Episode Links! Part 1: ua-cam.com/video/ylCUulJf-eI/v-deo.html - The Packard Bell Arrives Part 2: ua-cam.com/video/mqijq_A3Z2E/v-deo.html - Testing and Cleaning Inside Part 3: ua-cam.com/video/mwZKLWxcCCA/v-deo.html - Finding a Working Monitor Part 4: ua-cam.com/video/Ob7BtOjK0Bk/v-deo.html - Plastic Fantastic Part 5: Coming soon
I worked at a computer store in the late 90s as a repair tech. We replaced so many of those combo modem/sound cards in Packard Bells that came in. The primary reason was that they'd get fried through the phone line due to a lightning strike during a thunderstorm. Owners would be pretty upset when we had to break the news that they needed both a new modem *and* sound card!
I remember attempting to find the drivers for the sound/modem card to do a fresh install - they were a nightmare to find separately and had to using the restore CD with all its bloat, ugh.
We sold hundredsof those combo modems in the shop where I worked also as a tech. Some of th were almost as difficult to install the drivers on as he combo graphics on some "modern" laptops.
@@rimmersbryggeri That reminds me of the dirt-cheap sound cards (can't remember any details but I assume they were the cheapest on the market at the time) my school bought in 1998 to upgrade the job lot of used 486 machines they'd bought from a bank. The teacher responsible for buying the cards claimed he'd gotten one working in his son's machine but I certainly never saw/heard one working, no matter how hard I tried. They didn't work in the Windows 95 install the school technician had done and I definitely never got them working in DOS and Windows 3.1 even though they claimed to be SB compatible.
@@Ragnar8504 The computers we sold at home we always used opl3/4 cards thy were about $20 at the conversion rate of today when we started and about $15 when soundcars became mostly integrated. SOme times one of our chinesefriends bough a container of Aureal Vortex (Turtle beach) cards and sold them at about $10 to friends but those were not as good when it came to SB/AdLib support and they were also not proper turtle beach synth cards which was what you really wanted at that time. I think I had one until there was a fire in my storage unit last november though.
I used to work in a Comp USA tech shop repairing Packard Bell and other systems back in the day. Brings back memories. In my case, they aren't pleasant memories.
All of these old machines deserve to be treated well and in the hands of collectors. It's all getting rare and expensive, even for what was regarded as crappy back in the day.
One nice thing about you and your channel is you treat every classic as a classic, they all being the memories, they are all worth saving one example of anyway. Thank you!
This video gave me a massive flood of nostalgia. I grew up in Canada and saw this machine everywhere -- I remember playing Worms 2 on my friend's machine, and I remember them packing the computer lab at summer camp (where we played The Island of Dr. Brain). I somehow distinctly remember the color being the same yellowed disgusting shade as your video, even during the '90s. Perhaps the process was accelerated by slimy hands and sun exposure.
My first computer was a Packard Bell 486sx/33. I had wished for a Mac but I’m sure the Circuit City sales guy did a good job telling my dad how much he could save getting the PB instead. It was loaded with Windows For Workgroups and a bunch of office and multimedia software. I ended up loving that PC and used it for many years. I recently found and restored a very similar one. It makes me smile when I see it.
This is absolutely my era of machine. My parents had one almost exactly like this that my Dad and I used to mess around with when I was a young teen. Very nostalgic and makes me realise how far we have come. Some of my colleagues at work weren't born when these machines were built. I had a 'I'm old' moment when I had to explain DIP switches and Jumpers the other day - i'm not even 40 yet!
My first IBM PC was a PB with a 486 SX 33Mhz. I learned so much messing around there which became the foundation of my eventual career. Certainly a near and dear place in my heart, these PB machines.
This was one of my first family PCs. Had a amiga beforehand but this is the one I have the most memories of. Had the matching monitor with the speaker 'ears'.
I used to mock these systems back then because it was during the era that I'd started actually building my own PCs bit by bit, but now I love revisiting these static time capsules of the era. It was such an exciting time for PC gaming, particularly as it became feasible to play 3D games at unprecedently playable framerates after many years of just normalizing that 3D was supposed to be slow and choppy. Really glad you're shining a spotlight on this stuff and that stinger put a smile on my face
Same. Ive developed a fondness for old OEM PCs that I scoffed at back then, being an avid DIYer. They are exactly that - time capsules. I used to thrash them based on their “proprietary hardware” and “lack of upgradeability” but none of that matters now, and they’re often not as locked down as I thought. And since the entire thing is designed as a system, they’re sometimes better designed, thermally and space-efficiently, than anything I could’ve built.
Agreed. They were the friends and family computer I got stuck going over and trying to fix only to find out 87 programs were competing in the startup folder for dominance each boot. But none of that matters now for some reason and I love seeing them brought back to life.
I remember these, as a teenager in the mid-/late 90s I did a lot of "IT support" and many had Packard Bell system like this... not always the smoothest experience troubleshooting these (most of the time the included multimedia software was the culprit) 😅
I love my old tech & I dismantle, clean & rebuild & I can see you're care, attention & respect for anything you work on. You are a true 5 star old tech surgeon 😊 Old tech was built to last, before big greedy businesses of today started to find they could make things cheaper than the previous generations with a user life expectancy of 3 to 4 years when the machines you work on will still be alive & kicking long after you are gone from this earth.😊 I'd choose 3d acceleration over software rendering any day! I was trying to find part 2, then I realised, you posted this video 1 day ago, so you haven't made it yet🤣
I had this very PC as my first pentium based system. I had p200 mhz, 2gb hdd, 128mb of ram, a 24x CD rom, a voodoo 2 card, a FM tuner card and a Sony 17” monitor. It gave me several years of joy.
This was my 2nd home computer. The first was an Apple IIe. But then we got this in my early teens with Windows 3.11 and DOS 3 on it and I spent many, _many_ hours playing Doom and VidGrid and Hexen on it. It was also the first computer I went on the internet with on AOL 2.5 and Prodigy. Mine had a Packard Bell branded monitor with speakers that attached to the side of it. It was the family computer so my mom spent a lot of time doing desktop publishing and working on her files in Family Tree Maker. I also spent a lot of time fixing this computer, taking it apart, and learning about it. This machine (and the Apple) are the reason I got so interested in computers at an early age and made them my career. Thanks for featuring this machine and saving it. I'm in Florida but I know it was sold globally so I'm hoping to find one I can also restore.
My very first was a Multimedia something, but from 1997, and with a P233 MMX, 32MB SDRAM, 3.2GB HDD, 2MB video, non hardware accelerated, some various sound card baked in to the mobo, can't recall which... But this was the machine that really got me going... Only had a Mac Plus until then, a decked out one, but that was it... This was where I first got inside of a machine, popping in an STB Velocity Riva 128, with 4MB video memory!!! Woooo.... But, that was life changing to be honest... playing MTM2 with actual D3D rendering, it was incredible. Seeing so many games in a whole new light. From there it was the first self built, voodoo 3 2000, then the 3000, then the 3500, then a V5 5000, then Abit BP6 with dual cpus, TEC cooling, Water cooling on top of the TEC's, towers just for PSU's, transmission coolers, surgical tubing, lol... it got carried away. VP6 came after that, more dual cpu's... more TEC's.... Lot's of randomness in between... computer shows and sales, laptops, builds for others to sock money away to get some exotic thing for mine... and I was but a kid. In 97 with that first Packard Bell I was 12... And though the flame was already well lit, it went on to just dump gas onto it, igniting a great fire. All this time later, and I've dialed it back for sure, time sorta did that on its own though. The tech world will never be what it was through the 90's-00's, no more shows and sales, no more ground breaking anything, and very little tech lust. Most of that is for the old stuff now. . .
