Dude, you're 35?!? All this time I've figured you were in your mid 20's! Whatever you're doing, it's working, so keep doing it!! Do you have any plans to build a space where you can have key pieces of your collection setup and working? A combination display/lab/studio space would be sweet!
Yeah, not exactly a youngin. Figured I'd finally reveal that since people seemed quite confused as to how I could talk about systems of this age lol. Yeah I'm currently in the process of converting one of the spare bedrooms into a retro cave. Been a slow process because construction is not my most favorite thing, but it's coming along!
@@miketech1024 That's awesome! Can't wait to see how it turns out. Have you been filming the conversion process by any chance? I'm guessing not but I feel like there'd be value in that. I'd definitely watch... It wold be relevant to anyone with similar interests who are also not masters of construction. Maybe something to post on a secondary channel or as Patreon content if you're worried about it hurting the channel overall to have dissimilar content.
@@marcberm Yes, I’ll be posting a video on it to Patreon. Carpentry isn’t my strong-suit but the last patron-only construction video was pretty fun to make!
My first computer (mid 90s) came in that CenturyNet/Honeywell case (the second one). When I get it home, I felt that is very heavy but Ihad no idea that all that was the case, built like a tank. Inside it had a 486 DX2@66 with VLB (yes the original computer was removed) and I upgraded it further, preserving the motherboard until I replaced with a Pentium. I never ever had seen that case again until now. The only thing written was Olivetti instead CenturyNet and had no brand stickers in the back. Now I understand what the black velcro pieces in the back were for. I never had that plastic back panel and never knewt hat it existed.. Brings back memories, it was huge, all my table was filled with the computer, keyboard and mouse; the screen was sitting on top of that case.
I've made my own SIP modules by soldering wires onto the end of SIMMs as both are pin compatible. I love collecting / restoring / repairing these old computers too.
That Honeywell system really, really intrigues me. It's using the same class-model and serial number system as NCR PC / server equipment, and a lot of the design language is similar. The oldest NCR system I've seen is a 386, though, and it was using a SCSI drive and adapter. I wonder if there was a subcontractor agreement in place, and if so, who was building for whom...?
I remember infomercials from 1985 advertising home computers the first two might have been on those. Looking back those infomercials were a trip lol. That hard drive was HIUGE! Of all the computer parts I’ve seen I never saw a monster like that! It did sound like a Rage Against The Machine song. The NEC computer looks very familiar. I think we had one. It’s funny the one part was made in 1988. It would be a trip if it was made in the same month you were born. I look forward to your future videos digging into all the computers from your haul. This is a walk down memory lane for me.
Nice video as usual, though it would be nice to see some variety in the videos, like some actual start to finish restore or build / rebuild videos, benchmarks & games ect...
Still kinda figuring this whole thing out. The one-week timeline is proving tough (while having a full-time job). I might potentially drop down to two systems per video if doing so can fill out an entire video.
The servo tracks likely faided on the voice coil drive, possibly why it cant lock/see those tracks to finish initialization. Either that or theres a problem with the heads/head amps.
Thanks for the info! Here's a deleted clip of what it's doing internally. Does look like it's having trouble detecting it's at the edge of the disk. ruclips.net/video/RJZqnAWCg-A/видео.html
@@miketech1024 it's trying to find the negative track which contains the geometry information but it cannot be read. Also I can hear the head scratching the disc so it's definitely done
I physically cringed when I saw you wipe the edge connector you hit with the fiberglass pencil with your finger. I work as a network engineer, and I'm all the time fighting fiberglass insulation in ceilings. I can't imagine getting little needles of fiberglass stuck in my finger like that.
@@jovetj My first PC (if you want to call it that) was a PCjr. Mine had a Racore drive expansion kit on top. It also had had a memory expansion board along with a side car. The side car had a parallel port with a PC/jr toggle switch. The toggle switch appeared to do nothing but switch between 40 and 80 column mode on boot. I was able to boot PC-DOS 3.31 (albeit with multicolored ascii garbage about halfway through the boot--- nothing a CLS couldn't cure). I once tore a trace trying to desolder one of the ram chips on the memory board. 16 year old me had horrible soldering skills (I still do!). Looking back, having that Racore utility disk would have been helpful (had I known that existed). The funny thing is that I actually wrote my high school term paper on my PCjr. I wrote it using WordStar. I hated that word processor. Electric Desk (from Alphaworks) would have been much better. But, I least had a Panasonic P-KX1123 24-pin dot matrix printer. That printer had some decent print quality.
I had the 386SX version of the NEC PowerMate. Unfortunately it also only had 2 MB of RAM onboard with no way to expand it without NEC's proprietary RAM expansion board, which really limited its usefulness in Windows. I could've used an ISA card to increase the memory, but that's much slower because the ISA bus is only 8 MHz.
Wonder if the proprietary RAM expansion board would work with this system's 486 mod. Might have to create a new eBay saved search for that one. I imagine they're likely incredibly rare though.
