Just FYI: do NOT use any power-saving settings related to spindown of the drive while using these. the CF card uses the spindown command as a "I'm about to be removed" signal, and will NOT come back up unless it's power cycled. These are also used to upgrade/repair old ipod classics, and the aggressive disk spindown will cause issues unless disabled.
good to know about the cf card being able to replace the old hdd in the classic ipod. i have one with a dead drive in it and would rather not break the bank with a full replacement
My first PC was a "Laser" 386SX 16 with 1MB of RAM and a whopping 40MB hard drive. Paid $1200 for it. My $5 Raspberry Pi Zero dwarfs it in capability. But, I have so many fond memories of that computer.
I had a summer job during college in 1990 working at Laser computers in Illinois, assembling and packing 386SX machines. I've never heard anyone ever mention that brand since then.
I used a Copam pc clone when I was 5 or 6. No hardrive in that one just two 5,25'' floppy drives, and no games but still fun :). And monochrome amber display. Anyone got a copam? I'd love to see some pictures of it.
Nice seeing you enjoy some of the benefits of mixing new with old! I am using SD cards now, the adapters are quite similar and work just like you showed.
Long term, has the SD solution worked better than CF? :) I'm looking to get my retro rig back up and running and a replacement storage medium is what I need.
I would say that both SD and CF are both very fine long term solutions for computers. I used my Micro SD for my Orange Pi for years now, and it still hasn't quit me yet. I'm going to try out CF though, see if that gives my laptop a kick.
I ordered some CF hardware for my rig because I know they're reliable. I'd like to see some benchmarks done by someone at some point to compare the lifespans of CF and SD under "normal" use condition. Maybe they already exist and I just haven't seen them :P
Couldn't you just take an image of the DOS 6.22 basic install you have on that compact flash card, to make things faster in future *and* reduce wear and tear on your DOS floppies?
Format C: with sarcasm. Best line... Loving the old school hardware things Clint! Makes me want to break out some of my old machines and see what I can get working again! Ah the sounds and smells of an old pc... Nothing like it!
I learned to fear format c: when I did it without the /s and had no floppy with the system files. A guy in a computer shop took pity on the 11 year old me and gave me a 5 1/4 with DOS on it to restore my XT.
It's actually part of CompactFlash specification to behave like an IDE disk (one of their 3 modes, as I recall). That's why ATA-to-CF adapters are... passive, with the pins connected straight over. Also: Search for the Microdrive - it is a magnetic hard disk in CompactFlash size format.
I've been using that same wood-texture wallpaper for all my computers for years now. People always find it weird, and then I see you using the same! :D
The soothing sound of the 5.25' drive is the only sound you need. Also thanks for taking the advise of wood graining the spare drive bays - looks SOOO much better :D
I'd love to find a 486. I used to have a few but foolishly got rid of them all and it seems they're rare as hens teeth and people want a mint for them.
I dropped so many 486 desktops off at a recycling place before a move 4 years ago... and now the retro PC bug had bitten me again... ugh. Time to go thrifting!
Technically I have a "solid drive" on my DosBox setup. Everything is setup on a 128gb MicroSD with a card to usb adapter. I've even made a recreation of the windows 3.1 MS DOS icon for the drive ico file.
Dude-man I love these speriments'/upgrade videos! Trials and tribulations, I'm there with you every step of the way :) It's awesome to see something work the first time. Bringing 20th century tech into the 21st. I think Shakespeare said it best: There's more than one way to skin a cat. There's more than one way to shoot a gat. Keep on keeping on :)
FreeDOS supports larger partitions and you would be able to use the entire 4GB of the flash card, but I think that you want to use MSDOS for the system to be accurate with its age.
I'm so glad to see how messy the inside of your 486 is. If other people (especially other experienced vintage PC builders) can't get it tidy, it just reminds me that that is just how these old machines are, and it's not just my own sub-par abilities!
Have you ever considered doing a live stream of you doing this? (Or have you already?) It's very soothing to listen to and watch. Helps me focus on the work I need to do for online college classes. You should do more of these and help a girl out Clint :P
Awww that's a shame, but I understand. I'll make do by binge watching some of your vids then lol Also I love you for replying! Thanks, you're the first big time youtuber to ever reply to one of my comments :D
I got myself a little SD to IDE adaptor and I've been using it as a second/removable drive on a Win 98 machine I have. I just unscrewed one of the expansion slots and stuck it through that, it works great. It doesn't look good but it's in the back so you can't see it at all.
Great video as ever! One tiny suggestion: Use more partitions with less size. FAT16 partitions are indeed max 2 GB in size, but that comes at a cost of having 32 kb clusters which creates an insane amount of slack space. For example, you have a file of 1 kb, it still uses 32 kb storage on the drive. So, I'd recommend actually to use 4 partitions of 500 MB each, which will use 8 kb clusters, a lot less slack space. Or 2 500 MB partitions and one of 1 GB. :-)
It's really cool that people are able to max out these old machines! Or even go beyond what was possible at the time; such as this! In a similar vain I like sticking SSD's in my G3 and G4 PPC Macs. It breathes new life into them and is more reliable than 10+ yr old standard rotational hard drives! There are pre-made solutions and also adapter cards for CF, SD cards and even mSATA drives!
