So today's video is going to be a little bit different. I have recruited a special helper Who just locked me out of... Hey you Do you want to help me build a computer? Are you going to build your own computer? All right should we get started? Let's do it Corsair RMi series power supplies feature premium components for great Performance and very low, noise check out the link in the video description to learn more So I want you to help me pick out your favorite linus tech tips shirt to wear. Do you like this one? This one No, do you like black and white and orange one? Okay, alright.
Well the decision has been made. I think what we might have to do is maybe some clothes pins, okay. This is signature, and there's your mail. Oh I have mail too.
Excellent. All right now you get to wear A microphone I've never put one on someone else. You got to do a microphone. Test.
Make sure it's working. Can you yell Ah! [Laughs] Ah [laughs]. I'll have to clip it to like the back of his neck or something aright, so do you want to go pick out the parts for the computer? Let's go, okay. Hold on tight First thing we need to pick is a case.
Why don't you point it the one you want You Want the Cooler Master Master Case five? I had sort of wanted to go with something that we haven't covered before, do you want to help me pick out the motherboard? Mhm Why don't you wait for me to show you all the options first this time okay? You can pick this one or.. That one Okay, so now we need to pick a power supply, power supply. Do you want this one? Oh that one's an empty box That's not gonna work. I guess I gotcha.
Do you want this one or This One All right, so now I'm gonna pick the CPU because we can't have one that's not compatible 5960x. I will let you pick out the memory though Hmm, okay, you got one choice for memory. Do you like these ones, okay? Well that worked out. Which one do you like? You like the red one alright.
We're going with the HyperX Savage Okay, little man. You got to pick something on these shelves here. You got to pick one Show me which one you like. You like this one Okay, apparently we're using the RAIJINTEK TRITON.
So now this is really important You gotta pick your graphics card, which of these ones do you prefer? Okay, we got ourselves an AMD boy here So the R9 Fury it is Okay. You wanna try. It's very heavy Can you lift it way up on top of the table? Good job, what do you think red screwdriver Okay? Yeah? You're like a little early version of Linus aren't you? Hey! Alright, that's enough. That's enough Stop it.
What do you want to start with? Good choice We always start by assembling the components on the motherboard Outside of the case. I think Luke forgot to put the I/O shield for our wS board back in the box What part do you think goes next? Great choice, all right, hold on hold up! Oh okay hold on hold on, and your right hand here both at the same time push down All right next one you ready Wow Great okay, so you want to show me the next piece you need? Oh not that one yet, you wanna try again? That's right We need our CPU. You push it down and away from you, is it too hard Do you need help with that part Okay There you go! There you go. Then were gonna lower that down into the CPU socket Put this one down.
Whoa is that too hard? Okay I can help you with that one There we go. Tell me which part you think we need next. This one, you think it's the water cooler Wow, you picked out a pretty cool looking water cooler there Hey? This is fun With this one we get to pick what color we want to make the water What color do you like? Red. That's a great choice That's Gonna Go perfectly with our red graphics card.
You want the big one or the small one big? Small. You want the small one. Yeah that I can carry, that is a good choice So you can choose red white or green. Red.
Good choice Red just Because the water is red. That's right So what part do you think we need next? That's right. We're gonna open up our case. Oh there we go.
What do you think the quality of the packing materials for this case? Yeah, that's what I thought. He laughed at it What do you think of the case you picked out? You like it? Alright, you gotta work on your screwdriver technique a little bit, there you go now turn this way There we go So the first step is your motherboard standoffs. Keep trying Now you put your screwdriver in there, and turn it this way. Good computer Building.
I got it. You did. What do you think the first part we put in is? Wow okay, unconventional. We'll install our SSD first.
All done! Next one great job awesome Motherboard? Great choice, okay there we go, and then down. Do you want to put the screws in the motherboard? All the way till it's tight Okay, what part do you want to do next. Power supply? This one? Alright Rock on! Ope the other one popped out already Huh? You want a little bit of help there you go And turn it in. Great job.
Can you slide it in for me though? What's the next thing to install? Alright great job Alright you put in however much red you want. Okay tip it over Is that pretty Red? Do you want more? Awesome job Okay, I'm actually Gonna. I am gonna top this up Just because I don't want it to run out of fluid so I'll be right back. Okay little man What do you think is that red enough for you? Squeeze Harder Good All right now we can put our CPU cooler on.
We got to get our radiator up in the top of our case. Are you kidding me Cooler Master? Okay, the radiator isn't going there Where? Should we put it in the front? Yeah, okay. Let's do that Oops, it's always good to have a helper when you Install the Io liquid cooler. Yeah, there you go Gotta push a little harder So, how are we gonna power our fans? How? How are we gonna Do it? Yeah? Yeah, there we go Now we need our 8 pin connector for the back of the motherboard all right, so that's in Uh whoa This is the best part [Gasps] Oh Yeah, are you ready to install the video card? Yeah, push, push, push! Is it all the way in oh We still need power for our graphics card there you go is it in You got to hit it can't push there you go harder harder further down That's my computer! You betcha! Can you screw these in? We have to make the most important decision of all Do we want the side panel with the window? Yeah.
Or the side panel with no window? I want the side panel with the window. Window please. Alright should we power on our system? Yeah, all right. Let's do it.
Hey, Dad Can I put my screwdriver away, please Oh sure. Where do you want to put it? You did that again? How do you even know how to do that? Hey, little man. Do you want to find out if it powers on in the fan Spin Hmm? Where'd he go? No he's out here. Oh, there he is.
Hey! What the heck? Why do you keep running? [Laughs] Can i go down please? Sure after we finish your computer. This is the last step let's find out if it works Are the fans spinning? Hey where you going bud? I don't really want to play snowballs. Well, I think that pretty much wraps it up. How hard is it to join the PC master-Race? My son plays 50 fps roblox now Well it couldn't be that hard my 3 year old can do it Thanks for watching this little fun build log That I decided to do on a Friday Here as something a little different and a little fun if you just like this video I think you guys know where that button is but if you liked it click like? Get subscribe to Linus tech tips and maybe even consider supporting us you can buy a cool t-shirt like this one.
Give us some up the contribution through our community for which you should definitely Join or just change your Amazon bookmark to run with our affiliate code the instructions for which are up there that kind of thing helps Us out a lot. Thanks again for watching and I will see you guys next time You better hope I can't get out of here you want to say hi to youtube Say hi YouTube Hmm.
This is a Mystery PC. I say mystery for 2
reasons. The first is that I found it on eBay and I don't know what's on it. - Don't ask me exactly why I bought it, but
there was something incredibly nostalgic about that case.
It'd been sitting in my basket
for months, and despite the fairly high price tag, I needed to re-home it, and do something
with that dormant hardware. The second is because it's a mish-mash of
parts. This case, that CD-ROM drive, the turbo button. It doesn't fit.
The mystery deepens
when you realise that an AMD K5 100MHz lies at the core of this beast. It's clear that
this PC has a story. Like many PCs, it's evolved with the owner. That yellowing isn't discolouration
by the hands of UV radiation...
It's a part of this machine's life. Those cracks around
the plastic, isn't brittle plastic yielding to the unforgiving metal frame... It's an
intertwining, an evolution of the case. That dirt in the corner of the floppy drive and
around the buttons isn't everyday filth...
It's... Yeah, ok it probably is, and that
broken plastic is actually a result of the absolutely inadequate packaging used to send
this thing from Hungary to the UK. Because that's where this metal creation hails from.
You can see the badge says "Ready Computers, 1054 Budapest", which is of course the nation's
capital city. Why it has a cheese sticker on the side, I have no idea.
But there's no
denying that this thing looks the epitome of 90s retro. All of the 90s in one box. Opening her up, reveals the timeless circuitry,
ready to fire up once more. I mean, there's also a loose speaker knocking about, but you
can see from where it fell.
For now I'll just disconnect it. Here's the AMD K5, secured
under a small heat sink and fan. Connecting it to the outside world is an Intel PCIset
chipset and a 1995 Award BIOS. The PCI and ISA expansion slots are mostly bare, save
for a faithful Trident TVGA9000i video card.
An incredibly common range of cards on base
PCs, and actually the very first video card I had myself. Housed in the top expansion
bay is that mighty 52X LG CD-ROM drive, interestingly both the CD-ROM and 270MB Conner Hard Drive
underneath are setup as Primary and secondary IDE master devices, no slaves here. Incidentally,
Conner Peripherals were acquired by Seagate in 1996. All of this splendour is powered
by a JNC Power Supply, packing a beefy 200W.