Very fond of this era of PC. Whilst I was really too young to understand the hardware at the time, our family computer was a very similar model to this one and now that I’m 32 I’ve acquired quite a few!
I had a computer repair shop in the late 90s and early 2000s. We gave them names like Packard "Hell" or Packard "Smell". I personally loved mine, still have it and still sit in front of it on occasions.
I have a Packard Bell 486 system in my storage. It wasn't a screaming fast system, it wasn't my first system, but it was a competent system and, 30 years later, it's an iconic piece of computer history that has all of its original parts , including the monitor and side-mount speakers.
"oh my god I remember that..." - it was working on these day in day out as a Technician at PC World (1996 to 98) that put me off PCs for good. Good luck getting that answer machine working!
One of my very first computers as a kid was a Packard Bell, it had a Pentium much as this one does, but I never had really any issues with it, I loved it and used it until it could no longer keep up with current tech and sent it down the way to some kid to continue using it to learn as his first computer, I know they're not super special computers but compared to even eMachines here in the US, Packard Bell had a special place for helping get more of America connected. Glad to see another one being shown some love Neil.
Used to fix these when I was working in a computer shop in 1995 to 2002. We called them Packard Hell. They where a massive pain to work on but boy did they sell a truck load of them.!
Our Packard Bell 486/DX2 was the first Windows machine in our house, coming from the Amiga 500 was a bit of a shift, but I remember so much Doom, Heretic and AOL. I have a picture at the desk with it from back in the day. Good memories
My first Windows-compatible PC was a Packard Bell built in May 1997. It had a Pentium 233 with 2 mb of onboard video memory and I only could afford to upgrade it to 64mb of Edo Ram, because Edo Ram was fantastically expensive costing 1400 dollars (USA) to upgrade it to the full 128mb maximum capacity. Despite being the lowliest of the low for PCs, I had a blast pushing its limits upgrading all the way up to Windows 2000 and using the computer as a home server for four computers. Thanks for bringing back some memories.
I only remember pc's due to the Amiga vs PC vibe in that period. I never really took part in that, but when I visited a "friends" house to see the pc in action, I wasn't that impressed. Not only not by the games, but also the soul-less-ness of it. I didn't follow much news on my system and happily used it till 1998! :)
I still have mine in the loft. I remember fitting an early Voodoo 3Dfx card in it to play Need for speed. It was a trial I got in a magazine. I played that trial to death :)
My mum's first PC was a Packard Bell 486SX-25. I had fun adding upgrades like a Pentium Overdrive 83mhz and sound blaster sound card / CD kit and more memory. Good times indeed.
My first PC was a Packard Bell 486sx 25 with 1 MB RAM in the same case. I upgraded the CPU to a 486DX4-100 with 4 MB of RAM. Then the keyboard stopped working. There was a tiny fuse on the motherboard that had blown. I quick short with a piece of ethernet wire and I was back in business. Eventually it was superseded with a new motherboard, processor and RAM but I used the same case. It finally went to PC heaven in 1999 after giving me 5 years of relatively reliable service. The legacy continues though. All of the devices in my home have a girl's name and the primary server is always called Phoebe, an extension on PB for Packard Bell. Sad, I know but it makes me smile.
I have a lot of nostalgia for old Packard Bell machines like this. My childhood PC was a Packard Bell Legend with a 486SX 25mhz processor and later we had on like this. I'm not sure if it was this same model but the case was the same. Packard Bell computers were sold in all of the department stores here in the states. I really enjoyed this 😃
I loved Packard Bells. They honestly weren't the worst machines out there despite what critics would say. I am glad you are giving this the love it deserves. However, at this stage in life, I would say if a PC managed to survive this long, it should be given the chance to continue to live, even if it wasn't a machine one particularly didn't enjoy.
Sticking a Voodoo 2 in my old Pentium 133 IBM Aptiva is one of my fondest PC memories, going from playing Quake 2 with the software rendering to 3D accelerated with coloured lighting is a moment I will never forget.
My first computer was a Packard Bell Pentium II computer. I'll never forget the memories wither playing Doom & Quake for the first time, or the old days with Napster, and lets not forget the REAL player and MusicMatch
I'm from the US, and got out of highschool in 2000, but for 3 years I took Computer Network Technologies classes, and my school system here in S. Carolina used a combo of Gateway, DELL, and Packard Bell systems, and part of our lab work, was taking on the task of fixing some of the machines to take off some of the load of the county's IT department, and I can tell you now from experience, to just yank that fake sound blaster/modem card out, and toss it, to save yourself a lot of headache due to driver, and IRQ problems, we always ended up replacing them with A sound Gold, or Express sound cards that used Yamaha chips, and called it a day.
I worked for the Packard Bell support team at PC Service Call in Nottingham for the DSG (Dixons, Currys and PC World) for 4.5 years. While this model predates my time there, our extended warranty meant I had to deal with many of its ilk. An interesting footnote in PBs history is that Microsoft came down on them much harder than other manufacturers when it came to anti-piracy measures. To use the recovery discs, there were several measures put in place. Firstly, there was some code hidden in an unused section of the hard drives partition data that contained details telling the recovery media what versions of Windows to install, along with what optional software. This also had to match code what was flashed into the BIOS. If you replaced the HDD, the recovery media would not work without running a special command called "EXTHS /restore". This would flash the relevant data to both, but required a special code to complete that we had to get directly from PBs systems using their SONSYS. If customers had their HDDs replaced, we would have to guide them through this process over the phone, and generate said code. If they did not select the EXACT options we told them to, at the end, the code our systems generated would not match what their computer was expecting. I once had to do this with a 98 year old Polish lady. I managed it, but byt the time I finished, I was curled up under the desk. This is just one of the many stories I could tell.
For a year or so, I was an authorized Packard Bell service technician. The mom-and-pop shop where I worked examined multiple income streams, and third-party support was one of those streams. We were authorized for some Dell systems, some HP printers, and the Packard Bell. This equated usually to a set fee (for us and was per job, not per hour), OEM parts, and OEM training. Packard Bell reputation took a huge hit when they were found to be using refurbished parts in systems tauted as "new".
My first (and only) Packard Bell was one with this same basic case with a Pentium 75 in it. It was a real dissapointment in how slow it was considering I was upgrading from a 486DX2-66 to a Pentium 75 but even so, I am very much enjoying this. Thank you!
Thank you from the U.S. This was my first computer at around 8. We even had the monitor with the speakers on the side. Good memories of 1998 and 99. I struggled to get Duke Nukem 3d installed and was so happy when I finally did. I used to search Yahoo! for webrings about my favorite games and anime. Looking on ebay for cool things I couldn't afford. Good times...
My first PC was a Pentium 2 version of this PC with the exact same case, monitor, keyboard, etc. Many great memories; I played through link to the past in zsnes for the first time on it as well as the PC version of Sonic CD. It was a hand-me-down from my brother who worked at an electronics shop at the time. He's since passed away and this brought back some happy memories.
