Lovely machine! Or it will be once the restoration is complete :) Couldn't help but grin when you yanked out pin 9. I've done that to many VGA cables over the years precisely for IBM systems like this.
Not really used to working with these early nineties IBMs .... have a couple of them now to tackle ... the creative multimedia kit was a nice bonus. Hope I will be able to fix the cdrom drive.
@@RetroSpector78 It's actually not limited to IBM. I remember myself just as puzzled as you when I tried to plug my VGA cable into some random 386 machine. Some card branded "Plantron" with a WDC chip if I am not remembering entirely wrong. I opted for the nonviolent solution and got a 14 pin VGA cable from Ebay for a few €.
I have fond memories of these. My elementary school was full of them, but the monitors they used had control buttons hidden behind a panel that more closely resembled an Aptiva-style drop-down look.
Probably they were the same design that my secondary school had dozens of. A square white power button on the right if I remember correctly, all the other controls hidden behind a hinged panel.
@Mr Guru: The caddy CD-ROM drive I had on my 8088 Headstart LX-CD computer required power, as it wasn't manually ejectable like a 3.5 inch floppy drive. I don't remember if it had a pinhole to manually force it to eject, as my later tray-loading CD-ROM drives had.
2:25 "a lid or something on the front of the CD-ROM drive." Dude, this is a caddy-based CD-ROM (Panasonic CR-521/523), not a more common tray-based CD-ROM; it looks perfectly fine this way. Just press the (mechanical) eject button really hard to eject the caddy; no power is needed.
I had the same problem with the VGA connector in my Olivetti TIN/II (M4 586 Modulo). I made the hole for the ommited pin with a hot needle and problem resolved!
@Stanley Broniszewski yes but I have a lot of problems finding parts like a cdrom drive, ISA cards (sound, ethernet...) here in Spain. I don't know any places to find those parts at a reasonable price 😭
@@pcclassic i know. It's just more comfortable to mod the computer rather then mod all my cables or stick with just one cable for pcs and video cards with a blocked off connector.
@Nuke Dukem punching out the blocked pin will not devalue the computer. In fact when done well, nobody will be able to figure out the d-sub port was modded.
@Nuke Dukem yep, you don't want to do any modifications to the computer unless absolutely necessary. most lcd panels use separate vga cables, which are a dime a dozen, it's easier to just do what he did. and not risk screwing up the dsub connector on the computer. I have a model very similar to this, and wouldn't dream of doing that to it..
Pin 9 in VGA port is used to supply +5V to DDC interface of the display. You may have troubles with this display being not detected (not recognizing the model, native resolution, etc.) when off (or maybe even at all) by more modern PCs. I think it would be justifiable modification to drill one small extra hole in that VGA connector to make it more compatible.
Thanks for the video! I remember toying with these as a child, I loved the case design and the use of standard components. Lots of simcity and lemmings were played. Mine was a SX-25, I remember seeing at school one of my teachers had a DX4-100 model and I was quite jealous!
The SX/25 had the CPU soldered to the board and an empty ZIF socket for a CPU upgrade next to it. Mine received a 100 MHz DX/4 I'd found somewhere, without any cooling, not even a heatsink. It never blew up, probably because the computer didn't see a lot of use. I do think I had some weird and mostly-forgotten stuff on there, like Calmira. My school decided to buy a job lot of used DX/2 66 PS/VPs along with 14" CRTs from a bank in 1997, one for each classroom and some for a rather basic PC lab. They came with 8 MB of RAM and a 250 MB WD Caviar drive and my school upgraded them with some no-name sound cards that no one ever managed to get a single sound out of and a 32x CD-ROM drive. Windows 95 and Office 97 was about as much as the machines would take without running out of hard disk space and RAM. I had a two-part solution for that problem. On the one hand I found another 8 MB SIMM for hours (I had a one-hour break in another classroom, with minimal supervision, and for some strange reason that computer was the only one out of some 40 that had two SIMMs instead of one. One of those SIMMs magically migrated into our PC) and on the other hand I got permission to flatten the HDD and install DOS 5 and Windows 3.1, which gave the PS/VP a massive performance boost. Add some useful software (Winword 2.1 copied off of an old 286 running Windows 3), a few good games and a discarded Citizen dot matrix printer and three years later our computer was the only one that still worked and was used every day. The others had all been vandalised, cut cables, lost mice or formatted hard drives. No matter how technically inept, in each and every class there was at least one kid that knew ONE DOS command - format c:. We had classroom PCs until we moved back into the renovated building in 2000, then the computers were needed for a second computer lab. About a year later there was enough budget for new PCs and we got our 486 back. This time I upgraded it quite considerably from my own stash of old parts, going up to 24 MB of RAM, DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11. I found drivers for the S3 graphics chip (the first one had just run at VGA resolution with the generic Win 3.1 driver) and even tried to get the sound working and get the machine networked. Both of the latter attempts failed, the networking part probably just because of a config issue. In 2003, just when I left school, all the PS/VPs were thrown away and I took a few of them home. One should still be in storage somewhere and I've got an entire shoe box full of hard drives I removed from the others.
In my experience, hot water, an old tooth brush, and some dish soap (like Dawn) works REALLY well for cleaning PCBs. Just gotta make sure they dry out very well. Set'em on something warm or out in the sun if its a nice day to help speed drying.
As Adrian Black would say: Don't be afraid to wash your mainboard. Just rinse with IPA afterwards to displace the leftover water and leave it to dry overnight. It has worked out for me on my Commodore PET, Commodore 128D, Amiga 600 and some other machines which are still working by this day.
I'd rather have no cache than fake cache! I have a Olivetti 486 system lying waiting with a cache socket like that. Love that old creative CD drive with the caddy. Can't wait to see what you do with it next.
15:00 I love how when having a closer look at the heatsink of the CPU, there's clearly a see-through gap between CPU surface and heatsink surface. That's some great air-gap insulation they've got going there. Poor little sturdy chip!
