The sticker over the speaker performs potentially two functions, but making it quieter isn't really one of them. It's either for allowing a vacuum pickup tool to have a flat surface to grab the component during assembly (the same reason why you sometimes see a small piece of tape on USB connectors), and/or (perhaps more likely) to prevent ingress of cleaning fluid during an ultrasonic cleaning process at the end of assembly. Making it quieter is just a side effect of the sticker being left in place after assembly and cleaning.
So many small independent computer stores in many towns. The cases had the square spot for thick custom logo for the company. I don't remember what company made the custom stickers but I remember seeing them in PC Shopper
There are only two scenes I like in Titanic, the scene where he's drawing her lushous boobs. And the sinking part, especially the propellor guy and the ship breaking in two. I am morbid, depraved, and fkkkt up. : )
What would we do without Mike's wonderful "all right" remarks each step of the way of dismantling his latest PC finds, at the end of the week?! Love it Mike... keep up the good work. :)
I've encountered many a drive, particularly in the 2000s that just refused to load some CD-Rs. It was very much an imperfect technology that I don't miss any more... 😂
But they fixed those problems, just in time for napster. I'm happy when things come together like that. Man, the tunes I stole....... uh ...... borrowed..... sampled.
The main problem is cdr's are less reflective that cd's so had a lower signal return strength. Also the lasers could be just getting weak so they read cd's but cant get a good signal from cdr disc's
The hack job on that third system was impressive, but still makes me feel a little better that my hack jobs have never been anywhere close to that! Quite a mixed bag today! Great video as usual!
Wow what an assortment of unknown systems. The third one was a little disappointing. They remind me of going to the computer parts stores and getting things needed for our computers. I miss those days. Your videos take me down memory lane to an assortment of memories watching you fix or build systems. Your sense of humor is great, I love it! As always looking forward to your next video! I think I’ll rename my Fridays as Computer Friday!
20:45 - The capacitors aren't what you have to worry about, it's the primary side heatsink, which is just above them. Most power supplies have that heatsink in-circuit with the primary switching mosfets, meaning that it's anywhere between 60-375v RMS, depending on the switching topology used. Some power supplies are of piss poor design and can have that live heatsink just 1/16th of an inch from the lid with no insulation between them. I had an Antec SL350 that was such a design. Had a spectacular bang one time when a ground wire broke out of a molex connector and a one in a million shot, the wire whipped back and the end went directly into the vent of the PSU housing and touched the heatsink. Sounded like a gunshot and blew a deep crater in the heatsink. PSU was unfixable, that bang destroyed the mosfets, the PWM controller, bridge rectifier and controller IC. The capacitors are perfectly safe to touch powered on, since their legs are hidden under the board. The heatsink, not so much. Accidentally brush against it and you'll be swearing right quick. The capacitors can keep that heatsink charged up from minutes to several hours if the bleed down resistors are missing or damaged. Best to poke a multimeter across the heatsink and the PSU body to make sure there's no voltage left. Don't try shorting this heatsink out, because you'll most likely blow up the main switching mosfets and destroy the supply.
I guess the spiders that used to live on the dial up modem were trying to get on the world wide web, and send an email to relatives in another PC somewhere in the world 😆
Great Channel 👍🏻 RUclips algorithm brought me here 🎉 Seen a few of your vids as a new subscriber. This is great viewing. Brings me back to when I used to build these PCs back in the day as a day job and as a hobby. I’m surprised No coin cell manufacture is sponsoring you. The amount of them you go through repairing these retro systems, they should do. How do you not get bruised hands or cuts when pulling these parts out? I always find that’s the issue I get…😊 Keep up the video content… Cheers from the U.K 🍻
"...I'm guessing the rapidly blinking light means anger..." HAHAHAHA! That was the funniest thing I have heard all day... thanks for your content, keep it coming.
Just wanted to say there was a period of time when it seemed like CD-ROM drives just wouldn't read CD-R disks for some reason. Like in the late 90s or early 2000s it seemed like we had a bunch of different brands with that issue. Finally started to order every system with a CD burner, just so we knew that they would read. Great channel and fun to see you restoring the same type of systems I started my career on.
I found a trick to revive floppy drives which won't move even with new grease. The trick is to spray some contact cleaner into the stepper motor that actuates the head, you can spray some in there through the holes in the back and so far it has revived 100% of the floppy drives that I did it on
Well I know this reply is late, but you need to be ashamed of yourself!! Have you been to church lately??? You have sin on your soul. Do you think Jesus would steal tunes on Napster?? Me, I auditioned tunes on Napster. It was all about quality control. I had to do a lot of auditioning but it needed doing! And most of the time, the quality sucked balls. 🙂
That last system with the 2003 parts takes me right back to my high school years. That was the rig i was running right around my senior year of HS, first video card i bought was the Voodoo 3 and that would have been in 2001 i believe. Time flies.
Just out of curiosity, I'm wondering if they were still teaching computer science in hs in 2003. We took it in grade 12, but that was in 1982. Also, it's just weird what time changes. When I was learning how to run my own computer, reading those Dummies books and doing the disk tutorials, we were told that we needed to get a "computer guru" to help and guide us in our computer journey. That was in the mid 90s. Now, it's like who the fkkk needs one of those? The damn comp explains itself. : )
@@keithbrown7685 They were still teaching computer science in 2003 in high school because I was taking some of those classes back then while I was in high school. They were tech prep/vocational program classes that counted towards college but I never used that credit for anything as I did not go to university, only to a vocational college.
