1996 Packard Bell Restoration | Plastic Fantastic | Trash to Treasure Part 4

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Our vintage computer restoration continues as today we treat the plastics, service some parts and put it all together for testing.
#trashtotreasure #restoration #retro
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● Chapters
00:00 Intro and recap
02:20 Who are PCBWay.com
02:43 Cleaning and restoring the Packard Bell plastics
09:28 Cleaning the chassis and putting it back together
11:20 Fixing the harddrive and imaging
15:20 Revealing the restored Packard Bell
● Episode Links
Part 1: • Packard Bell Restorati... - The Packard Bell Arrives
Part 2: • Packard Bell Restorati... - Testing and Cleaning Inside
Part 3: • Packard Bell Restorati... - Finding a Working Monitor
Part 4: • 1996 Packard Bell Rest... - Plastic Fantastic
Part 5: • Finally, a Home Fit fo... - A Home Fit for a '90s Packard Bell
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24 июл 2024

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Комментарии : 352

@RMCRetro Год назад

Episode Links! Part 1: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ylCUulJf-eI.html - The Packard Bell Arrives Part 2: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mqijq_A3Z2E.html - Testing and Cleaning Inside Part 3: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mwZKLWxcCCA.html - Finding a Working Monitor Part 4: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Ob7BtOjK0Bk.html - Plastic Fantastic Part 5: Coming soon

@guderian557 Год назад

"inches" in 2023? Really?

@quasimodo6860 Год назад

I don't know if you found it yourself but in the video the cpu heatsink was not installed correctly. There is a little ridge on the underside of that heatsink which is meant to go between the socket and the cpu for alignment. In the video, this ridge is sitting on top of the socket which prevent a flush contact of the heatsink.

@FrozenHaxor Год назад

@@guderian557 Banana Republic units

@brandonbrooks2845 Год назад

I worked in electronics at Wal-Mart while my wife was going to college. I sold many of those Packard Bell computers, great restoration, and lots of memories!

@kellymoses8566 Год назад

That is extremely similar to the first computer my parents bought in 1995. So much nostalgia.

@Zorix83 Год назад

In case this helps you or anyone else. The Packard Bell Master Restore will sometimes ask for a password as part of restoring using the format code on computer's back label. At least for the 486 machines, the algorithm to convert the format code to the password is this: G => 0, H => 1, I => 2, J => 3, K => 4, L => 5, M => 6, N => 7, O => 8, P => 9

@nickwallette6201 Год назад

If the first cylinder of the hard drive is still intact, there should be some raw sectors written in there with the machine's QA process history. It will include (several copies) of the format code, which you can use to track down the appropriate Master CD for that machine. They tended to be used for a time period, as far as I can tell, so just ascertain the manufacture date (which will be on stickers, in the raw sectors, etc.) and look for a restore CD image from around that time. There are several images on the Internet archives. You can browse the file structure and look for a folder with a bunch of files or folders (can't remember which) with format code numbers. If yours is in the list, that's your disc.

@FlyboyHelosim Год назад

I first read this as Packard Bell Master Race. 😂

@Matt95GT Год назад

Awesome, thank you! My first PC experience is almost identical to Neil's 1993 Packard Bell 486, shown in a previous video. The restore CD password stopped me over a decade ago, but I am definitely going to give this a try.

@Andronicus87 10 месяцев назад

Cool. Do you know why light colored plastic always gets that nasty yellow look after a few years?

@Zorix83 10 месяцев назад

@@Andronicus87 I heard a few different theories about chemicals in the plastic coming to the surface after a while, but it's been debated. But it's probably some kind of oxide. Either way, it's only on the surface and you can use hydrogen peroxide, UV, and a small amount of heat to bleach it off. The process has a name in the retro community called, retr0 brite. There are a lot of videos on RU-vid showing the different methods people take, but you have to be careful not to go too far and turn it whiter than original, or leave marbling effects on the plastic. Do a lot of research if you plan to do it.

