Thrift Store Gateway FMN400C PC with a Dell AT101W Keyboard
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- Every time I go to a thrift store it seems that I get into trouble. I bought this Gateway FMN400C PC for the keyboard it came with.
This was supposed to be a short video. I guess that didn't quite work out either. The typing demonstration starts at 35:14 if you just can't wait.
Amongst the many things that RUclips feels compelled to produce pop up messages about, they have started informing me that something called the "tags" section has "been retired". I'm just waiting for the time when they decide to "retire" video uploads. :-P
I don't know if that means video tags or not. It let me enter them. In case they disappear later: Dell AT101W keyboard tactile click clicky Gateway FMN400c PC computer keyboard
I was working for Gateway's Hampton plant in the computer lab at the time this machine was built and I remember that these systems would either work perfectly or be a real pain. It had to do with how Gateway acquired components. They'd change vendors right in the middle of a production run and, even though they were supposed to be plug 'n' play, there would be hardware conflicts and customers would end up with a very unstable machine. This one must have been one of the good ones. By the way, I'm enjoying your computer videos, as I always do. Your knowledge of this old hardware is amazing. I used to do quality control on and top tier tech support on these very machines and I had forgotten most everything about them other than that they ran WIn98. LOL :)
I remember Packard Bell from this time period. Wholy sheesh.... what a nightmare.
***** LOL! Yep, that was standard procedure. If you couldn't figure out what was going on, send a replacement motherboard and hope for the best. I wasn't there for too long because I got frustrated with the mid-run production changes that would inevitably cause problems. They'd do that without sending the new parts up to the lab for testing. Just keeping track of the known issues was a nightmare. We usually found about it from customers who got crappy machines. We'd send out the original speced part to replace the cheapo substitute part, if we knew for sure what it was, and the company would end up paying for two of them anyway., they'd have never had those problems if they'd just stuck to the tested components on the original parts list. Talk about penny wise and pound foolish! :)
***** I remember doing tech support and someone would bring in one of those... and the entire world would scream in pain. Never before has anyone made a more poorly designed machine and still managed to sell so many of them.
Just out of curiosity, are you referring to Hampton, Virginia?
@@22408aaron Yep, Hampton. :)
I was a Gateway tech support agent from 97-2000, and that 90W power supply caused a lot of calls. If you tried to use the dial up modem while listening to a CD, it would immediately power off because the power draw hit that 90W power limit.
The product key on the side panel is the generic code for Windows 98 :) Works with all 98 discs out there.
Given that my PowerMac g4 of the same age of that pc can power a 1080p display and has 2gb ram it really shows that the windows pcs aged much worse than apples PowerMac as I can still use tenfourfox which is a fully up to date browser. Even for windows vista, you can’t get an updated browser.
@@itsmesb4399 eh thats bullshit, your mac is newer than that pc.
I ended up buying one of these keyboards based on this video, and I am not regretting it. This is a nice keyboard to type on, the alps switches have just the right travel and feedback for long sessions.
I paid about AU$65 all up, including shipping, which is not too bad for one of these given this current prices.
Totally agree on saving CRT monitors! I'm stocking up on a few They're surely getting rarer nowadays and will only get more rare I'm also saving CD-ROM or RW and floppy drives that work (particularly Beige or that greyish colour)
6 years of.
Boy were you ever right lol. I only this year found a decent CRT television for my NES,SNES light guns
I've also managed to build up a small army of floppy drives and IDE cd/dvd burners and Roms including some LG one's that should work with my LG external usb dvd/cd combo burner with lightscribe drive
@@JohnSmith-xq1pz 6 years later and yep. I have a stockpile of several large sets and about 9 smaller (less than 20") sets, almost entirely from the street or dumpsters. I have a pretty big basement so I'm able to.
Regarding DVD drives, if you have any LG GDR-8163B (or GDR-8164) drives, they can be flashed and installed in the Xbox original.
@@realgroovy24 Nice lol. You're lucky to have a whole basement I've only just a corner for my Retro setup, I'm putting together a little retro gaming retreat complete with a windows XP Pentium 4 "gaming machine" it's a recycle rescue Sony Vaio. A 3.0ghz HT Prescott, grabbed it mainly because no bad caps and it's pci/pcie x16 (unfortunately it's original DDR not DDR 2 but meh). Thanks for the tip. I don't think anybody the LG drives I have are those models but I'll definitely check just out of curiosity and to note that (I assume Xbox moders etc might be willing to pay good money for them?)
