8:26 - this modem still can make a great job nowadays. Just install some retro Linux, like Slackware or Debian and you can turn this machine into a nice telephony IP center with Asterisk! Not 100% fast but functional.... This modem can act like an interface between your PC and the PSTN.
@@fritsfelix8423 I was thinking about modding an old us army surplus vietnam era ammo box into a pc case. I don't think it's ATX compatible either. However.... a few holes drilled can change this.
That's a bloody nice case design. I really like the fact that the buttons aren't just glued into the front panel so you can just take it out cleanly without worrying about the wires.
Yep, she's a looker .... one of a kind ... but apparenty there's this Taiwanese company that has a whole series of those (minitower / bigtower /desktop / ....) But not that easy to find.
I find it incredible that a 486 PC looks similar to my CURRENT PC, which also has that door with a transparent panel but instead of displaying the CPU speed displays the time, date and temperature of different components, this is completely ahead of its time!
This brings back memories. 1995 was the year I bought my first PC when I turned 18. It was a Cyrix 486-DX2 80 MHz. First with 4 and later with 8 mb of RAM. That 4 mb of RAM extra costed me 250 Guilder. About 200 Euro's. Added a 6 speed CD-ROM drive and a SB compatible sound card as well. Had so much fun with that system. Tried GP2 as well. Let's just say the 486 didn't really like that game. GP2 ran awesome on my 2nd PC which was a Pentium 133 :)
Hehe .. glad you enjoyed it. Also remember selling my electric guitar to pay for a 4mb memory upgrade on my 486dx2 66mhz :) The music industry might have lost a great talent back there and then :)
Indeed ... passed it along to a fellow retro enthousiast who has an entire collection of these specific cases. Was sad to see it go but got a great replacement that will be featured here soon. Don't forget to subscribe / like and support the channel. Lots more content coming your way ....
Ya know, this might be the most beautiful COMPUTER ever (that’s not made by apple) New PC’s usually go overboard with unnecessary RGB. This one just looks cool.
Very cool find RetroSpector78! I might have an Intel overdrive cpu or Cryix/Amd one laying around. I took a Packard Bell 486 25mhz SX 4 meg desktop to the extreme from 1993 all the way to 1998 with upgrades. Thanks for the content!
Love the old days. We used to repair hard drives in a clean room. My favorite processors have always been AMD. Still using Amd now using a Opteron 8 core cpu socket AM3+. Love your videos, keep up the great work. Never liked new tech I am old school all the way.
It has a very 70's mainframe look to it. I love it! That unpopulated connector on the controler board for the virus thingy, was just a rom and nothing more. It would act as an extended option rom and perform some various tasks during post. It functioned similar to a scsi option rom latching int 13. It was a way to provide a somewhat lower level form of virus protection, but it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. It also caused many cards with option roms to freak out and not work when installed, such as any DPT scsi board or some earlier sasi boards.
Love the case. Pretty unusual. I had a 486 long ago with the Texas Instruments DX4 100 CPU, qith lovely colorfull lettering on it. A coworker happen to be sort of cpu collector and I gave it to him once I was done with the system at this era.
Hehe .... yeah a really nice case ... passed it along to a fellow collector who specifically collects these. Great thing about retro computers and collecting is that you come into contact with people with very specific interests to share stuff with.
@@RetroSpector78 wow, didn't expect a reply, specially one that fast. just found your channel today and am loving your content, great production quality, watching all of your back catalog, am actually watching the upgrade video right now, I'm now a subscriber, keep up the awesome work
@@ClanTeamKill3r hehe .... cool ... I will ... lots of cool stuff coming. Feel free to help spread he word cause I could use some extra subscribers :) Very difficult for a small channel to get noticed ... How did you end up finding the channel if I may ask ?
@@RetroSpector78 stumbled across your 286 from hell video while watching another retro pc vid, and yea its slow starting out, my suggestion is getting new retro hardware like the xt to ide card or the parallel port adlib card and do some videos on those since people look for that stuff. but really just stick to it, you have great content and this awesome retro community will eventually sniff out good content like yours
@@RetroSpector78 haha i think the term is funny. as a carguy its weird because its way diffferent then a sleeper car. i think about it more like having a room just to live in the 90s but modern system for work. sadly old os are not that usable because of to old browser even tho i have a second 2000 themed xp pc mainly for gamign and music but it can do youtube
Thx ... was really lucky to have stumbled upon this one. I was there to pick up a commodore pc when all of a sudden we ended up in the garage where I saw this one. It was going to go to he dumpster so managed to save it luckily.
ohh!!! I have exactly that same motherboard. The CPU is an AMD Am5x86 133MHz. I put it away about 25 years ago, in functional condition. A few months ago I wanted to rebuild my two old PCs (the other is a Pentium MMX, also put away working) but I haven't been able to get them working again. Now doing the same with a Super Socket 7 system.