I have an old computer(I think it's a 486) in my grandma's basement... not sure if it still works (It booted last time I turned it on, but that was about 10 years ago) but I'd love to take it apart and see what's all inside it and see if I can't get it fully optimized and running again. Visiting my family in WI this summer, so maybe it'll be my summer project while I'm up there! Always wanted to build a collection of retro machines, unfortunately I don't have the room for it. :(
I miss the DOS era. While I am keeping up with evolving tech over the years, I feel a little out of place after 30 years of home computing. Nice to know there are options out there to revisit older tech. Thanks for sharing.
BirdbrainZ: I agree COMPLETELY :o\ Remember when setting "jumpers" on daughter boards and working at the C: prompt was considered complicated? And when it came to monitors, printers, video cards etc you knew the "good one to get" (and it would stay the good one for more than a month). I didn't know how easy I had it back then (IMHO:) Since the advent of Win8.x and Win10... I'm just not [as] interested anymore, sadly. Cheers!
A-Man sTEEvie. You are right. I was HORRIFIED when I first laid my eyes on 8.x.. After that assault on the senses nothing could WIN me back.. Now I just use a mix of XP, 7 and Linux to stay involved. PC repair/service [use] to be my (small) business but I literally gave up and dropped out when MS started shoving 8 and then 10 down our throats. It may have been fine for the average "home user".. but it was murder on a business environment. I lost complete interest at that point. Woops! Sorry.. I guess I just needed a shoulder to cry on :) Cheers!
Nice video! I work with some old systems and so use some of these CF card adapters. The SYBA adapter you held up at 2:25 is great for plugging two drives up - some of the old mobo BIOS have a hard time with handling two separate adapters in master/slave configuration but that one has never given me trouble!
Just remember to check the pins on the converter thing every now and then. I played myself a few times trying to force the CF card into the thing and bending the pins in result.
Absolutely this! I think there are even some bent pins in a shot or two of this video, that's really easy to do (but thankfully not hard to correct if it happens.)
it's always a PITA when a pin breaks and gets stuck in the card. (Especially when it happens on a camera where you can't easily swap out the connector card)
This happened to two pins on my CF > USB converter. It still reads cards though. Which I find interesting. Makes me wonder how much losing a pin effects the transfer rate.
Compact flash cards also come in fixed disk mode (windows sees it as a hard drive rather than removable storage) I bought a Transcend Industrial 8gb for that reason. It works great on a hp compaq nc6000
Tried to use it once, could not find any decent and easy tutorial out there. After much hustling in google, I ended up with a DOS window, but no command would work in it, like dir, cd, mem... what the hell... that''s when I gave up... Would FreeDOS work at all for 3D games with my modern laptop GPU? How would I do with drivers for sound and graphics? Would appreciate if anyone out there provided a ready-to-go image with at least SoundBlaster installed.
@@FeelingShred It should be roughly compatible with DOS software. FreeDOS or not doesn't change the driver situation, but if it works in DOS it likely works in FreeDOS as well. Most games used their own sound drivers, so unless your sound card is compatible with what's listed in the setup menu, you're out of luck. GPUs are usually somewhat VGA compatible, though, but YMMV.
I've been saying it for years (and years and years...) I really really must dig out my old 486 DX4/100 and get her up and running again. What a sweet machine it was back in the day.
Ive done this a few times over the years. Tip of advice... find an old 3.5" cf reader thats usb. Must be cf only. Remove the board and install the cf to ide adapter inside. Its how i did it to 2 machines. Now you have an external cf. ;)
Upside is it would be in front of the pc, not the back.... Using a 3.5/5.25 bay. Also, I seem to have better luck with CF microdrives on older machines 286 pre.
offtopic ; there are bootable dos CD version, (6.22 or 7. something) also win 3.1 on cd . makes install alot easier when you ran out of floppy disks or damaged .
makinjica but certain PCs before the Pentium era machines only boot from floppies or hard drives, and in order to boot from a CD to install Windows or MS-DOS on CD-ROM, the drivers must be installed on a bootable floppy diskette in order to access the CD.
with nero burning you have an option to include the boot image of a floppy disk drive and use it to make a bootable Cd. it use for those machines without floppies, and also you could put dos, windows installers, programs and driver on the same CD. or even dvd if you need it. there are other cd burning programs as cdburnerxp
I used an IDE to CF card to run a router OS a while back on an old P3 IBM Netvista MB. I'm also planning on running a CF card setup like this in a retro PC. Good to see that there is hope for this kind of setup on an old PC such as yours.
My neighbour just brought over her pc for me to fix. It's a 20 year old Tiny branded pc ! 80gb hard drive is knackered so have a IDE to CF adapter on order, thanks for the idea. I think it's marvelous she still uses this old pc and don't want to upgrade to something modern :)
I love that case! Can you install Windows 98 or XP on a CF card like a SD card? Also I didn't know Compact Flash cards were still being made. My first digital camera from the early 2000's (HP Powershot 215) used one.
I remember you had a networking card in the Woodgrain 486. Have you thought about wiring up networking and then rocking some old-school LANMAN file sharing? You can get it to work with Windows, most NASes, and samba.
Yah -- I'm almost glad my Amiga 1200 needs a fan to survive outputting 1280x720 pixels, because it got awfully quiet in there with a CF card "harddisk".
