Time to check out these HP Vectra systems!
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- Опубліковано 11 лип 2024
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You have my eternal gratitude!
Time to give these HP Vectra systems the attention they deserve! The Vectra was the first line of IBM compatible systems from HP. This video features three such systems: Two from the Franklin eWaste haul, and one that's been in my personal collection for over 5 years!
0:00 Intro
System 1: HP Vectra VL Pentium II
0:28 System 1 Tour
1:15 S1 Disassembly and inspection
6:43 S1 Repair and refresh
9:38 S1 Testing
13:09 S1 Drive testing
15:15 Clean-up, re-assembly and verdict
System 2: HP Vectra VL Series 4
17:08 System 2 Tour
18:28 S2 Disassembly and inspection
22:19 S2 Repair and refresh
25:48 S2 Testing
30:37 S2 Cleanup and verdict
System 3: Hp Vectra VA Pentium Pro
31:05 System 3 Tour
31:58 S3 Tour of internals
34:46 S3 Refresh, testing and verdict
38:17 Outro
"Incontinent printer" 😂 my neighbors came over to see if I was OK.
There's no mistaking the sound of those Quantum Fireball's. I worked in a local computer store in the mid 90's where I'd assemble new 'made-to-order' PC's and the sound of those Quantum's are permanently etched in my brain.
Same here
I should have one working fireball somewhere.. at least it was when I last time used it years ago :D
Been watching these videos while I recover from a head injury I received the other day, gotta say, I love these videos, they are a joy to watch and I got hooked after the 2nd video I’ve watched from this channel, keep up the great work!
Thanks! I wish you a speedy recovery!
oh the start up sound always palys when you go to "About Word" that happened to me has well 😅
The Yellow 3 wire cable in the first Machine is a WOL or Wake Up On LAN connector. It would require a compatible NIC to connect to to allow the PC to be turned on my network signals.
Popped in to say exactly this and add that Wake-On-LAN felt like living in the future back then.
Didn't know the Pentium Pro looked any different to the standard version, what a thing of beauty!
It's a thing of beauty in so many ways, looks and performs amazingly they fly under Linux, and some machines could have dual P-Pro's. It's too bad the scrappers go after them all.
You know, Mike, these processors must have been beasts to use back in the day. Imagine having that kind of Pentium Pro power to use on a daily basis!
A new MikeTech AND LGR video in the same hour?! Lfg...
I have 9 HP Vectra VL420 Win98, they had a hard life in terms of work, many of them worked in precarious conditions full of rust because of the high humidity where they were installed. I already repaired two of them and they work, but they are waiting to be assembled in a setup at home, the rest of the VL420 will only be used to replace parts, but I will not discard the PC boxes, you can make a sleeper with them empty boxes.
The "Mri-1071.ica" is actually a Citrix shortcut that can be used to launch a Citrix session. ICA stands for Independent Computing Architecture and is a proprietary Citrix protocol for remote computing.
I always loved the Vectra line. You could tell HP put a lot of quality into those machines, especially the earlier models.
Pure comfort zone viewing, perfectly shot, edited and narrated. Love this channel. 😁 Why are these desktop systems so appealing...
I was suggested your channel last week and have now binge-watched nearly every video. You’re one of my new favorite channels!
Thanks!
I've never owned a Pentium Pro system.. what a gem to have found at a thrift shop!! So nice!!!
My parents bought a HP Vectra VL Pentium II in 1997, it was so awesome, it was Sweden's attempt to make the general population more used to computers, you could get them at a cheaper price, we paid 2000 usd (current) for a complete setup with speakers and printer.
I have a Vectra VL series 4 as well but mine is a 5/133 that I got from my sister. It was kitted out pretty much exactly as the one you showed in the video with that sound slider as well. Only thing I did to it was upgrade the HDD to a better unit and add a CT1920 Goldfinch AWE expansion card as that sound card that comes with the machine already has the Goldfinch header. Quite the nice little machine.... awesome video as always.
Hello MikeTech. Great video yet again. Keep up the good work
My first computer was a Vectra VLi! It had a Slot 1 500 MHz Pentium III, 384 MB PC100 RAM, and a 20 GB Maxtor HDD running Windows 98. …In 2003. I had to finish assembling it and install Windows myself (with some help from Dad, as I was 9 at the time).
