I turned a weird "keyboard PC" into an FM boombox
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- čas přidán 5. 06. 2024
- In terms of probability, it's not likely that it's the last of it's kind. But it's the last one I've ever seen.
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Original song:
• Adlib Tracker song: Li...
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:54 History of Wedges
03:16 Outside Impressions
08:47 Inside Impressions
11:07 Original hardware
21:00 Power problems
28:25 Audio mod
31:49 Turning it on
33:40 Game music demo
37:00 Original music demo
40:37 The Wobble Problem
46:45 Cybernet / Conclusion
49:20 Outro
Correction: 06:58 Typewriters have some concept of touch typing; I just meant that it's very different than what we do now. - Věda a technologie
That “first song you’ve ever written” is really quite good. Some solid retro PC sounds
It's very puzzle game.
Indeed. I was expecting something... I don't know but way less. Not bad at all, especially for first track 👍
I was going to say. It goes so hard. Love it.
Thunder Force II vibes.
blown away man
You should upload a direct rip of that tracker song separately. It's a jam.
Yup, needed cat jam overlay for sure
Seriously. I need it in rotation for my workday playlist ASAP.
It was so good I was almost mad about it.
lol entire video games have been soundtracked with less effort than this one song.
He put it on his second channel, Cathode Ray Dude Gaiden :)
It is! It is a jam! :D
Hello -- that motherboard is actually not custom. I don't know what the form factor is called, but I have a Ti 486 board in the same form factor that fit into this computer. I assume it's some standard industrial form factor. . . I actually have one of these PCs as well, with the original working external power brick and the same anti-theft device glued on. I bet they all came from the same lot as mine is missing the spray paint but has some rust on it too.
I have seen it in some industrial (literally cnc machines) computers. I think theyre called SBCs in a generic sense but apparently even the raspberry pi is under that umbrella so idk
gravis, i've known people who've spent half a decade in digital audio workstations before being able to produce something _half_ as coherent. you've got one hell of a natural talent for composition, and if that's what you put out for your first song with soundblaster restrictions, i'm _very_ excited to hear what you're capable of with something like openmpt!
thank you so much. also the funny thing is modplug (before it was openmpt) was the first thing i ever tried, like 15 years ago; I just didn't put my back into the work.
OpenMPT is a program I'm a user of. Funnily enough it now has an FM mode.
@@sparklesparklesparkle6318 That's not a book, it's actually a meme on how the current "inclusivity flag" (What it really is) looks like a 1980's card VCR cassette tape sleeve.
It's also the reason why it has the 420 meme there, as a statement of "you gotta be high not to see the flag as a traditionalist video format cover".
I even hear many LGBT-people reject the "new flag".
Also, I'm sure I heard another guy in CRD's other videos. So technically the meme/gag serves double duty.
@@sparklesparklesparkle6318 He explains this in a q&a I think, hell of a way to ask but, uh, short answer yes.
@@CathodeRayDude bro you need to give a download for it, that's is a complete bop.
That "the first song I've ever written" is equivalent of "haha it's just a sketch" when mfs do a complete and detailed painting. Very well done!
"Please excuse the crudity of this model. I didn't have time to build it to scale or to paint it." - Doc Brown
Cybernet continued making keyboard PCs until around 2017. See my video about their ZPC-H6, with a Core i5 and HDMI output. There was also the Great Wall U310 from around 2011 with an Intel Atom CPU, also rebadged as the Commodore VIC Slim -- I did a video about it as well.
I was just about to recommend your video. I still love the idea even though I hate the lack of upgradability.
Oh sick, gonna check those out.
I believe LTT has reviewed one or two over the years as well.
I remember seeing ads in _Maximum PC_ for them, along with an All-in-one that they reviewed about a decade ago as a child. Didn't know they made keyboard PC's in the 90's.
The pause during boot is DHCP waiting for an IP address. The joys of networking on Windows 9x.
You possess a computer that automatically gives every video the wobbly sound effect that they use in memes.. This is a miracle.