God ur killing me with that white shirt lol. Another great video. I love working on computers but right now my space is full and I’m trying to sell some off. Needing parts for some in order to sell.
Another great video! long enough to cover everything (I prefer 30-60 minute repair videos like this), great editing, great video/sound, just the right amount of commentary. Quickly becoming one of my favorites. Keep it up!
Thanks so much! I was a bit nervous about pushing to the 1-hour mark. I originally had 5 systems lined up for this video, but decided it might be too much. Glad to see people are liking the longer format!
Great video! Tip regarding 3.5" disks on modern systems: they CAN work with 360/720 formatting, but if you're using a modern HD disk (couldn't tell if you were) you need to tape over the density select hole, then it'll read and write no problem.
Thanks! Yeah I was using an HD disk. I had completely forgotten about the density select window until just this weekend, when I un-earthed a large cache of 3.5" disks (including many DD disks) at an estate sale. Pretty sure I felt the dust getting knocked off of those brain cells lol.
Someone was holding onto that last system for dear life. Seemingly upgraded it as far as it would go. I had a rage 128 (ATI rage fury) in 1999. Great card. I remember the thing about ATI cards at the time was they had built in hardware MPEG2 decoding for dvd playback. Makes me want to build a time machine and travel back 25 years to game on my old PC again.
You'll find ads of ARC in late 1980s computer magazines. I have found one with the line: "ARC - the No-Problem Computer Company". They were located in Monterey Park, CA. The "PC Magazine", December 1986 shows an ad after page 257 with the ARC 286 Turbo at the top.
Daym. You look awesome for being 35. Id guess 22. You sure maintain your body. If you have an significant other they are lucky to have you, because you seem like an awesome person too. :-D
A request. Do you have an discord server? It would be awesome to have an community to talk tech. You should create one for your channel where people can share their finds etc. it would be awesome.
Those tantalum capacitors are often just bypass caps. You may find that the board will run with a few missing if you wanted to test further before throwing down cash for replacements.
Awesome finds so far Mike and honestly, I've so far have enjoyed the journey so far and look forward to future discoveries. Also, your production quality improves with each upload especially the sound, can I make a small request however? I'm only speaking for myself of course but there may be a few others that agree timestamps in the description would help, I don't mind longer videos but most days I only have so much time to watch RUclips videos and while most times I come back to finish these types of videos, it can be a PITA sometimes to get back where I last left off and that would help tremendously, outside of that great job and I hope you can hit at the very least 10k subscribers by the end of the year
Thanks! That is a good idea on the timestamps. I'm still kinda new to this whole RUclips thing, so I'll certainly get that together. I really appreciate the suggestion!
I remember AOL sending floppies in the mail constantly. Then CDs I remember the gateway that was actually owned by psinet that every dial-up service including AOL used to access the internet I remember the day AOL bought all of the dial-up services I remember the dial-up service I used first was a guy in his garage and when the email didn't work I would call and he would go reboot the Box I remember when the cable companies were independent and they had the first high-speed service and I remember AOL buying them up one by one to get high-speed access I don't think there is any dial-up left I think AOL shut all of it down It is amazing how far we've come in just 30 years
@24:30 that brown stuff that sticks to the board probably has to be removed, as it could be the kind that absorbs humidity and becomes slightly conductive over time causing shorts between components.
That kind of conductive glue can also be typically found in certain brands of monitors from the 80s, usually around CRT neck boards for vibration resistance, it's a real pain
The voltage switch in North America I don't think is as critical. Accidentally telling the PSU to expect 240v but sending it 120v isn't really a problem. Doing the reverse in Europe and game over. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I remember putting in the bootloaders for the hard drives in 286 and 386 and 486 machines They were each specifically written CMOS for each motherboard and the company selling them. The companies were all generic and they would get ATs like this and the motherboard would have a custom written CMOS specifically for the hard drives that company would sell with that board. There were usually about 15 or 20 selections for the hard drive. Some boards later on had the ability to enter how many cylinders and heads and tracks you had and you could custom set the size of the drive but many did not have this ability especially in the 286 days Even the 386 has a lot of them did not have that ability yet So hard drive manufacturers would sell a program that was on the floppy disk that you could run and it would write a boot loader into the CMOS I don't remember which appeared first but I remember when I booted seeing the manufacturer of the CMOS like AMI and seeing the bootloader logo I think it was the VGA card logo and then the bootloader and then the CMOS The bootloader took over on top of the CMOS and ran as an interpreter between the hard drive and the system board Those were incredible Days I remember getting Windows 95 to run on a 286 I remember Microsoft telling me it would not work But I installed and 80 MB IDE drive and an IDE card and 4 MB memory, which was the maximum the system could accept. And I remember taking each floppy and copying the files off each floppy into a win95 directory off the C drive, and it was something like 23 floppies And then running the setup from the C drive and when it was done it had filled 60 MB of the hard drive. It was slow but it did work And what I realized was something absolutely incredible Had Microsoft written Windows 95 in 1985 it actually would have worked and it would have advanced computers by a full decade Remembering everything was command line based DOS back in 85, and very few people owned a computer and even in 95 very few people owned a computer I remember 99 when more people were getting on the Internet and the trouble that started because so many people were on that had no previous computer experience I miss the old days So many people were technologically adapt that were using computers in the 80s and early 90s and there was a lot of help in the tech community between all of us And there wasn't any of the hate that exists now that literally anybody can get on the internet I remember when the smartphone came out and I said this is single-handedly the greatest and the worst invention in the history of mankind I likened it to giving everyone a nuclear bomb with a hair-trigger and a hammer and giving it to apes I miss the old days so much because there was never a bad word among any of us Even in the late 90s I don't remember there being any hate speech at all But after smartphones came out I think around 2006 was the first time I saw so much hate speech just overnight it appeared and just kept getting worse and worse. But these machines bring back a lot of memories of a lot of nights spent working and sleeping on the floor in the office I worked two jobs most of my life and I can tell you it wasn't worth it I am old and sick and bedridden and in pain and dying alone in a welfare apartment My greatest regret is that I work so hard because it meant nothing And no one ever appreciated it
Oh no that Maxtor drive really isn’t happy at all. Normally it should just do that "Du duuuu" without going crazy afterwards. It would be nice if you could get it working but it’s probably unlikely to happen. I wish I could have one of these in my HDD collection. These machines that you got certainly are quite nice!