First pc is from Nimble Microsystems Inc. They are mostly into servers and enterprise level tech nowadays love your videos and cant wait to see a full video, on some of more in depth repairs. That some of these need. 😁
It's fine to try and start a MB with bulging caps, ie, it will ether start, or won't start. Also those rows of caps are usually in parallel, so you can replace 6 caps of 1500 with 2 caps of 4500.
Listen, MikeTech, I don't mean to criticize. Matter of fact, I approve. There are a lot of towers getting starring roles on this channel. I just wonder if this is your subconscious way of saying, that people who send their comps to the landfill or to eWaste....... that they should be taken to the Tower. You know, coz in merry old England, that's where people went before the King finally disposed of them for good.
I think the AOpen system was built at a local computer shop or as mail-order instead of assembled by a home enthusiast because of the CSI label. CSI was an acronym for Custom System Integrator which is what a lot of those type of smaller vendors were classified as back then. The matching AOpen CD drive, PSU, and AOpen chip on the sound card lends further credence to a purchased build, as does the Coolermaster 3rd party CPU cooler, since the boxed Intel chips for home end users included a fan but the OEM brown box CPUs didn’t always. You are my favorite channel discovery of 2023. ^__^ Love the way everything is put together and that includes the host. 🤠
And more heat. That was the whole point with the P4. Geeks needed space heaters. They also needed comps, but they often lived in cold cramped spaces, like dorm rooms. Enter the Pentium 4.
Regarding that AOpen chipset... Acer Labs Inc was part of the same conglomerate, and they did make some chipsets. So possibly that was the origin of that chip.
i did pc repair in the 90's- early 2000's you would had no idea what you might come across or what the issue might possibly be "mystery jumper" was a good day .... people using keyboard 5pin din as a midi port was something i came acreoss way to often
My gut feeling with the CD-Rs not working is due to the dye. Modern CD-R blanks are made with much lighter dyes (phthalocyanine) which might not reflect quite how those old drives need. I recall that most of my discs back in the early 2000s were a lot more blue in color than they are now. I could be wrong but just a thought.
You may very well be right. I have plenty of Verbatim disks that used their dark blue AZO dyes and those disks always read well, compared to many of the cheaper disks I used in later years that had like a very pale green type dye.
Do you remember orange dye CD-Rs? The first Maxell ones I bought in the very early 2000s were like that and ugly expensive. I seem to remember they were something like 18 Austrian Schillings each, or €1.50 in 2002 money. Finding a 10-pack of no-name CD-Rs for 10 Euros felt like a steal and they were decent too. The packaging was something to behold. A plain white cardboard box with black print and the discs in paper sleeves inside. No manufacturer info or anything on the box I think. If I remember correctly these off-brand discs had a deep green dye. Blue ones came later and I loved them as a teenager.
@Ragnar8504 I never saw orange dye disks, but I did encounter recordable disks probably a bit later in the lifetime of the tech. However I have very fond memory of the Dysan black CD-R, as rumour had it those would work best for pirated PS1 games. I never could test that, but the black disks looked really neat and all of those I burnt still work to this day. Can't same the same for those pale green-ish dye ones.
woow this first PC, it gave me some nostalgia.... very similar to our first PC when I was 5 or 6 years old it had also an Asus MB and a 120MHz intel P1 and 2x 16MB ram sticks :) also the case is similar, maybe just different front plastic front panel (more rounded buttons) it had a 1.6 GB seagata and a 8x CD rom
Good idea using a fiber glass repair, myself I usually use a plastic welder to repair bezels llike that (both automotive and PC) it fills in the gaps a bit better, but i always end up having to sand and paint the whole thing as its hard to match the color
Fiberglass is my favorite material for repairing thin plastic like this. Stuff is crazy strong! I do wish there were a good way to replicate original texture after filling/sanding. Especially that classic IBM texture.
The AOpen was obviously from a smokers house. I know, both of my parent's smoked, so I know that dust well. The reason it's so difficult to clean is because it's got cigarette tar, which is incredibly sticky. A bit of degreaser, like Dawn dish soap, will work wonders on plastic parts.
The spookier part, is how that stuff binds to lung tissue. I think of the things I did to my lungs. And even now, I'm not sure if I got away scot-free. But I LOVED smoking, in the beginning, and it was because of that very tar, that my tastebuds went to nirvana, and ultimately short-circuited, so that cigs were tasting like something worse than ***t to me.
I'm not sure, the dust doesn't look quite brown enough to me. Besides, it would have smelled. Humidity can make dust properly difficult to remove. My parents have a holiday home that sits empty and unheated throughout most of winter and that has dust just like this PC. Spring cleaning is always a chore.
Btw,do you happen to know,why,other then the battery,the BIOS can not hold values on the m-boards??? I have my ABIT AI7,and it's not held values, before bliwing some caps,and, while doing it killing P4 3.2.... And shearing it's pin!!
Those weird sound effects and cursors were part of the "Travel" theme from Windows 98 as far as I remember. And some CDs show quick blinking while reading the disc. If it keeps blinking forever it might be a sign it can't read it.
