The sticker over the speaker performs potentially two functions, but making it quieter isn't really one of them. It's either for allowing a vacuum pickup tool to have a flat surface to grab the component during assembly (the same reason why you sometimes see a small piece of tape on USB connectors), and/or (perhaps more likely) to prevent ingress of cleaning fluid during an ultrasonic cleaning process at the end of assembly. Making it quieter is just a side effect of the sticker being left in place after assembly and cleaning.
So many small independent computer stores in many towns. The cases had the square spot for thick custom logo for the company. I don't remember what company made the custom stickers but I remember seeing them in PC Shopper
There are only two scenes I like in Titanic, the scene where he's drawing her lushous boobs. And the sinking part, especially the propellor guy and the ship breaking in two. I am morbid, depraved, and fkkkt up. : )
I've encountered many a drive, particularly in the 2000s that just refused to load some CD-Rs. It was very much an imperfect technology that I don't miss any more... 😂
But they fixed those problems, just in time for napster. I'm happy when things come together like that. Man, the tunes I stole....... uh ...... borrowed..... sampled.
The main problem is cdr's are less reflective that cd's so had a lower signal return strength. Also the lasers could be just getting weak so they read cd's but cant get a good signal from cdr disc's
What would we do without Mike's wonderful "all right" remarks each step of the way of dismantling his latest PC finds, at the end of the week?! Love it Mike... keep up the good work. :)
The hack job on that third system was impressive, but still makes me feel a little better that my hack jobs have never been anywhere close to that! Quite a mixed bag today! Great video as usual!
"...I'm guessing the rapidly blinking light means anger..." HAHAHAHA! That was the funniest thing I have heard all day... thanks for your content, keep it coming.
Wow what an assortment of unknown systems. The third one was a little disappointing. They remind me of going to the computer parts stores and getting things needed for our computers. I miss those days. Your videos take me down memory lane to an assortment of memories watching you fix or build systems. Your sense of humor is great, I love it! As always looking forward to your next video! I think I’ll rename my Fridays as Computer Friday!
I guess the spiders that used to live on the dial up modem were trying to get on the world wide web, and send an email to relatives in another PC somewhere in the world 😆
Well I know this reply is late, but you need to be ashamed of yourself!! Have you been to church lately??? You have sin on your soul. Do you think Jesus would steal tunes on Napster?? Me, I auditioned tunes on Napster. It was all about quality control. I had to do a lot of auditioning but it needed doing! And most of the time, the quality sucked balls. 🙂
Just wanted to say there was a period of time when it seemed like CD-ROM drives just wouldn't read CD-R disks for some reason. Like in the late 90s or early 2000s it seemed like we had a bunch of different brands with that issue. Finally started to order every system with a CD burner, just so we knew that they would read. Great channel and fun to see you restoring the same type of systems I started my career on.
Great Channel 👍🏻 RU-vid algorithm brought me here 🎉 Seen a few of your vids as a new subscriber. This is great viewing. Brings me back to when I used to build these PCs back in the day as a day job and as a hobby. I’m surprised No coin cell manufacture is sponsoring you. The amount of them you go through repairing these retro systems, they should do. How do you not get bruised hands or cuts when pulling these parts out? I always find that’s the issue I get…😊 Keep up the video content… Cheers from the U.K 🍻
I found a trick to revive floppy drives which won't move even with new grease. The trick is to spray some contact cleaner into the stepper motor that actuates the head, you can spray some in there through the holes in the back and so far it has revived 100% of the floppy drives that I did it on
20:45 - The capacitors aren't what you have to worry about, it's the primary side heatsink, which is just above them. Most power supplies have that heatsink in-circuit with the primary switching mosfets, meaning that it's anywhere between 60-375v RMS, depending on the switching topology used. Some power supplies are of piss poor design and can have that live heatsink just 1/16th of an inch from the lid with no insulation between them. I had an Antec SL350 that was such a design. Had a spectacular bang one time when a ground wire broke out of a molex connector and a one in a million shot, the wire whipped back and the end went directly into the vent of the PSU housing and touched the heatsink. Sounded like a gunshot and blew a deep crater in the heatsink. PSU was unfixable, that bang destroyed the mosfets, the PWM controller, bridge rectifier and controller IC. The capacitors are perfectly safe to touch powered on, since their legs are hidden under the board. The heatsink, not so much. Accidentally brush against it and you'll be swearing right quick. The capacitors can keep that heatsink charged up from minutes to several hours if the bleed down resistors are missing or damaged. Best to poke a multimeter across the heatsink and the PSU body to make sure there's no voltage left. Don't try shorting this heatsink out, because you'll most likely blow up the main switching mosfets and destroy the supply.
