For me it still is, I mean, especially if its going to replace my current gaming PC or fill a niche I wanna use something for (like a media PC or a as a spare computer/NAS thingy)
The only new computer I've got was a netbook in 2009, everything else I've got used. To me the last time getting a new (used) computer felt like a big thing was in 2013 when I upgraded from a Core2 Duo E6300, Intel GMA 3000, WinXP system to a 4c/8t i7-920, Quadro FX 1800 (which I upgraded to a GTX 660 half a year later) and Windows 7. That was the first time I had a PC which was capable of running modern games. While my current main PC (X5670 6c/12t @ 4.4GHz, 24GB RAM, GTX 1080) isn't a fast system by todays standards upgrading from it wouldn't be anywhere near as big as upgrading from the C2D to X58 was back in the day. I have built more powerful systems for people (i5-12400F + RX 6700 and R5 5600 + RTX 3060) but the difference to my system didn't felt anywhere near big enough to even justify spending that much money to upgrade mine. I think I'll stay on X58 for few more years
It still is, computers are spendy. Mind you, whenever I get given a new dev laptop at work it's not so much "Ooh new bundle of power" it's "hello, next victim..."
I grew up in the 2000s but weirdly enough seeing those bundles of CDs bought back a lot of memories of getting a computer in the early 2000s (Some Time branded PC). Felt like a world of opportunities.
@RetroManCave These Trash-to-Treasure series video are one of the reasons I keep coming back. Thank You for the fun adventures! Please continue doing them!
Having worked 12,5 years at Dixons in the Netherlands (growing from parttime help to store manager), seeing that logo always brings a bit of a tear to my eye. They went bankrupt in 2014 and was sold off for parts basically.
When I was a kid my step-grandmother (married my mom's father) had the first PC, I believe it was an HP, that I ever really touched. It had the Encarta software, and there's something burned into my mind about this ENCYCLOPEDIA on a computer. To a small child with a deep curiosity and drive to learn, I loved going on it and just clicking on the multimedia pictures, or listening to the low-quality sounds of animals. It's just such a core memory for me, that even though I played video games like Diablo, WarCraft, Deus Ex, and more on PC, the thing that makes me immediately remember early 90s PC use is grainy Encarta images and midi files of frogs croaking.
Seeing those voodoo boxes sparks a sense if childlike joy in me, I remember seeing them on the shelf in the typically brown computer store we used. I was unaware that the graphics card we had was much newer and more powerful, the packaging made those things look genuinely badass. I would also would later realise that having a graphics card means nothing if you plug the monitor into the on board graphics. Not something I learned until many many years later...
Beautiful work, love these Packard Bells! The days of pack in software enticing you in to buy new computers in Computer Shopper magazine and the like - those were the days!
I remember as a teen in the Pentium era, when a Packard Bell salesman came to our house and setup a PC to demo for us. It was a pretty cheesy sales pitch, and we ended up buying a custom built instead from computer salesmen who also visited us at home. Weird times lol.
So I've got a weird recommendation Neil - Encarta is PERFECT, but I think you should have an unboxed/open version there so people can look at the manual while they give the program a go. If I remember correctly the Encarta manual was a big thing that you consulted while using it, so that would be a big part of the nostalgia.
Commented on the previous video but 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.
I got chill seeing the whole thing set up on a desk. It looks _exactly_ like the one I had in junior high school. I spent _so many_ hours sitting in front of that computer. Such nostalgia. I wish it were mine. I would never be able to afford to source all this stuff. Thanks for making these videos. I can at least see it again. I got another chill when you mentioned trying to network all these computers together. Well, it was more of a shudder than chill. Oh, the nightmares and horrors of trying to do networking in Windows period, much less very old Windows.
Awesome nostalgia trip, we had a slightly earlier version of this PC (Pentium 75, 8 whole megabytes of RAM, no modem) when I finally persuaded my parents that the world was leaving my beloved A500+ behind. Brutally underpowered and shockingly overpriced to be sure, but the skills and enthusiasm I started cultivating on that machine still puts food on my table today almost 30 years later, so I've got nothing but fondness for this kind of machine.
My family got one in 1994 that was a bit stripped down from this one, but it did include an offline CD-ROM based "multimedia" encyclopedia of animals where the main draw was 144 (maybe 200 something) video of exotic creatures. Also, some obscure Jurassic Park game. Arrived w/ a dead soundcard, which took months to get replaced. No modem, but did have a printer. Total in 1994: $2,500.
Supporting these when I worked for PC World, the restore CDs were the cause of, and the solution to most Packard Bell problems. I seem to remember replacements being surprisingly expensive.
Got my first family PC back in 94. Was a Compaq Presario which had a case identical to that Presario at 20:09 in the video. It was a 486 66mhz, 4mb RAM later upgraded to 16MB RAM, 200 ish MB hard drive, 2x cd rom. Had it for years and absolutely loved it. Wing Commander III & IV, Tex Murphy adventure games, Descent, so many classics. I miss the 90's.
