A Hidden 386 PC! Proxim RangeLAN2 Access Point

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  • čas přidán 30. 07. 2017
  • Another fascinating retro computer here, but this is one that you probably wouldn't realize is a PC unless you took it apart! This has no hard drive at all, it runs DR-DOS completely off a 3.5" floppy disk.
    ● Consider supporting LGR on Patreon:
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    ● Social links:
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    / lazygamereviews
    ● Here's the Retro Battlestations post I mention:
    / discovery_and_investig...
    ● Music used in order of appearance:
    Got The Groove, Suits & Neckties, Whisky On The Rocks
    www.epidemicsound.com
  • Věda a technologie

Komentáře • 511

  • @LonSeidman
    @LonSeidman Před 6 lety +225

    Love that they used the floppy drive - definitely the cheapest way to do that back then. Easy firmware upgrades too, just swap the disk!

    • @LGR
      @LGR  Před 6 lety +59

      Exactly, it's a pretty great solution for what this was meant to do!

    • @zwz.zdenek
      @zwz.zdenek Před 6 lety +28

      The brilliant part is that a floppy drive goes silent in a few seconds, as opposed to the horribly noisy hard drives of the era.

    • @briansotobassist
      @briansotobassist Před 5 lety +6

      I love to watch these videos. I'm a electrical engineer

    • @Deadguy2322forreal
      @Deadguy2322forreal Před rokem

      Why do electrical engineers think anyone else cares that they are electrical engineers?

  • @WalcomS7
    @WalcomS7 Před 6 lety +397

    Crouching LAN, hidden computer.

    • @arandomsciencedude
      @arandomsciencedude Před 6 lety +3

      WalcomS7 nice death grips reference

    • @krakenloco
      @krakenloco Před 6 lety +27

      It's actually a reference to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", which is a kung-fu movie.

    • @Brorrowind
      @Brorrowind Před 6 lety +5

      nice jojo reference

    • @zorochii
      @zorochii Před 6 lety +6

      You're a nice Morrowind reference.

    • @frankschneider6156
      @frankschneider6156 Před 6 lety +7

      featuring Ell Gee Arr instead of Li Mu Bai

  • @unclehogram
    @unclehogram Před 6 lety +32

    Had one of these in an industrial settings years ago. Untrue that it will communicate with WiFi unless actually RangeLAN2 and the Intermec device is not. It is OpenAIR. Much as with CDMA vs. GSM, they may run at the same frequencies but the standards are completely different. OpenAIR/RangeLAN was a predecessor to WiFi and maxed out at 2.1 Mbps. PCMCIA cards were available that complied with the standard and this is how we did wireless networking before 802.11b. Items than ran off this were primarily wireless scanners in our case. Janus 2020 was the model if I remember correctly. Worked just fine for that purpose.

  • @Drinkabeerandplayagameofficial

    man do i love the random, goofy computers that you find

    • @LGR
      @LGR  Před 6 lety +33

      Haha, well thanks, there's plenty more where this came from

    • @andersrabenhansen5017
      @andersrabenhansen5017 Před 6 lety +6

      There has got to be a way to get some kind of display running on this. Geeks, Unite!

    • @shreyaskul
      @shreyaskul Před 6 lety +5

      Lazy Game Reviews Clint, can you make video on your vintage calculator collection, just like david did with apple keyboards? I would love to watch it :)

    • @andersrabenhansen5017
      @andersrabenhansen5017 Před 6 lety +3

      Yep, I couldn't quite figure out how much that acid problem had destroyed. This is like a 386 fidget spinner for computer geeks. So many possibilities!

    • @Sfekke
      @Sfekke Před 6 lety +3

      You are not the only one ;)

  • @yushatak
    @yushatak Před 6 lety +237

    Laughed my ass off at this one, especially liked the little fake quotes from the company. It's amazing how much crap they just excluded from that board and had it continue to operate, especially the whole video subsystem. Oh and that teal one reminds me of SGI gear..

    • @tOSdude
      @tOSdude Před 6 lety +2

      Hey, you're that guy.

    • @yushatak
      @yushatak Před 6 lety +3

      What guy? :P

    • @tOSdude
      @tOSdude Před 6 lety +6

      You've got a few Toshiba librettos. How are they working.

    • @wisteela
      @wisteela Před 6 lety +1

      Yes, it reminded me of SGI too.

    • @kbhasi
      @kbhasi Před 6 lety +2

      Yeah, it kinda looks like the same colour as the case of the SGI Indy.

  • @suspedal
    @suspedal Před 6 lety +290

    Man, these sleeper PCs are getting intense.