I'm actually really glad I stock pilled IDE Rom drives like I did, I haven't scene a decent one in awhile. Now if I could just find a new old stock IDE hard drive 250gb or better...
I have exactly one IDE usb external hard drive, it's new enough to be usb 2.0 and XP plug and play but old enough the disk that came with it has 98se driver's. Granted said drives aren't 100% stable but I'd like to hang onto it if I ever get a physical 9x era machine again (sadly only have virtual 9x machine's). Plus it's a nice external drive, metal shell with a stand and external power brick with a ground plug (It uses the same kind of power cord as a desktop computer).
yeah, CRT's may be big, but they just can't get the same color as LCD screens, I feel CRT's are crisper and have brighter colors
as always a great video and showing us how different parts of a computer work together and what the limitations are with the hardware all the best and I look forward to more great computer videos and audio videos as well all the best
The Alps switches in the AT101(W) are not as clicky as the Cherry MX Blue switches. They're more comparable to the Cherry MX Brown and Clear switches. In my school's computer lab there were some old 386SX Dell machines with Model M keyboards with the old Dell logo on them, as well as an assortment of AT101, AT101W (the W means it's equipped with the Windows keys), and QuietKey keyboards on the newer machines.
***** In my opinion, Cherry MX Blue's are great to type on due to the weight of the actuation force required to activate the key press and their tactility. The keys require less force than a Model M though, so if you prefer a heavier switch it might not suit your taste.
The only Celerons that I think are dreadful are the first one with no L2 cache at all, and the Celeron based on the Pentium 4 Northwood ...
They are very inefficient ... (The Pentium 4 Northwood based one is atrocious, whatever the frequency you are running it, the performances are the same ... And it's worst than a Pentium 3 based Celeron ...)
Every other Celerons are very good. Very Cheap, but very powerful for the price.
For the Keyboard now, I think the cherry MX switches are very good, but if you are searching a good feeling and a keyboard a little less noisy, one should search for a Cherry MX Brown Keyboard.
Now, I must know what you can manage for a words per minute count! That's some pretty quick typing going on right there, certainly faster than what I can manage, and I'm not a slow typer either. Quite a lovely keyboard, I must say. A definite thrift store gem!
The last time anyone clocked it, which was decades ago, I was at 90 WPM or so. I'm probably a lot faster now.
The 440 Chipset (BX) in particular was one of the mest intel made.
I had a celeron based computer on more than one occasion. The first one I had was an old HP system which I dubbed "Grunt" because the thing would grunt through anything I asked it to do but get the job done. It absolutely refused to die no matter what I did with it. What finally wound up killing that machine was moisture ingress into my storage unit which caused corrosion on the main board. There have since been several iterations of "Grunt" as in the Mk2 and so on. They have all been Intel 810a motherboards and they have all been reasonably stable and reliable. You could say I have something of an affinity for the machine you powered up in this video. Thanks for the trip down memory lane and keep those great videos coming...
I am a fan of the old school Celeron A processors, as they were equal and in most cases faster than the Pentium 2 and early Pentium 3 which still used the on card L2 cache. I was a big overclocker and lapper of those old Celeron chips, and while getting one past 500MHz took a lot of effort, they were just a fantastic processor with the on-die L2 cache at 100+ Bus speed. One day I really need to do a video about that. I still have my old lapped slot 1 Celeron 333a cpu and the Soyo 6BA+3 board I used to rocket that chip into outer space :)
I've had good luck with the Celeron in my Gateway (See my long comment above), but I never tried overclocking it past the stock 333MHz because I doubt the motherboard supports it (no jumpers for past 333). I seem to remember in some installs of Win98 it would recognize it as a PII.
I don't hate the northwood celerons. Yeah, their slow, but they where cheap! Their low end, but not egregiously slow.
Also, I think they are decent overclockers.
Now, the celeron d's? (prescotts and newer). Awful. Absolutely miserable. Probably used as an instrument of torture in Guantanamo bay by forcing the prisoners to use a computer equipped with one.
Boy, I love hearing the clicking of the keyboard keys on the older keyboards.
i must be lucky.. 3 computers, 2 cases, multiple cards, external HDDs and DVDRWs... ;) You are right, its amazing what people take from a thrift store. My Store knows me, and always lets me open the PC Towers. I've been lucky enough to pass on a few, just to old (i usually don't get anything pre-Pentium 2 or pre-PowerPC G3s). I keep an old White Switch Keyboard around as well its a Compaq PS/2 Keyboard (takes me back to my first PC, Compaq DX2-50 MHz). I am pretty sure that Keyboard could be used as a shield or self defense LOL! Sure they are loud but so accurate with DOS gaming, Even with modern machines gamers want switches :D
I visited the local Goodwill Technology shop and they let me into the PC even thought the signs were posted not to open them. I got a hell of a deal on a Core i3. The MOBO was beeping and wouldn't post! Needed new RAM, and found the first RAM slot was bad. Can handle 8GB RAM and added a nice video card + SSD. Great price to, around $60 :) That include the video card. Great new PC for the work shop and running windows 10. Will last for years to come as a media player.