Create a floppy disk with hdat2 to do full surface scans to your hard disks. It's also capable of displaying the SMART attributes and reallocate damaged sectors automatically. I also recommend having a memtest86 floppy or boot CD nearby. Should be part of your testing tools
S1 - P133, nice! I'm not a big fan of 'Dallas' style RTCs but still better than those Varta barrels & also hackable! S2 - Where the fudge was that AOpen case used? It's a zoo for dust bunnies! S3 - Capacitor Plague was a real thing people! S4 - More dust! More bad caps! But Mike turns it on anyway! 😛 Looking forward to the future upgrades & repairs!
Just off topic, I would like to go on record as saying that "Permanent Dirt" is a good name for a punk band. And you heard MikeTech utter it first! So when Permanent Dirt becomes famous and people ask where the name came from, we can point them *right here*!
It looked to me like that second computer was used in a very humid (or at least not climate controlled) place -- the dirt/dust was *caked* on. Ick. Love these vids & keep 'em coming! :-)
I use to do this all the time in the Mid 2000s collect a bunch of random bargain store pcs and go to town lol I made several good working computers in this era..
Seeing the AOpen system interior brought to mind a service call I did for a local cement and gravel company. I was the most dust I ever saw inside a mostly working system. Every component was coated with about 2 mms of rock dust. The fans and heat-sinks were all rendered useless/non-functional by being gobbed tight by dust and grit. The bottom of the interior was coated thicker than the rest, easily a full cm of filth. How the system had managed to function in any capacity for more than a week in that location beggars belief. Regarding CD-R incompatibility, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I had endless troubles with CD-RW and CD-R media, it all hinged on what color laser diode was used in the units. Some used a yellow laser diode that would not work with some media, others used a blue laser diode (mostly Sony) that would not work with some media, yet others used a red laser diode that would not work with some media. Some worked fine reading CDs burned by any color laser diode, but not read RW media at all, even if the burn session had closed the CD to any further changes. And some would read a RW media until it was used a second time, then never again would it read. So much jank hardware in those days.
That makes my bearings hurt lol. I used to work at a shipyard. It gave me a whole new respect for the environmental conditions that hardware can tolerate! Oh I remember all too well the wild-west days of early recordable optical media. I definitely don't miss that!
Hi buddy, I am sure a cap popped when you switched on that last computer. Go back and review your footage. As you switched on you can hear a pop and a sudden silver "light" from the board. It looks like the top of the cap pushed out catching the light. I just love your channel. Regards from South Africa
You never know what you'll find in these mystery towers, system 4 looks like the kind of cheap somewhat flimsy case I built a metric ton of PC's in while working at a local PC repair shop in high school. It's really cool it supports a 120mm fan tho, none of the ones I worked on despite looking very similar supported more than a single 80 front and rear. Could make a really good candidate for an IDE RAID array 'cause you could put a modern high static pressure silent fan in there and keep those drives cool. Pair of 80mm's out back, you'll be set. Thankfully modern fan designs are much imporoved over ye olde days where even the silent fans probably buzzed when new, or just screamed, or both.
@@miketech1024 Yeah, no pesky vibration dampers either, though I dunno what that's gonna do for the life of four drives hammering away in sequence. Back in high school, a friend of mine and I thought it would be funny to RAID a bunch of these noisy 1GB Western Digital drives he'd gotten in bulk. We never got to do it though, but man that would've been loud. The drives were leftover spares from some office building, NOS, and they were loud. Never thought I'd miss that sound, haha!
@@miketech1024 We don't mind videos being late, don't overwork yourself, a day or two is fine :-) although can't get enough of your videos, drooling over the videos and you haha
It's funny because the Phillips burner was the first I ever bought! I think it was 200 euros at the time and it was all the money I got for my birthday!
I absolutely love the channel Mike, you inspired me to build my own windows 98 SE computer, which I did couple weeks ago. It works great with xp dual boot.
Love your videos! I'm sure the fiberglass repair works well, haven't tried that myself, but I can also recommend Plastruct Plastic Weld. It is solvent based and chemically dissolves the plastic and melds it back together. I've used it to repair cracks in computer cases with great results. Edit: I see someone else already suggested this, at least I'm not alone :D
Thanks! I thought the previous comment was referring to the electric plastic welders (the ones that essentially just melt a heated wire in). Never heard of that stuff, but it looks interesting.
Some of those older CD and CD-RW drives would read -R but not +R or the other way around. Would not read -R but would read +R's. And/or were just finikey about reading both. Depending on how the CD-R was closed when written. And there's just no rhyme or reason to it. Excellent video, I look forward to watching more.
That would be DVD. CDs only came in -ROM, -R and -RW flavours. Early DVD drives were sometimes indeed limited to whatever rewritable format the manufacturer thought to be more likely succeed in the format war. DVD-RAM was even more limited, especially the cartridge type.
In those days, it was just a matter of understanding the RAM IC manufacturer and the timings. Looks like the RAM in the first system was LG EDO RAM with 60ns timings. Pretty standard fare for the day.
18:53 "De-dusted?" That's an odd term. Is there a significance to saying that as opposed to just "dusted?" Kind of like "irregardless" instead of just "regardless." Just never heard anyone say that. Keep up the great work and the repairs on the broken parts is impressive.
Goodluck finding something to pair with the Media connector in the Nimble PC. And I'm just waiting for the Jackcon caps on my Abit VP6 to fail. The board was clearly used heavily and yet they are all perfectly fine, even during extended use with the FSB at 143MHz.