Greetings Clint, woodgrain whiskey batch number 486... Now that would be a good will to your staunch fans mate. Thankyou for your amazing insight and effort when it comes to the school of old.. Your a good man Clint. All the way from Australia. L. G. R FOR THE WIN!👍
Sorry Clint, there's no good technical reasons to install from floppy when you can just copy it straight to the card, however, there doesn't need to be. "Because I like the noise" is reason enough :)
He does mention in the video that he's had problems in the past copying the DOS files straight to the card. The DOS setup program detects and configures the current drives in the machine.
That was the reason for my comment! Come on, installing DOS isn't rocket science, a lot of us have done it and know it will work, it's just a bullshit excuse for the real reason, which is that he loves the experience/noise/nostalgia and that is fine. No need for the lame technical reasons :)
I just made the switch myself to CF-IDE. When I was using it on anything newer than a Win98 install, though, it had some issues because the cards report back as being removable, which changes the way Windows treats them. I ended up getting a Transcend Industrial 16GB CF instead, which reports as a fixed disk. No problems since.
I must compliment you, not only on your excellent old school Duke Nukum shirt (before he became a smart-mouthed icon), but also your choice of games to test this setup with. Bravo, good sir. I really need to dig up some old hardware and do something like this, because I still have tons of 3.5" disks in the basement with cool games on them...
One of my friends has his computer built into an old antique safe his grandfather left him. He has even rigged it to have the armoured shell acting as a heat sink as part of his water cooling loop. Given that it is bolted into the foundation of the house, he rather doubts that anyone will be walking out with it. He does however regret being the one to always host LAN parties now...
Yeah that turn into a nightmare, partly my fault. First, the first time I was stupid, stupid idiot and got the ribbon cable crossed(still don't know I was that stupid) on the 44-pin 2.5" ide connector because it's not keyed, causing the power on it to surge(smoking), ruining the IDE controller on the a1200 mainboard. Still booted to kickstart, but that was it. Replaced that mainboard, and everything was working, but about a month later it stopped see the memory/cpu upgrade board. The old board I had ruined the hdd saw the expansion board so something was wrong with the 2nd mainboard(nothing visible like popped caps or anything) . Also eventually it stopped booting to kickstart. Replaced that board, now everything is working fine for the past year or so.
We had a 486 until the late 90's early 2000's. I was way into computers back then but we didn't have money for a new computer. Crazy to think i'd ever want to go back and mess with one again lol. I've enjoyed watching your videos on this computer. I think I was getting most of my computer upgrades from goodwill at some point haha.
You cant get something decent below PIII 500 or Celeron 600 with at least 256MB and k-meleon. I tried that on slower, even a P1. It is useless and hopeless. Takes forever to get a frame loaded and audio keeps trashing like a bad CD. No matter if you run a small window on 144p. It wont happen. Only workaround is a Raspberry PI, VNC and do in that way. I mean, just for the amusement of "browsing" in HW that is not capable of that. W98 can get Opera 10.5 (or something like that) with kernelex, but I dont think that it would work for YT. But get DECENT browsing on TODAY pages. Speed will be as slows as the system.
9:30 Whistling Duke Nukem hahaha :D Quite a unique solution to your data transfer problem! Never thought I'd see CF used much anymore nowadays, I like it!
I'm gonna put a SATA SSD with a SATA/IDE converter into my XP gaming machine I'm working on. Nice thing about having more modern interfaces got storage is you can easily back it up on a new machine
As Brandon Upchurch mentioned, DoMs and special industrial CF cards use SLC "Single Level Cell" NAND flash. When used as a hard drive this is going to be way more reliable because it can sustain many more write cycles than the cheaper and more common MLC or TLC flash. Not sure whether @lazygamereviews Clint knew this or not but that Transcend TS4GCF300 is a perfect card for this as they are cheap and use SLC and are a good size for pre-2000 era computers. They do use UDMA 5 (Ultra ATA/100 100MB/s) interface speed but are backwards compatible with modes 0-4 for non-UDMA systems. Clint you are the absolute frikkin' man and I immensely enjoy all your content!!!
Ahhhh compact flash. I remember the first one I had was for my digital camera and it was 128mb. I was so excited I could store about 80 low grade photos.
There are a few VERY nice benefits of using a CF card as storage on really old laptops! I'm surprised you did not mention that they use significantly less power, put out much MUCH less heat, and weigh a hellava lot less than the vast majority of old 2.5" traditional HDDs in Pentium and lower class laptops. Its amazing how massive of a difference throwing a solid state storage solution into a 486 laptop can really unleash the beast within! ^_^
Huh. Nice. I've used a IDE->SD adapter for a Playstation 2 to store ISOs in place of an HDD and it worked out great so it makes sense this would work well too.
Clint we should hook up. In 1985 , I purchased a Commodore 64. I started writing my own software and games, which led me to buy the floppy drive. I wrote ( with the help of a algebra genius) a spiral graph style screen saver, each line plotted was in a random color and was quite dazzling in the day, and a early G U.I. When the program was loaded and ran, it spilt the main screen with a 4 square window box. In the center of each box was lettering. I figured out how to write ' strig" commands as the controller for the Atrari 2600 fit the port on the Commodore. So all you had to do was move the joystick to the corresponding window and click the red fire button to execute the program of choice. I gotta tell you, I did not know what I had! When Windows 3.0 launched yes it was better, but I had the mouse and the G U.I. concept long before Bill Gates. I look back and I love the glory days! You are the the offical keeper of nerd records my man.