Thanks for this one. I had that model except it had a Pentium 90 in it. Bought it after leaving the Military to goto College. Brings back some memories.
Our first computer was a Sanyo 8088 with 640K and a 16MB hard drive that we bought at a computer store in Barrie, Ontario. We strung that along for god damned ever until I finally managed to convince my parents, via a presentation printed and submitted to them, to buy a new computer at the Canex, which turned out to be a Packard Bell 486 SX/25 with CDROM drive and 4MB of RAM and a 400MB Hard drive. Amazing. Came with a bunch of multimedia CDs like The Animals and an Encyclopedia. Blown away.
I never owned a Packard Bell PC, as when they were popular I was building my own computers. However, I look forward to your adventure as you restore this one.
@@dennisp.2147 You definitely need Windows 3.11 with the Navigator! And the speakers! I was lucky enough to find the same model at the recycler's we had when I was a kid (Legend 410CD), and then a few weeks later a matching monitor showed up in my shop! We allow customers to drop of their old stuff for recycling, and I "recycled" that monitor straight to my basement! Unfortunately, the speakers were missing :(
Hi Neil, great video which brings back fond memories! Our first home PC was a Packard Bell Pentium 75 with 850MB HD and a whopping 8MB of memory running Windows 95. I later added an additional 16MB of memory and over clocked the CPU to make it run similar to a P90 by flipping a dip switch on the main board (there should be a clock multiplier and a bus speed setting if I remember correctly). Those speakers on the side of the monitor are actually screwed in with 2 screws each - they even supplied a special long metal bar with a screw thread so you could install them more easily. Some time later I reinstalled our machine with Windows 98 and, from what I remember, the Aztec sound card worked well enough (ours was just a sound card, no fax) both in Windows and for DOS games. We made do with the Cirrus Logic integrated graphics which were decent for all the games of the time that we played (Mech Warrior 2, Wing Commander 1 - 4, Sim City, etc.) Good times! The machine itself had decent build quality and was heavily used for many years by both me and my brother for gaming and school / university coursework, easily lasting more than 10 years. It finally got put out to pasture due to lack of use in 2010 as part of a house move... though I was sad to see the old girl go
the LAST desktop PC that I bought was also the FIRST desktop PC that I bought, namely a Packard Bell 80286 c. 1990. All of my subsequent desktop PCs were built from parts. I think this is why I have zero nostalgia for 1990s PCs. The only PC I have a little nostalgia for is that first Packard Bell, so I really appreciate this 😄
I’ve literally just bought one of these on eBay, albeit a 486 model. It has the PB450 motherboard, which is actually a bit of a gem! External cache support, expandable Cirrus Logic video memory, 2x IDE, 5x ISA and an aftermarket bios upgrade supporting 128MB RAM and 8GB HDDs. I couldn’t say that for most machines of 1994/5!
Enjoy, that was my exact childhood pc - £1000 iirc my dad paid. Was 14 at the time. 486 SX-2 50, 4mb on board ram. Win 3.11. Over the years i pushed it as far as it would go, played it every day and eventually wrote my dissertation on it. Ultimately it had the full 36MB ram allowed plus a pentium overdrive (P24T) for shits and giggles as you needed an interposer that actually disabled the L2 cache 😂 ran win95 though and was my first foray onto the internet with 56k modem. The Sound16A sound card was SBpro2 compatible and was pretty sweet in Dos games. I still have the system to this day and still going!!
I remember CD speeds. They started off as single speed, dual speed, and then quad speed, but towards the mid-90's the speed branding became pure fiction. 32x, indeed😀
Ah, yes, I remember. Super fast! 52x speed! (small print: for like the last 2% of data at the very edge of a 100% full disc) And even like that they'd still sound like they were trying to shake your computer apart, and if they were cheap CDRs with manufacturing imperfections you had a good chance of them grenading in the drive.
Oh those speeds are real! I have had at least three or four disks "explode" inside a drive when they spin up to full speeds. Incredibly loud and really hard to clean up CD pieces!
I had a 166 MMX version of this around the same time, never understood the hate for these machines , i won a lot of 8- 233 MMX chips and 32 meg of ram for 25 bucks at a local auction, added a PCI vid card to it , that machine lasted me for years extremely reliably, was one of my favourites. I would love to have one of these again
My first PC was similar to the one you are restoring. It was a Pentium 60 version of the Packard Bell. I only paid £200 for it in 1997 - It was the full setup, not just the PC. One of the pins on the CPU had snapped. The seller had bought a P133 to upgrade the P60 (which was a different socket). Upon realising this, he incorrectly put the P60 back in and snapped the pin. It was a very quick fix. As a bonus, he included the P133 in the deal at no extra cost. I sold the P60 machine to my then father-in-law for £450 a few months later and built my own machine around the P133
I have a near identical system I recently picked up for free, yellowed case and all. Mine worked right out of the 'trash' and I just did a minor clean up. very excited to see this series and what becomes of it!
I Love it! I used to sell these in the US working at Best Buy. I sold a TON of these from '94 - '98. There were several competitors to Best Buy from CompUSA and Circuit City, and Packard Bell offered slightly different models to each store so people couldn't directly comparison shop. They were pretty innovative for their time, color coding the cords and ports in the system and including a large color fast start poster as soon as you opened the box. My big complaint with the performance of the system was the lack of any system cache memory. Keep up the Series!
I had a similar Packard Bell as my first PC (I don't remember the exact model.) I still love the visual design of them. That bluey grey bit is lovely to me for some reason.
My cousin had the 1994 model that came with the single speed CDROM that used a plastic caddy. My first 'Multi-media' PC was an Amstrad 486 with 4MB RAM, 2200MB HDD and 4X CD-ROM and speakers. I remember being blown away by Star Wars Rebel Assault and the Grolier Multi-media Encyclopaedia (with super grainy FMV!).
I had the exact model, certainly the case matches what we had, and I recall it was a Pentium 133MHz. It will be great to watch this trash to treasure series
Great Video, I had one of these as a teenager it was my first pc, I upgraded from an amiga 1200. It was brought from Dixons for £1650 I soon started to upgrade the ram and storage about year later added a 3dfx card when it first was released, came with turok dinosaur hunter bundled game. I also upgraded the processor with an intel overdrive chip which took it from 120mhz to 180mhz with mmx if I remember. neil try to get one of these overdrive chips
In these weird desktops with riser cards, there is so much potential for upgrades. Yes, 3DFX but then try to change the CPU multiplier. It should take a Pentium 200 or Overdrive MMX 200. 180Mhz is not terrible.
I'm in Canada - we had a slightly newer Packard Bell model with very much the same design language, purchased in late 1998 super cheap on clearance as a French-conversion kit (so it was a normal English machine, with the normal English software, but a set of stickers to apply to the keyboard and mostly French manuals lol). It was a tower model, Pentium 233MMX, 64MB of RAM, onboard 2MB S3 video and Yamaha OPL3-SAX sound, and the same 14" monitor with the side speakers that sounded surprisingly good. The software ours came with that I remember included Encarta 98, G-Nome, and Little Howie's Math & Word Adventures. Ours was solid until the PS/2 ports started to fail. It was in use up until about 2003 or 4.
