Let's wrangle some Gateway 2000 systems! Vintage computer teardown from the Franklin eWaste haul.
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ก.ค. 2024
- If you'd like to support the channel and help me to produce more videos like this, you can find me on Patreon: / miketech
You have my eternal gratitude!
Gateways provided countless people with their very first computing experience. Here we have three Gateway 2000 systems from the mid-1990s. Let's see if we can give them new life!
Here's some of the stuff I used in the video:
Digital Microscope: amzn.to/42xVwF4
De-soldering alloy: amzn.to/3UcWwuD
De-soldering wick (I swear by this stuff): amzn.to/3VBrUnB
Solder flux: amzn.to/42qnodH
UV-curable solder mask: amzn.to/3HKTKrB
Anti-static brushes: amzn.to/3mb35Bw
Fiberglass scratch pens: amzn.to/3NDd7Xv
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
System 1:
0:29 System 1 Tour
4:57 S1 Motherboard teardown
8:59 S1 Desoldering
12:28 S1 Trace repairs
17:21 S1 Component testing
21:00 S1 HD Exploration
24:45 S1 Drive testing
26:50 S1 Rust repair
System 2:
27:21 System 2 Tour
31:49 S2 Component testing
35:18 S2 HD Exploration
38:15 S2 Drive testing
39:36 S2 Clean-up
System 3:
39:43 System 3 Tour
44:29 S3 Component testing
46:16 S3 HD install
48:08 S3 Sound Blaster tests
50:24 Outro
Most folks would give up if they saw that much corrosion, I have to admire your dedication. There's a good chance that someone loved those machines at one time, it always makes me sad when they are discarded.
My grandparents had a Gateway 2000 desktop running Windows 95 when I was a kid back in the early 2000s. That computer is long gone now, but a few years ago my grandpa found the original Gateway 2000 CD case that came with that computer and it still had all of the original CD-ROM games that we used to play as kids. My grandma loved to sit with us for hours and help us play through Pajama Sam and Muppets Treaure Island. This video brought back a lot of those good memories :)
Very important you archive those drives. Some rare, if not entirely unique stuff on there. Thanks for another great vid.
Like licks tools
@1993 MAZDA MIATA Think it's Slick (or rather §lick) but yes, I can't find that cheeky little prog anywhere. And believe me I've looked. I can only think it's listed as something else on all the archived sites I've checked out but who knows after such a long time. Maybe this is Slick's own PC?! 😮 But I doubt that!
@@MagikGimp yeah I did a quick search and could not find anything. Not that it would be useful anymore anyway😂
You're dedicated for sure. You make the repair process look easy.
I really enjoy your videos. You have enough detail to understand what’s happening but cut out the repetitive bits.
I’ve learned things about soldering I didn’t know.
Your enthusiasm is contagious.
Thanks!
Thank you for diving into computers I could only wish for at the time. Serious hit of nostalgia, for sure.
Two dialup modems could have been for multiple reasons. While this computer was a little late, it might have been used to support a BBS, or it might have been used as a server or gateway in an office.
It might also have been used to support multiple leased lines, etc., or as you suggested, someone might have just wanted an upgrade and not removed the old modem!
DO NOT feel bad if you are repeating yourself. Your desoldering techniques are valuable.
I appreciate the thirst trap thumbnail 🤯Never seen an AOL booter before, that hilarious "Punt da' lamer" button is the sickest.
The educational Mario game might've been Mario is Missing, appropriate because the exe isn't there.
Still have my Gateway 2000 tower case sitting in a corner I just can't bring myself to get rid of it yet - not the first computer I owned but symbolic in that it was the first I bought entirely with my own money from my first job and the first time I bought a high spec system.
I think these machines are in good hands, you've got some nice soldering skills! Love hearing the WD Caviar drives as well.
Trace repairs are definitely finicky when you have to do bodge wires to bypass ruined vias, especially if you ever happy to apply an iron to it. Best case scenario would be using whatever epoxy they use to glue down traces. He used superglue which may work, but I'm not sure tbh.