Yeah it kinda broke my heart hearing that. Well, if I can't get it working, it will certainly make an interesting piece of functional art because I can definitely get the voice coil to make some crazy sounds! It already does a great job at playing RATM songs! 🤣
Since you have quite a bit of experience with old drives, here's a deleted scene of the Maxtor spinning up and attempting to initialize. Seems like it's having trouble detecting that it's at the edge of the disk. Perhaps that rubber bumper has swelled? What do you think? (VOLUME WARNING) ruclips.net/video/RJZqnAWCg-A/видео.html
@@miketech1024 I know that some drives have issues with rubber but usually it’s because it melted so it’s either sticking the heads or is smaller than it should. I have no idea if it is possible for rubber to have expended or not. Early voice coil drives uses a dedicated servo surface, maybe that surface is damaged and the drive just cannot position the heads properly anymore? Really I don’t know but that’s certainly a bummer that this drive isn’t functional
I watched that clip of the drive trying to initialise. Looks like its having trouble reading the disk - like the click of death with modern drives or the control PCB is faulty. You could try replacing any electrolytic caps and testing the voice coil drive transistors on the PCB but its probably beyond repair.
@@miketech1024 I enjoy your videos. I was a consultant in the treasury department at Maxtor during the days of their full height 5 1/4 inch hard drives. I remember one of the employees (still a friend of mine) computer periodically making a very audiible sound (I'll call it a "groan" or a "whine") as the hard drive in his PC did some sort of a reset. A few times a day. In my own home PC's, I did have one Maxtor running RLL which allowed me something over 200 megs in disk space--considered huge at the time. Sadly, it is gone or I'd sendit to you. I doremember using software called "Max Blast" from a local firm (I think it was Storage Tech in Los Gatos but I'm old and don't remember what I had for breakfast) which was useful in diagnosing, low-level formating and partitioning the Maxtor drives. I think there are still references to the MaxBlast software on the web. Thanks again Mike!
I've used Loctite Rust Removal Naval Jelly to remove corrosion from hard-to-reach sockets and slots in-situ on circuit boards. It doesn't damage the surrounding components and can sit on areas liquids drain off of due to its thick viscocity. It would be perfect for a situation like your ISA slots.
16:18 - I _really_ like the aesthetics of that CenturyNet. The rear plastic cover was a nice touch. I really like the look of the flush port covers. It's a shame the ISA covers have to be clipped off (or at least it looks like it does.) When I first saw it, I had imagined early Apple computers like the later //e, IIgs, or Macintosh II series with their color-matched port covers that clipped into the unused slots. Either way, a nice looking case. The front kinda looks like an early HP switch.
It's definitely my favorite case out of the four of them! Yeah the ISA covers need to be clipped unfortunately. Luckily, enough of them are already exposed for me to add the cards that I want.
360 floppy ? I can't remember if mine had a 360 I remember when I bought the 1.2 MB floppy I remember putting in a new IDE controller and I think the hard drive was 120 MB Trident was the card I had The dip switch Serial card, I remember those and the first 2 button mouse
Love your content - I get to see all these weird and wonderful machines without having to store them! Just wanted to comment that touching a switching power supply's heatsink (see 37:37 ) is very dangerous, because a lot of TO-220 MOSFETs and diodes attach (usually the live) pins to the heat sink tab. The Osborne-1's ASTEC power supply does this and it's not pleasant.
I want to find a nice AMD K6-2 PC like that one! Preferably one with the motherboard securely mounted to the case! A BIOS update might fix the PC133 RAM module not being detected. Keep up the great content on the channel!