Even though this not being a computer I care about (INTEL OUTSIDE FOREVER) I still love watching it. The perfect format with history and tech! Love this trash to treasures. Looking forward to the murder gloves!
I moved from an Amiga 500+ to a Packard Bell tower - 350mhz PII, 64mb RAM. It was a great, reliable machine and like a few others in the comments, I learnt a lot from it. It came with a box of PB branded games, like Blade Runner on DVD. I put a Voodoo3 2000 AGP in it and it played whatever I needed it to, until I built a new AMD 1.33 Thunderbird a few years later.
man i love this so much, my grandparents had a US model i swear that was identical to the unit you have in this video. some of my earliest memories working with a pc was on that packard bell
Thank you so much for posting this video Neil. This does take me back to my first home PC back in 1995, specifically the original Pentium 60 MHz of the Packard Bell range ( I can’t remember the model exactly, but it was the same as a Legend CD68). Fond memories playing DOS games and learning how to use memmaker, to free up enough conventional memory to launch the game AND have sound. Getting the warm fuzzies from seeing this indeed.
Please leave in as much of the Packard Hell experience with the completed machine. That soundcard/modem is the source of so many frustrated teenage memories.
I am with you on this. My late first wife had one of these and used it to get to know me by asking me to repair it. Over a few years I upgraded RAM, disk, monitor, and some non-pentium CPU (Evergreen?) and added a NIC. The FM card was total trash as it was unscreened and just picked up RF noise from inside the case. The speakers were powered by an external power brick which is the only part I still have. If yours doesn't work, I can donate. Keep up the good work.
Plenty nostalgia here for me. My first pc was a few years later than this, and was thrown together from random parts so I certainly can't re-buy it, but this was very typical for the time and I remember seeing a lot of systems like this.
These ol' beige boxes much more interesting than clear lit up monoliths. Would happily rip guts out and put a high end system inside while keeping the aesthetic
This was the first PC I ever used and the computer I used to learn Windows and I was hooked. I must have been maybe 7 years old and I was playing Heroes of Might and Magic 2 on this many years later. I wish I still had it.
I used to sell these!!!! ‘95 or so was my era working at Dixons and we would easily sell around 10 on a Saturday! Customers (Dads) would bring the family in to justify spending over 2k on one of these and a canon bj10ex printer trying to convince the other half it would be great for the kids homework. “And if you take the 5yr coverplan I’ll give you this rather fetching blue rubberised mouse mat…”
"Not a good pc..." This was my first PC!! P75, 850mb conner HDD and a 4 speed cd-rom. The built in graphics were only 2mb iirc, the monitor was a 14" with the speakers bolted to the side of it, but I loved it :) Those 2 un-populated sockets are part of the video memory and I was given a dead stick of memory by someone and the chips on it looked almost identical to the ones soldered down next to those sockets. So I managed to unsolder 2 chips from the dead memory, they are surface mounted not through pin, and popped them into those empty sockets and hey presto, I now had 4 meg of memory :D That was the first of many upgrades I did to that PC before building a completly new one myself.
It's amazing to me that while we bemoaned the performance and cheap-ness of these systems back in the day, they are actually worth something to us today. Between the nostalgia and the fact modern systems just can't give you that same childhood experience no matter how much you can emulate, they do have value. I would love to build a vintage hardware collection of my own, but I just don't have the space or budget now. I used to have a collection of parts but it was only shortly after the hardware was "modern" for the time. I wish I still had that stuff, but in a combination of my own stupidity and my life turning upside-down, I left it behind in a move...
My first computer I bought was a Packard Bell PC in 1997. Something similar to that model. Cost me about $1000 with the computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, and a canon inkjet printer.
Our first family PC was that era of Packard Bell. We had the Tower Version with a 133mhz Pentium. I don't remember it's specs out of the box, but I know at one point it was upgraded to like 32MB or somewhere thereabout. I definitely remember ours having that same exact Modem/Soundcard. Definitely played a lot of games on that machine, but nothing heavy as I was more into console games. I usually played a bunch of kids edutainment and educational games on it, though I definitely played a good amount of Rollercoaster Tycoon on it. Though it started to really chug when a LOT was going on in your park. So many good memories with that machine. I never remember having any driver issues at all.
Our first family PC was a Pentium 60 in late 1995 and about a year later I got a Pentium 200 for myself. Just a few weeks later the MMX Pentiums came out. That was a crazy time. You'd have to upgrade your PC every few months to take advantage of the newest games.
I remember this computer, a friend's family had it. We were lucky enough to have a "Gateway 2000" 166Mhz PC in 1996 (later, they dropped the "2000" and just called it "Gateway" lol).
So looking forward to the next part. Brings back so many memories of the early pcs that I so wanted but couldn't afford Remember looking in pc world and wishing I had the money to buy one
An archival focus on the purely rare and exceptional is how you end up with massive gaps in the historic record - as slowly the domestic and the mundane slips beyond rarity.
Back in the 90s my father would typically be asked by friends and family to fix their computers and electronics. He hated when they would show up with an amstrad, compaq or packard Bell system. The latter quickly being nicknamed packed hell. This was mostly due to the proprietary nature of such machines and the complications this brought to repair them. Often it was simply easier for him to assemble an entire new machine as the cost of replacing the proprietary parts could be significantly worse than standard parts. This does bring back memories though of that era and makes me wish I still had my pentium 133 system which lasted me well into the early 2000s until I could afford to upgrade.
![АЛАУДИНОВ у Скабеевой: эти их ВСУ нас НЕ ДОГОНЯТ 😁 [Пародия]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/an0anqU4WGQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Episode Links!
Part 1: ua-cam.com/video/ylCUulJf-eI/v-deo.html - The Packard Bell Arrives
Part 2: ua-cam.com/video/mqijq_A3Z2E/v-deo.html - Testing and Cleaning Inside
Part 3: ua-cam.com/video/mwZKLWxcCCA/v-deo.html - Finding a Working Monitor
Part 4: ua-cam.com/video/Ob7BtOjK0Bk/v-deo.html - Plastic Fantastic
Part 5: Coming soon
The playlist is all out of order.
What's up with the playlist being out of order?
Any retro PC cleaning and restoration is interesting. It doesn't really matter if it's a high end model, or a potato. The fun is in the journey.
Never has a truer word been said
I worked at a computer store in the late 90s as a repair tech. We replaced so many of those combo modem/sound cards in Packard Bells that came in. The primary reason was that they'd get fried through the phone line due to a lightning strike during a thunderstorm. Owners would be pretty upset when we had to break the news that they needed both a new modem *and* sound card!
I remember attempting to find the drivers for the sound/modem card to do a fresh install - they were a nightmare to find separately and had to using the restore CD with all its bloat, ugh.
We sold hundredsof those combo modems in the shop where I worked also as a tech. Some of th were almost as difficult to install the drivers on as he combo graphics on some "modern" laptops.
@@rimmersbryggeri That reminds me of the dirt-cheap sound cards (can't remember any details but I assume they were the cheapest on the market at the time) my school bought in 1998 to upgrade the job lot of used 486 machines they'd bought from a bank. The teacher responsible for buying the cards claimed he'd gotten one working in his son's machine but I certainly never saw/heard one working, no matter how hard I tried. They didn't work in the Windows 95 install the school technician had done and I definitely never got them working in DOS and Windows 3.1 even though they claimed to be SB compatible.
