DIY'ing my Dream Vintage Test Bench
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- Опубліковано 18 бер 2021
- After a few weeks of work I've built the perfect test bench for me to test vintage PC gear!
There was a LOT of trial and error in constructing this. There aren't many test bench cases out there that give you access to the parts while also providing bays for putting 5.25" and 3.5" drives. As far as I could find, it's actually none. So I set out to build one myself. Starting with an existing basic open frame kit gave me all the specially parts for computer components. I used this as a base to expand with additional parts to fit the goal I had. I decided to just order parts and figure it out as I go, it worked well as a process, but it did take a long time.
A closer look at the new AT PSU: • A New AT PSU Disassemb...
If you want to build one of these and support the channel you can use the following links to get all parts needed to from either ebay or Amazon:
Amazon Parts:
- Base ATX Frame Kit: amzn.to/2P669Om
- 300mm Rails (2x order, 4x total parts): amzn.to/3vD6Lfa
- Extra L Brackets: amzn.to/30Xg2AM
- 5.25" Mounting Bay: amzn.to/3luatmB (Out of stock as of creating list)
- 3.5" Mounting Brackets: amzn.to/3vBZQ5T
- M3 Bolt Kit: amzn.to/3s2Ntxw
- AT PSU: amzn.to/2QbdYmo
- Paddle Switch: Not available on Amazon
or
- ATX to AT Adapter: amzn.to/319vOZv
Ebay Parts:
- Base ATX Frame Kit: ebay.us/RPR9kc
- 300mm Rails: ebay.us/vvNZoZ
- Extra L Brackets: ebay.us/FftwsD
- 5.25" Mounting Bay: ebay.us/Vkw9nW
- 3.5" Mounting Brackets: ebay.us/2EUFPI
- M3 Bolt Kit: ebay.us/qLz7dp
- AT PSU: ebay.us/YBAwj9
- Paddle Switch: ebay.us/Ps3bxd
or
- ATX to AT Adapter: ebay.us/7J4q2h
Notes:
I only used 10x of the L brackets, that's cutting it too close for my liking and I recommend ordering 20x in case some are bad.
The large paddle switch is likely going to become unavailble, and mounting the original AT push button switch was really difficult to figure out. The ATX kit comes with a way mount a push button power switch, using that with an ATX PSU adapted to AT. So a more sure option for a power switch is to just use that.
The Phanteks 5.25" bay is an option for a modular case. The case seems to be still in production as of this publication, but the bay is out of stock. I have no other strong alternatives. It is meant to mount with standard M3 PC case bolts and is threaded. Mounting it was tricky, I used some motherboard standoff brackets from the frame kit and used M3 bolts to mount it up against the frame, it's not elegant.
Playlists of more stuff like this:
Computers: • Computers
Other Links
UA-cam: / akbkuku
Github: github.com/AkBKukU
Thingiverse: www.thingiverse.com/AkBKukU
Patreon: / akbkuku
Discord: / discord - Наука та технологія
If you're wanting to know why my hands glow when they are over the monitor, here's a full explanation of why: ua-cam.com/video/CqOoY-o-j-Q/v-deo.html
At the beginning I thought this was going to be a massive ASMR-esque build video.
And you were right
Same... but then he started talking
Brian the Electrician! You should do some sort of collaboration with him...
One of the best characters in the Linus Cinematic Universe.
This would be a lot of fun, but we are kinda a long ways away from each other, and then the current global situation :/.
This was the first comment I saw when opening the video though and I def got a kick out of it
@@lttbriantheelectrician I can imagine how annoying it would be, and I know it wouldn't be feasible for a while.
But it would definitely be a lot of fun for sure.
true story: my first PC was a frankenputer built from various garage sale parts. in its final form, as a 486DX4/100, its motherboard had this big mystery jumper block and i don't think i ever found a manual to fully figure out what everything did. but i did find out that one or two of those jumpers would reveal another mystery.. a second BIOS interface! it somehow had both Phoenix and AMI BIOS on it. the AMI BIOS had that interface, which was a pretty common style for it in the mid-90s.
that computer lasted me till 2003, and i guess the CMOS battery had died by then.. with it went the second BIOS, apparently.
That is the beautiful thing about this type of test bench. They are INFINITELY versatile.
*EDIT:* If you take detailed photos and measurements of that 3.5" drive cage, people can go to sheet metal shops and possibly get them custom fabricated
This is a great idea, I did this with sound card brackets and they were not expensive.
