Let's check out some of these mystery pizza-box systems! Vintage computer teardown and test.
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- čas přidán 17. 06. 2024
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CR-2032 batteries: amzn.to/45BElUZ
It's been driving me crazy not knowing what's inside of these systems. Time to remedy that! In this video we teardown and test three vintage desktop systems from the Franklin eWaste haul.
0:00 Intro
System 1
0:19 System 1 Tour
1:00 S1 Disassembly
7:09 S1 Testing and OS Tour
15:26 S1 Verdict
System 2
15:29 System 2 Tour
16:37 S2 Disassembly
20:47 S2 Testing
22:35 S2 RTC Hackulation
23:47 S2 Testing and OS Tour
26:32 S2 Verdict
System 3
26:57 System 3 Tour
27:56 S3 Disassembly
32:26 S3 Testing
39:09 S3 CMOS Final Boss Fight
41:33 S3 Verdict
41:52 Outro
After Dark is a screensaver program. They are most famous for the flying toasters.
literally the 1st piece of software from a store I ever bought in my life, 1997.. (I think I bought Netscape Navigator also at the same time, both on floppies)
My copy of After Dark came with a pretty great Asteroids clone called Lunatic Fringe!
@@IrnBruNYC Dit it have Lawnmower Man?
I loved AfterDark!!
31:27 That's crazy. I knew SeaSonic had been around for a while, but I didn't know it's been around that long. They've even kept the same logo all these years...
Every old computer has a purpose. At the least a typewriter with memory. Great selection today. Surprisingly clean at that.
After Dark! The origin of the legendary Flying Toasters!!!
And always looking fire in the thumbnails! Who does a guy call for THAT pizza delivery? Haha
I'd probably get fired on the first delivery for eating all of the pizza!
May your channel grow exponentially! Your love of this shines through, and just the details and care in your overviews is beyond so many others.
Thank, man, thanks.
Really enjoying watching you go through that treasure trove. The mystery expansion slot is most likely a memory extender, I have a DTK board with an extra 8bit slot that gives you 8mb more with an 'unobtanium' 8meg card.
I'd love to figure out exactly which card is required by this board and try to create a reproduction of it!
I obtained one recently for a 486 variant of their 386 board. 8MB is usually enough for 386s and most 486 stuff, but 8 extra never hurt anyone. :)
I love your cuts, when you need to unscrew something or clean something.
I also love when CD albums I get have "Made in West-Germany" it's like piece of history
Wonderful 90s beige-ness! They just feel so cozy to me. One of these days I need to build a sleeper out of an ancient beige case.
I'm thinking about transferring my Ryzen 7 system into one of these beige cases.
I was a dad during the 80's 90's Made my first computers after first buying an old 486 66mhz from Gateway. I''ll never forget having problems and being on tech support with a lady who changed one line in the configsys file. she put a comma in and it fixed whatever was wrong. I was sooo impressed. Before that I had a VIC20 I used to play space invaders on. Lovved making computers back then and still do.
I comment on all of your videos - usually the same general idea - this was the BEST time for home PC life.. It was so wonderful the technology moved SO SO fast, you could build a system, upgrade it 3 or 4 times in a couple years, put it away, build a NEW system, run them both, keep upgrading them along the way.. I just loved LOVED the late 80's through up into the 2000s for PCs.. what a GREAT time to be a teenager / 20s.. SO good!! I have had SO many of these generic small company systems come through my home.. I sure wish I'd have kept all the old stuff.. the only thing I think I still have is my 386 motherboard in the box with the manual (needed the manual back then, there was NO plug n play hahaha) and a couple old drives.. I do get older systems from friends / friends of friends just because in my area I am one of the better repair techs / I'm super fair with my work to cost.. like I do most stuff for free for people, that's just the way I am. I LOVE computers with such a passion. I'm glad your channel is here, you share my love for these systems and it makes me smile!!
I like you sense of humour & enthusiasm as you go through the process & explore the hardware. I can also agree late 80's hard drives shouldn't be that quiet. Love the old Caviars I must say!
Thanks! Yeah those Caviars make some of the best sounds of all the drives I've tested so far from this haul. That MFM drive from the NEC PowerMate was quite musical as well.