No way you said: "don't be too harsh" and then played the best song I've ever heard
Touch typing on typewriters was ubiquitous for secretaries and typing pools. I was taught on a mechanical typewriter with a cover over the keys. To accommodate the key and hammer mechanics the rows were considerably steeper in their rake. This assisted in the muscle memory and made mistaken keys less frequent. Fingers moved "up to the right" or "down to the left from the familiar home key; ASDF ;LKJ.
Your hands could lay on the keys at rest when reading back your work without risking phantom strokes, such was the force required to operate.
Olivetti electromechanical 'golf ball' typewriters flattened the angle and compressed the gap between keys. It was a very hard adjustment at first.
You really went all out to save that little oddity's life. Personally, I think the lofi aspects and ridiculous institutional stencil spray letters make it perfect for when you want to put on some tracker tunes.
17:08 FYI, that is called a “flat flex cable” (not “ribbon cable”, because that term refers to the thicker, lots-of-round-wires-stuck-together cables like the gray one for the hard drive), or FFC for short. Orange ones like this are made of Kapton (polyimide), not Mylar (metalized biaxially-oriented PET, like in Mylar birthday balloons). The reason people sometimes confuse them is that the metalized Kapton films used on the lunar module and such were often mistakenly referred to as Mylar, even though they weren’t! People often thought one side of those was gold-plated, but the gold color actually came from the Kapton.
As for the tear: if you can solder decently, you can use a fiberglass brush to carefully expose the broken metal conductor and then solder a bodge wire to fix it. Alternatively, if the ends of the FFC are standard, which they probably are, you might be able to buy an off-the-shelf replacement and then make a few 45 degree folds in it to make it lay properly. This isn’t a weird hack, it’s actually a common way FFCs are routed in commercial products instead of costly custom FFCs.
They make these things called Pico PSUs, they're tiny little boards you can mount in the case, wire the outputs to the board then for input they have a DC jack and an external brick to do conversion. It would be a much cleaner solution. Edit - You'd need to pick up a 20 pin ATX Pico and a 20 pin ATX to AT converter cable but it should still be fine.
ATX Picos do not include the -5V that ISA ports need.
@@robertbackhaus8911 You can use a voltage regulator and derive -5V from the -12V rail. Though it's very likely not needed.
Original Sound Blasters needed -5V, but SB16s which the Vibra in the video shouldn't need it.
The PicoPSU would be a great option to clean up the build.
@@robertbackhaus8911 -5v is only actually needed for some of the older expansion cards, most will work fine without it. Its almost exclusively soundcards and even then most of the newer ISA cards simply derive it from the -12v line.
@@dungeonseeker3087 yeah, like the Sound Blaster in there
The original internal PSU was pretty much an early version of the Pico PSU concept! Newer ones are probably better quality though.
"As soon as I do that it'll just turn into a PC and become boring so let's not turn it on yet." This, right here, is why I keep coming back to this channel.
Those annoying round pin power connectors are Kycon connectors. I think they're specifically Kycon KPJX or KPPX series connectors but in my experience they just get called Kycon connectors. You can still buy them new, the mating half for the one on your machine is probably a KPPX-4P-SR7DI.
Yes, that's exactly right. I have a bag of KPPX 3 and 4 pin plugs. I blame Targus.
The first song you've ever written is not only perfectly inoffensive, it aptly captures an era to where I'm suddenly nostalgic for a game that never existed.
"Wobbly" video is extremely indicative of old, dried up capacitors, usually in the power supply, but not necessarily. When power draw increases, so do the fluctuations. Whether that's from increased HDD activity or more CPU load.
yoooo dude not bad AT ALL for a first song! the drums coming in with a rising velocity was a super nice touch! great job!
EDIT: oh man that quiet part back into the climax was great, seriously this is a jam! great work ahaha
For a first time composer, that is a pretty good tune!
32:30 It's the networking stack making Windows 98 freeze on boot. Probably waiting on DHCP.
Agreed. Windows 98 with a disconnected Ethernet card take forever to boot. Disabling the card or connecting the cable before booting will fix the issue.