Of pure POWER. Ok, we'll need a monitor to find out what
secrets lie within. This Dell Trinitron will do nicely, as will this IBM keyboard. There
are no PS/2 or USB ports here, just a good old fashion DIN connector for the keyboard,
and serial connections for whatever else takes your fancy.
With everything ready, the first problem I
encountered was the power switch. It's obviously taken a hefty knock in transport, which has
moved the switch away from the plastic housing. Pressing it delivers no response and no feedback.
Still I can undo this screw and then click the switch from here.... And there we have,
the sweet, sweet sounds of a 90s PC, booting.
Listen to that hard drive spin up, the sounds
of the floppy drive. Obviously there's no BIOS beep as I disconnected the speaker, but
it matters not, for all is well. 64MB of RAM means the triple memory check
takes a worthy amount of time, but then, we're in. Well, actually, Windows '95 didn't seem
to like the Turbo button being deactivated.
But a click and a reboot and we're good to
go. Now, the turbo button was actually designed to slow faster machines down to run older
DOS games... You know, ones without decent speed compensation, but it would be incredibly
rare to find one on a Pentium era machine. They were generally found on 386 hardware,
possibly the odd 486, which tells me that this machine has almost certainly been expanded
past its years.
Actually, before we get back to it, let's
have a look at the BIOS.... Ohhhh yes. Look at all these legacy options. I remember spending
hours playing around in this exact BIOS, with these settings.
The options fill me with excitement
and possibility just looking at them. This was the early days of Plug & Play and you
still had to set aside your options for legacy cards. Amazing stuff. Anyway back to Windows loading.
I don't know who set this Windows '95 colour
scheme, but he's a masochist, whoever it was. My first problem is that I think all my mice/mouses
are PS/2 or USB... So I thought this might have been game over (for the time being).
But then I remembered that hideous Star Trek mouse from a few weeks back, and we're good
to go. Rather appropriate screen saver for this device.
Obviously we're booting into a different language
as well. We can change some region stuff in the settings, but to change the OS base language,
we'd have to do a re-install. Still, it matters not, we can muddle our way around. In terms of resolution, we're operating at
good old 640x480 in 256 colours.
We can up it, but, I dunno, this resolution feels kinda
homely. So time to nose about. Immediately in the
root direct a SIMSON image, turns out it's a guy on a motorcycle. Oh christ, look, before
I continue I have to change these colours, it's like being stuck in a sh*t pie.
Apparently
media files are outside the scope of this thing. Probably an unsupported format, or
missing codec. Anyway, we've got all the usual Windows programs here... Paint, Wordpad...
WOLFENSTEIN 3D....
Now we're talking. Actually it's a Spear of Destiny demo... The sequel
to Wolfenstein. Completely devoid of sound given both the PC speaker is disconnected
and there is no sound card what-so-ever.
I was having troubles with the controls, and
it turns out I wasn't joking when I said this guy was a Masochist. The bloody fire key is
set to "M". Who even does that? Anyway, the game runs fine. It's Spear of Destiny.
This
would run fine on a 386. At this point, it seemed better to exit to
DOS, as finding things under Windows 95 can be a pain. Of course, the main problem here
is the keyboard is setup for a different country. But a few lines in the config.Sys and autoexec.Bat
straighten that out.
We've still got the wrong installation language, but at least the keyboard
works as it should. To be honest, the only obvious DOS program I found, simply entitled..
SEGA... Tried to run at a resolution too low for this monitor, so let's go back to Windows.
I'm presuming it's probably Sea Quest. I thought I'd try it in a window, within Windows, but
'95 was having none of it, but then I noticed this folder within the SEA directory.
O
M G Have we just stumbled across some 90s objectivity
right here? Within the suspect directory we have a Pictures folder, then Decadens, then
_ko_, and then we find the folders of truth. I don't know if this guy was trying to hide
this stuff as deep in the directory tree as possible, but if he was, WHY CALL THE FIRST
FOLDER..... THIS? Kinda gives the game away chum. So, these are all JPG images.
This machine
won't open them, and Paint can only deal in Bitmap or PCX formats, so time to copy some
files across to floppy. Just to be fair, I. Thought I'd take an array of files. Some of
that...
Oooo, yeah, some that too. Great. And after loading them up on my PC. I CAN
INDEED CONFIRM.
FILTH. Oooooo, oh hello. Wow. Yep, it's what we thought chaps.
Of course
it is. But I'm not going to display any here or indeed mention it by name, because this
is Youtube and THIS ISN'T THE TIME OR THE. PLACE. I don't
think we're going to top that, but it did make me want to search deeper, for other suspect
directories.
All I really found was Doom, disguised as Toca Touring Car Championship
for whatever reason. Maybe Tibi was happy to keep his explicit photo collection for
all to see, but wanted to cover up he was playing a game with demons. WHO CAN POSSIBLY
TELL. Doom runs fine, even under windows, although why it's hidden in this bizarre directory
is beyond me.
There didn't seem to be anything else of value in there. There were a few more interesting program
on here. Daytona didn't work, but we've got Windows Commander, which was always a handy
file navigation utility. In the recent documents folder there were some documents, in a language
I don't understand.
I presume that these are all the work of our friend Tibi. Who could
tell, or possibly know. To be honest, at this point I was bored. We'd peaked with the hidden
folder and now it was time to shut this beauty back
down.
I have plans for it. Great plans. All of which
I will share with you all in due course. In the mean time, thank you for joining me
on this Mystery PC investigation.
[ Vaxeen 4U (Remixed) ] Greetings, and welcome to LGR for 7 years now!
What a crazy thing! Speaking of crazy things, did you hear that intro?
*Laughter* That is just the coolest! Huge shoutout to Andrew Hulshult
for putting that together for me. I commissioned him to remix my old theme song Vaxeen 4U
in this mental rendition, as you just heard and it is awesome! You can download the whole thing in the description below if you like
and check out his other music too, he does a lot of really good stuff, but... Big shoutout to all of you as well. Supporting the show over the years, this has
just been the best time of my life.
I love doing this. I'm going to keep doing this as long as I can
and I just wanna repay you a little bit by doing a video that you've requested for a long time and something that I've wanted to do
for ages myself, and that is... Build a 486 computer for MS-DOS gaming
and I am *psyched* to do this because... You know, this is the kind of era of computers
that I was just like in awe of as a kid and there's so many cool things you can do with them!
So we're just going to...
Go all out and really explain the pros and cons
and the hassles that you're going to have to deal with, but also the excitement and the cool stuff
that you can do with a 486 computer. And the pleasures of building one yourself. And not only that, I'm gonna deck it out
in the only way I know how to on LGR. And that is with woodgrain.
That's right! Woodgrain! On this show, it's not tacky, it's *classy*! And I'm just got this contact paper...
Woodgrain... Vinyl adhesive, and we're just gonna wrap a 90's kind of
beige-style case in this, and make it look awesome! Kind of like what I did to this
3 inch external floppy drive here! Just look at that. *Scoff* That is just a marked improvement,
I have got to say. I like woodgrain.
And allow me to explain really quick what I want
to do with this 486. What are my goals here? Well, for one thing, it's gotta have a turbo button. I think that's just cool. And two, I want it to be a VESA local bus,
like VESA-compatible motherboard and computer with a- a video card that uses a VLB connector because
it was something I always just sort of lusted after as a kid, after SimCity 2000 came out and I didn't have
a VESA-compatible computer that did SVGA.
And so, that just stuck in my mind for years and
I know there were just regular 16-bit ISA cards, and... Those are cool too, but I wanna mess with VLB because
I never have and it seems like it could be interesting. The other goal really is just to keep it
kinda period accurate to around 1993-1994. Something that I would have respected back then, but...
You know,
maybe it's not the most powerhouse DOS 486 I could build; In fact, I know it's not. So you may be disappointed in that, but you know, there are just
infinite variations on DOS computer builds that you can do. This will just kinda cover a whole lot of the basics, though.
And you can apply this to the more powerful builds.
And uh, maybe I'll do that sometime in the future too. But yeah, let's just hop into some part selection! I'm sure someone's gonna ask where
am I gonna get the parts for this computer, and... Uh, that's a good question. I could go to eBay, I could go
to forums, or...
Try to look for them in thrift stores. But I have a better option. Why not just look in my own storage? *Chuckles*
Because um, well, you know, I don't show people this very often, but I've got a few spares of things lying around.