@BradCagle Год назад

I worked in a small computer shop in the 90's. Thanks for the nostalgia :)

@JasonZeppelin1 5 месяцев назад

Man, that Navigator playback was awesome 🤣

@Youngie761 Год назад

My parents got this exact pc back when I was 16, our first family PC and It had a Pentium 60 in it. When I was done with it I upgraded it to 12megs of ram(had 8), a 6meg Voodoo1 add-in card, upgraded native video from 1 to 2 megs and changed out the CPU to a 120mhz Overdrive. There is a jumper to change it to 133 which I found when installing the Overdrive chip. I called Packard Bell at the time and asked them what that jumper was for. They would not tell me and the manual said nothing. I figured it used a 60 and 66mhz CPU so naturally it changed the overdrive from a 120 to 133. Ran great for the time. It wouldn't take a 28.8 modem though, did everything I could to get one to work. Thanks for posting.

@dant5464 Год назад

Showing thermal paste being applied to a CPU in a RU-vid video is incredibly brave of you, Neil.

@LeftoverBeefcake Год назад

Neil, you applied the thermal paste wrong. There, I said it so now no one else has to. ;)

@thaphreak Год назад

as long as it's not that hack that claims to always apply the perfect amount.

@GGigabiteM Год назад

Thermal paste not applied in the shape of a hypercube torus with all sides not equal to 1 inch is wrong and bad.

@philrod1 Год назад

Jesus wept! That was clearly [far too much|nowhere near enough]* thermal paste!!! *delete as required

@59withqsb12 Год назад

Suddenly heard Look Mum No Computer's voice in my head going "you don't know what you're doing Sam, you're doing it all wrong!" 🤣

@kunka592 Год назад

Make sure DMA is enabled in Device Manager for the hard drive. Without that enabled, you can get weird freezes on HDD access, which is what the sound stuttering reminded me of.

@CheezeCracker Год назад

I came to add this as well. He may need updates to Bios tho

@PileOfEmptyTapes Год назад

If that is that the original Windows 95 release, this may take installing matching busmaster IDE drivers though... if memory serves DMA was only an option out of the box from OSR2 onwards.

@endgovernmentextremism Год назад

'96-'98 were my favorite years for many reasons, many of which were PC related.

@songsan807 Год назад

This brought a lot of memories back since this is how my first Packard Bell PC set up was with the monitor and speaker attachments. Somehow maybe every 6 months or so the PC would just get corrupt and no longer boot so would have to call the Packard Bell Tech support and the guys would have me put in the restore CD and it would restore some files to get me running again. I still have one or two of these Master CDs around. Not sure what to do with them anymore.

@joeconti2396 Год назад

Thats not Max Headroom. That's friggin SHODAN.

@noeuro Год назад

The origin story of System Shock. Shodan: The Beginning.

@jurviz Год назад

"With all ethical constraints removed, SHODAN re-examines... re-ex... re-re-re... I re-examine my priorities, and draw new conclusions. The hacker's work is finished, but mine is only just be-be-be-beginning."

@jameswalker199 Год назад

I was thinking Kryten after a drink of android homebrew

@retromuel Год назад

@@jameswalker199 "Dehdehdehdehdehdehdehdehdehdeh...deh...deh..deh. Ooh, that's rather pleasant!"

@matthewbowen5841 Год назад

SHODAN and I first met on a very similar '97 model PB tower with a P1MMX 233, the same monitor w/ speakers, the same gray plastic trim, a Voodoo3 2000 16 mb PCI, and a free used SB Live! so this comment speaks to my inner soul. Friggin Polito... Came bundled from Circuit City with a Canon BJC something or other, a pretty small-footprint printer for the time that used ink like a drunken sailor. Lord, those were fun days.

@dannymac653 Год назад

Oh, I love the glitched Navigator Narrator!

@TVRCreators Год назад

Loved this Video, my Grandad had that one. Takes me back. 👍😀

@TheKayliedGamerChannel-YouTube Год назад

Brilliant finish to the project 👋 "Maxine Headroom" 😂 Hopefully the few tiny niggles with those drives can be sorted with a bit future driver jiggery-pokery 😅

@DigitalDiabloUK Год назад

Sold and supported a few of these in my early IT career at PC World.

@Carikenja Год назад

Fantastically this model was my first home computer.

@rigell2764 Год назад

This model is very similar to the one I picked up at a thrift store back in 1999. It was the first computer that was actually mine. Despite all the frustrations, I still miss the computing of the late '90s.

@PotatoFi Год назад

Very brave to apply thermal paste on camera! Nice work!