@@miketech1024 The louder the better I say! 😉
The extra long isa slot on the 386 is for a proprietary memory board that lets you add more memory slots. great video!
Thanks! I've never seen a board like that. Wonder if we could figure out which board is intended for that slot and reverse-engineer it. I can't imagine it's more than a few bus transceivers and passive components.
@@miketech1024 pretty much. but 8mb on a 386 is plenty for 99.9% of people with the only use being games. if the board accepts 4mb 30-pin simms... the memory board becomes moot. if you ebay search for "386 memory board" you can see some examples.
I like all 3 of these computers. As for the scratched case. Sand, prime, and spray. The science desktop theme on the 486 system was added as an option by the Windows 95 Plus! Package. I am sure that system will work better with doom if you provide a good performance VLB card or maybe just an ET4000AX card. That WD caviar 280 hard drive was the first one I ever had in the first 386DX PC I owned. Incidentally, that was a GRiD 386is-16 which used Tandy parts but did not have any of the idiosyncratic hardware incompatibilities of the older Tandy 1000 series. It had a CHIPS chipset as well with a Phoenix BIOS.
That first system was pretty sweet. However, in addition to it being a VLB system in the wrong case, that Matsushita 563 CD drive is definitely a win. It's one of those drives that is absolutely required for using the very elusive 3DO Blaster. So I would definitely keep it.
Will have to wait with the other two later.
8:50 'what is after dark?'
me: :O
youre in for a real treat. After Dark is awesome.
So nice to see these old computers, I look forward to every friday☺
On last computer ( at 31:13 ) - the connector is for memory expansion with custom board. Usually motherboard-specific.
Whoa you SERIOUSLY lucked out with these systems!! Holy SMOKES that's totally 100% a jackpot Mike!!!
Good finds again this time. Atleast for me 90s hardware is getting pretty hard to find now so you’re definitely pretty lucky to continually find these kind of computers. I love 90s and 2000s hardware.
Apparently this is my flavor of ASMR. Thank You
Great video! I appreciate you throwing some horror in there with the After Dark and Doom. :)
old computers are full of surprises
i love these kind of videos, always gives me the urge to re-assemble my windows 95 machine :)
I like the whole thing for the memory refresh. So much that I thought I forgot, just had a light coating of dust on it.
8:53 “What is After Dark?” O. M. G. Only the most amazing collection of screensavers to have ever graced both PC and Mac!! I bet my head you don’t even know “Bet Your Head”!
After Dark was a popular screensaver pack made by Berkeley Systems. They had many versions with many different fun screensaver packs over the years. They made the popular Flying Toasters you may know of.
Enjoyed, as ever, your fun and delight as you discovered each facet of each machine. Whether about the unusual Cyrix or the maths co-processor. My partner and I come for the reminiscence and stay for the cuteness!
After Dark was the classic Mac screensaver with the flying toasters. I guess they used their fame to make a gazillion licensed versions on a bazillion other platforms.
Thanks for the video! I stumbled upon some intriguing details about Reasontech. Apparently, back in 1996, the Wayback Machine archived a snapshot showcasing their later models, Square 5 and Square 6. It's fascinating to see how their products evolved. In 2003, Reasontech also went through a name change and became Reasoncomputer. Keep up the excellent work!
Wow that's interesting! They lasted a lot longer than I would have thought.
Hey Cutie, nice video. It always amazes me that the manufacturer of these PCs stuff massive amounts of ribbon cables in there versus custom lengths to not clutter up the internals.
37:30 The DFX/DWG files are AutoCad drawings
Great Video as always mike!
Nice work man just subscribed
that extra slot is for a video accelerator card. diamond made one that I know of...I used to own it
Cool machines man. I really like that backplane type system.
Very nice too see you explore those computers :) Very nice hardware. I have a 386sx but I really want to have a proper 386dx system.
Thanks for the videos. Always interesting.
You should do a video on all the tools/devices essential for this kind of work.
Another great video. I love your commentary. Cheers
The After Dark screensavers were legendary, at the time...
Think "Flying Toasters"... seriously!