Or just give it a static IP Address
^^ Zot. Win 9x era was rather sloppy re: networking. I guess nobody ever considered that you might not have plugged in the cable one day.
You might be able to get turbo working with ctrl-alt and (on the numpad) the plus key. Pressing ctrl-alt minus will put it in slow mode.
either that or Alt (not Alt Gr) and both left+right shift (had this sequence on a couple of computers)
except that Pentium and later computers don't actually support a turbo/slow mode. The only way to practically do that is to disable the L1 cache. At that point the Pentium might be more like a 486 or 386.
@@SeeJayPlayGames probably yes
Still, I do remember some first pentium MMX computer having a turbo switch and LED 🤔🤔 which might also be faked and just turning on and off just the LED, indeed
@@Grizzly_Lab Your are probably correct as at that stage low end machines were using last years cases that did actually use the turbo function.
i have a pentium 100 still running strong and it has no turbo options on the mother board pins, best guess is by that stage no one really wanted to slow down a windows based pc to run 4.7 mh games
Dude this is one cool project you got there :) also I just wanted to say that your power mod for the thing is actually quite novel and functional, even if not aesthetic. And function is more important than form with PCs. And that first Adlib song you made is a real banger. You got some talent there :)
Thank you for all of the above!
for a first midi sequence you ever wrote, it's effing awesome!!!
I remember I had two external hard drives at one point that used that weird 4-prong plug. One used a 5V supply, the other one used a 12V supply (which I found out when I mixed up the two power bricks and blew one of them up). That day I learned to label all of my power supplies as to which device they belong to.
Rip
At work I have a 4 disk toaster dock, a Dell laptop dock, and a third power supply also from Dell but we don't know what it goes to, with that connector. 6, 12, 24V, it's hilarious. I think the 12V one is even like 16 amps for some reason
The Wii and Wii U have a similar issue, they use the same connector but aren't quite compatible. They won't immediately blow up but they'll get really unhappy, my Wii had issues for at least a year after I plugged it into a U supply by accident
That long pause is a Windows 98 thing. If I recall correctly, it happens when you have an Ethernet port with no cable plugged in. I think it's a timeout where it's waiting for an IP address from a DHCP server (that it will never get if the cable isn't connected).
"It's ugly, it could've been done better, but it works" should be the entire PC industry motto.
hey that tracker music sounds pretty good. wouldn't be out of place in a typical era game!
"expandandability, something a wedge can't offer"
Cries in Amiga 1200
Those Winbond chips are probably the L2 cache, based on how they're close to the CPU (and based on my experience with other Socket 7 motherboards that have L2 cache there too). The PIIs (and earlier PIIIs) are massive because the L2 is put onto the processor card to bring it closer to the CPU. Intel switched back to sockets with later PIIIs once they were able to reliably package the L2 directly onto the CPU die and no longer needed the card space.
That would make a lot of sense! I forgot about discrete cache in that era.
@@CathodeRayDude Dont forget that there were a lot of first gen pentium machines with NO L2 Cache. Made them not a lot faster than a 486. I bet if Intel had never integrated the cache or done so later that there would have been OEMs building machines with no cache right up to that point.
I love that you acknowledged the evolution of the first gen pentium too, the first ones were 800nm 5 volt monsters!
Maybe the screen ripple is because it's not verifying DMI pool data 😂
I’m so happy your channel is doing well. Everything about it makes me happy
thats pretty goood for your first midi
"So don't be too harsh, this is literally the first song I've written."
This track would have been right at home in the demoscene or PC / Amiga games of the early 1990s. And that's a good thing.
I think there were probably more (and more obscure) wedge computers that you're aware of. For a start, at least four companies made versions of that Sinclair PC200 (Amstrad PC20, Schneider Euro PC, Olivetti PC1). Then you get things like the "Commodore 64 Web It", which was a wedge PC that booted into a C64 emulator. I'm sure there are many, may more examples but most of them have been lost to obscurity.
The PC20 was just a "paint job and a logo" over the PC200, but the Euro PC and PC1 we only similar in as much as they all were XT Clones. From CPU to Gfx to motherboard layout, very different beasts.