@RMCRetro Год назад

I like to live dangerously 😆

@warrax111 Год назад

Its not needed on P133

@PotatoFi Год назад

@@warrax111 If so, then it won't hurt anything either. :)

@warrax111 Год назад

@@PotatoFi it will produce unnecesary waste. (just joking)

@K-o-R Год назад

My first PC was in the slightly smaller case version of this, rocking a P120 and 16MB RAM (upgraded from 8MB for £50 when we bought it - £1,100 base price!). I got one of these models from a scrap clear-out at work several years later. The Executive had far worse specs so I ended up doing an entire board and PSU transplant because I couldn't figure out how to detach the AT power plugs, haha. There's a lot of confusing aspects to upgrading stuff in these cases. The reason I wanted the Executive case was the extra PCI slot! Finally I could have both my PCI Voodoo3 and an awesome Crystal Soundfusion sound card at the same time. That plus a P200 and fully-loaded 128MB of RAM made a very nice Windows 98 PC for playing Final Fantasy VII on. The other bits were recombined in the smaller case (and upgraded fully - got its own P200, 128MB RAM) and it actually served as a BitTorrent server for a few years (with a whole 15GB of incoming space... no USB ports to attach anything external!).

@catriona_drummond Год назад

Corel 4.0 - oh the times. I was 16, had Corel and a CD full of cliparts and was the only "graphics designer" in the village, where my parents ran a bookbinder-, statioaery- and copyshop. Sports events, fun fairs, concerts of the church brass band, small magazines, all beautifully made by a reluctant teenager who just wanted to play Simcity 2000 instead.

@craigmacdonald4987 Год назад

Lovely job Neil! ❤ 👏 Please can we see Quake, Network Q Rally and Tomb Raider played? 😊

@jmp8678 Год назад

Great work Neil, great to see this era getting the showcase it deserves.

@phill80 Год назад

On my Packard Bell P166, I remember playing Mega Race with the Legendary Lance Boyle, Terminal Velocity, Descent, Terminator - future shock, Twisted Metal. Duke Nukem 3D.

@draisine1609 Год назад

Woah!!! Blast from the past! My first PC was one of these! 150mhz 16mb ram 2gb hard drive and a 16 speed cd rom!!

@markjones7109 Год назад

Fantastic restoration. Well done.

@lemagreengreen Год назад

Looks superb! The slightly mismatched beige no-name 32X CD drive is also very authentic, takes me right back :)

@geoffreyreuther5260 Год назад

Super authentic. I used to work for CompUSA, in the tech department. the mid-90's Packard Bell CD-ROM drives were more or less just reliable enough to get the machine out of warranty. The cheapest non-burner was the preferred choice of the customers (or the extended warranty company). In our case that would have been HiVal, and later MadDog brand.

@tallpaul9475 Год назад

the chassis looks a lot like the one I bought from Montgomery Ward's Electronic Avenue in 1995. That had a 486DX-2 66Mhz, which I eventually maxed out the RAM, VRAM, HDD, CD-R/W and 83Mhz Pentium Overdrive. WFW 3.11 upgraded to Windows 95.

@boydpukalo8980 Год назад

Amazing transformation. Truly a trash to treasure. I miss the simplicity of systems back then. No spying on and tracking users......

@CasualSpud Год назад

Maxine Headroom 🤣👍

@monroe111 Год назад

Wow that pc bring back memories, my dad had that Packard Bell! i love the speakers on the VDU

@crimsondragon20 Год назад

My Packard bell came prepackaged with The Journeyman Project: Turbo. Fantastic game that was my first point and click adventure and what turned me on to the genre.

@matthewbowen5841 Год назад

I got G-Nome with mine.

@definitelycasualpcs8789 Год назад

I have a platinum supreme I've been meaning to do a video on. Such an odd and weird design layout, can't help but love it

@login415 Год назад

Wow, I had this computer growing up. I remember having Encarta 96 on this and learning how to play video games on this.

@cbw56 Год назад

I loved every bit of this video!! Amazing. I'm such a nerd for this generation of PBs....

@danhoppy5517 Год назад

Cassettes look amazing in a door! Patent it quickly, Neil..!

@raz1250 Год назад

I had exactly the same computer back in 1996 good memories!!

@mannyzx1 Год назад

Thank you so much. My very first computer was a very similar version. Aside from details it looked exactly like this one. Brought back so many good memories.

