I worked on a bunch of Shuttle PCs like this in the mid-2000s. The company I worked for sold kiosks that were powered by these machines. It made it really quick to swap the machine out at the customer site rather than pulling parts out trying to troubleshoot a fault in the middle of the customer's foyer. They still used Windows 98 because they used the same key on every machine and XP would have required activation. Originally they would build each machine from scratch, but I started using disk imaging to build them instead, which dropped the build time from around 3 hours to about an hour. I ended up quitting because reasons, basically I really hated the job. The boss asked me to document the imaging process before I left but I just told him it's really easy, you basically just follow the prompts. I missed out a few key steps afterwards that needed to be done in the right order or the machine would just blue screen and require reimaging.
There were a few of the Shuttle cases where the Mobo tray slid out of the back of the case. Hands down some of the easiest and fun builds to make. I remember building quite a few over the years I worked at PC Club.
Worked for a small startup around this time and we needed lots of test machines that were easy for non-tech people to swap in and out - we used these for a few years and they were great! Kept spares in the back and re-imaged them as they were swapped in and out and repaired, etc. Made things cheap and easy, which was important for a company where every penny counted.
I went to LANS a lot so had one as my main gaming pc with an xp3200+ 400FSB and a fx5900 with bios flashed to a 5900U! Good times. Was the era when TFTs just started to become mainstream so it was mad going from lugging a big heavy steel tower PC & CRT to a LAN to easy carrying a super light aluminium shoebox in a backpack and thin TFT screen.
My dad invented the xpc he was the mastermind behind all of this and was the VP of the shuttle company( once called shuttle now changed name) . sadly he left the company in 2005 due to the company family civil war. since then the XPC has had no changes in look or design since 2003 and has gone downhill. My dad once told me has had better design in mind but you know he left the industries 10+ years ago and changed career to a different field now. I think he is still a computer genius who knows the electrical fundamentals inside and out and is a super handyman can fix everything. Also FYI I am currently on 4th gen i7 SZ87R6 my dad got it for me free from his connection. with 500W silver plus PSU , max out 32gb ram and with a GTX1080. still plays games with 1080P well
Since Phil made this video I now have 6 of these from one of the first socket A units to a 6 core i7 running in the SX58J3, and I am really impressed with them all. They all have individual features as well as much in common and this raises questions for me like; Why do the 32 bit systems only run with up 2GB of memory rather than 4GB? A thing I have also noticed is the high quality of construction and I have not found an XPC I have been unable to fix or with bad capacitors. It would be fascinating to hear about the details of design planning and the challenges of such a small format. Perhaps Phil could interview your father to give us an insight into the development of this platform and how things worked out for the Shuttle computer company?
I think my main criticism of the XPC would be that the power supplies are only just strong enough for their intended requirements, so they are always a little overworked and eventually fail. Fortunately I have been able to upgrade my XPC’s with old server power supplies with a higher rating, which also helps keep their operating temperatures lower.
@@davidp4456 Hi, i upgraded my SK43G with a brand new power supply SilverStone SST-FX350-G - Flex Serie, 350W 80 Plus Gold from Amazon. I only had to trim 3mm from the case at the back.
Remember them? I have 2 in my retro collection & there’s one in front of me right now! I always start by turning a new pc on or temporarily add any missing components then turning it on to see what I’m working with before I start refurbishing it. I actually had an even earlier P4 centric Shuttle PC back when it was new but the power supply died & I moved on to a G5 iMac for data that needed to be safe & a generic PC I built from parts for gaming but I loved that little Shuttle… even though the Geforce FX 5700 I ran in it for a while ran at 92°C in there. 😄
The shuttle cases were fun to build. Micro ATX, and the ones with handles on the front of the cases we called "Lan Party Builds". I had always wanted to see these make a return.
@@felixokeefe Yeah, I had forgotten that Shuttle used their own boards and the majority (if not all) of their cases. Been so long since I seen one. lI do remember there were cases similar to the shuttles by several brands that used Micro ATX motherboards. The one I was remembering (with the slide out mobo tray) was the Aspire X case.
@@HappyBeezerStudios If I remember correctly, all of the DFI "Lan Party" motherboards were the enthusiast full ATX boards. I think those had the crazy heatsink for the power that stuck out of the case. Man, I miss those crazy board designs.
Fond memories of putting many hours into MoH:AA multiplayer back in the day. Played it almost every day until Call of Duty 1 released and then me and most of my friends made the switch. Fantastic games!
Same thing happened to me when I interested network gaming with Mohaa and switched to COD. There was also other great network multiplayer hits like UT, ET, CS1.5 and up. Those games are playable also with dial-up 56k but wide latency has irritated some other players. At those time DSL-connections spread up very quickly. At nowadays I don't get feeling anymore from any top-end multiplayer games. Maybe it's from nostalgic wibes.
These were very popular, I remember people building more portable lanparty machines with them and I think they were popular as media PC's too, didn't look too out of place in a living room.
It's great to see the love for these Shuttle PCs. I had an SN41 just like the one in the video. I used it for work with dual monitors and it worked great running Windows XP, though it did occasionally hang. Just recently I found an SS51 Pentium 4 based Shuttle while dumpster diving and have fitted RAM, a hard drive, NVidia graphics card and a gigabit Ethernet card. It now runs Debian Linux and is really handy for working with floppy images and connecting "retro" hardware.
I have a homelab consisting of 2 Shuttle XPC cubes filled with a 8 core i9 CPU and 128GB each. The extensibility options is what caused me to choose these badboys over NUCs. The form factor hasn't changed much and still looks basically like the old ones.
I know I’ll get some hate, but I turned an old one of these into basically an external USB device. I’ve got a couple of laptop Blu-ray burners in it along with a multi card, reader and some hard drives all wired up with a USB 3 hub that I plug into my mini PC now. Figured it at least could use the case since the computer itself died.
The rental story is so nostalgic, our local library had a collection of PC games and quite a good one to. But because it was digital goods that could be copied on top of the library subscription you had to pay $1 to loan the title for a few days. So we'd totally loan them, copy them, download a crack online and then help copy those to other classmates who wanted copies to. If a classmate wanted a copy we'd also ask them $1 which was the rough cost of an empty disk so that they could pay for the costs it would take to burn and print the cover, and then they could enjoy a lot of great games to. But even more nostalgic was that this was done with a dutch collection called Twilight CD's, and Phil you can get them from 2 different sources on archive both have bad sectors but the museum uploads are usually the ones that are good, supplement them with the other uploader and its an absolutely incredible collection. They would be copied all over the netherlands and there is no other compilation of the same quality.
the 1 time the library kicked ass... was when the inner net was scarce and new... the only time i remember ever saying to my self gotta go to the library.... usb drive with quake on it....and cyber beach dm server ip written on a scrap of paper....
Yea, I also remember those times. There was no rental store with games in my neighborhood, I also don't heard about them until I watched this video. It's kind of weird because VHS rental stores were still very popular at this point. Maybe it's due to "anti-piracy paranoia" during the early 2000's. Back then allegedly "control groups" from police and Microsoft break into the peoples homes and put them in jail if they found out that you don't have a stupid "legal sticker" on your case. We borrow and copied discs with games to each other regardless, I still have a disc with copy of GTA San Andreas from my friend but I don't know if it's still working.
