Dear all, please note that I am very well aware that floppy and IDE ribbon cables had a red or pink stripe down one side that indicated the direction of insertion when using sockets without a notch or blanked out pin. Just because I do not mention something in what is already a long video does not mean that I am unaware of it! :) The cable I insert into the controller card at about 6:15 is indeed inserted the wrong way around. But given that this is an old, non-functional board - and this is not a “how to” video - this really does not matter. As always, when filming I am working upside down, and leaning back to avoid getting in the way of the camera and lights, so what you can see onscreen is far clearer than what I can see, and when filming I have a lot of other things to concentrate on. I make 52 videos here a year on a very tight schedule. Not everything is perfect. It never will be. But I do what I can to make things as accurate as possible. To those keen to point out below that I have “missed things out”, please note that I do say in the introduction that this video is not a definitive history of motherboards. Rather, it is a gentle discussion of those older boards I have in my possession.
I think most of the floppy-cable-comments just wanted to say... "hey, I can remember" and most of us just want to give something back to you for your hard work. (oh oh, I think I should learn english harder. Hope you understand me.)
Indeed, Chris, well said! I hesitate to ask my question now, but I have an ancient, non functional 386 (It even has the original case with the huge red power switch. Very COOL.) Anyways, I have no money at all, and even if I did, I have no idea where to buy used pc parts of this age, would you consider selling me that motherboard for parts? I have about 10.00 usd. (Told you I was poor. XD) If not no worries. I'll just keep collecting...
Despite the fact that it isn't a definitive history video, I still learned something new today from this. I had no idea that Baby-AT was even still a thing in 1999, much less that any P2 boards were made for the format. At that time, I was running a Tyan Thunder 2 motherboard with two P2-333's, it was an EATX board.
Cable management.... I remember it meaning "How can I actually cram all of these in here and still manage to hook it all up" Now it's "oh look. It's pretty!" Times sure have changed. Great video and it brings back bittersweet memories of the horrors/joys of working on old PCs.
I remember that I purchased adapters to allow IDE drives to be hooked up to sata connectors. It was such an improvement on cable management - even using the older - cheaper - IDE drives.
If I remember correctly Slot 1 came about because of Intel trying to save some money. Intel were using L1 and L2 cache on their processors. If they tried to put both caches on the same die, the die became big and expensive. By using the Slot which took a what was a PCB they could put the CPU and L1 on the same die but then have the L2 cache as separate chips on the Slot 1 PCB. Because they manufactured it themselves they could guarantee the quality control and run the L2 cache without problem. It also meant they could put different amounts of L2 cache on the same CPUs without have to use different dies. As manufacturing techniques improved and prices dropped the L2 cache was moved onto the main CPU die. Hence no more need for Slot 1 😊
was the pentium D the last slotted one ?? i remember we scrapped old work stations at the university (around 2010?) which were dual core optional and had two slots for cpus. HP workstations for cad i think. too powerhungry for the time but still kinda powerful, i think some were used with dual core afterwards in private hands and not scrapped. i took some heatsinks with me i think. i guess they would make some nerd money now in original state 😅
Slot 1 was during the PII era. They released Socket 370 for the PIII era. Socket 478mPGA for the early PIV then LGA775 for later PIV and early core 2/core quad. Then the socket in the 115x family for consumer and the socket 2011 for enthusiast lines
In 1998 I built a gaming PC for a buddy at work and was a little amused when he said it would be his last because he didn't think that they would ever get any faster. SMHLOL
lol in the late 90's / early naughties your computer was already old 6 months after buying it, those gains on the GPU generations were insane back then... +70-120% orso
@@dutchdykefinger also cpu wise in this last decades cpu speed depends on cores numbers while ipc performance increases are measured in percentages. Back then each cpu gen was around 2-3 times faster.
I went from 486 DX2-66 (33 Mhz) in 96 to Pentium 166MMX with Voodoo2 in 1998. Quake went from 320x200@10fps 8 bit color to 800x600@60+fps 16 bit color in just a couple of years.
@@artemaung5274 geez. id say thats roughly like going from 25 fps at 720p (medium settings) to 1440p 144fps (ultra settings), which took us the last 10 years
I've been experiencing the evolution of pc motherboard since 8086. There has been huge power jumps. The use of PC has leaped from an office use intrument to high-end gaming machine. Thanks for your sharing the change of PCs in decades! I still have the delight of having new CPUs and motherboards introduced from PC magazines.
This video and the previous one similar to it are exactly what the young technicians need to know to understand older equipment they may need to repair. Thanks
Well Chris you have certainly succeeded in making me acknowledge my age. I worked with all of the boards you reviewed and some older by ten years. Never the less I found it interesting.
Byon Bill, I'm with you buddy. I've been doing IT work for 20 years. These videos are always a flash from the past with a dash of "shit I'm getting old". LOL
mrnickbig1 This video, like all of my content, was presented in good faith based on what I could recall (I have built computers and written about and taught computing for 28 years), and also a great deal of checking -- not least in the manuals for the motherboards concerned. Nothing is every perfect, and especially so when individually producing a c.15 minute show every week. I do not believe there are any major errors here. Indeed, many "mistakes" pointed out in these comments are not actually mistakes at all. All but one of the boards in this video I purchased and built a PC with, and know very well indeed. Offering criticism is very easy. Actually doing a show every week is not. Sometimes on a Sunday a just feel like deleting this channel and giving up.
Yup. Back then we were cutting edge. I was the guy in my social circle who practiced the black arts of computer building. These boards take me back to that time.
Just be glad you can hook it up to the modern internet instead of using those damn baud modems and waiting 10 minutes to get some really compressed jpeg to load in line... by... line... lol. Don't miss those days.
@@javabeanz8549 Playing L.O.R.D. and Global Wars....then waiting a few days, checking the boards periodically to see if it was your turn. Anyone else remember when patience was a thing? lol
You can still get motherboards with UART (serial) ports, but they're usually workstation or server boards where you might need to connect to a piece of hardware (like large 48-port gigabit switches, high-end wi-fi access points, etc) via terminal. Home players would rarely, if ever, still use a UART or a floppy these days (unless you're me), and as such have no need for these ports on the motherboard. Most people who use UART or floppy these days just keep a USB version in their laptop bag, but even those can be hard to find without going online.
Don't forget the old 2 part power connectors that you could get switched around and potentially fry the board unless you kept the black wires next to each other
@@mephInc Oh, man... screwing up jumpers could get bad. I've seen dead CPUs and motherboards from that. Getting an incorrectly wired Molex connector on a power supply (most were generic junk back then)... that could be even worse. Let's just say that I have never before or since heard a hard drive make quite that noise (like a robotic shriek of pain) or produce acrid black smoke and brief flames. The technician working on it cut the power and hit the system with a CO2 extinguisher. Wrenching the somehow intact Molex connector from the slag that had been the socket and then identifying exactly why that... dramatic... moment had happened was a job our entire group of technicians focused on. From that day on, we checked the wiring of every single molex connector before ever plugging them in and powering on the PC. I was so glad when they ceased being a commonly used connector (and also when PSUs from reputable brands became common).
Man, I’ve got to tell you these videos are some the top notch tutorials on UA-cam. Here are some things that make them so great: great pace, good voice, nice editing, and simple and professional production.
Hi Chris. Thanks for this. As some others have said, that was a trip down memory lane. I actually remember back further, into the late 70s/early 80s when my Dad bought a Radio Shack TRS-80 II; this computer was pre-DOS, if memory serves, and the (specially written) programmes had to be loaded from a cassette tape. Unbelievable.
A very pleasant walk down memory lane there, well explained also to point out what we take for granted today with configuration / setup gotcha's. I joined the PC space late ( due to costs mainly ) so did not have to worry to much about alot of the nasties really early on. Its also worth a mention as shown in your other video's how pc tech is making into into the SBC arena aka PCI-E and M.2.
This was a great walk down memory lane Chris, thank you. I started out with a 16MHz 386-SX, as a very lucky teenager, later getting a maths co-pro for it when I was using a lot of maths software at University. I then built plenty of PCs into the Slot 1 era, after which I started a long spell with Macs. I'm back on Linux now though, and thinking of building myself a custom machine again. So this has been a great watch for me!
meh we played Wolfenstein, Spear of Destiny and Doom etc. as some of the first games, later on the amazing Duke Nukem came until Quake and 3DFX revolutionezed gaming
As usual Chris has this uncanny, nay professional method of explaining technology to the average Joe. I know all this stuff but I'm still watching your videos on Sundays. I must have way too much time on my hands Chris.
I had a P2 233, 32MB RAM and a 4.01 GB HDD back in 98. I overclocked it up to 252 without knowing exactly what I was doing in a time the OC could actually burn the CPU, OC was not a thing in those days so no safety features or safe OC whatsoever. That´s when I felt in love with computers! Thank you for the memory lane trip!!