Watching you take care of your machines makes me appreciate mine. Some 16:9 LCD monitors let you ask for the image to be rendered at 4:3. Also, 1600x1200 LCD monitors form integer pixels at 320x200, 320x240 and 800x600. You probably knew that, though. Thanks again,
Thanks! Yeah the monitor will indeed do 4:3. I shoot the video on an iPhone 14 Pro Max, which has a tremendously tough time focusing on the monitor. It seems to especially struggle when the monitor is in 4:3 mode. Guess it's high time to get a video capture system together.
i do so look forward to your videos on Fridays
Thanks! I'll do my best to keep up that pace.
@@miketech1024 don’t put ur self out man if u can’t make it sometimes u can’t make it
Winzip, omg the nostalgia kicked in.
Seeing that nearly took me out!
@MikeTech I wonder when you will get one with the original Winamp
Man, that corrosion on that first PC has to be the worst I've ever seen! Also, you have some very fancy AOL 7.0 discs! lol
Fantastic video as always, and I love the "warranty void" sticker running joke.
Thanks! Never in my life did I think myself (or anyone) would pay money for AOL CDs, but they do make great Easter eggs for videos!
Your videos bring back so many memories. I look forward to watching every Friday! One memory is when I worked with a teacher who brought her Gateway 2000 into her classroom in 1998 before every classroom got an iMac. We used Netscape Navigator in the schools back then. I remembered finding a game that used red cars for an autistic child I worked with. They only way I could keep his attention was by using red cars.
I remember one summer I think it was 1992 or 93 the schools got portable computers for families to take home over the summer. I think they were made by Compaq. This thing looked like a suitcase lol. Oregon Trail was one if the floppy disc games that came with it.
The microscope you used is awesome! It’s so cool to get up close to the parts you work on.
Nice job with the cowboy hat lol. I always found it interesting that Gateway used cows as their mascot.
LMAO that hair flick.
I like to watch these for the old machines and the super hot host
During the late 1990s I worked as a student technician servicing about 1,500 computers in a large community college. The older computers were HPs while the newer ones were Gateway computers. If a campus computer was acting up, we asked if it was an HP or a Gateway; and I would say, ‘Oh shit!’ if it was the latter. Reliability was not a feature of Gateways for oftentimes a brand new PC would arrive with a dead motherboard, or the assembly only partially complete. Sometimes debugging would take hours, even for our hardware specialist - for the Gateways often had buggy drivers for hardware that was state of the art, but obviously untested by the manufacturer. No wonder that Gateway now is more a distant memory in 2023.
You can wrangle me in that hat anytime you want lol 😍
Keep up the good work. Loving the videos xx
Think if I wrangled anything or anyone, I'd probably end up in the hospital. LOL
@@miketech1024 But what better way to end up in the hospital? ;)
Love your videos! And the thirst trap! 👀
I remember the enthusiasm you have as i did in the day . I loved PCs and mini computers and everything. I just turned 55 and had to clear out the cupboard of my SCSII cards, network cards etc. bits of SUN sparcs etc. I really felt a twinge but have to as my husband and me are moving to the country. Still love the computers to the day I die! Keep up the work.. so enjoyable😊
by clear out, you mean redistribute right?
Brilliant video, took me right back to my early days of 286's, 386's and 486's not to mention the big a** Pentiums that looked like half a sandwich, you have another subscriber, thanks for sharing.
When you got to the third one, and you had said something about the back screws being missing, I thought, "Imagine if there was 1 or more bag(s) with screws for the thing? And there was! I can't actually believe I thought that.
I was gave a Gateway 2000 to use for a few months out of high school. It was not bad for a loaner at all. Pentium Overdrive, 16MB ram I think it had a 33.6Kbps Modem. I don't remember what video or sound card it had. I remember that it had a 2x CD-ROM as well. I only needed it for some basic work tasks and email so it fit the bill till I got a better PC.