The edge of the chip is beveled. I have an AMD DX4 that looks exactly like this - thermal adhesive bonding a small heatsink to the top. There’s no room between the mating surfaces except around the edge.
@@nickwallette6201 To me it looks like there's light flashing through the gap all across the chip depending on camera angle, so I'm somewhat inclined to think that the gap is not just around the edge. No matter what: I guess that given the chip survived this long, there's no real thermal problem at hand, even if things look suboptimal from today's perspective.
Great video. Its funny no matter how many computers a person can work on and no matter how much experience a person can have, it always funny(not in a ha ha way) just missing that one little overview(with the boot second device in the bios)can make a person want to pull their hair out (scream if that person has no hair)trying to figure out what is wrong trying to get things up and running. Glad you saw the second boot device was only just disabled and you're able to get MS-DOS 6.22 back on that machine. Thanks for the upload.
Yeah ... with these non standard bios systems you always need to double check. But who would think that setting a second boot device would be disabled by default.
Hey thats crazy. Somebody either went into that bios and disabled things not knowing what they were doing or decided that it would be funny just to mess with someone possibly for a good laugh you never know.
Great video. Nice build up to the possible outcomes of first power on. :) After my NMS-9100 Philips XT, I got a Vesa Local Bus powered SX-25 486 with 4Mb of RAM, it got upgraded to a 486-DX2-66, 8Mb of RAM and the addition of a SB16-ASP and Panasonic (Matsushita Kotobuki) double speed CD-rom drive within 3 months. It was from one of those system integrators: Escom. Escom and Vobis were cheaper than the V&D Vendex or Warehouse machines on offer over here. The 486-DX-2 platform has a sweet spot with me. This is a very nice IBM system. Back in the day a true IBM was unobtainable as they came at a cost and often had their own proprietary PS/2 things. IBM's like this Valuepoint sporting things like VLB and ISA weren't a thing in my neck of the woods a little to the North of you. I got my system in 1993 after an extensive stay / work / studies in the US and my NMS-9100 XT just wasn't cutting it anymore. I wrote my thesis partly on the NMS-9100 but just had to upgrade when I had to do statistics and Database SQL / DBaseIV properly. :) Good times The S3 onboard video shouldn't be too shabby, but putting in a TSENG ET4000 (isa, vlb and pci exist) or other VLB graphics card and a soundcard/CD-rom would complete the system nicely.
>but putting in a TSENG ET4000 you want to put slower card? :-) Fastest ISA cards reach ~5MB/s, slowest VLB cards start at 10MB/s for 486dx 2/66 there is almost no difference in speed between even the slowest and fastest VLB cards, as they all run faster than the CPU can write to them.
@@rasz I had a Tseng ET4000 VLB card as well as a PCI variant next to and ancient ISA one. So the system not having 2nd level cache will make any graphics card addition mute by your numbers...
Did you try SYS'ing the replacement hard drive to put the system boot sector on it to see if it would boot up before FDISKing it? Also, you could drill a tiny hole in that 15 pin header so you can hook up any VGA monitor to it. :)
(2:09) I realize the impracticality of caddy loading versus tray loading, but I still love caddy loading CD-ROM drives. I wish we had got an additional caddy or two for my Headstart LX-CD. Loved that machine.
My first CD-R drive was a caddy type. I liked it a lot but you had to keep the caddy in a drawer or somewhere because the drive would reject an empty caddy. The drive (might have been a Pioneer) had a hinged flap over the caddy slot that broke off very quickly. 2x read/1x write, SCSI bus. It was in an external enclosure and connected to my Power Mac until I got a 6x read/2x write tray drive, then the 2x moved into my Pentium 150 toy where it was hardly ever used.
Nice review. Interesting way of cleaning of the PCB you did. Is there a reason why you don‘t use a bath cleaner, old toothbrush and water for cleaning a old dirty mobo? Greez, Peter
Restoring and working on these old systems can be a very relaxing experience I find. Also watching this video. :) Never saw that hinge thing - was this typical for the IBM Valuepoints?
One problem with the 90+% IPA is the low water content makes it hard to remove some water soluble grime that is not alcohol soluble from a board. In that case you can try the 70% IPA and it can sometimes do a better job.
ARGH I've been looking for that CD-ROM drive FOREVER, it was the one we had in our 386 Packard Bell when I was a kid... it came in a "MPC" kit with that sound blaster pro 2... I remember the eject button took a ton of force to get the caddy out, then when you put the caddy back in it would pinch your finger EVERY time unless you were really, really careful...
If you have fine point tweezers or even a needle you should be able to remove that little blank on the VGA port, I used to do this many years ago for both this and the blanked off key pins of IDE cables.
Looks like one of the type 2 boards too with a W series. I just got a 6384/D K30 which LOOKS like a type 2 board but is in fact a type 1 board. Very confusing. Do you know what kind of dip vram IC upgrades the video memory?
I was recently given a 433DX/D that's also missing the L2 cache. Do you know if any 256KB COAST will work, or does the motherboard require a special module? I'm hoping to add the cache and maybe swap in a 486DX2 to have a slick DOS gaming machine.
That CDROM and sound card were sold together as a bundle; I purchased the same one in the early 1990s. It's a single-speed (1X) drive, and the appearance is correct (there is no door, as it uses caddies).
Hi Dave. I just watched Doscember and have subscribed. I am currently making a few Pounds ££s pocket money renovating 1990 PCs and having a lot of fun but should be renovating my old house.
Very interesting to see any kind of IBM machine with a VLB slot. That... is what that brown slot next to the bottom ISA connector is, right? They didn't engage in any proprietary "haha MCA" shenanigans here?
I once bought a bag of retro RAM and it had some weird short ones in there that didn't fit anything. Turned out they were COAST modules (Cache On A Stick) for the CPU. Later came across a Socket 7 motherboard that supported them. I've never seen one before.
Nice looking machine, is this the first IBM to have a built-in CMOS setup utility? The older ones notoriously required a diagnostics disk whereas clones have it built-in.
