Let's check out the systems I bought from VCF! 

I remember you carrying that laptop in 3rd or 4th grade. Omg Earthlink and Netscape lol. I remember them well. We had Earthlink for a while. So many memories. I sure missed your videos when you were away. Brings me back to the time you explored systems when you were a kid. I still remember the laptop shell you bought and turned into a working laptop for your sister. It always makes me happy to see you get into all the systems you find. I’m so proud of your knowledge and how you revive vintage systems. I’m glad you found a few great vintage computers at VCF.

This channel is getting bigger than Mike's biceps! 😍

"looks like the machine is already debugged..." *drops hat* I came for the hardware, I stayed for the dry humor.

"De-bugged." Good one.

And Mike delivers again! How the hell do you manage to captivate me that I NEVER and I mean I NEVER skip any of your videos, just watch them fully engaged and interested, and I learn a lot out from them!

Mike, your dry humor kills me !! _Cache on a stick, it's a technical term!_

And we got some kind of video to watch 😉

Watching You doing surgery on these old but gold systems while You are explaining what exactly you're doing is very relaxing! Keep on doing what is definitely your purpose in this life! 😊

The way you talk about the different machines, you clearly have some love for them, nice work on the PSUs.

With those Gateways you could also pull the external bay cage and reinstall it by 90 degrees if you wanted a desktop config. I poked around a few of those things way back in my tech support days.

25:30 I fully expected those magnets to go flying, lol. Neat trick

Hip hip hooray for Mike the Tech who doesn't merely try-- he guts and heals a tight machine where no bugs need apply!

Wow the Mitsubishi laptop keyboard looks like GMK keycaps from the profile and typeface. You’d never see that now since they pretty much just do custom group buy orders now, but that’s really neat. I love seeing the computers of more unusual manufacturers of hardware.

5:25 ba dum TSSSSSS! 9:20 whoa I had a really bad feeling about this too! 9:26 yowch! 11:00 oh man I could hear the terrible sound even on the crappy phone loudspeaker! Can’t wait for the sequel to the power supply saga.

They tied the power cord into a noose, that's awesome lol

"COAST, it's a technical term!" Lol!

That Aptiva CD-ROM drive sounds like an Apple II disk seek when they turned on.

RU-vid recommended your videos to me since ive been hyperfixating on hardware ever since taking a course, and i love how you go on detail, and the retro hardware

Love your way of presenting. calm and professional! Some cool find you did on VCF.

Pretty sure my grandpa had one of those Mitsubishi's when I was like 6yo. He taught me dos and lotus, and I taught myself Crystal Caves, Rogue and Prince of Persia 😂

Nice vid once again Mike, hopefully you have some luck with fixing up that Mitsubishi luggable!

Old computers that would have been precious memories to someone.... 🥰 I enjoyed watching the video. 😊 👍 thank you I hope the mitsubishi power supply is fixed soon. 😉

Seeing a riser card in a "laptop" is peak early laptop

Watching your work brings back the excitement of pulling out boards, slotting in cards rebuilding pc etc. I used to spend hours doing this in my 20s I am now in my 50’s and the modern stuff isn’t as exciting, as it’s now just something you never take apart and recycle. Keep the videos coming please! Great work and a lot of fun.

Finally! Another video to watch❤🎉 Your channel is growing fast!

I had that exact Gateway tower. P166, 16mb of ram, 2gig WD caviar, 17” CRT, 56k modem. That setup cost $2400 in 1996. I still have the hard drive.

CACHE ON A STICK!!!!!

Exceedingly handsome and interesting, both the computers and the host.

Subbed when I saw the watch face, gotta support fam in the tech community, there’s not many of us haha.

26:34 when you clean off a white case like that aptiva, i get to see all the dirty spots on my monitor

"Pull Down Door 10H3079 Pull Down Door (for 2144 SL- I) 42H0348" Part Numbers that should fit that front door. Good luck!

That Mitsubishi laptop is pretty cool. I’ve always wanted to find a computer made by them.

These videos are great man. Keep em coming.

A suggestion is to take a picture with your phone before you disassemble the inside of the laptop. That laptop looks pretty clean (keyboard and screen)

These vids are so damn cozy

There was a note on the back of the laptop that said the default voltage is set to 230v on the PSU and you did show the switch after you tore it down but its hard to see the voltage. If someone else in the states plugged 120v in and turned it on set to 230v they may have blown that regulator or other parts. Be sure you check the switch before powering it up. On the third system the whole 5 1/4 bay may be able to be turned sideways so the drives are upright in desktop mode.

yay cant wait for the VCF hual

Yay! He is back! I love your channel!