    • @ninorpronin
      @ninorpronin Před 6 lety +33

      When you sleeper PC is such a sleeper, it doesn't even has any usefull I/O.

    • @SpicyDragonWings
      @SpicyDragonWings Před 6 lety +4

      New Old Computery-Things Intensifies

    • @randywatson8347
      @randywatson8347 Před 6 lety +2

      Not with a ricer card lol

    • @travis4798
      @travis4798 Před 6 lety +3

      Actually the motherboard I/O was that simple back in the day. You had to rely on add-on cards for more functionality like video, sound, lan, etc. What the router lacks is an I/O expansion card that would have a VGA, Lan, and/ or sound combo.

    • @ninorpronin
      @ninorpronin Před 6 lety

      Travis Piper They didn't have blocked off AT-connectors though.

  • @philscomputerlab
    @philscomputerlab Před 6 lety +33

    That is so cool! Covered up floppy drive, I love it.

  • @hackmiester1337
    @hackmiester1337 Před 6 lety +95

    I would say 512k is about right. Even the high-end routers of the time, such as the Cisco 2500 series, shipped with 4MB of RAM in 1994. In the world of access points, 512k should be enough for anybody...
    Also, I bet the CPU was a lot more taxed than you suspect. These early wireless standards could sometimes do up to 11 Mbit, but even the 10 Mbit Ethernet is difficult for a 386 to keep up with. All the packets would likely be bridged through the CPU in this device - no DMA between the cards. So during periods of high throughput from the wireless clients, I bet the CPU was working hard.
    Thanks for sharing this one. I work with enterprise networking gear, so it's interesting to see how we got to where we are in that field today.

    • @mspenrice
      @mspenrice Před 6 lety +13

      That's probably also why they went with a high clocked SX (which is otherwise rather unusual) instead of a DX at the same or lower speed. No point having a 32-bit bus when you've got such a small amount of RAM and the vast majority of transactions are going to go to or from the 16-bit ISA anyway, but you might still need a lot of internal horsepower to actually manage the data. Plus it means it'll work with only two SIMMs instead of needing four...

    • @straightpipediesel
      @straightpipediesel Před 2 lety

      11 Mbit lol. RangeLan did 2 Mbps physical, just like the original 802.11. 11 Mbit 802.11b came in 1999, several years after this product.

  • @burretploof
    @burretploof Před 6 lety +13

    What a weird device! I always find it interesting when manufacturers decide to use off-the-shelf products (especially when they're parts for desktop PCs, basically) for embedded devices like these.

  • @jacobpierce54
    @jacobpierce54 Před 6 lety +19

    Old tech is just so amazing and fascinating to see, especially since you can see how certain pieces of tech were way ahead of their time even with the limited technical of their time

  • @Vectrex4Life
    @Vectrex4Life Před 6 lety +35

    Blocking the AT keyboard port AND the floppy drive?! I've never heard of such insanity!

    • @LakoIsFun
      @LakoIsFun Před 6 lety

      Vectrex4Life, never expected you.

    • @Rookii
      @Rookii Před 6 lety +2

      Vectrex4Life Please upload more your videos are awesome

    • @EngineeringVignettes
      @EngineeringVignettes Před 6 lety +3

      It was designed as an embedded device... no keyboard, video or other user based I/O was needed. Just turn it on and it does its job. Modern WiFi routers are the same concept except they have the bonus of being able to be configured over a web based GUI. Back when this device was made, there was no concept of URL based configuration so they used a serial interface to a terminal session instead.

    • @Vectrex4Life
      @Vectrex4Life Před 6 lety

      I am hard at work on the next Forgotten Games. :)

  • @Dentenshi
    @Dentenshi Před 6 lety +45

    Going through a stressful move right now in my life ready to embark cross country. Only a cell phone with me in a empty room and LGRs videos are making my bad day better.

  • @Microang
    @Microang Před 6 lety +29

    You should find a working example and put an ISA video card in it and get some games going for the proper LGR review treatment! :D

  • @thedungeondelver
    @thedungeondelver Před 6 lety +10

    The tinkerer in me looked at that and thought "Okay, you could mount a CF card right on the IDE port with an adapter, no need for a cable, then get a basic soundblaster, maybe up the RAM to 4 or 8 megs, of course drop in a VGA card...or possibly track down the actual VGA chip and a 15-pin header, that'd leave the other ISA slot for something else...ooh, an I/O card to which you could connect a parallel port CD-ROM..." :)

    • @_Piers_
      @_Piers_ Před 6 lety +1

      thedungeondelver I suspect you could just solder in the missing connectors on the back and they'd mostly just work.