I have always been fascinated by the CyberNet PCs! The Jefferson County Public Libraries in Colorado had these in use for YEARS after they were relevant for looking up book locations, and the Pentium 4 machines were used for free web access. I remember being a 10 year old boy who was BEGGING his mother to buy him one of these MMX machines off of eBay for Christmas
I do remember quite a few modern wedges, though they're usually very rare and only one somewhat popular design, the RasPi 400. but cybernet, Great Wall are a few others I can remember off the top of my head. I've only ever seen one windows 10 wedge, most of them are WinXP era.
wedge is pretty generous, they're basically a normal keyboard but most of an inch thick (except for the great wall)
yeah that's kinda why i make the distinction; even if there *are* newer integrated machines, I'm sure they're all just kinda flat "trays." Not nearly as exciting as a wedge!
my favorite form factor. I was half excited about a production cyberdeck with that asus eeepc thing with the integrated display but it went absolutely nowhere.
I love Wedge PCs. They just strike a fun nostalgic chord for me. BTW, If you haven't seen it, the Raspberry PI 400 is a cute little modern wedge PC.
I think that Gravis would not consider that a PC though, because of difference in hardware architecture.
You have a natural talent for tracker music, Gravis! I love it! It sounds like something from the early PC demo scene. It's awesome!
"I mess around with keyboards" he said once in a Q&A. Now we know the true humility in that statement
that tracker track is freaking sick
More original music please!!
oh awesome. I have one of these but it proved to be the MOST ANNOYING FUCKER I've ever used. Like, I couldn't identify any 1 component that was bad, all the caps seemed fine, nothing was getting too hot, but it would only ever run for like 10 minutes at a time at best. I spent weeks trying to repair it into something like functionality, and completely failed.
and thank you for mentioning the Tandy. the whole time you were listing the other wedges I was like TANDY! TANDY! GRAVIS DIDN'T I BUY OR SELL A TANDY 1000 OFF YOU?
oh fusb me, you mention me and my terrible machine later in the video
also I was totally about to go "hey you know cybernet kept making this until at least the pentium 4 era" before you mentioned it. well done on the research!
One game that has an absolutely splendid Adlib soundtrack that doesn't seem to get matched yet is Dune 2, seems to have been completely forgotten in the nightmare that is IP acquisition over the years.
Your first song ever rocks. Sounds like the title screen for an obscure Space Wizard game
I just need to let you know something. I've been subbed for a while now. I LOVE how much you've been branching out on subject matter. I read the title of this video and thought to myself "ehhh..." then I saw it was from your channel, and thats when I got interested. Always love hearing your take on just about anything that gets you riled up.
thanks for watching and thanks for the input. I wasn't sure if the title sucked and now I am. I'll fix it.
@@CathodeRayDude not even really that it sucks, i just happen to be a rando who is subbed to a bunch of retro pc channels and thought it was one of them at first. Ngl, i love the neccissary horrors inside this one, and how you let us know what was about to happen, top notch entertainment lol
Your original song? Pretty damned great :)
bestie that song you just made is so good ??? it has no business being such a bop lol great job 😭😭😭
Dig it inside and out, that's some pinball wizard jams man!
You wrote a very nice demo track, and it was cool seeing Adlib Tracker again!
I wonder if you've looked into the PicoATX PSUs, would allow you to put it internally and have the 12v barrel jack in the original hole.. Tho they might need an extension harness with a -5v regulator if that soundblaster really needs it.
That song for a first composition is not bad at all honestly. Giving a PC a specific function keeps thing interesting. Thanks for sharing once more!
That is indeed a member of the genre of FM videogame music.
I already press like on any new video you post on principle, but I’d like a double like button for the music you composed. I genuinely think it’s fantastic.
I am a professional musician so can be super-critical, but I have no need to be. This is really great.
Dude! Your videos are like a birthday present 🎁 I've been waiting for a new one while watching the old ones over and over 😅😊 thanks for your hard work!
Happy belated birthday Konrad!
That "First song" is better than I've ever done in OctaMED and ModPlug Tracker since 1995. I like it a lot.