I had that problem with the VGA connector some years ago, I heated a paperclip on the stove and made a new hole in the port. Try it, you will see - even if the pin is not needed it was better than desecrating the monitor cable. I think I might have a newer revision to that board because I did have L2 cache installed, and never had that a double key stroke error, I remember in 2001 I was trying to play back mp3's on it, I had to reduce the quality from 128kbps to 92kbps to get smooth playback. I eventually got the pentium overdrive and with win95c, 32 MB ram, 2 MB vga ram (I added the extra ram to on-board vga later a 4MB SVGA VLB card) 3.7GB HDD. My step kids had some good times with it, game wise. Internet worked well too, msn messenger, ICQ, IE5, Norton System works 2001. It was on for 7 years non-stop because I used it to play DX-ball2, Super Collapse II, and HangAroo. I actually retired it for storage in 2009.
Nice one... i have a mainboard like this with a 486dx4 cpu and 32mb memory module. When i try to get it started i always keep getting that same code. I really like to get it working. I want to know. Does it work without a riser card? Can i use the slot as it is?
3 года назад
i found one exactly same this in a junk. Monitor, mouse, keyboard , monitor and more! Manuals, disketes,cables, ali stuff
Interesting video as usual. I have one of these machines with the same CPU and 16mb RAM, although mine has a 128kb cache chip and I don't have any double key stroke problem. Maybe I don't have the same onboard chips, I must check. They are very nice machines and quite fast. I am hoping you will explore the Pentium Overdrive option, it has piqued my interest but I haven't explored it yet. Cheers
I was working in a computer recycle warehouse these kinds of computer was really popular in banking industry. They were all send to destruction without testing.
Nice, a caddy loading CD-ROM drive. You don't see a lot of those, since they were a bit of a design mistake -- the naked discs simply weren't so fragile as to require them, and people quickly learned how to handle them in a different way compared to floppies. Plus if you had a lot of on disc software, you'd have had to buy a lot of extra caddies for your discs to make swapping them around less of a hassle.
I have a ValuePoint which is exactly the same as this one. It has a power saving feature in the BIOS which powers down hard drives after a period of inactivity. Is that what's going on here? I'd test the drive in another PC before saying it's definitely broken.
You can try to rinse the board with soap and water then rinse with pure alcohol. Dry it for couple of days and mobo should be looking as new. Its a good idea to remove all socketed ic's and before drying you can blow the board with compressor... 👍
Some time many years back I found an adapter for the VGA that would let you plug in conventional VGA monitors (it would provide you with a port with all 15 pin-holes). But it's a Western Digital hard drive, of COURSE it's dead.
pro tip, if you want a good board cleaning brush go to the plumbing section of your local hardware store and look for flux or acid brushes, natural bristles in a metal handle, cost peanuts, disposable and if they are too long cut them down a bit with scissors. Here in the USA you can get a 36 pack of them for $2.50 at harbor freight (or about 7 cents each) edit also I have been known to take a hand held pin vice and a small drill bit to unplug holes on vga outputs, there's no contact behind it so go for ti
1. Is this comment shown twice? I was commenting with my secondary account and it didn't show up on other Computers. 2. Please excuse me. I don't want to sound like a smart alec, but I believe the unpopulated place wasn't meant for a FPU, but rather a CPU. I counted a total of 196 contacts. Some 486 CPUs came as quad flat packages with 196 leads. AFAIK, FPUs for the 486 were mostly available as pin grid arrays. Here's a link, where you can find pictures of a 486, that uses this type of package: www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/80486/Intel-KU80486SX-25.html Please let me know, if i'm mistaken. I could be wrong. BTW, I love your channel. Your videos are amazing. Keep up the great work.
I had the 50MHz version of that range. It had the TSENG 4000 on board with 1MB video RAM and it was SLOW! Just above 1000 cps on LandMark. My slowest ISA version of this card managed around 2600 cps, my fastest ISA version of this card gets just above 6000 cps and I have a VLB version of that card that I can't remember how fast it was, but definitely five digit. You even had to wait multiple seconds for the Windows wallpaper to appear (yes I use 1024*768 with 256 colors wallpaper just because I can).
The Valuepoint series had 'Type 1' (SIMM sockets perpendicular to the riser slot) and 'Type 2' (SIMM sockets parallel to the riser slot) for the mid-range systems - Yours is a 'Type 2'. Scroll down to the matching planar in this reference for jumper settings: ps-2.kev009.com/pcpartnerinfo/ctstips/a26e.htm
The blocked VGA pin is redundant, you can just pull/break/clip off the relevant pin from the VGA cable and it will work 100% fine, that's what I did with my PS/1.
I doubt that sound card / cdrom was installed by IBM. Even though the IBM with VLB could come with a sound card it was usually a Sound Blaster 16 CT2950 , CT1740 , or CT1770. With Panasonic CDROM. There where so many versions of the IBM PS/1 and Value point and it all depended on what store you purchased it from. Each store carried its on versions. I assume this was a marketing scheme by IBM. In USA there are about 10 or more different versions on the IBM PS/1.( desktops and towers ). Also the Sound card installed should show up in bios.
I think there originally was L2 cache installed, if you look at the socket the plastic tab thing on the left that you use to release/secure it is missing. If it wasn't that keyboard thing, someone probably broke it and it wouldn't stay in anymore.
with a modern card, i remember watching a video of a way to dial into a recreation of billion boards sites of the day. did u hear of this or interest in it?
“The first time I tried to start the thing, the following happened...” * State Farm commercial * NOOOOoooo! The humanity! Insurance ads! 😝 P.S. I love that chonky CD ROM drive.
I wonder if the original hard drive was ok in the first place, just not configured in the BIOS and shutting down as a kind of power saving measure. You should try it again and see if the BIOS sees it.
I have serious doubts that there is no way to clean that motherboard. Seeing so many restoration videos, There is something for everything. You just have to find it. There is always a way.