Sense the whole mining with hard drives became a thing you can now get 3.5" hdd holders made from aluminum or steel from places like aliexpress and the likes that would more then likely be adapted to work with those frames. Search holder not bays on the sites tho they may even be on ebay by now as well.
I'm not sure you were thinking 4th dimensionally. 3.5" drive cages are easily available today, just search Amazon for "Drive cage" and the second result is a 5 bay 3.5 drive cage with the plastic hot swap rails.
In an earlier version of this video I did actually mention those. I don't think rails are a good fit for a test bench since they add more fiddly stuff for you to deal with when swapping parts.
@@TechTangentsyou should see that BIOS with mouse connected... it's even better ;-).. is the first BIOS with a full GUI in 1996...
Thumbs up for the switch, it's so satisfying ...
38:44
get a 72x trueX drive, and is much quieter too, finding one is the challenge
Good job
That build was all sorts of satisfying, but when you plugged that flash adapter straight into the motherboard like an m.2 drive, wow. I love how anachronistic the whole thing is, kinda a best bits of each time period.
Right!!!
A 3.5" drive cage would be super easy to design/3D print.
I used have two perforated plates of metal (rigidity through thickness _not_ embossing!) out of a gorgeous XT clamshell case originally designed for two invertable banks of half-height 5-¼″ drives, on rails, which surprisingly snapped together to hold 3-½″ drives.
I have thought about slicing up some adjustable shelving to make something similar.
The drive bays were luckily stored elsewhere with the hard-drives while I was trying to copy the parts hoping to fit more drives into my fileserver, when the chassis was stolen. Gave most of the remaining pieces someone who was building a custom case a few years later.
(edits: ugh. grammar flubs from redactions. should have just retyped.)
Yeah, but it wouldn't look or feel as good, and he was trying to avoid 3D printed parts as much as possible.
Or you can sack from a old desktop chassis and copy on a metal sheet
that switch mount was so satisfying
I remember a switch like that. I did a lot of programming on my Dad's very early genuine IMB PC in the early 80's. Goodtimes!
Also, you could have mounted the SD card reader just above the 5.25" drives over on the right of the MB area.
So, some quick tips for VLB since you say you've never messed with it before.
First and foremost, for maximum stability don't exceed 33MHz. Your VLB speed is tied to your FSB since VLB as a standard basically just maps the card into the 486's memory space, this is why it didn't get wide adoption outside the 486 era, it was just too hacky and cludgey and dependent on that memory map not changing. Some very early socket 4 Pentium systems that came with VLB did so using a PCI translation chip. Why they didn't just use PCI to begin with is beyond me. Especially don't exceed 33MHz if you've got your super-IO on VLB -- the IDE bus is normally all that's actually connected to the VLB slot, the rest is ISA. You can tweak the wait-states, I've found that 33MHz 0WS is actually quicker than 40MHz 1WS.
The more you have on the bus, the more potential for instability there is. One rule of thumb I read and generally found to be true was that at 40 and especially 50MHz, you're limited to one device, at 33 you can safely run two, and at 25 you're free and clear to use every slot available. The reason I was given was that the 486 memory bus was not intended to drive devices directly, and at higher speeds the signal driving those cards attenuates dramatically. Nevermind the fact that outside of super-IO and video, VLB cards are quite rare -- I know some SCSI and network cards exist for it, but they're few, far between, and expensive when you do manage to find them. Not to mention, they're generally not worth it, the network cards tend to not perform significantly better than their ISA counterparts and the SCSI cards are better suited to a more stable bus to begin with.
You'll get conflicting answers as to the best video card on the bus. According to DOS benchmarks, the ARK1000PV is apparently king, the ET4000/W32p is not far off the pace, and the higher end S3 cards and ATi Mach series hang somewhere in there. In Windows you're generally going to want a S3 GUI accelerator or a Mach series. A card I was very surprised by was my TGUI9440AGi -- it's competitive in just about everything, though my Trio64V+ is a bit faster. I replaced it not because it was too slow, but because of image quality concerns -- it was very mean to my LCD monitors, and didn't look particularly great even on my CRT.
I share your fascination with toggle-style switches for power -- I modified an ATX case for my 486 to have one, and since I don't need -5v for anything, I didn't mind also using an ATX power supply with an ATX to AT adapter. I drilled my own hole for my keyboard port in a blank IO shield.