    • @weepingscorpion8739
      @weepingscorpion8739 Před 6 lety

      Had a similar idea myself. Either a CF card or that Solid State solution that he mentioned in the Woodgrain HDD upgrade episode, combined sound and video card if those exist in ISA format and then an I/O card with a parallel port and maybe a 2nd serial port. Worst case use the Covox Speech Thing on the parallel port if no combined ISA video/sound cards exist. (the Diamond EDGE he showed in another video would be perfect had it not been a PCI card).

    • @mspenrice
      @mspenrice Před 6 lety

      You'd need a larger box and a taller ISA riser, I suspect, unless you want to go with a soundcard that has a CDROM interface built in...

    • @sjarken3979
      @sjarken3979 Před 5 lety

      Or you could just get a normal 386 and use that access point for what it was meant to, as a access point :P

  • @williamhayden7711
    @williamhayden7711 Před 6 lety +2

    The local management port is an RS232 Console port. Plug in console cable [to computer running] appropriate terminal emulation software (PuTTY, SecureCRT, etc.) [most like with settings of 9600, 8, N, 1 and No HW Flow control] and viola. It will allow you to configure the AP via CLI or Menu Driven CLI.

  • @chadmasta5
    @chadmasta5 Před 6 lety +89

    It's a shame yours don't work. I wonder if, assuming you could fit them in there, an isa video card and ide controller could be used to make that into a full(ish) PC.

    • @fishigl
      @fishigl Před 6 lety +17

      IDE is already built in, man. But yeah, inserting the video card is exactly the suggestion I was about to type in now. But also, adding a couple of 'em 4 meg SIMMs would be of help..
      In short, LGR, thank you so much for this video, but please, please make a follow up!
      P.S.: btw, a modern USB-to-floppy (GOTEK) emulator would replace the built in one neatly, wouldn't need way less maintenance, and, of course, having "99 floppies" under the hood would be pretty awesome for such machine, imho...

    • @LGR
      @LGR  Před 6 lety +45

      My real hope with releasing a video like this is that it opens more people's eyes to the fact that cool, hidden machines like this exist in the first place! Now that I've already covered it I can't imagine making a follow-up since I have way too many more interesting projects that deserve my time, but if anyone else happens to run across one of these PCs I hope they can perform those upgrades and show it to the world :)

    • @werkis2
      @werkis2 Před 6 lety +7

      Ben Heck could make that thing in function pc

    • @JelleDeLoecker
      @JelleDeLoecker Před 6 lety +2

      You succeeded in that. (Well you, 8-bit guy & techmoan. The trinity of retrotech ;))
      It is quite hard to find these things in Europe, though. It seems like these early odd devices never got here. I'm just glad I found 2 Macintosh Classics (both destroyed by their own batteries, unfortunately)

    • @KanawhaCountyWX
      @KanawhaCountyWX Před 6 lety +1

      chadmasta5 that is one thing that I would like to do this summer, buy one of these machines, install a compact flash hard drive mounted directly to the IDE controller, attempt to fix sole control sorry dictation corrosion on the logic board, and throw in more RAM, a VGA video card, and maybe a sound blaster Pro 2, and of course buying a tiki board, and I might just have myself a very small MS-DOS gaming PC.
      At keyboard.

  • @pizzaboxer
    @pizzaboxer Před 6 lety +16

    man, I love it when you show such weird systems.

  • @tatsuhirofujiwara7029
    @tatsuhirofujiwara7029 Před 6 lety +15

    im just a kid but i like this. keep up the good work!

  • @msiller
    @msiller Před 6 lety +7

    You know? The original Apple Airport Base Station, introduced alongside the original Tangerine & Blueberry iBooks in 1999, had a 486 embedded into the logic board; it was co-produced by Lucent and Apple, and was just $299 USD, was compatible with Macs and PCs, and was literally thousands of dollars less expensive than anything at the time.
    I've actually never taken apart one, but it would be interesting to do so.
    I love your videos, LGR! A big 'Hola' from México!

    • @witeshade
      @witeshade Před 6 lety +7

      It's interesting, like how the original apple laser printer had a faster cpu than the computer it was meant to be used with.