Nice, stroll through memory lane, back at the time I used to build PCs myself... xD Nowadays, even with the ressurgence of PC builders, I just buy them ready to use. Here in Brazil there was a quirk back in the 90s and early 2000s for anyone who lived close to the Paraguayan border - it was waaaay cheaper to buy parts and build your own PC. That plus me being a tinkerer who broke lots of electronics as a teen and early adult, I'm familiar with a whole ton of stuff Cris is talking about. I started opening up desktop cases to see what's inside back at PC-XT times... but my first builds were probably back at 386 DXII desktops. I think that went on up 'till Pentium III, which I had a Slot 1 cartridge for. Perhaps a bit longer than that. From that time on things started getting super complicated on the ram memory side. There was a transitioning period that had lots of motherboards that were only compatible with certain RAM memory brands and speeds, things got a heck lot more confusing, and worst of all - poorly documented. So what you effectively had to do (which I did) was talk a lot with people working on stores to know what combination worked and what didn't. As they assembled multiple desktops a day, they knew what worked better and what didn't. They had lots of headaches with assembled desktops coming back from costumers because they weren't working properly. You gave a base configuration of what you wanted and they took care of matching brands and whatnot so that the build would work. Things I don't forget from that time... the moment RAM memory prices crashed down, which was almost unbelievable at the time, and the moment RAM memory speeds became a thing, which was the point assembling your own desktop became too complicated - like I said on previous paragraph. From that point on I never went back to building my own desktops. It doesn't make economical sense anymore these days here in Brazil... difference in price isn't that big anymore, parts are harder to find, and warranty plus paying in installments just makes buying a pre-assembled branded desktop the better choices nowadays. But the benefits lives on. My current desktop is over 5 yrs old now. I got a Dell. But I put an SSD in it right after buying it, most people didn't even know what it was. And I'll probably replace the aging graphics card and push it for some more years before retiring...
Yeah you can upgrade parts as and when you need to which is the major advantage. PCs last a lot longer than they used to too because they aren't getting much faster now so you can keep using the old one.
Overclocking via dip switch? This is fascinating. I got into PC hardware around 2002, but learning about older motherboards is an experience. Nice video.
Nice trip down memory lane. I didn't get started in PC building professionally until the late Pentium days, but I had to troubleshoot some 386 and 486 along the way. I did notice a couple minor things I hope you don't mind me pointing out, not that anyone getting into retro tech is going to use this as their only source. Around 6:15 it looks like you plug the floppy cable in backwards? Red stripe on the side of the cable usually corresponds with Pin 1 on the connector. Also around 13:30 you talk about the Pentium II 300 being a 100MHz bus with a 3x multiplier - that CPU was actually a 66MHz bus with a 4.5 multiplier. The multiplier was usually locked in the CPU, so attempting to set it to 100x3 might result in an unstable 450MHz accidental overclock.
+ExplainingComputers That slot1 board is quite the rarity! It's an AT form-factor when most slot1 boards were ATX. It also has both AT and ATX power connectors. And yet it also has a USB connector? Very rare combination indeed!
I was going to mention the same thing - Slot1 was Pentium II era so AT form factor was largely obsolete by then iirc so this is a weird one indeed. In fact I remember my first DIY PC around 1998 and the only reason I chose a Socket 7 AT MB over ATX was the price - in hindsight it meant I couldn't upgrade it a couple of years later due most MBs moving to ATX :( at least ATX has stuck around for a long time with some minor updates!
@@Umski You're right. The AT spec was on it's way out by then. So that board was really just a stop-gap upgrade path for people who liked their AT case, which a lot of people did.
Not that rare, really. I have two PII motherboards that are strictly ATX, but another that is quite similar to the Gigabyte shown here - a Baby AT with AT and ATX PSU connectors (and a USB header). It's a Totem TM-P2BXAT. The Asus P2B-B is another one. I like those boards because the Baby AT form factor is about the same size as Micro ATX. With Pentium being nearly 100% AT, and Pentium III being 100% ATX, it's not surprising to find some crossover boards in the generation between.
Computers used to take research to build often with some troubleshooting. When you got upgrades, it would mean more tweaking. Now there is so little chance of things not working as long as you get the basics right. I built a new computer the other day. I spent maybe 15 minutes buying the parts in my local electronics store and it took me probably 15 minutes to put it together. The majority of my time was cable management.
Slot 1 and jumpers...I had completely forgot about them. I feel quite proud having built the things back then. That side of things - it never occured that it was difficult, its just how it was. But you had to be careful hey! The tougher jobs were getting early CD writers to work for me. SO many WASTED blank disks!! Cheers for doing this I'm doing a build, first time this century from scratch - its been quite a refresher learning about all the stuff I missed, that I'll never need, like DDR3 and SATA hard drives!
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. It's funny how MB's from the 90's use to have colors like a pack of Skittles and the new ones have a uniform color scheme.
Thanks as always for your videos. I taught A+ certification classes about 15years ago. I would always start off by passing around XT and AT motherboards, processors and co processors, memory types Dips, SIPPs, SIMMs, DiMMs and all sorts of cards and cables so the class understood where we came from and the legacy terminology that persisted. Great times. Love your videos.
I remember a stage when the connectors had a pin hole blocked or blanked off and the pins had a pin missing to ensure correct orrientation of the connector. I also remember having to carefully straighten pins on the motherboard with long nose pliers after my friend tried forcing the drive cable in the wrong way.
Thanks for this upload Chris. I appreciate your time and effort to fit these in. Looking forward to the history of RAM upload in the near future. Keep up the good work.
Great video, I definitely remember some of the early stuff being on my early computers as well as when I was in retail having to keep up with the various tech
Nice to see old names and logos, reminded me of Zalman, i checked them out, they are still in business ... i remember asking some one in early 90s "why do you need a fan for the CPU" because back them all i know is 386 without a fan, just heatsink.
And I prefer those fanless motherboards. For me it's ARM and RISC-V all the way for low-end motherboards with x86 being pushed more and more into the high-end until it will finally disappear like so many other architectures did.
I miss building the old 386 and 486 PCs. All those jumpers and DIPs meant that one error could fry the whole kit. That anticipation after triple checking and you press the power button to either get a boot up or a popping sound. You just no longer get that same all or nothing gratification. Seriously though, I do miss having to get everything just so. Nowadays literally anyone can plug and play a system together and it'll work. I'm not saying it'll work well, but it will work. I remember getting the Abit P5Q motherboard. It was the world's first jumperless motherboard and it was amazing in the fact you could just go into the BIOS, set a multiplier or ratio or FSB and reboot for some overclocking goodness. I still have that old system, haha. Great quick explanation for the uninitiated. This is a good video I can reference people to when I try to explain that things were much more difficult way back when. I'm getting old...
"Nowadays literally anyone can plug and play a system together and it'll work." I wouldn't be so sure about that. I recently helped a "friend" get his new rig going. He wanted to do it himself, and was pretty hyped about it. He told me later that he thought he'd bricked the thing after spending all that money on it. Turns out he didn't realize that the Ryzen 3 processor he put in was a CPU rather than an APU, which has the GPU integrated so you can use the video headers on the motherboard. He bought a new video card for it, but didn't clue in that he might need it to test with. I mean, the motherboard has video connectors on it, so it SHOULDN'T need an external video card to test it, RIGHT!? Well, that hasn't been the case for a few years now, and he was beating himself up over thinking that he'd destroyed his machine before he could use it.
Thank you for this video. Now I see how MB's have changed and that I won't be able to use my old cards. It is so much easier to build your own computer now. You brought back a lot of memories, some were good and some were very frustrating. Thank you, Chris.
Wow brings back a lot of memories. My first PC was a 486 (my first gaming rig). Then, a P2 500, a P3 1ghz, P4 2.4Aghz Prescott core, athlon x2 1.4ghz, core2duo e6600 (2.4ghz), core2quad q6600 (2.4ghz), i5 2500k, and finally the i5 6600k. Weird coincidence that I have 3 of Intel's same CPU nomenclature numbers although different eras. I still have all 3, the e6600, q6600, and my current PC with 6600k. By the way, I loved Zalman coolers too, but I could never afford or get one from where I used to live. I remember them topping the old Anandtech charts. Fun fact, I bought the Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120 (TRUE120) which cooled my e6600, q6600, 2500k, and is now mated to my 6600k!! Thanks for this awesome video I totally loved it. Felt kinda old, TBH, but wise too. Kids these days wouldnt know what to do with a jumper, except maybe wear it.
First PC was also a 486 - had a IBM SLC2/66 processor in it, so not quite as good as the Intel 486s, not to mention a 5-pin DIN keyboard connector instead of PS/2 - but it did have a CD-ROM drive! Just turned 40, so the "5150 and/or XT as home computer" era was a bit before my time, but I do remember playing around with Apple IIs and PS/2s at school prior to owning my first PC, and my dad did have the first model of PS/1 circa 1990, which was always fun to mess around with when I visited :) Of course, I have a Xeon E5-2680 with 32 GB RAM and 20 TB in hard drives (1x8TB & 3x4TB) as my main PC, and a i5-2400 HTPC now, but occasionally I still reminisce about the old days and fire up DOSBox for a bit...
Nope, I started out with 486, which was a big deal at that time. No monochrome screens either buddy. I have used and own several old 5.25" discs as well as 2 drives (IDE, so doesnt play well with modern Pcs). I have read and watched a lot about it, which does not count! You old timers really have done EVERYTHING right? haha. I AM young to be honest, just 35. I could guess your age given your PC stats, but I will just say that you are young at heart :-) Thats all that matters!