I have a collection of barebones, but Shuttle lost badly to MSI, with the barebones that had a front display. In fact, to the unwary eye, the MSI barebone passes unnoticed as a mini stereo of the mp3 generation. It had small speakers, and was able to play cds, radio, mp3 even with the computer turned off.
I believe these machines were quite popular around Australia and New Zealand. The IT repair shop I used to work for sold these as a OEM machine. I loved the small form factor, nice and small. Heaps of good specs inside. The only issue was the Power Supplies would die regularly and the motherboards would suffer from bad caps. Seemed to be a common issue. The last one I had was the same spec as yours but in black. So cool!
This was my recollection on the early '00s as well, very clever designs unfortunately hobbled by cheap components - boards and PSUs were a matter of "when" they go, not "if" and they were also proprietary layouts made them a bit of a hassle.
I had the sg31g2, and the ss40g. What was weird was I had two of the sg31g2s, and while they came with solid caps, some weren't and out of the 2, one of them went bad. Some random person would repair them for a price, and while it took them forever, they fixed it.
These were sold in the era of bad chinese capacitors, so that you would run into that is not unusual. I have one of these systems, still, that I first built it for my mom for her to use as her home PC. It has a 3400+ in it, iirc, and it doesn't like modern SSD, it won't recognize them in the BIOS.
Shuttle PCs were brilliant. I remember rocking up to a LAN party with an SB51G, ti4200 and P4 2.4 and having to host all the games, given my tiny PC was by far the fastest in the room. Armagetron, Quake 3, Battlefield 1942. Good times. I recently picked up an SK43G and it's a great little machine. Not as good as the SB51G, but close enough. The engineering required to take desktop components into a chassis that size in c.1999 was outstanding. Love the channel Phil, and the website resources are brilliant. Keep at it brother.
I had a fleet of these machines. Starting in 2004 with the SN45Gv2. I coupled them with ATI All in wonder cards and recorded thousands of hours of TV with them. They were real workhorses those machines! I went from amd to intel, found the intel versions more suited to mpg2 video capture. I wish these things were still made, they were brilliant.
My mother's friend's husband had a Shuttle with a 9800 Pro and probably some AMD chip. It was so much more powerful than what I was using at the time, buttery smooth HL2 and Doom 3. Seeing Shuttle PCs like this bring back those memories. :)
I was obsessed with Shuttle XPC builds in the 00's. I owned a few and tried to see how I could balance power vs. space vs. heat so I could make a portable LAN party box. I remember people taking a dremel to the side panel near the graphics card to add a fan vent because the airflow was so restricted. They were the THE tiny computer back when most people had a full tower.
Yes, I remember wanting these PCs after I felt my family's Pentium III machine was a getting long in the tooth for high end gaming (it was fine and could've done well with a new GPU but it was running old hardware already) and when I was shopping for parts at a now defunct Monarch PC website for my first build, I came across Shuttle barebones boxes and thought these were awesome as they took up far less space and still packed high end hardware and could be carried to LAN parties (which were still a thing at the time). The only problem was that these machines cost quite a bit more than building my own and still necessitated buying other parts to complete the build.
At the time I was just a kid and it took ke a long time to convince my parents that I should build us a new PC using an assortment of parts after getting used to upgrading the old prebuilt. I had a pretty limited budget which left Shuttle PC off the table. These days I'm more interested in building mATX machines as a nice middle ground.
Going to a lanparty you still have to go with the car instead of like the bicycle. Going to a lanparty you have to bring your screen too and cables. So you always have to go with the car to get all computers in. I think a bigger pc case, medium pc case and high end towers you have much better ventilation and air streams.
@@steeben009 As someone who drives a Yaris, if I brought friends to watch (therefore filling up the car seats) there wouldn't be much space for anything after I placed my desktop in the boot. The screen and peripherals would need to go on the lap of those in the backseats Edit, also, you clearly never seen ventilation oriented ITX cases. Those things are so big they end up the height of an mATX case
It looks very similar to Biostar iDeq 210. All aluminum case, Athlon XP 3200+, firewire, IRDA infrared. I have one and it's amazing for retro windows xp gaming.
Hi from Ukraine. I have seen similar mini PCs here at online flea markets (about 25 US $). The specifications there were already more modern. Core 2 Duo with Radeon HD3870. Powerful gaming computers of the time. Unfortunately, I don't have time to buy it and make a video right now. I like your videos. I have been watching your channel for a long time.
I have never played Medal of Honor and you have motivated me to give it a try with this video. I am playing it on my old Athlon Xp and am enjoying it quite a lot. Thanks.
I had a Shuttle gaming PC that I built in the early 2000s, I did meticulous research to make everything fit. It had nForce 2 chipset, 1GB DDR RAM and Radeon 9800 Pro. At that time, no one in my area had ever seen such a small PC, and it was (well, somewhat) easy to carry to LAN with friends. But it wasn't quiet.
The amount of power that could be packed into one of these is amazing. I bought the SN25P model right before SN26P was released. This was back when single slot GPUs and SLI were still a thing, like the 8800GT. Never could find a SN26P in stock but if I could, I would have had the X2 3800+ CPU matched with two of these. That was insane for an ATX build let alone a tiny box. Excellent for travel purposes as well.
Oh man! That optical drive was my first ever DVD burner! The legendary GSA-4040B from LG - I used it for many years and last I tested it it still works today!
Oh man, SHUTTLE!!! My main retro rig is in a Shuttle XPC. I always wanted one but had a laptop instead for portability. Now, 20 years later, I finally have a Shuttle SK21G. Athlon 64 3200+, Radeon X800XT PE (AGP), Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS, & Windows XP. I replaced the 200W Shuttle PSU with a 350W Silverstone FX350-G. It is an absolute beast for XP games, I love it!
I have owned more than 10 Shuttle XPCs before. They bring back good memories. After Shuttle stopped updating the XPC, I switched to Intel NUCs. Now I have the NUC3, NUC 7 Skull Canyon, and NUC 11 Extreme
I have one of these beauties, all black with a mirror front running XP and all of my old games, shoved a Pentium 4 and SSD into it, terrific machine. Had similar issues with an NVidia card so opted for an ATI, runs sweet.
@@jamesellis9080 I think the first gen power supplies were noisy and one of them went dead for me, but I got it fixed under warranty IIRC. The later versions though had better power supplies that were quieter.
If you want to have a more DOS compatible Shuttle PC, some of the predecessors (Shuttle PCs with rectangular buttons) are based on SIS chipsets / mainboard. There is even one version with 2 PCI slots (which I use). All onboard hardware, including the onboard VGA is picked up by Windows 98SE out of the box. Nforce Model: On the silver model you can remove the parallel port and route IDE cables outwards (with the included squished IDE cables). I put a Creative Life! 5 inch panel in the front and put the cd-rom on top. The fastest GPU I put in there was the GeForce 7800 GS.
Did the 7800 GS run at full power? When i bought my shuttle a few years ago, it had a slow geforce 4 MX 4000 which i took out and put in a 7600 GS. The computer powered on and everything worked as it should except for the 7600GS. I got a message saying something along the lines that the power to the 7600 GS was not enough and that the card was running in low power mode to protect it from damage. I also had the power molex cable connected to the card. To me the 7600 GS looked to be running fine and not in low power mode, but i removed it and put the crappy mx4000 back in.