Giving it a soapy water bath with a soft anti-static brush would do wonders, then you soak it in isopropanol alcohol later so that it doesn't start to rust from the chemicals in the future.
I'm trying to find where saying numbers like "six point twenty two" comes from. It's that how it's said in your native language (Dutch?) A lot of Americans say it that way too. In English we say "six point two two".
I have no idea why I am saying it like that in English ... I’m just winging it. As you might have already guessed I’m not a linguist by any means :) I try to say things that “sound right” to me. In Dutch it is also pronounced like that. And not six.twotwo :)
i wait to see that caddy cd-rom drive, i do have one in my collection but is no name and i don't know if is iSA interface or something wrong with it because freezes the pc. And don't broke the pin,poke the connector.
Hey retro scene check your calendars, 80s/early 90s tech had its time, its time to focus on the second golden age of computing 96-2006, Voodoo ,Riva Rage... 3d wars, Pentium vs K series, Athlon the Pentium killer, the advent of OC with the first Celerons, you know fun times
Ironically, I think the PS/Valuepoints did in fact use MS-DOS rather than PC DOS. I remember using a 433DX of some sort Valuepoint and it had MS-DOS 6.x of some sort and an IBM-badged Windows 3.1.
18:35 Same BIOS as in my HP VL 486 and HP XU Pentium Pro. In both I replaced the HDD with CF card converters. I still have the hard drives stored/preserved but they can be flaky at this point in time and I prefer the lower power draw and no moving parts of the CF. Interestingly, in my 486 the CDROM is not even a BIOS option even though it is plugged into the Motherboard. It still works and is accessible despite the BIOS not seeing it or having options for it. There are also limitations with drive sizes. My 486 will not see any CFs larger than 1GB, however the XU with the same looking BIOS can easily access a 4GB CF. Any one know what this BIOs is actually called?
This Power Supply was obviously "adapted" ,probably because find and original IBM is nearly impossible today... The main issue with this machine is finding 70ns memory with parity, otherwise it doesn't recognize on system BIOS...
Quantums were too whiny for my taste, except for the rare 2.5" GoDrives, which died like flies when they were about 15 years old. WDs sounded nice, even if the head movement is a bit coarse. I really have to check what brand of hard drive my Compaq 286 has, I really loved that sound! Some of the best-sounding drives are still full-height 5.25" behemoths, regardless of their brand. The sheer mass of the giant platter stack gives them an incredible spinup sound!
Immersion into a liquid and scrubbing is only way. I like using soapy water and toothbrush, but that kills stickers. (edit) Or use a brush and compressed air! (editedit and not the only way, lol)
Lovely machine! Or it will be once the restoration is complete :)
Couldn't help but grin when you yanked out pin 9. I've done that to many VGA cables over the years precisely for IBM systems like this.
Not really used to working with these early nineties IBMs .... have a couple of them now to tackle ... the creative multimedia kit was a nice bonus. Hope I will be able to fix the cdrom drive.
Oh hey Clint
@@RetroSpector78 It's actually not limited to IBM. I remember myself just as puzzled as you when I tried to plug my VGA cable into some random 386 machine. Some card branded "Plantron" with a WDC chip if I am not remembering entirely wrong.
I opted for the nonviolent solution and got a 14 pin VGA cable from Ebay for a few €.
I had a Compaq Prolinea that was the same way. Ended up using a VGA splitter which didnt have the pin
Normally I'll take a push pin or sewing needle and heat it up and poke the hole in the connector for the normal cables to work.
I have fond memories of these. My elementary school was full of them, but the monitors they used had control buttons hidden behind a panel that more closely resembled an Aptiva-style drop-down look.
Probably they were the same design that my secondary school had dozens of. A square white power button on the right if I remember correctly, all the other controls hidden behind a hinged panel.
These are beautiful machines. Looks a bit like a CD-ROM caddy is stuck in that Creative drive. Looking forward to the next episode ;-)
Yeah .. haven’t really looked at the cdrom drive yet... hope I’ll be able to fix it.
@Mr Guru: The caddy CD-ROM drive I had on my 8088 Headstart LX-CD computer required power, as it wasn't manually ejectable like a 3.5 inch floppy drive. I don't remember if it had a pinhole to manually force it to eject, as my later tray-loading CD-ROM drives had.
2:25 "a lid or something on the front of the CD-ROM drive."
Dude, this is a caddy-based CD-ROM (Panasonic CR-521/523), not a more common tray-based CD-ROM; it looks perfectly fine this way. Just press the (mechanical) eject button really hard to eject the caddy; no power is needed.
I had the same problem with the VGA connector in my Olivetti TIN/II (M4 586 Modulo). I made the hole for the ommited pin with a hot needle and problem resolved!
Yeah, yours was a better solution than taking out one of the monitor's pin
I just drilled the hole with a small drill bit.
@Stanley Broniszewski yes but I have a lot of problems finding parts like a cdrom drive, ISA cards (sound, ethernet...) here in Spain. I don't know any places to find those parts at a reasonable price 😭
... i just punched the missing hole in the computer's vga connector using a heated needle... Now it works with any vga cable.
I've used a small drill bit, works as well.
This contact is responsible for DDC, it's not necessary to use. just cut this pin in new cable and connect to LCD panel!
@@pcclassic i know. It's just more comfortable to mod the computer rather then mod all my cables or stick with just one cable for pcs and video cards with a blocked off connector.
@Nuke Dukem punching out the blocked pin will not devalue the computer. In fact when done well, nobody will be able to figure out the d-sub port was modded.
@Nuke Dukem yep, you don't want to do any modifications to the computer unless absolutely necessary. most lcd panels use separate vga cables, which are a dime a dozen, it's easier to just do what he did. and not risk screwing up the dsub connector on the computer. I have a model very similar to this, and wouldn't dream of doing that to it..