03:38 _coprocessor_ A term I must have not heard for something like 25 years - thus completely forgot about it. Thank you for reactivating that part of my brain which was unused for so long
Gosh, the weirdest thing to me is seeing how much I had forgotten about hardware, and watching you talk about what I always thought was common knowledge as... history. I feel old : o ).
Brings back memories, I remember building many of these during the 'migration' from AS400 to desktops when I worked at Seven Seas in the late 90's, each one was hand built and configured including a number of Novell Netware servers and a treasured Microsoft Exchange Server. Those were the days. A shout out to any of your subscribers from Seven Seas with thank's for giving me the opportunity to switch from Quality Assurance to PC Support, it was a life-changer. Thanks for sharing Chris.
Nice presentation once again Chris. I feel so old now that I watched this because I remember all those boards and some much earlier ones. Thanks for the trip down memory lane
The first 486 boards were an absolute pain to configure. You had about 40-50 jumpers to set to correctly address things and configure the CPU. Half of those acted as little killswitches, upon first start releasing curious blue smoke if set wrongly. Those really were the pioneering days of PC building.
Christopher - thanks for another great video. It was nice to see all those old types of motherboards again. I loved the "here's a PC I'd forgotten I'd got" moment - I'm sure I've had similar moments too :-) If I remember correctly, the first IBM compatible I owned was an Olivetti PCS 386 that cost me £1399 (with a monochrome monitor and a "free" dot matrix printer) plus another £85 for a mouse, both bought in Evesham Micros, when that was just a little shop in the town of the same name. Later on I upgraded to a colour monitor and added a maths co-processor (liberated from a redundant PC at work). Amstrad PC's were about £100 less than the Olivetti ones - but I reckoned the extra £100 was a worthwhile investment. In those days, new PC's came with unformatted hard drives, a manual and a set of install floppies for MS-DOS.
Excellent video and all very well explained. I've had all those motherboards except the last one at one time or another and only moved from a Pentium 4 3.2Ghz in 2010 to a quad core Phenom. That was very significant at the time.
Good show that brings back lots of memories of the pc's i had way back starting in 1985 and man the pc have come a long way just think what they might look like in the years
I've recently subscribed to your Channel and really enjoy your content. You make learning fun for us who like to know more about the different functions on computers. Hopefully UA-cam will present you with your very own plaque for all the hard effort you put in your videos.
That is a wonderful trip into the near past, I think I was on the same journey myself, now I wish I had kept all the MB's I went through in my life. I would like to mention about how MB's also gained layers of circuitry throughout their history also along with micro resistors and surface mounting, still a great video!
I had a 386 PC in 1987 ish. Quote from Wikipedia, "The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985". It didn't half seem fast compared to my 286!!
Fun fact about slot CPUs. Intel and AMD were physically compatible, but different electrically. If you plugged one into a board for the other, the CPU would die when you powered up the system. Yay.
@@RWL2012 No. He's saying that AMD Slot A and Intel Slot 1 connectors were physically identical - meaning you could physically insert a Slot 1 processor into a Slot A board or vice-versa. However, the pin assignments were different between the two processors. But, great regret and misfortune would betide thee if thou powereth it up. To be fair, though - the retention mechanisms that locked the processor card into the slot made this difficult to do unless you removed the brackets. A few determined but not particularly bright individuals did exactly that, and there was much depression and gnashing of the teeth afterward. But, while AMD took pains to avoid such tragedy, there were manufacturers who actually set a electrical booby trap that snared many an unwary tech or would-be upgrader. Yes, Dell, I'm speaking of YOU, but you're not the only offender here. Here's the rundown of it: www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=339053
I'm sure it has already been mentioned several times in the comments, Chris, but thank you for the trip down memory lane. I am really enjoying the conversations you're having with yourself while you talk about the subject (such as the one that starts at 6:50), whatever it happens to be. Funny stuff.
I actually have a few anti-static bags on my desk with some RAM chips for one of my vintage computers right now. I think RLL is used in other technologies, even today, not just MFM hard drives.
yep, i have a 286 with loads of 41256 256k by 1 bit ram chips on it, has hard drive/floppy card plus a multi IO card, and a EGA video card, 5 1/4 inch 20mb (yes, mb, not gb!) hard drive , plus 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 floppies ....still working when last powered up a few years ago! although the psu did go bang once, but i managed to repair it.
@@andygozzo72 Try locating a supply of those old RAM chips these days if some of them go bad. 74xx series logic is very easy to find, even today, but if you're trying to build replica expansion cards for these old computers, you'll be better off getting one or two newer 1MB RAM chips and your own address decoder than trying to replicate the old memory architecture.
@@BlackEpyon luckily i have a bagfull (200 ish?) each of 4164's or equivalent, and 41256s , plus small numbers of various others... you can still find them on ebay now and again, i've found it hard to get some 74 and 4000 series cmos types!
What a fantastic trip down memory lane (excuse the pun lol). I vividly remember all the trials and tribulations involved in setting up motherboards from yesteryear. You're quite right, we really have got things easy these days. Thanks Chris.
I had just watched your pcie slot video, and was hooked.. I subscribed and went hunting only to find you had already made this vid.. as I said earlier I have been playing with computers since the tandy, commodore days.. and building computers ever since.. I really liked the fact that you have connected all of my old memories into a new form to see the evolution that I was hardly aware of.. It really is fascinating to see it in this light.. I am now going to have go digging into my boxes! I know I still have my old 386 and my 486 (with a cd rom drive) But I have old motherboards, cpus, memory and all the good old stuff.. I will have to get my old 3 & 486 running again I even have the monitor, keyboard and mouse for them.. plus maybe get some cases and build some of the early pentiums back and make a little display of them.. you have rekindled the old fire my friend..and for that I thank you! I am only 66 years of age but I worked and played hard when I was young and as a result have worn my body out and need a simple easy hobbie and you have given me that.. carry on tally ho and TA...
STARTED WITH AN IBM CLONE 8088T Second hand around 1990. Learned DOS the hard way. Did not have a graphics adapter. So had to enter everthing by file name. Seeing as the DOS shell could not be displayed. Built machines through the 90s. Thanks for the memories. Nice Video
They were rubbish. The AMD slot processors had an issue where if you didn't have enough cooling, they actually de-soldered themselves and slid down the pcb. Then game over....
@@dj_paultuk7052 I had a 300mhz slot Pentium II back in 1997. Later upgraded to 533mhz Celeron, but I needed a slot to socket adapter... That was the fastest I could go on the LX chipset... In the hindsight I should have waited for BX chipset. That was really upgradeable!
@1ctrlaltdelete1 I wish I kept mine... I had an Intel motherboard.very basic in terms of available settings, but very stable. I'm sure it would have lasted...
@1ctrlaltdelete1 this story makes me feel better. You know what I am using AMD PC with Linux works fine...nothing fancy just UA-cam video editing and web browsing sometime I play cricket game using wine....
6:20 so true, you just need to see the verge PC build to understand what he meant . Nowadays you can really do everything BUT the recommended way, and it still works! Progress, I guess
That first board looked rather familiar, I had a similar one, with an 80386SX-16, and you could use SIMMs in 256KB, 512KB or 1024KB. In the 80386 days, SX referred to the "folded bus" 16bit data bus, rather than the DX with a 32bit data bus. In the 80486 days, the meaning changed, and SX meant the CPU didn't have a built-in Math Co-Processor. My first 486 was an SX that was over clocked, I think it was a 25MHz over clocked to 33MHz. Then I got to try the DX2/66 and I was hooked on the speed boost, LoL!
thanks for making this video, its really cool to look back on pc parts especially parts I will probally never get a chance to use or see. The fact you kept hardware for 30 years is amazing. This is why we subscribe, like, and comment. computers rule!!!
My first true IBM style PC was in 1990, an XT clone, no HDs, just twin 5 1/4 floppy drives, one for OS and one for Lotus 123, Wordstar 2000, my C compiler, or whatever game I was playing. I think my CRT colour monitor gave me mild sunburn ...
Mine was my dad's Tandy 1000HX. Based on the IBM PC-Jr, it 's got an Intel 8088-2 @ 8/4.77 MHz with 128KB onbaord RAM and 512 on a card for 640KB total, and 2x 720k floppies. Got it when dad upgraded to an IBM ThinkPad (486-DX 50MHz something something, forget the model). Still have it, and I keep it working for playing old games on.
Well done Chris, enjoyed the journey down memory lane. My first desktop computer was a Packard Bell PB620CD. purchased from Walmart at around $900.00 + Tax I took it out of storage and tried turning it on but the power supply is bad. We have come a long ways haven't we? My second computer was a Dell Optiplex GT150 my wife had purchased for me. Well, till the next video as always, "Enjoy The Adventure." 😀👍✌
The worst experience I had with a PC was with a tape drive, not IRQ conflicts. I just could not get the tape drive to work no matter what I did. I called the company long distance several times. Finally, they told me their tape drive only worked with Intel chipsets, not AMD or Cyrix compatible chipsets. They could have written that on the box before I bought it.
