoddy molex connectors. Even worse are some of those molex splitters, those pins inside of them just move all over the place and are really junky and cheap.
This takes the Pentium 83 MHz overdrive; which gives it a substantial performance boost. Also the IDE bus on these is garbage. A VLB SCSI adaptor combined with the Pentium Overdrive will make this machine “scream”.
Ahhhh, CD Caddies ... that takes me back a few years!
I've still got a few of the caddies lying around in my "junk" collection. Never any of the drives though. By the time I could afford them, trays were already the norm.
As it was games I'd access the most, the pack-in Headstart LX-CD Disc 2 would mostly stay in a caddy in the drive, while an encyclopedia, or the CBS audio sample disc, would occupy our only other caddy (rarely swapping out for other pack-in discs). I would have loved to have had just one more caddy back then. It's sad to see these things become rare-I love caddy drives.
I still remember the days when "Gaming PC" meant a PC with a sound card.
good to see an old pc get some love.
I did an oops back in the day swapping the AT power connectors. Yep, bad things do happen. 😉😉😉
Awesome! I like that you include small hiccups like the broken Molex cable into the videos, gives people more ideas for troubleshooting. Also I might finally tackle my own valuepoint system - even have the same monitor for it. :D (I know I say that about a lot of your PC's)
I love the networking stuff too but I guess I need to set up some extra server for it - the awesome FreeNAS based system a friend built for me won't even connect to a Windows machine without some patching and hotfixing acrobatics to reach the required security level.
Gave up on FreeNAS and custom storage solutions. Just bought a Synology now and it just works :) Do have some nice retro storage solutions that I need to look at at some point.
Back in the old days, a lot of fix because the molex cable not tight, happens quite often on cheap psu... Sometimes i have to bend again the metal part of the molex to make it tight
Memories, memories and memories (all good). Greetings from Karachi, Pakistan.
Finally somebody mentions that you need no soundblaster "drivers" for DOS games...👍
No, but you DO need that 'set BLASTER" variable in the autoexec.bat file, so the games know where to look for the sound card. I never had a sound card until we were already running Windows, so it took me a while to figure that out. Mind you, there were a few games, like Prince of Persia, that could figure it out on their own.
@@BlackEpyon Not necessarily. Most games offered a setup where you can configure or auto detect the soundcard. If they rely on the environment variable alone, then yes...in that case, you have to set it.
@@EgonOlsen71 Results may vary.
Love these upgrades/builds/repairs of those circa systems. Some of my favorite times.
Happy New Year!
Same here 🕹
CDROM caddies were intended to store cds when they aren't being used as well. They wanted you to buy additional caddies.
I wanted to buy additional caddies. I love caddy drives (possibly nostalgia). My first computer was an 8088 Headstart LX-CD, which came with two caddies. I'm not sure if it also came with a Mini CD adapter, or if my uncle provided us with it; always nice to have, just in case.
Caddies makes a lot of sense tbh, you never have to touch CDs and you use them as cartridges. While not the cheaper I consider it a better design
My favorite Interplay network card :D I look forward to the next episode!
My favorite ISA networking card! I'm digging this whole mTCP FTP server setup, will have to try that out.
I understand Commodore used similar CD-ROM drives for the Amiga 500 CD-ROM drive and the CDTV. That leading mechanism reminds me so much of a standard floppy disk drive.
15:31 I have a scratch-built DOS gaming PC with a new-old-stock black AT case (really cool looking with a light-up red LED power switch, MHz display, etc.) I wanted a caddy CD-ROM because that's what I have fond memories of, but it took me forever to find one in black. For a long time I had just a early 2000s era CD/DVD drive. Just didn't look right on a 386/486 era machine. However, by pure chance I was browsing my local electronics surplus store, and I stumbled upon a single speed caddy CD-ROM ... IN BLACK! Unfortunately it didn't power up, but fortunately for me it was just leaky caps. Recapped it, and it worked!
The cool part is that it's a SCSI drive, which was serendipitous because I had a SoundBlaster 16 SCSI sound card installed in my PC. It was like it was meant to be! I bought a pack of multi colored caddies (one of which was red), and man does it look cool! With the red caddy installed, it looks rather sinister with a red line going across the front. It also has a smooth eject motor, so the caddy ejects nicely. It can even be ejected via the Jukebox app without having to press the button.