Omg thank you for making these old computer vids. Ever since uxwbill quit making vids on old systems i havent really found any one who made vids like he did.. until today. Keep up the good work an maby try repairing some of those power supplys
The After Dark “Bad Dog” screensaver is great. The dog runs around your desktop slowly destroying it.
Conner drives were some of the quietest drive around back then.
VTech had a line of PC compatible computers that could be genuinely described as pizzabox format. They were around half the height of the top computer. There was enough room in them for maybe 2 expansion cards with the riser board fitted (one to the left, one to the right not a vertical stack). Honestly can't remember. I think it only went to 386 but maybe 486 too. VTech also had a line of low profile computers in the same style as the top computer.
Wow all the old windows sounds. I haven’t heard welcome, you’ve got mail in ages! Makes me feel ancient! The mouse cursor is a trip. The screen saver looks like Mortimer Mouse. That system sure made some crazy noises. The desoldering gun is very cool! Three Squares Computer is something I never saw before. Another great video!
Great channel mate.
A fun idea might be to run a favorite dos era CPU/Ram/Display benchmark on every retro PC that comes through and stick em in a Google doc or something.
You hit the jackpot lol. I would love to have the system's!!!!!!!!!!
8:49 Oh man, that's one of the themes that came with Windows 95 Plus! We had that exact lion background on the family PC for a good year or two. And those sounds are bringing back memories I forgot I had.
brings back lots of memories
just fixed up an old LCD monitor (2 fatty looking capacitors). im pretty tired, so when i saw a mike tech video, i grabbed a soda and bagel and got ready to relax!
God i love the look of the second system, very PS/2 like. I could see myself doing some writing based work on one.
Christ you know you are beyond a nerd when you audibly say "Cool" when shown a red LED for the 3'5 inch drive
Looking forward to seeing that VLB board in another case with some VLB cards 😀
Yeah,the "plus!" package!!!!
Had not seen &heared it for a while!!!!
another awesome video, I just saved a 2008-ish Dell Vostro200 Tower from the garbage this week, it works, and has Windows XP Black edition on it lol
i found a listing for a dell vostro 200 on ebay and bought it
it was listed as for parts but when i first looked in the case i realized it was complete and it was just password locked
funny thing is if you know how to.
you can completely bypass the password
the machine had the admin account disabled
but funny thing is there is a secret hidden Administrator account that is not able to be disabled just for that reason of regaining access to computers with lost passwords
so i went on turned the other admin account back on and logged in
apparently someone forgot to properly erase the hard drive tsk-tsk
because i found vacation photos and more stuff from a probably defunct tuxedo rental company
weird thing is there were no names so i couldn't actually find out if they wanted those photos back
i actually bought it just for the tower because i had a disembodied computer laying in a box just waiting for a new home
but i ended up with a standard office computer running xp
i compared what i did to a fallout 3 style hacking minigame
i actually had to look up how to change the username of the main account since it was firstname lastname and it wouldn't work if i typed firstname_lastname
it's been a while so i have actually forgotten again the steps of doing that but now if i wanted to i could rename the main account.
I got a slim version of that for $20
@MikeTech
Those two slots by the RAM are RAM expansion slots which needed a riser board to fit more SIMM modules into the system. As you see the board it can take up to 128MB of RAM, but with the expansion riser, that maximum increased to 256MB, IIRC. EDIT, it might have been 64MB -> 128MB. It's been so long I'm not 100% on the exact RAM limits.
The Windows 95 Plus! Pack is where all the sounds and crazy cursors came from on that first pc
I do a lot IC desoldering and I had no idea about that desoldering alloy. I'll be picking some of that up for sure
I've always just used some fresh leaded solder... desoldering alloy sounds fancy.
It works incredibly well for removing SMD chips and other multi-pin components like HDMI ports. It makes very short work of modern lead-free solder without the crazy high temps that are normally required.
It sounds like Wood's metal, but please be careful, it is apparently toxic, since it contains cadmium.
there is a product called soldering wick
basically it's braided copper wire mesh ribbon that literally pulls the hot solder right off the board
i mainly use it if i somehow mess up with the solder and have to start over which doesn't happen very often but it's not a non-zero chance
Mike, Word 6.0, on windows 3.1 was the hot set up at the time. Ran that at work on my PS2 model 60 with an HP DeskJet printer and got great looking print outs without the expense of having to use a LaserJet. I don’t recall what years that was, obviously pre-Y2K, but it worked really well. Thanks for the video!