These boxes are just full of parts, software, ongoing projects, a lot of LGR things I've done
in the past and many things I hope to cover in the future.
Or even just a box of stuff like this here,
just random ISA and other cards. *Crinkle Sounds* All sorts of things in here: Sound cards, video cards... This is a Voodoo card... *Crinkling Noises* Let's see, which one is this? *Crinkling Noises* Yeah, a lot of these are maybe a little later than what
I'm looking for, but there's also some good stuff in here.
*Crinkling Noises* I'm for sure gonna use... Oh, here's a... It's an original SoundBlaster. That'd be nice.
Well, isn't this a lovely assortment of parts? Let's just go ahead and take a look at everything,
piece by piece, because I think it's awesome. And here is the motherboard itself that we will be using,
which is quite an important piece, obviously. This right here, if you're curious about the model,
is the- something known as the VI15G. I believe it was manufactured by Acer
at some point or another, but...
Yeah, I dunno, it's just your kind of generic jack-of-all-trades Socket 3
486 motherboard that's very common at the time. There's a few reasons that I went with it, of course,
first being that it has VLB capability, which is just something that I haven't messed with very much,
so I'm curious to do that. It's basically an extension of 16-bit ISA,
which is what all these slots are here. These are your expansion slots and um...
Well... You have this in addition to that,
so it's not PCI or anything like that. It's just 16-bit ISA with VLB capability, so you can plug in things like,
well, video cards, of course, which is what I'm gonna be using, but also hard disk controllers and uh... Like COM, serial connections and all sorts of things, but...
Pretty much just want it for the video capability right now. It also has this nice zero-insertion force socket 3. *Creaking* Right here, for the CPU. And that just allows you to drop it in place, which is pretty much
what you see still nowadays and that might not seem so weird, but actually, there's a lot of boards at the time that don't have this,
and you kinda have to jam it in place.
It's really annoying. Uh, it's got a nice little auxiliary thing here,
if you wanna plug in like a fan or something. Uh... Who cares? And there's also this American Megatrends BIOS, which they-
*Chuckle* I just like this particular version of it because it looks neat.
It's got a UI that just pleases me.
And we'll get to that when we get to the setup program. Uh, it's got a spot here for like cache memory chips... I don't know if I have any of those on hand
at the moment, but I will check to see if I do later.
Um... And check out all these little pins, right, all these jumpers. There are *sooo* many pins and jumpers and things
that either have to be opened or shorted or whatever. And that actually configures...
Like
what your CPU type is, the speed, other things you may have installed
or features you want to enable or disable. It's all through pins, and the rest of it's through the BIOS. There's a lot more going on in like
Nthe setup program in this one, but... Yeah, there's still a lot of stuff
to determine through pins.
Uh, it's got four 72-pin SIMM RAM slots here. Oh come on, focus, you stupid thing. There we go. And this is 16-bit RAM.
There's a lot of the boards at
the time that are still gonna have 30-pin SIMM slots, but this one has the 16, like the 72-pin ones. I like that. I think this'll actually take up to
like 96 megs of RAM, which is *insane.* I'm not gonna put that much,
although it would be kinda cool, wouldn't it? This right here might not look familiar if
you're just more familiar with more modern PCs. This is not ATX or anything.
That is your traditional
PC power supply connector right there, so... Yeah. That's fun. A little uh, little aggravating to deal with.
You'll notice there's a severe lack
of ports built into this thing, in fact, really, the only I/O kind of thing you have right here is...
A keyboard, for 5-pin AT keyboard stuff, and that's it! So, for things like, you know, a mouse or graphics card *Chuckles*,
sound, or literally anything, hard disk support, you're gonna need cards. Cards everywhere, so that's why there's so many friggin' slots
because pretty much every basic function is just not built in and that's very common for these boards at the time! And something else that isn't common for
boards of this era necessarily is the CR2032. Just your basic kind of battery for the CMOS...
And real time clock and that's...
Common now, but uh, you know what? This is the only board like this from
this time period that I actually own. In fact, lemme show you some of
the others that I was considering. So this board right here.
It's very similar
in a lot of ways, but look at that. It's got that *horrible* like barrel battery
and its soldered into the board and... It's not a huge pain to take off of there. In fact,
I've just been meaning to clip it off, because...
They leak. And they will *ruin* the motherboard and
eat into the traces, it's just... A bad time all around. So uh...
Yeah.... Just get rid of
those things whenever you can. Or replace them with... Like the CR2032,
you can solder in a holder, it's no big deal.
There's some of those cache chips. I might
actually try to use those in the other board, hm. And let me show you one other... Motherboard I was considering here...
But decided against, because of the battery... Mainly. Um, this is a really nice
little board, actually, but it has that... CPU insertion right there that is just...
I mean, you just kinda have to slam it in place and there's no lever,
it makes it really annoying to deal with and whatever... Just being lazy. And then its got this,
which is the battery. It's one of these real-time clocks.
Lot of them were made by Dallas. And it's just all inside this... Little thing here, and... The annoying thing is even though they last
a really long time, when they do die...
Look at that! There's a billion little pins underneath and
it's soldered directly under the board. Now, some of them are socketed.
Those aren't a huge pain to deal with, of course, you can just pull 'em out, put in
a new one. Everything's fine.
But with this one, you need like, proper-
like a vacuum pump desoldering tool. I just- I don't have that, I don't wanna deal with it, so... Went with this one... With the nice little
easily replaceable CR2032.
So... You can get those batteries
frickin' anywhere nowadays. And, since ever. The dawn of time, in fact,
I think those 2032s predate humanity.
So uh, let's see, what's up next here? I guess we can just go onto the CPU itself. And, I'm going with an AMD, which at the time, these were actually... A little bit faster
than a lot of Intel's offerings. So these things are really neat! This is the DX2-66, the AM46- 486 version of it.
And um... Well, it's- it's pretty awesome. Really classic chip. Classic speed, and most importantly, my motherboard supports it right...
Er, out of the box, like just as it is. So... That makes it really easy. Um, obviously, if you can get something better,
you probably want to.
In fact, I was also considering... This monster, look at this. This is Am486 DX4-100. Ridiculously...
Powerful for the time, in fact,
this thing can give early Pentiums a run for their money... And outperform the DX4-100s from Intel. Check that! Heatsink was actually
required for this one, whereas... Just like the uh...
DX2, is not, so you don't need any heatsinks or fans or anything,
but this one, heatsink and fan would be nice. Uh, I could add a heatsink and
fan to the DX2 if I wanted... Um, in fact, I've got one right here.
*Chuckle* Look at this little thing.
"Oh, how cute." It's- It works. *Chuckles*
That's about as much as I can say for it. Alright, so in order to get capability of pretty much everything
we need, I've got this standard kind of controller card. 16-Bit ISA and it gives us hard disk and floppy disk
capability as well, as...
Uh parallel and serial port. Another serial port, and then like
a 16-pin game port here, looks like, which... Will be kind of redundant once
I install a sound card, but hey! That's nice! That adds a bunch of I/O
that we really need. *Chuckles* Seriously.
And... Let's see here. Ah well,
we got the hard disk, which is *awesome*. This is a classic Western Digital Caviar 2420...
A massive 425.3 Megabytes. Oh man! April 1994 was when this was made,
so, seemed appropriate. I could have gone with a CompactFlash solution.
I'm very well aware of that, but...
Uh, just didn't want to. I wanted to go with more original kind of stuff here and also... I've had some weird issues with
CompactFlash and DOS and things actually... Sometimes running a little slower or just being iffy.
I- I don't know. I just didn't wanna
mess with it for a DOS machine. And I don't really need it either because...
Honestly, that thing's fast enough.
I like the sound of old hard disks too. Here's the RAM we'll be going with, a 72-pin here. This one is 8 megs and uh... So is this one, so we're
going to have 16 megabytes of RAM with a 486 DX2.
That is just such a classic configuration
that it makes me wanna dance around. Mmm. Uh, let's see here. We've got...
The video card that we're going to be using and, wow, there are a lot of choices for
VLB video cards, but this is one of 'em that I had... On hand that is uh, quite nice,
I think, for what I'm wanting to do. This is the Diamond SpeedStar Pro VLB.
This is a 1 megabyte video card.
Mm-hm. It's pretty sweet. And it supplies uh, the SVGA and VGA and
I think pretty good compatibility with like EGA and CGA, which is... Nice.