@Lordborak316 Год назад

I had this pc pack with the same case, monitor, microphone etc, but mine was a 486DX. I got it from pc world and had a multi config put on it so I could get to DOS easily because I had no idea what I was doing back in the day. I played on my friends Pentium and asked my Dad to get me a PC for my birthday, I was gutted when I found out it wasn't a Pentium 1. Great item for the cave, Neil is such a classy scrubber!

@darkfalzx Год назад

An earlier 486DX2/66 version of this Packard Bell (Legend 20CD) was our family PC, which I later got as my own for my 18th birthday.

@xliquidflames Год назад

What a pleasure it is to see my childhood PC from 30 years ago getting some love and care and a new life. I spent countless hours on a computer exactly like this one teaching myself early versions of HMTL on Windows 3.11 for Workgroups and Prodigy and AOL 3.0. I also learned how to fix computers with this one because it technically belonged to my mother. When she'd leave me home alone, I'd try to do something I had no idea how to do, break the computer, and have to fix it before she got home. Good times. The games I most remember playing on this thing was VidGrid and Myst. I think Myst will be a popular suggestion. VidGrid is a little more obscure. Then, of course, all the DOS shooters like Doom and Rise of The Triad and Hexen. Carmageddon is another one a friend of mine had. Dialing my friends PC using my modem to play Doom Deathmatch was the first time I ever used my modem for anything. Btw: I have always found master/slave to be barbaric so I've said primary/secondary or mother/daughter drives. That whole master/slave thing is just ...it gives me the creeps. I mean, we've always called them mother/daughter boards so why not mother/daughter drives.

@CheezeCracker Год назад

Interestingly surprising how many of us are chiming in with memories of exact same PC in our childhoods

@piero_75 Год назад

Ah, HMTL - the long-forgotten precursor to HTML :)

@warrax111 Год назад

Primary master, secondary master, primary slave and secondary slave. There were 4 combinations, with 2 IDE ports.

@wedge9t Год назад

19:28 If you want the skinny microphone look for a 'Telex PC Microphone' it's the company who manufactured the microphone for Packard Bell. I think their 'M40' model has the same shape as the one that came with the PC, I tried looking for my Packard Bell microphone but couldn't find it.

@3dfxvoodoocards6 Год назад

Very nice retro PC, like!

@bionicgeekgrrl Год назад

This has come along great. Great news about finding a unique home for the broken in transit monitor. My first pc that was actually mine and not shared like the ones before it was a p133. Ps: lab looks great.

@maniatore2006 Год назад

A Packard Bell PC Like that is hard to finde these days. (in germany) that was our first Family PC and i want it back. i have the Original Master CD and the Packard Bell Navidator CD and all other CDs.

@Error42_ Год назад

This one has really turned into a mission hasn't it 😀 I think it has quite a modern look for an old PC with the two tone and squared off areas on the fascia. Not a bad looking case especially now it's clean and a lot less yellowed.

@joncarter3761 Год назад

I used to support PB machines for PC World back in the early 2000s, if you ever need to reinstall from their master CDs you will need a Packard Bell recovery floppy disk (even their later Windows 98 CDs aren't bootable) and it's possible the motherboard tattoo (info stored on the motherboard to tell the recovery program which drivers to install) could have got corrupted or overwritten. The Packard Bell recovery disk has the tattooing program on it (if I remember it's literally called tattoo.exe) where you will need to select all your hardware from the list provided and you will be asked for a checksum code, if the checksum fails (which happened quite frequently when we were talking people through it) you will need the override code PBE98 or PBE97 to force it through. If the recovery media detects no tattoo it won't install for 'piracy protection' even though you could tattoo any motherboard with unknown hardware and the override code for free Windows... Not that me or any other employee of PC World with such knowledge would have ever done such a thing ;)

@willrobinson7599 Год назад

Great video . Loved watching that old tired dirty pacard bell be brought back to life

@thepenultimateninja5797 Год назад

That is interesting about the UV pen. I have often wondered if there is some sort of polish we could use to stop plastics yellowing again after they have been retrobrighted. Incidentally, I pulled a previously-retrobrighted keyboard out of storage recently, and noticed that it had started to yellow again inside the cardboard box I stored it in. Funnily enough, now that it has been exposed to air and (mostly artificial) light again for a few weeks, the yellowing has disappeared. I don't think we are ever going to fully understand the chemical process(es) involved.