Neat - what drive is it? I have a few caddy loading drives - NEC, Toshiba, Sony.. all standard issue beige though. :-) Well, the Toshiba was actually made for Compaq, I think, and a little more of a dark gray.
@@nickwallette6201 Sticker on the drive reads: SONY CDU-8012B
My IBM PS/2 ValuePoint still works like a champ. If you need extra IBM memory, let me know. My PS/2 ValuePoint is maxxed out at 64MB. Sadly, IBM didn't offer any other BIOS updates besides the Y2K fixup. But one cannot be bothered by it since it still works. Great video.
Thx for the offer, but I found some IBM 72p simms in my stash that worked well. I’m looking for the l2 cache module as mine came without it.
@@RetroSpector78 I have a PS/2 Valuepoint 433SX/S with one: ps-2.kev009.com/pcpartnerinfo/ctstips/3aa2.htm.
I bought it from an eBay seller in NJ directly for ~$50, he goes by the eBay name of ctsales and runs computertradeexchange.com/ where he has a warehouse full of this stuff. If you go to the contact us, there's an email for the owner/sales and that is who you want to contact.
I have to run do some things, but I'll double check FRU for mine. I came across this seller because he was selling motherboards for Valuepoints on eBay and one of them had the cache chip. I messaged him asking if he would split up the auction and he said he had the chips in stock and we agreed to a price outside of eBay. I've bought from him a few times.
I love these valuepoints because most of them will take a Pentium Overdrive and will fly. I know for sure that at least 433SX/X can run CDROM drives off the IDE controller even though it's not spec'ed anywhere. With the right driver in the config.sys, it will detect. I also managed to find a video memory upgrade on eBay, though I run a 2MB VLB card as it's just a tiny bit faster. I can look up that FRU too.
8:21 You didn't close the caddy lid properly, causing it almost jammed when you tried ejecting the caddy a few seconds later.
Totally missed that (and again during editing :)
@@RetroSpector78 😊
@@RetroSpector78 at 2:45.. like i said to Adrian (@Adrian's Digital Basement).. put some Deoxit d5 (or similar contact cleaner) in the slot's.. they will gets in and out a lot easier.. and clean/protect from oxidation the contacts of the slot and board...
@@Ramdileo_sys Any idea how to get one of these going? I have a 1x IBM drive similar to this (SCSI) and the bus can see it, it registers in software, drivers load, but I can't get it to read any discs. Is it perhaps limited to some kind of format?
@@the_kombinator .. better ask to @RetroSpector78 .. but less see... you have a IBM 1X SCSI CD drive??... did I understood you okay..??
Old CD drive like that one... probably reads CD "Mode 1" only...
More new format like Mode 2 or Mode 2/XA or UDF.. almost certainly NO....
So check in a newer drive .. the "Mode" your CD has been burned.. can be format problem..
but.. first of all.. the drive read anything??... Like Audio CD for example??
Connecting only power (Molex connector) and put in a silver original stamped.. (not burned) CD... should read and play music..
if it doesn't .. and just keep trying to read it..
then the drive does not work..
Remember that our youtubers friends here.. they all borrow Mat's (@Techmoan) time machine to go get working drives :-DD
Usually get a working.. 5 or 10 year old used CD or DVD.. is more difficult than winning the lottery.. so imagine one of around 30 years old..
if you drive do not even read CD Audio... you can try to repair it ...
with the classic stuff... you know..
- clean and lubricate the gears and guide bars that move the laser assembly.. make sure it moves nice and free..
- clean the CD holder at the tip of the spinner motor ... makes sure the disc rotate nice and free.. and that the disk gets grounded firm.. and does not slip..
- clean the the lens leaving it nice and shining...
(unfortunately
the other side of the lens.. cannot be cleaned.. and that's the death of these drives.. it always has been.. dirt gets into that hole under the lens.. and prevents the laser light from passing through correctly)
So you can blow compressed air on the sides of the lens.. hopefully it will remove some dirt from the other side of the lens.. and from the prisms that reflect the laser light .. (if the laser works at all obviously)
Beyond this.. there is little that can be done ..
