We used to have that Colani tower from the left hand side picture in 1:20, but as a 486 DX2-66. It was a little bit different. The store we bought it from was near the Hamburg city centre, probably crossing Esplanade-Neuer Jungfernstieg. We had to RMA it once though because my father busted up the frame for the replaceable harddrive, but later on we retrofitted it with a Soundblaster and CD-ROM drive. I wish we had it back. And one thing: the POST screen was blue, I don't remember why but it was maybe an older version of the Award BIOS (which I'm still looking for to run on PCem), before they came with the Energy Star logos like in the Windows 95/98 era.
Nice one! Highscreen was incredibly successful Name distributed by Vobis in Germany. I have a feeling, that every second PC there was a Highscreen :D And sorry for being a smartass, but German V sounds more like F, so it's called [F]obis and not [V]obis, like you'd spell it in English.
Oh man, I love those Highscreen Computers. They are beautiful machines indeed. I have the same case, but mine is a 486. I too especially love the models designed by Colani. RIP Luigi Colani aka. Lutz Colani Great video as always, keep up the great content. Your channel is awesome! Greetings from germany.
First machine I bought with the money from my summer job was such a Vobis/Highscreen 486 (DX4-100) served me for years and gave me lots of fond memories.
I worked on these old pc when they were new and those maxtor would sometimes seize up if you left them turned off too long between power on states. You just had to take it out and shake it gently as it tried to boot and that would typically get it going again.
@@juanschroder6519 sisisis consigue todo! Yo estoy luchando para restaurar una 486 acá y no se consigue nada. Todo muy viejo y muy roto. Ya compré 5 monitores y todos se rompen. Lo mismo con los parlantitos de escritorio, discos rígidos. Argentina está en una dimensión paralela jajaja.
Nice video, I know someone with one of those Colani cases :P Have to love windows 95 and all its hick ups but good job getting there in the end. Looking forward to seeing what you do with it next.
Neat that the speakers have a passthrough IEC connector. I love being able to collect or piece together a complete "brand-name" set like this. Could use a good retr0briting, IMO, especially the monitor and keyboard, but I understand that some people like to keep the signs of aging.
@@RetroSpector78 It's a tossup, really. I don't mind a little yellowing, but when it looks orange, I'm grabbing the UV light and 40 vol. On the other hand, the patina and yellowing shows the history of the machine. It comes down to personal preference. Some people say that retr0btrite destroys the plastic, but really, if it was that brittle, you had other issues.
Super great video thank you !!! You are right, Vobis Highscreen have a special place into collectors hearts, like Gateway 2000 for instance. Those superb desktops and towers are unforgettable ! :)
Vobis, thought about that a few weeks ago when walking past the old building (here in Nijmegen) where they had their location. Felt like a day out walking through these mega stores. Those were the days. Awesome you found these old adverts!
I am from Brussels and was browsing the same kind of catalogues at about the same time as you did, but I have absolutely no recollection of this "Highscreen" brand. Thanks for the trip down memory lane anyway. BTW, the french "translation" on the speakers box is hilarious... "Connection par tous les multimedia audio source" ;-) MVG.
I'm remembering good old days with this video, I Was 12 yo in 94. At the time there was a Vobis store in my town (Namur) and I remember this folder. My first one was a pentium 75 with 8mb ram and S3 Graphics... Thanks for this vidéo
What a lovely 1995 Highscreen! 20:25 this lovely view speaks for itself. I'd keep it as ultimate DOS computer to play all DOS games. The fact because it is Socket 5, It probably cant handle MMX cpu's. 3Dfx Voodoo combine best with MMX and Socket 7 IMHO. ESS Audiodrive is Very good msdos card, notice it has wavetable header too. The only one thing I'd consider in this ultimate msdos pc is graphics card. My recommendation would be swap good old Ati Mach 64 with one of three: ARK Logic ARK1000PV, Tseng ET6000 or S3Trio64V+. S3 Trio has fenomenal ms dos compatibility. This could be my choice probably. And wavetable card like yamaha or roland. I can almost hear music from Doom or Duke Nukem 3D
Learn an ABC of vintage computers: always turn on a CRT first to let it warm up, only then power on a PC itself. Otherwise you'll miss first messages on screen, probably diagnostic one which you only have one chance to see before PC blew up its geriatric capacitor.