That last machine looks very similar to a powerspec I have. Only, mine is black and has a gig and a half of RAM, even the p4 is the same. Those sound max audio chips are kinda meh and the caps on the bottom right like to fail as well.
I'm curious if those CD-R lasers are going bad, sometimes the driver circuit starts to drift causing the laser's "shape" to go all funny or weak, but that might cause regular CDs to fail too.
I have a board with that hipoint ide raid. I've never used it, but I'd like to see that in action. I've thought about raid striping some sata ssd's into it with adapters to see what kind of ridiculousness I can get into.
I got an asus board from 20yr ago that can RAID 4 drives (PATA) , couldn't afford to try back then but now i got a bunch of drives from old satellite DVR so now it's on 🤓
@@agenda697 Something about how those drives work makes them really slow. Like they're meant to write and read in sequence or something. I got no idea really, but I know really slow. If you're after a hard drive symphany, then the dvr drives are probably great! Maybe they'll take longer and have to do more work which means more noise.
Back when the p2 came out and i received my 266mhz one there was one issue as the box came with cpu and detached cpu fan... but for some reasons did my box didn´t have the stuff needed to attach the fan bracket to the cpu... so i ended up jury rigging a fan with copperwire to the slot cpu. In hindsight using copper was probably not even remotely smart but it was what i had at hand.
Back before flash drives. Nero was a god send back in the day. Nothing worse than burning a CD with a lot of wasted space. Nero (and other programs) would let you add files later. I do look forward to seeing what that Abit board can do. Keep voiding those warranties. I do remember Albatron or Albatross making video cards. Not too sure.
Do you remember a program called Deep Burner? I tried it once. Worked fine. It was supposed to burn files super efficiently, so that a minimum of space got wasted on the recordable media. If I could find it now, and I'm sure it's out there, it would probably work just like before. But then I think... I don't have any blank dvds around here... and then I wonder wtf for? Got plenty of flash storage. Memories I guess.
The sticker over the speaker performs potentially two functions, but making it quieter isn't really one of them.
It's either for allowing a vacuum pickup tool to have a flat surface to grab the component during assembly (the same reason why you sometimes see a small piece of tape on USB connectors), and/or (perhaps more likely) to prevent ingress of cleaning fluid during an ultrasonic cleaning process at the end of assembly.
Making it quieter is just a side effect of the sticker being left in place after assembly and cleaning.
Awesome, it's Friday, Tired of watching Titanic all week, now it's time to watch Mike Dive into these computers!! I'm ready lol
Exactly what he said! I've been looking forward to this video all week!
@@trevorp-j Same!
So many small independent computer stores in many towns. The cases had the square spot for thick custom logo for the company. I don't remember what company made the custom stickers but I remember seeing them in PC Shopper
There are only two scenes I like in Titanic, the scene where he's drawing her lushous boobs. And the sinking part, especially the propellor guy and the ship breaking in two.
I am morbid, depraved, and fkkkt up.
: )
26:53 « _Another one boots the DOS_ » Queen, circa 2023.
What would we do without Mike's wonderful "all right" remarks each step of the way of dismantling his latest PC finds, at the end of the week?! Love it Mike... keep up the good work. :)
The inability of some drives of that period is related to lower reflectance of CD-Rs. Early DVDs were bad at reading CD-R for first generation.
I've encountered many a drive, particularly in the 2000s that just refused to load some CD-Rs. It was very much an imperfect technology that I don't miss any more... 😂
But they fixed those problems, just in time for napster. I'm happy when things come together like that. Man, the tunes I stole....... uh ...... borrowed..... sampled.
The main problem is cdr's are less reflective that cd's so had a lower signal return strength. Also the lasers could be just getting weak so they read cd's but cant get a good signal from cdr disc's
The hack job on that third system was impressive, but still makes me feel a little better that my hack jobs have never been anywhere close to that! Quite a mixed bag today! Great video as usual!
That CR2023 battery is the same battery used in my Toyota key fob. The original battery lasted about 5 years before I had to replace it
Even LED teacandles use it, it's quite popular choice of compact power source._
The super glue and baking soda method is also very good for fixing broken face plates. Keep up the nice videos!
Wow what an assortment of unknown systems. The third one was a little disappointing. They remind me of going to the computer parts stores and getting things needed for our computers. I miss those days. Your videos take me down memory lane to an assortment of memories watching you fix or build systems. Your sense of humor is great, I love it! As always looking forward to your next video! I think I’ll rename my Fridays as Computer Friday!
20:45 - The capacitors aren't what you have to worry about, it's the primary side heatsink, which is just above them. Most power supplies have that heatsink in-circuit with the primary switching mosfets, meaning that it's anywhere between 60-375v RMS, depending on the switching topology used. Some power supplies are of piss poor design and can have that live heatsink just 1/16th of an inch from the lid with no insulation between them.
I had an Antec SL350 that was such a design. Had a spectacular bang one time when a ground wire broke out of a molex connector and a one in a million shot, the wire whipped back and the end went directly into the vent of the PSU housing and touched the heatsink. Sounded like a gunshot and blew a deep crater in the heatsink. PSU was unfixable, that bang destroyed the mosfets, the PWM controller, bridge rectifier and controller IC.