@@BoomBox02 If I remember correctly, it worked without any problems, but I think at the time I only had one hard drive in there and an externally powered FireWire CD drive
First exposure to one of these was at a CompUSA, with the clear side panels and small size it excited both my dad and me. It ran a Knoppix 3.2 or so install too, my first hands-on with linux… was kinda hooked. He later built one (not Shuttle, but FIC IC-VL67), but also put a P4 3.2GHz w/HT and 9800 Pro… wow that thing ran so hot with those super hot components. Later went with like a 2.2-2.4ghz p4 and moved the other chip to a full size build. ALSO… not sure about your machine, but ours had a very specific smell to it… not bad, but it seemed like a lot of parts from that 2003-04ish period kinda had it, some kind of tech part smell lol.
I love these mini Shuttle boxes, have had 4 in the past, still have three working ones. Couple are AMD and the last one is a E6700 equipped one (recently updated from original e6420).
Hi Phil, awesome and insightful video! I really appreciate you so much for spotlighting this nostalgic brand that feels 'forgotten' in this new age of PC building. For those of you who don't know, Shuttle still exists! My boyfriend actually works for Shuttle and we watched your video together; he enjoys watching PC reviewers all the time and was really happy to see Shuttle showcased. He is more than happy to answer any questions about their recent stuff :).
I was so psyched to get one of these for my home theatre pc! I have such good memories of using this to learn how about BitTorrent, and watching The Office (UK) and Arrested Development on this with my 4 roommates.
Had a few of these in the past: SB81P in 2005, SB86i in 2006, and a SD39P2 in 2007. Ended up selling to upgrade up to that third one and it would literally be my main computer until it died in 2013 (cracks in the sub levels of the PCB, I think). It was the ideal system for someone like me who liked to tinker, but also wanted a nice system to bring to LAN parties. I remember hearing that the last models were mini-ITX compatible as well, so as long as you could keep the PSU alive, I suppose one could continue to use the same case indefinitely...Though I suppose nowadays there are other just as desirable options out there. I myself would end up getting a gaming class laptop in 2014 and would basically use that as my daily driver from there on out (I got another gaming class laptop in 2018 when that one died and through a stroke of luck I am typing this now on that very laptop, lol)
I remember seeing these Shuttle PCs in TV shows / magazines back in the day and falling in love with the small form factor. Never ended up getting one unfortunately, but they inspired my latest PC build. Just a small cube PC, nothing crazy. :)
I loved these ones back in the day and installed quite a few of them for my friends. I actually bought one just like this last year for some retro gaming. I remember we had a black XC Cube for socket 939 which a friend of mine and me used to host some websites on. I am still looking for that one for a decent price, just for the nostalgia.
I sure do remember the Shuttles! I went to a vocational high school for a couple classes in grades 10-12 and one of the years we built a whole bunch of these to be our classroom computers for the IT/networking & web design classes. I seem to remember we were running Windows 2000 on them, which is maybe slightly odd because this was probably around 2003, so XP would have been out. Though at the time, Win 2K was very clean and compatible, and perfect for browsing the web and MS Office, which was about all we used them for. Schools sometimes are late adopters of newer OS's anyways. Over at the main high school, they were definitely still running Windows 98 in most of the labs. When I was in college, they skipped Vista altogether and went from XP to Win7.
I had one just like this that I used as my main gaming rig. I lived at home but was hanging out everywhere else so it was a great portable solution. The nForce was a great overclocking chipset and this kit came with a very decent cooling solution, so I took advantage of that with one of the cheaper Athlon XPs and clocked it up. Cut the restrictive fan grills off the back to help airflow. I think I used a Radeon GPU at the time. Paired it up with a VGA LCD projector and I could carry everything with one hand and have the biggest display around as long as there was a white wall available. I even had the silver bag with shoulder strap for it. It was the best until the power supply gave out. Then I ran it without the case and an ATX power supply sitting next to it. At that point I had my own place and it just became a regular not very portable desktop. That power LED will light a dark room, I had to put a sticker over mine.
I do remember them. They always had some goofy problem or other to overcome, but worked decently once you figured out the quirks. Believe it or not, Shuttle is still around and still making compact systems. Though they focus on the business, industrial, and kiosk/signage market these days. They're still pretty low end. 😂
I remember when they were new. Used to see this stuff at computer shows (market for small vendors) I shopped at when I was a teenager. That stuff was too rich for me but I would feast my eyes anyway.
I remember seeing these all the time as a kid or young teen and always wanted one of these. Maybe that's where my love for the ITX form factor comes from. As far as retro games go, this seems like a very nice system and just like those ThinClients you showed years ago, easy to store away and to set up again whenever there's an urge to play classic PC games.
I do remember them, I had a few. The motherboards died left and right, were not cheap for what they offered and the internal layout suffered from no good layout for ventilation. But boy did I want one.
I bought 2 of these Shuttle XPC's when they came out. I still have 1 of them and I love it. They're so handy to have around for booting into Win98 or WInXP.
Have the same Shuttle computer which I setup on Windows 98 (could only us 1 Gig of ram) and I used some of your downloads on your website to get it up and running. Also used the built in video as most of my video cards do not have Win 98 drivers. Great video by the way!
I remember scoffing at these when they were new as I was all about the big towers back then. But now I really want one of these. But they're not that easy to find. But I just gotta keep looking.
I had Shuttle AI61 Slot A with original Athlon 600mhz processor. Served me till 2014, when it got broken. 5 years later, i've fixed it and i upgraded it to the maximum. You know that this fella can run RUclips on XP SP3 in 2023 on Firefox in 144p. But it was a pain to load the website, as expected... I'm using it nowdays as a retro computer. Since 2009 still stayin' alive...
I had one of these systems I used as a streaming PC for watching Netflix etc. on an old TV that didn't have HDMI input, once I got a new TV I would use my BlueRay player which had a built in Netflix app. and sadly I don't recall what happened to the Shuttle PC :( I really liked that little guy...
I had several of these back in the day, last one being a northwood P4. Just bought a Prescott era silver one with a Radeon x700 from eBay that is like new. I use this as my xp retro box.
I have a Shuttle PC and they are neat. Also I tend to clean equipment before using it. Nothing crazy but I generally do some cleaning maintenance before turning them on.
1. Open the side (in this case.. take it apart). 2. Check if everything is connected right, nothing gotten loose during shipping. 3. Turn on. 4. If works, and I care enough about the machine -- new thermal paste. 5. Put back together. 6. Use. :D
Had also two of those. A SN45G with an athlon xp 2600+ mobile which did run overclocked during its whole life, with a 9800pro. I still have it and had to replace the agp slot. It now runs with a x800xt. I did modify it to run an aqua computer watercooling kit, but the cpu bracket I managed to create wasn't good enough. There are some pictures of this monstrosity... ! And then a sd39p2 with a core2duo e6600 @ 3.6GHz. This design was much better with the cooling done sideways. Great memories of well thought machines, which came along in lan events quite a lot. We did stack our shuttle with a friend. I don't know if it was a cool factor like other running a chiller, but at least with flat screen maintream at that time, it was much easier to move around!
I still have mine from back in 2003 and it's my favorite Retro PC now: the SK41G. It's an Athlon XP-M 2600+ which can change the multiplier anytime on the fly, for the sound I'm using the TTSOLO-1 with the DreamBlaster S1 on it, and a Quadro4 980 XGL for the graphics, but this computer can also run a Voodoo3 without any problems! It's just a wonderful machine for Windows 98 with great DOS compatibility.