Back in the day we used the Trident video cards because they were cheap, not because they were good. The so-called speed indicator was a set of LEDs that were set with jumpers. They had nothing to do with the actual CPU clock speed.
The best ones you find by accident... when I actively search for something I hardly find anything. But sometimes I stumble upon one thing that leads to another. This one was just sitting in someones garage where I was to pick up a commodore pc and she just gave this 486 to me. So for sure lots of luck involved.
You should add plastic standoffs in the holes of the board (those that don't go through the metal frame) so your board doesn't flex when you install expansion cards. You can also improve the cable management a lot by inspiring you from Retro machines' 286 build video ^^
Thx for the tips... will check them out... don’t seem to have these plastic or metalic standoffs anymore. Only picked up this retro think recently and was decades ago since I was last working on computers. Got rid of a lot my stuff back in the day. Who would have known.... :)
Hello, I want to ask you one thing, I have a similar box but in SFF format, it has the same turbo display, do you know what the pinouts are? The jumper position to set it to 100MHz? I can't find data on this display: '(.
Had this exact tower case, got it from my uncle. But during the early 90s, i had a 386DX in a case that had the same design but it was a desktop (horizontal) one. Still trying to find a photo of it, while we were playing some sick pc speaker ear bleeding games! :)
@RetroSpector78 Just a month ago got this exact case back after 20+ years without after I got rid of it. At that time it had a AMD K6-2 based system. The one I got now has a P75 system, all original and barely used. It was stored in a warehouse and it still got the original labels and stickers. Inside is mint. Every component is listed on the sticker on the back. I will leave it as it is. Not the most powerfull system but who cares, it's a time capsule that needs to be preserved. Maybe some day I will make a video about it, been thinking for years now that I should start my own video channel about my collection (20+ complete systems, from spectrum, atari, c64,... to P4's) :) Anyway, still looking for the desktop variant of this case. We had it as our first home pc, with a 386DX 40MHz.
Btw, I once had that same graphics card, what I did was scrounge memory chips from old 286's and XT's then expanded the cards RAM to 2Mb hehe (Finding the correct size ones was hard, but in those days I had access to a considerable number of old spares from my computer repair part-time job)
Did the processor also get the fan and heatsink it said it'd require? Also, I love when before the POST, the Trident BIOS appears, it makes me feel nostalgic because my first GPU on my old 286 from almost 30 years ago was equipped with a 512k Trident TVGA card.
I had this PC at my work in 1996.It was branded as a Sky wich was a common brand in these days,But it didn't last very long.It broke down just two years later.It had Win95 installed.
Wow!! This is a good looking case!! 😏 The only negative thing is the back of the case is not ATX or mini-ATX yet, so it can't hold a Win98 motherboard with standard IO shield, I say...
Hey inverted motherboards especially in modern PCS make for fantastic airflow LOL look at the06 I think? Or The Cooler Master HAFX? I think one of those are inverted
dx4 100 my dream machine back then. if i remember correctly this thing came out (and became affordably) around the time they released the first pentium 586 the s-class 486. and then dropped rapidly in price.
Logic is: if the keyboard error was detected by a mistake (which sometimes happens), or you can fix the error on the fly (for example by disabling 'Key lock' feature) you can then press F1 and proceed.
I know this video is old, but… I would argue that a modem is still quite useable. If you have a cable modem for your home internet and you have phone service bundled, you can just plug right in and use it just like back in the day. There are many dialup BBSs in operation around the country and with VOIP there is no long distance. I know I would have died for that in 1985.
That is such a gorgeous case. :D I literally went, "Whoa!" when the segmented display came up. That is so cool. This case really needs an ENCOM case badge from TRON. You can find them on eBay. :) Out of curiosity, can you set segment jumpers for the MHz part as well? Or just the speed part?
Hello Retrospector78 can you please tell me the manufacturer/model of this case (if you know)? I remember wanting this specific case so much for a computer of mine back in the day but it never happened. I had AOpen cases and some Inwin cases as I remember but this I never got 🙂
fradd It was a tipping point. I remember getting my first pc in 1995 (486dx2 66) and it was also VLB. Lots of them were. Some had pci in 1995 but I think it became more mainstream in 1996.