Surprised you hadn’t heard of Zeos. They were the bomb in the early/mid 90s. We had a Zeos Pantera with a Pentium running at 90mhz back in ‘94. Came with Windows 3.1, but really unleashed the speed when we installed Win95 on it.
I just acquired that same NEC but mine has an onboard IDE controller on the riser card and the company that had it used a boot floppy to boot it off a network. I have several flavors of the NEC config software if you want to compare notes. I cannot get mine to recognize any hard drive or IDE to SD, will probably get another XT-IDE like I did for my PS/2 but my seller is out of them.
looks like (and sounds like) that Creative drive might be a Plextor... a model before Plextor started selling commodity grade drives. if it is, it will likely be the best CD-RW drive you'll get your hands on.
The second one is what i was talking about in a previous video of yours. It is an NCR PC8. Made in Germany. I have that too. Though mine is not an SBC, but also a fully loaded 286 12mhz with 2 65MB MFM Seagates.
Dude, you're 35?!? All this time I've figured you were in your mid 20's! Whatever you're doing, it's working, so keep doing it!! Do you have any plans to build a space where you can have key pieces of your collection setup and working? A combination display/lab/studio space would be sweet!
Yeah, not exactly a youngin. Figured I'd finally reveal that since people seemed quite confused as to how I could talk about systems of this age lol. Yeah I'm currently in the process of converting one of the spare bedrooms into a retro cave. Been a slow process because construction is not my most favorite thing, but it's coming along!
@@miketech1024 That's awesome! Can't wait to see how it turns out. Have you been filming the conversion process by any chance? I'm guessing not but I feel like there'd be value in that. I'd definitely watch... It wold be relevant to anyone with similar interests who are also not masters of construction. Maybe something to post on a secondary channel or as Patreon content if you're worried about it hurting the channel overall to have dissimilar content.
@@marcberm Yes, I’ll be posting a video on it to Patreon. Carpentry isn’t my strong-suit but the last patron-only construction video was pretty fun to make!
Ages like a fine bottle of wine, very well. i didn’t think you were more than 29.
That solves the mystery. I'm 41 and most of these stuff are my childhood, I thought "how is this kid in his mid 20s know all this?" LoL
I call it the Gun Show 💪
"To burn house down..." you're a trip! Loved the fireworks 🎆.
That one was so good, it deserved a screenshot, a definite keeper 😂
You had me at “Got some old boys on the bench today…”.
25:00 - I cracked up. Perfect work tag there. 😂
44:18 That Windows background image... *Y I K E S* lmao.
My first computer (mid 90s) came in that CenturyNet/Honeywell case (the second one). When I get it home, I felt that is very heavy but Ihad no idea that all that was the case, built like a tank. Inside it had a 486 DX2@66 with VLB (yes the original computer was removed) and I upgraded it further, preserving the motherboard until I replaced with a Pentium. I never ever had seen that case again until now. The only thing written was Olivetti instead CenturyNet and had no brand stickers in the back. Now I understand what the black velcro pieces in the back were for. I never had that plastic back panel and never knewt hat it existed..
Brings back memories, it was huge, all my table was filled with the computer, keyboard and mouse; the screen was sitting on top of that case.
my fav retro PC channel : )
Thanks!
@@miketech1024 is possible to dump the bios?
I didn't know a HD of that size exists lol and the sounds would drive me crazy using it ha
That's my first time seeing one in almost 30 years! The old 10MB Seagate drives (from the IBM XT systems) with stepper motor heads sound much better.
I've made my own SIP modules by soldering wires onto the end of SIMMs as both are pin compatible. I love collecting / restoring / repairing these old computers too.
That was definitely my backup plan! 🙂
That Honeywell system really, really intrigues me. It's using the same class-model and serial number system as NCR PC / server equipment, and a lot of the design language is similar. The oldest NCR system I've seen is a 386, though, and it was using a SCSI drive and adapter.
I wonder if there was a subcontractor agreement in place, and if so, who was building for whom...?
I love your content and big thanks for converting units to metric (its a timesaver for non US viewers :))
That little sound when you typed dir was so cute. Wish dir always made that sound
Love these videos! Please do more :) also motherboard / psu repair videos would be great
I remember infomercials from 1985 advertising home computers the first two might have been on those. Looking back those infomercials were a trip lol. That hard drive was HIUGE! Of all the computer parts I’ve seen I never saw a monster like that! It did sound like a Rage Against The Machine song. The NEC computer looks very familiar. I think we had one. It’s funny the one part was made in 1988. It would be a trip if it was made in the same month you were born. I look forward to your future videos digging into all the computers from your haul. This is a walk down memory lane for me.
A very deep dive into cyber archeology 😊
I love your videos, only fish you where in them mkre. 😜
Nice video as usual, though it would be nice to see some variety in the videos, like some actual start to finish restore or build / rebuild videos, benchmarks & games ect...