My gut feeling with the CD-Rs not working is due to the dye. Modern CD-R blanks are made with much lighter dyes (phthalocyanine) which might not reflect quite how those old drives need. I recall that most of my discs back in the early 2000s were a lot more blue in color than they are now. I could be wrong but just a thought.
You may very well be right. I have plenty of Verbatim disks that used their dark blue AZO dyes and those disks always read well, compared to many of the cheaper disks I used in later years that had like a very pale green type dye.
Do you remember orange dye CD-Rs? The first Maxell ones I bought in the very early 2000s were like that and ugly expensive. I seem to remember they were something like 18 Austrian Schillings each, or €1.50 in 2002 money. Finding a 10-pack of no-name CD-Rs for 10 Euros felt like a steal and they were decent too. The packaging was something to behold. A plain white cardboard box with black print and the discs in paper sleeves inside. No manufacturer info or anything on the box I think. If I remember correctly these off-brand discs had a deep green dye. Blue ones came later and I loved them as a teenager.
@Ragnar8504 I never saw orange dye disks, but I did encounter recordable disks probably a bit later in the lifetime of the tech. However I have very fond memory of the Dysan black CD-R, as rumour had it those would work best for pirated PS1 games. I never could test that, but the black disks looked really neat and all of those I burnt still work to this day. Can't same the same for those pale green-ish dye ones.
That last system with the 2003 parts takes me right back to my high school years. That was the rig i was running right around my senior year of HS, first video card i bought was the Voodoo 3 and that would have been in 2001 i believe. Time flies.
Just out of curiosity, I'm wondering if they were still teaching computer science in hs in 2003. We took it in grade 12, but that was in 1982. Also, it's just weird what time changes. When I was learning how to run my own computer, reading those Dummies books and doing the disk tutorials, we were told that we needed to get a "computer guru" to help and guide us in our computer journey. That was in the mid 90s. Now, it's like who the fkkk needs one of those? The damn comp explains itself. : )
@@keithbrown7685 They were still teaching computer science in 2003 in high school because I was taking some of those classes back then while I was in high school. They were tech prep/vocational program classes that counted towards college but I never used that credit for anything as I did not go to university, only to a vocational college.
Listen, MikeTech, I don't mean to criticize. Matter of fact, I approve. There are a lot of towers getting starring roles on this channel. I just wonder if this is your subconscious way of saying, that people who send their comps to the landfill or to eWaste....... that they should be taken to the Tower. You know, coz in merry old England, that's where people went before the King finally disposed of them for good.
And more heat. That was the whole point with the P4. Geeks needed space heaters. They also needed comps, but they often lived in cold cramped spaces, like dorm rooms. Enter the Pentium 4.
It looked to me like that second computer was used in a very humid (or at least not climate controlled) place -- the dirt/dust was *caked* on. Ick. Love these vids & keep 'em coming! :-)
Love your videos! I'm sure the fiberglass repair works well, haven't tried that myself, but I can also recommend Plastruct Plastic Weld. It is solvent based and chemically dissolves the plastic and melds it back together. I've used it to repair cracks in computer cases with great results. Edit: I see someone else already suggested this, at least I'm not alone :D
Thanks! I thought the previous comment was referring to the electric plastic welders (the ones that essentially just melt a heated wire in). Never heard of that stuff, but it looks interesting.
First pc is from Nimble Microsystems Inc. They are mostly into servers and enterprise level tech nowadays love your videos and cant wait to see a full video, on some of more in depth repairs. That some of these need. 😁
You never know what you'll find in these mystery towers, system 4 looks like the kind of cheap somewhat flimsy case I built a metric ton of PC's in while working at a local PC repair shop in high school. It's really cool it supports a 120mm fan tho, none of the ones I worked on despite looking very similar supported more than a single 80 front and rear. Could make a really good candidate for an IDE RAID array 'cause you could put a modern high static pressure silent fan in there and keep those drives cool. Pair of 80mm's out back, you'll be set. Thankfully modern fan designs are much imporoved over ye olde days where even the silent fans probably buzzed when new, or just screamed, or both.