Pin 9 in VGA port is used to supply +5V to DDC interface of the display. You may have troubles with this display being not detected (not recognizing the model, native resolution, etc.) when off (or maybe even at all) by more modern PCs. I think it would be justifiable modification to drill one small extra hole in that VGA connector to make it more compatible.
or just buy a 6 inch extension cable
Thanks for the video! I remember toying with these as a child, I loved the case design and the use of standard components. Lots of simcity and lemmings were played. Mine was a SX-25, I remember seeing at school one of my teachers had a DX4-100 model and I was quite jealous!
The SX/25 had the CPU soldered to the board and an empty ZIF socket for a CPU upgrade next to it. Mine received a 100 MHz DX/4 I'd found somewhere, without any cooling, not even a heatsink. It never blew up, probably because the computer didn't see a lot of use. I do think I had some weird and mostly-forgotten stuff on there, like Calmira.
My school decided to buy a job lot of used DX/2 66 PS/VPs along with 14" CRTs from a bank in 1997, one for each classroom and some for a rather basic PC lab. They came with 8 MB of RAM and a 250 MB WD Caviar drive and my school upgraded them with some no-name sound cards that no one ever managed to get a single sound out of and a 32x CD-ROM drive. Windows 95 and Office 97 was about as much as the machines would take without running out of hard disk space and RAM. I had a two-part solution for that problem. On the one hand I found another 8 MB SIMM for hours (I had a one-hour break in another classroom, with minimal supervision, and for some strange reason that computer was the only one out of some 40 that had two SIMMs instead of one. One of those SIMMs magically migrated into our PC) and on the other hand I got permission to flatten the HDD and install DOS 5 and Windows 3.1, which gave the PS/VP a massive performance boost. Add some useful software (Winword 2.1 copied off of an old 286 running Windows 3), a few good games and a discarded Citizen dot matrix printer and three years later our computer was the only one that still worked and was used every day. The others had all been vandalised, cut cables, lost mice or formatted hard drives. No matter how technically inept, in each and every class there was at least one kid that knew ONE DOS command - format c:.
We had classroom PCs until we moved back into the renovated building in 2000, then the computers were needed for a second computer lab. About a year later there was enough budget for new PCs and we got our 486 back. This time I upgraded it quite considerably from my own stash of old parts, going up to 24 MB of RAM, DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11. I found drivers for the S3 graphics chip (the first one had just run at VGA resolution with the generic Win 3.1 driver) and even tried to get the sound working and get the machine networked. Both of the latter attempts failed, the networking part probably just because of a config issue. In 2003, just when I left school, all the PS/VPs were thrown away and I took a few of them home. One should still be in storage somewhere and I've got an entire shoe box full of hard drives I removed from the others.
In my experience, hot water, an old tooth brush, and some dish soap (like Dawn) works REALLY well for cleaning PCBs. Just gotta make sure they dry out very well. Set'em on something warm or out in the sun if its a nice day to help speed drying.
As Adrian Black would say: Don't be afraid to wash your mainboard. Just rinse with IPA afterwards to displace the leftover water and leave it to dry overnight. It has worked out for me on my Commodore PET, Commodore 128D, Amiga 600 and some other machines which are still working by this day.
Indian pale ale?
@@paco3523 isopropylic alcohol
@@AlejandroRodolfoMendez no such thing. wash it with soap and water.
@@BenState yes but I was explaining that ipa is iso propilic alcohol
@@AlejandroRodolfoMendez *isopropyl.
I'd rather have no cache than fake cache! I have a Olivetti 486 system lying waiting with a cache socket like that. Love that old creative CD drive with the caddy. Can't wait to see what you do with it next.
Hope I get it fixed ... would like to see if fully functional, with L2 cache and see if I can reproduce the keystroke issue :)
15:00 I love how when having a closer look at the heatsink of the CPU, there's clearly a see-through gap between CPU surface and heatsink surface. That's some great air-gap insulation they've got going there. Poor little sturdy chip!
The edge of the chip is beveled. I have an AMD DX4 that looks exactly like this - thermal adhesive bonding a small heatsink to the top. There’s no room between the mating surfaces except around the edge.
@@nickwallette6201 To me it looks like there's light flashing through the gap all across the chip depending on camera angle, so I'm somewhat inclined to think that the gap is not just around the edge. No matter what: I guess that given the chip survived this long, there's no real thermal problem at hand, even if things look suboptimal from today's perspective.
@Mr Guru Okay, thanks for elaborating!
Great video. Its funny no matter how many computers a person can work on and no matter how much experience a person can have, it always funny(not in a ha ha way) just missing that one little overview(with the boot second device in the bios)can make a person want to pull their hair out (scream if that person has no hair)trying to figure out what is wrong trying to get things up and running. Glad you saw the second boot device was only just disabled and you're able to get MS-DOS 6.22 back on that machine. Thanks for the upload.
Yeah ... with these non standard bios systems you always need to double check. But who would think that setting a second boot device would be disabled by default.
Hey thats crazy. Somebody either went into that bios and disabled things not knowing what they were doing or decided that it would be funny just to mess with someone possibly for a good laugh you never know.
This really makes me feel the pressure to finally bring my Valuepiont SX 25 into shape.
I'm glad to have seen you in the DOScember group, can't wait to see your videos!
Great video. Nice build up to the possible outcomes of first power on. :)
After my NMS-9100 Philips XT, I got a Vesa Local Bus powered SX-25 486 with 4Mb of RAM, it got upgraded to a 486-DX2-66, 8Mb of RAM and the addition of a SB16-ASP and Panasonic (Matsushita Kotobuki) double speed CD-rom drive within 3 months. It was from one of those system integrators: Escom. Escom and Vobis were cheaper than the V&D Vendex or Warehouse machines on offer over here. The 486-DX-2 platform has a sweet spot with me. This is a very nice IBM system. Back in the day a true IBM was unobtainable as they came at a cost and often had their own proprietary PS/2 things. IBM's like this Valuepoint sporting things like VLB and ISA weren't a thing in my neck of the woods a little to the North of you. I got my system in 1993 after an extensive stay / work / studies in the US and my NMS-9100 XT just wasn't cutting it anymore. I wrote my thesis partly on the NMS-9100 but just had to upgrade when I had to do statistics and Database SQL / DBaseIV properly. :) Good times
The S3 onboard video shouldn't be too shabby, but putting in a TSENG ET4000 (isa, vlb and pci exist) or other VLB graphics card and a soundcard/CD-rom would complete the system nicely.