Still kinda figuring this whole thing out. The one-week timeline is proving tough (while having a full-time job). I might potentially drop down to two systems per video if doing so can fill out an entire video.
Love the content sir! Keep it up. 😇
Teenage me hacked Nibbles for trainer mode, extra levels and eventually up to 8 players!
When it comes to powering up, it's not explosions....
The term is "spitzinsparkin".
I can't believe you didn't do the thing, the thing everybody does to 3.1...hotdog stand.
The servo tracks likely faided on the voice coil drive, possibly why it cant lock/see those tracks to finish initialization. Either that or theres a problem with the heads/head amps.
Thanks for the info! Here's a deleted clip of what it's doing internally. Does look like it's having trouble detecting it's at the edge of the disk. ruclips.net/video/RJZqnAWCg-A/видео.html
@@miketech1024 it's trying to find the negative track which contains the geometry information but it cannot be read. Also I can hear the head scratching the disc so it's definitely done
The AMD K6-2 Motherboard; what is it?
nevermind; it's a Tyan Trinity 100AT
What exactly is the thing?
first liking, then watching. 🙂🙂🙂🙂
Phat hard drive
I physically cringed when I saw you wipe the edge connector you hit with the fiberglass pencil with your finger. I work as a network engineer, and I'm all the time fighting fiberglass insulation in ceilings. I can't imagine getting little needles of fiberglass stuck in my finger like that.
The ARC 286 was sold/imported by California Computer & Component Inc, suspended in 91, dissolved in 1992
I love your enthusiasm in discovering all this old tech. To you it's archaeology. To us old folks with 20+ years on you, it's fond memories.
Thanks! These are the types of systems in my earliest memories of working with computers, so they're quite fond to me as well.
@@miketech1024 My PCjr is waving Hi at you! And winking alluringly. Oh, wait, that's me.
Me too. Such fun! Sending best wishes from the UK.
@@jovetj My first PC (if you want to call it that) was a PCjr. Mine had a Racore drive expansion kit on top. It also had had a memory expansion board along with a side car. The side car had a parallel port with a PC/jr toggle switch. The toggle switch appeared to do nothing but switch between 40 and 80 column mode on boot. I was able to boot PC-DOS 3.31 (albeit with multicolored ascii garbage about halfway through the boot--- nothing a CLS couldn't cure).
I once tore a trace trying to desolder one of the ram chips on the memory board. 16 year old me had horrible soldering skills (I still do!).
Looking back, having that Racore utility disk would have been helpful (had I known that existed).
The funny thing is that I actually wrote my high school term paper on my PCjr. I wrote it using WordStar. I hated that word processor. Electric Desk (from Alphaworks) would have been much better. But, I least had a Panasonic P-KX1123 24-pin dot matrix printer. That printer had some decent print quality.
I had the 386SX version of the NEC PowerMate. Unfortunately it also only had 2 MB of RAM onboard with no way to expand it without NEC's proprietary RAM expansion board, which really limited its usefulness in Windows. I could've used an ISA card to increase the memory, but that's much slower because the ISA bus is only 8 MHz.
Wonder if the proprietary RAM expansion board would work with this system's 486 mod. Might have to create a new eBay saved search for that one. I imagine they're likely incredibly rare though.
God ur killing me with that white shirt lol. Another great video. I love working on computers but right now my space is full and I’m trying to sell some off. Needing parts for some in order to sell.
Hottest vintage PC RUclipsr I've seen 😍
Some of the things you say just crack me up, Mike!
"Sounds like a RATM song." 😆
This was a fun video! Thank you!
If I can't get that drive to work, it's definitely becoming a hard drive speaker that plays Bulls on Parade!
You are handsome!
Here's a good idea: Put your Franklin eWaste haul series in a playlist in case if someone wants to binge on them!
Great idea, thanks!
Done: ruclips.net/p/PLk-afacna4Q895ZY0d6m5YyjeNLWzrO8g
I was an engineer back then and I helped develop the voice coil technology. I had a blast.
Wow that’s amazing! I bet you have some fascinating stories!
Another great video! long enough to cover everything (I prefer 30-60 minute repair videos like this), great editing, great video/sound, just the right amount of commentary. Quickly becoming one of my favorites. Keep it up!
Thanks so much! I was a bit nervous about pushing to the 1-hour mark. I originally had 5 systems lined up for this video, but decided it might be too much. Glad to see people are liking the longer format!
Great video! Tip regarding 3.5" disks on modern systems: they CAN work with 360/720 formatting, but if you're using a modern HD disk (couldn't tell if you were) you need to tape over the density select hole, then it'll read and write no problem.
Thanks! Yeah I was using an HD disk. I had completely forgotten about the density select window until just this weekend, when I un-earthed a large cache of 3.5" disks (including many DD disks) at an estate sale. Pretty sure I felt the dust getting knocked off of those brain cells lol.
You are really making me want to get back into older tech. Used to love it years ago. Haven't played with it much since. And... 35? You look great!