@@Cypherdude1 The same situation with some TV cards. I've spended some hours/days in trying fixing BSOD problems with a PC: TV card, win95 ... Intel CPU and VIA chipset. Solution: Only motherbords with intel BX chipset worked. (WTF)
If I recall correctly your IDE sockets or headers were also called AT Architecture and then later Parallel AT Architecture to distinguish it from Serial AT Architecture or SATA.
Thanks a lot for the video really helped me teach one of friends in college about all the older standards for our hardware class. She is an older woman taking the class to enjoy college life ( pre covid-19 I think she dropped until in class picks up) but your explanation was very easy for her and I could fill in the parts she didn't understand easily.
Who here remembers when they first started making smaller rounded IDE cables? I remember them being so expensive compared to their flat grey brethren...
@@ExplainingComputers I had a tower case like yours for a long time but it got damaged when I bought my new house and moved in. I miss that roomy beast.
It had 5 external bays, 7 internal bays, at 5 1/4" 2 external and 1 internal 3 1/2" bays, it was 33" Internal Height, Can't remember the foot print now but was huge.
Recently I bought an AsRock 4CoreDual-VSTA (L1), excellent for testing components of different generations, certainly my favorite motherboard.😍 Nice video, as always!
Well that blue barrel battery was pretty much an indication on how PC manufacturers clearly designed their PCs to eventually fail due to Planned Obsolescence. You can see how it leaked, like a Zinc Carbon or an Alkaline Battery does when it becomes dry. Sadly the Amiga 500+ had those barrel batteries that caused a leak that made the Amiga motherboard beyond repairs, even those Arcade machines that had used them for SRAM Hi-Score storage. As for the i80386 lacking a fan it didn't seem as powerful as it was for the Pentium II or III, but it be recommended to have a PC case with plenty of circulation as well maybe having a case cooling fan, to prevent excess heat from damaging the Capacitors and melting the solder. But those PowerPC, Motorola 680x0 processors didn't compete well as Steve Jobs ditched the PowerPC for Intel x86 near 2006 for Apple's iMac range.
Those barrel batteries aren't that hard to replace. All you need to do is desolder the 2 connections, remove the battery, and install a new one. Even for a newbie, it would probably take one day's labor, about $6 and would last another 5-10 years. You can buy the barrel battery anywhere. Here's one listing on eBay: "3.6v rechargeable CMOS battery 60mAh (NiCd/NiMH) for vintage motherboards & PLC", Item# 331034570308. Amazon has many different listings, including Varta (made in Germany!) and 2 and 3 pin models. For the *_ONE_* person who reads this and actually needs to replace their barrel battery, I recommend you spend the extra $5 and buy a higher quality rechargeable battery such as the Varta.
Biggest thing I loved about some of the Amiga computers was that upgrading was a relatively easy method of plugging in an accelerator card and installing a library. Expansion port on the bottom of the A1200 was great.
7:27 ... what a tiny netword card ?! Unbelieveable. I stopped working inside Desktop PC around 1997. Soundcards and CD drive could be a nightmare. Burning a CD was an even far more nightmare.
A nice bit of nostalgia, though slightly alarming to realise how old I'm getting. [Looks out of window] It used to be all fields round here... I hope I don't forget the video about memory.
Ah, sweet memories. *(The moment I read "PC motherboards" and "pure retro computing nostalgia" I had to take care of my morning constitutionals and brew fresh coffee; that way I could watch uninterrupted.)
I like this channel. It is like an early 80's computer documentary. Also the host is really serious which helps you focus on the topic. Like the hair though, rocking that Beatles vibe.
All the way up to the Pentium Pro, you had to buy the cache and tag chips. From the PPro onward, it was "built in" (officially only built in only on the second wave of P3 chips. On the PPro, P2, and first wave of P3, it was actually separate, but on the same substrate as the CPU. The difficulty in inserting/removing the PPro IMHO is why they went to the Slot 1 (probably the cost of the PPro sockets too).
Not just "could" buy them separately, had to. Heck, before the 486, only the really expensive boards had any kind of cache at all. And now modern chips have more cache than older systems had RAM.
evknucklehead LGR has a video on installing cache chips on a 486 and the result being on par with a sizable clock bump - which begs the question, why was cache left as an upgrade option in the first place. The only way this makes sense to me is that component costs are 5-10x what they are today and this kind of ala carte computer building makes sense.
John, cache chips only became a thing due to the slow speed of RAM. No one anticipated that they'd become important, and they were thought of as more of an upgrade for your memory, rather than your processor. They only got added to the CPU die once RAM got faster and the motherboard interconnect latency between your CPU and cache became the bottleneck. And funny story, CPU cache killed sales of the PII. Intel released the PII with cache and the first Celeron without cache. The Celeron tanked, so Intel added a little cache to the second Celeron and suddenly, once overclocked, it kicked the PII's arse. Everyone said they had a PII back in the day, but watch their systems boot and most of them were running Celerons.
it was less a problem with cost, and more a problem with die area. Take a look at the Pentium Pro for instance. The cache die was huge. The Pentium 2 and early Pentium 3 (Slot 1) still had to have the cache on a separate chip. Static RAM has only with modern shrinks become practical in any large amounts. No matter how you look at it, you still require six transistors for each bit of static RAM.
A very interesting video, where have all the years gone? My first PC bought in the late 1980's was an 8086 from NESS (long gone). When I started using ORCAD I had to have a mouse, no connector of course in those days and I bought a Microsoft Mouse with interface card for £110!! The last mouse I bought a couple of years ago was £3 from Ebay. Bob
Dear all, please note that I am very well aware that floppy and IDE ribbon cables had a red or pink stripe down one side that indicated the direction of insertion when using sockets without a notch or blanked out pin. Just because I do not mention something in what is already a long video does not mean that I am unaware of it! :)
The cable I insert into the controller card at about 6:15 is indeed inserted the wrong way around. But given that this is an old, non-functional board - and this is not a “how to” video - this really does not matter. As always, when filming I am working upside down, and leaning back to avoid getting in the way of the camera and lights, so what you can see onscreen is far clearer than what I can see, and when filming I have a lot of other things to concentrate on. I make 52 videos here a year on a very tight schedule. Not everything is perfect. It never will be. But I do what I can to make things as accurate as possible.
To those keen to point out below that I have “missed things out”, please note that I do say in the introduction that this video is not a definitive history of motherboards. Rather, it is a gentle discussion of those older boards I have in my possession.
Relax, it's only UA-cam. :D
I think most of the floppy-cable-comments just wanted to say...
"hey, I can remember"
and most of us just want to give something back to you for your hard work. (oh oh, I think I should learn english harder. Hope you understand me.)
I think you destroyed one of your viewers computer with pentium 133mhz. :)
Indeed, Chris, well said! I hesitate to ask my question now, but I have an ancient, non functional 386 (It even has the original case with the huge red power switch. Very COOL.) Anyways, I have no money at all, and even if I did, I have no idea where to buy used pc parts of this age, would you consider selling me that motherboard for parts? I have about 10.00 usd. (Told you I was poor. XD) If not no worries. I'll just keep collecting...
Despite the fact that it isn't a definitive history video, I still learned something new today from this. I had no idea that Baby-AT was even still a thing in 1999, much less that any P2 boards were made for the format. At that time, I was running a Tyan Thunder 2 motherboard with two P2-333's, it was an EATX board.
Cable management.... I remember it meaning "How can I actually cram all of these in here and still manage to hook it all up"
Now it's "oh look. It's pretty!"
Times sure have changed. Great video and it brings back bittersweet memories of the horrors/joys of working on old PCs.
So true on cable management. So true.
Especially if you had to organize SCSI ribbons!
I remember that I purchased adapters to allow IDE drives to be hooked up to sata connectors. It was such an improvement on cable management - even using the older - cheaper - IDE drives.
I feel so old. I remember when all this stuff was new. A journey through Memory Lane.
Literally
I really enjoy the way you can talk about motherboards in an factual, well organized and interesting way. Very good work!
This is literally a life story of tech enthusiasts of my age. I grew up on these motherboards.
If I remember correctly Slot 1 came about because of Intel trying to save some money. Intel were using L1 and L2 cache on their processors. If they tried to put both caches on the same die, the die became big and expensive. By using the Slot which took a what was a PCB they could put the CPU and L1 on the same die but then have the L2 cache as separate chips on the Slot 1 PCB. Because they manufactured it themselves they could guarantee the quality control and run the L2 cache without problem. It also meant they could put different amounts of L2 cache on the same CPUs without have to use different dies. As manufacturing techniques improved and prices dropped the L2 cache was moved onto the main CPU die. Hence no more need for Slot 1 😊
Great info, thanks for sharing here.
was the pentium D the last slotted one ?? i remember we scrapped old work stations at the university (around 2010?) which were dual core optional and had two slots for cpus.
HP workstations for cad i think. too powerhungry for the time but still kinda powerful, i think some were used with dual core afterwards in private hands and not scrapped.
i took some heatsinks with me i think. i guess they would make some nerd money now in original state 😅
Exactly right.