@@miketech1024 Yeah, no pesky vibration dampers either, though I dunno what that's gonna do for the life of four drives hammering away in sequence. Back in high school, a friend of mine and I thought it would be funny to RAID a bunch of these noisy 1GB Western Digital drives he'd gotten in bulk. We never got to do it though, but man that would've been loud. The drives were leftover spares from some office building, NOS, and they were loud. Never thought I'd miss that sound, haha!
The AOpen was obviously from a smokers house. I know, both of my parent's smoked, so I know that dust well. The reason it's so difficult to clean is because it's got cigarette tar, which is incredibly sticky. A bit of degreaser, like Dawn dish soap, will work wonders on plastic parts.
The spookier part, is how that stuff binds to lung tissue. I think of the things I did to my lungs. And even now, I'm not sure if I got away scot-free. But I LOVED smoking, in the beginning, and it was because of that very tar, that my tastebuds went to nirvana, and ultimately short-circuited, so that cigs were tasting like something worse than ***t to me.
I'm not sure, the dust doesn't look quite brown enough to me. Besides, it would have smelled. Humidity can make dust properly difficult to remove. My parents have a holiday home that sits empty and unheated throughout most of winter and that has dust just like this PC. Spring cleaning is always a chore.
Hi buddy, I am sure a cap popped when you switched on that last computer. Go back and review your footage. As you switched on you can hear a pop and a sudden silver "light" from the board. It looks like the top of the cap pushed out catching the light. I just love your channel. Regards from South Africa
Just off topic, I would like to go on record as saying that "Permanent Dirt" is a good name for a punk band. And you heard MikeTech utter it first! So when Permanent Dirt becomes famous and people ask where the name came from, we can point them *right here*!
At the start of the audio cd rip-off era, someone gave me a disc that sounded like the audio had tiny little pperforations in it. Turned out they forgot to finalize it. I don't know why I remember such trivia, but this was in the year 2000.
@@miketech1024 We don't mind videos being late, don't overwork yourself, a day or two is fine :-) although can't get enough of your videos, drooling over the videos and you haha
i did pc repair in the 90's- early 2000's you would had no idea what you might come across or what the issue might possibly be "mystery jumper" was a good day .... people using keyboard 5pin din as a midi port was something i came acreoss way to often
I think the AOpen system was built at a local computer shop or as mail-order instead of assembled by a home enthusiast because of the CSI label. CSI was an acronym for Custom System Integrator which is what a lot of those type of smaller vendors were classified as back then. The matching AOpen CD drive, PSU, and AOpen chip on the sound card lends further credence to a purchased build, as does the Coolermaster 3rd party CPU cooler, since the boxed Intel chips for home end users included a fan but the OEM brown box CPUs didn’t always. You are my favorite channel discovery of 2023. ^__^ Love the way everything is put together and that includes the host. 🤠
woow this first PC, it gave me some nostalgia.... very similar to our first PC when I was 5 or 6 years old it had also an Asus MB and a 120MHz intel P1 and 2x 16MB ram sticks :) also the case is similar, maybe just different front plastic front panel (more rounded buttons) it had a 1.6 GB seagata and a 8x CD rom
Good idea using a fiber glass repair, myself I usually use a plastic welder to repair bezels llike that (both automotive and PC) it fills in the gaps a bit better, but i always end up having to sand and paint the whole thing as its hard to match the color
Fiberglass is my favorite material for repairing thin plastic like this. Stuff is crazy strong! I do wish there were a good way to replicate original texture after filling/sanding. Especially that classic IBM texture.
I use to do this all the time in the Mid 2000s collect a bunch of random bargain store pcs and go to town lol I made several good working computers in this era..
It's fine to try and start a MB with bulging caps, ie, it will ether start, or won't start. Also those rows of caps are usually in parallel, so you can replace 6 caps of 1500 with 2 caps of 4500.
Some of those older CD and CD-RW drives would read -R but not +R or the other way around. Would not read -R but would read +R's. And/or were just finikey about reading both. Depending on how the CD-R was closed when written. And there's just no rhyme or reason to it. Excellent video, I look forward to watching more.
That would be DVD. CDs only came in -ROM, -R and -RW flavours. Early DVD drives were sometimes indeed limited to whatever rewritable format the manufacturer thought to be more likely succeed in the format war. DVD-RAM was even more limited, especially the cartridge type.