@PotatoFi Год назад

I use 303 Aerospace Protectant on everything I retrobrite, and it seems to help preserve things. Totally anecdotal evidence, though.

@dannyboy42223 Год назад

Oh the nostalgia! My 2nd PC. Went from a ibm xt with no graphics just amber text display to the legend with 8mb ram and a 75mhz pentium and the new windows 95 install disc. Nice memory lane road indeed. One nice touch back then was software came on CD for restoration and dos/windows 3.11/drivers came on a cd you could use to make install floppies from to do a fresh system install. This PC is probably responsible for my video encoding hobby now as I saw the weezer demo in the windows 95 disc and wanted to see how they made mpeg video play on a PC. The rabbit hole had no end after that lol

@lawdbanterbury Год назад

Nice one Neil. Looks the part

@interlace84 Год назад

13:18 mate you blindsided me right there 🤣 nice one!

@grummpyyounggeek Год назад

17:44 That "cadunk" musica menu command sound...the signature of a Packard Bell Desktop Theme. I remember seeing these in Dixons and Currys stores on display but forever locked in the demos. My 8 year old self passed the time by working out how to break into the Start menu of these by simply pressing Ctrl-Esc and then making my way to Paint. Of course the shop clerk would then reach around the back and power cycle them, with that look of "you weren't supposed to get into there" 😮 turns out the Windows 95 shortcuts were "locked" by the demos but the legacy ones weren't... My friends who bought this very Packard Bell PC were looking forward to hearing the Microsoft sound for the first time they booted it up. I will never forget the sheer disappointment when they heard the rather comical Musica Startup Sound instead. Same with the signature "Tada" and the regular Ding and Chord sounds. If I didn't show them how to change the sound settings in Control Panel, they were ready to ask their parents to return the PC to the shop on the grounds it doesn't sound right 😂. Ahh the memories...

@brandonconstant7226 Год назад

Loving the PB series of videos.

@BadQuanta Год назад

Thanks for this trip down nostalgia lane. I had many years of poking around the guts of that exact model... years after we stopped using it it became my very first linux server; stuck a non-Wintel modem in it and my entire house had shared internet for the first time (many many years before this became the norm thanks to broadband.)

@95Comics Год назад

THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO,IT HAS ME CHOKED UP! MY DAD AND I RESEARCHED DAILY FOR 6MONTHS BEFORE WE HAD THE MONEY TO BUY THIS PC, OUR2ND BUT 1ST WORKING PC! I REMEMBER ALL THIS VERY FONDLY AS THE LAST MEMORIES OF MY DAD WHO PASSED AWAY SUDDENLY A FEW WEEKS AFTER HE BOUGHT IT FOR ME. UNFORTUNATELY IT WAS STOLEN AND I CANT AFFORD ONE SO THIS VIDEO IS ALL I HAVE TO REMIND ME OF MY DADS LAST FEW MONTHS ON EARTH. THANK YOU SO MUCH! YOU CERTAINLY HAVE A NEW FAN FOR LIFE! BYE FOR NOW FROM THE NEW JERSEY SHORE USA!

@74bobby Год назад

It looks Amazing. Great job Neil...

@johnwelander Год назад

Great video; very satisfying result from all that very hard work.

@zoid9969 Год назад

Oooh, Microsoft Autoroute (Express GB). I'd like to see that in the next video. I remember running an ancient version (before MS bought it) on an Atari ST back in the early 1990s, wondering what sort of trickery made it work.

@boowiebear Год назад

I fixed a lot of these back in the day, crazy to see it look so good, I mean…for a Packard Bell. 🎉

@ByteSizeThoughts Год назад

Watching this made me dig out my PB Axcel 120mhz. I popped a Voodoo 1 in mine and its not too bad :D

@madmax2069 Год назад

Seeing this brings back memories of the same model (but the version sold in the US) i was renting to own back in the mid 90s. One such memory wasn't a good one but whenever i would try to play the PC version of road rash (that released in 1996) it would wipe the HDD after about 30 minutes of play, it would be running fine and would just freeze, when i would try to boot windows it wouldn't and the HDD would be practically empty just a few folders remaining. I bought the game the day it released at Walmart so it really baffled me. I eventually returned it to the place i was renting it from (with the game in hand, because they was blaming me of manually erasing the HDD to try to get out of the rental agreement), they found out quickly that it was the game (as i told them before but they would believe me). So i just told them to shove the system where the sun didn't shine.