*Thonk* But yeah, there's a whole bunch of
other cards, some of them are 2 megs, a couple are even... Seeing like 4 meg,
I mean, that's ridiculous, but... Yeah, so it's got the VLB connector right here,
in addition to your classic sort of 8-bit style ISA connector. I'm also gonna slap this in here because I might
play around with some networking at some point, so...
We've got this to add here: 10/100 Ethernet
and all that good stuff, so that's cool. But it's just, you know,
it's just a card. Kind of boring. This is not boring though.
*Chuckle* When it comes to sound cards, there are
obviously a *ton* of things I thought about, you know, the original Sound Blaster,
Sound Blaster 16, in fact... I'm still considering slapping
like a Sound Blaster 16 in here, but uh... You know what? I may as well just go with this:
the AWE 32, the AWE32 CT3900. Good old wavetable sound and
all sorts of just cool stuff.
These cards were legendary, always wanted one back in the day,
and I've got one I'm gonna stick it in there because I *caaan*. And yes, this does actually take some RAM in here,
like 30-pin. I might stick some in there if I feel like it. I would've loved to put like a Gravis Ultrasound, but I don't own one.
*Chuckle* I would *love* to have it- one, but... Uh... They're expensive and hard to track down,
so. Maybe someday.
But this'll work. And then, lastly, we've got some drives here. Uh, so, we've got 3 inch,
just your 1.44 Meg. Very standard.
And... Also very standard 5 inch.
And this one is... 1.2 Megabyte capable.
And I- I- I- I like that. Hey, look at that. "This drive is designed *not* to require a protect sheet.
Inserting one may damage the mechanism." I don't want to take that off of there,
because it adds some...
Charm. Like very outdated charm. At one point, when you were moving these things around,
you would actually stick like a piece of floppy disk-shaped cardboard in there to keep the internals from rattling
when you're moving the computer. *Thud* But uh, they don't need it anymore with this one.
And in case you're wondering about like
the manufacturing and stuff, this is a Chinon- "She- She-non", I don't know how. FR506. *Thud noises* Very common floppy drive.
I've seen quite a few of these around.
And this is pretty much just the most basic CD-ROM drive. Um, I'm not the happiest with this, but,
it's what I had lying around closest by. So... You know.
This is just a Sony CDU331-01 double speed
CD-ROM drive made in 1994, so it seemed appropriate. And then, last but not least... Is the case! It's pretty much just a case. Taken off the outside here
so you can see the inside and...
Uh, it's just your kind of typical design
of the time and its got some annoying stuff too, like a big caddy here for the- holding
the hard disks and whatnot. Ah, just... Ergh. But, hey.
I like the other parts of it. I like the fact that
it has a nice, proper PC speaker in there. Um, a nice... Cone.
None of that Piezo beeper crap
that you see on a lot of modern machines. And then, of course, we have... The power supply... Which is just a 200 watt power supply by...
Bestec? *Chuckles* I don't know if it is the "best,"
but it's definitely "tech." And then around front here,
I- I really like the front design of this. That whole sort of ridge- riveting, whatever, I dunno. It's neat! I like the display, the display was
a necessary thing for me because... I just thought it was the coolest thing ever as a kid.
Uh, it's got a floppy drive already in here. You know, I might just leave it in there because
it's really annoying to get out of here. I'll see if it works, and if it does,
I'll probably just leave it. But, uh, check it out.
Turbo button,
cause that's awesomely necessary. And uh, it does have the key right here for locking the... Keyboard and people from *Chuckle*
messing with it and whatnot. In fact, check this out.
I've actually got the keys to go with it. So uh... You just stick that in the front there... Turn the key and then nobody's
gonna be using your computer.
Or if you forget and leave it in the wrong position, then
your computer's just not turning on. You're like, "What the heck!?" Or the keyboard doesn't work. *Chuckle* It sucks. I like that little badge too, 486DX2 66 megahertz.
Now it is time to insert this CPU. And uh, before I go any further though, let me just
address the whole electrostatic discharge thing because you may have noticed I'm not wearing
a wriststrap or anything, I've never felt the need to. I've been doing this for decades, no problem at all,
just touching a computer chassis that's grounded- making sure you discharge your static
and not doing anything on like a static... Surface or anything and this wood table is fine.
Uh, you just gotta be mindful of it though, of course,
and make sure that you are discharging and uh... You know, make sure that- *Laughter* That-
That sounds really dirty, let's just stop it right there. So anyway, uh, here is the CPU itself and
how do we do this? Well, it's pretty simple. If you see that little notch cutout right there,
that's letting you know which way to put this thing in.
And that's supposed to line up with that little extra pin
that's... Off to the side there, being alone and sad, so we just sort of drop it here and you'll notice that there are
actually more holes in this socket than there are pins on the CPU. You just sort of stick it very-
uh, much in the middle right there... And then uh, we'll just drop this in place and that's it.
We've installed the CPU! Alright, time to address the RAM. And these are er, kind of fun too,
as far as little notches go. *Chuckles* So that means it can only go in one way
here and in this particular board, there's like a little extra bit on this side and not on
this side, so that means the slot's gonna go over there. And uh...
So with this one,
I'm going to put this one in slot 1, which is this first one down here,
which is labeled on the motherboard. And uh, it should just go in... Like so. *Clicking Noises* There you go.
It just sort of snaps
in place there and gets in like that and you do want to make sure that
it's nice and tight, because these are... Uh... A little finicky. Sometimes they-
they're- it look like it's in, but it's not.
*Clicking Noises* There we go. *Click* Felt everything snap in place, I think, so... Alright. Got the RAM installed, so let's get this thing inside
the case, then we can start installing some cards! So here's another thing that
you don't see a whole lot of anymore and that is the fact that there's only two offsets
for the motherboard in this case.
Otherwise, you'd just have these little grooves here
and that's for these kind of plastic offsets and uh, you know, it's kind of interesting... Because... They just sort of... Pop in here...
*Click* Like that. And then, they're going to uh.... All right... If my camera focuses...
That part is going to slide into... These little grooves
along the back, so there's one, two, three, four... And then two spots for the offsets
to uh, screw into and uh... That's it! So, that's kind of an interesting design.
*Clattering Noises* Ugh, by interesting design, I mean terrible. Super annoying. Okay, uh, it's mostly in there. *Chuckles* This one is supposed to have
another one go in right here, but uh...
The cache is actually covering the spot...
Where the fourth one would go, so I'm just kinda gonna let it be what it is, but it is at least mounted
in there and it's got a screw and the other ones are in place, so it's four points, it's just this corner is
a little loose, so gotta be careful with that. Alright, let's go ahead and plug in
the power supply to the motherboard here and... Uh, with these, in theory, they will fit either way,
but you only wanna put 'em in one way, like so many of the other things in here, and if you don't,
then you might blow something up, so...
Black to black is the idea here, so of course,
the black cables go side by side. And if they're opposing, then uh, it's not good. You kinda have to wiggle them in place. Let's see.
There we go. *Scratching Noises* Alright. Oh, here's a fun part, and by that, I mean not at all. These are all the things for the front of the case, so...
And the things like PC speakers, turbo switch,
LEDs, and even the- the little key in the front. It's all got to plug into the motherboard somewhere. Except for I think the hard drive LED, that's actually going
to plug into the controller card once I get that installed, but uh... Uh...
Good. Ugh, okay. So it does have some of these
connectors labeled down here, but not all of them. Uh, so...
That's kind of a pain and it means... *Thud* Start looking up online... What the pinouts are for this thing, which it looks like... Yeah, there's a jumper manual on that old classic
MBarron site, "Motherboard Manuals Data & More." So...
Uh... Yeah. Let's follow this and see what we got. [] Okay, I'm going to say that that...
Is correct. *Laughter* And if it's- it's not, then I will know
once we turn this thing on. Alright, let's go ahead and get
the unwieldy controller card connected. And put it in this slot and hope it likes it there.
*Click* *Rattle* *Click* Alright. *Rattling Noises* If I were thinking, I would put it up
here, but uh... I'm not thinking. *Rattling Noises* And put the networking card in here...
*Rattling Noises* *Click* Sweet. *Rattling Noises* Oh... Giant sound card right here... *Click* And yes, I know I'm taking up the VLB slot right there,
but we've got two more.
I'm not worried. Alright, the sound card here.
I'm actually going ahead and plug in uh, this is like the audio interface cable for the CD-ROM
to allow CD audio to pass through to it, so that's going to go... Right there.
And then this'll plug in to the back of the CD-ROM drive. And finally... The video card. *Rattling Noises* It'll go right here and these are
kinda tricky because the VLB part of it...