I've probably watched this video no less than 15 times over the years.
Windows 98 security makes me laugh - brings back memories! Oh I don't know this person's password so just hit cancel to use their PC!
I want one of those Dell AT101W keyboards so bad but they're quite expensive when you do find them on eBay. You're a lucky guy, Bill!
I actually found one of those keyboards at my school.. shame that it isn't being rescued from middle schoolers.
The Dell AT101W's are nothing special to type on as far as mechanical keyboards go. In fact, I'd put them on the bottom rung, although they're an appreciable step above a rubber dome in feel. If you think the AT101W's are expensive, you're in for a real sticker shock if you ever enter the market for a good Cherry MX Blue keyboard.
Tobias Theebe You might be able to find one (Model M) on eBay up for approximately $35 + shipping if you keep an eye out and exercise a little patience. That would be a good deal, by the way. Honestly though, Model M's and Dell AT101W's are typically a lot cheaper than newer model mechanical keyboards that use Cherry switches.
Tobias Theebe www.ebay.nl/itm/IBM-1997-Model-M13-Clicky-Keyboard-w-Trackpoint-II-PS2-Works-Great-/291220602753?pt=US_Vintage_Computing_Parts_Accessories&hash=item43ce19bf81&_uhb=1
***** Keyboards that use Cherry MX Blue switches are definitely not hard to come by. In fact, they seem rather ubiquitous, though you'd be hard pressed to find one for less than $55. Is that expensive? Not to me, though I gather the previous poster (Tobias) may disagree. Prices generally hover around $80+ on the low end. As an aside, if you consider Model M's the be-all and end-all, I urge you to try an IBM Model F someday. They use capacitive Buckling Springs, and in my opinion the typing feel and build quality is simply second to none. Personally, I use a terminal Model F, which has 122 keys and requires a custom converter, but I consider it the creme de la creme and quite the battleship of a keyboard.
5:52 "I think this keyboard is going to be a keeper."
One might be inclined to say it's a key(board) keeper.
I love my Dell AT-101. Found it new in box at a Goodwill and I use it as my main board. It is to my senses one of the most pleasing to type on of all full size keyboards.
I love how you suddenly break out into a massive belly laugh every time you make a dad joke! :D
Another awesome video uxwbill. I remember this model at my first work place running ME and boy was it a nightmare. Keep up the excellent work!
Typing this on at101w, the perfect keyboard.. In use by me for 7 years.
No errors found.
In recent times I have had Three of the higher end Gateway Performace ATX Pcs from this exact design lineup and I loved them
Love the old desktops Thanks Bill
I personally really like the clicky keyboards.I learned to type on a typewriter where you had to actually push down the buttons with some force. When I got my first AT 2001 keyboard I loved it, because it reminded me of when I was learning to type on a typewriter. When I bought my first soft touch keyboard (ps/2) I absolutely despised it, bought a AT to ps/2 adapter and went back to my 2001 keyboard and still have(and yes still works)to this day. Got to love the click.
Would a person who is sad about not having a mechanical keyboard be said to have the "Cherry MX Blues"? :P
That's a nice Dell keyboard. I remember typing on a couple of those back in the day, but never owned one. Personally I'll stick with a Model M or (preferably) a Model F.
I do have a Gateway quite similar (at least in case design) to the one you show here. Mine does not have a reset button. The one I have is a bit more souped up, with a Pentium II 400MHz processor. It's decked out with 320MB of RAM, Windows XP, and whatever size hard drive I had laying around.
I've had this machine running 24/7 for about 6 years now as my print server. There are about 23 printers of all different kinds connected to it through a slew of different ports. There's a bunch of dot matrix printers (including an Apple ImageWriter II (using the C-Itoh 8510 driver), and a Citizen receipt printer), a bunch of old Inkjets (featuring HP Deskjet Plus, Deskjet 500, 600, 800, and 900 series printers, a Deskjet 1000 and 9300), 5 or 6 laser printers, 2 dye-sublimation printers, a few thermal label printers, as well as a couple of inkjet photo printers.