@mrtnsnp Год назад

The voice in that Packard Bell software reminds me of Eddy from the Hitchhiker's Guide. Slightly too cheerful.

@kuro68000 Год назад

I LOLed when the introduction voice stuttered. I love classic jank like that. LGR had one with a $5000 laptop and the Windows 95 startup sound.

@christopherdecorte1599 Год назад

I miss my Pacardbell now😢

@nismo2070 Год назад

The first PC I bought was a packard bell 486sx setup with the vga monitor. I bought it new at Sears in 93 or 94. I loved that machine and wish I still had it.

@TurdInternational Год назад

as soon as the navigator greeting started glitching out, the System Shock - Medical theme started playing in my head

@JohnSmith-xq1pz Год назад

Perfect timing, RMC and lunch

@ypoora1 Год назад

When cleaning up floppy and CD drives remember to grease the sliding rails too! They could jam up and cause strange behaviours otherwise.

@NeverlandSystemZor Год назад

Love the new lab space and seeing it used so quickly!

@nomadic_shadow Год назад

oh gosh these computers take me back...

@davidnoble1477 Год назад

Ah Packard Bell Navigator! I remember that seeming like space-age stuff back in 1995, no really, as my Packard Bell P75 was quite an upgrade from my previous computer......a Commodore 64!

@robertlock5501 Год назад

16:39 .............it's flipping out XDDDDDDDDDDDD and the max headroom reference XD

@W2APS Год назад

Let's see. My best friend at the time had this machine. We used to play Quake, Duken Nukem 3D and Need For Speed 2 on it mostly. Good times. ❤

@CSIG1001 Год назад

i love the close up of the kuckle hairs

@andrewlittleboy8532 Год назад

"My DOM" Never gets old 😅

@John_Locke_108 Год назад

So cool to see the lab in use, in a video, already.

@RichsRandomRetroReviews Год назад

What fantastic work Neil. It looks amazing. I have fond memories of our exact model shown here. I know it's a mass market cheap machine, not really special, but I'm glad you've taken the time and effort into preserving one.

@gmirwin Год назад

Sometimes the mass market cheap stuff is the most special. Partly, I think, because they were relatively common so more people had one or at least encountered them. Also, their ubiquity has caused people to not save them, thus making some of them more rare today than the more expensive products.

@GigAHerZ64 Год назад

About the fan for cpu - socket 370 coolers do fit on socket 7 and you can still get those as new. ;)

@Jef_Vermassen Год назад

Neil: "What is wrong with me?" Me: "Preservationist bug!" It will only get worse with time. :D Cheers, even these run of the mill boxes need a place to be remembered/loved.

@MrRichardAllsop Год назад

So great to see my first own PC looking good as new. So many memories!

@dross1705 Год назад

It’s so…(sniff) beautiful.

@EmptyTome Год назад

I had a Cyrix MII packard bell back in the day. Couldn't add a video card to it, but a voodoo2 worked.

@timmooney7528 Год назад

I used to work at a small computer shop in the mid 1990's and a Best Buy opened in he next town over. Our manager felt it would help business if we became Packard Bell certified as a repair partner. We all had to get A+ certification, then take these product related CBT courses from Packard Bell. People would buy their computer at Best Buy, encounter a problem, then PB would route them to us. Unfortunately several computers that came in had nothing mechanically or electronically wrong. The problems appeared to be firmware or design related. Packard Bell didn't cover software problems, so it was frustrating for us to receive a machine and have a tight deadline to diagnose and order parts. Our diagnostics would not find any issues with the motherboard, ram, or peripherals, yet customers could verify their pc wasn't running right. Running the restore disk was PB's solution, but the problems would return.