Oh my. That is a beautiful rig. Seriously. It's so cool in so many subtle ways. The colors mis-match, and yet somehow still complement each other. The buttons and the green display are ultra retro-cool. The same goes for that CD drive with its control buttons. I wonder if a case like that (and matching components) could be bought for a modern rig? If I had the ability, I would totally buy that case and put my new computer in there.
I used to have a monitor that looked EXACTLY like the one you are using, only mine was branded as Mitsubishi, specifically it was the Mitsubishi Diamond Plus 72. Must have been the OEM for gateway. It was a superb monitor, I have spent countless hours playing MS Flight Simulator 2000 Pro on it...
Another great video from LGR. If you haven't already, it would definitely be cool if you created a playlist of the 486 upgrade videos, and linked it in the description.
LGR I have this exact thingy! Although these are great for swapping OS's and faster than a traditional HDD. From the same SYBA brand theres an IDE to sata cartridge that I highly recommend, it allowed me to put a Samsung EVO into my nostalgia machine(Dell LxxxR) as well as a new beige SATA drive.
Just got myself an internal 40 pin adapter and a Transcend CF card and it's doing nicely so far (on a newer motherboard, though). First I backed up my existing drive to a Raspberry Pi via EtherDFS. Created a small boot disk with EtherDFS, fdisk, format a packet driver and Volkov Commander. Used that to format the CF card and then copied my system back from the Raspberry Pi...absolutely painless!
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Just FYI: do NOT use any power-saving settings related to spindown of the drive while using these. the CF card uses the spindown command as a "I'm about to be removed" signal, and will NOT come back up unless it's power cycled. These are also used to upgrade/repair old ipod classics, and the aggressive disk spindown will cause issues unless disabled.
Go to know, but I dont think those fun Energy Star features showed up until Pentiums took hold?
good to know about the cf card being able to replace the old hdd in the classic ipod. i have one with a dead drive in it and would rather not break the bank with a full replacement
@@blendpinexus1416 Depending on the model it is a drop in replacement. they also sell sd adapters. ruclips.net/video/S83ZHf1GAeY/видео.html
I would've killed to have a 2GB hd in my 486. I remember when I got my first 1GB drive and thought that would be all the space I'd ever need.
Ewwwww .... Windows ME.... argh.... the only OS I ever returned to the store.... LOL
My first PC was a "Laser" 386SX 16 with 1MB of RAM and a whopping 40MB hard drive. Paid $1200 for it. My $5 Raspberry Pi Zero dwarfs it in capability. But, I have so many fond memories of that computer.
I had a summer job during college in 1990 working at Laser computers in Illinois, assembling and packing 386SX machines. I've never heard anyone ever mention that brand since then.
Scott Hall Wow that was probably the same model. I bought mine in the summer of 91. I'd never heard anyone say anything about it myself.
I used a Copam pc clone when I was 5 or 6. No hardrive in that one just two 5,25'' floppy drives, and no games but still fun :). And monochrome amber display. Anyone got a copam? I'd love to see some pictures of it.
Nice seeing you enjoy some of the benefits of mixing new with old! I am using SD cards now, the adapters are quite similar and work just like you showed.
Thanks for stopping by, Phil! I certainly want to give the newer SD card solutions a shot sometime too.
Lazy Game Reviews Awesome! I shall send you some info and tips. Used them in a range of machines from 386 to Athlon XP and they have been good to me.
Long term, has the SD solution worked better than CF? :) I'm looking to get my retro rig back up and running and a replacement storage medium is what I need.
I would say that both SD and CF are both very fine long term solutions for computers. I used my Micro SD for my Orange Pi for years now, and it still hasn't quit me yet. I'm going to try out CF though, see if that gives my laptop a kick.
I ordered some CF hardware for my rig because I know they're reliable. I'd like to see some benchmarks done by someone at some point to compare the lifespans of CF and SD under "normal" use condition. Maybe they already exist and I just haven't seen them :P
9:30
How many times have you installed MS-DOS from floppies?
Countless times. I do it in my dreams even.
Couldn't you just take an image of the DOS 6.22 basic install you have on that compact flash card, to make things faster in future *and* reduce wear and tear on your DOS floppies?
You could also cook your steak on the microwave oven but that will get rid of all the fun and taste
I was more commenting on how he had the install sequence memorized so much, that he could whistle out portions of the floppy drive sounds.
DosBox is good for running dos games
Format C: with sarcasm. Best line... Loving the old school hardware things Clint! Makes me want to break out some of my old machines and see what I can get working again! Ah the sounds and smells of an old pc... Nothing like it!
he forgot the /q the format was so damn slow :(
toysareforboys I'm not sure DOS 6.22 had quick format. I don't remember seeing it until Windows '95
Looks like it does: www.vfrazee.com/ms-dos/6.22/help/format.htm
Impossible to input a /s command without thinking on it now.
I learned to fear format c: when I did it without the /s and had no floppy with the system files. A guy in a computer shop took pity on the 11 year old me and gave me a 5 1/4 with DOS on it to restore my XT.
>Woodgrain PC
>Woodgrain Background
>Another fresh video of LGR.
10/10.
Whistling Duke3D music while installing MS-DOS? Priceless :D
Did you notice how his whistles correspond to the drive noises? 9:30
Almost as good as the Tyrian theme.