It's very odd to see that WinBIOS on such a late board. It was quite popular in the late 486/early Pentium days, but fell out of style very quickly after Windows 95 came out. To see a board boasting a BIOS release date from 1997 showing the WinBIOS interface is interesting indeed.
I also have built a test bench system using 2020... but I did mine with power supply in the back and card cage and all drives in front. It made testing, plugging and unplugging cables much easier. No need to reach around all the time.
This is inspuring me on making my own pc case to house modern stuff with drives and floppy disks
I used to have a AT system tray screwed into the bottom of a drawer on my workbench. The PSU was attached through the back of the drawer and the upgrade slots faced the front, being the only part you could see with the drawer closed. I even went so far as to line the inside of the drawer and the underside of the table top with aluminum foil grounded to the case.
This may be my favourite of all your videos! Your unbridled joy at getting that paddle switch installed! Plus, it's a really slick build!
If you have future trouble with SD-to-IDE adapters that don't play nice, there's a little utility floating around called WHATIDE that you can find. It gives you the correct information (Cylinders, Heads, Sectors, etc.) to input in the BIOS to make the drives work correctly.
This reminded me of the Meccano I played with as a kid. I never built the bundled designs, just rolled my own!
Nothing compares to the clunk of turning on the old PC/XT or AT desktop cases, those were very satisfying.
Great Video, Came back to watch it again
I tried a 486 mobo with ""exactly"" the same amibios interface.. Watch out those amibios might fight with hdd formatted and used in other machines and dos will detect missing/corrupted sector while actually there isn't any
I've got a 486 dx4 with the same bios. The hdd issues I've experienced were related to the onboard IDE not being able to see larger drives (>500mb). I managed to get a larger drive working with OnTrack hdd manager, but to this day it still refuses the read any CF cards..
@@ms-dosman7722 its almost like they produced this type of BIOS for many years and some are newer and have better support for modern devices than others..
Some I remember back in the day had that gawdy pastel psudo-GUI, but most that I remember were ASCII based, even in the modern day. But hard drive limitations were pretty common. 386/486 IDE BIOS often wouldn't recognize higher than 510 MB, and Pentium BIOS' might not recognize more than 2.5GB, etc. And if you were using an MFM controller, or otherwise had some sort of custom drive geometry set, then you'd only be able to get the hard drive to read properly in the machine or controller card it was formatted in.
I’ve got a couple boards with the Win BIOS, but I don’t remember seeing much of AMI after the 486 era. The OEMs seem to prefer Phoenix, and nearly all of the generic motherboards I’ve owned since then were all Award.
I was enjoying the ASMR at the beginning SO MUCH 😩
That's a good idea for testing motherboards and whatnot before tossing them in a case.
You’ve made me realize how much I want there to be an ASMR retro tech channel.
Your test bench came out amazing. I made one completely out of acrylic from scratch, of course it's no where near as sturdy and resourceful as yours. I might look into making another one with the aluminum rails in the future. Awesome test bench and video! I have the same bios in my 486 Rust Bucket, it is very cool.
You can design sheetmetal parts in fusion and use sendcutsend. They will lasercut and bend whatever you want for relatively cheap. That way you can have whatever brackets you want. They will also powdercoat it black.
I love your enthusiasm for this project, 100% agree with that switch.
Having a sandbox system like this is really handy to have.
It really made my day to see you so happy about your new awesome testing-bench, soooo thanks so much for sharing it with us 🖖
Love your videos Shelby. I always learn so so much. and reminisce of what I once had around my house when I was young. Thank you sir.
Love it, these PS2 like power switches are the best.
That is a sweet test bench....well planned out and well executed.......nice work!
I'm super excited to see you test tons of stuff on this test bench!
what an awesome build. i am jealous! I foresee that test bench getting a TON of use
That is indeed one hell of a BIOS. I've seen modern PC's still using text-based stuff, but here's a vintage with full blown GUI!
You had fun making this.
I had the excact Bios in my first 486. its was amazing.
Very cool! Loved that CF adapter, wow!! And WinBIOS is AWESOME!
That was awesome! And quite pertinent to what I'm thinking about doing, actually. Gave me tons of ideas :)
Congratulations for reaching 100K Subs
That's a pretty cool frame! I have a few of those 3.5 inch drive mounts. I have a few old computer cases still and I usually save the metal cages just in case I might need them for something. I also have all the fans and heat sinks out of all the computers I have disassembled.
