As someone who works in IT for a auto manufacturing facility, you would be surprised at how many of those older mills, cnc machines, and lasers run off windows 95 / 98. To replace the entire machine would costs millions of dollars and these kinds of PC's are crucial to uptime and costs.
@@AaravShukla-oo9dj Depends; the host has to support raw passthrough of whatever port or protocol the guest software is relying on. Might be worth it to try, but I'm guessing there's at least some cases where the guest will freak out because it was expecting to e.g. run a custom PHY carrier over the serial port using a custom device-driver, while the VM software only supports exposing the host's serial port as an established link-layer device to the guest OS, rather than directly exposing the serial port's CPU IO-ports themselves for raw host-ring0 bit-banging. Also, sometimes the newer hardware you'd want to use, just doesn't even support the old ports / protocols. It's very hard to buy a motherboard OR pci/pci-e card OR USB adapter these days, that gives you 10-BASE-T Ethernet connectivity; let alone stranger standards like token-ring. Or even if you get a "SuperIO" (serial + parallel port) pci-e card for your modern machine, it might expose those only at a link-layer level _to the host CPU_ (since nothing on a modern Windows is allowed to bang bits into them on the PHY level anyway, for security reasons); so even if you custom-coded your VM software, the right level of support isn't there in the host to be passed through to the guest. And that's ignoring even more basic constraints, like needing to plug in some old custom ISA card. Ain't no modern (consumer) motherboard with an ISA slot.
I work in IT, different industry but yes I completely agree. In 2018 I pulled a 486/66 out of service in our warehouse. It ran some proprietary loss-prevention/inventory software and interfaced with a serial-driven barcode reader.
So i used to work there. If the owner is still Nicolas he was awesome. I remember building those computers. I did some crazy builds back then. They had some high profile clients too. Nasa ordered some, the government (basically all branches of it), the Smithsonian, Harvard, yale and so on. Good times. I even remember helping move that company to the location Austin picked up at.
I did, i learned so much there that it helped build my resume in career in tech. As a kid i taught my self on how to install linux, but working there i learned so much more thanks to being a part of their R & D department.
For a second I thought you said it was moved to "Austin" where I live. Austin, Texas. So I was hyped and wanted to see if I could get a tour. But nope. They in Cali :(
For a while I was in the market for building a "new" old machine, either XP or Vista. I wanted somewhat newer tech so it could handle games from the early 2000's up to 2011-12, but not so new it wouldn't be able to read older discs who's drivers were no longer compatible. I was pretty close to getting one when my grandfather passed. He's the one who really got me into building PCs and the computer I'm currently watching this video on was the last build I ever did with him. Now, this isn't supposed to be a sob story or whatever, just setting up the scene for how I found a delightful little gem in the attic. Being really the only person who could go through all his computer stuff and know what was what (Some things still elude me) I found the old yellowing XP machine we had growing up. We played old demo discs on it like the original Far Cry, and full games like Zoo Tycoon. It brought back a bunch of memories of that time, most of which I'd forgotten because I just have really bad memory. I didn't know if it still worked, it'd been sitting up there for the better part of 20 years, but I took it home anyways, opened it up, cleared out the dust and minimal cobwebs, and plugged it in. It booted up no problem, beeps and all. I found old photos and music my grandpa had saved and got them all onto a flash drive. Now I've been collecting all the games I had as a kid, plus the ones I wish I had (too young to be allowed to play) and have been having a blast. From Flight Simulator 2000 to the original Tomb Raider Trilogy, I've been spending hours just losing myself in the nostalgia. I want to upgrade it a bit here and there because the GPU is not the greatest from that time, but for now its been bringing me so much joy. So thank you grandpa for leaving such a wonderful gift, and thank you for this video bringing me hope that I can get an all new updated parts should something go awry, price be dammed. I'm always happy to support those who keep this tech alive.
Very touching story. Some of the oldest memories I have of computers is with my grandparents' computers, playing old games on Windows 95 and Windows 98. When my grandfather passed away earlier this year, I was able to get some of those older games back. And now there is so much nostalgia going back and playing them again.
FYI: Motherboards want +12v and -12v because they pass those through on the serial port (because RS-232 uses differential signalling on a balanced circuit; in turn because the initial use-case for RS-232 in 1960 was using the line voltage to power solenoids to physically throw around the typebars of an electromechanical teletype. The oldest TTYs didn't need a power cable, just a serial connection!)
I still remember the day I got my Compaq computer back in 1998, hearing the windows 98 startup sound was unreal, at the same time I experienced high speed cable internet for the first time, it was pretty epic back in 1998
I work manufacturing and automation it is really incredible to see how much runs on 95/98 systems still. This video certainly brings back memories though, and I think I need to lay down in a darkened room to get over the shcok that everything I used to play with/game on/build systems out of in my teens Austin now calls old.
It really surprised me to learn that XP was Austins first Windows. I'm not that much older (1988 vs 1992, at least according to google) and maybe it was caused by computer tech arriving to Poland later, but my first PC was running MS-DOS from two floppy drives. 5.25" floppy drives. It was a PC-XT clone, later replaced by 386SX with two 3.5" floppy drives (still no HDD) and a monochrome (amber) CRT monitor. I don't think our home PC had a HDD before we moved to Windows 3.11 (although most work and games was still done under DOS, as Windows was too heavy for the at most 32MB of RAM might have had). Then jump to Pentium 133 (with Win95, still occasionally running to interface with legacy hardware), Next I got my own PC (Athlon 2500+ IIRC?) that lasted until Uni and saw every Windows version until XP (98SE, Me, XP), then I switched to i5 3570k which still works fine to this day (running Win7, then 10) as my main desktop, although I spend most time on a 12th gen laptop now. In the meantime I had a Core2Duo laptop that saw Vista, Win7 and now runs Win10 as a fileserver, and a pair of 4th gen franken-laptops I built out of at least 5 broken laptops.
god this video was soo freaking Nostalgic! i was born in 1992 and had windows 98 as my first ever PC just took me back, i remember playing tons of minesweeper back then, and what other "games" i had back then, honestly kinda miss Floppy disks a little bit
now I feel really old. first computer was a C64, then a 386 PC with windows 3.1, a 486 with windows 3.11, then I got my first own pc with windows 95, then various upgrades on that machine, windows 98 SE, no windows millenium, directly to windows XP. then very long windws XP. and since then windows 10 and 11.