"Lets see what we got on here... CITRIX!?!?!?!" lol i love you
Yay, Friday lunchtime viewing!
I've been binge watching a bunch of your videos. I really enjoy them. I'm surprised you don't run into more machines with the connectors hot-glued in place. Late 90's, early 2000's I saw a ton of workstations with hot glue everywhere.
Ahhhh, the HP Vectra. I have fond memories of these! About 22 years ago, I worked for BT in the IT department of one of their offices and we had a batch of 50 Vectra P3 733 desktops. I think they were DL models. Out of them, 49 suffered hard drive failure within the first week of their lives. Only 1 escaped this mass death of drives. They were all Seagates and back then, from memory, Seagates weren’t the best of drives. The chap that had the sole survivor told me every week how grateful he was that it was me who had prepped his system and it was still going even when I left.
PS - love the videos, all the stuff you fix up is exactly the vintage of what I grew up with and ended up working on / supporting in my IT career. So many great memories and recognising things I had when I was younger and well into buying / upgrading PCs. Please, keep up the fantastic video work. It's so nice to watch someone who clearly enjoys this gear.
The sound of that fireball is just great. I had an HP back then, and I think I still have the hard disk somewhere. I'll have to look around for that. I had forgotten how nice these sound.
Always enjoy seeing a new video from you in my feed. 😊
yay more MikeTech !
I wish I could say the Vectras bring back fond memories but astonishingly, my workplace still uses them! Happily we have 3 spares and a plan to phase them out within a year. None of them have intact plastic tabs btw.
Intel Pentium Pro CPU's were god beasts back in their day... I believe they were the first Intel CPU's capable of running SMP as well.
I believe the original Pentium, using socket 4, was the first capable of 2-way SMP. That is /true/ SMP. Intel's MultiProcessor Specification (MPS) came out in 1994, though. After the original Pentium and before the Pentium Pro.
Loved those machines, they have character!
That constant drumroll gave me flashbacks of my Commodore 64 and 1541 when it loaded commercial games.
NIce video again, keep up.😀
Another Friday, another smile. Keep up the work Mike! This time, I’m showing my lil brother.
My lil brother wasn’t interested but my dad was
Thanks! I'm glad your dad liked it!
20:41 An actual HARDWARE modem. Haven't seen one of those in a minute, loved those things. Rock steady connections, reliable, no drivers or special software to run it, and you set COM and IRQ manually. You could boot that machine to DOS from floppy and run that modem from the command line.
Can't do that with no stupid WinModem.
Great videos. We had Vectras in school and they are my all time favorite machines!
All right! Review of the channel:
PROs: All right! Lots of interesting stuff!
All right! Excellent repair skills!
All right! Perfect lighting!
All right! Brilliant editing!
CONs: All right! None. I've watched almost all of your videos. All right! The first ones were very good, and you are constantly improving! Well done! All right!
All right! Keep up the good work! All right!
I feel like this is going to become a drinking game. Might need to start releasing on Saturday nights...
@@miketech1024 It's all in jest. A really great channel, filled to the brim with excellent content. And your editing should be shown to all the technical channels. Really, congrats!
Wow! A new video for a good friday eneving! =) Good job! It's the best serial for a tired admin. =)
Good video Mike, I always pickup little things watching your videos - keep up the awesome work! 👌
Great channel! Just subscribed and watching all previous videos.
Awesome! I love pentium pros. Always wanted a Vectra pentium pro.
Love the HP Vectra line of computers myself never had the flat style desktop computers though instead had one of the mid towers the neat thing about them was the fact it was upside down on the face plate so the power button was towards the bottom of the front instead of the top or the middle. Anyhow another great video thanks again for helping to bring forth that old memory.