Yay Mike is back! Best 30min of the week!

I believe that would be a voice modem. The sound to the motherboard is for the "voice" part of it

All those caps need replaced in the PSU, the PF series, etc... they all leak, and thats what caused the damage.

I love this channel. Great content mixed with dry wit.

you make thing's look so easy when you fix theses computer's and you explain thing's so clear great work and thanks for your upload

Oh thank you for a new MikeTech video! I was starting to have withdrawals. 🤤

Some nice "new" machines to add to your collection. 👍

Mike, I love your retro PC collection as well!👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👍🏻

yes the AudioStation with the little graphics of a casette and a diskette, oh the memories 🥹

I love how well-made most of the older computers are, thanks for a nice video.

Your passion and excitement for retro tech is quite wholesome 🙂

liked and subscribed

I recall a model of Packard Bell (early Pentium) which had a modem/ sound card combo. A guy at work had one and it came with answering machine software.

Great video, looking forward to the PSU/Laptop fix attempt

20:57 Very rare but there are some old BIOSes which do not output boot codes to the BUS.

Thanks for the Video. I have the P5 133 model of that Gateway mini tower Still runs like a champ.

I only just discovered your channel and I enjoy it very much. I remember some of these machines from the 90s but I was more in the Amiga camp at the time. I look forward to your next restoration videos!

That Lapcrusher thing was very well-built and clean!

Yassssssss fresh MikeTech. I didn't even know about the conventions - definitely going to think about planning a trip one year with my fellow tech nerds.

I really wanted an Aptiva growing up in n the late 90s. I have no idea why lol. They used to sell them at Radio Shack in the mall.

Look at that power cable noose

That sound is a "trademark" for Toshiba cd drives :)

Great haul. Join us at VCF Southwest in 2024 and grow that collection!

how many audio cards have a built-in modem lol that's a new one for me, Mike!

I really enjoy your productions. I still have that exact Aptiva I purchased from Radio Shack back in the day. It came with OS/2 Warp and windows dual boot. It still works and I fire it up a few times a year. I enjoy OS/2 and the CDE look of the desktop. I haven't booted it to Windows in years.

Nice GW2K

20:28, sounds like a cattle prod!

lol you had a "rubycon" cap to take care of the day armored core 6 fires of "rubicon" launched.

random comment to make the algorithm happy and to say thank you for the fun video

You were worried about the weight of that Mitsubishi, when you have those guns? 😅

Ha, I cringed as soon as you mentioned the sound card with a modem. That was the first thing I replaced on the first Wintel box my family had. It was a Packard Bell, and that card never would work with both at the same time. You either had sound or modem. Definitely one of the reasons they were called Plug N Pray.

Pozdrawiam . Ciekawy filmik .

That Gateway is a definitely a late model Pentium P54C, its got the later black chip style used on the MMX onwards and it has DIMM memory, although the MMX didn't reach the shelves until Jan 97..

Earthlink is definitely still around! They're active under Charter Communications these days.

clean that Shmoo

29:48 when you put this in tower orientation, I had to double take, because the bottom looked like it was missing! I have only seen a few of these in real life - made a video of one many years ago. But both of those had a front panel that matched the way the computer opened if that makes sense.

We had a very similar Gateway back in the day for our family PC before my Dad got fed up and decreed the PC was his only. Can't blame him, my brother and I argued over who got to use it. We both ended up wtih hand me down packard bells that really sucked.

Being that it's a Pentium 1, that RAM will either be 168-pin EDO (unlikely) or PC66, not PC100/133. The tell is that it's a single-sided module. those old machines don't do double-sided very well. A lot of those quad speed drives in some cases have deteriorating foam. The foam is just for sound dampening and can be removed without replacement. Once you get a pinout, it *might* be possible to make a 3D printed bracket for the fan and power connections and then shove a meanwell supply in. all depends.