It is really fun, though it can be quite an expensive hobby these days. Thanks!
Someone was holding onto that last system for dear life. Seemingly upgraded it as far as it would go. I had a rage 128 (ATI rage fury) in 1999. Great card. I remember the thing about ATI cards at the time was they had built in hardware MPEG2 decoding for dvd playback. Makes me want to build a time machine and travel back 25 years to game on my old PC again.
Even an elder-geek like me can learn more tricks. I like your approach to these ancient beasts!
I like this channel, good editing not much talk and screwing around, keep up. Good job.
Pretty boy!
Love these old systems and the work you’re doing on them. Good stuff … keep it up!!
Thank you so much!!
You'll find ads of ARC in late 1980s computer magazines. I have found one with the line: "ARC - the No-Problem Computer Company". They were located in Monterey Park, CA. The "PC Magazine", December 1986 shows an ad after page 257 with the ARC 286 Turbo at the top.
Thanks! You just gave me a new hobby: Flipping through old computer magazines!
You must get your massive guns from lifting around all these tanks! 👍
It definitely helps! 🤣
I love it when you pull apart those antique hard drives... haven't seen those monsters since I was in High school back in the 80's..... what memories!
You are a smoke show too ❤ another great video 😊
you have a really good process with these old systems, love it. and your enthusiasm is so genuine, makes it really easy to get into watching these.
You're looking good for 1988 vintage. I also especially like the use of the word 'cromulent'!
56:30 A fellow Arch Linux enjoyer! I also started using Arch in 2004... but my original love was Slackware which I started using back in 1996.
i came for the arms and white shirt 🤤
Daym. You look awesome for being 35. Id guess 22. You sure maintain your body. If you have an significant other they are lucky to have you, because you seem like an awesome person too. :-D
Thanks! ☺️ Well he’s lucky until I fill the garage with 200 old computers lol. Just kidding, he loves these things too!
@@miketech1024 awesome. :-D And I’m proud of you for other reasons. :)
A request. Do you have an discord server? It would be awesome to have an community to talk tech. You should create one for your channel where people can share their finds etc. it would be awesome.
ah a simpsons reference! perfectly cromulant
That Watson card is half of a voicemail/answering machine setup if you can track down the software
Brilliant. A trip down memory lane. I’d totally forgotten about the Quantum Bigfoot drives 🤣
One of my favorite drives, just because of its shape. It sounds lovely too! Probably why I kept it for all these years.
Those tantalum capacitors are often just bypass caps. You may find that the board will run with a few missing if you wanted to test further before throwing down cash for replacements.
It's ok, I needed to stock up on MLCC caps anyway. They should arrive sometime this weekend.
Not as exciting to watch blow as the infamous RIFAs! LOL
Awesome finds so far Mike and honestly, I've so far have enjoyed the journey so far and look forward to future discoveries. Also, your production quality improves with each upload especially the sound, can I make a small request however? I'm only speaking for myself of course but there may be a few others that agree timestamps in the description would help, I don't mind longer videos but most days I only have so much time to watch RUclips videos and while most times I come back to finish these types of videos, it can be a PITA sometimes to get back where I last left off and that would help tremendously, outside of that great job and I hope you can hit at the very least 10k subscribers by the end of the year
Thanks! That is a good idea on the timestamps. I'm still kinda new to this whole RUclips thing, so I'll certainly get that together. I really appreciate the suggestion!
No way you're 35/36, you look so much younger! ❤
I remember AOL sending floppies in the mail constantly. Then CDs
I remember the gateway that was actually owned by psinet that every dial-up service including AOL used to access the internet
I remember the day AOL bought all of the dial-up services
I remember the dial-up service I used first was a guy in his garage and when the email didn't work I would call and he would go reboot the Box
I remember when the cable companies were independent and they had the first high-speed service and I remember AOL buying them up one by one to get high-speed access
I don't think there is any dial-up left I think AOL shut all of it down
It is amazing how far we've come in just 30 years
😆 you're not much older than I am.
what about these old machines makes you so excited to restore and collect them? just mainly nostalgia?
Well I grew up with machines like these, so they trigger a childish excitement for me.
Hi from Sydney, Australia. Awesome video!
I've heard of ARC but that's only because I found one of their monitors out in the wild once
@24:30 that brown stuff that sticks to the board probably has to be removed, as it could be the kind that absorbs humidity and becomes slightly conductive over time causing shorts between components.
That kind of conductive glue can also be typically found in certain brands of monitors from the 80s, usually around CRT neck boards for vibration resistance, it's a real pain
The voltage switch in North America I don't think is as critical. Accidentally telling the PSU to expect 240v but sending it 120v isn't really a problem. Doing the reverse in Europe and game over. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I remember putting in the bootloaders for the hard drives in 286 and 386 and 486 machines
They were each specifically written CMOS for each motherboard and the company selling them.
The companies were all generic and they would get ATs like this and the motherboard would have a custom written CMOS specifically for the hard drives that company would sell with that board.