I have an am486DX4 myself as well, my machine came with a Biostar board though, what it does have is 8 memory slots, but lacks VLB or PCI. I never got the CPU to work above 100MHz, or least it refuses to show it at boot anyway. I tried setting the bus to 40MHz and letting it multiply by 3 to get 120MHz, but that didn't work and it just showed 100MHz still. Normally it's 33MHz * 3. For some reason 28MB is the most RAM I could get the board to recognize, won't detect full 32MB. Back when this was my primary personal computer (I got it as a donation in 2000 when I was 12), I ran Windows NT 4.0 on it, honestly not sure why. It was a lot worse at running games than Windows 95 or 98 would have been, but I could always dual boot into DOS, so that's what I did. Anyway, I think it played Quake kind of okay though from what I recall I might have had to turn off sound. VLB or PCI would have helped there I'm sure.
I also have a case from that time that is very beautiful and different, it's a Pentium 1 233mhz mmx + voodoo gfx, but its design reminds a real gamer machine, the front of the machine has features that reminds of a descent ii ship. I think I will also make a video showing it
A rear case fan at the bottom is not good, it just kicks up more dust off the floor/desk that floats down in between power ups. Or it's just waiting to invite water in case of a flood if it was sitting on floor instead of on a counter.
ha ha looking at the board there was no dual memory channel rules lol ... I seen them cases but only worked on newer versions later on mainly around the Windows XP time.. actually it looks similar to a server cases but in a mini form factor a lot of companies like that case layout mainly DELL / IBM & COMPAQ were notorious to have the mother board and power supply in different locations .. good video interesting as per usual my friend .. in fact some of the cheaper end computer companies that made gaming computers such as TIME computers ect were using similar cases later on around the early Pentiums pre-486 era too .. but yes nice case .. like say reminds me of a server case???!!! or is it just me lol
16:27 i remembered that i have to overclocked my amd 486 dx4 100 to 166 mhz (33x5) just to play mp3 44khz 128kb smoothly... i'm using more modern board that already have pci slot but still have vlb slot with UMC chipset..
I have exactly that same motherboard. The CPU is an AMD Am5x86 133MHz. I put it away about 25 years ago, in functional condition. A few months ago I wanted to rebuild my two old PCs (the other is a Pentium MMX, also put away working) but I haven't been able to get them working again. Now doing the same with a Super Socket 7 system.
This is actually the computer I ordered in 1995, just about the same config. They upgraded me to a Pentium 60 for a little more money. I bought it from Planhold Computers in Amsterdam. I would love to get my hands on a case like this again!!!! If anyone knows what model it is.... Please let me know.
I love AMI GUI setups, much better then today's shitty lagging guis. This case is fantastic and befirore it's time they somehow knew that the power supplys will be on the bottom in the cases :) !BTW you need to retrobrite it :)
It seems to be a bit of a mystery ... some think it is a Taiwanese brand but nobody seems to know the name. I passed this one along to a friend who collects these type of cases and he also has lots of variants like this but also does not know the brand unfortunately.
I supposed it's a nice case for the time, but it didn't have much competition. Even Apple (who are known for producing some stunning looking cases, even if they aren't always easy to maintain) produced some ugly computers in the 90s. Never saw the appeal of the LED speed indicators either. Too easy to fiddle. I'd much rather the Motherboard give an actual estimate of the speed, with perhaps the option of displaying POST codes on the front panel. As for the rest, I have fond memories of trying to expand my 486 (an Escom one with OS/2 Warp, at least until I actually needed Windows on it). I think I expanded the RAM to 16 Meg, although it was 25 years ago, so the memory is a little foggy. I also have fond memories (same machine, I think) of both removing and adding a VLB graphics card. A fairly generic Cirrus Logic thing that I thought was the bee's knees at the time. The funny thing is, that is the only PC I have ever bought knew. I've bought 2nd hand PCs from time to time for other purposes, but I've never entirely replace my main PC, merely upgrading it bit by bit, into the current spec, with it currently having an RTX 2080 GFX Card, Ryzen 5 and 48 Gig RAM and a couple of terabytes of SSD, and a couple more terabytes of HDD. I need the 48 gig of ram because I do a fair amount with VMs, and need to have enough ram to run 2 or more at once.