I had completely forgot that I could use my Gateway P5-75 to make phone calls and keep voice messages. My future brother in law got a similar PB and I would call my future wife on my computer to talk to her on his computer. Living in the future.
These pizza box pentiums have actually became my favorite. Small, compact, enough horse power to run any dos game and early windows games. ISA slots for old sound cards, PCI slots for new graphics adapters. They were originally for business but now days make fantastic retro gaming rigs.
In 1996 I would have been mesmerised by watching the multimedia on the Packard Bell. Echo The Dolphin would have had me captivated for hours, not to mention all the other things. It's an excellent home PC and the styling is very attractive as well. I like the idea of networking all the PCs. Leave it reasonably stock I say. 😊👍
Those packard bell execution sounds brought back some memories, ours was a later model though, but remember it having a similar box of software and the missing red boot floppy disk.
Thanks for rebuilding this. Loved watching. That's a really cool feature with the analog phone. This was honestly the golden era for computers. There was so much creativity and new features. Nowadays it's all the same thing, nothing new or creative
Man this is a huge nestalgia hit for me. I remember our first computer. It was a packard bell. Man it was garbage lol at the time i thought it was the most amazing thing in existance, but it was outdated in the blink of an eye. I remember the mic that came with ours was rediculously sensitive. I used to play arouns with wave recorder recording things, slowing them down, speeding them up, and playing them backwards. One time i was recording dead silence and i saw sound waves displayed like it recorded something. I knew it was silence so i played it back and i heard an alarm clock alarm playing in the recording. I thought it was odd so i walked through the house and found my parents alarm clock was going off in their room all the way across the house and their door was closed. I couldnt even hear it till i opened their bedroom door.
The amount of packard bells from that era that i restored for friends and family because of someone or something accidently wiping windows or windows hanging on boot sequence was unbelievable. That machine was in more homes (uk) than any Dell or Time pcs at the time. Oh, and please.... No more singing!
I cut my computer teeth on a friends Packard Bell he got for christmas. Our minds were blown to see actual video on a PC in the form of a mime in the introduction, we would scour Grolier's Encyclopedia for any video clips. CD-ROM was new to the world and all was great.
The first PC my family got as a kid was one of those 486 (66Mhz) all in one Compacs. Looked exactly like that one. Either I or my parents still got it stored somewhere, we added a 10mbit network card to it as well. What a great machine that was. So many memories that are brought up by this series. Keep up the good work!
I had a Packared Bell just like that. I loved and still love the waved design asthetic. I also love the way the speekers mounted on the monitor and were designed to to so. I truely miss this age of computing. So much excitement. Thesedays computing just dosent seem as exciting.
Thank you SO much for this series! My first ever not just PC but computer was the 75MHz version of this PB. That 'for kids' GUI/shell you showed sure did give me a good and proper nostalgia-smack. Prodigy, Encarta 97, 3D Body, etc. are what I remember most from the US bundled bloat. The pièce de résistance was beating Myst on this thing...which was so hard for me as a kid. Recently re-played it and it only took a couple of hours, if that haha. Time is a trip. Thanks again for taking the time to lovingly restore what to a lot of people is trash but what is certainly a treasure to me. Cheers Neil!
I remember those Packard Bell's being available new from Dixons. They always felt different to other PCs, but not in a good way. Somehow less flexible; less open. Worked just the same but they didn't feel like machines you could mess around with. Seemed like they were meant for people who weren't hobbyists.
I had a similar remote back in the day, you should be able to see the remote codes coming in over the serial port with something like hyperterminal, if you don’t get codes it could be your remote or your receiver, you can try other IR based remotes with your receiver to half split the problem.
This was our families first computer. Cost a ridiculous amount of money. Something like 3 grand in 1998-ish. I have absolutely no nostalgia for it because it was crap lol. I remember we 'upgraded' the graphics to a matrox mystique, which was also equally crap. I remember my Dad being on the phone to Packard bell support to get advice on getting Flight Simulator to run, having to add stuff to the autoexec and config.sys for extended memory. What a ball ache. I think the phone call cost him £90.
I don't know if you have water pipes or a heater or anything around, but since you are doing a museum, something to think about is getting risers for any PC that's on the floor. For a school I worked for we picked up cheap little PC tower caddies with casters on them for around $20. Water leaks hopefully never occur, and if they do, ideally MANY years apart.. but none of the less with hard to replace hardware.. Risers are a nice and easy thing to protect the equipment! Many of the "Caddy" items are larger and may impede on the look of the tower, but most PC tower "Riser" labeled products are more like simple stands and may look better and be less obtrusive.
Oh my, I think my parents bought this exact model with the printer for me many many years ago (obviously). It was my first step up from the 386 I was using before!
That was pretty much my exact first computer. Also as far as the mic goes, a tin can and a string would have been an improvement. I never knew about the remote.