The capacitors are perfectly safe to touch powered on, since their legs are hidden under the board. The heatsink, not so much. Accidentally brush against it and you'll be swearing right quick. The capacitors can keep that heatsink charged up from minutes to several hours if the bleed down resistors are missing or damaged. Best to poke a multimeter across the heatsink and the PSU body to make sure there's no voltage left. Don't try shorting this heatsink out, because you'll most likely blow up the main switching mosfets and destroy the supply.
I guess the spiders that used to live on the dial up modem were trying to get on the world wide web, and send an email to relatives in another PC somewhere in the world 😆
Your channel makes me happy. It's so peaceful.
16:33 that *is* a cool switch, but still, nothing can beat a 1980s 386 red flip switch, the kerchunk on that badboy....
Mike: "CSI doesn't ring any bells to me"
My brain: **puts on glasses** Good to know. 😎
_YEAAAAAAAAH_
Homocidal looking handwriting; That's priceless! 🤣
Nice! Cracked me up! That case was Jank! Pay attention to those weird coincidences. Those are glitches in the Matrix.
Those glitches in the matrix have been seeming like full-on kernel panics.
Wow! An AT/DIN keyboard port *and* USB header on the same logic board! I've definitely never seen that.
Great Channel 👍🏻 RUclips algorithm brought me here 🎉 Seen a few of your vids as a new subscriber. This is great viewing. Brings me back to when I used to build these PCs back in the day as a day job and as a hobby. I’m surprised No coin cell manufacture is sponsoring you. The amount of them you go through repairing these retro systems, they should do. How do you not get bruised hands or cuts when pulling these parts out? I always find that’s the issue I get…😊 Keep up the video content… Cheers from the U.K 🍻
"...I'm guessing the rapidly blinking light means anger..."
HAHAHAHA! That was the funniest thing I have heard all day... thanks for your content, keep it coming.
Just wanted to say there was a period of time when it seemed like CD-ROM drives just wouldn't read CD-R disks for some reason. Like in the late 90s or early 2000s it seemed like we had a bunch of different brands with that issue. Finally started to order every system with a CD burner, just so we knew that they would read. Great channel and fun to see you restoring the same type of systems I started my career on.
25:02 this was probably upgraded from Windows 98, so that's why it has that sound
My first custom PC in 2000 was in an Aopen case. Fond memories. Popular like Antec. Keep your eyes out for an old Lanboy case + system.
I found a trick to revive floppy drives which won't move even with new grease. The trick is to spray some contact cleaner into the stepper motor that actuates the head, you can spray some in there through the holes in the back and so far it has revived 100% of the floppy drives that I did it on
11:05 NICE WORK Mike!
😮🤝
This saves me the trouble and mess of doing this kind of treasure hunting myself. My garage and sanity thanks you.
That Celeron looked like a BX chipset, very popular pairing, you could overclock the smeg out of celerons.
You mean CeleronA (with the on-die cache), didn't you?!
Yes, I had one of those back in the days. 300 MHz easily overclocked to 450 MHz, that was awesome value for money.
The celeryA was the one worth OCing. The non A 266 did overclock well though
and P2s, or so I heard.
That Nero burner program sure brings back memories, I still have the archive of pirated music CDs from mid-2000's._
Well I know this reply is late, but you need to be ashamed of yourself!! Have you been to church lately??? You have sin on your soul. Do you think Jesus would steal tunes on Napster??
Me, I auditioned tunes on Napster. It was all about quality control. I had to do a lot of auditioning but it needed doing!
And most of the time, the quality sucked balls. 🙂
That last system with the 2003 parts takes me right back to my high school years. That was the rig i was running right around my senior year of HS, first video card i bought was the Voodoo 3 and that would have been in 2001 i believe. Time flies.
Just out of curiosity, I'm wondering if they were still teaching computer science in hs in 2003. We took it in grade 12, but that was in 1982.
Also, it's just weird what time changes. When I was learning how to run my own computer, reading those Dummies books and doing the disk tutorials, we were told that we needed to get a "computer guru" to help and guide us in our computer journey. That was in the mid 90s.
Now, it's like who the fkkk needs one of those? The damn comp explains itself. : )
@@keithbrown7685 They were still teaching computer science in 2003 in high school because I was taking some of those classes back then while I was in high school. They were tech prep/vocational program classes that counted towards college but I never used that credit for anything as I did not go to university, only to a vocational college.
Mike, I could literally watch you do this all day.
24:50 beautifully smooth
That was a "floating point" temperature sensor. Popular in DIY builds and upgrades at the time.
And you know it *was* floating.. in a way. : )
Great way to start a Friday morning. Thanks!
YES! I AM FALLING IN LOVE WITH MIKETECH!
17:40 😅😅 C&C 👍🏽👍🏽
First pc is from Nimble Microsystems Inc.
They are mostly into servers and enterprise level tech nowadays
love your videos and cant wait to see a full video, on some of more in depth repairs. That some of these need. 😁
Another Great Video. A very nice selection of Retro Cases. Thanks for sharing
It's fine to try and start a MB with bulging caps, ie, it will ether start, or won't start.
Also those rows of caps are usually in parallel, so you can replace 6 caps of 1500 with 2 caps of 4500.
Listen, MikeTech, I don't mean to criticize. Matter of fact, I approve. There are a lot of towers getting starring roles on this channel. I just wonder if this is your subconscious way of saying, that people who send their comps to the landfill or to eWaste....... that they should be taken to the Tower. You know, coz in merry old England, that's where people went before the King finally disposed of them for good.