42:36 the voice of "bad and naughty children get put in the pear wiggler to atone for their crimes"
I completely agree with most of the comments here about the first song you've written. It is amazing and perfect for any 8 bit game that you might create one day soon. It's so catchy and could quickly become a classic.
I saw quite a few of the Amstrad keyboard PCs in the UK, including the Sinclair PC200 one. Although the Amstrad PPC was really a portable with integrated screen, like a precursor to modern laptops.
I like that you've kinda made this half way to your own cyberdeck with all the mods, the jank and the custom ad lib tracker song.
It's got its own character now with all the jank going on.
First song ever?! Then you're a natural musical genius. Make more!
That's a pretty banging tune dude.
On the Amstrad PPC512/640, I have a working one and they are around in the UK/Europe. They're actually designed as a portable machine and can run off battery power or 12v DC from a car, hence the integrated LCD. 🙂
Awesome video, love these weird form factors!
“Don’t be too harsh, this is literally the first song I’ve ever written.” Goes on to produce an awesome tune that wouldn’t be out of place in a hot selling 90s DOS arcade shooter.
Great video as always, the keikaku reference near killed me. And that song... genuinely amazing, would love to hear more if you ever pursue that.
I'd be curious if the visual artifacts would be resolved with running your own video card. Some of those old video chips were real crap.
Wouldn't trust that daughter card above the graphics chip either. It's old, unshielded, and the device itself probably wasn't built with top shelf components, so there's a good chance that the electronics in it are dying/bad, screwing up the voltage rails its making or even creating EMI.
Just an educated guess, and I can't really rewind to correct my assessment since YT doesn't like to save comment replies on mobile.
I believe the only keyboard integrated PC which is produced nowadays is the raspberry pi one.
In the early 2010's there were some of those with netbook like specs. With those awful Atom processors which were too slow to run windows 7.
Love my pi one
I expect the reason exclusive fullscreen helps with load is that the entire screen is being drawn entirely with the video chip. The chip likely has blitters and so once the decode is done everything else is hardware accelerated in fullscreen.
Lots of stuff ran better in exclusive fulscreen, it was basically DOS level control of the card, but with drivers.
Yeah, I guess I just assumed the bulk of the load was in the video decoding, but now that I think about it, MPEG-1 was meant to be decoded in realtime on... probably an *original* Pentium. A 233 would be overkill, and other workloads would become more significant.
44:45 - They eventually become 'Thermal Talkies" when the plastic bearings in their fans are cashed (12:48)!
Wedge PCs need to make a comeback.
"This is literally the first song I have ever written" = : Literally better than the melodies and beats on current pop radio.
Nice little machine, Probably deserves a deep clean with a pico psu inside, maxed out ram and a ssd.
Dude, that tracker song you composed was awesome! Great job!
The last wedge PC? What about the Raspberry Pi-400 ? Still a cool video, thanks!
Not a PC? Doesn't have an x86 processor.
The computer "POISK" was created in the USSR. Modern Ukraine, which appeared in 1992, has nothing to do with the creation of this computer, which was created in the Ukrainian SSR. Modern Ukraine, completely and completely denies everything that was created during the USSR. So you are being misled.
If it's one thing I always wonder about retro tech collectors, its 'what do you actually do with the devices you own?' so hearing your story of how you repurposed it along with a study of the oddities of this machine was super interesting.
Plenty of devices I'm sure are just museum pieces but actually seeing how, even if you must modify the system a bit first, you've found a way to keep it useful for a task (such as making really good music! :D Well done!) or for fun as a MIDI jukebox and 'DOS game-console'. A much better way for a computer in its 'retirement' to find purpose than just slowly going bad on a shelf, before eventually being recycled or worst, becoming e-waste.
Yeah! I think about this constantly - "okay, I have this stuff, it's neat, but how can I actually do something with it?" Much of the time... I basically can't, hah.
In case the song's main hook reminds anyone else of eurodance - you may be looking for 1994's "I show you secrets" by Pharao.