More than allergic to magnets, the static they used to produce I was nicknamed sparky as I used to turn on and off the crt fast to produce static to shock whoever was close to me lol Plus the satisfaction of degaussing the monitor with the screen shake etc 😆
Retro PC building isn't necessarily cheap nowadays (unless you find that diamond in the rough). This service seems to source components, test them and offer warranty. Which isn't exactly easy, hence the price point. Then again, I have no experience with them, and it could be bollocks. (sidenote: Having Austin explain these "old" technologies is painful. A 31 year old tech RUclipsr should have experience with this. But it's all new to him)
It is surprisingly cheap as long as you don't need or want a 3D graphics accelerator like a 3DFX Voodoo I/II/III card. The other expensive component is an appropriate SoundBlaster card with both Windows and DOS support. The rest of the PC can generally be bought or built under $100-150. The PC showcased here lacks both of these expensive components and a similarly specced build could be bought for $100-150 second hand without having to look too long. The real advantage is the fact that these parts are new and therefore statistically less prone to failure. I recently found a Voodoo II and a soundcard in a thrift shop and went down the rabbit hole of getting a Windows 98 machine to put them in. I ended up spending $70 on a full machine to just slot my two components into.
He is a bro dude RUclipsr that does tech occasionally. Why are you even disappointed? Also, you don't have to know old tech to be a "techy" or whatever you want to call it, I bet you can't operate let program in punch cards like in the early days on those "basic" computers. So what's your point
Retro PC building isn't necessarily cheap nowadays (unless you find that diamond in the rough). This service seems to source components, test them and offer warranty. Which isn't exactly easy, hence the price point. Then again, I have no experience with them, and it could be bollocks (sidenote: Having Austin explain these "old" technologies is painful. A 31 year old tech RUclipsr should have experience with this. But it's all new to him)
@@zackburkhart8693 For commercial purposes the new parts are definitely worth it, but that's not what I was trying to contest at all. I was trying to shed some light on the cost of retro PC building for home use. Informing that most of it is still dirt cheap, except for a few parts.
This is super useful in university and research lab institutes. Some of the super expensive devices that are bought years ago do not support new systems , or nobody is willing to risk million dollar device functionality . So acient computers are used for these as well . The stability is so important that these computers are not turned off ever
I remember installing Dune 2 (the best game ever!) from 5 floppy disks. It also had DRM in the form of asking you questions where the answer was in the manual. So if you didnt have the manual, you could sometimes not answer the question. If you got it wrong, the game would exit. Crazy stuff!
4:51 The one that Austin is pointing out is the parallel port (LPT1) not serial. Serial is the DB9 connector next to the VGA port 8:28 That video card should be 8Mb (and yes, it's "new" as in a new board and support components, but reused GPU chip)
Technically serial originally came on DB25 and had a ton of cool stuff on it's protobol, however not a lot of people used it, they only use RX/TX/GND, so they adapted the DB9 format, a while peripherals like mice had an adapter that people say its from serial to parallel, it's not, its the old RS232 format. Then for faster printing speeds they used the DB25 format for Paralel(RS485 usually)
I grew up with 3.11, 95, and then 98 (we got a new version every few years) and you didn't miss much other than a bunch of blue screens. NT/2k/XP were a breath of fresh air.
if i knew they was around many years ago, Had a use for some old systems like that. Some lawfirms and many manufacturing placed need NEW old systems like this to run, as you pointed out. amazing!
I miss the older versions of Windows so much. I can’t do anything at all with the newer versions. I grew to hate them with a passion because I can’t figure out how to move around or do a damn thing. They’ve made it way too complicated for my dumb brain.
I wonder how hard it is to update a computer system on a corporate scale opposed to buying new old hardware. I’m currently in business management courses for college so hearing the business side of the video was very interesting to me.
Some old devices and machinery require old versions of Windows to run their proprietary software since for one reason or another the legacy software won’t run on a newer version. Without any updated software, upgrading would mean replacing all of the otherwise still working old equipment with newer versions as well, which would be much, much more expensive than just buying one of these computers.
the 1st system I built was a AMD k6-2 266mghz, 16megs ram, CD-R 4xread 2x write, DVD read only drive, Floppy, with 2x 3DFX Voodoo 2 Diamond Monster 12meg in SLI. I miss that system. Was so cool, my 1st system I built. Miss those days.
Fun fact: NIXSYS was founded in 2002 as an IT sales and distribution company, with their side hustle being, as you can see here, building legacy systems for companies that didn't have the time, money, or resources to train their employees with new hardware. At some point, however, NIXSYS found that they were selling their legacy computers at such a good rate, in such a good market, that they just ditched the IT market entirely and focused solely on building legacy computers.
I was a IT manager at the department of chemistry at the university of Cambridge. One day I was chatting with the departmental X-ray crystalographer. Lê was lamenting that one of his extremely expensive spectrometers had been offline for 6 months due to a dead controller pc. And was stressing over the backlog he had. So I told him I’d take a look, it was a windows 95 box with a ISA controller card, he said the manufacturers only option was to replace the entire machine and PC. At the cost of some 200k+. So I cloned the hard drive and went and searched through our e-waste storage and pulled out a few similar era workstations. After some trial and error hoping for a comparable HAL and an old dell workstation (that the department literally had hundreds of)worked Dropped in the USA card and plugged it in and it worked. Left him with a stack of identical working machines as backups and a running spectrometer. I don’t think I brought a coffee for the rest of that year!