I still have mine, same model as yours, sitting safely in the official silver Shuttle carrycase in a cupboard. Athlon XP 2500, Radeon 9800 Pro, and a sweet brushed aluminium cover attached to the front of the DVD drive to keep the front looking slick. Absolute beast for LAN sessions back in the day.
@@philscomputerlab It was an optional extra, the model of the carrycase I had was the "Shuttle PF9" if you're curious. I also still have the official Shuttle media IR remote and receiver in the side pocket, as I'd only just moved out of the family house, and it was my main DVD player. I used to keep it simultaneously plugged in to a monitor on one side and a larger CRT television on the other, through the 9800 Pro's S-Video out. Ahhh, simpler days. ;)
Had a shuttle pc for a decade (2004-2014). SN41G2v3. Loved the size and unusual case at that time. My specs where: AMD Athlon XP Barton 2800+2.08Ghz. 2Gb Ram and ATI Radeon HD 3850 AGP. But there was some things that was anoying with this case. First and foremost the high pitch noise from the Sunon fan. And the other thing was that it was hard to mod. I switched the Sunon fan to two Noctua 80mm fans that was in a push/pull configuration because the CPU got really hot with only one Noctua fan. The Northbridge got a Zalman ZM-NB47J Passive Heatsink that had to be cut in the fins to fit. To be able to have the HD3850 card in, the strongest power supply at 300W was a must. Original PSU was at 250W...... Nice vid Phil, this gave me some nostalgia from my 20's
These were the start of my fascination and eventual odd obsession with building a powerful and decently cooled mini computer. That obsession continues to now (CM N200).
I never had or used a Shuttle system, but used to see them popping up on eBay quite often. I went off on a Mini-ITX tangent, and sellers perhaps not sure what they were selling were listing them as Mini-ITX. While similar in size, the form factor is different. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault got its hooks into me and a friend I built a PC for. We played multiplayer games and would be on the same team, trying to help each other out. When I moved from XP to Windows 7, the game would no longer run - disaster! I believe it was copy protection on the game disc that caused it. I later bought the GOG version, which does away with all that nonsense, and the game worked fine once again. In fact, it continues to work now I've moved to Linux; someone in the GOG forums created a program that repackages the GOG files and a version of Wine, and it all works. The multiplayer service was killed-off by EA some years ago, but there is a workaround for that, although the number of players online has plummeted; well, it's a 20 year old game, after all.
Gosh, Phil. This was the dream machine I never got to own. I wanted a mini-ITX system build back in the early oughts, but the offering outside Shuttle's dedicated HW was almost non-existent. (Now happily typing this on a Z97 mini-ITX system running a modded BIOS and a power-sipping but high performing Xeon. With an RTX 2060 OC, it is one of my main gaming machines.) BTW, was a moderator on the now-defunct SFF Forum.
So weird to see this in my subscriptions. I used a v2 model of this exact PC daily from about 2008 until 2012, aging by that point of course but served me well for what it was. I still have it but it needs a power supply; 3.3v rail is very low and causes instability.
Lovely, lovely Shuttle. My first SFF PC. It was rocking a Windows ME. Vividly remember playing Odyssey: The Search for Ulysses on it, among other games. Would love a proper modern XPC gaming cube by Shuttle (not what they offer right now).
I own about 4 shuttle PC's of this style. All of mine are Pentium 4's though. I got mine working at a Universities Surplus store. I wish I had a socket A version. That is when I started to get into building computers. Unfortunately I don't have a Athlon in my collection. I have looking to get one. But they are expensive. Luckily I do I one K6-2 PC. Thanks Phil you always do a good job.
I have the same shuttle pc! Same chassis, but different mainboard with pentium 4. I still have in the closet. My family actually used it until 2013-2014 or so, very late for this hardware
I always disconnect the drives and see if it passes post using a known good power supply. After that I test each component. I have a USB to SATA/PATA adapter to test the drives. Usually I suggest getting a new atx power supply and an adapter instead of running the old PSU. If someone wants to run the old PSU they should have the capacitors replaced. Then of course replace the thermal pads if needed, and replace the thermal paste. I generally use Noctua NT or Artic MX for general use machines. Don't forget to clean and oil the fans.
Ah, FN41. It notably has 4-pin power. You indeed won't be able to use DDMA on nForce2 in DOS. nForce2 GF4MX iGPU in general is nice for Win98. It can be picky about RAM and you probably want to avoid dual channel altogether as it is non-ultra version. That BIOS pictured is a very old version. Perhaps it contributes to instability. Thanks for the review.
I've owned 3 of the Shuttle SFF machines over the years. The first two were Athlons very similar to the one in this video. The third one I still have. It's an H170 chipset with an i3-6300 processor. I believe it will accept 7th gen Intel CPUs with a BIOS upgrade. I also have a Shuttle HOT-555 Socket 5 motherboard in a machine from 1997 or so. It's got a Cyrix IBM 6x86 PR200 in it I believe. In my experience Shuttle makes great hardware. Their motherboards have always been solid, and they were pretty innovative with the cooling in their mini PCs.
I worked on a bunch of Shuttle PCs like this in the mid-2000s. The company I worked for sold kiosks that were powered by these machines. It made it really quick to swap the machine out at the customer site rather than pulling parts out trying to troubleshoot a fault in the middle of the customer's foyer. They still used Windows 98 because they used the same key on every machine and XP would have required activation. Originally they would build each machine from scratch, but I started using disk imaging to build them instead, which dropped the build time from around 3 hours to about an hour. I ended up quitting because reasons, basically I really hated the job. The boss asked me to document the imaging process before I left but I just told him it's really easy, you basically just follow the prompts. I missed out a few key steps afterwards that needed to be done in the right order or the machine would just blue screen and require reimaging.
Cool! Thanks for sharing. Love hearing these personal stories 😊
There were a few of the Shuttle cases where the Mobo tray slid out of the back of the case. Hands down some of the easiest and fun builds to make. I remember building quite a few over the years I worked at PC Club.
Worked for a small startup around this time and we needed lots of test machines that were easy for non-tech people to swap in and out - we used these for a few years and they were great! Kept spares in the back and re-imaged them as they were swapped in and out and repaired, etc. Made things cheap and easy, which was important for a company where every penny counted.
I went to LANS a lot so had one as my main gaming pc with an xp3200+ 400FSB and a fx5900 with bios flashed to a 5900U! Good times. Was the era when TFTs just started to become mainstream so it was mad going from lugging a big heavy steel tower PC & CRT to a LAN to easy carrying a super light aluminium shoebox in a backpack and thin TFT screen.
My dad invented the xpc he was the mastermind behind all of this and was the VP of the shuttle company( once called shuttle now changed name) . sadly he left the company in 2005 due to the company family civil war. since then the XPC has had no changes in look or design since 2003 and has gone downhill. My dad once told me has had better design in mind but you know he left the industries 10+ years ago and changed career to a different field now. I think he is still a computer genius who knows the electrical fundamentals inside and out and is a super handyman can fix everything. Also FYI I am currently on 4th gen i7 SZ87R6 my dad got it for me free from his connection. with 500W silver plus PSU , max out 32gb ram and with a GTX1080. still plays games with 1080P well
Amazing, thank you for sharing!