Had to buy those paddle switches!
T-slot aluminum asmr.
Yes.
I did something very similar with mine. I like what you've done with the drives. Too bad those Mounting Bays are not available. All very slick.
Nice build, i love that chunky switch u found
That is a great test bench build!
Great setup! I bought something like this for my ATX crap and its super useful for throwing a board down, quickly throwing four screws in to secure it in case I bump it, and run it through MemTest+ out in the garage for a whole day to test for stability before I build a whole machine. Or throw something together so I can test a bunch of video cards, hard disks and optical drives in a row. Now to rig up something that's AT friendly!
Of course you can still get new drive cages. Even in black. Many modern cases have removeable drive cages for HDDs.
Love the BIOS. Actually had one of those back in the day. But I don't think my mouse pointer had a wiggling tail.
Nice build . Just a cover and would be a really competent desktop.even like this is really useful.
I spotted the bent paper clip & pin appear during the windy install.
congrats on 100K, awesome channel!
That power switch is pure retro pr0n!! Looks very similar to the units IBM used on the PC XT and AT computers.
You could notch out the top-front corners of your 3.5 cage to fit around the cross-bar.... Then your drives will mount securely and be flush with your 5.25 drives/cage. (:
Always Awesome to you have uploaded a new video!
Ha! Funny thing, I was working on my PI test setup few days ago, but had no luck with booting from CF card for some unknown reason. Will have to revisit, happened to me few times before.
Super awesome build! I love the creativity with getting everything to fit. A shame they don't have 3.5 inch drive brackets around anymore, seems easy enough to make with a small press break and some sheet steel, I'll have to look into that.
You could make a boot disk that will automatically clone an image off of the CDROM, or make a menu of lots of images., if you don't want to have to get your main computer involved to reimage the test bench.
Dude, heck yeah. Very nice.
There are tons of 5.25 to 3.5 brackets you could use.
I've always wanted to make a computer that could provide both legacy and modern ports.
I would have put a third rail to mount the motherboard, just to give it the support it needs when plugging cards in...
Awesome video! 👍🏻
You might want to add an extra support at the front of the motherboard. Otherwise the first time you try and press in a VLB card you'll snap your motherboard.
Very Long Bus
@@ryaxnb2
Video Local Bus, for Video, Multi function/IDE, networking cards.
@@joeturner7959 often called very long bus as a derisive term because it is poorly designed and physically awkward due to it's length
That switch is quite nice
You mentioned that one board onnly have one 8 bit slot. The 16 bit / VLB Slots will work as 16, VLB, and 8 bit slots as well :)
CPUs before P2/K7 era do not need thermal paste. Sure, it won't hurt but isn't really necessary. When trying stuff like that, i usually omit it.
Ahhh I see you finally learned the old "buy parts from Phanteks cases trick". My case has stackable hard drive bays from Phanteks.
For a test bench I would rotate the motherboard 90 or 180 degrees to avoid having to fiddle with cables blindly at the back of the rig when swapping graphics cards and whatnot.
The unpacking part was really nice. The lack of narration gives it an interesting feel.
Nice touch. :-) (But a bit too much noise reduction.)
That's a cool shot at 3:00
Nice work. :)
only thing I would add would be a hot swap 3.5 bay just to test old drives i keep finding, otherwise, that is one gorgeous setup!!!!
for a more readily available 3 inch bay solution, you could just get another one of the 5.25 bays, and insert an adapter that converts 5.25 bays into 3.5 bays
Your best build Great job and fun sources?
I had a couple of motherboards that used a graphical bios similar to these and absolutely hated them. I was so glad when a bios update reverted back to the standard bios layout.
Looks like a great setup! I agree on the power switch too haha definitely worth the effort and cost for such a solid thunk. Glad to see your getting some use out of that board now too and good to know I set the jumpers correctly 😂 I did set it up and test it before I gave it to you 😁
And yes the WinBIOS is awesome haha
Thanks again for it! I've already been getting a ton of use out of it now it's in the test bench!
I hope I wasn't overboard with checking the jumpers. I just have PTSD for those after spending a year off and on trouble shooting the Tiny Pentium I build that had the wrong voltage settings that caused sporadic frequency issues and instability. I definitely got some grey hairs from that system.
I'd never encountered it before somehow! So far I actually like using it to configure stuff.