That version of the D3D theme is from the Duke3D soundcard test when you install it through DOS.
I've done this more than once.
It's actually part of CompactFlash specification to behave like an IDE disk (one of their 3 modes, as I recall). That's why ATA-to-CF adapters are... passive, with the pins connected straight over. Also: Search for the Microdrive - it is a magnetic hard disk in CompactFlash size format.
Your retro computer videos are always so good!!! Please keep more of them coming, I just love to watch these! :D
I've been using that same wood-texture wallpaper for all my computers for years now. People always find it weird, and then I see you using the same! :D
I love the background music always, that jazz and the old computers, it has a special feeling.
It's a small touch but it makes the videos seem so much more polished.
The soothing sound of the 5.25' drive is the only sound you need. Also thanks for taking the advise of wood graining the spare drive bays - looks SOOO much better :D
WOW! loook at your woodgrain pc , I love this iconic item of your collection ! :)
This was a very soothing video. I loved the background music and the fond memories of my DOS days.
I'd love to find a 486. I used to have a few but foolishly got rid of them all and it seems they're rare as hens teeth and people want a mint for them.
So many of us have those regrets, myself included. Tossed out several over the years and ugh.
I dropped so many 486 desktops off at a recycling place before a move 4 years ago... and now the retro PC bug had bitten me again... ugh. Time to go thrifting!
I had a 386. wish i would have kept it. Had a few old gateways too.
It was my first computer using windows 3.1. people really buy old PCs?
I also had a Compaq "Luggable" that I tossed. Huge regrets. Something similar to this - www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=870&st=1
These are my favorite videos of yours, just working on old machines. Great stuff :D
Solid drive in 486 pc? This sounds like a Druaga1 idea 😀 BTW great video i fully enjoyed it
i watch danoct1 for msdos and windows an virus
Andres Villarreal not even close lol
Technically I have a "solid drive" on my DosBox setup. Everything is setup on a 128gb MicroSD with a card to usb adapter. I've even made a recreation of the windows 3.1 MS DOS icon for the drive ico file.
Mmmm tower of druaga
Man i really like your channel, all these old pc´s make me feel nostalgic, reggards from Brazil.
Dude-man I love these speriments'/upgrade videos! Trials and tribulations, I'm there with you every step of the way :) It's awesome to see something work the first time. Bringing 20th century tech into the 21st. I think Shakespeare said it best: There's more than one way to skin a cat. There's more than one way to shoot a gat. Keep on keeping on :)
Man, your videos are always just so relaxing and calming.
FreeDOS supports larger partitions and you would be able to use the entire 4GB of the flash card, but I think that you want to use MSDOS for the system to be accurate with its age.
That is true. I really need to do a video on the latest FreeDOS sometime, it's got some great features.
@@LGR I am personally loving it on my 2012 laptop.
I'm so glad to see how messy the inside of your 486 is. If other people (especially other experienced vintage PC builders) can't get it tidy, it just reminds me that that is just how these old machines are, and it's not just my own sub-par abilities!
Have you ever considered doing a live stream of you doing this? (Or have you already?)
It's very soothing to listen to and watch. Helps me focus on the work I need to do for online college classes. You should do more of these and help a girl out Clint :P
I don't have the desire (or the bandwidth) to do livestreams these days
Awww that's a shame, but I understand. I'll make do by binge watching some of your vids then lol
Also I love you for replying! Thanks, you're the first big time youtuber to ever reply to one of my comments :D
I got myself a little SD to IDE adaptor and I've been using it as a second/removable drive on a Win 98 machine I have. I just unscrewed one of the expansion slots and stuck it through that, it works great. It doesn't look good but it's in the back so you can't see it at all.
I love your hardware vids the most. Thanks!
I love this video. You have an amazing sense of capturing the wonderful aesthetic qualities of this time period.
Great video as ever! One tiny suggestion: Use more partitions with less size. FAT16 partitions are indeed max 2 GB in size, but that comes at a cost of having 32 kb clusters which creates an insane amount of slack space. For example, you have a file of 1 kb, it still uses 32 kb storage on the drive. So, I'd recommend actually to use 4 partitions of 500 MB each, which will use 8 kb clusters, a lot less slack space. Or 2 500 MB partitions and one of 1 GB. :-)
I have been trying to remember Tyrian for the better part of a decade! thank you!
Once you're happy with your configuration, you should create a disk image of it, so you can re-image a new card quickly in the event of a failure.
It's really cool that people are able to max out these old machines! Or even go beyond what was possible at the time; such as this!
In a similar vain I like sticking SSD's in my G3 and G4 PPC Macs. It breathes new life into them and is more reliable than 10+ yr old standard rotational hard drives! There are pre-made solutions and also adapter cards for CF, SD cards and even mSATA drives!
Top notch rendition of the duke3d theme :-)
Thanks so much for this! I was having trouble booting from the compactflash card, but hddclear did the trick.
I have an old computer(I think it's a 486) in my grandma's basement... not sure if it still works (It booted last time I turned it on, but that was about 10 years ago) but I'd love to take it apart and see what's all inside it and see if I can't get it fully optimized and running again. Visiting my family in WI this summer, so maybe it'll be my summer project while I'm up there! Always wanted to build a collection of retro machines, unfortunately I don't have the room for it. :(
Nothing like waking up to a new LGR. Thanks for a wonderful video Clint
I miss the DOS era. While I am keeping up with evolving tech over the years, I feel a little out of place after 30 years of home computing. Nice to know there are options out there to revisit older tech. Thanks for sharing.