Love aopen stuff, specially the cases...been trying to find one..ive got an alps floppy drive, very reliable
I think the AOpen system was built at a local computer shop or as mail-order instead of assembled by a home enthusiast because of the CSI label. CSI was an acronym for Custom System Integrator which is what a lot of those type of smaller vendors were classified as back then.
The matching AOpen CD drive, PSU, and AOpen chip on the sound card lends further credence to a purchased build, as does the Coolermaster 3rd party CPU cooler, since the boxed Intel chips for home end users included a fan but the OEM brown box CPUs didn’t always.
You are my favorite channel discovery of 2023. ^__^ Love the way everything is put together and that includes the host. 🤠
Thanks! That is interesting. The CSI badge was giving me a bit of a hunch. It's incredible how difficult this information is to find via search.
Awesome videos. The P4 is not dual core but Hyperthreaded. Was a way to get more performance with those chips
And more heat. That was the whole point with the P4. Geeks needed space heaters. They also needed comps, but they often lived in cold cramped spaces, like dorm rooms. Enter the Pentium 4.
Regarding that AOpen chipset... Acer Labs Inc was part of the same conglomerate, and they did make some chipsets. So possibly that was the origin of that chip.
i did pc repair in the 90's- early 2000's you would had no idea what you might come across or what the issue might possibly be "mystery jumper" was a good day .... people using keyboard 5pin din as a midi port was something i came acreoss way to often
My gut feeling with the CD-Rs not working is due to the dye. Modern CD-R blanks are made with much lighter dyes (phthalocyanine) which might not reflect quite how those old drives need. I recall that most of my discs back in the early 2000s were a lot more blue in color than they are now. I could be wrong but just a thought.
You may very well be right. I have plenty of Verbatim disks that used their dark blue AZO dyes and those disks always read well, compared to many of the cheaper disks I used in later years that had like a very pale green type dye.
Do you remember orange dye CD-Rs? The first Maxell ones I bought in the very early 2000s were like that and ugly expensive. I seem to remember they were something like 18 Austrian Schillings each, or €1.50 in 2002 money. Finding a 10-pack of no-name CD-Rs for 10 Euros felt like a steal and they were decent too. The packaging was something to behold. A plain white cardboard box with black print and the discs in paper sleeves inside. No manufacturer info or anything on the box I think. If I remember correctly these off-brand discs had a deep green dye. Blue ones came later and I loved them as a teenager.
@Ragnar8504 I never saw orange dye disks, but I did encounter recordable disks probably a bit later in the lifetime of the tech. However I have very fond memory of the Dysan black CD-R, as rumour had it those would work best for pirated PS1 games. I never could test that, but the black disks looked really neat and all of those I burnt still work to this day. Can't same the same for those pale green-ish dye ones.
once again great video i do love seeing these old computers come back to life thank you
I'm in the middle of moving... But you make me want to go through my old pcs i refuse to ever get rid off lol, i will once I'm settled 😁
Perhaps you'll do a video on them 🤞
Also, I just noticed the watch background. Happy Pride Month! :)
So if I were to touch it, I might ride the lightning?
woow this first PC, it gave me some nostalgia....
very similar to our first PC when I was 5 or 6 years old it had also an Asus MB and a 120MHz intel P1 and 2x 16MB ram sticks :)
also the case is similar, maybe just different front plastic front panel (more rounded buttons)
it had a 1.6 GB seagata and a 8x CD rom
i have been waiting for a channel like this for years :O
always enjoy tour vids mike...
41:33 it is a BenQ drive, says right below the yellow label
Well spotted good sir 🧐
Some of those cases look like some of my builds back in the day! 😆
Good idea using a fiber glass repair, myself I usually use a plastic welder to repair bezels llike that (both automotive and PC) it fills in the gaps a bit better, but i always end up having to sand and paint the whole thing as its hard to match the color
Fiberglass is my favorite material for repairing thin plastic like this. Stuff is crazy strong! I do wish there were a good way to replicate original texture after filling/sanding. Especially that classic IBM texture.
The AOpen was obviously from a smokers house. I know, both of my parent's smoked, so I know that dust well. The reason it's so difficult to clean is because it's got cigarette tar, which is incredibly sticky. A bit of degreaser, like Dawn dish soap, will work wonders on plastic parts.
The spookier part, is how that stuff binds to lung tissue. I think of the things I did to my lungs. And even now, I'm not sure if I got away scot-free. But I LOVED smoking, in the beginning, and it was because of that very tar, that my tastebuds went to nirvana, and ultimately short-circuited, so that cigs were tasting like something worse than ***t to me.
I'm not sure, the dust doesn't look quite brown enough to me. Besides, it would have smelled. Humidity can make dust properly difficult to remove. My parents have a holiday home that sits empty and unheated throughout most of winter and that has dust just like this PC. Spring cleaning is always a chore.
Great channel Mike! Glad I found it. And great to see a techie RUclipsr who also works out 💪 keep it up!
Thanks! Gotta stay in shape moving all these heavy old machines around! 😂
Came here for the handsome guy, stayed for the PCs... 😂 I wish I had one of those old towers. Everyone I know has long disposed of them.
Awesome work. I'm into old PCs also but now as well versed as you. Learning a lot, Thanks.