- make sure that each and every one of the traces inside the ribbons cables has electrical continuity... reinsert them with some contact cleaner to ensure electrical continuity in those ribbon cables ... and also in any other connector that you see.. both inside and outside the drive.. in the Molex connector.. in the SCSI pins conector.. in the jumpers.. all that ensures good electrical conductivity in those rusty old contacts..
- check the chips in the logic board.. that they are not overheating..
usually some of them hitsink against the CD case.. put fresh thermal compound there...
- check the capacitors.. or if there is any obvious broken or overheating component that can be replaced ...
Beyond this.. is even little that can do..
- in the laser assembly there is usually a potentiometer (two on DVDs) to adjust the brightness of the laser.. and force the light pass through the dirty inside of the lens
... you can adjust those potentiometers to increase the laser light a little.. contact cleaner in that potenciometer.. also a good idea...
and up to this point... is where i run out of wisdom... :-\
LOL! I thought someone started hammering something outside when I heard the beat from the game music at the end!
Anyway, always interesting to see these old machines get a new lease on life. I remember when my school got their first PC with a CD-ROM drive, I'm pretty sure it was the exact same model as this one since I remember it had the MPC logo on the front. It was amazing that I could just stick the caddy in and load up an encyclopaedia, and I could just search the index and jump to an entry, rather than having to flick through books. It was just so much easier, especially if I didn't know the exact title of the entry I was looking for!
it feels like CDROM drive should go into upper 5.25" slot...
That's how the Headstart LX-CD desktop computer was laid out-3.5 inch on top, caddy CD-ROM below. Sometimes things did get in the way, and I'd have to move something to access the drive, but that only change with which desk we used. I wish we also had a 5.25 inch drive at that time.
Happy new year!
Same to you !
@@RetroSpector78 same 📼
Hi, will you show us around, what i think is, your new underground retro bunker?
I will ... planning a before and after video :)
I bought that exact MPC upgrade kit back in the day after seeing (and saving for it) for many months in my copy of Sierra On-Line's Interaction Magazine. The Cdrom drive was a 1x (you can check the model # against the doc in your video) :D. It was super reliable and I used the heck outta it until I replaced it with a 6x Teac in the later 90s. The software that comes with it is a lot of fun, there is "Dr Sabito", a voiced psychiatrist and software for a talking parrot too!
Haha ... sounds like fun ! This one came without software unfortunately.
@@RetroSpector78 I think you have it! The software was on floppies. Check your C:\SBPRO\PARROT directory! :) The cdrom that came with the kit was Microsoft Encarta? I think it also came with a copy of MS windows 3.11. Oh and also a midi adaptor, but I hacked mine to provide a 2nd joystick port instead :D
Happy New Year RetroSpector78 and all your viewers
Same to you ! Thx for tuning in !
Happy new year from Argentina 🇦🇷🇧🇪🇧🇪🇧🇪
And the same from Belgium !
@@RetroSpector78 Thanks Dave!!!
I don't like molex connectors, they're such bad design. Sometimes you can feel that the connector is loose in place. That's not good. You may carefully squish the tubular contacts in the plug to make them tighter for better connection.
Yeah, I hate molex connectors with a passion. They are always a pain, literally. They are always either too loose or too tight. The tight ones always hurt my fingers when I try to inplug them. Some cheap molex connectors have really loose pins causing bad connections. Those modern sata power connectors are much more gentle.
7:00 I have 2x SBPros and a Ensonic Soundscape 2000 with this interface. I ditched it for IDE after a couple of years using them in the 90's once the standards stabilized as it was easier to get compatible CDROMs as well as less memory hungry drivers. You could try QEMM for memory management. It was very aggressive and could load almost everything into high memory. It was/is a fascinating tool. However it could cause severe memory lock ups with Ultima 7 and the original Great Naval Battles of the North Atlantic game. I have a bunch of old LAN cards...I guess that is something I could mess around with however CFs/SDs and USB have been my go to usually with these systems.
Happy New Year!!!
Right back at ya !
I'm surprised at how many IBM machines of this era use the exact same internal chassis, although the front plate styling changed quite a bit over the same time.
The days with my Intel 466DX2-50Mhz cpu and VL-Bus. Having different 3.5" boot disks in order to play games. Each disk was used in order to have the right amount of memory in the pc for certain games.
With flaky Molex connectors, I simply bend the pins in with a screwdriver.
Nice video and Happy New Year!