Create a floppy disk with hdat2 to do full surface scans to your hard disks. It's also capable of displaying the SMART attributes and reallocate damaged sectors automatically. I also recommend having a memtest86 floppy or boot CD nearby. Should be part of your testing tools
I absolutely love the channel Mike, you inspired me to build my own windows 98 SE computer, which I did couple weeks ago. It works great with xp dual boot.
S1 - P133, nice! I'm not a big fan of 'Dallas' style RTCs but still better than those Varta barrels & also hackable! S2 - Where the fudge was that AOpen case used? It's a zoo for dust bunnies! S3 - Capacitor Plague was a real thing people! S4 - More dust! More bad caps! But Mike turns it on anyway! 😛 Looking forward to the future upgrades & repairs!
Regarding that AOpen chipset... Acer Labs Inc was part of the same conglomerate, and they did make some chipsets. So possibly that was the origin of that chip.
Oh yes, and you kids have it easy nowdays. 🥳 Let me introduce you to our friends in the 90s, "everything is an expansion card" and "IRQ conflict from hell"! 😂👹
Oh yes, it was! I started messing with old and cheap or free computers (mostly 286 to 486) in around 1997 and played with a bunch of P1 machines throughout my teen years. I never built a PC from scratch but I did help a friend design his custom PC in 1999 or early 2000. We picked all the components from a local small computer chain, I think we even used their web site rather than a paper catalogue, and then he had the machine built by the store, it was a service they offered. One thing I remember very well is how upset I was that he got a crappy video card (might have been an NVIDIA something) so he could afford a huge 19 or 20" CRT monitor - I'd have preferred a decent video card and smaller screen. He was happy with the computer for several years though and eventually gave it to me to play with when it was wildly outdated. It did run XP quite nicely, which was a far cry from the 98 it had been built with. The real fun begins once you get back into the late 80s, with MFM and RLL hard drives. The first DOS machines I worked on were like that, 1987-1989 vintage, mostly cheap-ish 286s, featuring Seagate ST-225 or 251 drives. The two things that saved my sanity back then were a stack of DOS magazines my neighbour gave me and the early internet. Seagate had the data of all their ancient drives on their web site for free. Those drives couldn't be detected automatically, you had to enter cylinders, sectors and heads manually. Some BIOS setups offered a custom type (often 47) that let you enter the data manually, with others you had to pick the closest pre-defined type with the same or slightly smaller size and format the drive with those values. Using that drive in any other machine required knowing the values the original user had used to format the drive. If you didn't know them you were out of luck. Early IDE drives were installed in a similar fashion, the cyl/head/sec values didn't have to match the physical drive though, just the size of the BIOS type had to be correct or smaller than the actual drive. Auto-detect came with 486 machines, possibly some very advanced 386s had it too but I haven't seen any. ESDI and SCSI drives were much more advanced. For SCSI you set the BIOS hard drive type to "none" and the controller did the rest, for ESDI you picked any type you wanted. Those drives were painfully expensive though. MFM/RLL and IDE were similar enough that they couldn't co-exist in one system, so moving data from one of those old machines onto something more modern usually required a SCSI controller and hard drive. The last time I used that setup in a real world environment was in 2006 when I had the dubious pleasure of backing up the hard drive of a 1987 Mitsubishi 286 that used to control a CNC milling machine. The only thing that was wrong with the Mitsi was a flat CMOS battery but unfortunately the BIOS setup wasn't in ROM but had been supplied on a long gone floppy disc. Getting the controller and hard drive to work with any other 286 board proved futile for some reason, as did using the drive with another controller, so I spent the better part of two days scouring the depths of the internet for a setup disc image. I actually found a generic setup that I could then put on a flash drive, shift that to a 3.5" floppy on an older Mac with a USB card and finally copy it onto a 5 1/4" DOS boot floppy on a Pentium 1. Then began the fun of trying hard drive types one by one, thankfully type 2 or 3 was the correct one. Once I had the hard drive working I installed my SCSI card and drive, xcopied the whole C: drive to the SCSI drive, plugged that into a Pentium 90 running DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 and copied the relevant software to the Pentium's IDE hard drive. Thankfully DOS software could be copied from drive to drive without any issues. What a palaver!
Those weird sound effects and cursors were part of the "Travel" theme from Windows 98 as far as I remember. And some CDs show quick blinking while reading the disc. If it keeps blinking forever it might be a sign it can't read it.