That Pentium Pro system is a thing of beauty. Since the Pentium Pro introduced CISC-RISC translation, speculative out-of-order execution, and relatively long pipelines without optimization for 16-bit or mixed 16/32-bit instructions, some software runs significantly slower on a Pentium Pro than a Pentium at the same clock speed. DOS games and underlying components of the Windows 9x OS are particularly affected. There is also a problem affecting video writes that requires some workarounds to mitigate. Without them, writing to video memory can be as little as 1/10th the speed compared to a Pentium. Notably, this can affect Quake and was much discussed back in the day. The Pentium II introduced significant optimizations for 16-bit x86 instructions and brought performance with them much closer to parity with the Pentium at the same clock. As a result, my preference is to use Pentium Pro systems with a fully 32-bit OS, like Windows NT 4.0 for period-correctness, Windows 2000, Linux, or BSD for more modern purposes. OS/2 is probably a fun option too.
10:50 Tennessee Titans business PC lmfao
another great video keep up the good work
Man that floppy drive on your 3rd PC did sound amazing!
Woah, I actually owned that first Vectra nearly 15 years ago. A friend's parents gave it to me, and I always remember it living in my friend's bedroom and had some educational games on it. When I got my first computer desk in my room, this was on my first setup. It ran Windows ME, which crashed constantly, so I put 2000 on it and got a little use out of it. I got rid of the PC years ago, but would LOVE to own one again. Great video as always :)
I remember my family's first computer had a 12gig hard drive and that was huge with 256k ram!! Lol that when we upgraded it to win 98 years later....we upgraded to 512k ram! We originally payed $3,000 for the full system in 95.
I have one of those Vectra Vl my self, it`s yelow as hell but works like new, i use it for old games paired with Woodo 3 PCI, great machine.
You show interesting machines. Greetings from Poland . Pokazujesz ciekawe maszynki . Pozdrawiam z Polski .👍👋
i actually have that Same Vectra VL (1st system), and found it's System Restore CD, since comments cant post links easily, look on the Wayback Machine's Software Archive "HP Verctra VL Series 8 Recovery Disc" restores it to a somewhat barebone "Stock+" plus state over a standard 9x install, but you CAN install a 2nd HDD at the cost of the one PCI thats above that drive bay.
Love that Vectra VA with the Pentium Pro. I had one of those at work many years ago, it replaced a Pentium 75 Mhz.
I miss that Vectra.
I used to have the master key for these vectras with the crazy black locks. the master had pins that went in some of the holes.
32:44 Love this part! Hard to find now without bent pins.
The second one with large PSU, it has variable speed on the fan, and it speeds up and down based on the current consumption, which is really, probably on the 3.3V, which is actually pretty clever to anticipate the heat removal demand. A bit ackward supply indeed.
Just found your channel. You give me some serious Steve1989 vibes but with computers instead of MRE's. Good stuff!
S1: *drum roll* Presenting to you *drum roll* the HP Vect... *drum roll* ...ra
S2: Sorry about the busted Fireball just spontaneously clonking out on ya!
S3: I'm glad that Fireball works at least!
I hope it remains healthy. It sounds lovely and that really completes the whole experience for me.
33:06 LMAO DO IT! instead of "braaaains!" MikeTech says "CPUUUUU!"
ROBOT BRAAAAINSSSSS
Another video that does NOT disappoint! That constant drum roll on the first Quantum would drive me insane. I love listening to all the vintage computer sounds. The incontinent printer 😂 there goes that sense of humor. I like the Mommyboard reference it kills me! 😆I remember when you got the last Quantum. I believe I have a photo of you with it. Yes, Magic Erasers are great for a lot of things, when in doubt try Magic Eraser. #IloveMikeTechFridayvideos
I have the picture you took when I bought the PS/1.
Not all Deskstar drives were "Deathstars". The drives in question that tarnished the Deskstar line were the 75GXP models, which were all released in the 1999-2001 timeframe and had a capacity from 15-75 GB.
I had the misfortune to own six of those 75GXP drives, they all failed with the click of death and I lost a ton of data on them.
I've also owned many Deskstar drives before those and since those and never had an issue with them. It was really only limited to the 75GXP line.
And possibly some... I want to say 60GXP. And some 75GXP already came out with fixed firmware I think. Memories from a far past.