@@Ragnar8504 The computers we sold at home we always used opl3/4 cards thy were about $20 at the conversion rate of today when we started and about $15 when soundcars became mostly integrated. SOme times one of our chinesefriends bough a container of Aureal Vortex (Turtle beach) cards and sold them at about $10 to friends but those were not as good when it came to SB/AdLib support and they were also not proper turtle beach synth cards which was what you really wanted at that time. I think I had one until there was a fire in my storage unit last november though.
I used to work in a Comp USA tech shop repairing Packard Bell and other systems back in the day. Brings back memories. In my case, they aren't pleasant memories.
All of these old machines deserve to be treated well and in the hands of collectors. It's all getting rare and expensive, even for what was regarded as crappy back in the day.
I guess it was just me, but the section set to driving techno beats where you listed out the questionable features was pure comedic gold 😂
It was hilarious to me as well
I loved it too 🤣
I almost spit out my drink! LOL!!!!
@@JenniferinIllinois No. No you didn't.
@@FlyboyHelosim How do you know?
One nice thing about you and your channel is you treat every classic as a classic, they all being the memories, they are all worth saving one example of anyway. Thank you!
This video gave me a massive flood of nostalgia. I grew up in Canada and saw this machine everywhere -- I remember playing Worms 2 on my friend's machine, and I remember them packing the computer lab at summer camp (where we played The Island of Dr. Brain). I somehow distinctly remember the color being the same yellowed disgusting shade as your video, even during the '90s. Perhaps the process was accelerated by slimy hands and sun exposure.
My first computer was a Packard Bell 486sx/33. I had wished for a Mac but I’m sure the Circuit City sales guy did a good job telling my dad how much he could save getting the PB instead. It was loaded with Windows For Workgroups and a bunch of office and multimedia software. I ended up loving that PC and used it for many years. I recently found and restored a very similar one. It makes me smile when I see it.
I enjoy seeing old hardware restored and upgraded, it’s amazing how much one can squeeze out from these old machines!
This is absolutely my era of machine. My parents had one almost exactly like this that my Dad and I used to mess around with when I was a young teen.
Very nostalgic and makes me realise how far we have come. Some of my colleagues at work weren't born when these machines were built. I had a 'I'm old' moment when I had to explain DIP switches and Jumpers the other day - i'm not even 40 yet!
My first IBM PC was a PB with a 486 SX 33Mhz. I learned so much messing around there which became the foundation of my eventual career. Certainly a near and dear place in my heart, these PB machines.
I had a 94 PB as my first PC :)
Learnt so much on it and have worked in IT ever since. Best investment I ever made :)
This was one of my first family PCs. Had a amiga beforehand but this is the one I have the most memories of. Had the matching monitor with the speaker 'ears'.
Good to see this getting saved! Just like all old cars, & clothes, all old computers deserve to be saved.
My first computer was a Packard Bell CD20. So many great memories with that old machine.
I used to mock these systems back then because it was during the era that I'd started actually building my own PCs bit by bit, but now I love revisiting these static time capsules of the era. It was such an exciting time for PC gaming, particularly as it became feasible to play 3D games at unprecedently playable framerates after many years of just normalizing that 3D was supposed to be slow and choppy. Really glad you're shining a spotlight on this stuff and that stinger put a smile on my face
Same. Ive developed a fondness for old OEM PCs that I scoffed at back then, being an avid DIYer. They are exactly that - time capsules.
I used to thrash them based on their “proprietary hardware” and “lack of upgradeability” but none of that matters now, and they’re often not as locked down as I thought.
And since the entire thing is designed as a system, they’re sometimes better designed, thermally and space-efficiently, than anything I could’ve built.
Agreed. They were the friends and family computer I got stuck going over and trying to fix only to find out 87 programs were competing in the startup folder for dominance each boot. But none of that matters now for some reason and I love seeing them brought back to life.
I remember these, as a teenager in the mid-/late 90s I did a lot of "IT support" and many had Packard Bell system like this... not always the smoothest experience troubleshooting these (most of the time the included multimedia software was the culprit) 😅
I love my old tech & I dismantle, clean & rebuild & I can see you're care, attention & respect for anything you work on. You are a true 5 star old tech surgeon 😊
Old tech was built to last, before big greedy businesses of today started to find they could make things cheaper than the previous generations with a user life expectancy of 3 to 4 years when the machines you work on will still be alive & kicking long after you are gone from this earth.😊
I'd choose 3d acceleration over software rendering any day!
I was trying to find part 2, then I realised, you posted this video 1 day ago, so you haven't made it yet🤣
I had this very PC as my first pentium based system. I had p200 mhz, 2gb hdd, 128mb of ram, a 24x CD rom, a voodoo 2 card, a FM tuner card and a Sony 17” monitor. It gave me several years of joy.
This was my 2nd home computer. The first was an Apple IIe. But then we got this in my early teens with Windows 3.11 and DOS 3 on it and I spent many, _many_ hours playing Doom and VidGrid and Hexen on it. It was also the first computer I went on the internet with on AOL 2.5 and Prodigy. Mine had a Packard Bell branded monitor with speakers that attached to the side of it. It was the family computer so my mom spent a lot of time doing desktop publishing and working on her files in Family Tree Maker. I also spent a lot of time fixing this computer, taking it apart, and learning about it. This machine (and the Apple) are the reason I got so interested in computers at an early age and made them my career. Thanks for featuring this machine and saving it. I'm in Florida but I know it was sold globally so I'm hoping to find one I can also restore.
My very first was a Multimedia something, but from 1997, and with a P233 MMX, 32MB SDRAM, 3.2GB HDD, 2MB video, non hardware accelerated, some various sound card baked in to the mobo, can't recall which... But this was the machine that really got me going... Only had a Mac Plus until then, a decked out one, but that was it... This was where I first got inside of a machine, popping in an STB Velocity Riva 128, with 4MB video memory!!! Woooo.... But, that was life changing to be honest... playing MTM2 with actual D3D rendering, it was incredible. Seeing so many games in a whole new light. From there it was the first self built, voodoo 3 2000, then the 3000, then the 3500, then a V5 5000, then Abit BP6 with dual cpus, TEC cooling, Water cooling on top of the TEC's, towers just for PSU's, transmission coolers, surgical tubing, lol... it got carried away. VP6 came after that, more dual cpu's... more TEC's.... Lot's of randomness in between... computer shows and sales, laptops, builds for others to sock money away to get some exotic thing for mine... and I was but a kid. In 97 with that first Packard Bell I was 12... And though the flame was already well lit, it went on to just dump gas onto it, igniting a great fire. All this time later, and I've dialed it back for sure, time sorta did that on its own though. The tech world will never be what it was through the 90's-00's, no more shows and sales, no more ground breaking anything, and very little tech lust. Most of that is for the old stuff now. . .
Very fond of this era of PC. Whilst I was really too young to understand the hardware at the time, our family computer was a very similar model to this one and now that I’m 32 I’ve acquired quite a few!