Since Phil made this video I now have 6 of these from one of the first socket A units to a 6 core i7 running in the SX58J3, and I am really impressed with them all. They all have individual features as well as much in common and this raises questions for me like; Why do the 32 bit systems only run with up 2GB of memory rather than 4GB? A thing I have also noticed is the high quality of construction and I have not found an XPC I have been unable to fix or with bad capacitors. It would be fascinating to hear about the details of design planning and the challenges of such a small format. Perhaps Phil could interview your father to give us an insight into the development of this platform and how things worked out for the Shuttle computer company?
I think my main criticism of the XPC would be that the power supplies are only just strong enough for their intended requirements, so they are always a little overworked and eventually fail. Fortunately I have been able to upgrade my XPC’s with old server power supplies with a higher rating, which also helps keep their operating temperatures lower.
@@davidp4456 Hi, i upgraded my SK43G with a brand new power supply SilverStone SST-FX350-G - Flex Serie, 350W 80 Plus Gold from Amazon. I only had to trim 3mm from the case at the back.
Remember them? I have 2 in my retro collection & there’s one in front of me right now! I always start by turning a new pc on or temporarily add any missing components then turning it on to see what I’m working with before I start refurbishing it. I actually had an even earlier P4 centric Shuttle PC back when it was new but the power supply died & I moved on to a G5 iMac for data that needed to be safe & a generic PC I built from parts for gaming but I loved that little Shuttle… even though the Geforce FX 5700 I ran in it for a while ran at 92°C in there. 😄
The shuttle cases were fun to build. Micro ATX, and the ones with handles on the front of the cases we called "Lan Party Builds". I had always wanted to see these make a return.
The shuttle PC in this video uses a flexATX motherboard. Fyi
@@felixokeefe Yeah, I had forgotten that Shuttle used their own boards and the majority (if not all) of their cases. Been so long since I seen one. lI do remember there were cases similar to the shuttles by several brands that used Micro ATX motherboards. The one I was remembering (with the slide out mobo tray) was the Aspire X case.
I wonder if DFI ever made a motherboard for that form factor. Putting a LanParty into a Lan Party build.
@@HappyBeezerStudios If I remember correctly, all of the DFI "Lan Party" motherboards were the enthusiast full ATX boards. I think those had the crazy heatsink for the power that stuck out of the case. Man, I miss those crazy board designs.
I've got a couple of these. I turned my SK21G into an absolute rocket of a Windows 98 machine with DOS audio via a Vortex 2! Great little systems.
Did you get Dos audio in Windows or in pure Dos mode?
Oh the drive cage is super easy it just slides backwards and lifts out the top. Might have 1-2 screws in the top rail, I can’t specifically remember.
Fond memories of putting many hours into MoH:AA multiplayer back in the day. Played it almost every day until Call of Duty 1 released and then me and most of my friends made the switch. Fantastic games!
Same thing happened to me when I interested network gaming with Mohaa and switched to COD. There was also other great network multiplayer hits like UT, ET, CS1.5 and up. Those games are playable also with dial-up 56k but wide latency has irritated some other players. At those time DSL-connections spread up very quickly. At nowadays I don't get feeling anymore from any top-end multiplayer games. Maybe it's from nostalgic wibes.
These were very popular, I remember people building more portable lanparty machines with them and I think they were popular as media PC's too, didn't look too out of place in a living room.
Ugh I was desperate for a Shuttle back in the day.. I didn't really know why but I wanted one. Nice video!
It's great to see the love for these Shuttle PCs. I had an SN41 just like the one in the video. I used it for work with dual monitors and it worked great running Windows XP, though it did occasionally hang. Just recently I found an SS51 Pentium 4 based Shuttle while dumpster diving and have fitted RAM, a hard drive, NVidia graphics card and a gigabit Ethernet card. It now runs Debian Linux and is really handy for working with floppy images and connecting "retro" hardware.
I still have my old Shuttle sitting on a shelf.
Me too! At my mom’s lol- with a P4 and 2gb ram. They looked so cool but ran hot.
I have a homelab consisting of 2 Shuttle XPC cubes filled with a 8 core i9 CPU and 128GB each. The extensibility options is what caused me to choose these badboys over NUCs. The form factor hasn't changed much and still looks basically like the old ones.
Do they fit MiniITX motherboards?
@@joshwa1234 no, to my knowledge shuttle pc motherboards have their own motherboard form factor.
I know I’ll get some hate, but I turned an old one of these into basically an external USB device. I’ve got a couple of laptop Blu-ray burners in it along with a multi card, reader and some hard drives all wired up with a USB 3 hub that I plug into my mini PC now. Figured it at least could use the case since the computer itself died.
The rental story is so nostalgic, our local library had a collection of PC games and quite a good one to.
But because it was digital goods that could be copied on top of the library subscription you had to pay $1 to loan the title for a few days.
So we'd totally loan them, copy them, download a crack online and then help copy those to other classmates who wanted copies to.
If a classmate wanted a copy we'd also ask them $1 which was the rough cost of an empty disk so that they could pay for the costs it would take to burn and print the cover, and then they could enjoy a lot of great games to.
But even more nostalgic was that this was done with a dutch collection called Twilight CD's, and Phil you can get them from 2 different sources on archive both have bad sectors but the museum uploads are usually the ones that are good, supplement them with the other uploader and its an absolutely incredible collection. They would be copied all over the netherlands and there is no other compilation of the same quality.
Thank you for sharing, love these personal stories 😊
the 1 time the library kicked ass... was when the inner net was scarce and new... the only time i remember ever saying to my self gotta go to the library.... usb drive with quake on it....and cyber beach dm server ip written on a scrap of paper....
Yea, I also remember those times. There was no rental store with games in my neighborhood, I also don't heard about them until I watched this video. It's kind of weird because VHS rental stores were still very popular at this point. Maybe it's due to "anti-piracy paranoia" during the early 2000's. Back then allegedly "control groups" from police and Microsoft break into the peoples homes and put them in jail if they found out that you don't have a stupid "legal sticker" on your case. We borrow and copied discs with games to each other regardless, I still have a disc with copy of GTA San Andreas from my friend but I don't know if it's still working.
I have a collection of barebones, but Shuttle lost badly to MSI, with the barebones that had a front display. In fact, to the unwary eye, the MSI barebone passes unnoticed as a mini stereo of the mp3 generation. It had small speakers, and was able to play cds, radio, mp3 even with the computer turned off.
Definitely went through a shuttle phase! Thanks for this!
I believe these machines were quite popular around Australia and New Zealand. The IT repair shop I used to work for sold these as a OEM machine. I loved the small form factor, nice and small. Heaps of good specs inside. The only issue was the Power Supplies would die regularly and the motherboards would suffer from bad caps. Seemed to be a common issue. The last one I had was the same spec as yours but in black. So cool!
This was my recollection on the early '00s as well, very clever designs unfortunately hobbled by cheap components - boards and PSUs were a matter of "when" they go, not "if" and they were also proprietary layouts made them a bit of a hassle.
I had the sg31g2, and the ss40g. What was weird was I had two of the sg31g2s, and while they came with solid caps, some weren't and out of the 2, one of them went bad. Some random person would repair them for a price, and while it took them forever, they fixed it.
These were sold in the era of bad chinese capacitors, so that you would run into that is not unusual.
I have one of these systems, still, that I first built it for my mom for her to use as her home PC. It has a 3400+ in it, iirc, and it doesn't like modern SSD, it won't recognize them in the BIOS.
Had a few of these back in the day when i was LANing, all that power in a small box made them perfect.
I had a Shuttle in the 2000s. It was a solid machine that served me well for a number of years.