That second system has the dreaded 90s SMD electrolytics, it will need to be recapped soon. SMD electrolytics can be hard to determine if they're leaking, because the plastic base can wick up the electrolyte between it and the body of the capacitor, as well as between the base and the logic board. This allows them to leak pretty significantly before they'll ever show signs of leaking.
The leaking can cause electrolysis damage, because the electrolyte is conductive. Once energized, the electrolyte will allow electrolysis to start eating away at the pads on the board, and often isn't seen until it's too late.
I'd recommend recapping that system sooner rather than later, especially if it's going to be used.
32:54 that is a gorgeous cpu, never seen it before
Excellent video! About the quantum hard disk.... Get Spinrite in a later version (6.0)to fix it. Scandisk doesn't do such a deep diagnostics on the sectors as Spinrite does and keeps the sectors marked as bad. Spinrite tests these sectors thoroughly and when it finds them being able to perform write/read tests without further issues, they'll be marked as good again. Did that several times and achieved a clean yellow surface again after a test with scandisk after a repair with Spinrite. 100% functional again. Doesnt work with every damagee sector/disk and It's a bit time intensive, but to me, any attempt to rescue an old HDD is totally worth it. For such things i got a dedicated Pentium 133 machine which i load with such tasks while i do other things on my other setups. Try it. Maybe worth an own video since i didn't see such one yet on UA-cam. Cheers!
Wow I haven't thought about SpinRite or GRC in decades! I love how the website hasn't changed at all LOL. It's worth a try, thanks!
@@miketech1024 If you try that, can you make a video? I would love to see the results of that (and see how to use SpinRite).
Ohh boy. Those Deathstar drives were quite notorious for lasting less than a marriage.
The 2 parallel ports were likely for a printer and a scanner, as combo units were rare back then.
Dave here
Oooooooo almost there eh 7.96k I can feel 10k almost touch it
Lol
Another great video
Keep it up
Dave
London uk
9:02 I remember many Mainboards the last PCI slot and the first ISA slot did actually take the same slot and could never be used at the same time. Even on very late systems actually where there was only one ISA slot available.
-FYI- For anyone who has HP Vectra Pentium III Towers that they change the power supply out, you can use regular PC Power Supplies that don't have the fan pin header, just jumper the fan pin header with a jumper shunt and it won't complain.
Friday saved! Tomorrow i myself is going to some fleamarkets! Let's see what i can find! :)
Good luck!
Great👍
4:35 Deskstars from before the bad series were almost indestructable, as were those from after the bad series. This one is probably from just before, either series-wise or date-wise or both.
The Pentium Pro is my favorite x86 CPU; it was the one that really spooked the RISC vendors because Intel proved that x86 could actually compete on the high end.
These HPs post surprisingly fast. I half expected it to take the requisite 3 days that their proliant g6-7 series servers take to post! Just brutal!
Hey yay MikeTech!!!!!!!!!!!! I've been waiting for your next teardown-rebuild!!!!
I like these vids the way I like some kinds of music and books. I avoid things like book jacket quotes, acknowledgments sections, dedications, phrases like "No 1 on NY Times best seller list"
first computer tennessee titan wallpaper nice
Great video as always :) I seem to recall red meant primary?
Wow, never actually seen a Pentium Pro in the wild.
An Intel Pentium Pro!!!
A rare one.
I was always fascinated with the Pentium Pro. Never had one back in the day but I did manage to get one this year so now the search for a Socket 8 motherboard begins. And you really seem to luck out with the Panasonic 563-B CD-ROM drives. I hope you find a 3DO Blaster someday since these require that particular Panasonic/Creative drive to work, I'm also looking for that combination for my 486 build.
Shame the Pentium Pro CPUs are being hoarded to be completely destroyed/obliterated for the miserable amounts of gold those processors use, making it increasingly harder to find and expensive because of it
I always liked to Find the Most-Compact, yet Most bad arse systems I could find. Hell I still do that to this day lol
Tennessee Titians.... LOL
The Pentium Pro was a phenomenal CPU, especially the unicorn black version with 1MB L2 cache. Used to run a dual CPU setup with those and it had the ommph to deliver pretty good performance on Quake III - a game released four years after the P-Pro. Hey Mike, I think your arms are getting even bigger too ')
Finding a machine with a Pentium Pro Black is the type of thing I dream about! Thanks, I've been bulking for about 2 weeks now. My main goal over the last 16 months was fat loss, which I've achieved so it's time to move on to the next phase.