BirdbrainZ: I agree COMPLETELY :o\ Remember when setting "jumpers" on daughter boards and working at the C: prompt was considered complicated? And when it came to monitors, printers, video cards etc you knew the "good one to get" (and it would stay the good one for more than a month). I didn't know how easy I had it back then (IMHO:) Since the advent of Win8.x and Win10... I'm just not [as] interested anymore, sadly. Cheers!
Same here. I started losing interest after XP but 10 but has lost me almost completely now.
A-Man sTEEvie. You are right. I was HORRIFIED when I first laid my eyes on 8.x.. After that assault on the senses nothing could WIN me back.. Now I just use a mix of XP, 7 and Linux to stay involved. PC repair/service [use] to be my (small) business but I literally gave up and dropped out when MS started shoving 8 and then 10 down our throats. It may have been fine for the average "home user".. but it was murder on a business environment. I lost complete interest at that point. Woops! Sorry.. I guess I just needed a shoulder to cry on :) Cheers!
Just picked up a 486 Machine. Thanks for all your years of RUclips content.
Awesome content as always. An idea I'd like to see.. How about LGR Tech Tales: Sierra?
Thank you! Sierra will be a huge Tech Tales, but I hope to.
Lazy Game Reviews Beautiful. I'll be patiently but anxiously waiting haha. Keep up the great work!
maybe you can talk to metal jesus he use to work at sierra
Awesome idea
Nice video! I work with some old systems and so use some of these CF card adapters.
The SYBA adapter you held up at 2:25 is great for plugging two drives up - some of the old mobo BIOS have a hard time with handling two separate adapters in master/slave configuration but that one has never given me trouble!
Just remember to check the pins on the converter thing every now and then. I played myself a few times trying to force the CF card into the thing and bending the pins in result.
Absolutely this! I think there are even some bent pins in a shot or two of this video, that's really easy to do (but thankfully not hard to correct if it happens.)
Oh crap. I just tweeted a picture in rage to this. Oh well. Naughty, naughty.
it's always a PITA when a pin breaks and gets stuck in the card. (Especially when it happens on a camera where you can't easily swap out the connector card)
This happened to two pins on my CF > USB converter.
It still reads cards though. Which I find interesting.
Makes me wonder how much losing a pin effects the transfer rate.
@@pouringblood makes you wonder how many of those pins actually do anything.
Great "sneaker net" solution! Thanks for sharing it.
I loved DOS 6.22 back in the day. All my games were 3.5" DOS games. Used to be so fast.
Compact flash cards also come in fixed disk mode (windows sees it as a hard drive rather than removable storage)
I bought a Transcend Industrial 8gb for that reason. It works great on a hp compaq nc6000
Have you ever done a video in Freedos? How do you feel about the project?
Tried to use it once, could not find any decent and easy tutorial out there. After much hustling in google, I ended up with a DOS window, but no command would work in it, like dir, cd, mem... what the hell... that''s when I gave up... Would FreeDOS work at all for 3D games with my modern laptop GPU? How would I do with drivers for sound and graphics? Would appreciate if anyone out there provided a ready-to-go image with at least SoundBlaster installed.
@@FeelingShred It should be roughly compatible with DOS software. FreeDOS or not doesn't change the driver situation, but if it works in DOS it likely works in FreeDOS as well. Most games used their own sound drivers, so unless your sound card is compatible with what's listed in the setup menu, you're out of luck. GPUs are usually somewhat VGA compatible, though, but YMMV.
Ahhhh, the sweet nostalgia of hearing the reading sounds of a floppy drive. Pure love.
A:\> c:
Invalid drive specification
"Of course it's not going to 'C' anything." :D
Wicked Mouse D:\
Oh the pun
Wicked Mouse I C what you did there
Wicked Mouse lol
kamulecPL12 lol
I've been saying it for years (and years and years...) I really really must dig out my old 486 DX4/100 and get her up and running again. What a sweet machine it was back in the day.
Ive done this a few times over the years. Tip of advice... find an old 3.5" cf reader thats usb. Must be cf only. Remove the board and install the cf to ide adapter inside. Its how i did it to 2 machines. Now you have an external cf. ;)
Upside is it would be in front of the pc, not the back.... Using a 3.5/5.25 bay. Also, I seem to have better luck with CF microdrives on older machines 286 pre.
I don't know why it's so satisfying to watch you tinker with these old machines.
So... basically a 486, with a SSD-esque setup?
You got it!
Somebody call Druaga1 here!
Hey Smokers!
awesome! I was just about to buy one of those today, but I saw the bracketed version worked perfectly for you. I guess I'll pick one of those up then.
offtopic ; there are bootable dos CD version, (6.22 or 7. something) also win 3.1 on cd . makes install alot easier when you ran out of floppy disks or damaged .
makinjica but certain PCs before the Pentium era machines only boot from floppies or hard drives, and in order to boot from a CD to install Windows or MS-DOS on CD-ROM, the drivers must be installed on a bootable floppy diskette in order to access the CD.
with nero burning you have an option to include the boot image of a floppy disk drive and use it to make a bootable Cd. it use for those machines without floppies, and also you could put dos, windows installers, programs and driver on the same CD. or even dvd if you need it. there are other cd burning programs as cdburnerxp
I used an IDE to CF card to run a router OS a while back on an old P3 IBM Netvista MB. I'm also planning on running a CF card setup like this in a retro PC. Good to see that there is hope for this kind of setup on an old PC such as yours.