Great content! I just finished the series, found a lot of info here that I couldn't find anywhere else. And the timing... it's just out of the ordinary. Right about at the time of the release of this episode (without me knowing the existence of this channel) I acquired a complete Packard Bell Executive Multi-Media system.
i've enjoyed this series a lot, computers like this one might be boring to some but to me my very first computer was a packard bell just like this one. that machine even introduced me to the world of computers i have vivid memories playing dos and windows 95 games on it hell i even experienced dial up internet and made a geocities site on it. that crt monitor with the terrible speakers that clip onto the sides is instant nostalgia to me lol
Wow, you brought back some memories! I remembered owning Civnet, but also remembered seeing the advisors with funny videos, which was only in Civ 2, so now I know how I played it. The Batman & Robin Cartoon Maker and Magix Music Maker were amazing. And even though the PC was new, I remember that we had to upgrade the RAM to play FIFA 97.
Neil, you can point the remote into a phone camera in low light to establish if the remote is actually transmitting IR. This might help narrow down where the problem lies. 😊
I didn't see one. But you need an Amstrad PC 1512 in there too. Anyone in the late 80's to very early 90's who did any sort of computer course almost certainly did it on an Amstrad PC 1512 or the PC 1640
I'm not sure what sort of brand cachet that PB's had in the UK, but across the pond in the states, they were always known to be bargain basement specials. I sold PB's stateside in the late 90's (using the design language of the unit that you have in the video), and it wasn't uncommon to find two examples of the same SKU using vastly different parts. It was speculated at the time that this was not a manufacturer error, but rather just extreme cost cutting. We once found a case wherein there were four examples of the same SKU, and they all had different optical drives. Same thing discovered on the modems which were either a riser board or ISA slot type (PCI on later models). While a similar model from Compaq would almost always use the same model parts for a entire run of a given SKU. The net result of this is that sometimes the machines didn't work 100% out of the box... this was not a case of bad components per sé, but rather it was almost always a driver issue that the customer buying the computer couldn't easily resolve on their own. PB's tech support was crap too - waits of 2-3 hours on hold were common, so most people brought the units back to the store, and then when we told them that we could get the unit working, but would take 1-2 hours of paid labor. This caused many returns. Glad you were able to get yours going.
I remember after the archive was extracted to the hard drive you could boot win95 and when asked for serial number you could hit cancel and windows would boot.
Not /entirely/ computer related but the only other things I could think that would make that look like a 1990s era computer room would be a vertical CD rack filled with a selection of adult contemporary (or grunge) and a spindle of blanks waiting to be burned. Maybe an old Bose wave radio.
My family’s first computer was a Packard Bell in September of ‘94. Wish I could remember anything about it other than it was 33 mhz. I would love to find a machine like this to fix up. Alas, retro computing is becoming expensive.
Oh good idea! I have some retro systems, but don't have the room for a bunch of PC's too. But have some real nostalgia for games like Doom and X-Wing on real PC hardware.
That PB PC are so Expansive these days, back in time that was our first Family PC. And i want so much one of it. Thank you for that Video. The only what i have from our PB PC is the Software Collection with the Master CD.
My 90's PC memories were running Linux w/ X Windows. Specifically it was MCC Interim Linux from the Manchester Computing Centre at the University of Manchester.
Looks like the remote is an IR remote. You can use the back camera on your phone to make sure the remote is sending a signal, it should make it visible when you press a button.
I was still using my A1200 + Apollo 1240 33Mhz + 32MB as my daily driver until 2000 so I missed this era... I bought a 90s machine in 2000 for cheap to do some 'privateering'
This series does bring back a lot of 90's memories for me, as in high school I took computer network technologies, and we cut our teeth working on so many Packard Bell systems. 👍
Wow, I completely forgot my first Windows PC was the Packard Bell 9009E. Coming from the Amiga/Sun Sparc systems it just seemed more familiar looking to me than anything else at the time. Great little machine and never had a problem with it.
I had the earlier 486 SX-33 Packard Bell with the 2 speed cd rom, 4mb ram, Astek soundcard/modem and 240mb hdd. Some of teh games I had for it were the original Civilization, Frontier: Elite 2, Syndicate, Cannon Fodder, The Settlers, SimCity 2000 and countless pc magazine disks with classics like Tyrian 2000 and Raptor: Call of the Shadows. When I bought the original Star Wars: Dark forces though, I had to add an extra 4mb of ram. It was also the first IBM compatible pc I had after giving away my Amiga 500 to a mate's disabled dad.
Shelf wise, I also have the sidewinder, Lucas Arts and Delphine big boxes up there. You could put a 3.5" floppy disc box to really add to nostalgia.. Fill it with some random pirated discs. 😁😁 Maybe even a few empty CD caddies for the early days of CDROMs. Some of those massively thick books on windows secrets, HTML guides and similar. I'm still kicking myself for getting rid of my Space Quest collection big box, that would've looked great on my shelf.
Congrats to get it finally done! About the fan: The Pentium really doesn't produce much heat, so you may even be fine with removing the fan altogether, as the case fan is likely producing enough flow, and the area of the new fan is much larger. If you don't trust that, try a Noctua on it, stepped down with one if its voltage converters. Did the same here with the very same cooler and a P233 MMX (which has a higher wattage), and that just works fine. In doubt, use your finger to measure temp... if it doesn't burn, it surely is cool enough ;)