I had the exact Vectra VA although mine was running on 240v 😂. Those pentium pros were beasts. Have used a few socket 8 machines over the years, my favourite being the IBM PC 365 dual socket 8.
My heart rate increased a little just thinking about that system!
@@miketech1024😂
Cool story from me involving some HP Vectras:
I once got two nearly identical HP Vectra computers in unknown if working but used condition from a computer store back in 2003-2004 for $10. One was DOA (no POST regardless of any attempts to resuscitate it), while the other was more like "Ol' Faithful," but it needed some case parts that the dead one had. I took the two to make one and got it running Win98SE. I wasn't into collecting PCs at the time, so I decided to try to sell the working HP priced at $100.
Some time later, as I was riding the city bus to get around, I saw an old hatchback car sitting next to a quick oil change and minor auto service shop that had "For sale $1" in that white marking stuff for glass on the back. I asked about it, and they said the owner was a former employee. They got me in touch with him and we started talking about the price of the car. He stated that he had originally written the price as $1000, but his buddies at the shop pranked him by wiping the zeros off. He said that he would take $100 for the car since it had been sitting for quite some time, and nobody else had asked about it. I didn't have $100, but I asked if he would trade the car (A 1978 Plymouth Arrow Hatchback with a 4 speed manual and a 4 cylinder Mitsubishi for you gear/petrol heads) for my HP Vectra. Surprisingly, he said yes. Thank you, HP Vectra!!
So, in the end, I got a running car for $10. 😁
You turned a Vectra into a car… Love it!
Greetings fellow scientist!
🥼🧪
Vectra .... may preferred choice when picking a computer at the computer room to do my work, it was more like the second one, 166Mhz (no MMX). What a machine, all the clone around hung from time to time ... as you would expect from 95 and 98, whe HP .... it was way more stable. Many yeard later I managed to get one. ... 99% of them have been dumped, as they werre uses in offices. Hard to see one of plain brick at the home. Got a second one, loaded with 128MB, 4 x32 dimms and XP ... LOL. Savage. I used the second as parts and spares since case was totalled. AT one poin bought an IDE to SATA adapter (Marvell chip) to fit an SSD. No much difference at all, since it worked only in PIO mode. Fitting the 128GB kingston was another issue, since BIOS only allow 8.4G. I used Dinamic Overlay SW. A copy licensed to Seagate. OF course the main drive wasnt a Segate, but the SW would let to operate if you have a Seagate as slave. So I grab a Seagate and the SW enabled to install the overlay SW on the kingston. After that I put a mechanical, because, this is how is meant to be.
“Citrix!? Oh god…”
lmao
Lovely computers. It's nice how you fix it. I have 2 similar ones the one with a 486 with hdd and w311 but no sound card and a pentium one with not hdd but pci sound card. I have no idea what the other connectors aside the ide one are tho.
who else clicks thumbs up before watchin??
Vectra's were pretty decent for their time. I had a few given to me that all had Win 95 on them. But, That Pentium Pro is sweet! I am surprised you didn't fully populate the ram slots.
I probably have enough EDO SIMM modules now to fully populate it.
i had a Pentium 3 gateway in this form factor
The SGRAM in the first computer is worth its weight in platinum! Those are nearly impossible to find online these days. As I understand it, the chips on those are actually EDO DRAM (presumably 50ns since that's the fastest EDO I've ever seen), despite being used in computers whose main memory is PC-66/100/133 SDRAM (10/8/7.5ns). So much for high-performance video memory...
thanks for the video man! ppro is excellent looking cpu. anyway! what aboute retro computing with linux videos? almost no one making videos in this topik!
Thanks! I probably will in the future.
I recently saw a Vectra with dual Pentium socket 7s. It was however defective and the seller didn't specify what the issue was so I passed on it. But it cool to see a dual cpu machine of these of the early 90s
A dual-CPU Vectra is one of my 'white whales'...