I had a computer repair shop in the late 90s and early 2000s. We gave them names like Packard "Hell" or Packard "Smell". I personally loved mine, still have it and still sit in front of it on occasions.
I have a Packard Bell 486 system in my storage. It wasn't a screaming fast system, it wasn't my first system, but it was a competent system and, 30 years later, it's an iconic piece of computer history that has all of its original parts , including the monitor and side-mount speakers.
"oh my god I remember that..." - it was working on these day in day out as a Technician at PC World (1996 to 98) that put me off PCs for good. Good luck getting that answer machine working!
One of my very first computers as a kid was a Packard Bell, it had a Pentium much as this one does, but I never had really any issues with it, I loved it and used it until it could no longer keep up with current tech and sent it down the way to some kid to continue using it to learn as his first computer, I know they're not super special computers but compared to even eMachines here in the US, Packard Bell had a special place for helping get more of America connected. Glad to see another one being shown some love Neil.
My first was a Packard Bell Pentium 120 Corner PC. Gosh I loved that thing so much when I was young.
Used to fix these when I was working in a computer shop in 1995 to 2002. We called them Packard Hell. They where a massive pain to work on but boy did they sell a truck load of them.!
Our Packard Bell 486/DX2 was the first Windows machine in our house, coming from the Amiga 500 was a bit of a shift, but I remember so much Doom, Heretic and AOL. I have a picture at the desk with it from back in the day. Good memories
My first Windows-compatible PC was a Packard Bell built in May 1997. It had a Pentium 233 with 2 mb of onboard video memory and I only could afford to upgrade it to 64mb of Edo Ram, because Edo Ram was fantastically expensive costing 1400 dollars (USA) to upgrade it to the full 128mb maximum capacity. Despite being the lowliest of the low for PCs, I had a blast pushing its limits upgrading all the way up to Windows 2000 and using the computer as a home server for four computers. Thanks for bringing back some memories.
I only remember pc's due to the Amiga vs PC vibe in that period. I never really took part in that, but when I visited a "friends" house to see the pc in action, I wasn't that impressed. Not only not by the games, but also the soul-less-ness of it. I didn't follow much news on my system and happily used it till 1998! :)
I still have mine in the loft. I remember fitting an early Voodoo 3Dfx card in it to play Need for speed. It was a trial I got in a magazine. I played that trial to death :)
My mum's first PC was a Packard Bell 486SX-25. I had fun adding upgrades like a Pentium Overdrive 83mhz and sound blaster sound card / CD kit and more memory. Good times indeed.
My first PC was a Packard Bell 486sx 25 with 1 MB RAM in the same case. I upgraded the CPU to a 486DX4-100 with 4 MB of RAM. Then the keyboard stopped working. There was a tiny fuse on the motherboard that had blown. I quick short with a piece of ethernet wire and I was back in business. Eventually it was superseded with a new motherboard, processor and RAM but I used the same case. It finally went to PC heaven in 1999 after giving me 5 years of relatively reliable service. The legacy continues though. All of the devices in my home have a girl's name and the primary server is always called Phoebe, an extension on PB for Packard Bell. Sad, I know but it makes me smile.
I have a lot of nostalgia for old Packard Bell machines like this. My childhood PC was a Packard Bell Legend with a 486SX 25mhz processor and later we had on like this. I'm not sure if it was this same model but the case was the same. Packard Bell computers were sold in all of the department stores here in the states. I really enjoyed this 😃
I loved Packard Bells. They honestly weren't the worst machines out there despite what critics would say. I am glad you are giving this the love it deserves. However, at this stage in life, I would say if a PC managed to survive this long, it should be given the chance to continue to live, even if it wasn't a machine one particularly didn't enjoy.
Never had one of these, but I spent a lot of hours fixing and/or upgrading them. Good times.
Sticking a Voodoo 2 in my old Pentium 133 IBM Aptiva is one of my fondest PC memories, going from playing Quake 2 with the software rendering to 3D accelerated with coloured lighting is a moment I will never forget.
My first computer was a Packard Bell Pentium II computer. I'll never forget the memories wither playing Doom & Quake for the first time, or the old days with Napster, and lets not forget the REAL player and MusicMatch
I'm from the US, and got out of highschool in 2000, but for 3 years I took Computer Network Technologies classes, and my school system here in S. Carolina used a combo of Gateway, DELL, and Packard Bell systems, and part of our lab work, was taking on the task of fixing some of the machines to take off some of the load of the county's IT department, and I can tell you now from experience, to just yank that fake sound blaster/modem card out, and toss it, to save yourself a lot of headache due to driver, and IRQ problems, we always ended up replacing them with A sound Gold, or Express sound cards that used Yamaha chips, and called it a day.
I worked for the Packard Bell support team at PC Service Call in Nottingham for the DSG (Dixons, Currys and PC World) for 4.5 years. While this model predates my time there, our extended warranty meant I had to deal with many of its ilk.
An interesting footnote in PBs history is that Microsoft came down on them much harder than other manufacturers when it came to anti-piracy measures. To use the recovery discs, there were several measures put in place.
Firstly, there was some code hidden in an unused section of the hard drives partition data that contained details telling the recovery media what versions of Windows to install, along with what optional software. This also had to match code what was flashed into the BIOS. If you replaced the HDD, the recovery media would not work without running a special command called "EXTHS /restore".
This would flash the relevant data to both, but required a special code to complete that we had to get directly from PBs systems using their SONSYS.
If customers had their HDDs replaced, we would have to guide them through this process over the phone, and generate said code. If they did not select the EXACT options we told them to, at the end, the code our systems generated would not match what their computer was expecting. I once had to do this with a 98 year old Polish lady. I managed it, but byt the time I finished, I was curled up under the desk.
This is just one of the many stories I could tell.
A similar Packard Bell IBM-compatible was the first PC I used to go online in late 1995. I love it, I wish I still had mine.
For a year or so, I was an authorized Packard Bell service technician.
The mom-and-pop shop where I worked examined multiple income streams, and third-party support was one of those streams. We were authorized for some Dell systems, some HP printers, and the Packard Bell. This equated usually to a set fee (for us and was per job, not per hour), OEM parts, and OEM training.
Packard Bell reputation took a huge hit when they were found to be using refurbished parts in systems tauted as "new".
My first (and only) Packard Bell was one with this same basic case with a Pentium 75 in it. It was a real dissapointment in how slow it was considering I was upgrading from a 486DX2-66 to a Pentium 75 but even so, I am very much enjoying this. Thank you!
Thank you from the U.S. This was my first computer at around 8. We even had the monitor with the speakers on the side. Good memories of 1998 and 99. I struggled to get Duke Nukem 3d installed and was so happy when I finally did. I used to search Yahoo! for webrings about my favorite games and anime. Looking on ebay for cool things I couldn't afford. Good times...
You could hook the modem up to a landline, enjoying the authentic BBS experience, some great dial ups going at the mo, loving this restoration 💚💚💚
I grew up in Buxton 2 minutes away from that postcode. my mind is blown right now! wow!
My first PC was a Pentium 2 version of this PC with the exact same case, monitor, keyboard, etc. Many great memories; I played through link to the past in zsnes for the first time on it as well as the PC version of Sonic CD. It was a hand-me-down from my brother who worked at an electronics shop at the time. He's since passed away and this brought back some happy memories.