    • @mspenrice
      @mspenrice Před 6 lety +2

      Most early lasers did, in fact. At least, the Atari one did, though they saved money by relying on the computer's RAM via the DMA port, rather than putting loads of expensive memory into the printer itself.
      And actually there's a whole load of devices that have intel chips in that you'd think were more at home in desktop computers. Some applications need more power and address range than a typical microcontroller can offer, and the architecture is plenty familiar to a broad range of programmers, so once their star has faded in the actual-microcomputer market, all of the x86's went on to have a surprisingly long afterlife as embedded logic cores instead. Not sure about the Pentiums, but it's certainly true for everything from the 8086/8088 up to 486, and most particularly 80186 and 386 - the former being a good value combination of features better known from the 286 with some of the simplicity of the 8086, as well as a number of things unique to it that made it a good microcontroller replacement, and the latter being your cheapest and most basic option for 32-bit code compatibility if you weren't comfortable with programming a 68020 or similar.
      Thing is, few of those devices are quite like the Proxims... ie, they're not based off a regular desktop motherboard (and its chipset) and CPU, with easy-upgrade RAM sockets, ordinary old ISA cards and headers for floppy and parallel ports, and an AT-class power supply. Instead the familiarity starts and ends at the processor label being prefixed with "i80", and basically everything else is different... mostly the RAM is soldered directly to the board instead of being in modules, the various other motherboard chips are often conglomerated into a single VLSI unit specialised to that particular application (desktop mobos being the definition of "general purpose"), and there's rarely any user-accessible storage device or indeed any kind of video option, let alone an ISA bus...

  • @chaomusicify
    @chaomusicify Před 6 lety +5

    Always looking forward to Monday/Friday for these vids. Got to see one 4 minutes after upload!

  • @LockeRobsta
    @LockeRobsta Před 6 lety

    Wow, just listening to the excitement in your voice. You can tell you really have a passion for this legacy tech. Love your videos man.

  • @retrogamereplay1889
    @retrogamereplay1889 Před 6 lety +11

    Nice and unique find again! Love watching your videos!

    • @LGR
      @LGR  Před 6 lety +9

      Thank you!

  • @mathematics117
    @mathematics117 Před 6 lety +1

    I ALWAYS enjoy your voice, I find it very smooth and nice to watch. Keep up the good work, oh and do more oddware or thrifting!

  • @DigitalDiabloUK
    @DigitalDiabloUK Před 5 lety +1

    A lot of network appliances are still x86/amd64 under the hood. Dell even did a range of unbranded versions of their Poweredge servers for different companies that made network gear.

  • @DieWeltIstSchlecht
    @DieWeltIstSchlecht Před 6 lety

    The music in the background you play in videos like this is just neat! I love it!

  • @alexamts
    @alexamts Před 6 lety +3

    These are nice machines with an interesting background, but the resarch you made is AWESOME.

  • @TheRetroNobody
    @TheRetroNobody Před 6 lety +2

    Like you mentioned. I really love all the off the shelf parts they used to build these. Pretty ingenious.

  • @ziginox
    @ziginox Před 6 lety +5

    There are a LOT of business voicemail systems out there, mostly Lucent and Avaya, that use PC-compatible hardware just like this.

  • @TechTier_
    @TechTier_ Před 6 lety

    Great video! I really like this current exploration of old hardware!

  • @SnorkCosmodix
    @SnorkCosmodix Před 6 lety +76

    thank you for keeping the australians awake

    • @Kippykip
      @Kippykip Před 6 lety +5

      sup mate

    • @MV60
      @MV60 Před 6 lety +1

      Heh, it's now like quarter to 4 in the morning.

    • @YouSoSpice
      @YouSoSpice Před 6 lety

      Stay woke.

  • @memsom
    @memsom Před 6 lety +1

    Be Inc used the RangeLan protocol for their prototype tablet that ran the BeIA OS. I used to have one of the tablets. It was a National Semi based computer with a 800x600 touch screen LCD. Pretty interesting. Booted from a CF card. DT-300 webpad.

  • @RemiDupont
    @RemiDupont Před 6 lety

    Whoa nice, I love when you do reviews of random curious electronic/device like that.

  • @drumsamerica6158
    @drumsamerica6158 Před 4 lety

    Dude I love your classy music choices LGR!!!

  • @goqwertygo
    @goqwertygo Před 6 lety

    Computer Chronicles, i love that show.
    watched i think all of the episodes here on YT. that show is such a throw back with amazing future technology

  • @JimmiG84
    @JimmiG84 Před 6 lety +14

    Hilarious how they just stuck a floppy disk in there and sealed it off... Makes it easy to upgrade the "firmware" though - just plop in a different floppy disk...

    • @mspenrice
      @mspenrice Před 6 lety +2

      Fun thing is that routers kept using floppies as their primary storage - or at least primary backup and firmware upgrade method - for an awful long time. This time last year I was working somewhere that had routers in use that offered only serial, ethernet, and floppy drive - no USB or anything. And they weren't exactly archaic kit, at least in terms of infrastructure hardware.
      But if you only have about 4, maybe 8mb of flash for the firmware, it kinda works. In the case of these early 90s models, they might not even have bothered much with discrete files if there were only a limited number of models. You'd just have a 512kb (or smaller) system image file that would load into memory much like an emulator save state and then execute straight off the bat.