The stick in the Gateway is an early PC-66, PC-100 didn't came until 1998 with the introduction of the famous 440BX and then with the 815, PC-133 became the standard until DDR struck like a meteorite in 2002 Love your vids, quite calm & informative, hope by the next you can have that Mitsubishi laptop going

As a heads up, just because a capacitor is a Rubycon, Nichicon or the like doesn't mean it can't fail. Just this year alone I've probably swapped well over 100 Japanese caps alone, even some that weren't looking bad but once I swapped them out any issues I was having got fixed. Some even tested fine on my (admittedly crappy) LCR meter but once I changed them out I've had dead computers come back to life. It's worth completely recapping anything you intend on keeping working for any length of time. I've had computers working for maybe like 10 total hours after I got them only to start working/intermittently working until I fully capped usually just the PSU. Even the small 1uf electrolytics can cause issues, at this point I've made it a point to replace all the electrolytics in any computer I want working even if it's working already.

I love these old computers ! I have a preference for the #2, that IBM is very well designed and built. Meanwhile, I remember my first "serious" PC was a Pentium 166 MMX, so I'm a bit encline to love that third PC 🥰 Oh, and btw, your channel is like ASMR =)

The rubber Dremel tool is great. I picked up a box of these and have been using them. fantastic tip.

Puppy Linux can boot on just about anything from the Windows 9x era

That Aptiva is probably early enough in the production run to still have some PS/1 similarities and even software. That model started essentially as a renaming of the PS/1 line. That Gateway, back in the day, we used to call the "Baby Gateway" because they had finally moved on from the ridiculously tall Full Tower AT cases.

23:21 That IBM AudioStation software looks an awful lot like Media Rack by Willow Pond, which was bundled with HP Pavilions in the late 90's. Its a fun program to play around with.

Damn Small Linux is a handy Live CD distro for vintage hardware. It's very out of date (Kernel 2.4.x, 2008) but it supports some pretty old hardware. It can boot to a GUI desktop on a 486 with 16MiB RAM, though it's happier with 24 or more. A boot floppy image to accompany the CD is available as well for systems that don't natively boot from CD. Sound, video, and network are usually autodetected without any trouble.

I enjoy your content, somewhat of a retro PC lover myself. I recently restored a Packard Bell D160. The IBM Aptiva is similar to Packard Bell units. They both use the same riser design, modem/soundcard combo, motherboard layout. The Voyetra app is interesting, it is identical to P Bells audio station program. Makes me wonder if these companies were collaborating, using the same parts and mfg facility? Who knows. Welp, good luck with the lap crusher, looks like a fun challenge.

Good video as usual mate, My Aptiva (that's also missing the front) also came with the same optical drive etc. The optical drive is a Mutsumi (they are identical to a Mutsumi 4x I have too) I've also been told by friends that the PSU in these IBMs is the week point. I'm likely going to recap it to be cautious. Also, regarding it having similarities to the PS1 - I believe the chassis is the same. If you look behind the front bezel there is a fan mount which is useless to the aptiva (the front bezel blocks it) where a PS1 has a fan In that very position.

in 97 I bought an Aptiva 2144 a-12 damn near identical only difference is the cpu was 133mhz.

👍

That Gateway has a BIOS update. One of Intel's early ATX boards too. Despite having the 430VX chipset with a USB capable PIIX3 southbridge, the ports were omitted since they were buggy/broken. The pads are still there though. The reason the Aptiva has PS/1 software is because it basically is a renamed PS/1. The entire line went to the Aptiva branding in 1994.

Can you do some bios updates on systems , i love updating a system that has a dual bios.

Gateway up to the Pentium 4's were solid systems if a little on the madlad side. (Compaq still takes that.) The full towers are a sight to behold.

I wish I could go to VCF and get to meet you. :) You seem like a nice guy I have lots of respect for. I don’t like to travel alone on big airports tho, so for events like that I’m a little sorry my bf don’t like old tech. But at home it’s nice to have different hobbies and not all the same. How’s yours?

Was surprised that the Mitsubishi only takes wall power, guess it's more of an LCD luggable than a true laptop on that front, hopefully you get it up and running soon. Oh lord if you get that M-Wave working you'll have to show us, the results from Cathode Ray Dude on his Eduquest 40 were abysmal and hilarious

that power supply is a house fire 2.0

Oh ho yeeeeaah

ATX in 1996? Wow

Ah, some extra PSU spice!

you know one of these days one of those PSU's are gonna explode

Great Laptop, you hunted there. While you are waiting for parts, any plans to come back to the damaged motherboards from older vids with corrosion and damaged parts?

I wonder if on the Gateway machine the 5.25 drive cage could have been installed 90 degrees as well.