Is a little unwieldy. *Click* *Rattling Noises* And this screw at the bottom was getting
in the way of putting the video card in place, so... *Click* Theeere we go. A tight fit in those uh, VLB portions down there, but...
Alright, that's pretty much all
the cards plugged in, I guess! *Thud* And that is a proper assortment
of ports and whatnot in the back. Makes me very happy even though...
This thing seems to wants to leave. 'Kay, time to...
Drop this floppy drive in here. *Rattling Noises* Now I didn't mention it,
but I have actually... *Rattling Noises* gone through and cleaned out the inside
as much as I could. You can use like a...
Disk cleaner if you want to, or you can just go inside like I did,
and just vacuum it out, made sure everything was all... Nice and clean in there,
and then you lube up the rails... With uh, some appropriate like electronics lube. Usually that's like
a white...
Lithium-based lubrication, I believe, is... What it is? So... Yeah, just to make sure that it works nicely. 'Cause those...
Will absolutely crap out over time. They'll usually
be repairable, you know, you could get 'em working again, but... 5 Inch floppy drive, especially, can be really finicky... When they're not properly maintained.
Start putting in some uh... Power and
data cables and things like that. So here's that uh, audio cable is going to
the sound card. It's going to go back to the...
CD-ROM. *Click* Right over there... Uh... Let's see...
That floppy drive is up there... Looks like the power is still connected
to the 3 inch already, so that's... Useful. So this is something that's always kind of tricky when
*Chuckle* putting floppy drives in and connecting them all up, so...
These uh, didn't have any much of a notable
like Pin 1- or usually, there's a red stripe here. This one kind of has one, I guess,
it's kind of like little speckles, but... That's supposed to indicate which way this is
gonna plug into the back of the floppy drive, so... Uh, it- it's supposed to, the red part-
Pin 1 is supposed to be facing the direction...
Of where the power plugs in and then this floppy drive... *Click* at least for the 3 inch here, it goes in on the right,
the power does, so that means the red part should be facing that. And there we go. Got it plugged in.
And then this is going to plug into the 5 inch drive
and these can only go in one way. And that's... That way. So that's plugged in.
Sweet! Um, power is already plugged in for the 3 inch, so just plug this one into the 5 inch... Floppy drive there. So here's the caddy that I was talking
about that the hard disks go into. Uh, it actually goes in here...
*Clattering Noises* in that, and screws into the back, so you have to
like take this thing out, or else you can't get to uh... Actually putting anything
in... Side of there, so... *Thunk* Simple enough, though.
You just... *Clattering Noises* slide in there like that, I believe,
and that's pretty much I all I gotta do. Well of course, I do have it set to be the only drive in there with
those little jumper pins, which usually tells you what to do on the back, or the-
the top of the drive... *Clattering Noises* where the label is.
*Click* *Click* Just gonna line these up.
God, I hate this design. Okay, so I just realized something. This is an early Sony CD-ROM drive,
and that have like a Sony interface, and this is the cable that you can use with it,
and I was just gonna plug it in.
I'm like, "Wait a second...
I don't have anywhere to plug that in... In the rest of the computer here." Uh, there's like spaces to do... *Clatter* you know, different interfaces
and whatnot on the AWE32 and...
I've got some things on the controller card that
are all filled. Yeah, none of them are going to fit that. I do actually have a controller- deal, like the Sony,
which just plugs in right here, you can see actually says "SONY CDROM" *Chuckles* *Sigh* But, you know, this is like a sound card
and other things that I just- I don't *need*. So what I'm gonna do is swap out this CD-ROM here,
the Sony, it's a classic, but I don't want other cards in there.
*Thud* Especially audio ones potentially conflicting and I could
probably make it work, but I just don't want to, so screw it! Alright, you weirdo. Get out of there! *Scraping Noises* Put something much more appropriate in here instead. I picked up something at the local
Circuit City just a few minutes ago, a brand-new in box Blaster CD-ROM 2x by Creative. And no, Circuit City has been out of business for
friggin' ever, which it makes me very sad, *but* this...
*Thud* I have had this for a while and uh, well,
figure I may as well open it up and install it in here. Because uh, this'll work just fine with what I've got,
and it also includes... An interface card and cable. Well, since we're here, may as well do an unboxing.
It's pretty cool to actually... I don't remember... How long I've had this, but it's been quite a while
and I've been wanting to open it up anyway and... Just use it for a rainy day.
So let's see. Ooh, look at that! Brand-new! *Chuckles* Very cool. So... You got the little baggie here with
the cable and uh...
Another one of those. This is actually gonna have a different end connector
for the audio... So it's a good thing it came with that. *Thud* Mmm...
I like this, this is really cool. *Thud* Was always jealous of these- or
envious of my friends that uh, had one... Uh, Creative CD-ROM, look at that. "MPC2 - Multimedia PC" standard.
Adheres to that just fine. Brand new! Ooh, that's really cool. Uh, made in 1995, actually! So this must have
been a mu- a later like, re-release budget thing. I- I guess that makes sense with
the packaging and like the whole, "Value!" So here is the controller card.
*Crinkling Sounds* And this... Looks like just an 8-bit ISA. Yep. So that'll just drop right in
there and um...
Check it out. This thing is so clean! Makes sense,
but I mean, it really is! Huh. You know, it looks like I could
actually hook in that Sony drive... *Chuckle* on this one, but uh...
No, I'm gonna go with the Creative because
I have more nostalgia for that anyway. *Clack* See what else we get in here.
This is pretty cool. Uh, we get...
"Thank You" registration card,
a User's Guide for the Blaster CD-ROM 2x. "Have You Seen These Forces?" My God. *Page Flipping Noises* There's some pretty hefty documentation here, look at all this! Good grief! Well, installing CD-ROM support in DOS is no easy task
sometimes, especially Windows 3.1 Too. There's an Addendum.
And uh, looks like we have a
floppy disk for some software. Do I wanna open this or not? I think I do. *Thunder Rumbling* Mm, thunder outside. Oh yeah.
Sound Blaster CD-ROM installation disk. Not seen in 21 years. Very cool. Well, this will make it a heck of a lot easier to set up.
But... I was hoping to do a like, figure out... Where I was gonna get the drivers and things for
that Sony drive and how to make that work, but... This is about as simple as it gets.
So yeah, I was right. Um... The cable that the Creative CD-ROM drive comes with
actually plugs directly into the AWE32 sound card, so I don't even need to use this guy at all.
This is a very useful card to have for that Sony and Creative drive uh,
ports right there.
That's really cool. *Thud* Uggh... A tight fit! Oh yeah. I like the look of this much better anyway.
Not necessarily the coloring or anything, but that's just... I remember seeing so many Creative drives
on friend's and family's computers that... Oh man, I always wanted one. Oh yeah, everything's in here.
Looking good! Cable management is... Top notch. *Giggles* Uh... But you know, if this works...
I don't really care too much. Moment of truth, see if anything works. *Click* There's the power. Ooh, got a signal.
Yes! 16 Megs of RAM, there's the motherboard. I hear the hard drive. Ooh, it detected. C: drive failure.
Well, that's... Kind of expected. I don't think there- okay, 66 megahertz... Tck tck.
It's all looking pretty cool. Yeah, it's missing the operating system, that's... Alright, so... Uh...
Don't have... Floppy drive B: detected there. Kinda makes sense, let's restart this thing
and get it into the setup program. And check this out, alright? So this is what
I was *really*...
*Chuckle* I- I just love this BIOS. Look at this. It's like a... An Atari ST or something,
it just...
It has that sort of look to it. It's- it's really cool. Okay, so let's take
a look here... Date and time...
Wow, it already knows? What the heck, man!? That's pretty cool. Seriously, that's impressive.
I have not set this myself. *Laughter* Whoever had this thing
before me must have like, set it...
*Rumble* Wow, it has kept track of the time... Within like a few minutes, that's... Pretty amazing, alright?
That battery must still be pretty good in there. Cause yeah, I- I didnt check the uh,
CR2032, I didn't take it out...
Or anything. That's genuinely impressive to me. So... I'm...
Gonna say that maybe... Yeah, let's try that and see what happens.
Hard disk C:, ooh, it's... It's user-set, is that what I really want? I didn't even see if it was detecting it as the correct...
Drive, um... Looks like we can detect C:,
let's see what that is. Yeah, that's correct. Wow, it detected it nicely.