Shuttle PCs were brilliant. I remember rocking up to a LAN party with an SB51G, ti4200 and P4 2.4 and having to host all the games, given my tiny PC was by far the fastest in the room. Armagetron, Quake 3, Battlefield 1942. Good times.
I recently picked up an SK43G and it's a great little machine. Not as good as the SB51G, but close enough.
The engineering required to take desktop components into a chassis that size in c.1999 was outstanding.
Love the channel Phil, and the website resources are brilliant. Keep at it brother.
I had a fleet of these machines. Starting in 2004 with the SN45Gv2. I coupled them with ATI All in wonder cards and recorded thousands of hours of TV with them. They were real workhorses those machines! I went from amd to intel, found the intel versions more suited to mpg2 video capture. I wish these things were still made, they were brilliant.
ATI All in Wonder, what a marketing name. I remember those cards well!
My mother's friend's husband had a Shuttle with a 9800 Pro and probably some AMD chip. It was so much more powerful than what I was using at the time, buttery smooth HL2 and Doom 3. Seeing Shuttle PCs like this bring back those memories. :)
I was obsessed with Shuttle XPC builds in the 00's. I owned a few and tried to see how I could balance power vs. space vs. heat so I could make a portable LAN party box. I remember people taking a dremel to the side panel near the graphics card to add a fan vent because the airflow was so restricted. They were the THE tiny computer back when most people had a full tower.
I remember using these at my old job, putting them inside our touch screen jukeboxes, perfect application for these due to their small form factor.
I had a Shuttle pc back in 2005. One of my favorite PCs
Yes, I remember wanting these PCs after I felt my family's Pentium III machine was a getting long in the tooth for high end gaming (it was fine and could've done well with a new GPU but it was running old hardware already) and when I was shopping for parts at a now defunct Monarch PC website for my first build, I came across Shuttle barebones boxes and thought these were awesome as they took up far less space and still packed high end hardware and could be carried to LAN parties (which were still a thing at the time). The only problem was that these machines cost quite a bit more than building my own and still necessitated buying other parts to complete the build.
Funny enough the total assembly price back then is probably not much different from building a modern ITX pc today
At the time I was just a kid and it took ke a long time to convince my parents that I should build us a new PC using an assortment of parts after getting used to upgrading the old prebuilt. I had a pretty limited budget which left Shuttle PC off the table. These days I'm more interested in building mATX machines as a nice middle ground.
Going to a lanparty you still have to go with the car instead of like the bicycle. Going to a lanparty you have to bring your screen too and cables. So you always have to go with the car to get all computers in. I think a bigger pc case, medium pc case and high end towers you have much better ventilation and air streams.
@@steeben009 As someone who drives a Yaris, if I brought friends to watch (therefore filling up the car seats) there wouldn't be much space for anything after I placed my desktop in the boot. The screen and peripherals would need to go on the lap of those in the backseats
Edit, also, you clearly never seen ventilation oriented ITX cases. Those things are so big they end up the height of an mATX case
I had and still have this exactly same Shuttle! Bought it as media PC for living room, nice little machine.
It looks very similar to Biostar iDeq 210. All aluminum case, Athlon XP 3200+, firewire, IRDA infrared. I have one and it's amazing for retro windows xp gaming.
Hi from Ukraine. I have seen similar mini PCs here at online flea markets (about 25 US $). The specifications there were already more modern. Core 2 Duo with Radeon HD3870. Powerful gaming computers of the time. Unfortunately, I don't have time to buy it and make a video right now. I like your videos. I have been watching your channel for a long time.
Thank you!
I've built so many of these! Awesome find!
Oh nice 🙂👍
I have never played Medal of Honor and you have motivated me to give it a try with this video. I am playing it on my old Athlon Xp and am enjoying it quite a lot. Thanks.
That's awesome 🙂
@@philscomputerlabI have it on my Core 2 Duo XP PC.
I had a Shuttle gaming PC that I built in the early 2000s, I did meticulous research to make everything fit. It had nForce 2 chipset, 1GB DDR RAM and Radeon 9800 Pro. At that time, no one in my area had ever seen such a small PC, and it was (well, somewhat) easy to carry to LAN with friends.
But it wasn't quiet.
The amount of power that could be packed into one of these is amazing. I bought the SN25P model right before SN26P was released. This was back when single slot GPUs and SLI were still a thing, like the 8800GT. Never could find a SN26P in stock but if I could, I would have had the X2 3800+ CPU matched with two of these. That was insane for an ATX build let alone a tiny box. Excellent for travel purposes as well.
Oh man! That optical drive was my first ever DVD burner! The legendary GSA-4040B from LG - I used it for many years and last I tested it it still works today!
Oh man, SHUTTLE!!! My main retro rig is in a Shuttle XPC. I always wanted one but had a laptop instead for portability. Now, 20 years later, I finally have a Shuttle SK21G. Athlon 64 3200+, Radeon X800XT PE (AGP), Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS, & Windows XP. I replaced the 200W Shuttle PSU with a 350W Silverstone FX350-G. It is an absolute beast for XP games, I love it!
Very cool!
I always wanted one of these back in the day! Such a small computer for the time.
i remember the Shuttle brand.
I was buying their motherboards long before the mini pc.
They had quite good products.
I have owned more than 10 Shuttle XPCs before. They bring back good memories.
After Shuttle stopped updating the XPC, I switched to Intel NUCs. Now I have the NUC3, NUC 7 Skull Canyon, and NUC 11 Extreme
I have one of these beauties, all black with a mirror front running XP and all of my old games, shoved a Pentium 4 and SSD into it, terrific machine. Had similar issues with an NVidia card so opted for an ATI, runs sweet.
I had one of those too. Really nice machine. Can't remember the cpu or the graphics card.
I have one of those in need of a recap. Some day. Would make a great Win98SE machine.
I always wondered why it hasn't gone more popular. It looks cool
It was very popular back in the day. I bought a few of them, from the SiS 740 chipset socket a, the nforce chipset, and some intel ones.
I had one many years ago they were cool. But those power supply fans were the most annoying things ever invented.
@@jamesellis9080 I think the first gen power supplies were noisy and one of them went dead for me, but I got it fixed under warranty IIRC.
The later versions though had better power supplies that were quieter.
If you want to have a more DOS compatible Shuttle PC, some of the predecessors (Shuttle PCs with rectangular buttons) are based on SIS chipsets / mainboard. There is even one version with 2 PCI slots (which I use). All onboard hardware, including the onboard VGA is picked up by Windows 98SE out of the box. Nforce Model: On the silver model you can remove the parallel port and route IDE cables outwards (with the included squished IDE cables). I put a Creative Life! 5 inch panel in the front and put the cd-rom on top. The fastest GPU I put in there was the GeForce 7800 GS.
Did the 7800 GS run at full power? When i bought my shuttle a few years ago, it had a slow geforce 4 MX 4000 which i took out and put in a 7600 GS. The computer powered on and everything worked as it should except for the 7600GS. I got a message saying something along the lines that the power to the 7600 GS was not enough and that the card was running in low power mode to protect it from damage. I also had the power molex cable connected to the card. To me the 7600 GS looked to be running fine and not in low power mode, but i removed it and put the crappy mx4000 back in.