Our first PC at home was an Intel Pentium MMX, came with Win 95. Had CorelDraw, and played some classics like commandos behind enemy lines, legacy of Kaon and more
I'm actually very curious as to how powerful a windows 7 PC can be, like with the parts of that era, how powerful can you make it. I wonder the same with windows XP etc.
Really depends on when in the life cycle you're going to be picking from. Launch day or later in the cycle. Just as a quick example, nvidia still supports 7 on 30 series. Latest driver came out last year, but the latest security update just came out 2 months ago.
If anyone is curious, this type of business is specifically aimed at keeping old industrial systems working. This way companies can purchase new Modern Hardware, with old processors and old Technologies. This way they can keep their Old Mills and old machines functioning, because the software needed to run those machines only works on this older operating system. This also explains why the prices are so high. When you have an industrial Mill that can make you half a million dollars, a couple thousand dollars on a control PC is not a huge expense.
Really enjoyed the video. It was tons of fun watching you explore a Windows '98 PC for the first time! If you ever have any questions, feel free to reach out!!
Bob was so underrated for what it was I used to play with it like it was a game when I was 5-6 and it was a really powerful teaching tool for kids or people who couldn't computer back before a tutorial was so easily accessed (admittedly it is useless for anyone who knows what their doing in anyway)
Windows 95 originally didn't have USB support but it was added later. I had the disk version and it was on something like 13 disks. That company is super cool and providing really crucial machines, it's awesome to see.
Fun Fact : Microsoft actually still offered floppy disks to people who wanted it when they started making disc versions of their software. I believe that one of them was Windows 98 or one of the Office Packages.
Absolutely love the red PCB of that motherboard with the gold accent heat sinks,Looks so good! Im surprised the company that supply those machines still go with a traditional hard drive and not a small SSD or Flash card.
@@Keepskatin well that’s true, but the game Austin played in the video is more of what I was thinking, also plenty of old dos games that would be fun to play, I’m sure many games can be found online somewhere
I think I died a little at 5:28 "We do have a power supply. So this is a 300 watt power supply, but even this power supply is not a standard off the shelf component. It has a -12 volt rail. Which is not something that any modern power supply has." Most modern power supplies do in fact have a spec for their -12volt. All of which were at 0.3A As another bonus, Comic Sans was supposedly created for Microsoft Bob, but wasn't finished in time for it's launch and wasn't actually included?
The art of Microsoft Bob just sent so many memories for me. I remember my grandpa got mad because his computer only took 8" actual floppys not the new versions. Windows XP for life, how did you not play 3D pinball Space Cadet!
As someone who has used every major Windows iteration 3.1 onward, it should be noted that there are literally hundreds if not thousands of legacy PC games that will not (or can't) run on modern hardware or OS's; or are just forgotten by the gaming community at large. I own 3 retro laptops specifically to play old PC games that I can't play on a 64 bit OS. Laptops are way more cost effective for this purpose, but if you're trying to build a retro PC using new old stock (like this) you'd likely pay just as much if not more than what these guys charge, depending on your component selection.
Speaking of fast boot times, I can still remember to this day that my Windows ME system booted super quick; from completely off to fully ready for work in 13 seconds!
Austin - when you turned that computer around and I saw those PS2 ports and other colorful ports it was 1999 again and I was unboxing my Compaq Presario as a teenager in my mind - THANK YOU 💯
My first computer was H/P Pavilion with intel Celeron, 20gb hard drive, CD and 3.5 floppy drive. Windows 98. $1,100 my parents paid for it. The 17" monitor was $90 sold separate. I know it had a graphics card, but don't know what the specs were. I was 11 years old. AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy was the internet. Hearing the baud modem dial in, so annoying.
As a CNC Field Engineer, this is accurate. You have companies that have old CNC machines and robot running proprietary embedded software and are not able to run on anything else, but for the OS is was specifically written for. So companies like NIXSYS, are crucial.
There is a need for these PC's, i had it happen twice where old factory machines need a old OS and hardware , like this one CNC machine where it needed a specific cpu and speed for the program to run correctly , and factories will pay big money to keep old equipment running.
company I worked for at one time, used thermoformers that ran win98/win2k, the controllers would not work with anything newer and getting hardware for such is a pain, these guys are life safers.
My first computer it's from late 1997/early 1998 and it came with Windows 95 version B. It had the USB support and DVD playback built-in. It came with an Nvidia Riva 128 card with a mpeg2 add-in card for DVD playback. Later on I would upgrade it with an ATI video card for gaming , and to accelerate DVD playback without needing an additional add-in card. At the time, only ATI cards had the extensions to accelerate video, which my system needed for smooth standard definition video playback.
Watching Austin geek out over things like 8 disks to install software which annoyed the hell out of me in 96 is so funny. It has the same novelty as churning butter by hand.
I worked for a wood company which used an old win98 computer for a kind of CNC. When the pc died, I bought a new pc running windows 10, put a pcie card with parallel and serial ports, and run Windows 98 onto VMware with pass-through for ports and it works well since
I know Linus Tech Tips also did a video about the company, so I found it interesting to see Austin do one too. I still find it cool to see a small company helping support other companies who can't afford to upgrade their old hardware and need older Windowz (or even MS-DOS) releases and compatible hardware to run their software correctly because it may be hard to virtualise or emulate the hardware and it may be hard to find something like an old Advantech or VIA industrial PC mainboard or even something like a Compaq DeskPro or HP Brio or AST Bravo or Dell OptiPlex or IBM NetVista… I'm sure you get the idea. (10:52) Windows 3.1x and 95 supported up to Internet Explorer 5, Windows NT 4, 98, 2000, and ME supported up to Internet Explorer 8, Windows XP supported up to IE 8, Windows Vista supported up to IE 10, and Windows 7 supported up to Edge 109 (actually Chromium 109 in general, including Chrome 109), if I recall correctly.
