This was my first PC - a slightly different variant, a 386/20e. I got it when I was 10. I remember everything about it. It had integrated I/O, only a Gravis gamepad adorned a single expansion slot, and I had a 2400 BPS modem connected externally. I hated it. I could not enter BIOS (needed a utility to change anything), I could not upgrade the RAM without spending several hundreds on proprietary expansion cards. I could not upgrade the crappy 16 bit CPU. It had ONE MEG of RAM and a 42 Mb hard disk. That panel with the jumper settings will be forever etched in my mind as it taunted me with expansion options I could not afford. Granted, it was free, I cut my teeth on it at 11 or so and was very proficient with DOS on it, but I have passed up several very low priced offers on these even very recently. Hearing one of these start up though brings waves of nostalgia back. I actually have the original Deskpro keyboard hooked up to my KVM which steers a V30, 386SX, 486DX4, and a 233 MMX. The keyboard is solid, I love how it feels. The VGA monitor also was decent. My second PC was a slightly slower NCR 16 MHz 386, but it was a full 32 bit machine with a whopping 4 Mb of RAM. It was also considerably larger. I recall eventually selling the Deskpro when I was 13 or 14 for $100 with a reduced capacity DD drive and a mono VGA monitor (I actually have the ad on diskette still lol). "Good" times - thanks for the upload :D
It's really fascinating that people have held on to computers this old. I remember during my small kid days, we went straight from the Compaq Portable to an IBM PS/2. It was the last time during our "one computer household" era that we bought a major brand. But PC users who weren't phased by the "new system" propaganda likely waited a few more months for the Compaq Deskpro 386. 💁🏻♂️🖥️
This model was my first PC of my very own! I think I got it for my 15th birthday. It was used, had a 486 upgrade of some type, 4mb ram, a Sound Blaster 16 with connected CD-ROM drive, and a 14.4 modem. I played lots of Sim City 2000 on it, as well as shareware versions of Keen 4, Wolfenstein 3D, and Jazz Jackrabbit.
Boy the nostalgia was heavy in this one. I had a Turbo XT clone in the late '80s and early '90s ... during that time my friend had a Compaq 386sx, and I was always jealous of it. I used to do a lot of the things you showed here ... using Telix to call bulletin board systems (then I switched to Qmodem I think), playing DOS games, etc. Finally, I agree that DOS Shell looked really pretty ... but I never used it much either, finding the command line to be more efficient.
Well I think that amongst the very high number of computers I had and operated, this small one held one pretty good position for a few years. It was sure not amongst the fast beasts that I was building for my clients for mapping purposes and MicroStation but it was just doing its thing flawlessly. Good memories, thanks for bringing them back. Andre
Man... Back in the day, back in the day... I was always so poor growing up that when everyone else was 386SX16's I was just getting my feet wet with an IBM XT. I loved it though. From 1992 to late 1995 I rocked that old 8 bit girl ervery night checking out BBS's. Over the years I upgraded it from it's stock 8088 to a "Tiny orchard" 286 daughter card, a 720K external floppy and added a "hard card" 30meg rll drive to go with the original MFM 20 meg drive. I even stuffed an 8 Bit soundblaster and a VGA card into it and could actually play Wolfstien 3d. In late 1995 I finally upgraded to a state of the art (well, not really, but it felt that way to me! ) 5X86 133mhz barebones computer with a HUGE 850meg hard drive. Those really were the days. Working on computers back then felt like hot rodding a car. You could really tell when you made an upgrade that made things faster. Things would load faster, or numbers would crunch quicker, and don't get me started on the first time you went from a 1200 baud modem to 14.4K HOLY COW! Now, unless I'm rendering video I can't tell my new AMD Ryzen 7X 8 core processor from my old Q6600 4 core. It's lost it's magic a bit, don't you think?
Hey Erik! Man, I could talk about old computers all damn day. There was definitely something special about computing back then. I seem to remember my brain being on dopamine overload anytime I heard the sounds of a modem connecting to a BBS, a friend's computer, or the early days of the Internet. I truly feel everyone has become desensitized to the wonders of technology. People are tough to impress these days. I love hearing about the old IBM XT! Those are still some of favorite. I had only one friend who had an XT at their house and I barely even got a glimpse of it. The other was in our school library and was used by students all the dang time. It was hogged up quite often. I'm very fond of the power switch on those bad boys. I totally agree on the upgrades as well. I started with a 2400 baud modem, and sometime around 1995 I went to Sam's Club and bought an internal ISA 28.8k modem. Cost around $130. But I was sorely disappointed when I realized I purchased a "WinModem" which literally only worked in Windows. Even though I was only using Windows 3.1, it still worked, but Telix for DOS was useless to me and I was freakin' distraught. Ahh well. As soon as DOS went bye-bye, things really started to change! Great to hear from you man. By the way, I received the CB amp and all is well! It actually works!!! I'm working with my friend on finding a good spot to mount it in my truck and I'll be rockin' the region before you know it. Thanks again my friend. Hope you guys have an awesome Fall!