Coming from the C64 and Amiga myself, I got my first PC in April or May of 1995, just before Windows 95 came out. It had DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 at first, and it was a Pentium 75 with a PCI S3 graphics card. Many hours spent in Doom.
Cool stuff! My parents had a Highscreen 386 around 1992. Not a Colani though. Luigi Colani was a German industrial designer who designed a lot of out of this world stuff, including cars.
I believe his greatest success was defining a new design language for Canon SLR cameras. His aesthetic design for the Canon T90 in the mid-80s continued to influence camera design for many years after.
I'm glad you got a functional 90's hard drive going in the HighScreen. An old hard drive with it's bearing whine just 'feels' right to me, not a standalone CompactFlash adapter.
Yeah I try to use hard drives most of the time, even on XT class machines. With ethernet installed (pretty sure every collectie has boxes full of them) transferring software is pretty easy. But on lower class machines networking is also slow and hard drives small, making it not very practical.
Oh, man, the memories. In '95 (or was is '96) my dad bought a brand new Pentium 133, Intel Endeavor motherboard with integrated audio, 16MB of ram and a WD Caviar 1.2GB hard drive. So similar to what you have, except for the cpu. This video really took me back to those days.
Me too. Cyrix 486 DX2 80 MHz. Upgraded it till it eventually had 8 mb of RAM, 540 mb hard disk, 1 mb graphics card, SB16 compatible soundcard and a 6 speed CD-ROM drive. So many memories toying around with it. :)
It seems the "beeping" was actually coming from the HDD since it stopped right when the HDD started up. I guess it was the motor attempting to spin that was making this sound. I have the pentium 100 version of that pc :) Now the motherboard died years ago, but the case is still ok. I guess I could rebuild that pc using another motherboard with the same chipset. By the way I saw you took an image from UH19. I don't mind that you use them (we don't own all of them anyways), but a reference would be appreciated, also some images are copyrighted by their authors and licenced to us. Even if you don't want to reference UH19, please reference them :D (This also counts for images from other sites, like the one from vogonswiki, they'd probably like to be referenced) Good video as usual :)
75 MHz Pentium and a Maxtor 7850AV. Nostalgia! That was the configuration of my childhood computer, a Compudyne (re-branded AcerAcros). *EDIT:* Oh, wow. Whoever had this previously even had the same printer we had: a Canon BJC-4000!
Love your videos, keep up the good work. Here in Germany, Vobis had pretty a cheapo reputation but when I see the components they used, I must say that that was not true. Intel FX on an Intel board with a proper Pentium should have been rock solid and performant at the time.
Yeah its not bad … I have vivid memories of scrolling through these magazines. Even then I thought the computers looked cool. I’ve come to appreciate them even more now.
At 1:28 there's my Tower Colani Pentium 60! What a weird machine! We paid the equivalent of today's 6000 € for that, and 3 years later all the main components were replaced or upgraded... people nowadays complains about 1000 € machine lasting 10 years...
Very nice video as always, thanks. I recently also picked up a machine that had the same case as the one at 2:30, but don't think it had HighScreen branding on it, but the case is pretty unique design wise.
I have the same Caviar 11200 in my 486, it had been sitting in a box for some time in my basement. I think it came from my ICL ErgoPRO. Very light drive with a nice design. Thanks for the video!
Real fun to see this. I started my Windows experience with a Pentium 1, 75mHz. I had 16mb system memory and started with a 850mb HDD. That failed pretty quick within the year so i got a replacement HDD of 1,2GB. All this back in 1997. A 2000 euro these days, Targa computer that weight a ton ;-)
Never knew about the Colani line! Those case designs look really unique. Normally Highscreen PCs are such standard beige boxes.. and often with very average specs, so I mostly don't bother with them.