Btw,do you happen to know,why,other then the battery,the BIOS can not hold values on the m-boards???
I have my ABIT AI7,and it's not held values, before bliwing some caps,and, while doing it killing P4 3.2....
And shearing it's pin!!
rhx for all the awesome videos, been watching them all in a marathon, keep up the good work
Wow, the buff pc tech 💪 you got a subscriber
26:36 obviously the person was into trains. Cool person.
The last case is an Enermax. They had a ton of different looking front panels but are identical on the inside. Still using mine after almost 20 years.
Great video, wow that dust bunny pc was something else, wonder if had been running 24/7 all its life.
Those weird sound effects and cursors were part of the "Travel" theme from Windows 98 as far as I remember.
And some CDs show quick blinking while reading the disc. If it keeps blinking forever it might be a sign it can't read it.
As always a good video! Thanks for the content I always enjoy watching
Create a floppy disk with hdat2 to do full surface scans to your hard disks. It's also capable of displaying the SMART attributes and reallocate damaged sectors automatically. I also recommend having a memtest86 floppy or boot CD nearby. Should be part of your testing tools
I never knew before of hdat2, where has that been all my life ! Thanks sharing 👍
For that out of round belt - could you pop it in some hot water for a time? It would likely reshape its self.
Lots of love as always x
S1 - P133, nice! I'm not a big fan of 'Dallas' style RTCs but still better than those Varta barrels & also hackable!
S2 - Where the fudge was that AOpen case used? It's a zoo for dust bunnies!
S3 - Capacitor Plague was a real thing people!
S4 - More dust! More bad caps! But Mike turns it on anyway! 😛
Looking forward to the future upgrades & repairs!
Oh yeah I’ll take a dead RTC over an evil Varta battery any day!
Ngl, I am looking forward to that BTX-133 RAID octet. Should be really cool to hear.
Just off topic, I would like to go on record as saying that "Permanent Dirt" is a good name for a punk band.
And you heard MikeTech utter it first! So when Permanent Dirt becomes famous and people ask where the name came from, we can point them *right here*!
Those banging and clanging sacrifical hdds I anticipate that they will chug along like that for days on end if you let them.
It looked to me like that second computer was used in a very humid (or at least not climate controlled) place -- the dirt/dust was *caked* on. Ick. Love these vids & keep 'em coming! :-)
I would've thrown the whole computer into a soapy bath, risk be damned. Or should that be 'risc' I don't know. 🙂
My weekly or so broken record comment of "so many memories". Cheers
Complete with cobwebs, the new communication protocol!
I use to do this all the time in the Mid 2000s collect a bunch of random bargain store pcs and go to town lol I made several good working computers in this era..
You should've made them into YT vids!
Seeing the AOpen system interior brought to mind a service call I did for a local cement and gravel company. I was the most dust I ever saw inside a mostly working system. Every component was coated with about 2 mms of rock dust. The fans and heat-sinks were all rendered useless/non-functional by being gobbed tight by dust and grit. The bottom of the interior was coated thicker than the rest, easily a full cm of filth. How the system had managed to function in any capacity for more than a week in that location beggars belief.
Regarding CD-R incompatibility, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I had endless troubles with CD-RW and CD-R media, it all hinged on what color laser diode was used in the units. Some used a yellow laser diode that would not work with some media, others used a blue laser diode (mostly Sony) that would not work with some media, yet others used a red laser diode that would not work with some media. Some worked fine reading CDs burned by any color laser diode, but not read RW media at all, even if the burn session had closed the CD to any further changes. And some would read a RW media until it was used a second time, then never again would it read. So much jank hardware in those days.
That makes my bearings hurt lol. I used to work at a shipyard. It gave me a whole new respect for the environmental conditions that hardware can tolerate! Oh I remember all too well the wild-west days of early recordable optical media. I definitely don't miss that!
I'm always happy if a new video comes!
Nice systems!
In 25:23 I see hp iPod and iTunes just like my hp pavilion 533w I wonder if that hard drive was taken out of an hp at some point I could be wrong tho
Hi buddy, I am sure a cap popped when you switched on that last computer. Go back and review your footage. As you switched on you can hear a pop and a sudden silver "light" from the board. It looks like the top of the cap pushed out catching the light. I just love your channel.
Regards from South Africa
You never know what you'll find in these mystery towers, system 4 looks like the kind of cheap somewhat flimsy case I built a metric ton of PC's in while working at a local PC repair shop in high school. It's really cool it supports a 120mm fan tho, none of the ones I worked on despite looking very similar supported more than a single 80 front and rear. Could make a really good candidate for an IDE RAID array 'cause you could put a modern high static pressure silent fan in there and keep those drives cool. Pair of 80mm's out back, you'll be set. Thankfully modern fan designs are much imporoved over ye olde days where even the silent fans probably buzzed when new, or just screamed, or both.
The system 4 case is almost perfect for it. I’ll definitely use some modern, quiet fans so that those delicious drive sounds won’t be drowned out.
@@miketech1024 Yeah, no pesky vibration dampers either, though I dunno what that's gonna do for the life of four drives hammering away in sequence.
Back in high school, a friend of mine and I thought it would be funny to RAID a bunch of these noisy 1GB Western Digital drives he'd gotten in bulk. We never got to do it though, but man that would've been loud. The drives were leftover spares from some office building, NOS, and they were loud. Never thought I'd miss that sound, haha!