Putting an SSD in a 486... am I watching Druaga1 or LGR?!
so glad to see this lol
Holy crap your desktop looks so close to mine. time to play some Prey!
Awesome content as usual ty LGR
TIL an OS dislikes having its system partition forcibly removed while on
I'd like to introduce you to micro kernel ;)
My neighbour just brought over her pc for me to fix. It's a 20 year old Tiny branded pc ! 80gb hard drive is knackered so have a IDE to CF adapter on order, thanks for the idea. I think it's marvelous she still uses this old pc and don't want to upgrade to something modern :)
I love that case! Can you install Windows 98 or XP on a CF card like a SD card? Also I didn't know Compact Flash cards were still being made. My first digital camera from the early 2000's (HP Powershot 215) used one.
I remember you had a networking card in the Woodgrain 486. Have you thought about wiring up networking and then rocking some old-school LANMAN file sharing? You can get it to work with Windows, most NASes, and samba.
this brings me back memories, now windows 3.1 and u are set xD
That was a neat little upgrade for your pc. Glad items like that exist to keep pc history alive.
Yah -- I'm almost glad my Amiga 1200 needs a fan to survive outputting 1280x720 pixels, because it got awfully quiet in there with a CF card "harddisk".
Greetings Clint, woodgrain whiskey batch number 486... Now that would be a good will to your staunch fans mate.
Thankyou for your amazing insight and effort when it comes to the school of old.. Your a good man Clint. All the way from Australia.
L. G. R FOR THE WIN!👍
Sorry Clint, there's no good technical reasons to install from floppy when you can just copy it straight to the card, however, there doesn't need to be. "Because I like the noise" is reason enough :)
Exactly, it's nostalgic and has sentimental value.
He does mention in the video that he's had problems in the past copying the DOS files straight to the card. The DOS setup program detects and configures the current drives in the machine.
That was the reason for my comment! Come on, installing DOS isn't rocket science, a lot of us have done it and know it will work, it's just a bullshit excuse for the real reason, which is that he loves the experience/noise/nostalgia and that is fine. No need for the lame technical reasons :)
You can put an Ethernet card in and map network shares as dos drives, I find that easiest.
Apple 2e with proper interfacing can run usb
I just made the switch myself to CF-IDE. When I was using it on anything newer than a Win98 install, though, it had some issues because the cards report back as being removable, which changes the way Windows treats them. I ended up getting a Transcend Industrial 16GB CF instead, which reports as a fixed disk. No problems since.
Why does poping in a CompactFlash card look satisfying?
Oh man, that transition at 1:19. Gorgeous. Mmmwa!
You need to give this computer a name! I recommend Harold or Eddie.
Gertrude
Ligno Clintbuilt
Cthulhu
I want to see that drive that plugs right into the IDE connector work, that looks awesome.
Like the Duke T
I must compliment you, not only on your excellent old school Duke Nukum shirt (before he became a smart-mouthed icon), but also your choice of games to test this setup with. Bravo, good sir. I really need to dig up some old hardware and do something like this, because I still have tons of 3.5" disks in the basement with cool games on them...
I really want a modern computer with a wooden yellowish case like that. It would protect it from robbers (=
One of my friends has his computer built into an old antique safe his grandfather left him. He has even rigged it to have the armoured shell acting as a heat sink as part of his water cooling loop.
Given that it is bolted into the foundation of the house, he rather doubts that anyone will be walking out with it.
He does however regret being the one to always host LAN parties now...
Yeah, that kinda sucks. Though you can still play with friends locally, you just need an internet connection able to support many players.
It doesn't. You can create custom games but they are hosted on blizzard server. Just like SC2 actually.
foufoufun0 the best way to stop robbers is to put it into a 10 y/o Dell case
fuck...... damn...... neat work! : )
Yay for Tyrian. Probably one of my favorite top down shooters ever.
stick an am5x86-133 in there (OC to 160Mhz)
3x50 if the board can handel it would be even better than 4x40
Wow, your 486 has come a long way 😀😀 cool upgrade man 👍👍
Use a cf card in my Amiga 1200 as a hdd
Got one in mine as well!
Yeah that turn into a nightmare, partly my fault. First, the first time I was stupid, stupid idiot and got the ribbon cable crossed(still don't know I was that stupid) on the 44-pin 2.5" ide connector because it's not keyed, causing the power on it to surge(smoking), ruining the IDE controller on the a1200 mainboard. Still booted to kickstart, but that was it. Replaced that mainboard, and everything was working, but about a month later it stopped see the memory/cpu upgrade board. The old board I had ruined the hdd saw the expansion board so something was wrong with the 2nd mainboard(nothing visible like popped caps or anything) . Also eventually it stopped booting to kickstart. Replaced that board, now everything is working fine for the past year or so.
We had a 486 until the late 90's early 2000's. I was way into computers back then but we didn't have money for a new computer. Crazy to think i'd ever want to go back and mess with one again lol. I've enjoyed watching your videos on this computer. I think I was getting most of my computer upgrades from goodwill at some point haha.