Great find....aaaaah...I love the Luigi Colani design..he was a visionary designer in those days...He also designed the Canon T90 (SLR) and laid the basis in design for all the SLR's ever since
16:22 Those were Primary IDE (40-pin), Secondary IDE (40-pin), Floppy (34-pin), Parallel (25-pin), respectively. You could see "PRI IDE" "SEC IDE" "FLOPPY" "PARALLEL" written on the board. There is no Game Port connector or reserved solder points; on the other hand, there are VESA Feature Connector (26-pin) next to AT power, and a Wavetable connector (8-pin; I've never seen a wavetable daughter board with just 8-pin before) between 14-pin VGA (pin 4 or 9 can be omitted on a DV15 connector) and 4-pin analog CD audio connector.
Am I the only one who prefers the W95 startup sound to practically any other? Brian Eno hammered it out of the park: listen to it slowed way down, he managed to cram 10 min worth of awesome music that could have been on an album into that tiny space!
Sound card in this video was also my first ever sound card. It was quite expensive, but still one third of the original Sound Blaster. Ah, the memories.
I had a desktop Colani case in my possession at some point. It was a nightmare to do any kind of intervention or assembling in it. Just like most of the desktop cases of the era. But heck ya, it looked so cool!
@@RetroSpector78 You know, back in the days (20 years ago), when we thought nobody would be interested in these outdated and obsolete machines....Yeah stupid things I did when I was younger.
This was my first PC in 1996: * Cyrix 6x86 P166 * 16MB RAM * 2GB HDD * 3,5" floppy drive * 16x CD-ROM drive * 4MB ATI video card with MPEG video hardware decoder * Aztech Waverider Pro-32 3D audio card * PS/2 keyboard * PS/2 mouse with scroll wheel * 15" crt monitor with integrated stereo speakers * Windows 95, Drivers and Lotus smart suite 96 on setup CD * User manual with first steps in Windows 95 and Lotus smart suite 96 The Cyrix 6x86 P166 has 133 MHz, but more integer performance than a Intel Pentium 166 MHz.
Imagine having a Pentium 75 machine back in the day. You would have left the rich kid with his (rarely her) show-offish Pentium 60 IN THE DUST! I wonder how many of those as-expensive-as-a-car top-of-the-line computers they actually sold back then -- or whether those were mostly advertised to make spending a still-hefty sum on comparatively more mid-range computers seem more acceptable. Have you tested whether this Pentium is affected by the FDIV bug? Some 75 MHz models were.
11:00 The presence of the .dos files on the root indicates that Windows 95 was installed over a previous version of DOS. I’d be curious if it boots ok to that (if you’re willing to let it do the additional disk operations to rename the system files.) I also have a 1.2 GB drive in my Pentium 100, though I partitioned mine so that the last ~ 200 MB would contain installation files and miscellaneous stuff so that the main partition would benefit from the smaller cluster size by being just under the 1 GB barrier. It probably doesn’t matter as much in your situation since I can tell you opted for FAT32, based on that 4kB cluster size on the format screen.
...you must have been very optimistic as you were trying to install Win95 straight from the CD-ROM instead of copying installation files to the hard drive beforehand ;)
Very close specs to my first PC, except mine was a P90 I also remember swapping the 8MB memory for 16 and being quite surprised at what a difference it made Ahhh those were the days
Yeah … future video is going to be about software and games. I remember the pentium being a step up from a 486 so it will be fun to see what kind of software this could run that a 486 could not
My first PC was an 80 MHz Cyrix 486 DX/2 back in 1995. It came with 4 mb of RAM. I've had it upgraded to 8 mb which made quite a difference. It also burned a hole in my pocket though.. As I recall those 4 mb of RAM costed me 250 gulden. About 100 Euro.
@@SandsOfArrakis I remember trading in my electric guitar for a 4x1mb 30pin simms. As I didn’t have money for an amp the electric guitar was pretty pointless anyway :)
I have a very similar system from 1997. Guess it's also a Highscreen. Even the case is the same, but my power button is more square than rectangular. I upgraded from the standard 850 Mb drive to a whopping 1 Gb! And it has an AMD-K6 233 with a Biostar Voodoo Rush card, which I was able to find drivers for Windows 98, but not for DOS. Still want to find DOS drivers so I can play Screamer Rally again :) Nice video!