Slot 1 was during the PII era.
They released Socket 370 for the PIII era.
Socket 478mPGA for the early PIV then LGA775 for later PIV and early core 2/core quad.
Then the socket in the 115x family for consumer and the socket 2011 for enthusiast lines
Yeah, I would say Intel had trouble keeping up with PowerPC machines throughout much of the 1990s. Its architecture was simply not as efficient.
In 1998 I built a gaming PC for a buddy at work and was a little amused when he said it would be his last because he didn't think that they would ever get any faster. SMHLOL
Great story! :)
lol in the late 90's / early naughties your computer was already old 6 months after buying it,
those gains on the GPU generations were insane back then... +70-120% orso
@@dutchdykefinger also cpu wise in this last decades cpu speed depends on cores numbers while ipc performance increases are measured in percentages.
Back then each cpu gen was around 2-3 times faster.
I went from 486 DX2-66 (33 Mhz) in 96 to Pentium 166MMX with Voodoo2 in 1998. Quake went from 320x200@10fps 8 bit color to 800x600@60+fps 16 bit color in just a couple of years.
@@artemaung5274 geez. id say thats roughly like going from 25 fps at 720p (medium settings) to 1440p 144fps (ultra settings), which took us the last 10 years
I've been experiencing the evolution of pc motherboard since 8086. There has been huge power jumps. The use of PC has leaped from an office use intrument to high-end gaming machine. Thanks for your sharing the change of PCs in decades! I still have the delight of having new CPUs and motherboards introduced from PC magazines.
This video and the previous one similar to it are exactly what the young technicians need to know to understand older equipment they may need to repair. Thanks
Useful in repairing modern machines as well as a general primer. That's because the fundamentals are still the same ;)
Well Chris you have certainly succeeded in making me acknowledge my age. I worked with all of the boards you reviewed and some older by ten years. Never the less I found it interesting.
Byon Bill, I'm with you buddy. I've been doing IT work for 20 years. These videos are always a flash from the past with a dash of "shit I'm getting old". LOL
I am 45 and I worked in all of them . do you remember the driver hell and death blue screen. like what Microsoft doing now in windows 10 hahaha.
Interesting because of all the mistakes he made?
mrnickbig1 This video, like all of my content, was presented in good faith based on what I could recall (I have built computers and written about and taught computing for 28 years), and also a great deal of checking -- not least in the manuals for the motherboards concerned. Nothing is every perfect, and especially so when individually producing a c.15 minute show every week. I do not believe there are any major errors here. Indeed, many "mistakes" pointed out in these comments are not actually mistakes at all. All but one of the boards in this video I purchased and built a PC with, and know very well indeed. Offering criticism is very easy. Actually doing a show every week is not. Sometimes on a Sunday a just feel like deleting this channel and giving up.
Yup. Back then we were cutting edge. I was the guy in my social circle who practiced the black arts of computer building. These boards take me back to that time.
Replacing my PC with a self-assembled 286 clone was one of my biggest highlights in computing. I feel so utterly ancient now.
Just be glad you can hook it up to the modern internet instead of using those damn baud modems and waiting 10 minutes to get some really compressed jpeg to load in line... by... line... lol. Don't miss those days.
kids... try 300bps and ASCII art ;o)
+Java Beanz
I thought it was such hot shit when I got a 2400-baud modem.
286 was so bad LOL. People forget they even existed :P
@@javabeanz8549
Playing L.O.R.D. and Global Wars....then waiting a few days, checking the boards periodically to see if it was your turn.
Anyone else remember when patience was a thing? lol
Your home is a veritable museum of ancient artifacts.
Realy thanks for the little history of Motherboards. Its a pleasure to see old stuff again, that its from my teenager time.
Motherboards have come a long way. Looking forward to your next video!
I sure miss those good old cereal ports. Especially in the morning...
cereal ports lol
Yeah, helped keep you regular.
serial and we still have serial connections nowadays. serial ata for example or universal serial bus.
You can still get motherboards with UART (serial) ports, but they're usually workstation or server boards where you might need to connect to a piece of hardware (like large 48-port gigabit switches, high-end wi-fi access points, etc) via terminal. Home players would rarely, if ever, still use a UART or a floppy these days (unless you're me), and as such have no need for these ports on the motherboard. Most people who use UART or floppy these days just keep a USB version in their laptop bag, but even those can be hard to find without going online.
In those days, “serial” specifically meant RS-232C/422/423.
The days when you accidentally discover overclocking by putting the jumper on the wrong pins
Wonderful!
Or when components let out the magic smoke because you put a jumper on the wrong pins.
Don't forget the old 2 part power connectors that you could get switched around and potentially fry the board unless you kept the black wires next to each other
And I fried my HDD :D
@@mephInc Oh, man... screwing up jumpers could get bad. I've seen dead CPUs and motherboards from that. Getting an incorrectly wired Molex connector on a power supply (most were generic junk back then)... that could be even worse. Let's just say that I have never before or since heard a hard drive make quite that noise (like a robotic shriek of pain) or produce acrid black smoke and brief flames. The technician working on it cut the power and hit the system with a CO2 extinguisher.
Wrenching the somehow intact Molex connector from the slag that had been the socket and then identifying exactly why that... dramatic... moment had happened was a job our entire group of technicians focused on. From that day on, we checked the wiring of every single molex connector before ever plugging them in and powering on the PC. I was so glad when they ceased being a commonly used connector (and also when PSUs from reputable brands became common).
Hey Chris, good summary of mobo developments over the years. Those ISA slots take me back!
Look forward to the next one on future of desktop pcs
Man, I’ve got to tell you these videos are some the top notch tutorials on UA-cam. Here are some things that make them so great: great pace, good voice, nice editing, and simple and professional production.
Many thanks.
I stared as a hardware tech over 30 years ago and this was a walk down memory lane. Thanks! I thoroughly enjoyed the stroll!
Hi Chris. Thanks for this. As some others have said, that was a trip down memory lane. I actually remember back further, into the late 70s/early 80s when my Dad bought a Radio Shack TRS-80 II; this computer was pre-DOS, if memory serves, and the (specially written) programmes had to be loaded from a cassette tape. Unbelievable.
I remember the old TRS-80 and the old 51/2 floppy disk to start the computer and other ones for programs.
A very pleasant walk down memory lane there, well explained also to point out what we take for granted today with configuration / setup gotcha's. I joined the PC space late ( due to costs mainly ) so did not have to worry to much about alot of the nasties really early on.
Its also worth a mention as shown in your other video's how pc tech is making into into the SBC arena aka PCI-E and M.2.
Yes, things are blurring. In a few weeks I'll be plugging a PCIe card into an SBC! :)
This was a great walk down memory lane Chris, thank you. I started out with a 16MHz 386-SX, as a very lucky teenager, later getting a maths co-pro for it when I was using a lot of maths software at University. I then built plenty of PCs into the Slot 1 era, after which I started a long spell with Macs. I'm back on Linux now though, and thinking of building myself a custom machine again. So this has been a great watch for me!
Wonderful Chris! Beautifully put together. Thank you for the effort. Looking forward for more of these series :)
People in 1990 be like "But can it play solitaire?"
Too bad Windows Vista can't.
meh we played Wolfenstein, Spear of Destiny and Doom etc. as some of the first games, later on the amazing Duke Nukem came until Quake and 3DFX revolutionezed gaming
There were no windows in 1990. So no in 1990 you can't play solitaire, unless you got some third party dos game.
But can it play Ultima 7 ... darn memory mangers
Windows 3.0 was released May 22, 1990, so then you can use your imagination when earlier versions was released right?
As usual Chris has this uncanny, nay professional method of explaining technology to the average Joe.
I know all this stuff but I'm still watching your videos on Sundays. I must have way too much time on my hands Chris.
I had a P2 233, 32MB RAM and a 4.01 GB HDD back in 98. I overclocked it up to 252 without knowing exactly what I was doing in a time the OC could actually burn the CPU, OC was not a thing in those days so no safety features or safe OC whatsoever. That´s when I felt in love with computers! Thank you for the memory lane trip!!
I still have all of these generations of computers. I even still have my Commodore 128D, and it still works! :) Nice video!
brings back memories I have owed all these motherboards in the past, started building PC's as a kid in the 90's
Nice, stroll through memory lane, back at the time I used to build PCs myself... xD
Nowadays, even with the ressurgence of PC builders, I just buy them ready to use.
Here in Brazil there was a quirk back in the 90s and early 2000s for anyone who lived close to the Paraguayan border - it was waaaay cheaper to buy parts and build your own PC.
That plus me being a tinkerer who broke lots of electronics as a teen and early adult, I'm familiar with a whole ton of stuff Cris is talking about.
I started opening up desktop cases to see what's inside back at PC-XT times... but my first builds were probably back at 386 DXII desktops. I think that went on up 'till Pentium III, which I had a Slot 1 cartridge for. Perhaps a bit longer than that.
From that time on things started getting super complicated on the ram memory side.
There was a transitioning period that had lots of motherboards that were only compatible with certain RAM memory brands and speeds, things got a heck lot more confusing, and worst of all - poorly documented.