@@TechTangents haha for sure and no not overboard. It's always a good thing to verify! I just got a chuckle out of the "they were set correctly" part 😂 Configuring the 486 board will be similar, only real change may be jumpers for cpu type but those really are just setting bus speed, multiplier and voltage. (most Cyrix chips and amd dx2/dx4s are 3.3v, whereas intel chips are 5v)
I love how that whole bench is aluminum though, seems quite sturdy. Much more so than most I've seen.
I have lots of socket 7 boards many of which are dual voltage for the mmx CPUs, if you want to do a full build I can send another your way and then you could still have one for your test bench. I even have a few 233 mmxs now.
For the 3.5 inch drive bay you could measure it, including the hole locations and sizes, and make a template that a person could cut from thin aluminum and bend a new one, or bend you one that lines up with the slots in the 20/20 better.
Those heatsinks were a nightmare to get on back in the day and I didn't much enjoy installing old windows compared to how easy it is to get an OS on a system now.
Okay, this one is definitely something different 👍
I've been looking for something like this for years! I even started designing my own modular 3D printable version, but gave up because ADHD then Fuchsia 360 license changes. But that would've been way more flimsy than 2020 extrusion.
Anys ways. Open frame test bench setups were like $200 Aussie dollary doos, usually plus shipping from overseas, but I guess it's been a while since I last looked. I used 2020 extrusions to build a stand for my old 3D printer a few years ago and that was pretty expensive, so it's clearly come down in price! Looking at the Australian electronic bay website I can see there's at least a vendors selling it from China for under $150 AUD including shipping, which is a totally reasonable price for something so customisable.
I know what I'll be buying myself for my birthday in a couple of months time!
Also, that BIOS wasn't super unique; my old AMD 586 motherboard had it, and I saw it on a bunch of machines that came through the computer store that I worked at when I was in high school during the late 90s.
That's a cool BIOS :)
I had a Pentium 133 with that graphical BIOS in the mid 90s. I was disappointed when they didn't catch on.
Myself, I'd have flipped the "L" brackets the other way, so the paddle is recessed. Not too much of an issue while it's on the bench, but when it's not in use, and stuffed in a corner for storage, I'd hate to see the paddle switch get damaged by something else bumping it.
I've still got one of those original paddle switches kicking around, with it's original black ABS recessed mount from the XT power supply I took it from (really wishing I hadn't tossed the rest of the thing) all those years ago.
In the day the 2000s is push buttons were really annoying because some cases had like oval buttons that popped over the switch mechanism and of course they would jam up....
cut notches in the top of the 3.5 bay to go around the mounting bar to sit flush in the front!!!
Such a helpful man.....
This is fantastic !
There is one thing missing from your build though I think : it's missing a PC speaker !
How are you going to debug old hardware without one ? ^^
There are really tiny ones that just hang off of the motherboard that I'll use. Since it's not really for gaming it's not all that helpful to have a big one that will get in the way.
Also: a turbo button.
You are the best !
*ASMR computer building sounds*
Nice
You have just reminded how I have no idea how to format and get Win98 running any more
Always figured looking at those put together benches you'd need 2 of everything to make something work in horizontal config nice build tho.
If you cut notches to clear the top front cross bar on the top front of the 3.5" bay, going from the front back as far as the front mounting tab, you could have the 3.5" drive flush with the 5.25" drives and still use the proper mounting holes. Jus' sayin'.
I read that 3 times. Still no clue what it means 😄
Phanteks has a 3.5" hard drive cage that should work. PH-HDDKT_03 is the model number and available from Newegg.
Another option is to use another 5 1/4" bracket, and install 3 1/2" to 5 1/4" conversion bays like Star tech's BRACKETFDBK which can also be had at Newegg.
like this project very much, great job! Is it SC-55 on top of MT-32?
I wish someone would make a new board every year that is specifically for using as a bridge between legacy and modern hardware. Like it has usb4/tb4 hdmi, dp, pcie, nvme, ddr4, but also ddr3 for platforms that also support ddr3 sodimm, and also has support for things like FireWire, serial, scsi, pata, isa, floppy, pci, agp, etc. basically not meant at all to be used as a main computer (unless you’re weird like me) but to be used like a real test bench. You wouldn’t have to have a bunch of dongles and adapter cards to troubleshoot legacy hardware, and you wouldn’t be stuck using a slower machine when working.
Too few people would buy that to make it economically viable to produce
Cool
29:09 - i see what you did there ;) haha