Considering the industries I know that completely rely on a single computer or server that hasn't been supported in decades, the fact that this exists doesn't surprise me. It's a niche market that is really useful for industry folks.
11:48 You explaining floppy disks as though it's some lost knowledge just makes me feel old. I remember when 10 MB was a lot of disk space, and I did entire school presentations from a floppy disk. I had the original X-Wing game on floppies.
Austin starts StarCraft 1 and shows us a bit if the first Zerg Mission warms my heart Zerg was the first campaign I played as well, the whole idea of a swarm mind race was mind-blowing to me, until I learned about the Warhammer 40k universe I thought that Zerg was the coolest idea of a alien race based on Gingers design
Linus: "Oooh, someone making something very expensive for a very niche use case. Let's mock them!" Austin: "Oooh, someone making something very expensive for a very niche use case. Let's find out what they're doing, how they're doing it and why, and, whaddaya know, that's actually really interesting and makes perfect sense!"
I work in a factory and we just got rid of the last of our equipment that had old windows 98 computers recently. So I can see why they charge a premium for that niche.
Sure the win98 is nostalgic. I spent all my childhood in it... But as a person who spends a lot of time in hospitals with needles in my arm.. I'm more nostalgic about the veins in Austin's arm.. they are magnificent!!
I'm 33 now so 2 years older than Austin and I had Windows 95 and 98. Also they included the PS2 mouse and keyboard due to driver availability. For Win95 and 98 you had to install drivers for everything.
Ah, I miss Star Craft! Thank you for including that in the video. Kinda makes me wish I didn't get rid of my old Packard Bell machine. Anyway, carry on.
I remember in the mid 90's going to our local thrift store for spare parts. They'd have boxes of old video cards and IDE controllers. Of course now it's nearly impossible to find anything like that anymore.
As someone who works in conjunction with CNC, I didn't know it wasn't common knowledge that these machines run off of rudimentary computer systems. And people.
10:12 that's what the degauss button or setting was for on monitors hit or run that thing like 50 times and it would get rid of magnet smear 90% of the time.
That pc is really top tier for a windows 98 machine i remember our family computer in which i played starcraft and counter strike only has like 128mb of ram and around 10 gb of storage. I wish Austin tried to browse the internet using that machine.
WIN98 was my 4th or 5th computer upgrade (apple IIe, MS DOS 486sx25, Win 3.11, win 95, then win98)... It's hilarious to see you excited about something that wasn't even the first thing I used, and I aint that friggin old...
As someone who works in IT for a auto manufacturing facility, you would be surprised at how many of those older mills, cnc machines, and lasers run off windows 95 / 98. To replace the entire machine would costs millions of dollars and these kinds of PC's are crucial to uptime and costs.
I work in sheet metal manufacturing and all of our machines work off a combination of 98/XP
Question cannot we use a virtual machine for this window xp
@@AaravShukla-oo9dj Depends; the host has to support raw passthrough of whatever port or protocol the guest software is relying on. Might be worth it to try, but I'm guessing there's at least some cases where the guest will freak out because it was expecting to e.g. run a custom PHY carrier over the serial port using a custom device-driver, while the VM software only supports exposing the host's serial port as an established link-layer device to the guest OS, rather than directly exposing the serial port's CPU IO-ports themselves for raw host-ring0 bit-banging.
Also, sometimes the newer hardware you'd want to use, just doesn't even support the old ports / protocols. It's very hard to buy a motherboard OR pci/pci-e card OR USB adapter these days, that gives you 10-BASE-T Ethernet connectivity; let alone stranger standards like token-ring. Or even if you get a "SuperIO" (serial + parallel port) pci-e card for your modern machine, it might expose those only at a link-layer level _to the host CPU_ (since nothing on a modern Windows is allowed to bang bits into them on the PHY level anyway, for security reasons); so even if you custom-coded your VM software, the right level of support isn't there in the host to be passed through to the guest.
And that's ignoring even more basic constraints, like needing to plug in some old custom ISA card. Ain't no modern (consumer) motherboard with an ISA slot.
@@AaravShukla-oo9dj Is most people do not know how to work a virtual machine. They're also volatile
I work in IT, different industry but yes I completely agree. In 2018 I pulled a 486/66 out of service in our warehouse. It ran some proprietary loss-prevention/inventory software and interfaced with a serial-driven barcode reader.
So i used to work there. If the owner is still Nicolas he was awesome. I remember building those computers. I did some crazy builds back then. They had some high profile clients too. Nasa ordered some, the government (basically all branches of it), the Smithsonian, Harvard, yale and so on. Good times. I even remember helping move that company to the location Austin picked up at.
If you didn’t play Oregon Trail between builds you didn’t take full advantage of the greatness you were surrounded by. Lol
I did, i learned so much there that it helped build my resume in career in tech. As a kid i taught my self on how to install linux, but working there i learned so much more thanks to being a part of their R & D department.
For a second I thought you said it was moved to "Austin" where I live. Austin, Texas. So I was hyped and wanted to see if I could get a tour. But nope. They in Cali :(
Just FYI, the wide purple/pink port on the back isn’t serial, it’s a parallel port. The greenish port above VGA is a serial port.
haha i was thinking the same thing. old school but i did build windows 98 boxes back in the day and he did say he started in xp
Damnit you beat me to it. Thought I caught something😂 ... My late ass
@@trooom350 i feel so old i started 3.1 -Cyba
For a while I was in the market for building a "new" old machine, either XP or Vista. I wanted somewhat newer tech so it could handle games from the early 2000's up to 2011-12, but not so new it wouldn't be able to read older discs who's drivers were no longer compatible. I was pretty close to getting one when my grandfather passed. He's the one who really got me into building PCs and the computer I'm currently watching this video on was the last build I ever did with him. Now, this isn't supposed to be a sob story or whatever, just setting up the scene for how I found a delightful little gem in the attic.