Ah, the Intel Advanced/EV motherboard… I had its brother (or sister) back in the day, the Intel Advanced/ZP or Intel Zappa board with a Pentium 90 MHz. Those are very reliable motherboards! And they take the Pentium 166 Overdrive with MMX processor. Initially, my PC back then had an ASUS motherboard with an non-Intel chipset and that was not compatible with the Overdrive CPU.
Maybe this is a silly question, but what is the purpose of the little metal bushing the CPU fan wires are wrapped around? I've seen this before, no only on fans but on the power lead for a DC motor. Thanks! Love your videos man.
Its interesting, a friend of mine actually bought the sky tower with a p133. Seems that they put exactly the same board just into the sky tower. I totally remember those missing chips and this weird power connector
@@RetroSpector78 You know... the other day Clint (@LGR) was asking "what would be the bottleneck of his Pentium Overdrive" 😐.. I comment that is the crappy motherboard 🤨.... and i tell him to look for an Intel "Batman" or similar from back in the day.. 😃...... Now I'm at 5:37 in this video ... and I bet that this machine with that motherboard.... performs much better.. just because of it.. 🤓
@@RetroSpector78 @ 16:35 The odd extra power connector there is for a 3rd AT power connector that provided 3.3V. Around that time when the Pentium 133 CPUs came out Intel started making CPUs with split power rails, for running the signals at 3.3V for example and the cores at 3.3 or less. They also planned to use Voltage regulator modules (VRMs) on retail CPUs but that didn't take off. Quite some boards were prepared for that however, but remained unpopulated. Such boards like yours, or my dual socket 8 Pentium Pro Workstation, could either run on 3.3V from the PSU, or from the onboard 3.3V regulation (to beconfigured via jumpers usually). A bit later the ASUS T2P4 board that ran basically every existing socket 7 chip could be jumpered to about any voltage between 2.2V and 3.3. That would be a fine example of an onboard VRM. Starting with the Pentium 2 systems CPUs began setting their own voltage via pins on the socket or slot, the beginning of various "VRM versions" that had to be supported to run CPUs. Apparently Intel had concerns about regulation and cleanliness of the rails coming from 3rd party PSUs. I hope that's helpful
@@amurtigress_mobile365 "The odd extra power connector there is for a 3rd AT power connector that provided 3.3V." That's right. This was the shortly lived spec between AT power and the 20pin ATX power spec. The ATX spec (both physical and electrical) was likely released right as this motherboard was made.
The first serious PC my parents bought was a Highscreen from Vobis as well, it had an AMD K6 MMX 166mhz etc. The PC is long gone, but I still have the CPU :-) I remember I ultimately “claimed” the thing, upgraded the ram to 32mb and put a Voodoo 3dfx passthrough card in which gave a sensational improvement in games like Dungeon Keeper.
Holy shit...6999DM for a Pentium 60 machine, 2999DM for a 486/66 (without such luxuries as a CD-ROM drive of course) - I always wanted to have such a beast (I only had a 386 and a C64 at that time) when I was a kid back in the 90s, but my parents somehow didn't quite agree :D
8:21 - It's always worth ditching those Molex passthrough power connectors if you can (the one used to power the fan). I found over the years that the contacts in them are often quite bad, and can create a high resistance. Hard drives need a fairly high peak current to start the spindle motor, and those power connectors have caused me problems in the past. I had a few of them where the "gold" coating had corroded, caused a high resistance, and almost caught fire. There may be a header somewhere on the motherboard for 12V to power the fan, but I know that wasn't so common on older boards with the "AT" style power connector. It's probably better to splice into the floppy drive power cable perhaps.
Highscreen Pentrum 166MMX was my first PC computer. I still have it, but didn't use it for years. By now i'm afraid to check if it works without recaping. Luckily main board battery is looking good.
The original label for the C partition was "VOBIS Gent". Don't know where you got this from but looks like it never got reinstalled. Wonder if it was standard practice for this store to give this label or it might me a former store demo model.