See, yeah, I *love* this BIOS, it's so cool! Look at this! ARMY MODE BIOS! PASTEL, SKY! This is like Windows 2.0 Kinda crap here
is what it looks like, isn't this great? I love t- this makes me so happy! Okay, le- let me... Move the camera here for a sec, Check it out. Uh, the turbo is displaying
the 66 megahertz right there. Um...
*Click* I don't know if this is functioning... I probably should check that here soon.
But anyway, um, basically... What this is asking right here on the uh,
the screen, "System Boot Up Speed" is in "High," so when you press the turbo button, it'll go down to
like the lower uh, compatible mode for lower speed.
Rest of this is lookin' pretty good. Oh sweet, no error that time. Awesome! Awesome. Awesome! Alright, so...
Yeah, I have actually used this hard drive
as something else before just to uh- just to test it out. It doesn't actually have like full DOS 6.22 On there. Like see, it's asking for time and date and weird crap,
it's really just like COMMAND.COM and that's it. Uh, but I did actually put uh
Keen Dreams *Chuckle* on there, um...
I don't remember why. Keen Dreams! Neat! See if the PC speaker works and
I connected that correctly. Ooh, I don't hear it! Nope, doesn't seem to be working. So we got some things to sort out,
but this is very promising.
Okay, so, this is gonna be... Interesting to try to fix. Brand new CD drive, uh, when you hit
the eject button, check that out. That's as far as it opens.
*Laughter* For brand new, uh... I am not impressed.
This is more of a budget release than I thought. Alright, so check it out...
*Sliding noise* This whole... Back part here, uh... It's supposed to look... More like *that*...
And instead, it's like coming out
of that little area in there... And is all busted up. I can't believe it. Brand new in the box, the box
has not even been harmed...
Yeah, I mean, you saw it-
it looked like... Well, brand new. Um, let's see if I can fix this, but if not, *Chuckle*
I might be going back to the Sony. Good grief.
'Kay, I will be surprised if this works. But, there we go.
So I was able to just... *Chuckle* literally take this assembly, I picked it up and plopped it
back where it was.
*Laughter* Or where it's supposed to be. I guess it just came from the factory like that.
That is... Ridiculously cheap! I- I mean, this whole assembly is
just really cheap.
Ugh... That's unfortunate. *Eject Sound* Much better. *Insert Sound* So I've got the wonky CD-ROM drive figured out,
but I do have another one to- another problem to sort now.
So... The A: and B: drives are reading,
but they're not exactly... Reliable. Like, they're recognizing just fine,
but when I try to read a disk...
Uh, I get this horrible "General failure reading drive A," which is... Unfortunately a pretty common problem... For these. I'm going to try to access
the B: drive now.
Oh, let me put the disk in there. Uh, try that again. And this one typically seems... To read things...
Yeah, it read that just fine. I've had a couple times where it hasn't though, so...
You know, I'm- I'm gonna check the drives themselves. Check the cable, check the uh controller card,
uh, there's a bunch of things this could be.
It could also just be that this is a bad drive.
I've never actually tried that- that 3 inch drive before. You know, this one usually works in the other machine
that I've used it on, so... Well, here we go! Easiest way to check it really quick is just
to try another 3 inch drive here and uh...
Well... Eh, it's getting the same error,
so it's probably something else. *Sigh* Okay, after 35-40 minutes of
screwing around with everything I could, replacing cables, replacing disks and cards man, I frickin'- I put in a whole- I switched
around everything, really. *Chuckles* So the sound card's at the bottom now,
and I also put in this uh...
An- another controller card that I had. Um, which is actually a VLB card, you can kinda see it there. (My phone shadow is in the way.) But it's basically is the same as the one
I had in there that was just normal ISA, hooked everything up, and uh using
the same old floppy drive and looky here! Everything's fine. Perfectly fine.
So... Somewhere along the line,
it has been fixed... I don't give a crap where. Well, now that I've got a working A: drive...
It's time to install MS-DOS 6, or specifically 6.22. Probably install Windows 3.1 Eventually as well. But uh... We're just gonna you know...
Gotta
have DOS first, so that's what we're gonna do. *Chuckles* This classic setup for
Microsoft operating systems- they used this for... Man, 'till what? Windows Vista or something? Maybe... "Fix it with ScanDisk!" Disk problems?
Just...
Diagnose them! Correct them! I'm... Sure it probably... Works for
some things, but, you know what? Who ever really used ScanDisk? Oh, this is going to be good. Killer.
Aw yeah, and I... Plugged in the PC speaker, so
Keen Dreams should have PC speaker sound now. The actual PC speaker noise... On.
Whoops. *PC speaker SFX* Ha ha. *PC speaker SFX* Hee hee, Yaaaay!!! PC speaker noise! Oh, it sounds so cool. Okay, I guess we'll try setting up the CD-ROM drive
now and see if my quick repair worked.
Oh yeah, it's uh... Just, that. So let's see what we got here... It's like you'll uh...
I probably will only have to do
the same installation when I get 3.1 On here. But... This is the DOS installer! So... Let's see what we got.
SBCD works fine with me. Oookay, I'm assuming it's that, since I didn't change... Actually, you know, I'm not sure! Heh heh. Maybe I should've checked that because I'm actually plugging
this into the AWE32, not the...
Card that it came with. Oh! Oh good! Well, it's at least got this, I don't know...
Ooh, it's not ready. Huh.
It- it, yeah, so I might need to switch that address... Okay, now it's time to install the AWE32... Wonderful sound card here! Off of the original floppy disks! And uh, yeah, let's just... Well,
let me see what's in the "Custom" here.
Oh my. All sorts of crap. *Chuckle* A lot of things I don't necessarily need,
especially because there's uh, Windows stuff that I just... I don't even have Windows on here right now.
So yeah, this is interesting. I don't exactly have any
of these drives, but... You know, maybe this'll work... We'll see...
You see all that stuff that just went by earlier about
the IRQ and DMA settings and things like that? Well... *Sigh* There's a reason that can
be such an absolute *pain*... And that is because each piece of hardware
that goes in there: all the cards and stuff, they're gonna have IRQ and DMA settings
that basically is like memory addresses and the system knowing where to look for certain things and whatnot,
and if they happen to have the same settings.... Uh, they can conflict or if they're looking in the wrong space,
they can conflict, and all sorts of things...
That can conflict. It's... A wonderful, terrible thing! Let's try some Duke Nukem 2 as a test... For the sound.
I know it's not exactly AWE32 like, tier wavetable stuff,
but... Eh, I'll at least try Sound Blaster and AdLib. Hm... Ehhh, it isn't promising, no music.
[ Gun Fire SFX ] Huh. Okay, so we've got Sound Blaster sound,
like PCM audio, but no AdLib, or...? Duke: "I'm back." *Boom* *Boom* Well, that's fascinating.
I don't think I've ever uh... Heh heh...
Yeah, it's turned on. Okay, so this is the testing utility/diagnostic utility
for the AWE32, so we should be able to... [ Music & VO ]: "8-bit testing!" LGR: "8-bit testing!" Okay, so we got that. [ Music & VO ]: "16-bit testing!" 'Kay, that's good.
[ FM Synthesis Music ] Huh... [ FM Synthesis Music ] [ Advanced WavEffects Music ] Everything seems to be working... [ Louder Advanced WavEffects Music ] Very well, I might say. Uh...
So that's cool. Maybe it just
needed a friggin'... Be stupid. [ Duke Nukem 2 Menu Music ] It is just...
Insanely low volume, okay,
well, we know how to fix that. [ Menu Music Cont. ] Alright, let's get out of here and get back to the uh... So this is where you can adjust like
the volume for...
All sorts of things, really. And uh, yeah, if we... If we want to... Um...
Some equalizer settings and things
like that in here too, but uh... [ Duke Nukem 2 Music ] *Crackles* [ Duke Nukem 2 Music ] *Crackle* So, I haven't had uh, much luck
getting the CD drive to work... With the sound card, so I'm gonna
actually try it with the card it came with... Just to see if indeed the CD drive is working because...
I dunno, I mean, it could be screwed up for all I know. Another thing I've noticed is that the main
speaker output here... Is really crackly, like... Uh, I mean, i- it's seen better days, anyway,
this card, so what I'm gonna do is...
Uh, use a little bit of this
DeoxIT contact cleaner, which is good for, well, cleaning contacts and stuff *Chuckles* and especially like deoxidizing audio ports. *Spraying Sounds* *Clatter Noises* *Chuckles* Yeah. *Clicking* So... In theory, this is supposed to just...