Seeing the AOpen system interior brought to mind a service call I did for a local cement and gravel company. I was the most dust I ever saw inside a mostly working system. Every component was coated with about 2 mms of rock dust. The fans and heat-sinks were all rendered useless/non-functional by being gobbed tight by dust and grit. The bottom of the interior was coated thicker than the rest, easily a full cm of filth. How the system had managed to function in any capacity for more than a week in that location beggars belief. Regarding CD-R incompatibility, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I had endless troubles with CD-RW and CD-R media, it all hinged on what color laser diode was used in the units. Some used a yellow laser diode that would not work with some media, others used a blue laser diode (mostly Sony) that would not work with some media, yet others used a red laser diode that would not work with some media. Some worked fine reading CDs burned by any color laser diode, but not read RW media at all, even if the burn session had closed the CD to any further changes. And some would read a RW media until it was used a second time, then never again would it read. So much jank hardware in those days.
That makes my bearings hurt lol. I used to work at a shipyard. It gave me a whole new respect for the environmental conditions that hardware can tolerate! Oh I remember all too well the wild-west days of early recordable optical media. I definitely don't miss that!
It's funny because the Phillips burner was the first I ever bought! I think it was 200 euros at the time and it was all the money I got for my birthday!
Another great video. I have been on a retro computer kick for the last few months (I've been playing with computers since 1997 - first PC was a 133 Cyrix commercial build). Only recently found your RU-vid channel. My first retro build is based on a Intel D815EEA motherboard (the very first motherboard I bought ) and put Windows 98 SE back on it. I'd purchased it for one of my sons, so we three could play LAN games in the house. It's great to play old games on - viva StarFleet Academy! Works well for a 20 year old PIII board . . . with one exception: I keep getting a memory error at "Address 261472256." Thus far the error hasn't caused any crashes or data corruption. I've tried different RAM and different slots, and even just one stick . . . and the error keeps repeating. the first two numbers stay the same, but sometimes the rest of the string may change slightly. I don't see any bad caps on the board. I don't have any testing equipment to diagnose the issue, so I'm guessing the problem might be with the Tualatin 1ghz processor. I have a 733mhz PIII I stored somewhere I intend to switch in to see if the error clears up. Tons of fun, though! Again, thanks for a great video.
Thanks! Have you tried a different power supply? Could be due to ripple, which causes all sorts of strange issues. Also, couldn't hurt to hit all slots and sockets with DeoxIT.
I've not tried either. I'll give them a shot - another PSU I have. I dont have any DeoxIT but have been planning on getting some. Thanks for the suggestions!
Just a follow-up . . . I tried a different CPU and PSU. Cleaned the RAM slots as best I could. The memory error remained the same. The only variable was during g the CPU switch suddenly one of the RAM sticks was showing 100mhz instead of its rated 133mhz. That issue disappeared with a reboot and never reoccured. To paraphrase Heraclitus - A difference which makes no difference is no difference . . . As in the memory error hasn't impeded playing old games on the machine. Thanks again for the tips!
In those days, it was just a matter of understanding the RAM IC manufacturer and the timings. Looks like the RAM in the first system was LG EDO RAM with 60ns timings. Pretty standard fare for the day.
Back before flash drives. Nero was a god send back in the day. Nothing worse than burning a CD with a lot of wasted space. Nero (and other programs) would let you add files later. I do look forward to seeing what that Abit board can do. Keep voiding those warranties. I do remember Albatron or Albatross making video cards. Not too sure.
Do you remember a program called Deep Burner? I tried it once. Worked fine. It was supposed to burn files super efficiently, so that a minimum of space got wasted on the recordable media. If I could find it now, and I'm sure it's out there, it would probably work just like before. But then I think... I don't have any blank dvds around here... and then I wonder wtf for? Got plenty of flash storage. Memories I guess.
you start to feel old when you see P4 and a windows XP machine been stripped. It feels like only yesterday when i was studying windows XP and playing about with PCs. I don't do it now at all. But i did rebuild my old MCP lab a couple of years ago so i can have a play with old OSes again of yester year a long with the server side, now and again. I have 3 Pentium IIIs one is a dual processor maxed out, which i use a server role. A system id have loved to have built back then, shame i cannot turn back the clock to 2004 to the windows XP days. Id have been laughing now. But with me not been able to get into the field back in the mid 2000s, i gave up with it all. Microsoft stuffs good shit to learn.
Goodluck finding something to pair with the Media connector in the Nimble PC. And I'm just waiting for the Jackcon caps on my Abit VP6 to fail. The board was clearly used heavily and yet they are all perfectly fine, even during extended use with the FSB at 143MHz.