Being really the only person who could go through all his computer stuff and know what was what (Some things still elude me) I found the old yellowing XP machine we had growing up. We played old demo discs on it like the original Far Cry, and full games like Zoo Tycoon. It brought back a bunch of memories of that time, most of which I'd forgotten because I just have really bad memory. I didn't know if it still worked, it'd been sitting up there for the better part of 20 years, but I took it home anyways, opened it up, cleared out the dust and minimal cobwebs, and plugged it in.
It booted up no problem, beeps and all. I found old photos and music my grandpa had saved and got them all onto a flash drive.
Now I've been collecting all the games I had as a kid, plus the ones I wish I had (too young to be allowed to play) and have been having a blast. From Flight Simulator 2000 to the original Tomb Raider Trilogy, I've been spending hours just losing myself in the nostalgia.
I want to upgrade it a bit here and there because the GPU is not the greatest from that time, but for now its been bringing me so much joy. So thank you grandpa for leaving such a wonderful gift, and thank you for this video bringing me hope that I can get an all new updated parts should something go awry, price be dammed. I'm always happy to support those who keep this tech alive.
Longest comment. Well done
@@Techlevel1534. You're welcome, always happy to give people browsing the comments something to do
Nice story. You’ll always have something awesome to remember him.
Very touching story. Some of the oldest memories I have of computers is with my grandparents' computers, playing old games on Windows 95 and Windows 98. When my grandfather passed away earlier this year, I was able to get some of those older games back. And now there is so much nostalgia going back and playing them again.
FYI: Motherboards want +12v and -12v because they pass those through on the serial port (because RS-232 uses differential signalling on a balanced circuit; in turn because the initial use-case for RS-232 in 1960 was using the line voltage to power solenoids to physically throw around the typebars of an electromechanical teletype. The oldest TTYs didn't need a power cable, just a serial connection!)
The ISA slot also provides -12V, which is needed by certain expansion cards, often sound cards and the like (because opamps).
I will do u
As a 40-something computer geek, this video brought quite a few fond memories ❤
Ive been craving a 386/486dx lately
Oh yes, this. I'm upper 40s and the innards of this computer reeeeally gave me flashbacks to one of the first PCs I built.
You said it! Those memories of being a kid and just poking around teaching yourself how to use different programs.
I still remember the day I got my Compaq computer back in 1998, hearing the windows 98 startup sound was unreal, at the same time I experienced high speed cable internet for the first time, it was pretty epic back in 1998
if you havent seen him yet, LGR is a great channel all about old computing.
I work manufacturing and automation it is really incredible to see how much runs on 95/98 systems still. This video certainly brings back memories though, and I think I need to lay down in a darkened room to get over the shcok that everything I used to play with/game on/build systems out of in my teens Austin now calls old.
Man I didn't know I had experienced the glory that was windows 98 before Austin did
Nothing was better than experiencing going from 3.1 to 95.
Man I didn't know I had experienced the glory that was windows 98 before Austin did
It really surprised me to learn that XP was Austins first Windows. I'm not that much older (1988 vs 1992, at least according to google) and maybe it was caused by computer tech arriving to Poland later, but my first PC was running MS-DOS from two floppy drives. 5.25" floppy drives. It was a PC-XT clone, later replaced by 386SX with two 3.5" floppy drives (still no HDD) and a monochrome (amber) CRT monitor. I don't think our home PC had a HDD before we moved to Windows 3.11 (although most work and games was still done under DOS, as Windows was too heavy for the at most 32MB of RAM might have had). Then jump to Pentium 133 (with Win95, still occasionally running to interface with legacy hardware),
Next I got my own PC (Athlon 2500+ IIRC?) that lasted until Uni and saw every Windows version until XP (98SE, Me, XP), then I switched to i5 3570k which still works fine to this day (running Win7, then 10) as my main desktop, although I spend most time on a 12th gen laptop now. In the meantime I had a Core2Duo laptop that saw Vista, Win7 and now runs Win10 as a fileserver, and a pair of 4th gen franken-laptops I built out of at least 5 broken laptops.
@@AlexPaluzzii'm old enough to experience dos and apple ii
you missed the best part of Win 98 by not using a speaker... the boot chime.
Interstate '76 was my favorite game back then. I also loved exploring Encarta Encyclopedia.
lol it's 2023 and i still have interstate 76 installed on win 10 and working on my force feed back wheel
god this video was soo freaking Nostalgic! i was born in 1992 and had windows 98 as my first ever PC just took me back, i remember playing tons of minesweeper back then, and what other "games" i had back then, honestly kinda miss Floppy disks a little bit
From 92 as well, I remember playing Age of Empires 1, my first game that came on CD, that was SO futuristic, in a P1 MMX with 128MB of Ram
now I feel really old. first computer was a C64, then a 386 PC with windows 3.1, a 486 with windows 3.11, then I got my first own pc with windows 95, then various upgrades on that machine, windows 98 SE, no windows millenium, directly to windows XP. then very long windws XP. and since then windows 10 and 11.
I'm a Trash 80 man myself
More than allergic to magnets, the static they used to produce I was nicknamed sparky as I used to turn on and off the crt fast to produce static to shock whoever was close to me lol Plus the satisfaction of degaussing the monitor with the screen shake etc 😆
I worked at a distribution center, and they were running old XP machines running almost everything. Always wondered where they’d get replacements.
Cool to see a mostly new build from that era! I vaguely remember Bob. 😄
Retro PC building isn't necessarily cheap nowadays (unless you find that diamond in the rough). This service seems to source components, test them and offer warranty. Which isn't exactly easy, hence the price point.
Then again, I have no experience with them, and it could be bollocks.