I’ve got a philips NMS TC 100 I need to look at at some point. Also got an Escom pentium with a Commodore badge :) so many systems still to cover ...
>but putting in a TSENG ET4000
you want to put slower card? :-) Fastest ISA cards reach ~5MB/s, slowest VLB cards start at 10MB/s
for 486dx 2/66 there is almost no difference in speed between even the slowest and fastest VLB cards, as they all run faster than the CPU can write to them.
@@rasz I had a Tseng ET4000 VLB card as well as a PCI variant next to and ancient ISA one. So the system not having 2nd level cache will make any graphics card addition mute by your numbers...
Did you try SYS'ing the replacement hard drive to put the system boot sector on it to see if it would boot up before FDISKing it?
Also, you could drill a tiny hole in that 15 pin header so you can hook up any VGA monitor to it. :)
(2:09) I realize the impracticality of caddy loading versus tray loading, but I still love caddy loading CD-ROM drives. I wish we had got an additional caddy or two for my Headstart LX-CD. Loved that machine.
My first CD-R drive was a caddy type. I liked it a lot but you had to keep the caddy in a drawer or somewhere because the drive would reject an empty caddy. The drive (might have been a Pioneer) had a hinged flap over the caddy slot that broke off very quickly. 2x read/1x write, SCSI bus. It was in an external enclosure and connected to my Power Mac until I got a 6x read/2x write tray drive, then the 2x moved into my Pentium 150 toy where it was hardly ever used.
I can still hear the hollow metal on metal scraping sound of opening similar computers like that when repairing.
The MPC logo brings back memories from childhood.
Pretty nice!
The missing VGA pin makes me wanna look for the standard pin layout however 👀
Nice review. Interesting way of cleaning of the PCB you did. Is there a reason why you don‘t use a bath cleaner, old toothbrush and water for cleaning a old dirty mobo?
Greez, Peter
Restoring and working on these old systems can be a very relaxing experience I find. Also watching this video. :) Never saw that hinge thing - was this typical for the IBM Valuepoints?
Not really sure ... first time I’ve seen a socket work like that.
One problem with the 90+% IPA is the low water content makes it hard to remove some water soluble grime that is not alcohol soluble from a board. In that case you can try the 70% IPA and it can sometimes do a better job.
Great video as usual. 4MB memory is a bit anemic for a DX2-66, will you be upgrading it or keeping it stock?
I remember I had to work a week (not full time, but after school) to be able to buy 4 extra MB as a 16 year old
ARGH I've been looking for that CD-ROM drive FOREVER, it was the one we had in our 386 Packard Bell when I was a kid... it came in a "MPC" kit with that sound blaster pro 2... I remember the eject button took a ton of force to get the caddy out, then when you put the caddy back in it would pinch your finger EVERY time unless you were really, really careful...
17:57 Oh god that was like watching you pull someone's toenails out D:
If you have fine point tweezers or even a needle you should be able to remove that little blank on the VGA port, I used to do this many years ago for both this and the blanked off key pins of IDE cables.
Haha ... never thought of that actually :)
Looks like one of the type 2 boards too with a W series. I just got a 6384/D K30 which LOOKS like a type 2 board but is in fact a type 1 board. Very confusing. Do you know what kind of dip vram IC upgrades the video memory?
This made me go OH i used to have that dubble keystroke problem on my old 486 I guess it was due to this bug. It only took 30 years to find out why..
Really ? Going to try and reproduce it if I can find a cache chip.
I was recently given a 433DX/D that's also missing the L2 cache. Do you know if any 256KB COAST will work, or does the motherboard require a special module? I'm hoping to add the cache and maybe swap in a 486DX2 to have a slick DOS gaming machine.
That CDROM and sound card were sold together as a bundle; I purchased the same one in the early 1990s. It's a single-speed (1X) drive, and the appearance is correct (there is no door, as it uses caddies).
Hi Dave. I just watched Doscember and have subscribed. I am currently making a few Pounds ££s pocket money renovating 1990 PCs and having a lot of fun but should be renovating my old house.
Very interesting to see any kind of IBM machine with a VLB slot. That... is what that brown slot next to the bottom ISA connector is, right? They didn't engage in any proprietary "haha MCA" shenanigans here?
I once bought a bag of retro RAM and it had some weird short ones in there that didn't fit anything. Turned out they were COAST modules (Cache On A Stick) for the CPU. Later came across a Socket 7 motherboard that supported them. I've never seen one before.
Wonderful machine!
Excellent video. What about the other two machines in the stack?
Nice looking machine, is this the first IBM to have a built-in CMOS setup utility? The older ones notoriously required a diagnostics disk whereas clones have it built-in.
I had that problem with the VGA connector some years ago, I heated a paperclip on the stove and made a new hole in the port. Try it, you will see - even if the pin is not needed it was better than desecrating the monitor cable. I think I might have a newer revision to that board because I did have L2 cache installed, and never had that a double key stroke error, I remember in 2001 I was trying to play back mp3's on it, I had to reduce the quality from 128kbps to 92kbps to get smooth playback. I eventually got the pentium overdrive and with win95c, 32 MB ram, 2 MB vga ram (I added the extra ram to on-board vga later a 4MB SVGA VLB card) 3.7GB HDD. My step kids had some good times with it, game wise. Internet worked well too, msn messenger, ICQ, IE5, Norton System works 2001. It was on for 7 years non-stop because I used it to play DX-ball2, Super Collapse II, and HangAroo. I actually retired it for storage in 2009.
Thank you Sir. Greatly appreciated 486DX look see!