I could probably still get use out of it today, except for the thing with the short filenames.
I used to be ashamed to admit this to a geek crowd, but I'm still using Word 2000 --- on a Win7 system! 🙂
@@keithbrown7685 LOL Keith, I still use Word 2003 on my Win 10 system. I've got Word 2010, but never liked the ribbon on the top. IMO opinion Word 6.0-2003 were the best Word versions.
Cool video Mike. Keep on bringing us that good stuff 👌
Wow that German C&T graphics card in the S3 system must be seriously slow as DooM is supposed to run a lot smoother on a DX-25. I would try that Diamond Speedstar Pro from that other system and see it perform about 3 times better ;-)
Heh I wish Mike would deliver me a pizza.. cause he always delivers the goods :) ❤
I like my pizza with extra sausage, if you catch my meaning.
@@fatguywitholdcomputers9351 😉
All orders must be submitted via dial-up BBS. 🙂
@@miketech1024 can I get the number to this BBS? ^.^
The extra "ISA" slot is slot for a memory expansion card. You can se the traces between the slot and the simm sockets.
Thanks for another interesting video. It’s possible that the not-parallel card is a SCSI adaptor. The external connectors are the same, IIRC.
Wow. Yeee. Yer right Mike. The first one belongs in a tower or full case. Just started watching this. Watched all yer videos so far and Re watched them over and over again. Love the content buddy.
Keep up the awesome work.
Ps. I still love that one hdd bay that pulls out of the case in the one video. I’d love to find something like that.
Right now I have some older computers from early 2000s. Dell Dimension 2400 series 😂. Which I’m currently working on. Some problems installing Xp. Bit anything newer then Xp. Installs no problems. Relic computers grrrr. But I ain’t giving up until I get that Xp on there.
Looking forward to more of yer videos 👍
Thanks!
@@miketech1024 Yw buddy! :).
31:18 RAM expansion card. Seen Everex 386 TIGA workstations with up to 32MB RAM :)
386DX was definitely capable of running Doom, heck I played doom on 386SX. Back in college we ran lanparties on 386DX on Novell and it was absolutely payable. The key was to get VLB VGA card, bacause the regular 16bit ISA didn't cut it. I think your lovely 387 was just dragging down by ISA. Great vid as usual.
After dark was quite the well known screensaver program back in the day. many modules were made for it. flying toasters was my favorite setting and it was the main screensaver for windows 3.1
Just curious. Did you have the Lawnmower Man plugin?
@@keithbrown7685 for some reason I thought I had, but I can't find it now :(
embrace your madness brother.
I see a WP51 folder on the first PC - that is WordPerfect 5.1 (for DOS)
Love me some pizza box/desktop form factors…Crammed components and all. I’ve stopped questioning why I like them over towers.
I think it's the visual aesthetic. Maybe there's some space savings to be had, too.
9:53 dude, that Bobcat picture, makes me think I'm 10 again. Win 95, GOOD TIMES!
AfterDark were well known for screensavers in the 90's. I used to have a Star Trek TNG (and TOS) themed AfterDark screensaver.
Their famous ones were the flying toasters/flying toilets.
The sound from 12:22 when you shut down the system is from the first Polish internet messenger called Gadu-Gadu when you received a new message :D
Man, those Caviar Drives!
I loved getting a pile of junk from my uncle in TN when we'd visit from Detroit.
I thought these things would never die in the early/mid 90s
I'm really surprised at the number of hard drives I've tested from this period that still work perfectly fine!
To mitigate the rust on the case, I'd recommend either sand-blasting with glass beads _or_ manually sanding with some manner of high number sand paper (at least P320, possibly P500) to avoid marring the surface with deep scratches (steel hardness and quality varies wildly in old cases). Matching the paint is another issue, I have had relatively good success using RAL 9002 ("grey white") when repainting old beige boxes. Although, I have come upon a few that needed RAL 1013 ("oyster white") and more than one that was RAL 9012 ("clean room white").