Break up
the oxidization and some other crap that's in there. Works really well for a lot
of audio equipment that I have, so... Hopefully, it will resolve my problems here too,
so we'll let that sit for a while, kind of... Let it go and then spray it a little bit more, then let it dry off and uh, get all that crap out of there.
And hopefully, we'll have some good audio. Please... Oooh! Ooh! Ooooooh! Okay! Sweet, alright. So I guess that- that worked.
Uh, putting in the Creative card... Not the sound card, the interface card
for the CD-ROM. Awesome! So we should have D: accessible... Oh, I hear it spinning,
hopefully it's okay...
*Laughter* It sounds a little bit like it's rubbing up
against something, which it probably is. *Grinding Noise* Yep, okay, so I was afraid of that. Ngh, kind of uh... As expected, to be honest...
So... CD is fine, it didn't mess up anything, but
the internals are a little screwed up because of the whole uh, well, the fact that it's just a piece of crap. *Ominous Breathing* Well, it's been interesting couple of days, but uh,
here's the solution I've got at the moment: I'm just using this random Acer CD-ROM drive,
which is much later. It's a 50x...
I don't like it being in here,
since it doesn't fit in my whole uh... You know, early '90s aesthetic, that's more like,
much later '90s, but uh, you know, whatever... I don't care, because... It frickin' works and it's an IDE drive, and I don't have to mess with any
stupid controller cards or anything like that.
Eh, this is the lazy way out, but uh that's
what I'm doing right now until I get a better, more appropriate for the era
CD-ROM that actually works. 'Cause I tried the Sony one... Eh, didn't work. And like, uh, the Creative one, there's just so many problems
I've had over the past couple of days and I'm just pissed, so here we go! Uh heh, here...
Is... See, Duke Nukem 3D
that I was trying to do the other day. Just trying to install this, and uh...
You know, there we go.
Excellent. Exactly what I wanted to do. Now setting up these IDE drives is super simple, cause like
I said, you don't need like a... An extra controller card...
Or any weird interfaces- It's just IDE,
the same as the hard disk that I'm using. And so, what you do for that is as long
as your DOS version is uh, compatible, you can just put this into your CONFIG.SYS file
(I've named this one "FARTS"). It's using the CD1.SYS, which is just like
a standard Oak CD-ROM file that's uh, it comes with a lot of versions of DOS and
I dunno, I just have it floating around. You can find it if you need to.
And then you add this to your AUTOEXEC.BAT, and this will start up the uh, actual CD-ROM
capability when your computer starts. This tells it to look for FARTS, which is in here,
and this tells it to make it the D: drive. And um... Obviously you can change around some of this
if you want to, but...
This is how I'm doing it for now. Okay, just to test out some things
in Duke 3D really quick, and uh, well, I have successfully set the AWE32... Goodness in here and the music set to that as well. Everything's pretty much default, so...
[ Collapsing Bowling Pins ] Nice! [ Duke Nukem 3D Theme Song - AWE32 Rendition ] Kinda sounds like crap, but uh... You know, whatever. So let's try this 640x480 VESA mode here, um... Uh, you know what? It's- It's not going to do that at all.
Um... Let's do it anyway,
because it's probably going to suck. [ Explosion SFX ] Well, we're going to get an intro screen but uh, you're
going to see what happens when eh, you try to run this... [ Intro Theme ] at 640x480, on a 486-66, it just...
It takes forever to load, for one thing... [] But once it does... Oh my word. [] We might get a frame a second.
[] Ahhh! [] It's like two! Two frames! *Chuckles* *Chuckling Intensifies* Ohhhh, man! You know, it's just the fact that it *can* do this VESA compatible mode,
and then- and that's what would have made me happy back in the day. I would have learned to play this game *like this*... Anyway! Uh, obviously, it's- it's supposed to, it's gonna run
better and just in software mode because um, yeah- the graphics and the CPU and just *EVERYTHING*
are not up to snuff to uh, to work it- to work it out that way. [ Explosion SFX ] Oh yeah, that's a lot better already.
[] Sweet! Actually got a logo that moves. *Chuckles* [] That sound really does sound awful in AWE32 mode. I need to... Mess with the soundfonts
or something, man! 'Cause that...
You can make that sound different. *Chuckles* Okay, so yeah, this is about what
I expected for a 66 megahertz... Duke: "Let's rock!" So even in 320x200 here, it's just still going to-
I mean, this is going to take forever to load right here. Oh, it didn't take as long as I thought it would.
Duke: "...Pay for shooting up my ride." That's *really* slow. So typically, what you did,
when you had a computer of this slowness, was turn off the detail, turn that kind of stuff off, and then even screen size *waaaay* down here,
and I do remember playing some games like this on my 486 back in the day. Look at that! It's almost playable. I mean...
Sure, it's just about twice the size of
a postage stamp, but uh... It does work and you can play it. *Laughter* This brings back memories, man! Oh, it really does. I had a Packard Bell 486,
I believe it was a 66DX2 like this one Uh, and it...
You know, this is about what it could do. Of course, it never had a sound card, never had a CD-ROM drive,
so it was immeasurably less cool than this computer, BUT... I still loved it. I'm amazed-
Well, kill myself, this is- LGR (Duke VO): "THIS IS FREAKIN' AWFUL!" But yeah, you know what I wanted to
play with a VESA-compatible computer? I just- I wanted one of these cards in here,
and a sound card, and a CD-ROM, just to play...
THIS. The SimCity 2000 Special Edition... On a CD-ROM, and... It just blew me away, a- a- friend of mine had
a Compaq and it had all the things, you know? Uh, I think it was also like a 66 megahertz,
uh 486, but had a CD-ROM drive...
I believe by Creative, even,
and installed that thing, and... Sound Blaster, and you know, BASICALLY, I'M- I'M EMULATING
that experience from around 1993-'94, and this is all I wanted man, and-
and I dunno if uh... Lemme see here... SVGA card with 512K video RAM.
Now it doesn't actually tell
you that it's gotta, like... Conform to this VESA standard thing,
but when you run the Setup on this... *Thud* You know what?
I'm just gonna show you right now. Aw man, okay yeah, so this right here.
THIS
installation screen was the *bane* of my existence... For years! So, when I got this... Not specifically the Special Edition,
but you know, this is what I wanna do. Uh, it didn't...
It just didn't work! Because I had a VGA card, and- and you know what?
I think it had some sort of weird SVGA capability... It was a Trident card, I remember that because
I remember thinking, "Oh, my video card is chewing gum." This was all on that Packard Bell, and uh... You know what? It just... Ugh...
It- it would not get past this, no matter what. Yeah, it's correct. So, where is this in here?
Let's do the Custom Install. Now I remember going through here.
We're going to do the Full. And uh... I'll get to this. And so, it's gonna run through all the
whole installation and then what it would do is there's another installation for installing the-
the VESA video drivers and whatnot for your specific computer and
I had no idea what that crap was on mine.
And I didn't- I- I got a SimCity 2000 for Christmas. 1994, I believe, and I couldn't run it for like... Six months or so, while I tried to
figure out this... VESA compatibility problem...
And it was such a thing. I remember UniVBE... Or something along those lines, an executable,
(Yeah, I think it just installed it. *Chuckles*) you'll see some of this VESA data stuff, so
this could run it, and my computer back then couldn't.
So I'm *building this thing to get back* at the past! Always had to select PC speaker, but NOPE! We're going to go *all-out* because I *can* now!
Because I *made* something that's *amazing*! Ugh! Suck it, 1993! BAM! Continue! Alright, same thing for this. Suck it 1993! BAM! Okay, so it completed just fine. However, it would give me all sorts
of errors back in the day because of this VESA crap, and
let me see if I can open that. *Chuckle* Okay, so VDTech - They all did this,
right, and it would bring these things up.
I had none of these, closest I could figure is I had
a Trident something, but it wasn't an Impact. And I tried *every single*... One of these. Yeah, look at this.
It would try to bring this up and
it was just like, "Holy crap, what's going on?" But... Here you go! Look at this! VESA-compliant card. [ Maxis Logo Music ] Ohh! This... *Laughter* Oh man! I almost wanna cry because this is seriously...
Is what I dreamed of so much.
This is my favorite game in the world. [ Intro ] I would play it at my friend's house,
they had the VESA card, I- This- this- this is worth all the hassle! Right here! [] Oh, this is great. Look at this! Oh, look at it! *Joyous Laughter* Oh, it's so cool! [] SimCity 2000 Special Edition...