(sidenote: Having Austin explain these "old" technologies is painful. A 31 year old tech RUclipsr should have experience with this. But it's all new to him)
It is surprisingly cheap as long as you don't need or want a 3D graphics accelerator like a 3DFX Voodoo I/II/III card. The other expensive component is an appropriate SoundBlaster card with both Windows and DOS support. The rest of the PC can generally be bought or built under $100-150.
The PC showcased here lacks both of these expensive components and a similarly specced build could be bought for $100-150 second hand without having to look too long. The real advantage is the fact that these parts are new and therefore statistically less prone to failure.
I recently found a Voodoo II and a soundcard in a thrift shop and went down the rabbit hole of getting a Windows 98 machine to put them in. I ended up spending $70 on a full machine to just slot my two components into.
He is a bro dude RUclipsr that does tech occasionally. Why are you even disappointed? Also, you don't have to know old tech to be a "techy" or whatever you want to call it, I bet you can't operate let program in punch cards like in the early days on those "basic" computers. So what's your point
Retro PC building isn't necessarily cheap nowadays (unless you find that diamond in the rough). This service seems to source components, test them and offer warranty. Which isn't exactly easy, hence the price point.
Then again, I have no experience with them, and it could be bollocks
(sidenote: Having Austin explain these "old" technologies is painful. A 31 year old tech RUclipsr should have experience with this. But it's all new to him)
@@zackburkhart8693 For commercial purposes the new parts are definitely worth it, but that's not what I was trying to contest at all. I was trying to shed some light on the cost of retro PC building for home use. Informing that most of it is still dirt cheap, except for a few parts.
Love it when you guys play with retro hardware & software. Great Video!
Love it when you guys play with retro hardware & software. Great Video!
Am gonna do u
This is super useful in university and research lab institutes. Some of the super expensive devices that are bought years ago do not support new systems , or nobody is willing to risk million dollar device functionality . So acient computers are used for these as well .
The stability is so important that these computers are not turned off ever
Man, the nostalgia of the old components brought me back 😅
We’ve come so far in some instances but in some not.
We need a new version of BOB. People now don't know how to use computers bacause, they only use thier phones.
5:29 Love the “Sparkle Power ✨” power supply 😂
Ah yes, this brings back a bunch of childhood memories of playing StarCraft. It’s awesome seeing you including it into the video.
I remember installing Dune 2 (the best game ever!) from 5 floppy disks. It also had DRM in the form of asking you questions where the answer was in the manual. So if you didnt have the manual, you could sometimes not answer the question. If you got it wrong, the game would exit. Crazy stuff!
oh ya I had a game called starflight that did the same thing!
Am gonna do u
Master of Orion 1 did this also. Fun memories
I get there's a niche market that truly needs this, but for all other companies, stay as up to date as you reasonably can.
Gotta love the older startup chimes. 98 had gusto!
4:51 The one that Austin is pointing out is the parallel port (LPT1) not serial. Serial is the DB9 connector next to the VGA port
8:28 That video card should be 8Mb (and yes, it's "new" as in a new board and support components, but reused GPU chip)
Technically serial originally came on DB25 and had a ton of cool stuff on it's protobol, however not a lot of people used it, they only use RX/TX/GND, so they adapted the DB9 format, a while peripherals like mice had an adapter that people say its from serial to parallel, it's not, its the old RS232 format. Then for faster printing speeds they used the DB25 format for Paralel(RS485 usually)
Takes me back to the good ol days of playing Sega PC games back in around 2000
I grew up with 3.11, 95, and then 98 (we got a new version every few years) and you didn't miss much other than a bunch of blue screens.
NT/2k/XP were a breath of fresh air.
if i knew they was around many years ago, Had a use for some old systems like that. Some lawfirms and many manufacturing placed need NEW old systems like this to run, as you pointed out. amazing!
I miss the older versions of Windows so much. I can’t do anything at all with the newer versions. I grew to hate them with a passion because I can’t figure out how to move around or do a damn thing. They’ve made it way too complicated for my dumb brain.
You know what is scary. How much of our industrial, medical, and etc run and would collapse without a company like this making these legacy systems
usually older pc's the usb mouse and keyboard dont work in the bios.
I was a contractor for Microsoft on the windows 98 rollout team. Scuzz the rat was my favorite assistant with Microsoft Bob
I wonder how hard it is to update a computer system on a corporate scale opposed to buying new old hardware. I’m currently in business management courses for college so hearing the business side of the video was very interesting to me.
Some old devices and machinery require old versions of Windows to run their proprietary software since for one reason or another the legacy software won’t run on a newer version. Without any updated software, upgrading would mean replacing all of the otherwise still working old equipment with newer versions as well, which would be much, much more expensive than just buying one of these computers.
the 1st system I built was a AMD k6-2 266mghz, 16megs ram, CD-R 4xread 2x write, DVD read only drive, Floppy, with 2x 3DFX Voodoo 2 Diamond Monster 12meg in SLI. I miss that system. Was so cool, my 1st system I built. Miss those days.
Fun fact:
NIXSYS was founded in 2002 as an IT sales and distribution company, with their side hustle being, as you can see here, building legacy systems for companies that didn't have the time, money, or resources to train their employees with new hardware.
At some point, however, NIXSYS found that they were selling their legacy computers at such a good rate, in such a good market, that they just ditched the IT market entirely and focused solely on building legacy computers.
Tip for the video crew -- if you match your shutter to the CRT's refresh it won't have a rolling image.
When technology flipped. It did so fast that millions of old pc components were left on shelves and unwanted.
I was a IT manager at the department of chemistry at the university of Cambridge. One day I was chatting with the departmental X-ray crystalographer. Lê was lamenting that one of his extremely expensive spectrometers had been offline for 6 months due to a dead controller pc. And was stressing over the backlog he had.
So I told him I’d take a look, it was a windows 95 box with a ISA controller card, he said the manufacturers only option was to replace the entire machine and PC. At the cost of some 200k+.
So I cloned the hard drive and went and searched through our e-waste storage and pulled out a few similar era workstations.