Love your straightforward explanatory approach. I am ignorant of much of your specialist area, yet i can learn so much. I see you there, quietly being a good true person in the midst of... the stuff. Subscribed.
Isn't a laptop a wedge computer with a screen and a battery? Wedge computers weren't phased out, we just added screens to them..
Great content as always
I feel so centered while watching this. Thank you for calming my spirit with a great tech video.
Sick tunes man, that was a real bop. You should make some more. Maybe you could offer them up to other people to use for sound demos so they too can avoid the content id
seriously, that track...
from a musical perspective: deceptively simple start, but still chill vibes. the progressive layering gets quite complex without polluting the rhythm/spectrum and turning it into sludge (not easy). and the ~20s from about 39:05 to 39:25... structurally, that it exists is impressive for a first song, and i really like it
could be projecting a bit myself, but if there's a chance you want to be making music and don't think you're good enough... even if they're "accidental", your intuition and taste guided you to some great choices, and you're selling yourself short
The Song was just SO AMAZING! Like actually wow!
i loved the little bit of air hitting the phone mic when spinning up that drive that you physically broke loose, lol. sounds like POWER.
That soundcard already has a power amp build in, its the big DIP chip, also the 6 pin jumper that has 2 jumpers on it behind the green line out jack selects between line-out and amplified out
You could connect some speakers directly to that jumper and the ground pins of the CD-rom input to use the build in amp and have the line out at the same time without a cable plugging in and going back in the system
I used to have passive speakers in this era of sound blasters and I recall them not really having enough oomph. It's *technically* amplified, but I don't think I'd get these levels off the card itself. I could be wrong though, and it's definitely worth investigating, esp. the internal header. I will probably revisit this machine in the future and will keep that in mind.
That looks like the same model Vibra I have. If it is, I believe the "MB_PRO" connector is a standard AC97 audio header. The front panel module from an old case would then let you make an internal connection without soldering.
I'm pretty sure that keyboard-chassis PCs were still being advertised in the UK Computer Shopper until about 2002/3 and were coming with PIII-based Celerons or Durons
That song is a SOLID, era/hardware appropriate jam! You work well within whatever limits you face, well done!
I have seen very similar motherboards before in industrial PCs, it could be that they used an existing motherboard and stuck it into a keyboard shaped case.
Having both 2.5" and 3.5" IDE could be a a pointer to that, 2.5" is a common DOM module size but 3.5" HDD was cheaper it could be that both ports are connected in parallel.
Industrial PCs are almost always 2-3 generations behind current gen.
Also having only one PS/2 port is common with the mouse input over serial in a touch screen.
I have seen side mounted PCI before on slim panel industrial PCs (more modern example: Enano-6612LVDS-R10).
It could explain the pivot to industrial PCs, why build a computer if you already have the connection with the OEM? Industrial PCs has a much higher margin.
Many thanks, a great tear-apart of a humble yet hard working item found in many an industrial / workshop location. I never knew about the intervals.
I remember Zero Footprint PC ads from my dad's old issues of Wired magazine. What a blast from the past! Great tunes, Gravis! You could moonlight as a chiptune musician.
Your first song sounds like it would go well as a background music track for an RPG. It's not quite the right tone, but lufia 2 popped in my head.
Cathode Ray Dude...
Now that you've written your very first piece of kick ass music, you should use it in your opening.
This computer would make the best sleeper PC ever
If I ever manage to get a second one........
hot damn that was amazing for a first song ever written! you should explore music more because that sounds like some natural aptitude right there.
Woah, you really could be a composer, no joke
This is such an interesting video. Your composition is really good. I’m re listening with headphones shortly …
Man that 'first song' was great! Would love to hear more.
Impressive tune you wrote there, especially for your first go, nice one geezer.
i loved that song! Also wow what a cool project PC!
Big points, that composition is really solid stuff, especially for working in adlib constrictions! What a fun little machine, having an adlib player feels like something that'd come in handy.
I'm going to bet this board was manufactured by Advantech. The SIS5571 and the "LCD/CRT" video output point to this being an industrial/kiosk motherboard. The internal layout of the computer could easily follow the board requirements.