There were usually about 15 or 20 selections for the hard drive.
Some boards later on had the ability to enter how many cylinders and heads and tracks you had and you could custom set the size of the drive but many did not have this ability especially in the 286 days
Even the 386 has a lot of them did not have that ability yet
So hard drive manufacturers would sell a program that was on the floppy disk that you could run and it would write a boot loader into the CMOS
I don't remember which appeared first but I remember when I booted seeing the manufacturer of the CMOS like AMI and seeing the bootloader logo
I think it was the VGA card logo and then the bootloader and then the CMOS
The bootloader took over on top of the CMOS and ran as an interpreter between the hard drive and the system board
Those were incredible Days
I remember getting Windows 95 to run on a 286
I remember Microsoft telling me it would not work
But I installed and 80 MB IDE drive and an IDE card and 4 MB memory, which was the maximum the system could accept.
And I remember taking each floppy and copying the files off each floppy into a win95 directory off the C drive, and it was something like 23 floppies
And then running the setup from the C drive and when it was done it had filled 60 MB of the hard drive.
It was slow but it did work
And what I realized was something absolutely incredible
Had Microsoft written Windows 95 in 1985 it actually would have worked and it would have advanced computers by a full decade
Remembering everything was command line based DOS back in 85, and very few people owned a computer and even in 95 very few people owned a computer
I remember 99 when more people were getting on the Internet and the trouble that started because so many people were on that had no previous computer experience
I miss the old days
So many people were technologically adapt that were using computers in the 80s and early 90s and there was a lot of help in the tech community between all of us
And there wasn't any of the hate that exists now that literally anybody can get on the internet
I remember when the smartphone came out and I said this is single-handedly the greatest and the worst invention in the history of mankind
I likened it to giving everyone a nuclear bomb with a hair-trigger and a hammer and giving it to apes
I miss the old days so much because there was never a bad word among any of us
Even in the late 90s I don't remember there being any hate speech at all
But after smartphones came out I think around 2006 was the first time I saw so much hate speech just overnight it appeared and just kept getting worse and worse.
But these machines bring back a lot of memories of a lot of nights spent working and sleeping on the floor in the office
I worked two jobs most of my life and I can tell you it wasn't worth it
I am old and sick and bedridden and in pain and dying alone in a welfare apartment
My greatest regret is that I work so hard because it meant nothing
And no one ever appreciated it
Ah the memories. A K6-2 and rage 128 was my first gaming pc. Played the original Everquest on it for years!
That Maxtor sounded like it was sneezing for a quick second.
Oh no that Maxtor drive really isn’t happy at all. Normally it should just do that "Du duuuu" without going crazy afterwards. It would be nice if you could get it working but it’s probably unlikely to happen. I wish I could have one of these in my HDD collection.
These machines that you got certainly are quite nice!
Yeah it kinda broke my heart hearing that. Well, if I can't get it working, it will certainly make an interesting piece of functional art because I can definitely get the voice coil to make some crazy sounds! It already does a great job at playing RATM songs! 🤣
Since you have quite a bit of experience with old drives, here's a deleted scene of the Maxtor spinning up and attempting to initialize. Seems like it's having trouble detecting that it's at the edge of the disk. Perhaps that rubber bumper has swelled? What do you think? (VOLUME WARNING) ruclips.net/video/RJZqnAWCg-A/видео.html
@@miketech1024 I know that some drives have issues with rubber but usually it’s because it melted so it’s either sticking the heads or is smaller than it should. I have no idea if it is possible for rubber to have expended or not. Early voice coil drives uses a dedicated servo surface, maybe that surface is damaged and the drive just cannot position the heads properly anymore? Really I don’t know but that’s certainly a bummer that this drive isn’t functional
I watched that clip of the drive trying to initialise. Looks like its having trouble reading the disk - like the click of death with modern drives or the control PCB is faulty. You could try replacing any electrolytic caps and testing the voice coil drive transistors on the PCB but its probably beyond repair.
@@miketech1024 I enjoy your videos. I was a consultant in the treasury department at Maxtor during the days of their full height 5 1/4 inch hard drives. I remember one of the employees (still a friend of mine) computer periodically making a very audiible sound (I'll call it a "groan" or a "whine") as the hard drive in his PC did some sort of a reset. A few times a day. In my own home PC's, I did have one Maxtor running RLL which allowed me something over 200 megs in disk space--considered huge at the time. Sadly, it is gone or I'd sendit to you. I doremember using software called "Max Blast" from a local firm (I think it was Storage Tech in Los Gatos but I'm old and don't remember what I had for breakfast) which was useful in diagnosing, low-level formating and partitioning the Maxtor drives. I think there are still references to the MaxBlast software on the web. Thanks again Mike!
I've used Loctite Rust Removal Naval Jelly to remove corrosion from hard-to-reach sockets and slots in-situ on circuit boards. It doesn't damage the surrounding components and can sit on areas liquids drain off of due to its thick viscocity. It would be perfect for a situation like your ISA slots.