After some trial and error hoping for a comparable HAL and an old dell workstation (that the department literally had hundreds of)worked
Dropped in the USA card and plugged it in and it worked.
Left him with a stack of identical working machines as backups and a running spectrometer.
I don’t think I brought a coffee for the rest of that year!
11:48 I have the computer game “Fievel Goes west” from 1991 and that still came on 8 IBM compatible floppy discs and took about 2 hours to install
Our first PC at home was an Intel Pentium MMX, came with Win 95. Had CorelDraw, and played some classics like commandos behind enemy lines, legacy of Kaon and more
I'm actually very curious as to how powerful a windows 7 PC can be, like with the parts of that era, how powerful can you make it. I wonder the same with windows XP etc.
F1 2016 supported Windows 7 and the recommended GPU for thay game was a GTX 460 (a 2010 GPU) so I'd imagine early/mid 2010's is your cut off there.
Really depends on when in the life cycle you're going to be picking from.
Launch day or later in the cycle.
Just as a quick example, nvidia still supports 7 on 30 series. Latest driver came out last year, but the latest security update just came out 2 months ago.
Who remembers putting in the DOS disk first then entering a command at the prompt?
If anyone is curious, this type of business is specifically aimed at keeping old industrial systems working. This way companies can purchase new Modern Hardware, with old processors and old Technologies. This way they can keep their Old Mills and old machines functioning, because the software needed to run those machines only works on this older operating system. This also explains why the prices are so high. When you have an industrial Mill that can make you half a million dollars, a couple thousand dollars on a control PC is not a huge expense.
Really enjoyed the video. It was tons of fun watching you explore a Windows '98 PC for the first time! If you ever have any questions, feel free to reach out!!
12:55 😂😂😂 had me fucking dying there with Scooby-Doo voice 🤣🤣🤣
The nostalgia 🥲 ‘92 kid here I grew up learning to take apart and put together systems starting with 98… love this
Bob was so underrated for what it was I used to play with it like it was a game when I was 5-6 and it was a really powerful teaching tool for kids or people who couldn't computer back before a tutorial was so easily accessed (admittedly it is useless for anyone who knows what their doing in anyway)
Honestly thats close to what it cost when 98 was in style
Windows 95 originally didn't have USB support but it was added later. I had the disk version and it was on something like 13 disks. That company is super cool and providing really crucial machines, it's awesome to see.
i have MS Office on 20 disks.
Fun Fact : Microsoft actually still offered floppy disks to people who wanted it when they started making disc versions of their software. I believe that one of them was Windows 98 or one of the Office Packages.
Office '97 and windows 98(IIRC)
55 and 29 respectively.
Thanks for reminding me of that nightmare from the early days of me being in IT.
They Didn't Do it for long.
Absolutely love the red PCB of that motherboard with the gold accent heat sinks,Looks so good! Im surprised the company that supply those machines still go with a traditional hard drive and not a small SSD or Flash card.
Possibly because hard drives are more reliable.
I don’t ever remember anyone ever having Microsoft Bob
I would totally pay the money for one of these computers, it would be the ultimate retro gaming rig
Only if you can find the retro games and premium retro GPU and CPU etc.
@@Keepskatin well that’s true, but the game Austin played in the video is more of what I was thinking, also plenty of old dos games that would be fun to play, I’m sure many games can be found online somewhere
I think I died a little at 5:28 "We do have a power supply. So this is a 300 watt power supply, but even this power supply is not a standard off the shelf component. It has a -12 volt rail. Which is not something that any modern power supply has."
Most modern power supplies do in fact have a spec for their -12volt. All of which were at 0.3A
As another bonus, Comic Sans was supposedly created for Microsoft Bob, but wasn't finished in time for it's launch and wasn't actually included?
Windows 95 also had internet explore because i grew up with Windows 95 as my first PC using a Pentium II 450MHz with a 4mb ATI GPU.
I'm only 42 and started building systems as a kid in 1992, and you're making me feel much, much older than I am 😆
The art of Microsoft Bob just sent so many memories for me. I remember my grandpa got mad because his computer only took 8" actual floppys not the new versions. Windows XP for life, how did you not play 3D pinball Space Cadet!
I assume you mean 5 1/4" inch floppies, because the 8" floppy format really wasn't used in personal computers.
As someone who has used every major Windows iteration 3.1 onward, it should be noted that there are literally hundreds if not thousands of legacy PC games that will not (or can't) run on modern hardware or OS's; or are just forgotten by the gaming community at large. I own 3 retro laptops specifically to play old PC games that I can't play on a 64 bit OS. Laptops are way more cost effective for this purpose, but if you're trying to build a retro PC using new old stock (like this) you'd likely pay just as much if not more than what these guys charge, depending on your component selection.
Speaking of fast boot times, I can still remember to this day that my Windows ME system booted super quick; from completely off to fully ready for work in 13 seconds!
61...first computer was a ibm 386 dx...windows 3.1...upgraded modem to a 14.4 baud...internet on floppy with the Mosaic browser...fun times...
Those prices are ridiculous though. I am shocked that tech this old would cost that much
Same considering I can buy a windows 10 pc from Amazon for $200 Australian, mind you the pc doesn't have a graphics card for gaming but still.
Austin - when you turned that computer around and I saw those PS2 ports and other colorful ports it was 1999 again and I was unboxing my Compaq Presario as a teenager in my mind - THANK YOU 💯
My first computer was H/P Pavilion with intel Celeron, 20gb hard drive, CD and 3.5 floppy drive. Windows 98. $1,100 my parents paid for it. The 17" monitor was $90 sold separate. I know it had a graphics card, but don't know what the specs were. I was 11 years old. AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy was the internet. Hearing the baud modem dial in, so annoying.
As a CNC Field Engineer, this is accurate. You have companies that have old CNC machines and robot running proprietary embedded software and are not able to run on anything else, but for the OS is was specifically written for. So companies like NIXSYS, are crucial.