I'd almost prefer some kind of power sanding tool with a delicate setting. I swear I'd take forever with sandpaper, and I probably wouldn't get it right anyway.
@@keithbrown7685 Sanding metal cases is a lot like using salt in cooking. You can't undo sanding once done and you can't dial back salt once added. So slow is better, especially when you go in guns-ablazing thinking you're sanding steel only to discover it's aluminum. (Learn from my mistake)
Thanks to your video, finally i know the terminology of Pizza Box case.
Before i watch the video i only know the Desktop term.
The problem is, the tower case also called a Desktop. Then i have difficulty to tell people what i mean.
Thanks to this video, i can just tell them a pizza box case, which i mean is not a tower case.
For a vintage Desktop, i more love a Pizza box case than a Tower case.
Ahh too bad no Linux lectures today. I love watching and picking up bits and pieces.
There was once an i386 distro called Damn Small Linux. The entire image was only 50MB! Sadly, it is long-dead. Might see what I can do to resurrect it as it is perfect for old machines. Long ago I modified it with graphics drivers and loaded it into a RAMdisk. It made an insanely fast gaming OS!
For that first system, there is a Cyrix cache enabler software out there that may be required to enable the cache which should speed it up. (I only know about it from a PS/2 I have that has an drop in 286 replacement that is a 486 thing.
The second system looks identical to a Northgate 386SX system I used to have. Worked pretty well, and came with a nice keyboard - which is what Northgate was famous for. I'll bet they used the same OEM manufacturer.
Very likely. They probably just badged an off-the-shelf case.
I recognize the funky cursors on that first system - it's the Marvin the Martian theme cursors; I still have the set that somebody gave me back around 2000. Would be still using them if I still used Windows. And that one with the scarred paint on the top, kinda quirky idea, but you might try that self-adhesive contact paper they use on closet shelves. I've done that before. Get the right pattern and apply it carefully and neatly and it can look pretty nice. I still remember making up an old desktop with a beautiful woodgrain cabinet!
Ah that explains all the weird spacey sounds!
@@miketech1024 I think the icons and sounds were also on the "Science" theme, at least on Windows 98 (that inherited a few of the Plus! 95 themes). And that wallpaper is from another of the themes, Dangerous Creatures, I think.
(I had to look up the english names for the themes, btw)
I have a somewhat similar Socket 3 VLB motherboard with the same Opti 895 chipset. Mine's a Shuttle HOT-419. I've got a late-90s date code AM5x86 installed and running rock solid at 160MHz on a 40MHz FSB. The 895 seems like a pretty great chipset for VLB systems.
Good to know! I've always heard VLB can be quite unstable at higher clock speeds.
@@miketech1024 It can definitely get flaky. Many cards and motherboards have jumpers to alter timing/wait states on the bus to compensate for >33MHz FSB. That jumper sets the same signals on the bus whether it's on the card or the motherboard, so it usually only has to be set in one place. Multiple VLB cards installed with a higher FSB is somewhat trickier. You may find that the cards have to be in specific slots to work properly. With my system, it seemed to work best jumpered to >33MHz even with the FSB at 33MHz. It's totally stable at 40Mhz, and it POSTs at 50MHz, but I didn't stress test the system as I want to place thermistors on the CPU and VRM to make sure things are sane with the CPU at 200MHz.
PC clones from mom & pop Chinese computer shops used to all kinds of badges on them, often just for the single shop, but really could be anything. At least that's how it was in Australia in the 486 era. I suppose it was the same before, after, and elsewhere.
2:29 Sound card is an Aztech Sound Galaxy Nova 16 Extra, found on DOS Days
The last computer i have with a 386 33Mhz in 1992 (Romania/craiova)
I have one of the same desoldering guns. My experience has been mixed. It seems great when I first used it but I think it depends on what you are using in for. Mine just came with a 1mm tip which I think is a bit bigfor anything mid 2000's forward. Also, since the pump is in the gun it is a bit heavy and combined with the larger tip and loss of suction over time it struggles on any stubborn components. If you're not careful, instead of removing the solder, it will start removing all the solder mask and thin traces surrounding the component after any prolonged use more than a few seconds. Just my experience ... YMMV.