Those HP Aztech cards are decent, I believe. Should have a real OPL3 core in that AZ2320 ASIC (some boards have that chip branded with the OPL logo on the silkscreening).
That Pentium Pro is one nice looking CPU.
I rather love the PPro CPU too, and i've been collecting them a while!!! Even have a couple of ES (engineering sample) ones
Citrix is a product of Florida. It's name is a combination of Citrus and Unix. They couldn't trademark "Citrus"
Every time I see anything Citrix-related, it gives me PTSD flashbacks of being a VDI admin...
Haha for me vdi was paired with pretty stringent desktop experience management so it was easier and not just a collection of floating breaking machines.
Since you're a retro gamer, my suggestion is to put one of those Matrox video cards in your Pentium pro system. They are an excellent choice and will allow (I'm pretty sure) you to play quake.
27:23 Yeah Office did play the windows sound at odd times. Also when you start installing Office 2000 it plays the windows startup sound of Windows 95. No idea I guess Microsoft just loved themselves too much at the time.
They were flexing those multi-media capabilities!
35:22 they make VGA to HDMI capture cards. It might be worth looking into.
I have one but it is awful. Good ones are hideously expensive, but I will spring for one eventually.
My preference would be upgrading the pentium 166 to a pentium 200/233MMX😁
Never seen one of the Vectra systems in person, kind of surprising considering the amount of computers that came and went when I was working at a local PC repair shop circa 2005-2006. Also that Pentium Gold has me jealous, never seen one of those either!
My brother saved two old PC's and a Macintosh from the trash yesterday for me, he knows I've always got a BOLO out for old electronics and PC's. The first system blew me away, someone threw away a circa 1991 Macintosh Classic II, I know they're not the most desirable or valuable but holy crap man! I never see old Apple's out for the trash! I don't have much interest in fixing it, it turns on but the screen is a bunch of garbled nonsense. I'll pass it on to someone who'll show it the love it deserves.
The second is another system I'll pass down to whoever I can find interested, a Compaq Presario 5460 with what I think is an AMD K5 but I dunno, someone drilled the poor rubberized Seagate hard drive in it, never thought I'd be sad to see one of those dead. I have two windows 98 PC's that can play any old games this one can and without the original drive it's just a firm "Meh" on my interest scale, PCI, too old for AGP, no USB, but it does have a ZIP drive so that's kinda neat. Haven't tried to get it to boot but it does post as far as to complain there is no hard drive. I mean there is one, but it's got a hole in the side of it.
Lastly there was a Dell Dimension 3000 with a 3.0GHz Pentium 4. Too new for my tastes, so I'll probably rob the Pentium 4 for a sentimental MSI mATX motherboard with an SIS chipset, AGP 8x, and SATA 1 and put some random slower Pentium 4 in it's place so the system isn't left for dead. I don't like parting out functional PC's but at the same time, nothing holds my interest with a Socket 478 or AMD equivalent system if it doesn't even have an AGP graphics port. I have no desire to relive PCI graphics cards, haha! But I do have an FX 5500 and FX 6200(?) (FX 6xxx something) 128 and 256MB GPU waiting for a home as well as a nice Sound Blaster Live soundcard from the era, and not the Dell OEM one that kinda sucks either.
We also saved a CRT monitor and some Casio adding machine with a receipt printer,I dunno, it's a calculator that spits paper with a teal VFD display, color me intrigued. The CRT monitor is some off brand it's very dead, I THINK from the noise it makes when you provide it video signal the flyback transformer is just clicking on and off. It just sits there and clicks, screen does nothing, shame really, it was a cool little 15" monitor. Also the power switch doesn't work, which is unsettling, so it's just gonna sit in the corner while I debate what to do with the little thing.
The Mac Classic might just have some bad solder joints. Adrian’s Digital Basement has some great videos on fixing those. Worst case, the PRAM battery leaked and corroded the motherboard.
@@miketech1024 Yep, I'm leaving it as Schrodinger's box, a mystery for the next person. Also I don't like working on them because you're exposed to high voltage. Been zapped enough, haha!
4:28 "Thats no moon it's a..."
Also, that 3rd PC got the same cirrus logic gpu that the Linux built-in Hypervisor emulates for legacy OS's.