Oh and I have Part 2 of this video almost finished up! I got a sound card in this puppy and it's pretty freakin' cool. I had a chance to relive the feeling of an upgrade. Especially one as substantial as actually hearing real sound on the computer versus just a PC speaker. Good stuff!
The machine that feels like my first computer was a Dell 333D, also a 386. Math Copro, 4MB RAM, and a 180MB WD Caviar HDD. I always wanted a soundblaster card but never got one for it. I did own an XT-class PC a couple years earlier, but I had no idea how to use it yet. I deleted everything on the hard drive, not understanding that it needed these things to function, and then I had to learn how to rebuild it from a series of borrowed 5.25" floppy disks. Shortly after getting DOS 3.3 reconfigured on it, the PSU failed and that was the end of that machine... so the 333D really "feels like" my first machine - since it gave me years of faithful service and I really learned my way around DOS and Win3.1 on it.
I've heard recently that a kilobyte from each memory chip is substracted for parity, so instead of 9216 kilobytes it's 9184 kb, still close enough to 1MB, especially at that time when marketers were confusing the public whether a megabyte was 1000 kb or 1024kb. In the 90s, I used to trash pick (generally, I would just stop to look at the side of the road on trashday) hoping to find a 386 so I could install Linux, which requires a machine like Compaq's at a minimum. I certainly found 286s, Apple II clones, 8086s and restored them and drove my ex-wife crazy. The "guest bedroom" was full of computer parts in various stages of cleaning. lol. Now I just have I have a Compaq Portable1. All things considered, and since it is mainly good only for a handful of DOS games, I think I'd rather have the DeskPro. There is a 386 Portable, but it has a monochrome orange gas plasma display. The monochrome isn't a problem for me, but fixing or restoring or replacing a gas plasma display is rather difficult.
@@the_kombinator It's been too many years to remember the details, but I do remember it being quite straightforward. I was using MS-DOS 6.22 at the time, and the limit was 2GB.
@@BrunoFonsecaPT Hmm, those computers required special software on diskettes to change any parameter - they were all but straightforward. Furthermore, those systems (I'm willing to bet my project car) did not support over 528Mb disks in BIOS. My guess is that you used a DDO, which IS straightforward.
Was my first PC also! I have one but can't get it to work. Looking for another one to switch parts with. I remember end of the 90's I got multiple for free as people rid them gladly.... threw them out eventually... :-( Thanks for this video!
I just got one of these computers and I have been troubleshooting it for the past few months, just realized that last time I took off the floppy disk power cable I put it on the wrong way and killed my combo drive, it was a 5.25" drive and 3.5" drive, sucks that it broke but now I have to search for a ISA bus floppy card
Thanks for the clarification and for watching. In my 22 years working in IT, I still get these things messed up. If it has pins, it's all serial to me. This is serial business here. I'm super serial. I wish more people would take me serially.
Sort of. You could say that was the Compaq Portable, the first successful "clone" (note Eagle Computers, and Corona Systems and Columbia were all before Compaq, but two of them were more or less killed by IBM lawsuits). BUT after Compaq already got wildly successful with multiple Portable, IBM hesitated to build a 386 PC because they were worried about its limitations. But Windows 3 really depended on memory management to work well, and IBM didn't anticipate Windows being so popular.. So it was a one-two punch. Also IBM was thinking it would take over the world with OS/2 the operating system (which it should have started with), and also MicroChannel Architecture, etc, etc. IBM really self-destructed as much as anything. IBM kicked IBM off the throne. One thing not ever mentioned about: Compaq spending a million dollars to reverse engineer IBMs BIOS, is that at the time it was not even legally certain that firmware was copywritable. That precedence wasn't set until Apple vs Franklin Computer in 1984. So it could have been all for naught, if Franklin had won and anyone else could freely copy IBM BIOS