I think it's the cable-pin connection that gave up
Maybe I missed it, but you didn't seem to use the built-in memory configuration utility in 6.22, called Memmaker. It works really well.
Will be on part 2. Video was already 40+ min so decided to split it up.
Yes-Memmaker is demonstrated in *part 3 (finale). ua-cam.com/video/M9gYwilILZM/v-deo.html
You can always swap the power button from the old PSU. That's why they used spade connectors. Just be sure you don't screw up which colour goes where, because that could be spectacular.
Also, like many of the early 16-bit cards, that Sound BLASTER Pro 2 doesn't use the later address or data pins, and can be used in an 8-bit slot if you were mindful of which IRQ and DMA settings you used. Actual 8-bit sound cards can be a bit hard to find, but which pins are present on the 16-bit end of the edge connector can be a clue as to whether it will work in an 8-bit slot.
With all these old machines you can use the driver collection from FreeDos as improvements. For ex. UMBPCI will give you fast upper memory blocks for TSRs and drivers without loading EMM386, and the CD-ROM driver can also be replaced. You can have ~626k conventional memory if I remember correctly. Command.com can also be replaced with 4DOS to make an actually useful system, I still have a universal setup somewhere that works with just about everything.
19:00 thats pretty wild that you can still get on your nas that easily
hey I love the videos! Please keep 'em coming. As clunky as they seem - in my experience, CD Caddy-based drives are quite reliable b/c there's no tray loading mechanism to fail. As they age, I've had multiple tray-loading CD-ROM drives have issues with the tray due to broken gears. The caddy-based drives though work great - it's a simpler design. YMMV of course :)
Hey - what driver are you using to power that CDROM? I have a similar IBM 1x drive that keeps getting CDR101 errors (won't read) - Adaptec cards see the drive but I can't get it to read.
I truly enjoy your videos 👌
Thx a lot ! Nederlands ?
@@RetroSpector78 Jazeker! En u? Nederlands of Vlaming?
I just want to point out that build quality of those Valuepoints is awesome. Notice how the drives turned yellow and the case did not. I have one of these as well (325T/S) and none of the plastics yellowed through 28 years that passed from release date. Even the bezel of the original FDD in my unit is still pearly white.
There is also a MSDOS TCP/IP Disk from Microsoft. I am using this on my A2286 to connect to the NAS.
That's a nice IBM that is! I have an IBM 'Personal Computer 340' Pentium 1 pc I need to sort at some point. Can't remember where I got it from, but it does work! At some point i'd like to recreate the first pc I ever built from scratch, it was a 486 DX2-50 using one of those 'It's ST' Cyrix clones but it may be better to get a proper AMD or Intel CPU - maybe even a DX2-66 as the DX2-50 seemed to be a bit slow on some games etc. Be nice to get the original motherboard I used but I can't remember the make or model, all I remember was it was manufactured in the time when some manufacturers were faking the pipelined burst cache - mine showed 256kb at bootup but it turned out (reading up on it a few years later somewhere) the "Write back" labelled chips were empty (soldered to the board) and the bios was hard coded as no test programme could actually find the cache! May be better that I get one with real cache ram!
You can load drivers with LH and DEVICEHIGH= to free up some conventinal memory and /TESTMEM:OFF speeds up loading HIMEM.SYS
(3:35) I'm assuming you already viewed the contents of the HDD with another machine. It would have been nice to know if you saw what was on the drive before you formatted it. Who knows what was lost.
I had used that hard drive for another project so I knew what was on it. The original hard drive that was in it didn’t work but got fixed in the final part of this series. In Part 1 you can briefly see the content of the 400mb drive I used in this video before formatting it :)
I actually have the CD for this multimedia sound blaster kit (we bought one for my parents packard bell 386 setup back in the day), if you want I can make an ISO of it
Awesome 😎
Oh dang. I used to have an SB Pro II in my 386, and wanted a CD-ROM drive. Bought a Mitsumi 4x IDE but that wouldn't work because the machine didn't have IDE. Was told I'd need an expensive SCSI controller and drive... in the end I never had an optical drive in that machine. How I wish I was more tech savvy at the time, I could just have hooked a Creative/Panasonic drive onto my Soundblaster!