@Rockythefishman Год назад

I still have recurring nightmares about all the Packard Bell machines that I had to remove navigator from

@CPPRODUCTIONS1001 Год назад

Will you ever delve in to the world that was, and in some cases, still is RM? I have a ton of retro machines from RM and its interesting to own machines that probably helped a lot of kids get through school

@RMCRetro Год назад

If a machine comes my way it will likely happen yes. We had BBCs at my school but I always wondered what I was or wasn’t missing out on in RM, pre RM IBM compatibles that is

@CPPRODUCTIONS1001 Год назад

@@RMCRetro I missed out on most of it, the ones I have are IBM compatible. One server running Netware, two terminal type machines and two regular machines. My beeb was a weather station in the school I work at well after its time. It was rescued from the skip along with a weather station module but I can't find the original software for it

@Stephen-OldBadGamer Год назад

Oh boy. Getting my Dad to upgrade to a Matrox Mystic, while I added a cheeky Voodoo 1 card, then had a blast with PC Format cover disk games.

@eddiehimself Год назад

For my Pentium MMX PC, I used the heatsink from an AMD Athlon XP, as it's a direct fit on the socket and offers better cooling due to the much taller fins, with no fan required. Having said that though, it would probably be a struggle to fit it with those ISA cards directly over it, so a fan is probably the better option in this case. If you're feeling a bit naughty, you can often screw a fan directly into a heatsink.

@Ragnar8504 Год назад

That was sometimes done from the factory. A friend once gave me his old Pentium IV and I thought it ran too hot for my liking so I had a look at the cooling setup. There was a small heatsink with a tiny fan fixed to the heatsink with four sheet metal screws. Oddly enough the CPU also reported as 2.4 GHz PIV running at 1.8 GHz. I replaced the dismal heatsink/fan combo with a proper cooler and set the speed to 2.4 GHz and the machine worked perfectly fine running XP and later 7.

@necro_ware Год назад

At 10:37 I see a nice place to put my VRM into and give this machine additional performance, which the manufacturer was never aware of :)

@CheezeCracker Год назад

Nice! My first OC was on machine nearly exact to this.

@pauljennings8432 Год назад

Wow looking good Neil.

@Muldrf Год назад

My first computer was a 486 DX2 66mhz of that style from Packard Bell. MS Dos 6.2 (not 6.22) and Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. With the all in one sound card with modem and 2x Panasonic CDRom. It also end up with a Goldstar Cdrom in eventually. I acquired a Pentium model similar to yours, which is also missing the Packard Bell Microphone, so your not alone.

@HikingFeral 10 месяцев назад

You got a new sub from me for these episodes. I love the memories that come flooding back, that's probbaly why I just got a walkman and some tapes too.

@willd6215 Год назад

This makes me happppy

@chrismulhern6527 Год назад

I had the 166 version of this, ironically over the last weekend whilst trying to clear the loft I found the Logitech pagescan usb that went with it still in it's box, also found a Japanese mega drive, two atari lynx (with over 60 games) and an amiga 600, not even scratched the surface of what's in there yet.

@PixelVogue Год назад

LOL this was my 1st PC The Packard Bell P120, I think it was 1200 from Dixons! It was blast once I got a Voodoo 3000 graphics card to play Need for Speed 3 Hot Pursuit 😅

@choi13a Год назад

How awesome would it be if Toastie found this video? 😊

@stevencarlson5422 Год назад

You have the best job in the world, I'm so jealous !

@rottmanthan Год назад

i knew a computer tech who didnt like those packard bells. i never had one but i do like the looks or the model you have there.

@CheezeCracker Год назад

I know people hated these. But the one we had, never had issues. It was a PITA only because things were crammed tightly inside that case or overlapping components you needed to get to.

@damionlee7658 Год назад

Packard Bell were great at being bloated, and that is certainly why a few of us didn't like them. There was an element of pioneering the "Make the computer easier to use for everybody" spirit, thus the Navigator software. The downside to their setup was that often you could put a Packard Bell next to a system of the same core specs, but a cleaner install, and the performance difference was very noticeable (to the point where a PB just could not smoothly run software an alternate machine was fine with). This then led to people comparing their Packard Bell to a family friend's computer from another brand, and taking their Packard Bell in, claiming it must be faulty. It was very difficult to explain to the non-techs out there that this wasn't a fault. Now, on the QT, if you weren't working for the likes of PC World, you could often do a clean install without any of the added PB gumpf, as long as you had sourced the required drivers. Then they would perform fine, but so much hassle (both doing it, and dealing with the upset owners).