Thanks for this one. I had that model except it had a Pentium 90 in it. Bought it after leaving the Military to goto College. Brings back some memories.
Our first computer was a Sanyo 8088 with 640K and a 16MB hard drive that we bought at a computer store in Barrie, Ontario. We strung that along for god damned ever until I finally managed to convince my parents, via a presentation printed and submitted to them, to buy a new computer at the Canex, which turned out to be a Packard Bell 486 SX/25 with CDROM drive and 4MB of RAM and a 400MB Hard drive. Amazing. Came with a bunch of multimedia CDs like The Animals and an Encyclopedia. Blown away.
I never owned a Packard Bell PC, as when they were popular I was building my own computers. However, I look forward to your adventure as you restore this one.
To be correct, you need one of those monitors with the "integrated speakers" bolted on to the sides. And install Window 95 with Microsoft Bob.
Nahh, you need Packard Bell "Navigator"
@@dennisp.2147 You definitely need Windows 3.11 with the Navigator! And the speakers! I was lucky enough to find the same model at the recycler's we had when I was a kid (Legend 410CD), and then a few weeks later a matching monitor showed up in my shop! We allow customers to drop of their old stuff for recycling, and I "recycled" that monitor straight to my basement! Unfortunately, the speakers were missing :(
Hi Neil, great video which brings back fond memories!
Our first home PC was a Packard Bell Pentium 75 with 850MB HD and a whopping 8MB of memory running Windows 95.
I later added an additional 16MB of memory and over clocked the CPU to make it run similar to a P90 by flipping a dip switch on the main board (there should be a clock multiplier and a bus speed setting if I remember correctly).
Those speakers on the side of the monitor are actually screwed in with 2 screws each - they even supplied a special long metal bar with a screw thread so you could install them more easily.
Some time later I reinstalled our machine with Windows 98 and, from what I remember, the Aztec sound card worked well enough (ours was just a sound card, no fax) both in Windows and for DOS games.
We made do with the Cirrus Logic integrated graphics which were decent for all the games of the time that we played (Mech Warrior 2, Wing Commander 1 - 4, Sim City, etc.)
Good times!
The machine itself had decent build quality and was heavily used for many years by both me and my brother for gaming and school / university coursework, easily lasting more than 10 years. It finally got put out to pasture due to lack of use in 2010 as part of a house move... though I was sad to see the old girl go
Oooh, this brings back memories, my first pc was a slightly slimmer P60 Packard Bell, it was a dog until you binned the virtual house interface!
the LAST desktop PC that I bought was also the FIRST desktop PC that I bought, namely a Packard Bell 80286 c. 1990. All of my subsequent desktop PCs were built from parts. I think this is why I have zero nostalgia for 1990s PCs. The only PC I have a little nostalgia for is that first Packard Bell, so I really appreciate this 😄
I’ve literally just bought one of these on eBay, albeit a 486 model. It has the PB450 motherboard, which is actually a bit of a gem! External cache support, expandable Cirrus Logic video memory, 2x IDE, 5x ISA and an aftermarket bios upgrade supporting 128MB RAM and 8GB HDDs. I couldn’t say that for most machines of 1994/5!
Enjoy, that was my exact childhood pc - £1000 iirc my dad paid. Was 14 at the time. 486 SX-2 50, 4mb on board ram. Win 3.11. Over the years i pushed it as far as it would go, played it every day and eventually wrote my dissertation on it. Ultimately it had the full 36MB ram allowed plus a pentium overdrive (P24T) for shits and giggles as you needed an interposer that actually disabled the L2 cache 😂 ran win95 though and was my first foray onto the internet with 56k modem. The Sound16A sound card was SBpro2 compatible and was pretty sweet in Dos games. I still have the system to this day and still going!!
I remember CD speeds. They started off as single speed, dual speed, and then quad speed, but towards the mid-90's the speed branding became pure fiction. 32x, indeed😀
Ah, yes, I remember. Super fast! 52x speed! (small print: for like the last 2% of data at the very edge of a 100% full disc)
And even like that they'd still sound like they were trying to shake your computer apart, and if they were cheap CDRs with manufacturing imperfections you had a good chance of them grenading in the drive.
Some of them really did rev up to sometimes scary rotational speed!
Oh those speeds are real! I have had at least three or four disks "explode" inside a drive when they spin up to full speeds. Incredibly loud and really hard to clean up CD pieces!
I believe they can spin at the advertised speeds, but actually reading a disc is a different story.
I think they made it all the way past 52x speed, the things sounded like a circular saw when operating 😋
I had a 166 MMX version of this around the same time, never understood the hate for these machines , i won a lot of 8- 233 MMX chips and 32 meg of ram for 25 bucks at a local auction, added a PCI vid card to it , that machine lasted me for years extremely reliably, was one of my favourites. I would love to have one of these again
I really like the aesthetics of the Packard Bells, even if they weren't good machines.
My first PC was similar to the one you are restoring. It was a Pentium 60 version of the Packard Bell. I only paid £200 for it in 1997 - It was the full setup, not just the PC. One of the pins on the CPU had snapped. The seller had bought a P133 to upgrade the P60 (which was a different socket). Upon realising this, he incorrectly put the P60 back in and snapped the pin. It was a very quick fix. As a bonus, he included the P133 in the deal at no extra cost.
I sold the P60 machine to my then father-in-law for £450 a few months later and built my own machine around the P133
I have a near identical system I recently picked up for free, yellowed case and all. Mine worked right out of the 'trash' and I just did a minor clean up. very excited to see this series and what becomes of it!
I Love it! I used to sell these in the US working at Best Buy. I sold a TON of these from '94 - '98. There were several competitors to Best Buy from CompUSA and Circuit City, and Packard Bell offered slightly different models to each store so people couldn't directly comparison shop. They were pretty innovative for their time, color coding the cords and ports in the system and including a large color fast start poster as soon as you opened the box. My big complaint with the performance of the system was the lack of any system cache memory.
Keep up the Series!
I had one with P60. Thanx for the video!!!!
We called them Crapard Bells in college. I fixed classmates systems in the dorms and I dreaded working on these.
I had a similar Packard Bell as my first PC (I don't remember the exact model.) I still love the visual design of them. That bluey grey bit is lovely to me for some reason.
My cousin had the 1994 model that came with the single speed CDROM that used a plastic caddy. My first 'Multi-media' PC was an Amstrad 486 with 4MB RAM, 2200MB HDD and 4X CD-ROM and speakers. I remember being blown away by Star Wars Rebel Assault and the Grolier Multi-media Encyclopaedia (with super grainy FMV!).
I had the exact model, certainly the case matches what we had, and I recall it was a Pentium 133MHz. It will be great to watch this trash to treasure series
I think a pair of Packards is a great thing to have in the Cave.
This was our first PC. For some reason I've never felt remotely nostalgic for it, unlike the A1200 that came before...
Great Video, I had one of these as a teenager it was my first pc, I upgraded from an amiga 1200. It was brought from Dixons for £1650 I soon started to upgrade the ram and storage about year later added a 3dfx card when it first was released, came with turok dinosaur hunter bundled game. I also upgraded the processor with an intel overdrive chip which took it from 120mhz to 180mhz with mmx if I remember. neil try to get one of these overdrive chips
In these weird desktops with riser cards, there is so much potential for upgrades. Yes, 3DFX but then try to change the CPU multiplier. It should take a Pentium 200 or Overdrive MMX 200. 180Mhz is not terrible.