Print jobs don't take long to process at all, a very modest couple second delay if anything; usually more time is spent transferring a big job over the network than it takes for the machine to start the printer going.
A lot of these printers are connected via serial port! This machine had 2 serial ports onboard, as well as an ISA slot in which I've installed a 2 serial/2 parallel card, plus a couple serial/parallel PCI cards. Then of course there's USB, and a lot of those have either USB-->Serial or USB-->Parallel adapters. That gives me a grand total of 5 true hardware LPT ports, 8 true hardware COM ports, and countless others through USB emulation. It's really something to go to the Ports (COM & LPT) section of Device Manager and see LPT1 through LPT5, and COM1 through COM12!
Unfortunately I don't do much printing anymore so it just sits idle most times, but the choice of 23 printers was sometimes overwhelming.
I must say, the reliability of this machine has been superb. It has never gone down or locked up on me, ever. Guess I was lucky to get a machine not made on a Friday!
I've vowed for a long time to make a video about it, and I keep telling myself one day I will. I hope that day comes sooner rather than later.
Love that keyboard. Just purchased a clickity tactile keyboard for work . I love it
that's a clean PC, I used to work in a repair shop and often saw them come in with tons of dust in them. I did find an old Dell the other day that is very clean inside, it came from a business, I guess they must have had a computer tech servicing them every year.
That's a nice Win98 machine! I got some good mileage out of a Celeron system myself. My daily driver from 98 until 2003 was a self build Celeron 300A system on a (I think) 440BX chipset. Started with 64, ended up with 256 MB RAM, CDRW even a Voodoo3. It never missed a beat, but by 2003 time really had marched on. I have never had a system last as long as that one did, and it performed flawlesly until the end. I even sold the board, CPU and RAM just a couple of years ago for a reasonable sum of money. The 300A was infamous as being a nice overclocker - it ran continually at 450Mhz for all its life with me, 150Mhz over stock is a pretty nice "free" performance boost!
I love this guy!! I met a guy, who had a barn, yes a barn full of vintage computers he was giving away. I got as many in my car I could. The best was an old Dell and an emachine. I'm running out of room😂😂..love desktops. And old R and T series IBM laptops, which I have too many of also!
“This is the computer to have if size matters because that is one big window”
One of my favorite quotes.
Man I miss 98. Makes me almost want to go find a old copy and install it just for laughs
Really nice sounds to that keyboard. I miss those days when keyboards were load and clear when typing.
Grew up with NT Workstation 4.0 and Windows 98 Series II in custom-built machines; never a single issue, never gave in to failure. Also had a IBM PS/2 (with the famous Model M), and a Gateway (gut-way) with ME. Both the PS/2 and the ME were terrible flops, but they were hand-me-downs. Proudly running Windows 7 Professional in a custom-built machine.
Used to look down on the Celeron and Pentiums of Broadwell and Skylake.
But then I came across a Pentium 3825U with 2 Cores and HT and I am impressed, such a cheap CPU with such power,...
I find it funny that this computer is from 1999, yet it is not abiding by the rules of PC97. When that came out, they had standardized the color of the PS/2 ports to be purple for the keyboard, and green for the mouse. But the rings around the ports on this machine are orange for the keyboard, and pink for the mouse. I remember some very old Compaq Deskpro Pentium machines in my high school that were like this, and the plugs on the keyboards and mice were even colored this way. Also, the audio ports are close, but not the right colors. But that was in the PC99 standard released a few months after this machine was manufactured. Also, I am loving the built in game port on this machine. I think that was a luxury item even back then, though most add on sound cards included this. I remember plugging one into my dad's machine that even though it had built in audio, I wanted the game port for my joystick I had at the time.
I have a Dell dimension L733r with a 733Mhz Pentium 3 and it has an 85 W power supply.
so skimpy.
I had that same computer. (of course not my computer u have. due to me tearing the thing apart.) but I love ur videos, and glad we have you here to entertain us with ur knowledge and commentary. :3 thanks Bill!
Would love to get one of those Gateway machines from back in the day. That keyboard is also glorious! Just listen to that. Awesome.
Excellent uxwbill. Nice to see more computer related videos from you
(wow, You type fast mate!)
Watching this video on an Inspiron 9400 right now. The previous owner upgraded the ram to 2 gigs. It had a Core Solo T1350 that i swapped with a Core 2 Duo T7200 out of a Latitude D820 laying around that i bought for parts for my good one. The battery was completely dead, but to my amazement it charged. Doesn't take long for Windows 7 to wear it down even when in power saver mode.