Let's wrangle some Gateway 2000 systems!
You: OK, we're not actually doing that.
Me: I'll watch the video anyway, but I'll be seating quietly as a sign of indignation.
If I actually tried to lasso something, I'd probably need medical attention. 🤣
Great talent, and patience. I love your videos. Keep up the great work Mike!
love watching your videos keep it going
Keep em coming..... Loving it
Really digging this channel.
Another great video
Looks like you have an admirer lol
Keep it up
These noises of the machines starting up makes me feel young again
Dave
London uk
I used to buy PC Magazine just to see the newest ads for Gateway 2000! Wanted one so badly - but Packard Bell from Best Buy is what was on my future…
Another excellent video. Absolutely love seeing each system from that mega haul! That second system in the small case is an absolute treasure, that install of Windows 3.1 got some heavy use
If you took the innerds from the dx2 66 and put them into the larger case that's my exact childhood pc. It was so bad ass. Ran win98 without batting an eye
I actually have one of those! It’s a 4DX2-66V.
Gateway 2000 Produkowalo kiedyś komputery AMIGA . Pozdrawiam z Polski . Gateway 2000 It used to produce AMIGA computers. Greetings from Poland .😁👍🤝
I have a P5-75 in my collection and it looks to be the exact or very similar same configuration as the one you have - video card, modem, sound card, cd-rom, motherboard all the same. Not surprising as they probably sold thousands of these things in the same or similar configuration. It's a great machine - I picked it up for free in in like 2002 or 2003 and then it sat in a closet until a couple years ago when I actually had time and inclination to finally clean it up and use it. All it needed was an inspection and a good cleaning - Everything worked as it should when I turned it on.
These machines are amazingly resilient! As long as there are no evil Varta barrel batteries in them.
Amazing video man. I have a soft spot for gateway systems since they so common near me...and they got their start a mere 2 hours away from me here in Iowa. Hence the cow box marketing
Just found this channel a few days ago subbed after watching a few videos! I love this content so much! I build PC's for a living and this is just so awesome to watch, I can tell you have passion for this work! It's so interesting seeing how old PC's work, I don't see many as I'm always working with modern one's. Greetings from Scotland
Thanks! Glad you’re enjoying them. 🙂
omg you are triggering a ton of memories for me as well with this. I think we are around the same age, and I remember AOL 3.0. That was my first experience with the internet, and that was in the late winter/spring of 97 on a 386. Experience was dismal but it was my first
My first experience with the internet (other than BBS) was with AOL 2.0. When they announced that they would be dropping support for it, I was so upset I emailed Steve Case (then-CEO of AOL) because later versions wouldn't run on my machine. Either he or someone employed by him did respond! He explained that the cost would be astronomical to continue maintaining AOL 2.0. I must have been about 6 or 7 at the time.
@@miketech1024 awww dang. That sounds like something I would do. I didn't know what a computer was until 1996 when I had just turned 10.
You and your luck with OPL3 chips. Amazing. Money back straight away. I love this PC archeology. X
I never would have guessed that Gateway systems came with OPL3 Sound Blasters!
Thanks for adding the time stamps Mike! Makes things much easier especially watching during a work day and I for one appreciate it, I'm a novice at soldering myself so I think its great you demonstrated that a bit and I now look forward to your motherboard repair series, keep up the great work
Thanks! Glad the timestamps help.
Very nice. I have a p5 90 the first computer we ever had and a p5 133.thanks gateway was a very nice computer business.
This brings back memories. Way back in my university student tech days we supported around 200 of these things in the various business and finance departments around campus. What I'd love to find is one of the huge same-styled Gateway 2000 towers.
OK i love the lil PBS bit at the end
On the first system, the application mIRC was a total blast from the past! The time spent on IRC in my youth was extensive!
That is a BEEFY power supply in the first PC.
Good job !
Mike, you are a total trip! I can hardly wait for the Carmen Miranda hat episode, lol. This one is one of my favorites so far. The Win95 brought back some great memories. Thanks, man!