@@BoomBox02 If I remember correctly, it worked without any problems, but I think at the time I only had one hard drive in there and an externally powered FireWire CD drive
First exposure to one of these was at a CompUSA, with the clear side panels and small size it excited both my dad and me. It ran a Knoppix 3.2 or so install too, my first hands-on with linux… was kinda hooked. He later built one (not Shuttle, but FIC IC-VL67), but also put a P4 3.2GHz w/HT and 9800 Pro… wow that thing ran so hot with those super hot components. Later went with like a 2.2-2.4ghz p4 and moved the other chip to a full size build. ALSO… not sure about your machine, but ours had a very specific smell to it… not bad, but it seemed like a lot of parts from that 2003-04ish period kinda had it, some kind of tech part smell lol.
Excellent video as always Phil, and my pleasure for supply it :)
Thanks again!
I love these mini Shuttle boxes, have had 4 in the past, still have three working ones. Couple are AMD and the last one is a E6700 equipped one (recently updated from original e6420).
Hi Phil, awesome and insightful video! I really appreciate you so much for spotlighting this nostalgic brand that feels 'forgotten' in this new age of PC building. For those of you who don't know, Shuttle still exists! My boyfriend actually works for Shuttle and we watched your video together; he enjoys watching PC reviewers all the time and was really happy to see Shuttle showcased. He is more than happy to answer any questions about their recent stuff :).
I was so psyched to get one of these for my home theatre pc! I have such good memories of using this to learn how about BitTorrent, and watching The Office (UK) and Arrested Development on this with my 4 roommates.
Had a few of these in the past: SB81P in 2005, SB86i in 2006, and a SD39P2 in 2007. Ended up selling to upgrade up to that third one and it would literally be my main computer until it died in 2013 (cracks in the sub levels of the PCB, I think). It was the ideal system for someone like me who liked to tinker, but also wanted a nice system to bring to LAN parties. I remember hearing that the last models were mini-ITX compatible as well, so as long as you could keep the PSU alive, I suppose one could continue to use the same case indefinitely...Though I suppose nowadays there are other just as desirable options out there.
I myself would end up getting a gaming class laptop in 2014 and would basically use that as my daily driver from there on out (I got another gaming class laptop in 2018 when that one died and through a stroke of luck I am typing this now on that very laptop, lol)
It's cool that they made the effort to provide some full height expansion capability in a very small package. You don't see it nowadays
Never had a Shuttle myself, but I absolutely remember those from around the mid-2000s. Usually people used those as HTPCs back then.
I remember seeing these Shuttle PCs in TV shows / magazines back in the day and falling in love with the small form factor. Never ended up getting one unfortunately, but they inspired my latest PC build. Just a small cube PC, nothing crazy. :)
I built a few of these back in the early 2000's. They were really popular in Japan where I was stationed.
Got two myself. Socket A and a 754. Been sitting in the basement for a while. You got me wanting to tinker with them now :)
I loved these ones back in the day and installed quite a few of them for my friends. I actually bought one just like this last year for some retro gaming. I remember we had a black XC Cube for socket 939 which a friend of mine and me used to host some websites on. I am still looking for that one for a decent price, just for the nostalgia.
Wow… I think I still have one of those in my parent’s basement or attic. I was so excited when I got it as a secondary PC.
Nice video! I am happy that you returned to review old pc and old hardware in win 98/xp!
Me too! More to come!
I really wanted one of these, I love the idea of a small form factor PC.
I remember this shuttle trend back in the day. And it get pretty hot inside the box if you hardcore gaming ^^
I sure do remember the Shuttles! I went to a vocational high school for a couple classes in grades 10-12 and one of the years we built a whole bunch of these to be our classroom computers for the IT/networking & web design classes. I seem to remember we were running Windows 2000 on them, which is maybe slightly odd because this was probably around 2003, so XP would have been out. Though at the time, Win 2K was very clean and compatible, and perfect for browsing the web and MS Office, which was about all we used them for. Schools sometimes are late adopters of newer OS's anyways. Over at the main high school, they were definitely still running Windows 98 in most of the labs. When I was in college, they skipped Vista altogether and went from XP to Win7.
I had one just like this that I used as my main gaming rig. I lived at home but was hanging out everywhere else so it was a great portable solution. The nForce was a great overclocking chipset and this kit came with a very decent cooling solution, so I took advantage of that with one of the cheaper Athlon XPs and clocked it up. Cut the restrictive fan grills off the back to help airflow. I think I used a Radeon GPU at the time. Paired it up with a VGA LCD projector and I could carry everything with one hand and have the biggest display around as long as there was a white wall available. I even had the silver bag with shoulder strap for it. It was the best until the power supply gave out. Then I ran it without the case and an ATX power supply sitting next to it. At that point I had my own place and it just became a regular not very portable desktop. That power LED will light a dark room, I had to put a sticker over mine.
Awesome, love the projector setup ☺️
I do remember them. They always had some goofy problem or other to overcome, but worked decently once you figured out the quirks.
Believe it or not, Shuttle is still around and still making compact systems. Though they focus on the business, industrial, and kiosk/signage market these days. They're still pretty low end. 😂
Always a joy to watch =D
I remember when they were new. Used to see this stuff at computer shows (market for small vendors) I shopped at when I was a teenager. That stuff was too rich for me but I would feast my eyes anyway.
I remember seeing these all the time as a kid or young teen and always wanted one of these.
Maybe that's where my love for the ITX form factor comes from.
As far as retro games go, this seems like a very nice system and just like those ThinClients you showed years ago, easy to store away and to set up again whenever there's an urge to play classic PC games.
That is indeed a good point about them taking less storage space 😊
I do remember them, I had a few. The motherboards died left and right, were not cheap for what they offered and the internal layout suffered from no good layout for ventilation. But boy did I want one.
This case design made me think of what chasis design would be ideal for retro pc. Even if you have to make one from scratch.
I do remember these! I was keen on one but ended up going full atx due to getting some hand me down P4 parts.
I have one of these as my retro PC. I used your videos to get Windows 98 Se installed on it. I have an Geforce Fx5600 agp and Athlon xp +2600.
I bought 2 of these Shuttle XPC's when they came out. I still have 1 of them and I love it. They're so handy to have around for booting into Win98 or WInXP.
Have the same Shuttle computer which I setup on Windows 98 (could only us 1 Gig of ram) and I used some of your downloads on your website to get it up and running. Also used the built in video as most of my video cards do not have Win 98 drivers. Great video by the way!
Ah the precursor to Mini ITX! My brother had a "Jetway MiniQ" that he bought from GameDude in Brisbane, pretty similar to the Shuttle!
I remember scoffing at these when they were new as I was all about the big towers back then. But now I really want one of these. But they're not that easy to find. But I just gotta keep looking.
I have that exact model (SN41G), she happily Runs Linux and is an amazing part of the collection.
I had Shuttle AI61 Slot A with original Athlon 600mhz processor. Served me till 2014, when it got broken. 5 years later, i've fixed it and i upgraded it to the maximum. You know that this fella can run RUclips on XP SP3 in 2023 on Firefox in 144p. But it was a pain to load the website, as expected...
I'm using it nowdays as a retro computer. Since 2009 still stayin' alive...
built numerous Shuttles during the very late 90's and especially during the early 00's
I had one of these systems I used as a streaming PC for watching Netflix etc. on an old TV that didn't have HDMI input, once I got a new TV I would use my BlueRay player which had a built in Netflix app. and sadly I don't recall what happened to the Shuttle PC :( I really liked that little guy...