Gonna have to try that on the next one. Thanks!
Nice shorts in the thumbnail. This vintage tech is exciting. ;)
16:18 - I _really_ like the aesthetics of that CenturyNet. The rear plastic cover was a nice touch. I really like the look of the flush port covers. It's a shame the ISA covers have to be clipped off (or at least it looks like it does.) When I first saw it, I had imagined early Apple computers like the later //e, IIgs, or Macintosh II series with their color-matched port covers that clipped into the unused slots. Either way, a nice looking case. The front kinda looks like an early HP switch.
It's definitely my favorite case out of the four of them! Yeah the ISA covers need to be clipped unfortunately. Luckily, enough of them are already exposed for me to add the cards that I want.
39:14 The BIOS font on that NEC computer looks a bit different from the norm.
360 floppy ? I can't remember if mine had a 360
I remember when I bought the 1.2 MB floppy
I remember putting in a new IDE controller and I think the hard drive was 120 MB
Trident was the card I had
The dip switch Serial card, I remember those and the first 2 button mouse
"We dont really scrap motherboards around this parts' Words of a retro messiah
No sheep is beyond redemption
No motherboard is left behind in this house!
@@miketech1024 good
Love your content - I get to see all these weird and wonderful machines without having to store them!
Just wanted to comment that touching a switching power supply's heatsink (see 37:37 ) is very dangerous, because a lot of TO-220 MOSFETs and diodes attach (usually the live) pins to the heat sink tab.
The Osborne-1's ASTEC power supply does this and it's not pleasant.
I want to find a nice AMD K6-2 PC like that one! Preferably one with the motherboard securely mounted to the case! A BIOS update might fix the PC133 RAM module not being detected. Keep up the great content on the channel!
Thanks! I'll give that a try. I did confirm the PC-133 stick does work in another K6-2 system.
Surprised you hadn’t heard of Zeos. They were the bomb in the early/mid 90s. We had a Zeos Pantera with a Pentium running at 90mhz back in ‘94. Came with Windows 3.1, but really unleashed the speed when we installed Win95 on it.
Glad you don't scrap motherboards. I hope you don't scrap anything else.
I just acquired that same NEC but mine has an onboard IDE controller on the riser card and the company that had it used a boot floppy to boot it off a network. I have several flavors of the NEC config software if you want to compare notes. I cannot get mine to recognize any hard drive or IDE to SD, will probably get another XT-IDE like I did for my PS/2 but my seller is out of them.
looks like (and sounds like) that Creative drive might be a Plextor... a model before Plextor started selling commodity grade drives.
if it is, it will likely be the best CD-RW drive you'll get your hands on.
@ 20:07 Kendrick Lamar Humble? Wonder how the producer acquired the sample?
Those long modem cards have either 6502 or z80 cpu and other good chips worth harvesting. Nobody will want a dialup modem anytime soon.
I may have told you this before but.....
When smoke appears, the term is "spitzensparken".
Nah, it doesn't sound like a Rage Against the Machine song. If anything, it sounds MUCH better than that God Awful suck ass band!
That Maxtor drive is a double height drive, not a full height drive. Just FYI.
You are good ! Cool videos, I give a sub and greetings from Poland.
The second one is what i was talking about in a previous video of yours. It is an NCR PC8. Made in Germany. I have that too. Though mine is not an SBC, but also a fully loaded 286 12mhz with 2 65MB MFM Seagates.
That thing is built like a tank! High-gauge steel all around.
@@miketech1024 yes it's damn heavy. I've tried to post a link but doesn't work. Now you know what to look up on the net for. NCR PC8
I had Siemens Nixdorf: ruclips.net/video/7KUJidkMn4w/видео.html
@@djpirtu2 That video is amazing. Thanks!
ok that computer is odd. A k6-2 with an AT power supply? I didn't think such a thing existed.
Damn, where do you get all these treasures... Here in Germany you find nothing like that...
Why not replace the tantalum cap with an electrolytic? Many boards use electrolytics for filtering anyhow..
i like the Socket 7 Motherboards that seem to be in-between the new and the old. they have ISA but PCI and AGP and the 2 ram slots
It also accepts either AT or ATX power. Very versatile little board!
@@miketech1024 I just turned 30 this last year so i missed ALOT of the AT Era stuff. Our first home PC was a gateway with a Pentium 3 and windows 98
@@westtell4 Ohh I have a ton of those!
did you replace the battery cmos such as chs? did you configure bios correctly?
Thank you for give us kilograms, we metric folks appreciate it.
im surprised it didn't explode at turn on the egg sack spider nest one, and damn you are older than i assumed you look good😏😏
Thats a GF model TEAC on the Honeywell machine!
Only 20 more "all right" and you are as good as Ardians 500 "all right" per video. Not bad.
Making progress!
I remember you could change how long nibbles grows after each target eaten to make it harder like the tron light cycles are.