  • @doodsterski
    @doodsterski Před 5 lety

    Back in early 2000 I've been testing Proxim Tsunami MP11.a. It was a nice piece of hardware! Thank you for refreshing my memories :-)

  • @yrly59e
    @yrly59e Před 5 lety

    Reminds me of these paint color matching systems they were made by some company Match Rite or something like that. Some of the standalone ones not hooked to a dispenser run a 386sx. I don’t remember if they booted from a hard drive or internal floppy but retailers that do manual mixing still use them to this day.

  • @Jolamprex
    @Jolamprex Před 6 lety

    I'm glad there are people who appreciate this stuff. I've never thought nearly this much about this old stuff.

  • @jairtorres289
    @jairtorres289 Před 6 lety

    10 min vids should come back! awesome stuff LGR !

  • @theSato
    @theSato Před 6 lety

    I never fail to be surprised by just how many unique kinds of computers and tech that you come across.

  • @GiSWiG
    @GiSWiG Před 6 lety

    I remember using something similar with LEAF; Linux Embedded Application Firewall. It basically turns an old PC into an advanced gateway, router, firewall, and wireless access point. The nice thing was that LEAF only runs from a read-only floppy and that is the genius behind it. You configure the LEAF floppy in another PC and pop the disk and boot up the LEAF box. It loads everything in RAM and it runs from there. If you think the box has been compromised, you just shut it off. Any hacking done to it is gone. Then boot from the floppy again, probably after you've re-configured against the hack.

  • @CMHC
    @CMHC Před 6 lety

    love you man! this stuff is always fascinating

  • @genericgreensquid6669
    @genericgreensquid6669 Před 6 lety +2

    Hell yeah /r/Retrobattlestations! Love that subreddit!

  • @nathanwolf4444
    @nathanwolf4444 Před 6 lety

    Something about these old machines just bring a smile to my face. What could you do to re-purpose it, I wonder...

  • @NaoPb
    @NaoPb Před 6 lety

    Awesome video, Clint. Thanks!

  • @bmalinnd
    @bmalinnd Před 4 lety

    This reminds me of our old Firewall / VPN devices. They replaced them my first week on the job, so I never saw them in action - but they hung around in a closet for years. They were Lucent "Bricks" - and the name was very apt, they were giant black 4U monstrosities with big industrial looking grab handles and even dust filters on the front. After a few years I thought about taking one or two to make a coffee table or something. I cracked it open and was surprised to see it was just a tiny Pentium II PC class motherboard tucked in one corner with a bunch of PCI LAN adapters and an Encryption Accelerator card booting off an IDE to CF adapter. Unlike these things, it did have a video card though. The newest one I looked at was a PIII and lacked the PCI Encryption Card so I guess the CPU was powerful enough by that point to do it all with software. They were replaced with Juniper NetScreen devices that I presume ran on ASICs because they were tiny in comparison. And now it is all in a landfill or scrap yard somewhere, made redundant by MPLS and IT managers running around yelling "put it in the cloud!"

  • @DolganoFF
    @DolganoFF Před 5 lety

    I had a PC in exactly the same form factor with the same AMD processor in a similar motherboard, but it had everything a PC needed, like hard drive and video :) The coolest and the most compact 386 desktop I've ever seen :)

  • @KOSMOS1701A
    @KOSMOS1701A Před 6 lety +1

    What an interesting little box. I imagine it wouldn't be very hard to convert this thing into a "Slim" Dos/Early Windows computer. I love the blue one more though.

    • @LGR
      @LGR  Před 6 lety +1

      It wouldn't be hard in theory, you'd just have to find one that isn't battery-corroded to hell and back ;)

  • @50MGG
    @50MGG Před 6 lety

    So many Amiga's I have had to repair from battery leakage over the last 10 years, some extreme examples have taken so much work to restore it's insane... Varta the destroyer of worlds!

  • @ThecrackpotdadPlus
    @ThecrackpotdadPlus Před 6 lety

    What a fascinating bit of hardware, thanks for sharing it

  • @12345678booo
    @12345678booo Před 4 lety

    The Cisco PIX was a 486 PC under its cover. I remember we needed a RAM upgrade and Cisco wanted $500 for a 4MB upgrade. One of the other Sys admins I worked with took the lid off and we saw it just used 72 pin EDO. So we purchased a $50 stick and performed the upgrade.