I do miss those keyboards. They were *definitely* easier to work with. Back in those days, along with that kind of keyboard, I had a Packard Bell PC running Windows 95 with a 100 MHz Pentium processor, 8 MB of ram and a 4X CD-ROM player. It was a real screamer.
"military grade security"
lol i remember thos days glad when xp came about for more security except for home edition where all you have do is boot into safe mode and login as the administrator hahha
Steven Barber You can still do that with any XP computer that still has it's OEM install no matter the variant; maybe even clean installs if the person who installEd it didn't bother putting a password for the Administrator account during the setup process. You don't even need to boot into Safe Mode; just press Ctrl+Alt+Del at the login screen a couple times if it wasn't already the 2000-styled login box and put Administrator as the username and try logging in that way. If you're lucky, it lets you through. If not, it'll say the credentials are not correct or even as I've saw some computers do (and may be mostly true for business computers), the Administrator account is disabled and cannot be logged onto.
i also love the sound of my old IBM Keyboard :)
The Dell AT101 keyboards used Alps SKCM Salmon switches in the beginning, then after a while switched to the Alps SKCM Black switches on the AT101W to my understanding. those are in my black colored version of the AT101W.
Great video! We had a Gateway 2000 (still have it) back in the day with a 75MHz Pentium. It ran Windows for Workgroups 3.11 but was upgraded to Windows 95 (with Plus!). Both versions were quite stable compared to the PC's successor that ran Windows ME :D
7:51 I actually have a Gateway PC in this case with an AMD K6-2 Processer.
Back in high school, All our optiplex GX series 400Mhz P2 computers had those keyboards with them, along with all 19" Dell CRTs. the writing lab was full of these, and i loved those keyboards for doing paperwork on. Was awesome, good ol days. The optiplex units were not towers, they were the flat style desktop models. With Win NT4 as the OS.
Windows 98. Wow brings back the memories.
Saw a few Gateways like that with a broken power button. There was a front panel redesign that strengthened the plastic mechanism and made minor cosmetic changes to nearby features. Usually, one of the newer front panels could be found in the inflow of recycled machines, and swapping them out fixed the problem.
35:14 - looking away for a little while and see him typing ACTUAL WORDS THIS FAST! its amazing how fast he types - he slows down and speeds up, so cool.
I can't type fast but, on the keyboard I could make a world record.
I loved the old w98se, worked fine for me bill, but the second you installed more memory then you were in trouble :-(, no amount of messing with the registry fixed the problem of w98se hating it. Ntfs access was acheaved with an odd paragon driver.
The increased memory was for the dual boot to win xp.
Oh, that keyboard sounds like crickets playing with castinets lol :-))
Another great video! I love your computer videos :D
I have that same Dell keyboard! It is a bit noisy when you type. That Gateway is in very nice condition i can't find ANY computers in thrift stores. I like what you said about Windows 98's "Military type" security.
I've already waxed nostalgic about certain things on other social channels on the interwebz, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to do it again. ;)
I still love these little cases. My mom had a Gateway Essential 400c in one of these cases (400 MHz Celeron, Win98SE, and a whopping 32 megs of 133 MHz SDRAM). It ended up getting thrown out one week in late-2005. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it, just that it was getting a bit long in the tooth and too slow for daily use. I wish there was some way I could've saved that computer. With a RAM upgrade, I bet it could've ran Windows 2000 perfectly.
Most of the RDRAM systems Gateway offered came in white tower cases with gray bezels on the front. That's another Gateway case design I really like. Had they not made the I/O shield a part of the case itself, I'd consider building a classic gaming machine out of one.
The best find I've been able to get at my local Goodwill is an old Dell Ultrasharp 1703FP monitor with some cosmetic blemishes. It still works perfectly well, though it gets a little warmer than I would like in operation.
LOL. Windows 98. It's Lame Anecdote Time. Back in 1999 or so when I was around 11 years old, one of the malls near where I lived had a massive video display that played music videos, movie trailers, and game reviews all day long. I always thought they just used VHS or Laserdisc as the video source, until one day I saw that giant screen displaying Win98's Scandisk in all of its blue and yellow glory. I even heard a few people laugh at it. Kinda hard to miss, that wall of blue telling the whole world that someone forgot to click Start to turn off their computer..
Once Scandisk was done, Win98 started up, auto-loaded a bunch of programs, and started playing the latest Backstreet Boys video. Yeah, those were great days. :-)
Please keep making these videos I love the nostalgia
I definitely agree with your guessed production date, I have a Dell PS2 Keyboard very similar to this, that was bundled with a Dimension 4100 made in 2000, even though my keyboard is sadly not a clicky one.