I'm in Canada - we had a slightly newer Packard Bell model with very much the same design language, purchased in late 1998 super cheap on clearance as a French-conversion kit (so it was a normal English machine, with the normal English software, but a set of stickers to apply to the keyboard and mostly French manuals lol). It was a tower model, Pentium 233MMX, 64MB of RAM, onboard 2MB S3 video and Yamaha OPL3-SAX sound, and the same 14" monitor with the side speakers that sounded surprisingly good.
The software ours came with that I remember included Encarta 98, G-Nome, and Little Howie's Math & Word Adventures.
Ours was solid until the PS/2 ports started to fail. It was in use up until about 2003 or 4.
Even though this not being a computer I care about (INTEL OUTSIDE FOREVER) I still love watching it. The perfect format with history and tech! Love this trash to treasures. Looking forward to the murder gloves!
Thank you for making me feel old, if computers as young as I am can count as retro :)
I moved from an Amiga 500+ to a Packard Bell tower - 350mhz PII, 64mb RAM. It was a great, reliable machine and like a few others in the comments, I learnt a lot from it. It came with a box of PB branded games, like Blade Runner on DVD. I put a Voodoo3 2000 AGP in it and it played whatever I needed it to, until I built a new AMD 1.33 Thunderbird a few years later.
I didn’t have a PB, but I had a Canon tower PC of a similar vintage. I loved that machine. My first PC that was truly mine only.
man i love this so much, my grandparents had a US model i swear that was identical to the unit you have in this video. some of my earliest memories working with a pc was on that packard bell
I think the US model had a different name where this one says 'Executive Multi-Media' but otherwise was basically the same.
@@BlameThande sounds about right, my grandpa was proud of that packard bell when it was brand new!
Thank you so much for posting this video Neil. This does take me back to my first home PC back in 1995, specifically the original Pentium 60 MHz of the Packard Bell range ( I can’t remember the model exactly, but it was the same as a Legend CD68). Fond memories playing DOS games and learning how to use memmaker, to free up enough conventional memory to launch the game AND have sound. Getting the warm fuzzies from seeing this indeed.
Please leave in as much of the Packard Hell experience with the completed machine. That soundcard/modem is the source of so many frustrated teenage memories.
I am with you on this. My late first wife had one of these and used it to get to know me by asking me to repair it. Over a few years I upgraded RAM, disk, monitor, and some non-pentium CPU (Evergreen?) and added a NIC. The FM card was total trash as it was unscreened and just picked up RF noise from inside the case. The speakers were powered by an external power brick which is the only part I still have. If yours doesn't work, I can donate. Keep up the good work.
Plenty nostalgia here for me. My first pc was a few years later than this, and was thrown together from random parts so I certainly can't re-buy it, but this was very typical for the time and I remember seeing a lot of systems like this.
You absolutely nailed it with the intro commentary...
Great video!
No idea why but I'm really excited for this Trash to Treasure ha! It must be the machine age it hits a nostalgia tone with me :)
This has to be a first in the series...it's Trash to Trash!
These ol' beige boxes much more interesting than clear lit up monoliths. Would happily rip guts out and put a high end system inside while keeping the aesthetic
This was the first PC I ever used and the computer I used to learn Windows and I was hooked. I must have been maybe 7 years old and I was playing Heroes of Might and Magic 2 on this many years later. I wish I still had it.
I used to sell these!!!! ‘95 or so was my era working at Dixons and we would easily sell around 10 on a Saturday! Customers (Dads) would bring the family in to justify spending over 2k on one of these and a canon bj10ex printer trying to convince the other half it would be great for the kids homework. “And if you take the 5yr coverplan I’ll give you this rather fetching blue rubberised mouse mat…”
"Not a good pc..." This was my first PC!! P75, 850mb conner HDD and a 4 speed cd-rom. The built in graphics were only 2mb iirc, the monitor was a 14" with the speakers bolted to the side of it, but I loved it :)
Those 2 un-populated sockets are part of the video memory and I was given a dead stick of memory by someone and the chips on it looked almost identical to the ones soldered down next to those sockets. So I managed to unsolder 2 chips from the dead memory, they are surface mounted not through pin, and popped them into those empty sockets and hey presto, I now had 4 meg of memory :D That was the first of many upgrades I did to that PC before building a completly new one myself.
It's amazing to me that while we bemoaned the performance and cheap-ness of these systems back in the day, they are actually worth something to us today. Between the nostalgia and the fact modern systems just can't give you that same childhood experience no matter how much you can emulate, they do have value.
I would love to build a vintage hardware collection of my own, but I just don't have the space or budget now. I used to have a collection of parts but it was only shortly after the hardware was "modern" for the time. I wish I still had that stuff, but in a combination of my own stupidity and my life turning upside-down, I left it behind in a move...
My first computer I bought was a Packard Bell PC in 1997. Something similar to that model. Cost me about $1000 with the computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, and a canon inkjet printer.
Our first family PC was that era of Packard Bell.
We had the Tower Version with a 133mhz Pentium.
I don't remember it's specs out of the box, but I know at one point it was upgraded to like 32MB or somewhere thereabout.
I definitely remember ours having that same exact Modem/Soundcard.
Definitely played a lot of games on that machine, but nothing heavy as I was more into console games.
I usually played a bunch of kids edutainment and educational games on it, though I definitely played a good amount of Rollercoaster Tycoon on it. Though it started to really chug when a LOT was going on in your park.
So many good memories with that machine. I never remember having any driver issues at all.
Our first family PC was a Pentium 60 in late 1995 and about a year later I got a Pentium 200 for myself. Just a few weeks later the MMX Pentiums came out. That was a crazy time. You'd have to upgrade your PC every few months to take advantage of the newest games.
whoa that was my first family PC. Starcraft, day of the tenticle, tomb raider. I wrote research papers on this thing. So many memories.
I remember this computer, a friend's family had it. We were lucky enough to have a "Gateway 2000" 166Mhz PC in 1996 (later, they dropped the "2000" and just called it "Gateway" lol).
I adore goofy, low-end tech like this, and I believe it deserves just as much love as the really good stuff! Thanks for helping to keep it alive!
So looking forward to the next part. Brings back so many memories of the early pcs that I so wanted but couldn't afford
Remember looking in pc world and wishing I had the money to buy one
An archival focus on the purely rare and exceptional is how you end up with massive gaps in the historic record - as slowly the domestic and the mundane slips beyond rarity.
Back in the 90s my father would typically be asked by friends and family to fix their computers and electronics. He hated when they would show up with an amstrad, compaq or packard Bell system. The latter quickly being nicknamed packed hell. This was mostly due to the proprietary nature of such machines and the complications this brought to repair them. Often it was simply easier for him to assemble an entire new machine as the cost of replacing the proprietary parts could be significantly worse than standard parts.
This does bring back memories though of that era and makes me wish I still had my pentium 133 system which lasted me well into the early 2000s until I could afford to upgrade.
My first PC was a Packard Bell. It had a 486/DX2 66Mhz with 8MB of RAM. So good.
That was my first computer when I was a kid. I loved it!