  • @TheRealHeavyG
    @TheRealHeavyG Před 5 lety +1

    I have a box of 24 motherboards for these. Well, specifically, they are IBM OPAL LX 486SLC2 system boards. The 486SLC2 is really a 386 that IBM did some... stuff to. Unfortunately, out of the box of 24, only 4 appear to be salvageable. I'm going to remove the barrel battery and may replace with a newer 3.6v battery. I also came across 8 super small AT cases that I've been selling on the e of bays. I'm keeping one for myself.

  • @Charok1
    @Charok1 Před 6 lety

    No one needs 2160p Clint.
    I can't believe that news cast didn't try to dumb down the technicals to it's beer chugging 90s viewers.

  • @Finchnz
    @Finchnz Před 6 lety

    I use modern proxim wireless hardware for doing WiFi surveys, it is the only NIC that works correctly with the software required by many hotel chains that will provide the wireless signal strength, along with SNR and some other important values. so looks like they have come a long way, but still really play in very specialized enterprise markets.

  • @samuelmumby7982
    @samuelmumby7982 Před 6 lety +1

    Ooooooooo, that felt like a mini tech tales I love it!

  • @jlewwis1995
    @jlewwis1995 Před 6 lety

    I remember reading a reddit post where there was an old erver PC installed inside of another bigger server :D this sort of reminded me of that

  • @insector2
    @insector2 Před 6 lety +4

    A great vid like always. I can't Imagine why they wouldn't have sold it as desktop, access point combo.

    • @jackmcslay
      @jackmcslay Před 6 lety +2

      Because it's a bad idea. You don't want to have your workers poking around server and network equipment for unrelated stuff

    • @paulgraves1392
      @paulgraves1392 Před 6 lety +3

      Main reason as said before is security. Combining a general purpose pc and wireless access point together to would be a poor design choice. Not just because users may get access to things they shouldnt, but typical end user problem eg poor maintenace, viruses would bring the computer down and the network with it. Theres also the inherent risks that would come with running a common operating system such as MS DOS/Windows which was not designed for networking and security (hello exploits!). Finally the last point is hardware specs and pricing. 386 computers were no longer top of the line and were at least a few generations old, but their low prices meant they could still be useful in situations where not a lot of cpu power is required. Throwing a video chip in would be an additional expense to buyers who would only be interested in having wireless access.

    • @frankschneider6156
      @frankschneider6156 Před 6 lety

      I'd guess it was rather for performance issues. You probably don't want your network to drop dead, just because someone decides to write a word document on the network devices, right ?.

  • @snoballuk
    @snoballuk Před 6 lety

    Reminds me of the Mini ITX based ADSL router I put together that ran Smoothwall, back when ISPs only gave out ADSL USB modems.

  • @retrozen
    @retrozen Před 6 lety

    I don't understand half the things you're talking about but I love it! :)

  • @tonylancer7367
    @tonylancer7367 Před 6 lety +11

    _That's it, it's good._ -LGR

  • @EposVox
    @EposVox Před 6 lety +5

    Very neat!

  • @rayceeya8659
    @rayceeya8659 Před 6 lety

    I used to gut those just to get those riser cards. They're were really handy for squeezing another card into an older machine for benchtop data recovery.

  • @MrAzztech
    @MrAzztech Před 6 lety

    nice find! and bit of history about wifi :)

  • @Thomasm3000
    @Thomasm3000 Před 6 lety

    I love LGR, man quotes strange letters and numbers at me for 6 minutes and I can't stop listening to it.

  • @neverthere5689
    @neverthere5689 Před 6 lety

    lol where did you get that "commercial/news report" on the product. That was so bizarre... i love it

    • @adenowirus
      @adenowirus Před 6 lety

      Computer Chronicles. All episodes are on CZcams. At the end of every episode there was a short "news" segment called Random Access.

  • @conorrocks7
    @conorrocks7 Před 6 lety

    i really like the new blurbs on the bottom left, they look nice and are helpful.

    • @LGR
      @LGR  Před 6 lety

      Thank you!

  • @nastybun
    @nastybun Před 5 lety

    This sort of standard PC/server hardware in an appliance is still used today in a bunch of networking kit - I've seen an old network firewall used as a media PC just by putting a video card in it and installing linux - it's also common that the only video output is a serial port - usually via RJ-45 connector, but it's the same deal as a 9-pin, just a different connector.

  • @lepterfirefall
    @lepterfirefall Před 6 lety

    So you bought computers that don't work....AWESOME!!! Great video. Some crazy hardware out there.