Had this exact machine. It’s limited to 540 meg had and 64 megs of ram. I ran OS/2 Warp 3 Connect on this computer.
Also planning an os/2 install :)
My first computer had that same CD-Rom drive. Man I kinda miss those disc caddys.
Nice one... i have a mainboard like this with a 486dx4 cpu and 32mb memory module. When i try to get it started i always keep getting that same code. I really like to get it working.
I want to know. Does it work without a riser card? Can i use the slot as it is?
i found one exactly same this in a junk. Monitor, mouse, keyboard , monitor and more! Manuals, disketes,cables, ali stuff
Interesting video as usual. I have one of these machines with the same CPU and 16mb RAM, although mine has a 128kb cache chip and I don't have any double key stroke problem. Maybe I don't have the same onboard chips, I must check. They are very nice machines and quite fast. I am hoping you will explore the Pentium Overdrive option, it has piqued my interest but I haven't explored it yet. Cheers
Ga jij ook Windows opzetten? Ik raad aan Windows 3.1 en Windows 95 voor deze 486 computers.
I was working in a computer recycle warehouse these kinds of computer was really popular in banking industry. They were all send to destruction without testing.
Except for the face plate, that's basically identical to my old PS/1. Sure wish I still had that thing. It was neat.
These videos are very relaxing :)
Haha ... glad to hear that ... they are not always that relaxing to make :)
Have you got any tips for that 'baked in' dust? I've seen it on heat sinks before and I cannot budge it at all.
got to love MPC 1 based systems with a caddy CD-ROM
What was the white cleaner you used on the case? Seemed to do a really good job
Probably Cif, it usually does a good job on beige plastics.
Nice, a caddy loading CD-ROM drive. You don't see a lot of those, since they were a bit of a design mistake -- the naked discs simply weren't so fragile as to require them, and people quickly learned how to handle them in a different way compared to floppies. Plus if you had a lot of on disc software, you'd have had to buy a lot of extra caddies for your discs to make swapping them around less of a hassle.
I had that cd rom ! It came with the sound blaster pro 2 in a box.. memories :-)
I have a ValuePoint which is exactly the same as this one. It has a power saving feature in the BIOS which powers down hard drives after a period of inactivity. Is that what's going on here? I'd test the drive in another PC before saying it's definitely broken.
It did the exact same thing in another computer.
We used to pull those VGA pins out all the time to make it fit something, but I can't remember what.
You can try to rinse the board with soap and water then rinse with pure alcohol. Dry it for couple of days and mobo should be looking as new. Its a good idea to remove all socketed ic's and before drying you can blow the board with compressor... 👍
Some time many years back I found an adapter for the VGA that would let you plug in conventional VGA monitors (it would provide you with a port with all 15 pin-holes).
But it's a Western Digital hard drive, of COURSE it's dead.
pro tip, if you want a good board cleaning brush go to the plumbing section of your local hardware store and look for flux or acid brushes, natural bristles in a metal handle, cost peanuts, disposable and if they are too long cut them down a bit with scissors. Here in the USA you can get a 36 pack of them for $2.50 at harbor freight (or about 7 cents each)
edit also I have been known to take a hand held pin vice and a small drill bit to unplug holes on vga outputs, there's no contact behind it so go for ti
not esd safe
I think It's not original IBM PSU here. Thank you for the video!
Indeed it isn't ... Not really sure why it broke ... but I am really bad at fixing PSUs
1. Is this comment shown twice? I was commenting with my secondary account and it didn't show up on other Computers.
2. Please excuse me. I don't want to sound like a smart alec, but I believe the unpopulated place wasn't meant for a FPU, but rather a CPU. I counted a total of 196 contacts.
Some 486 CPUs came as quad flat packages with 196 leads. AFAIK, FPUs for the 486 were mostly available as pin grid arrays.
Here's a link, where you can find pictures of a 486, that uses this type of package: www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/80486/Intel-KU80486SX-25.html
Please let me know, if i'm mistaken. I could be wrong.
BTW, I love your channel. Your videos are amazing. Keep up the great work.
Will double check and clarify in next video :) thx for the kind words. And only saw the comment once :)
I had the 50MHz version of that range. It had the TSENG 4000 on board with 1MB video RAM and it was SLOW! Just above 1000 cps on LandMark. My slowest ISA version of this card managed around 2600 cps, my fastest ISA version of this card gets just above 6000 cps and I have a VLB version of that card that I can't remember how fast it was, but definitely five digit.
You even had to wait multiple seconds for the Windows wallpaper to appear (yes I use 1024*768 with 256 colors wallpaper just because I can).
The Valuepoint series had 'Type 1' (SIMM sockets perpendicular to the riser slot) and 'Type 2' (SIMM sockets parallel to the riser slot) for the mid-range systems - Yours is a 'Type 2'. Scroll down to the matching planar in this reference for jumper settings: ps-2.kev009.com/pcpartnerinfo/ctstips/a26e.htm
I was going to suggest the hot needle for the VGA port but someone beat me to it. I used that method on ribbon cables over the years.
Great job! Nice work!
Any idea why IBM marked their 486 systems as 466? I remember having an IBM PC 350 - 466DX2, which had 486DX2-66 CPU.
Probably because they had a 66MHz CPU? Sounds reasonable to me.
4th gen, 66MHz.
The blocked VGA pin is redundant, you can just pull/break/clip off the relevant pin from the VGA cable and it will work 100% fine, that's what I did with my PS/1.
I doubt that sound card / cdrom was installed by IBM. Even though the IBM with VLB could come with a sound card it was usually a Sound Blaster 16 CT2950 , CT1740 , or CT1770. With Panasonic CDROM. There where so many versions of the IBM PS/1 and Value point and it all depended on what store you purchased it from. Each store carried its on versions. I assume this was a marketing scheme by IBM. In USA there are about 10 or more different versions on the IBM PS/1.( desktops and towers ). Also the Sound card installed should show up in bios.