That CD drive at the end is a BENQ drive :) once again a great video! Can't wait to see the video if you capping the boards
Thanks! Yeah I was moving pretty fast by that point in fear of the video being late, didn't even see it...
@@miketech1024 We don't mind videos being late, don't overwork yourself, a day or two is fine :-) although can't get enough of your videos, drooling over the videos and you haha
I remember the first GPU I bought was a Voodoo 2. And it was really cool with the 3-4 games that actually made use of its capability at the time.
It's funny because the Phillips burner was the first I ever bought! I think it was 200 euros at the time and it was all the money I got for my birthday!
I absolutely love the channel Mike, you inspired me to build my own windows 98 SE computer, which I did couple weeks ago. It works great with xp dual boot.
Love your videos! I'm sure the fiberglass repair works well, haven't tried that myself, but I can also recommend Plastruct Plastic Weld. It is solvent based and chemically dissolves the plastic and melds it back together. I've used it to repair cracks in computer cases with great results. Edit: I see someone else already suggested this, at least I'm not alone :D
Thanks! I thought the previous comment was referring to the electric plastic welders (the ones that essentially just melt a heated wire in). Never heard of that stuff, but it looks interesting.
Some of those older CD and CD-RW drives would read -R but not +R or the other way around. Would not read -R but would read +R's. And/or were just finikey about reading both. Depending on how the CD-R was closed when written. And there's just no rhyme or reason to it.
Excellent video, I look forward to watching more.
That would be DVD. CDs only came in -ROM, -R and -RW flavours. Early DVD drives were sometimes indeed limited to whatever rewritable format the manufacturer thought to be more likely succeed in the format war. DVD-RAM was even more limited, especially the cartridge type.
@@Ragnar8504 Whooops, you're right, I got'em mixed up.
In those days, it was just a matter of understanding the RAM IC manufacturer and the timings. Looks like the RAM in the first system was LG EDO RAM with 60ns timings. Pretty standard fare for the day.
18:53 "De-dusted?" That's an odd term. Is there a significance to saying that as opposed to just "dusted?" Kind of like "irregardless" instead of just "regardless." Just never heard anyone say that. Keep up the great work and the repairs on the broken parts is impressive.
Goodluck finding something to pair with the Media connector in the Nimble PC.
And I'm just waiting for the Jackcon caps on my Abit VP6 to fail. The board was clearly used heavily and yet they are all perfectly fine, even during extended use with the FSB at 143MHz.
cool find with that P4, but isn't it a single core with hyperthreading?
It has to be, otherwise it would be a Pentium D.
That last machine looks very similar to a powerspec I have. Only, mine is black and has a gig and a half of RAM, even the p4 is the same. Those sound max audio chips are kinda meh and the caps on the bottom right like to fail as well.
Just a heads up if you boil the belts for just a little they will go round again.
I'm curious if those CD-R lasers are going bad, sometimes the driver circuit starts to drift causing the laser's "shape" to go all funny or weak, but that might cause regular CDs to fail too.
I have a board with that hipoint ide raid. I've never used it, but I'd like to see that in action. I've thought about raid striping some sata ssd's into it with adapters to see what kind of ridiculousness I can get into.
I got an asus board from 20yr ago that can RAID 4 drives (PATA) , couldn't afford to try back then but now i got a bunch of drives from old satellite DVR so now it's on 🤓
@@agenda697 Something about how those drives work makes them really slow. Like they're meant to write and read in sequence or something. I got no idea really, but I know really slow. If you're after a hard drive symphany, then the dvr drives are probably great! Maybe they'll take longer and have to do more work which means more noise.
@@ItIsNot1984 Yeah i think it's because they have less buffer memory (cache), still i'm gonna try it out, thanks for the response ! 👍
Wow. That Malwarebytes logo looked really old! Also, thought I was the only one who uses glary utiltities lol.
Back when the p2 came out and i received my 266mhz one there was one issue as the box came with cpu and detached cpu fan... but for some reasons did my box didn´t have the stuff needed to attach the fan bracket to the cpu... so i ended up jury rigging a fan with copperwire to the slot cpu.
In hindsight using copper was probably not even remotely smart but it was what i had at hand.
38:07 500 dollars says Mike will fall in love with this machine.
I'll see your $500, and raise you 7 internets! Too rich for your blood?
@@keithbrown7685 I'm out! 😂😂
Back before flash drives. Nero was a god send back in the day. Nothing worse than burning a CD with a lot of wasted space. Nero (and other programs) would let you add files later. I do look forward to seeing what that Abit board can do. Keep voiding those warranties. I do remember Albatron or Albatross making video cards. Not too sure.
Looks like Albatron did indeed make the video card!
Do you remember a program called Deep Burner? I tried it once. Worked fine. It was supposed to burn files super efficiently, so that a minimum of space got wasted on the recordable media.
If I could find it now, and I'm sure it's out there, it would probably work just like before. But then I think... I don't have any blank dvds around here... and then I wonder wtf for? Got plenty of flash storage. Memories I guess.
There was a program called "Deep Burner" meant for DVDRs, designed to add files in such a way, that almost no space got wasted.
My very first computer was made by Nimble. They were great to work with.
The last one was probably a custom gaming PC from the early 2000's would have been cool to have a hard drive
Yeah I was pretty disappointed by that.
i would love to see you building a pc with that s370 ide raid board