Wow, talk about a nostalgia attack seeing Windows 98 again. The first computer our family had was also a Gateway (Gateway2000 actually), and it was another one of these similar towers, only difference being that it ran Windows 95. Also, that was some quick typing!
Not to be that guy but the Dell keyboard uses complicated Black Alps and not White Alps. If they were White Alps then they would click with a sound like Cherry MX Blue does. Black Alps are more compareable to Cherry MX Brown switches as they are both tactile but without the "click" at the activation point like the Cherry MX Blue or White Alps has.
I've recently discovered Alps switches myself. Always prefered Cherry Blues before but after trying Alps they are my new favorites. I have 3 Dell AT102W coming to me within a week, two with black chassis and one with white/grey chassis. Going to be awesome!
Nice fun video by the way. Your voice and style is nice to listen/watch to/at.
I like Gateways of this vintage. My parents had a 500MHz Pentium mid-tower model and my school district had nothing but Gateways (and even some Gateway 2000 machines) with Windows 98. The district used them until support ended for 98 in 2006. By the way, I don't think your computer videos could ever be too long. lol
With regards to the lined pattern on the display when you brought up the shut down options, I have seen that before with Windows 98 and flat panel displays. It doesn't always do it, but it definitely seems to happen with higher resolution panels.
Here's an extra history footnote.
Off the top of my head, the only home video consoles that used RDRAM where the PS3 and Nintendo 64.
I wouldn't be surprised if on the PS3 all RDRAM did was inflate the bill of materials, but maybe it was necessary as the PS3 loves LOVES it's memory bandwidth. Meanwhile the Xbox 360 and newer consoles (including Sony) use GDDR memory for the whole system. Basically, the latency on GDDR is "good enough" to be used for the CPU, but still supplies the GPU with plenty of bandwidth. It's quite the clever cost cutting measure.
Perhaps the PS3 kept RDRAM treading water slightly longer as even the very last revision of the PS3 still uses RDRAM.
RDRAM on the N64 was absolutely NOTORIOUS. It was so bad that loading textures from cartridge was faster then loading from ram. You also have folklore and legends about it's contents still persisting for quite a while after fully turning the console off.
Yess A new awesome episode of cool computers! My night is has become epic
same here,Bill.Friday night,I started getting that tickle in my throat and coughing and yesterday and today I have been congested,and downright sick....
If you do shift+restart on Windows 8.1 some special thing will happen: you will enter in some type of recovery (it gives some options: continue to Windows, shut down computer , boot from cd,dvd,usb and recovery options) and also it runs programs that you are put in startup folder (if you choose continue to Windows)
I found a black Dell AT101W in my friend's basement, it had a bunch of dead switches but after salvaging the more useless switches and re soldering them to the keys that needed to be replaced I got one hell of a good keyboard for free, I removed the plastic housing for the keyboard so as to make it more of a low profile solution but it serves me well as a typing keyboard on one of my machines, made even better by its price tag of 0$
I have a Gateway select that looks quite similar, was outfitted from the factory with 384 MB (I think) of RAM, 40 GB IDE hard disk, IDE CD writer and IDE DVD drive, AMD Athlon, Win 98SE, Sound blaster Live!, 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000G AGP with the S-Video out, Conexant softmodem (ew), and realtek 100Mbps Ethernet card. Had three USB 1.1 ports on the mobo. Very nice unit, no complaints since I got it other than having a hole where the power button used to be and having to poke around with a screwdriver to find the plastic nub that is under the "button" normally to turn it on. Works very well as a retro gaming PC.
The Athlon runs at a blazing 750MHz BTW ;)
When you blew the duster i could still smell the bitterant.
I loved the 440 chipset. It had a decent life, and was very expandable. Intel rewrote the bios many times. Making it very capable of handling more memory, and the ability to handle 133mhz memory. Very versatile, Socket 1, socket 7, and pga 370, it stayed around for a good long time.
I actually had a genuine original IBM Model m about 10 years ago that my science teacher gave us with the computer we built, I threw it out in the bin, I know terrible but that was before I knew how good it was.
My firs computer that I actually had for myself, besides our Olivetti, was an ex-business AMD Athlon 550, running Windows 2000, and I agree with you about the good reliability of that version of Windows. Even with the 96mb ram it had it was fairly nippy enough.