There is a need for these PC's, i had it happen twice where old factory machines need a old OS and hardware , like this one CNC machine where it needed a specific cpu and speed for the program to run correctly , and factories will pay big money to keep old equipment running.
i still run windows 98 and 200 in my business the software we use is like 20 years old
company I worked for at one time, used thermoformers that ran win98/win2k, the controllers would not work with anything newer and getting hardware for such is a pain, these guys are life safers.
This really brings me back, first version of Windows I’ve ever used!
My first computer it's from late 1997/early 1998 and it came with Windows 95 version B. It had the USB support and DVD playback built-in. It came with an Nvidia Riva 128 card with a mpeg2 add-in card for DVD playback. Later on I would upgrade it with an ATI video card for gaming , and to accelerate DVD playback without needing an additional add-in card. At the time, only ATI cards had the extensions to accelerate video, which my system needed for smooth standard definition video playback.
Get the 8-bit-guy to show you how to sync up the camera. He is a MASTER of filming CRT
Watching Austin geek out over things like 8 disks to install software which annoyed the hell out of me in 96 is so funny. It has the same novelty as churning butter by hand.
I worked for a wood company which used an old win98 computer for a kind of CNC. When the pc died, I bought a new pc running windows 10, put a pcie card with parallel and serial ports, and run Windows 98 onto VMware with pass-through for ports and it works well since
This is awesome. Brings back lots of memories.
Austin: "It's like an emoji before emojis were a thing!
Harvey Ball: Am I a joke to you?
Those are hard disks not floppy disks. Floppy disks were made of vinyl and film
i dont care if youre first
I got a blue shell bruh
Second😊
2st
We love you...
You forgot the ‘
I know Linus Tech Tips also did a video about the company, so I found it interesting to see Austin do one too. I still find it cool to see a small company helping support other companies who can't afford to upgrade their old hardware and need older Windowz (or even MS-DOS) releases and compatible hardware to run their software correctly because it may be hard to virtualise or emulate the hardware and it may be hard to find something like an old Advantech or VIA industrial PC mainboard or even something like a Compaq DeskPro or HP Brio or AST Bravo or Dell OptiPlex or IBM NetVista… I'm sure you get the idea.
(10:52) Windows 3.1x and 95 supported up to Internet Explorer 5, Windows NT 4, 98, 2000, and ME supported up to Internet Explorer 8, Windows XP supported up to IE 8, Windows Vista supported up to IE 10, and Windows 7 supported up to Edge 109 (actually Chromium 109 in general, including Chrome 109), if I recall correctly.
Great video . What’s the song that starts at 3:18? I know it just can’t remember from where .
Considering the industries I know that completely rely on a single computer or server that hasn't been supported in decades, the fact that this exists doesn't surprise me. It's a niche market that is really useful for industry folks.
This is one hell of a nostalgia when I first tried playing a computer as well as the others I'm sure.
11:48 You explaining floppy disks as though it's some lost knowledge just makes me feel old. I remember when 10 MB was a lot of disk space, and I did entire school presentations from a floppy disk. I had the original X-Wing game on floppies.
Austin starts StarCraft 1 and shows us a bit if the first Zerg Mission warms my heart
Zerg was the first campaign I played as well, the whole idea of a swarm mind race was mind-blowing to me, until I learned about the Warhammer 40k universe I thought that Zerg was the coolest idea of a alien race based on Gingers design
Linus: "Oooh, someone making something very expensive for a very niche use case. Let's mock them!"
Austin: "Oooh, someone making something very expensive for a very niche use case. Let's find out what they're doing, how they're doing it and why, and, whaddaya know, that's actually really interesting and makes perfect sense!"
Ah Windows 98 such nostalgia :) I was 9 when our school got it's first Windows 98 machines and we got introduced to the internet.
I work in a factory and we just got rid of the last of our equipment that had old windows 98 computers recently. So I can see why they charge a premium for that niche.
Sure the win98 is nostalgic. I spent all my childhood in it... But as a person who spends a lot of time in hospitals with needles in my arm.. I'm more nostalgic about the veins in Austin's arm.. they are magnificent!!
I'm 33 now so 2 years older than Austin and I had Windows 95 and 98. Also they included the PS2 mouse and keyboard due to driver availability. For Win95 and 98 you had to install drivers for everything.
Ah, I miss Star Craft! Thank you for including that in the video. Kinda makes me wish I didn't get rid of my old Packard Bell machine. Anyway, carry on.
That Rage chip is a graphics accelerator, not a GPU. The two are different.
Now all the retro gamers are gonna hit up this place and make it more difficult for a business to source older PCs.
No, I still have a couple retro PCs from the early 2000s
I remember in the mid 90's going to our local thrift store for spare parts. They'd have boxes of old video cards and IDE controllers. Of course now it's nearly impossible to find anything like that anymore.
this is a trip down memory lane lol. I had a Windows 3.1 computer when i was a kid.
As someone who works in conjunction with CNC, I didn't know it wasn't common knowledge that these machines run off of rudimentary computer systems.
And people.
15:03 why is this a newer monitor
You know what i Wonder if you can go live on that pc 98 that will be good thing to test it ps the graphics are insane
10:12 that's what the degauss button or setting was for on monitors hit or run that thing like 50 times and it would get rid of magnet smear 90% of the time.
That pc is really top tier for a windows 98 machine i remember our family computer in which i played starcraft and counter strike only has like 128mb of ram and around 10 gb of storage. I wish Austin tried to browse the internet using that machine.
WIN98 was my 4th or 5th computer upgrade (apple IIe, MS DOS 486sx25, Win 3.11, win 95, then win98)... It's hilarious to see you excited about something that wasn't even the first thing I used, and I aint that friggin old...
Hearing someone say Windows 98 was a little bit before their time makes the ol' bones creak since I grew up on Windows 3.1.