[] So yeah man... [] *Relieved Sigh* This is all I wanted to do with this machine.
I- I'm not even kidding. *Laughter* Of course it can't find the mouse driver,
it's cause I haven't loaded the mouse.
*Laughter* NOOOOO!!! Uh, but yeah I- I just need
to plug in a mouse really quick. Mm, digging around my storage
again and found this little guy. Figured uh... This be a good choice for a mouse.
"Logitech First Mouse" for IBM compatibles. "Double click with one click!"
Yeah, that's what the middle mouse button did. Heh, double click button! Not the uh, middle mouse button, but yeah, whatever. It'll work for what I need, it's a serial...
And... It's all pretty new and stuff inside. So... Yeah, let's get this out of the way.
MouseWare Lite program 2. Install it, if you want,
which... You don't necessarily need to, DOS has its own sort of drivers for it and whatnot, and uh, here we go. It still has the sticker on it from
when I was at Goodwill and I got it.
But yeah, it's just a *really* basic little mouse, kinda cheap. And uh, it's got this serial to PS/2 adapter on there, obviously,
I don't need the PS/2 port, as I don't have one on that computer, but... Serial is exactly what the doctor ordered. Alright, I've got the First Mouse
plugged into for the first time.
*Chuckles*
Ahh, so clever. And we're going to play some
SimCity 2000 because... I really want to. "Reticulating splines..." That's right, reticulate Duke VO: "those splines, baby." We're gonna call this...
"Woodgraintown." And we're gonna start in 2000. "Woodgraintown founded!" "On this joyous Sunday celebration, Mayor Clint
turned the first ceremonious shovel of earth..." And things happened. Aw yeesss! The good stuff right here. [] So, let's build a power plant...
Go with coal... 'Cause that's the thing you do nowadays. [ Music and SFX ] Wow, I just noticed, I'm not talking at all.
I am already just...
Into the game. This is just... I love this stuff. *Chuckles* Oohhh...
[ ZZT SFX ] 'Cause why not? Eh, put a water pump over here... [ Drill SFX ] Do those things to plan ahead. [ Drill SFX ] A Flint situation going on. [ Drill SFX ] [ Drill SFX ] [ Drill SFX ] *Chuckles* Alright.
Go with that uh, Cheetah speed. The DOS version doesn't actually have African Swallow, you only got
what that- with the Windows version of the Special Edition here, so. [ Music and SFX ] Faux Accent VO: "Well, that is a notable fact, that is." Look at this! My town is THRIVING! Time to blow it up. [ Emergency Siren SFX ] [ Flooding SFX ] [ Flooding SFX ] Mmm-right...
[ Flooding SFX ] [ Emergency Siren SFX ] [ Wind SFX ] "Mayday!" [ Wind SFX ] [ Riots SFX ] *Chuckles* Riots in the streets! [ Explosion SFX ] Mayor's blowing up the whole town.
We just got started! What is this crap!? Oh no! [ Wind SFX ] [ Burning SFX ] I like how they're setting on fire as
they're about to be overtaken by hurricane floods. Oh, guess not! [ Ambulance Siren SFX ] You guys just suck then! [ Ambulance Siren SFX ] [ Wind SFX ] Whatever, I put them there.
That's just how it goes.
Ah, this game is awesome! So, yeah, with the 486 it does run a tad...
Slow, I mean, but at the same time... It was designed to run on cities- cities- Good grief! Systems even slower than this. [] But yeah, you can see like on a...
[] Even on a really populated city here, still running pretty well.
I mean, it's more than playable. This is how I remember playing it, so... It's good stuff.
[] I like this. [] I like this so much. [] But you know what, even though I do?
Uh, let's actually go and check out some other... Some other games while uh...
I have this open and um,
just... Show a few things in action here on the Woodgrain 486. Norton Commander... Yeah...
There's a time and a place for a bunch of
DOS commands and entering things through text, but uh... *Chuckles* Well, if you got it, may as well use it. [ Epic Pinball ]
(Direct Audio from AWE32) [ Commander Keen: Secret of the Oracle ]
(Direct Audio from AWE32) [ DOOM ]
(Direct Audio from AWE32) Well, I think you get
the gist of it, uh, it works. Alright, so I'm pretty satisfied with the way
this thing is working at the moment, so...
Last thing to do is apply the woodgrain... And uh, well *Chuckles* I've never actually done this to a computer, so... I'm assuming I'm really just gonna...
Make it go all the way around and um...
Just stick it to it... Best I can. [] Oh yeah, this is gonna work.
Slow going trying to get all these bubbles out.
[] Oh yesss! So I've got plenty of extra
around the edges and whatnot... To uh, cut off, trim...
All that kind of stuff, but look at this! That... Is so cool! *Laughter* [] Oh yeah...
Think I've got myself a uh,
woodgrain PC case here! *Laughter* That is...! D'aw, okay. I love this. [] Alright. Look at *that*! Ohhh, that is the coolest! *Laughter* I love it! Oh man, okay.
Look- A better look at this thing here... *Sigh* That's so freakin' cool to me! Woodgrain, woodgrain, woodgrain... It's a very nice walnut kind of texture... Oh yes! That....
Is pure class. Now, I do kind of w-
it kind of makes me want to... Mess with the front of this a little bit more
and make it more uh... Appropriate, like...
I was thinking, maybe sort of
a- a black... Instead of this beige, and then maybe have these
like a silver or something, but then, of course, that leaves this,
but then again, that might work. And as you might have noticed, I actually did find another
CD-ROM drive that is appropriate. This was made, I think, early 1995? And uh, it's just a 4x...
Works very well,
IDE drive, just like that Acer one was, and uh... Oh, this is just... This is just so fulfilling to create. Well, that's it for the Woodgrain 486 build for today, and *Chuckles* I hope you enjoyed watching this as much as
I enjoyed creating it.
This is just... Uh, it was so... It's so satisfying to create this thing, and yeah-
there might be some of you asking very legitimately like, "Why not just get a pre-built DOS machine from the time?" And yeah, you can do that. Great option and, in fact,
there's a whole lot of things that you can do as far as like later Windows machines that make a lot more sense than something like this practically if you just wanna play some
games really easily, but uh...
Or even DOSBox, you know, fine option nowadays. But this! This is pure fulfillment. This is pure
childhood fantasy come to life. This is just...
Geeky greatness, I- I love these kinds of projects
and putting this thing together, it was just... *Eject Sound* Oh, this is so cool. I love this, man. This is like,
my new favorite computer.
*Laughter* Ohh, I- I don't know, I don't have much more to say, except that I- I do wanna do some
more work on it. Like, it's not perfect yet. It does need uh, some-
some little kinks worked out like, for instance, the turbo button doesn't
actually adjust the display here, I'm not sure why. I couldn't get the power LED to work,
it may need to be replaced.
And uh, there's some weird issues still with
the AWE32 sound card, and I dunno if the card is bad, like... 'Cause now the right audio channel on the... Uh, audio out is just not working,
I also need to address that, so... And I also want to install uh 3.1 And...
Maybe 3.11 On here uh for Windows, just to play
with that, 'cause I like that version of Windows, but... You know... Either way, this is just... This has been so much fun to put together and uh...
Thank you to everyone who has supported me
over the years and make these kinds of things happen. And thank you for watching my uh, *Chuckles*,
just stumbling around trying to get something like this to happen. Um... It- This is awesome.
Seven years of LGR, and this is uh... THIS IS THE RESULT! I HOPE IT WAS WORTH IT! And if you enjoyed this video, then perhaps,
you'd like to see some of my others. Although, if you've made it this far, chance are,
you have seen some of my others and, but uh, yeah. I hoped you enjoyed this and if you did,
you can click some of these videos right here, or stop by every Monday and Friday
for more of *this* kind of stuff.
And as always, thank you very much
for watching for seven years and counting..
So today's video is going to be a little bit different. I have recruited a special helper Who just locked me out of... Hey you Do you want to help me build a computer? Are you going to build your own computer? All right should we get started? Let's do it Corsair RMi series power supplies feature premium components for great Performance and very low, noise check out the link in the video description to learn more So I want you to help me pick out your favorite linus tech tips shirt to wear. Do you like this one? This one No, do you like black and white and orange one? Okay, alright.
This is a Mystery PC. I say mystery for 2
[ Vaxeen 4U (Remixed) ] Greetings, and welcome to LGR for 7 years now!