It had A Tseng Labs ET6000 compatible graphics, it was a Hercules card when I investigated inside the case eventually. Strangley it had a Samsung made 300W PSU, well it wasn't Samsung probably, still kinda excessive for the application. otherwise it was a pretty basic business grade machine, it wasn't a name-brand computer, it must've been custom built for the bank it came from by the IT dept or something, came with a Compaq 17-inch monitor, lasted me till 2005 when I built my own PC.
I grew up with one of those "never obsolete" emachines etowers. The 333id in particular. It boasted a Celeron 333MHz, 64 MB of RAM, later upgraded to 128, a 4 gig hard drive, and Windows 98 first edition. Certainly nothing special, but at the time, it worked ok for its use.
Man, you must have a huge hardware collection. Have you thought of trying to build some kind of PC hardware museum?
Here we don't have this kind of thrift stores, so it's not easy to get old hardware, besides I don't have so much space as you seem to have, so... i merely have just 3 PC's.
Anyway, nice videos, keep up with them, congrats! :)
When you said about the joke I put 2 and 2 together immediately. Gave me a good laugh
I have a Gateway 2000 similar to this running WIndows XP sitting in my attic. The power button broke, but it was overall a reliable computer back then!
This video is very relaxing.. I used to work on such computers. You typing in the end was a treat... Let's see a millenia do THAT! Lol
I have a similar computer in my in my basement. It's a Gateway that has an Intel Celeron CPU and came pre-installed with Windows 98. The only major difference is that the case on this one is two or three inches taller. One disk dive on the top and a floppy drive beneath that. The bottom slots where the drives are on yours are empty and a side panel opens for access.
I don't have any comment to leave here about this particular video, but I am wondering if you can tell me/us or show on a video a quick thing. Since you have tons of great working computers, witch one do you use the most, by the most, i mean, witch computer do you use to render and upload this awesome content you are providing, at least to me.
Btw, I've watched the last video about computers (1h and 25min) with any problems, i was enjoying it so much that I've lost track of the time. Keep the good work!
***** You could almost do a new video series haha "Pool Table Computer Electronics' hahaha, great video as always
McLaughy. That gave me a chuckle.
win 95 and 98 were not that bad...back then.. i used a win95 upgrade from win311 for work groups on a acer acros 486-25 and never had a problem, never... then i used win98FI on a dell dimensions xps t700r with a pentium3 slot1 700mhz that i still have and use. i still use PC PaintBrush, i goof around with images, do fun stuff with them, i worked out the kinks on the USB and flash drives or the mass storage problem, and then transfer them on to my newer pc.. and its been cool sailings... so thank you bill for the fun video...
I've gotten some good deals and some fairly pointless deals at thrift stores. While on an RV trip, I found a $40 Compaq Deskpro EN with an 833mhz PIII. I also found a Gateway desktop for eight dollars that I think used to be a gaming machine, with a nearly untouched copy of Windows XP on a 250GB hard drive, all for eight bucks because the power supply was disconnected and the RAM needed reseating. And of course, the countless broken Dells that ended up either limping or not working...
I watched the Video Thoroughly, But did I miss a part where you said it was a Pentium II ? I noticed towards the beginning you Did state it was a Celeron / Celeron Badge and its a 400C, But has anyone seen that Under System Properties it states its a Pentium II ?
I recently found a Dell AT101W at a local thrift store for 4 bucks. It was really dirty when I got it, but hopefully it'll clean up well. That keyboard feels nice. Probably not as good as my Unicomp Ultra Classic, but still, a nice keyboard.
One thing I will say about branded PC's Bill is, OK they might've been abit offbeat about their design and engineering aswell as quite locked in when it came to being compatible with certain stuff, manufacturers generally did design the cases, even thought most of em were beige LOL to be quite aesthetically pleasing, atleast to my eye when compared to your average home built job, and they put wee touches in like places to put your portable stuff on top, connectors in convenient places, and they usually had nicely molded front panels on them even if that didn't do the upgrader much good.
The real issue with branded computers I think is that when it came to the fundamental stuff PSU, motherboard, all the ancilliaries stuff, they tended to cheap out alot, so even if the PC had decent specs (though you could certainly have built a better one most of the time cheaper), the bones weren't always strong as they had to build thiings down to a price, especially the consumer stuff as you prob know all too well.
Which is a shame cause that meant that all the little custom fellas made better stuff and that might've been good for them I agree, but it lost jobs when the bigger players got stuffed.
Not the giants like Dell and HP but the Gateway's, Packerd Bell, (Tiny, Time computers over here in Britain), err let's see dozens of other brands that actually could make some very distinctive models (think there was a Disney themed one at some point prob eMachines or somebody else made it).