  • @summerlaverdure
    @summerlaverdure Před 6 lety +44

    Can you please dump the floppies for historical purposes

    • @LGR
      @LGR  Před 6 lety +35

      That's the first thing I do with all floppies I get :)

    • @summerlaverdure
      @summerlaverdure Před 6 lety +16

      Lazy Game Reviews you freakin rule Clint

    • @WednesdayMan
      @WednesdayMan Před 6 lety +1

      yeah that's something I do too

    • @manuelink64
      @manuelink64 Před 6 lety +2

      Please Clint! dump the floppies and share with us!!

    • @WednesdayMan
      @WednesdayMan Před 6 lety +1

      "That's the first thing I do with all floppies I get :)" - LGR
      he already dumped those floppies

  • @donwimalasiri5758
    @donwimalasiri5758 Před 5 lety

    This Channel Is Drop Dead Awesome!!!

  • @miyu4043
    @miyu4043 Před 6 lety +4

    These hidden PCs are not that uncommon even today. In the company I work for we got an internet gateway and a VoIP server which are basically the same thing: Standard PC components put in a custom form factor with crippled I/O and running specialized software.

  • @orinokonx01
    @orinokonx01 Před 6 lety

    I would love to repair that board for you! Man you get all the great stuff :) :)

  • @NeoJ4K3
    @NeoJ4K3 Před 6 lety

    I loved you over on "The Game Dave" channel! He needs more subs!

  • @BennedDover
    @BennedDover Před 6 lety +1

    thank you for another entertaining video!

  • @MrJest2
    @MrJest2 Před 6 lety

    Around when this unit was made, I used to sell those motherboards. They came out of a factory in Taiwan, and cost us about $40 with all the "normal PC" chips installed. I'd imagine this one with all the missing hardware was quite a bit cheaper. We'd sell them for around $200 each - memory extra, and of course no peripherals or drives.
    The big problem was the quality. Fully 1/3 of them failed within a few months. To the factory, this was an acceptable loss rate as they were so cheap to produce. But try explaining that to some guy across the country who had to wait a week for a replacement to be mailed to him.

  • @porklaser
    @porklaser Před 6 lety

    If you like hidden 386s try looking for old an Pre-Lucent buyout Livingston PortMaster 2E access server - A staple of early-mid 90s pre-56K ISPs. Placed where you'd have shelves of actual external modems (Or modems stripped out of their shells and slid in to cool little custom made racks) and gobs of analog phone lines. (56K required PRI or BRI or any other digital line on the ISP side and the access servers were pure digital)
    If you peeked inside the Portmaster you'd see a little 386SX chip chugging along running the show (Along side a lot of dedicated serial hardware. Portmasters were no slouch)
    No DOS to be found on the livingston though. Not really PC hardware either. Ran custom unix that booted off an internal ROM in true embedded fashion. Accessible via serial console or telnet. Old portmasters saw use after the death of 33.6 and modems in general because a device with gobs of serial ports could be turned in to a serial console access system with some clever configuration. Useful if you had lots of sun hardware or lots of linux systems with serial consoles.. As was common in the late 90s and early 2000s.

  • @jeffreyplum5259
    @jeffreyplum5259 Před 6 lety

    The SX is 16 bit bus CPU. It talks to the world 16 bits at time, while being a 32 bit chip internally . That makes it really a 20 Mhz 386 functionally 386SXs talk naturally on a 16 bit ISA bus like a 286, AT type CPU. Code wise, they are like their 32 bit bussed relatives. I had one. I thought of it as a racing squirrel. I ran DOS and linux on it .

  • @MarkyShaw
    @MarkyShaw Před 6 lety

    Would love to see you get that thing working somehow and put your own stuff on it!

  • @TheGeekPub
    @TheGeekPub Před 6 lety +4

    Fascinating!

  • @wisteela
    @wisteela Před 6 lety

    That is very cool. I'll have to see if I can find one here in the UK.

  • @LazyBunnyKiera
    @LazyBunnyKiera Před 6 lety

    That intermec case could possibly make a nice mini-ITX case if modded just right. (vent holes and IO plate modifications)

  • @nicholasgerry6931
    @nicholasgerry6931 Před 6 lety

    I always think that you actually deserve more subscribers and more views

  • @VieVentar
    @VieVentar Před 6 lety

    That front panel interests me - looks like there was provision originally for the floppy to be accessible.
    Wonder if these guys literally bought up a then out of production computer line from another company and just used it with modifications.
    Wonder how hard it would be to track down any of the original machines - cause a case this size would be interesting to play with.