Try to watch youtube on old pc's with windows
You cant get something decent below PIII 500 or Celeron 600 with at least 256MB and k-meleon. I tried that on slower, even a P1. It is useless and hopeless. Takes forever to get a frame loaded and audio keeps trashing like a bad CD. No matter if you run a small window on 144p. It wont happen. Only workaround is a Raspberry PI, VNC and do in that way. I mean, just for the amusement of "browsing" in HW that is not capable of that. W98 can get Opera 10.5 (or something like that) with kernelex, but I dont think that it would work for YT. But get DECENT browsing on TODAY pages. Speed will be as slows as the system.
It´s Excellent seeing the retro scene Alive
Nice Videos !
format with sarcasm! lol
9:30 Whistling Duke Nukem hahaha :D
Quite a unique solution to your data transfer problem! Never thought I'd see CF used much anymore nowadays, I like it!
i put a cf card into my ipod mini and now its completely silent
I just came back from a video you made in 2012, and the tone is just so much different. Now LGR is a lot more upbeat than it used to be.
I want that Duke Nukem shirt.
Here's where I got mine!
goo.gl/FNrMyL
I'm gonna put a SATA SSD with a SATA/IDE converter into my XP gaming machine I'm working on. Nice thing about having more modern interfaces got storage is you can easily back it up on a new machine
45 dislikes? This is heresy!
As Brandon Upchurch mentioned, DoMs and special industrial CF cards use SLC "Single Level Cell" NAND flash. When used as a hard drive this is going to be way more reliable because it can sustain many more write cycles than the cheaper and more common MLC or TLC flash. Not sure whether @lazygamereviews Clint knew this or not but that Transcend TS4GCF300 is a perfect card for this as they are cheap and use SLC and are a good size for pre-2000 era computers. They do use UDMA 5 (Ultra ATA/100 100MB/s) interface speed but are backwards compatible with modes 0-4 for non-UDMA systems. Clint you are the absolute frikkin' man and I immensely enjoy all your content!!!
Ahhhh compact flash. I remember the first one I had was for my digital camera and it was 128mb. I was so excited I could store about 80 low grade photos.
There are a few VERY nice benefits of using a CF card as storage on really old laptops! I'm surprised you did not mention that they use significantly less power, put out much MUCH less heat, and weigh a hellava lot less than the vast majority of old 2.5" traditional HDDs in Pentium and lower class laptops. Its amazing how massive of a difference throwing a solid state storage solution into a 486 laptop can really unleash the beast within! ^_^
Huh. Nice. I've used a IDE->SD adapter for a Playstation 2 to store ISOs in place of an HDD and it worked out great so it makes sense this would work well too.
Clint we should hook up. In 1985 , I purchased a Commodore 64. I started writing my own software and games, which led me to buy the floppy drive. I wrote ( with the help of a algebra genius) a spiral graph style screen saver, each line plotted was in a random color and was quite dazzling in the day, and a early G U.I. When the program was loaded and ran, it spilt the main screen with a 4 square window box. In the center of each box was lettering. I figured out how to write ' strig" commands as the controller for the Atrari 2600 fit the port on the Commodore. So all you had to do was move the joystick to the corresponding window and click the red fire button to execute the program of choice. I gotta tell you, I did not know what I had! When Windows 3.0 launched yes it was better, but I had the mouse and the G U.I. concept long before Bill Gates. I look back and I love the glory days! You are the the offical keeper of nerd records my man.
Tonns of respect for Tyrian! Game of my childhood on my Compaq 486DX
Oh my. That is a beautiful rig.
Seriously. It's so cool in so many subtle ways. The colors mis-match, and yet somehow still complement each other. The buttons and the green display are ultra retro-cool. The same goes for that CD drive with its control buttons. I wonder if a case like that (and matching components) could be bought for a modern rig?
If I had the ability, I would totally buy that case and put my new computer in there.
I used to have a monitor that looked EXACTLY like the one you are using, only mine was branded as Mitsubishi, specifically it was the Mitsubishi Diamond Plus 72. Must have been the OEM for gateway. It was a superb monitor, I have spent countless hours playing MS Flight Simulator 2000 Pro on it...
Another great video from LGR. If you haven't already, it would definitely be cool if you created a playlist of the 486 upgrade videos, and linked it in the description.
LGR I have this exact thingy! Although these are great for swapping OS's and faster than a traditional HDD. From the same SYBA brand theres an IDE to sata cartridge that I highly recommend, it allowed me to put a Samsung EVO into my nostalgia machine(Dell LxxxR) as well as a new beige SATA drive.
Man, loud hard drives are really the charm of a retro PC, Clint.
Holy balls....I was flashing back to my childhood so hard and my trusty old 486DX2. Dude you gotta review Tyrian.
Just got myself an internal 40 pin adapter and a Transcend CF card and it's doing nicely so far (on a newer motherboard, though). First I backed up my existing drive to a Raspberry Pi via EtherDFS. Created a small boot disk with EtherDFS, fdisk, format a packet driver and Volkov Commander. Used that to format the CF card and then copied my system back from the Raspberry Pi...absolutely painless!
I always only understand 1/3 of these videos... but I still enjoy watching them for some reason lol
dayum! i have to leave for work but i can't wait to watch this tonight!