Makes me think back to my old PCs.. My 2nd PC (from an ibm 286) was an NEC containing Pentium 120mhz, 24MB RAM, 1GB hdd, with onboard vid and an opti 930 sound card.. well it wasnt bad, except opti was notorious for impossible to obtain drivers (the only available win driver made warcraft 2 stutter) and crusader in DOS mode refused to play music, but sfx worked... after that was a p3 system and then everything was ok after that. I bet today I could get that old NEC to work correctly, kinda miss it. Not sure where any of my old computers went... :(
I was watching a video by Casual Retro Gamer recently, and he picked up one of those Desktop Colani pcs in a big haul, weirdest looking pc case I've ever seen
I also have of these Intel Advanced/EV (Endavour) socket 5 motherboards, with the audio chip on it and the proprietary riser card with audio connectors on it. All this generation of Intel motherboards with triton FX chipsets are really super stable and none of them has failed so far (I think I have at least 6 or 7 of them, mostly OEM from Gateway).
I also ran an Intel Triton board and it was very reliable. It also looks and FEELS like a quality board (unlike the cheaper made in Taiwan brands). No sharp edges on the board, all the connectors and jumpers were labeled. Often Intel would use much better quality parts, like capacitors. The only downside to an Intel board, was that there was no overclocking.
Regardless of whether the PC itself can boot from CD-ROMs, none of the W95 CD-ROMs were actually bootable, so you would always need a floppy to initialise the Setup. And yes, trying to install it off the CD is a pain in the old bumhole and it's a hell of a lot easier just to dump the contents of the CD onto the hard disk.
I have the same motherboard on one of my assembled at home computers, bought back in the day. Too bad it doesn't fit my GUS Max as it collides with the CPU, so I have it still in the 486 which is a bit ill. Nice and solid board this one. I don't have the S3 populated but I have the integrated Vibra and thanks to the OPL3 it is pretty decent for old DOS games. I am halfway to make the external adapter to be able to use the joystick, as that was lost somewhere in time. If you need the board's user manual in pdf I found a matching one as "Intel Advanced/EV Motherboard Order Number 281835-001 May 1996" . Somehow the date doesn't match (I indeed got mine back in 95 if I recall correctly) but it is pinpoint accurate.
Greetings from Austria,. i had the exact Same Tower and Monitor in End of 94, with a AMD 486 DX80. 4 MB RAM and no CD ROM Drive and 420 MB HDD with OS2 Warp pre installed (on CD was Windows 3.11 but no drive :)) , the PC was barely useable with that after adding Sony Double Speed CDROM with extra Controller Card and extra 4 MB RAM the PC was so much faster (OS Warp was then removed)
15:40 There is no onboard cache, those chips (which look like cache) above the COAST socket are part of the i430FX chipset. I have the Intel Advanced/EV with onboard Vibra 16, but I had to hunt down the audio riser card (Intel PBA 636117-002), none were available on ebay, so I had to track down an unsold one from years ago! Luckily, the seller still had it! Then 2 of them showed up on ebay after the sale .🤣
Those Maxtors in the 1995/6 era were so slow, I think the spindle speed was only 4480rpm on my 1.3Gb drive. My Compaq Deskpro 4000 at work had the 1Gb variant. Our Mac had a Quantum Fireball 1280AT with a 5400rpm spindle and what a difference in performance.
The additional power connector on the motherboard is for a "P10" connection from the PSU providing 3.3vdc and ground. Dell utilized it and you did show the Dell version with the onboard S3 graphics chip. I'm not sure what it actually did beyond that though.
Ah, sweet nostalgia 🥰 Gosh, I miss Netscape Navigator. Maybe that comforting splash screen will come back again in a modern version. Can someone please do it? Please? 👍😊
Een tip: een station is een drive in het engels bij computers. Leuk apparaat overigens, zoiets hadden mijn ouders vroeger ook, maar dan een Pentium 90.
I still have my PC with an Intel Endeavour motherboard (Pentium 133) with the onboard video, onboard SB Vibra and a 256kb pipelined Burst cache stick. Maybe the best mb I ever had.
My first own PC was a Colani Tower PC with a Pentium 60 inside. Payed 3000DM(~2300€ incluning inflation) for it. Dragged that beast to many LAN parties. Sadly i had to sell it back then.