Had 3 of these back in the days, use them for lan party, because my main gaming pc wasn't easy to move
I had several of these back in the day, last one being a northwood P4. Just bought a Prescott era silver one with a Radeon x700 from eBay that is like new. I use this as my xp retro box.
I have a Shuttle PC and they are neat. Also I tend to clean equipment before using it. Nothing crazy but I generally do some cleaning maintenance before turning them on.
I remember these boxes. I'd see them in the Goodwill back a decade or so ago.
As usual super video. As for Australia, besides your channel I still watch BigstackD :) Greetings from Poland
Thanks for watching!
This is exactly what i have. Was bought for music. Running a barton 2500+ and ati x800
1. Open the side (in this case.. take it apart).
2. Check if everything is connected right, nothing gotten loose during shipping.
3. Turn on.
4. If works, and I care enough about the machine -- new thermal paste.
5. Put back together.
6. Use. :D
Had also two of those.
A SN45G with an athlon xp 2600+ mobile which did run overclocked during its whole life, with a 9800pro. I still have it and had to replace the agp slot. It now runs with a x800xt. I did modify it to run an aqua computer watercooling kit, but the cpu bracket I managed to create wasn't good enough. There are some pictures of this monstrosity... !
And then a sd39p2 with a core2duo e6600 @ 3.6GHz. This design was much better with the cooling done sideways.
Great memories of well thought machines, which came along in lan events quite a lot. We did stack our shuttle with a friend. I don't know if it was a cool factor like other running a chiller, but at least with flat screen maintream at that time, it was much easier to move around!
I still have somewhere a SB51G. Yes it was my LAN meet PC all those years ago.
I still have mine from back in 2003 and it's my favorite Retro PC now: the SK41G. It's an Athlon XP-M 2600+ which can change the multiplier anytime on the fly, for the sound I'm using the TTSOLO-1 with the DreamBlaster S1 on it, and a Quadro4 980 XGL for the graphics, but this computer can also run a Voodoo3 without any problems! It's just a wonderful machine for Windows 98 with great DOS compatibility.
I still have mine, same model as yours, sitting safely in the official silver Shuttle carrycase in a cupboard. Athlon XP 2500, Radeon 9800 Pro, and a sweet brushed aluminium cover attached to the front of the DVD drive to keep the front looking slick. Absolute beast for LAN sessions back in the day.
It came with a carry case? Nice! I'd use a woolworths shopping bag 😂
@@philscomputerlab It was an optional extra, the model of the carrycase I had was the "Shuttle PF9" if you're curious. I also still have the official Shuttle media IR remote and receiver in the side pocket, as I'd only just moved out of the family house, and it was my main DVD player. I used to keep it simultaneously plugged in to a monitor on one side and a larger CRT television on the other, through the 9800 Pro's S-Video out. Ahhh, simpler days. ;)
Had a shuttle pc for a decade (2004-2014). SN41G2v3. Loved the size and unusual case at that time. My specs where: AMD Athlon XP Barton 2800+2.08Ghz. 2Gb Ram and ATI Radeon HD 3850 AGP. But there was some things that was anoying with this case. First and foremost the high pitch noise from the Sunon fan. And the other thing was that it was hard to mod. I switched the Sunon fan to two Noctua 80mm fans that was in a push/pull configuration because the CPU got really hot with only one Noctua fan. The Northbridge got a Zalman ZM-NB47J Passive Heatsink that had to be cut in the fins to fit. To be able to have the HD3850 card in, the strongest power supply at 300W was a must. Original PSU was at 250W...... Nice vid Phil, this gave me some nostalgia from my 20's
These were the start of my fascination and eventual odd obsession with building a powerful and decently cooled mini computer. That obsession continues to now (CM N200).
I never had or used a Shuttle system, but used to see them popping up on eBay quite often. I went off on a Mini-ITX tangent, and sellers perhaps not sure what they were selling were listing them as Mini-ITX. While similar in size, the form factor is different. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault got its hooks into me and a friend I built a PC for. We played multiplayer games and would be on the same team, trying to help each other out. When I moved from XP to Windows 7, the game would no longer run - disaster! I believe it was copy protection on the game disc that caused it. I later bought the GOG version, which does away with all that nonsense, and the game worked fine once again. In fact, it continues to work now I've moved to Linux; someone in the GOG forums created a program that repackages the GOG files and a version of Wine, and it all works. The multiplayer service was killed-off by EA some years ago, but there is a workaround for that, although the number of players online has plummeted; well, it's a 20 year old game, after all.
Gosh, Phil. This was the dream machine I never got to own. I wanted a mini-ITX system build back in the early oughts, but the offering outside Shuttle's dedicated HW was almost non-existent.
(Now happily typing this on a Z97 mini-ITX system running a modded BIOS and a power-sipping but high performing Xeon. With an RTX 2060 OC, it is one of my main gaming machines.)
BTW, was a moderator on the now-defunct SFF Forum.
I had a small case back in the day, details escape me but used uATX and full size PSU. X Cube maybe?
So weird to see this in my subscriptions. I used a v2 model of this exact PC daily from about 2008 until 2012, aging by that point of course but served me well for what it was. I still have it but it needs a power supply; 3.3v rail is very low and causes instability.
Lovely, lovely Shuttle. My first SFF PC. It was rocking a Windows ME. Vividly remember playing Odyssey: The Search for Ulysses on it, among other games. Would love a proper modern XPC gaming cube by Shuttle (not what they offer right now).
Hell yeah! I used one of those to make a MythBox to record OTA signals back in 2005ish.
Myth wow haven't heard that for ages! I used the Microsoft media centre for a while...
I plug it in outside first 😂
I remember just drooling over these shuttle PCs back in the day.
I own about 4 shuttle PC's of this style. All of mine are Pentium 4's though. I got mine working at a Universities Surplus store. I wish I had a socket A version. That is when I started to get into building computers. Unfortunately I don't have a Athlon in my collection. I have looking to get one. But they are expensive. Luckily I do I one K6-2 PC. Thanks Phil you always do a good job.
I have the same shuttle pc! Same chassis, but different mainboard with pentium 4. I still have in the closet. My family actually used it until 2013-2014 or so, very late for this hardware
I always disconnect the drives and see if it passes post using a known good power supply. After that I test each component. I have a USB to SATA/PATA adapter to test the drives. Usually I suggest getting a new atx power supply and an adapter instead of running the old PSU. If someone wants to run the old PSU they should have the capacitors replaced. Then of course replace the thermal pads if needed, and replace the thermal paste. I generally use Noctua NT or Artic MX for general use machines. Don't forget to clean and oil the fans.
Ah, FN41. It notably has 4-pin power.
You indeed won't be able to use DDMA on nForce2 in DOS.
nForce2 GF4MX iGPU in general is nice for Win98.
It can be picky about RAM and you probably want to avoid dual channel altogether as it is non-ultra version.
That BIOS pictured is a very old version. Perhaps it contributes to instability.
Thanks for the review.
I've owned 3 of the Shuttle SFF machines over the years. The first two were Athlons very similar to the one in this video. The third one I still have. It's an H170 chipset with an i3-6300 processor. I believe it will accept 7th gen Intel CPUs with a BIOS upgrade.
I also have a Shuttle HOT-555 Socket 5 motherboard in a machine from 1997 or so. It's got a Cyrix IBM 6x86 PR200 in it I believe.
In my experience Shuttle makes great hardware. Their motherboards have always been solid, and they were pretty innovative with the cooling in their mini PCs.