Even PS/1s were shipped with Sound Blaster 16s, the ValuePoints never had SB Pro 2s - it was installed afterwards for sure.
I think there originally was L2 cache installed, if you look at the socket the plastic tab thing on the left that you use to release/secure it is missing. If it wasn't that keyboard thing, someone probably broke it and it wouldn't stay in anymore.
Do you think it would be impractical to clean the motherboard with distilled water and a water pick?
with a modern card, i remember watching a video of a way to dial into a recreation of billion boards sites of the day. did u hear of this or interest in it?
“The first time I tried to start the thing, the following happened...”
* State Farm commercial *
NOOOOoooo! The humanity! Insurance ads! 😝
P.S. I love that chonky CD ROM drive.
Reminds me of my IBM PS\1 486.
I wonder if the original hard drive was ok in the first place, just not configured in the BIOS and shutting down as a kind of power saving measure. You should try it again and see if the BIOS sees it.
Bios did see it, and detected it as a 300mb drive but it kept shutting down after a minute or so.
Also tried it in another computer and same thing happened.
Why not just drill a hole in the VGA receptacle so the plug fits? Just a thought...
I have serious doubts that there is no way to clean that motherboard. Seeing so many restoration videos, There is something for everything. You just have to find it. There is always a way.
Giving it a soapy water bath with a soft anti-static brush would do wonders, then you soak it in isopropanol alcohol later so that it doesn't start to rust from the chemicals in the future.
if put really dirty PCBs in the dish washer, works great
Nice video! Are you going to put in new thermal paste on the cpu?
just after he uses rotary tool to remove glued heatsink :-)
@@rasz is it glued? I thought it was thermal paste 😅
it looks glued all right, using something akin to bathroom tile epoxy glue
Retry the original HDD on the replacement PSU?
I wash them in the sink and give a thorough rinse with deionised water and allow to dry over a few days.
Great video as usual
Very good video man
Nice . I have one of this computer . But i havent't the case cover or so (Gehäusedeckel) Of this beaty Computer. Techniquially it works fine.
hi i have the same pc and when i try to boot on my hdd (compact flash 256mb) its giving me J_ and nothing more apan to you have any fix ?
Figured you were gonna put the motherboard in the dishwasher!
It's got an overdrive on it!
AFAIK it is a standard 486 DX2 66Mhz but you can upgrade it with a pentium 63MHz or 83MHz overdrive CPU.
Ok.
I'm trying to find where saying numbers like "six point twenty two" comes from. It's that how it's said in your native language (Dutch?)
A lot of Americans say it that way too. In English we say "six point two two".
I have no idea why I am saying it like that in English ... I’m just winging it. As you might have already guessed I’m not a linguist by any means :) I try to say things that “sound right” to me. In Dutch it is also pronounced like that. And not six.twotwo :)
@@RetroSpector78 I think maybe Americans got it from Spanish, lots of Spanish speakers there.
i wait to see that caddy cd-rom drive, i do have one in my collection but is no name and i don't know if is iSA interface or something wrong with it because freezes the pc. And don't broke the pin,poke the connector.
Hey retro scene check your calendars, 80s/early 90s tech had its time, its time to focus on the second golden age of computing 96-2006, Voodoo ,Riva Rage... 3d wars, Pentium vs K series, Athlon the Pentium killer, the advent of OC with the first Celerons, you know fun times
I would have personally modified a "port protector" (Slimline VGA M/F adapter) versus modifying the cable or port.
Ironically, I think the PS/Valuepoints did in fact use MS-DOS rather than PC DOS. I remember using a 433DX of some sort Valuepoint and it had MS-DOS 6.x of some sort and an IBM-badged Windows 3.1.
why is it ironic?
@@BenState Because IBM had PC DOS - it didn't make sense for them to offer MS-DOS.
Ít looks very modern for a board from 1992/1993
18:35 Same BIOS as in my HP VL 486 and HP XU Pentium Pro. In both I replaced the HDD with CF card converters. I still have the hard drives stored/preserved but they can be flaky at this point in time and I prefer the lower power draw and no moving parts of the CF. Interestingly, in my 486 the CDROM is not even a BIOS option even though it is plugged into the Motherboard. It still works and is accessible despite the BIOS not seeing it or having options for it. There are also limitations with drive sizes. My 486 will not see any CFs larger than 1GB, however the XU with the same looking BIOS can easily access a 4GB CF. Any one know what this BIOs is actually called?
Stop ignoring that cool CD- drive! :)
where i can find AT motherboard cheap for intel pentium mmx and free shipping?
This Power Supply was obviously "adapted" ,probably because find and original IBM is nearly impossible today...
The main issue with this machine is finding 70ns memory with parity, otherwise it doesn't recognize on system BIOS...
It looks like there's a tiny sticker over the VGA pin on the mobo.
Throw it in the dishwasher man. I'm a convert.
Loved the HD sound as long as it lasted :)
I prefer Quantums for the sound.
This design is not my cup of tea sadly, except that sexy brown mainboard.
Quantums were too whiny for my taste, except for the rare 2.5" GoDrives, which died like flies when they were about 15 years old. WDs sounded nice, even if the head movement is a bit coarse. I really have to check what brand of hard drive my Compaq 286 has, I really loved that sound!
Some of the best-sounding drives are still full-height 5.25" behemoths, regardless of their brand. The sheer mass of the giant platter stack gives them an incredible spinup sound!
@@Ragnar8504 So true
What are the keys for? LOL: Instead of LOGIN there is a physical lock to prevent people from accessing the computer? LOL
Wow it still has keys 😮
Hehe ... brand new, never used.
Immersion into a liquid and scrubbing is only way. I like using soapy water and toothbrush, but that kills stickers. (edit) Or use a brush and compressed air! (editedit and not the only way, lol)
Do you rinse it with distilled water or use IPA afterwards ?
@@RetroSpector78 IPA then hair dryer... (edit) tho that sounds dangerous, not until after most of it evaporates!