So what you effectively had to do (which I did) was talk a lot with people working on stores to know what combination worked and what didn't. As they assembled multiple desktops a day, they knew what worked better and what didn't. They had lots of headaches with assembled desktops coming back from costumers because they weren't working properly.
You gave a base configuration of what you wanted and they took care of matching brands and whatnot so that the build would work.
Things I don't forget from that time... the moment RAM memory prices crashed down, which was almost unbelievable at the time, and the moment RAM memory speeds became a thing, which was the point assembling your own desktop became too complicated - like I said on previous paragraph.
From that point on I never went back to building my own desktops. It doesn't make economical sense anymore these days here in Brazil... difference in price isn't that big anymore, parts are harder to find, and warranty plus paying in installments just makes buying a pre-assembled branded desktop the better choices nowadays.
But the benefits lives on. My current desktop is over 5 yrs old now. I got a Dell. But I put an SSD in it right after buying it, most people didn't even know what it was. And I'll probably replace the aging graphics card and push it for some more years before retiring...
Yeah you can upgrade parts as and when you need to which is the major advantage. PCs last a lot longer than they used to too because they aren't getting much faster now so you can keep using the old one.
Overclocking via dip switch? This is fascinating. I got into PC hardware around 2002, but learning about older motherboards is an experience. Nice video.
Nice trip down memory lane. I didn't get started in PC building professionally until the late Pentium days, but I had to troubleshoot some 386 and 486 along the way. I did notice a couple minor things I hope you don't mind me pointing out, not that anyone getting into retro tech is going to use this as their only source. Around 6:15 it looks like you plug the floppy cable in backwards? Red stripe on the side of the cable usually corresponds with Pin 1 on the connector. Also around 13:30 you talk about the Pentium II 300 being a 100MHz bus with a 3x multiplier - that CPU was actually a 66MHz bus with a 4.5 multiplier. The multiplier was usually locked in the CPU, so attempting to set it to 100x3 might result in an unstable 450MHz accidental overclock.
He was referring to the FSB speed not the CPU, back then you had to do each separately.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane Chris. I remember all of those generations well!
+ExplainingComputers
That slot1 board is quite the rarity! It's an AT form-factor when most slot1 boards were ATX. It also has both AT and ATX power connectors. And yet it also has a USB connector? Very rare combination indeed!
And it feels like only yesterday that I was putting the board in question into my PC! :)
Right? I still vividly remember my first 486.
I was going to mention the same thing - Slot1 was Pentium II era so AT form factor was largely obsolete by then iirc so this is a weird one indeed. In fact I remember my first DIY PC around 1998 and the only reason I chose a Socket 7 AT MB over ATX was the price - in hindsight it meant I couldn't upgrade it a couple of years later due most MBs moving to ATX :( at least ATX has stuck around for a long time with some minor updates!
@@Umski
You're right. The AT spec was on it's way out by then. So that board was really just a stop-gap upgrade path for people who liked their AT case, which a lot of people did.
Not that rare, really. I have two PII motherboards that are strictly ATX, but another that is quite similar to the Gigabyte shown here - a Baby AT with AT and ATX PSU connectors (and a USB header). It's a Totem TM-P2BXAT. The Asus P2B-B is another one. I like those boards because the Baby AT form factor is about the same size as Micro ATX.
With Pentium being nearly 100% AT, and Pentium III being 100% ATX, it's not surprising to find some crossover boards in the generation between.
Computers used to take research to build often with some troubleshooting. When you got upgrades, it would mean more tweaking. Now there is so little chance of things not working as long as you get the basics right. I built a new computer the other day. I spent maybe 15 minutes buying the parts in my local electronics store and it took me probably 15 minutes to put it together. The majority of my time was cable management.
What a trip down memory lane. Thank you for these videos!
Slot 1 and jumpers...I had completely forgot about them. I feel quite proud having built the things back then. That side of things - it never occured that it was difficult, its just how it was. But you had to be careful hey! The tougher jobs were getting early CD writers to work for me. SO many WASTED blank disks!! Cheers for doing this I'm doing a build, first time this century from scratch - its been quite a refresher learning about all the stuff I missed, that I'll never need, like DDR3 and SATA hard drives!
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. It's funny how MB's from the 90's use to have colors like a pack of Skittles and the new ones have a uniform color scheme.
Love your videos, feels like I'm in a university class
Love them too! But most University classes are not that compelling, informative and fun.
I took apart and rebuilt these as a kid. Best way by far to learn about computers, when you play with RAM chips and I/O cards like LEGO ;)
Thanks as always for your videos. I taught A+ certification classes about 15years ago. I would always start off by passing around XT and AT motherboards, processors and co processors, memory types Dips, SIPPs, SIMMs, DiMMs and all sorts of cards and cables so the class understood where we came from and the legacy terminology that persisted. Great times. Love your videos.
The red stripe on the floppy cable should be oriented toward Pin 1 of the floppy header.
That is true! But you still have to know that and get it right . . .
I remember a stage when the connectors had a pin hole blocked or blanked off and the pins had a pin missing to ensure correct orrientation of the connector.
I also remember having to carefully straighten pins on the motherboard with long nose pliers after my friend tried forcing the drive cable in the wrong way.
Yes, blocked out pins were common in the later days of (E)IDE.
I came looking for this! Thanks for setting it straight.
Exactly
Thanks for this upload Chris. I appreciate your time and effort to fit these in. Looking forward to the history of RAM upload in the near future. Keep up the good work.
Great video, I definitely remember some of the early stuff being on my early computers as well as when I was in retail having to keep up with the various tech
Nice to see old names and logos, reminded me of Zalman, i checked them out, they are still in business ... i remember asking some one in early 90s "why do you need a fan for the CPU" because back them all i know is 386 without a fan, just heatsink.
It's like history is repeating itself, today you have the same thing on raspberry pi's and people asking why you need a fan on it. :D
Yeah, in tech almost everything is repeating itself, old debates are new but with different products.
And I prefer those fanless motherboards. For me it's ARM and RISC-V all the way for low-end motherboards with x86 being pushed more and more into the high-end until it will finally disappear like so many other architectures did.
Agreed, i can't wait for ARM or RISC-V to take over desktop.
I miss building the old 386 and 486 PCs. All those jumpers and DIPs meant that one error could fry the whole kit. That anticipation after triple checking and you press the power button to either get a boot up or a popping sound. You just no longer get that same all or nothing gratification.
Seriously though, I do miss having to get everything just so. Nowadays literally anyone can plug and play a system together and it'll work. I'm not saying it'll work well, but it will work. I remember getting the Abit P5Q motherboard. It was the world's first jumperless motherboard and it was amazing in the fact you could just go into the BIOS, set a multiplier or ratio or FSB and reboot for some overclocking goodness. I still have that old system, haha.
Great quick explanation for the uninitiated. This is a good video I can reference people to when I try to explain that things were much more difficult way back when. I'm getting old...
"Nowadays literally anyone can plug and play a system together and it'll work."
I wouldn't be so sure about that. I recently helped a "friend" get his new rig going. He wanted to do it himself, and was pretty hyped about it. He told me later that he thought he'd bricked the thing after spending all that money on it. Turns out he didn't realize that the Ryzen 3 processor he put in was a CPU rather than an APU, which has the GPU integrated so you can use the video headers on the motherboard. He bought a new video card for it, but didn't clue in that he might need it to test with.
I mean, the motherboard has video connectors on it, so it SHOULDN'T need an external video card to test it, RIGHT!? Well, that hasn't been the case for a few years now, and he was beating himself up over thinking that he'd destroyed his machine before he could use it.
Thank you for this video. Now I see how MB's have changed and that I won't be able to use my old cards. It is so much easier to build your own computer now. You brought back a lot of memories, some were good and some were very frustrating. Thank you, Chris.
Wow brings back a lot of memories. My first PC was a 486 (my first gaming rig). Then, a P2 500, a P3 1ghz, P4 2.4Aghz Prescott core, athlon x2 1.4ghz, core2duo e6600 (2.4ghz), core2quad q6600 (2.4ghz), i5 2500k, and finally the i5 6600k. Weird coincidence that I have 3 of Intel's same CPU nomenclature numbers although different eras. I still have all 3, the e6600, q6600, and my current PC with 6600k. By the way, I loved Zalman coolers too, but I could never afford or get one from where I used to live. I remember them topping the old Anandtech charts. Fun fact, I bought the Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120 (TRUE120) which cooled my e6600, q6600, 2500k, and is now mated to my 6600k!! Thanks for this awesome video I totally loved it. Felt kinda old, TBH, but wise too. Kids these days wouldnt know what to do with a jumper, except maybe wear it.
Have you never used the XT with 8088 CPU 4.77 MHz, 2 floppy drives 5.25", no hard drive and monochrome graphics?
You must be very young.
;-)
First PC was also a 486 - had a IBM SLC2/66 processor in it, so not quite as good as the Intel 486s, not to mention a 5-pin DIN keyboard connector instead of PS/2 - but it did have a CD-ROM drive! Just turned 40, so the "5150 and/or XT as home computer" era was a bit before my time, but I do remember playing around with Apple IIs and PS/2s at school prior to owning my first PC, and my dad did have the first model of PS/1 circa 1990, which was always fun to mess around with when I visited :) Of course, I have a Xeon E5-2680 with 32 GB RAM and 20 TB in hard drives (1x8TB & 3x4TB) as my main PC, and a i5-2400 HTPC now, but occasionally I still reminisce about the old days and fire up DOSBox for a bit...