I just checked the card and it's identical to yours with the Creative CD-ROM connector... Dangit =)
I also just looked at my SB16 which did have an IDE port... I'm sure there were many ways to get a CD drive in that machine back then that were cheaper than going the SCSI route. Dangit again =)
My old PC for many years had issues with BSOD.... The problem was with a molex>SATA HDD converter. That was infuriating to try and track down.
that FM synth sound bring a lot of nostalgic feeling... roland maybe superior, but fm is the way to go for commoner like me
nice pc 👍
It sure is.
Where can I download those exact soundblaster installation disks?
Try Vogons drivers.
@@nickwallette6201 I have but those don't contain all the SB Software that comes with the ones shown on RetroSpectors Video and have a different SB Mixer.
Nice video. (They are called CD caddies by the way)
I think that term has been used in the last episode.
@@Edman_79 Ahhh.... I just fell over this video, and stayed for the build process. I love that stuff.
upgrading memory... Installing Slackware Linux???
Blasphemy :) This IBM really needs os/2 :)
@@RetroSpector78 agreed 🌎
@@RetroSpector78 hahaha i hope you had good luck with cd-rom drivers for this panasonic drive. I suggest you to use 8 mb of ram to install warp 3.0
@@RetroSpector78 ahh i lost to tell blasphemy is to install Windows NT on a DEC Alpha machine which needs and fits a VMS system downloadable from winworldpc
You voided the warranty of the HD.
I'm stuck between 3 eras. Is The 1995-99 better? How about 2001-2009? And of Course 2010-2016
Very beauty
I’ve got a SB Pro 2 which makes a squealing sound as well as the normal sounds it should make. Do you reckon you could fix it ? Great video as always.
Does it always make that sound or only in specific situations?
I have a SB Vibra 16 that works perfectly fine in DOS games but as soon as I'm running any version of Windows with SB drivers installed, there's a weird, interference-like whining noise in the background every time the sound card is activated. The weird sound continues for a fraction of a second after the sound file has finished playing, then stops. I've tried Win 3.11 with original drivers, WIn 95 and 98 with MS-supplied drivers, always the same result.
@@Ragnar8504 It does it always all the time as soon as the PC has started. Its got to be a hardware issue for sure but I am unable to diagnose it as I have no idea where to start with fixing physical board-level issues.
Awesome
Am I the only one who almost got a heartattack when the sudden bios-screen came up full screen? Back in the day I had a similar looking machine with dual Pentium Pro´s. And as a first sign (i guess) of a bad CPU power regulator, it started to do random reboots. One second you were doing your stuff, and the next you saw it post with that IBM-logo. I guess I haven´t fully recovered from that.
where can you find such audio cable?
They’re on Ebay. You just need to know what connector types to look for. The small white kind is the Sound Blaster style. The larger 4-pin plastic plug with the spring clip is the MPC style. The drive end will be either MPC (ATA and late SCSI), or brand-specific for the proprietary and early ATA/SCSI drives.
shipping yes!
If you use DEVICEHIGH= it will load into high memory and free up conventional memory
Ooooo, another modern parts rebuild potentially.. ope
looks like a budget version of the ibm ps/2 (kinda)
Because it is exactly what the PS/Valuepoints are.
I always hated when some power supplies has shoddy molex connectors. Even worse are some of those molex splitters, those pins inside of them just move all over the place and are really junky and cheap.
that's a Caddy Loading CDROM Not Tray Loading, Apple used Caddy Load Drives in the early days of CDROM
"Making date: 6/10/96" @ 12:28 ... no better way to say it really.
lol i tought by thumbnail you're installing itunes
2021!
This takes the Pentium 83 MHz overdrive; which gives it a substantial performance boost. Also the IDE bus on these is garbage. A VLB SCSI adaptor combined with the Pentium Overdrive will make this machine “scream”.
Wouldn’t mind receiving a little upgrade package like that :) but these pentium overdrives are pretty rare and expensive.
@@RetroSpector78 there are two on eBay right now & they are about $140.00 each.
🙂
Motherboards with riser cards.... Shudder.
Splitter. Not riser.
Hi to all from RU
I wanted to get an IBM 486 for myself ... 😭
IBM ValuePoint. What a joke. I had to look at wiki because I also remembered Aptiva and the POS PS/1 computer. What junk.
I just wish he would say "The" instead of "Da"
What’s the point? Value?!?! 🤪