My eyes about popped out of my head when you asked what After Dark was, only the best screensaver packs ever! I've never seen the disney pack tho. Side note, you might want to look into liquid electrical tape for sealing up those old RTC chips and to protect areas you're worried about shorting. Friend of mine used it and that stuff doesn't play around. I use it to repair old wiring on cars and trucks, it holds up. Just ask the glob of it permanently affixed to my driveway after I knocked the jar over... Oops... Also I nearly snapped my head off leaning to the left when I saw that 3 squared PC had a SeaSonic PSU at around 30:46, definitely one of my favorite brands of PSU!
Pretty surprised myself that I hadn't heard of it. We even had the flying toaster screensaver, but it came in the form of a single SCR file with no such branding. Yeah I've used that liquid electrical tape before. It is definitely permanent! I usually use either hot glue or RTV to seal up the holes in the RTC, just in case I need to remove the connections for some reason.
@@miketech1024 A friend of mine and I had a running joke that if there is anything left of Humanity at the end of time it will be fossilized plastic, and liquid electrical tape. Nothing survives what that liquid electrical tape can, haha!
I had a memoory mismatch error like that it was a bios setting, change it to the new amount of ram installed.
Turbo switch seems to be hooked up backwards, turbo is supposed to slow it down to 286/386 speed.
@31:13
from memory, I /think/ you could add more cpu cache. that's the socket for it.
Hope to get my hands on an 386 one day. Have a 286, 486 and a couple of pentiums
I used to modify the sound scape in AOL. I found some on the world wide web and one was Homer Simpson running to the mailbox stating', "Oooh, the mail's here!"
Child me once modified all of the AOL sounds using WAV files from a website called fart.com. This was peak hilarity for an 8-year-old!
AFterdark was a suite of screensavers for older windows systems.
The bottom one in your stack is not a "pizza box" case. It was a standard desktop size and much the same size as a mini-tower, but the horizontal shape/size came first. (Mini-tower came later).
none of these are "pizza box" cases.
pizza box form factor was/is extremely rare for pc compatible computers. most of them were Sun, HP, SGI, etc... Unix machines.
Pizza boxes are generally not sized as these cases, except in places like Chicago or Detroit.
these are plain ol' desktop form factor.
@@316diag agreed. IBM also had pizza boxes and they were AIZ Unix also
After dark was a mac screensaver program. There weren’t any before os x installed natively. Funny to see it on a windows machine
That spot at the front of the be is for a board specific memory expansion card.
That cyrix Cpu could be a gp-100/120/133?
12:33 is the sound of an incoming message in the Polish instant messenger "gadu-gadu". Once very popular in Poland :)
Interesting. I wonder if they licensed it from AOL.
@@miketech1024
Hard to say :) The date of the first release of this communicator is August 2000.
After Dark created by Berkley Systems and was the must-have screen saver utility with the famous flying toasters. Came to prominence in the mid 1990s and available for Mac and PC. In those days screensavers were almost essential to prevent burn-in and in office enviroments so people popping away from their desk for coffee and forgetting to lock the PC didn't have their stuff looked at casually. Berkley was later bought by SIerra online and the advent of better monitors and decent LCD ones meant screensavers weren't so important.
In your previous life as a Network Engineer I'm surprised that you didn't come across After Dark, although it was installed on desktop PCs and not Servers.
Never have come across After Dark (or flying toasters of any kind) in a professional environment. I did go straight into admin/engineer roles, completely bypassing helpdesk/desktop type work. So that may be why. The days of CRT monitors were well over by the time I entered the workforce also. I work 100% in the cloud these days (DevOps and Azure) so the only server hardware exposure I get these days are the ones in the home lab.
That second system is one that I would love to find for myself. Would you be willing to part with it? lol
Dang. That one has a Seasonic
OMG i'm an HOUR LATE... How dare i... I forgot today was friday... looking forward to the video
Hate to admit it, but we used the top of that last computer case as a work station for a few weeks since we were so low on space. 😬Broke down a few hundred telecom switches right ontop of it
More content for me!
8:53 "What is After Dark?" Excuse me? :D
Somehow I never looked into the origins of the flying toaster screensaver. We had it in the form of a single SCR file with no After Dark branding.