Zalman coolers were the bomb at it's time.
Nope, I started out with 486, which was a big deal at that time. No monochrome screens either buddy. I have used and own several old 5.25" discs as well as 2 drives (IDE, so doesnt play well with modern Pcs). I have read and watched a lot about it, which does not count! You old timers really have done EVERYTHING right? haha. I AM young to be honest, just 35. I could guess your age given your PC stats, but I will just say that you are young at heart :-) Thats all that matters!
500MHz Pentium II...? overclocked...? :)
03:38 _coprocessor_
A term I must have not heard for something like 25 years - thus completely forgot about it. Thank you for reactivating that part of my brain which was unused for so long
Gosh, the weirdest thing to me is seeing how much I had forgotten about hardware, and watching you talk about what I always thought was common knowledge as... history. I feel old : o ).
Brings back memories, I remember building many of these during the 'migration' from AS400 to desktops when I worked at Seven Seas in the late 90's, each one was hand built and configured including a number of Novell Netware servers and a treasured Microsoft Exchange Server. Those were the days. A shout out to any of your subscribers from Seven Seas with thank's for giving me the opportunity to switch from Quality Assurance to PC Support, it was a life-changer. Thanks for sharing Chris.
I learned so much on this channel
Thanks.
Awesome. Very nostalgic to see computer HW from the 90s. Thanks for sharing.
Leave up to gigabyte to put the cpu fan pins over the memory slots.
No that was a third party cooler if a true intel cooler was there that would not occur
Nice presentation once again Chris.
I feel so old now that I watched this because I remember all those boards and some much earlier ones.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane
The first 486 boards were an absolute pain to configure. You had about 40-50 jumpers to set to correctly address things and configure the CPU. Half of those acted as little killswitches, upon first start releasing curious blue smoke if set wrongly. Those really were the pioneering days of PC building.
so a bit like aviation in the early days?
Christopher - thanks for another great video. It was nice to see all those old types of motherboards again. I loved the "here's a PC I'd forgotten I'd got" moment - I'm sure I've had similar moments too :-)
If I remember correctly, the first IBM compatible I owned was an Olivetti PCS 386 that cost me £1399 (with a monochrome monitor and a "free" dot matrix printer) plus another £85 for a mouse, both bought in Evesham Micros, when that was just a little shop in the town of the same name. Later on I upgraded to a colour monitor and added a maths co-processor (liberated from a redundant PC at work).
Amstrad PC's were about £100 less than the Olivetti ones - but I reckoned the extra £100 was a worthwhile investment.
In those days, new PC's came with unformatted hard drives, a manual and a set of install floppies for MS-DOS.
I remember Evesham Micros! :)
Wow !! A trip down memory lane. Loved it
Excellent video and all very well explained.
I've had all those motherboards except the last one at one time or another and only moved from a Pentium 4 3.2Ghz in 2010 to a quad core Phenom. That was very significant at the time.
Good show that brings back lots of memories of the pc's i had way back starting in 1985 and man the pc have come a long way just think what they might look like in the years
I've recently subscribed to your Channel and really enjoy your content. You make learning fun for us who like to know more about the different functions on computers. Hopefully UA-cam will present you with your very own plaque for all the hard effort you put in your videos.
Thanks for your find feedback and the sub. UA-cam sent me a Silver Play Button when I reached 100,000 subs. :)
How nice,... a trip down memory lane. I recognize all of it and of course, since I can't throw away anything... I have plenty of those in my shed.
That is a wonderful trip into the near past, I think I was on the same journey myself, now I wish I had kept all the MB's I went through in my life. I would like to mention about how MB's also gained layers of circuitry throughout their history also along with micro resistors and surface mounting, still a great video!
I had a 386 PC in 1987 ish. Quote from Wikipedia, "The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985". It didn't half seem fast compared to my 286!!
Great episode. Thanks from Orlando
Those "cartridge" CPUs are kinda cool to be honest. Just think how easy upgrading CPU would be, just as easy as changing ram.
I can't believe how much I just enjoyed watching a 20 minute video about motherboards.
:)
I think I just died and went to pc heaven. Really good video from one nerd to another.
You got me thinking of lovely old days.. thank you Chris!
Fun fact about slot CPUs. Intel and AMD were physically compatible, but different electrically. If you plugged one into a board for the other, the CPU would die when you powered up the system.
Yay.
They both used PGA unlike today when they used PGA and LGA for motherboard and cpu.
Pasta Sarmonella E-Specialé are you saying that Slot CPU modules were internally PGA or...?
@@RWL2012 No. He's saying that AMD Slot A and Intel Slot 1 connectors were physically identical - meaning you could physically insert a Slot 1 processor into a Slot A board or vice-versa. However, the pin assignments were different between the two processors. But, great regret and misfortune would betide thee if thou powereth it up. To be fair, though - the retention mechanisms that locked the processor card into the slot made this difficult to do unless you removed the brackets. A few determined but not particularly bright individuals did exactly that, and there was much depression and gnashing of the teeth afterward.
But, while AMD took pains to avoid such tragedy, there were manufacturers who actually set a electrical booby trap that snared many an unwary tech or would-be upgrader. Yes, Dell, I'm speaking of YOU, but you're not the only offender here. Here's the rundown of it:
www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=339053
@@xaenonreply seen and acknowledged :)
I'm sure it has already been mentioned several times in the comments, Chris, but thank you for the trip down memory lane. I am really enjoying the conversations you're having with yourself while you talk about the subject (such as the one that starts at 6:50), whatever it happens to be. Funny stuff.
Rewind just a few years and there are motherboards with individual RAM chips and I/O cards for MFM and RLL hard drives.
I actually have a few anti-static bags on my desk with some RAM chips for one of my vintage computers right now.
I think RLL is used in other technologies, even today, not just MFM hard drives.
yep, i have a 286 with loads of 41256 256k by 1 bit ram chips on it, has hard drive/floppy card plus a multi IO card, and a EGA video card, 5 1/4 inch 20mb (yes, mb, not gb!) hard drive , plus 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 floppies ....still working when last powered up a few years ago! although the psu did go bang once, but i managed to repair it.
yeah that's right, the DIP Packages that you slotted into a Chip Holder
@@andygozzo72 Try locating a supply of those old RAM chips these days if some of them go bad. 74xx series logic is very easy to find, even today, but if you're trying to build replica expansion cards for these old computers, you'll be better off getting one or two newer 1MB RAM chips and your own address decoder than trying to replicate the old memory architecture.
@@BlackEpyon luckily i have a bagfull (200 ish?) each of 4164's or equivalent, and 41256s , plus small numbers of various others... you can still find them on ebay now and again, i've found it hard to get some 74 and 4000 series cmos types!
What a fantastic trip down memory lane (excuse the pun lol). I vividly remember all the trials and tribulations involved in setting up motherboards from yesteryear. You're quite right, we really have got things easy these days. Thanks Chris.
I had just watched your pcie slot video, and was hooked.. I subscribed and went hunting only to find you had already made this vid.. as I said earlier I have been playing with computers since the tandy, commodore days.. and building computers ever since.. I really liked the fact that you have connected all of my old memories into a new form to see the evolution that I was hardly aware of.. It really is fascinating to see it in this light.. I am now going to have go digging into my boxes! I know I still have my old 386 and my 486 (with a cd rom drive) But I have old motherboards, cpus, memory and all the good old stuff.. I will have to get my old 3 & 486 running again I even have the monitor, keyboard and mouse for them.. plus maybe get some cases and build some of the early pentiums back and make a little display of them.. you have rekindled the old fire my friend..and for that I thank you! I am only 66 years of age but I worked and played hard when I was young and as a result have worn my body out and need a simple easy hobbie and you have given me that.. carry on tally ho and TA...
Thanks for the sub!
STARTED WITH AN IBM CLONE 8088T Second hand around 1990. Learned DOS the hard way. Did not have a graphics adapter. So had to enter everthing by file name. Seeing as the DOS shell could not be displayed. Built machines through the 90s. Thanks for the memories. Nice Video
That slot processor thing is new to me....this proves "Every day you learn something new...."
They were rubbish. The AMD slot processors had an issue where if you didn't have enough cooling, they actually de-soldered themselves and slid down the pcb. Then game over....
@@dj_paultuk7052 I had a 300mhz slot Pentium II back in 1997. Later upgraded to 533mhz Celeron, but I needed a slot to socket adapter... That was the fastest I could go on the LX chipset... In the hindsight I should have waited for BX chipset. That was really upgradeable!
@@dj_paultuk7052 this is the best reply regarding AMD that i get 👌....it seems you are one of the victim.
@1ctrlaltdelete1 I wish I kept mine... I had an Intel motherboard.very basic in terms of available settings, but very stable. I'm sure it would have lasted...