But ye get what I mean, it was too focused on specs and price, and not enough on the User experience and personalization, bit like what Apple was soo successful with the iMac for, and that was just one machine but then they were in a very unique place with Steve Jobs way of doing things at the time.
But other brands could've put abit more into that kind of thing instead of making the same beige box as everybody else, differentiating themself abit more.
Of course they were limited by the technical limits of hardware design they had and the constraints of Windows itself but they could all have still came up with compelling reasons to buy theirs if they'd concentrated on something unique that made their PC's special.
The first computer I ever used was Gateway with a similar case style to this one, except it was a mid-tower and had at least one more 5.25" drive bay. I think the exact model of the machine was GP7-500. It ran Windows 98SE and I used it until my freshman year of high school when I got an Asus Eee PC running Windows XP as a Christmas present.
In 99/00 my brother had ordered a brand new Gateway Essential 566c that came in that same case. It was the 566MHz Celeron, I don't remember the memory, I want to say 128 or 256, he spent way too much on the computer. He ordered his with a DVD Rom and a CD-RW, so it's possible that's a factory CD-RW. But we did find out years later that since it was a socket 370, we were able to put a P3 866 in it.
I gotten some really good gear from my local goodwill. Lots of color lasers for $2.00, old dell optiplexes for $5, dell pocket PC's for $15, very nice LCD monitors for 50 cents.
I like to put threadlocker on those port screws (though, with sufficient torque on the attached cable's retaining screws, threadlocker is moot anyway). Worse, IMO, is the modern manufacturers who elect to leave them off entirely.
I like your videos they are very educational and entertaining
The end of the video seems to be a classic day in the office in the days of Windows 9x. Got some refreshments, your classic clickity keyboard and good ol 98 on either Wordperfect or Word 97. Good times. However it would be cool to see you do a video dedicated to Windows 3x and machines dedicated to their cause. Like Windows for Workgroups 3.11. That is one of my all time favorite Windows flavors, even though it was just a GUI over DOS technically.
I never had a problem with 95, 98 ME, or plain 98 crashing. The ME (dual booting with 2000) is on an eMachine my wife gave to me for Christmas years ago. I don't use it much these days, but ME did not deserve the bad press received from my experience. I did replace the eMachine PS with another odd one. I used that ME machine every night at home playing with software. During the day, I used 95 daily with Exceed to connect to Solaris UNIX writing SGML turbine engine maintenance and overhaul manual data. I would have liked that clicky keyboard to annoy my work neighbors. :-)
If memory serves me, RDRAM was an exclusive to Intel. I seem to remember Intel was deep in bed with RAMBUS back in the day, I think Intel had a hand in the design, and shared patents, might be mistaken about that but that was the reason Intel chose to produce the i850 chipset for the early 423 P4 for RDRAM only. Then they tried to force the ram "standard" on the P3 chipsets. Lousy benchmarks of RDRAM with anything less than the 800-40ns and an extreme price compared to SDRAM really sent people to AMD.
I had a customer who needed to upgrade his PC that had RDRAM in it. Guy had to pay like $100 more for the whole thing just because of the extra cost of those BS RAM chips. If it was DDR, he'd only have to pay $40.
QuietKey's one of the better 'rubberdome mushboards.' Also, you could OC an older Celeron to the point that it became competitive with the higher-end chips of the day, as is especially apparent with the Mendocino-core chips.
I actually like the sound of those old keyboards.
I have seen two non-functional power buttons on gateways. Fixed them both with a little bit of tape to extend the actuator of the power button.
The reason why I never cared for the Intel Celeron is because I used to have a Dell Inspiron 1100 with a 2.4GHz Northwood based Celeron. That processor was decent, but it really wasn't up to much, especially later on in its life when I used it for RUclips. And it always, always ran hot, but that's probably because somebody had the bright idea to put desktop Pentium 4s and Celerons in laptops.
I did use Windows 95 and 98 a little bit. I remember it being far too easy to really make a mess of the operating environment, and I always hated dial-up internet, ain't nobody had time for dat. It's a good thing that TV was much better back then!
That was some fast typing! Wow!
UXWBill, if you’re interested in ALPS style switches; I recommend you see what Matias have to offer. They produce the only modern clone of ALPS switches, a cloned and slightly altered version of ALPS simplified white switches. The design of their boards is reminiscent of the early 2000s Apple USB Keyboard which may or may not be to your taste. The key feel isn’t up to that of a Model M or even complicated white ALPS or the holy grail blue ALPS but it’s leagues better than any of Cherry’s fairly dismal offerings.
Leo.