  • @henrydave6603
    @henrydave6603 Před 6 lety

    What a random thing to use 386 hardware for! Didn't think there was wireless hardware back then, but here it is. It's actually quite surprising what sort of things that hardware was built into. Interesting to see what came before something became standard. Why they used a whole computer instead of making specialized hardware. Why a disk drive though? Was it just easier to swap out updated programs? Or was it to just keep the theme and stick to their guns on what the computer does?
    Anyways it's really cool to see one of these, even if it's battery is really that poor quality. I know they where going to cheap hardware, but they went with a strong CPU, so why the sucky battery?
    Can't wait to see what strange hardware you come up with next! Keep up the awesomeness ^_^

    • @_Piers_
      @_Piers_ Před 6 lety +1

      Henry Dave I think the battery problem, was probably caused by them upgrading to a larger capacity battery.
      They wouldn't have wanted it to lose it's setting however long it sat for, it's rather less user serviceable than standard PC.
      ...but who knows.

    • @henrydave6603
      @henrydave6603 Před 6 lety

      I guess it's one of those design choices one will always ponder at. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to ask one of the designers directly. Still, design wise that does make sense.

  • @NicolasCorte
    @NicolasCorte Před 6 lety

    Good video. Why don't you work with the 8-bit Guy to restore those motherboards and in the process make a video?

  • @jaxonwalz7735
    @jaxonwalz7735 Před 6 lety

    Hey LGR I was goodwilling yesterday and I know you like things with buttons and the thing I got I don’t even know what is is but it has at least 300 buttons and dials and levers I got it for 10 dollars it’s awesome

  • @James-cd8ih
    @James-cd8ih Před 6 lety

    "There ya go, it's good." -Proxim,probably xD
    this is like one of those you can make it yourself or you can buy the prebuilt ideas.

  • @twiddler71
    @twiddler71 Před 6 lety

    Watchguard made lots of routers and firewalls with stripped down PC's. I have an old Watchguard Firebox 1000 with a socket 370 motherboard and AMD K6-2 450 cpu. It has a PCI slot and I was able to boot it with a video card.

  • @plan7a
    @plan7a Před 6 lety

    :D - that blue one looks really modern for the time; compared with the beige/off white!

  • @tcpnetworks
    @tcpnetworks Před 6 lety

    Back in the 1990's, I had an entire network that were built on these, and the Motorola WaveLAN radio. I had 100's of them..

  • @trustnoone81
    @trustnoone81 Před 6 lety

    LGR, you should do a special about networking equipment like you did for TI calculators. Cisco routers are no more powerful than a '90s computer just like the 386 here, but sell for upwards of $1000 due to various externalities. I'd be curious to hear your take on it.

  • @JAFOpty
    @JAFOpty Před 6 lety

    Clint you have to do a Tech Tales for Computer Chronicles!

  • @patrickwalsh2086
    @patrickwalsh2086 Před 6 lety

    Whoa those were the days:-) the venerable 386 PC!

  • @Pesthauch666
    @Pesthauch666 Před 6 lety +4

    The best part is the floppy drive with a constantly inserted disk. What a silly idea. I just imagine the sound it would make when started up every time. Couldn't they just added some ROM that does the same, maybe even something like just emulating a floppy like all those recent floppy emulators for the old home computers do?

    • @_Piers_
      @_Piers_ Před 6 lety +7

      This would have been much cheaper than the alternatives and with a product like this wouldn't really have been much of a problem.
      It's not something you'd be switching on and off much, so most of the time it would read the disk while booting and then not use the disk again for weeks/months...(years?)

    • @MrRobarino
      @MrRobarino Před 2 lety

      Floppy drive emulators are a recent thing. They didn't exist back in the early 90's and would have cost as much as entire computer itself.

  • @Sun-ut9gr
    @Sun-ut9gr Před rokem

    I think the Intermec's blue case would make for an amazing HTPC. Saved an ebay search for one so maybe one day I'll have one too :D

  • @PenguinDT
    @PenguinDT Před 6 lety +1

    I love it! I can't tell if that design is creative as heck or lazy as hell - which is the best kind of design.

  • @Drive-n-Vibe
    @Drive-n-Vibe Před 6 lety

    found a varta battery on the trapdoor ram of my dads old A500. it was so badly corroded i had to get a new one. thankfully the mainboard was unaffected. Varta batteries are a ticking time bomb for vintage computers

  • @H4zuZazu
    @H4zuZazu Před 6 lety +2

    Even some Networkswitches use still a 386 or 486 today.

  • @DigitalDiabloUK
    @DigitalDiabloUK Před 6 lety

    A lot of network appliances are x86 under the hood - if you can get a headless OS install on them, they make great re-purposed general computers sometimes.

  • @nberedim
    @nberedim Před 6 lety +3

    Blocking the keyboard connector because... security :-)