@1ctrlaltdelete1 this story makes me feel better. You know what I am using AMD PC with Linux works fine...nothing fancy just UA-cam video editing and web browsing sometime I play cricket game using wine....
....Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
6:20 so true, you just need to see the verge PC build to understand what he meant . Nowadays you can really do everything BUT the recommended way, and it still works!
Progress, I guess
Holy crap that was already two years ago?!
This was very nice and good video for whom who don't know how it was evolved. hats off for the research and keeping those M/B handy.
That first board looked rather familiar, I had a similar one, with an 80386SX-16, and you could use SIMMs in 256KB, 512KB or 1024KB. In the 80386 days, SX referred to the "folded bus" 16bit data bus, rather than the DX with a 32bit data bus. In the 80486 days, the meaning changed, and SX meant the CPU didn't have a built-in Math Co-Processor. My first 486 was an SX that was over clocked, I think it was a 25MHz over clocked to 33MHz. Then I got to try the DX2/66 and I was hooked on the speed boost, LoL!
thanks for making this video, its really cool to look back on pc parts especially parts I will probally never get a chance to use or see. The fact you kept hardware for 30 years is amazing. This is why we subscribe, like, and comment. computers rule!!!
@3:15 even my sub 2USD microcontroller run on 72mhz, and I only use it for blinking an LED
Time flies, my friend.
Another gem of a video from this channel.
Thanks.
My first true IBM style PC was in 1990, an XT clone, no HDs, just twin 5 1/4 floppy drives, one for OS and one for Lotus 123, Wordstar 2000, my C compiler, or whatever game I was playing. I think my CRT colour monitor gave me mild sunburn ...
Mine was my dad's Tandy 1000HX. Based on the IBM PC-Jr, it 's got an Intel 8088-2 @ 8/4.77 MHz with 128KB onbaord RAM and 512 on a card for 640KB total, and 2x 720k floppies. Got it when dad upgraded to an IBM ThinkPad (486-DX 50MHz something something, forget the model). Still have it, and I keep it working for playing old games on.
Well done Chris, enjoyed the journey down memory lane. My first desktop computer was a Packard Bell PB620CD. purchased from Walmart at around $900.00 + Tax I took it out of storage and tried turning it on but the power supply is bad. We have come a long ways haven't we? My second computer was a Dell Optiplex GT150 my wife had purchased for me. Well, till the next video as always, "Enjoy The Adventure." 😀👍✌
Down memory lane ...🙄 Sorry couldn't resist that. What I remember about those early motherboards are IRQ conflicts 🤔😱
The worst experience I had with a PC was with a tape drive, not IRQ conflicts. I just could not get the tape drive to work no matter what I did. I called the company long distance several times. Finally, they told me their tape drive only worked with Intel chipsets, not AMD or Cyrix compatible chipsets. They could have written that on the box before I bought it.
@@Cypherdude1 ha ! They wouldn't sell as many though !🙁
@@Cypherdude1
The same situation with some TV cards. I've spended some hours/days in trying fixing BSOD problems with a PC: TV card, win95 ... Intel CPU and VIA chipset. Solution: Only motherbords with intel BX chipset worked. (WTF)
And... you just reinvigorated a lot of peoples PTSD.
@@youtubasoarus 👹😨😨
Hi Chris, a very nice walk through time. Good show.
Thanks.
If I recall correctly your IDE sockets or headers were also called AT Architecture and then later Parallel AT Architecture to distinguish it from Serial AT Architecture or SATA.
Yes, I think you are correct.
Yes, ATA, UATA and PATA, with the blazing speed of 133MB/s !!!
Thanks a lot for the video really helped me teach one of friends in college about all the older standards for our hardware class. She is an older woman taking the class to enjoy college life ( pre covid-19 I think she dropped until in class picks up) but your explanation was very easy for her and I could fill in the parts she didn't understand easily.
Glad it helped!
Who here remembers when they first started making smaller rounded IDE cables? I remember them being so expensive compared to their flat grey brethren...
I remember paying a great deal for an extra long version of such a cable to use in a large tower PC. :)
I still have two of them.
@@ExplainingComputers I had a tower case like yours for a long time but it got damaged when I bought my new house and moved in. I miss that roomy beast.
It had 5 external bays, 7 internal bays, at 5 1/4" 2 external and 1 internal 3 1/2" bays, it was 33" Internal Height, Can't remember the foot print now but was huge.
Recently I bought an AsRock 4CoreDual-VSTA (L1), excellent for testing components of different generations, certainly my favorite motherboard.😍
Nice video, as always!
Well that blue barrel battery was pretty much an indication on how PC manufacturers clearly designed their PCs to eventually fail due to Planned Obsolescence. You can see how it leaked, like a Zinc Carbon or an Alkaline Battery does when it becomes dry. Sadly the Amiga 500+ had those barrel batteries that caused a leak that made the Amiga motherboard beyond repairs, even those Arcade machines that had used them for SRAM Hi-Score storage. As for the i80386 lacking a fan it didn't seem as powerful as it was for the Pentium II or III, but it be recommended to have a PC case with plenty of circulation as well maybe having a case cooling fan, to prevent excess heat from damaging the Capacitors and melting the solder. But those PowerPC, Motorola 680x0 processors didn't compete well as Steve Jobs ditched the PowerPC for Intel x86 near 2006 for Apple's iMac range.
Those barrel batteries aren't that hard to replace. All you need to do is desolder the 2 connections, remove the battery, and install a new one. Even for a newbie, it would probably take one day's labor, about $6 and would last another 5-10 years. You can buy the barrel battery anywhere. Here's one listing on eBay: "3.6v rechargeable CMOS battery 60mAh (NiCd/NiMH) for vintage motherboards & PLC", Item# 331034570308. Amazon has many different listings, including Varta (made in Germany!) and 2 and 3 pin models. For the *_ONE_* person who reads this and actually needs to replace their barrel battery, I recommend you spend the extra $5 and buy a higher quality rechargeable battery such as the Varta.
Biggest thing I loved about some of the Amiga computers was that upgrading was a relatively easy method of plugging in an accelerator card and installing a library. Expansion port on the bottom of the A1200 was great.
I did have a slot 1 Pentium II 266mhz back in the day as well.
7:27 ... what a tiny netword card ?! Unbelieveable. I stopped working inside Desktop PC around 1997. Soundcards and CD drive could be a nightmare. Burning a CD was an even far more nightmare.
I was surprised to see VGA on the last one!
Great summary, Chris!
A nice bit of nostalgia, though slightly alarming to realise how old I'm getting. [Looks out of window] It used to be all fields round here... I hope I don't forget the video about memory.
it's incredible how we moved in technology so fast. but i love the old hardware from 20th like 486, pentium etc.
Ah, sweet memories.
*(The moment I read "PC motherboards" and "pure retro computing nostalgia" I had to take care of my morning constitutionals and brew fresh coffee; that way I could watch uninterrupted.)
I like this channel. It is like an early 80's computer documentary. Also the host is really serious which helps you focus on the topic. Like the hair though, rocking that Beatles vibe.
Only thing missing was cache chips. Yes, kids, for a time you could buy your CPU and cache separately.
All the way up to the Pentium Pro, you had to buy the cache and tag chips. From the PPro onward, it was "built in" (officially only built in only on the second wave of P3 chips. On the PPro, P2, and first wave of P3, it was actually separate, but on the same substrate as the CPU. The difficulty in inserting/removing the PPro IMHO is why they went to the Slot 1 (probably the cost of the PPro sockets too).
Not just "could" buy them separately, had to. Heck, before the 486, only the really expensive boards had any kind of cache at all. And now modern chips have more cache than older systems had RAM.
evknucklehead LGR has a video on installing cache chips on a 486 and the result being on par with a sizable clock bump - which begs the question, why was cache left as an upgrade option in the first place.
The only way this makes sense to me is that component costs are 5-10x what they are today and this kind of ala carte computer building makes sense.
John, cache chips only became a thing due to the slow speed of RAM. No one anticipated that they'd become important, and they were thought of as more of an upgrade for your memory, rather than your processor. They only got added to the CPU die once RAM got faster and the motherboard interconnect latency between your CPU and cache became the bottleneck.
And funny story, CPU cache killed sales of the PII. Intel released the PII with cache and the first Celeron without cache. The Celeron tanked, so Intel added a little cache to the second Celeron and suddenly, once overclocked, it kicked the PII's arse. Everyone said they had a PII back in the day, but watch their systems boot and most of them were running Celerons.
it was less a problem with cost, and more a problem with die area. Take a look at the Pentium Pro for instance. The cache die was huge. The Pentium 2 and early Pentium 3 (Slot 1) still had to have the cache on a separate chip. Static RAM has only with modern shrinks become practical in any large amounts. No matter how you look at it, you still require six transistors for each bit of static RAM.
A very interesting video, where have all the years gone? My first PC bought in the late 1980's was an 8086 from NESS (long gone). When I started using ORCAD I had to have a mouse, no connector of course in those days and I bought a Microsoft Mouse with interface card for £110!! The last mouse I bought a couple of years ago was £3 from Ebay. Bob
Single board computers are great pc innovations so they must be in here.But, good job chris