🤣🤣 I don’t think I could fit a Carmen Miranda hat in-frame. Thanks!
I have a Gateway Pentium 4 that I use as a "retro gamer" for my Hasbro Interactive games. They don't work with most modern video cards, but they work well with the onboard VGA graphics on the Gateway. it also runs Windows XP, so it still supports full screen DOS games without using DOSBOX
Finally someone using the desoldering alloy! I nearly destroyed an SE/30 motherboard trying to replace the SIMM sockets (all of the plastic latches were broken) because I did not know about this!
sad that first GW2K suffered the fate of the varta timebomb. the 2nd one at least uses a dallas RTC that is socketed, and the 3rd one uses coin batteries
I remember having monitors that had the three-pin style Port that plugged into the power connector on the back of the PC
I also remember the d sub connectors with the ribbon cables and the ports on the back just like this
The edge of an old slot blank is a great tool for removing "low" insertion force CPUs.
My fav vintage machines
I'm definitely getting one of those Amazon microscopes with a display on it when I have the money, been on my wishlist for awhile now. Also have you thought of using kynar wire? It's basically enamel coated wire that can be melted off and soldered with easily, meaning you don't have to worry about it shorting anything. The enamel also helps keep the whole wire from coming unsoldered as easily if you apply too much heat.
Haven't used kynar wire before. I have used regular magnet wire harvested from transformers in the past though.
Ouch,that 'cranchy' sound!!!!
It reminded me my time in tech school!!!
Nostalgia overload is a massive understatement lol. the first computer I ever rebuilt, an 8088, used Direct access 4.1. Before I had windows, that was my main program. I still have the thing on floppy somewhere. I have a P5-75 myself, but it doesn't have the plastic power button. for some reason I have had trouble finding one. despite that, the machine runs great. but yeah kind of annoying to have to use a screwdriver to turn it on and off lol.
Thank you for your videos. They are very informative without becoming boring. Keep up the fun!
That second computer is slightly older than me by 6 months, and I still remember using Windows 3 at school 22 years ago :3
Looks like the 95 system was upgraded from MS-DOS 6. My family's 486 was the same, and I'm glad it was because it still had QBasic on it which taught me how to program (or at least as much as you can from BASIC). Awesome.
most likely windows 3.1 in addition to ms dos 6
Another Superb Video, this is definitely making Friday, my best day! every time I see a CD Rom Drive, I hope a CD is in there, I still have my Original Quake, and Doom Cd, I bought way back in the day lol, also, I've noticed a lot of those dial up modems have a small Canadian sticker flag on them ?
Thanks! Never know what might be lurking in those drives. I believe those stickers indicate that the device complies with Canadian standards for operation and interference. Not too sure.
I was a Gateway premier partner and sold a ton of their PCs and Servers. I have to say I rarely had hardware failures. Their customer service and support was very good. Now, I’m a slave to Dell, ordering suxs as they take sometimes more than 24 hrs to get a quote back and the whole warranty support is a joke compare to Gateway.
Keen 4! Used to play that st the library while waiting for my sister to finish tai kwon do, lol.
ahhhhh I missssssssssssssed almost everything. Talking bout the games back. My school had Gateway 96(yr)
You need to setup your own dial-up modem bank and dial in with these old machines. I've got some old cisco equipment I'm going to try it with. That would be cool. Very great video! I like what you're doing. I love these old 486 machines and DOS! Keep up the good work!
Thanks! I’ve been contemplating starting a dial-up BBS service, since so few of them still exist. I do have a 25U server rack at the house and about a decade of professional systems/network engineering experience. Might be time to put it to some good use! Just an idea at this point, no idea what the cost of bringing in the phone lines would be.
@@miketech1024 I was thinking more along the line as a "private" "internal" dial-up service that you can use in your workshop. Not for the public. I've got the stuff to try it and most likely will make a video documenting my failure or success. youtube.com/@overalltech7746
I had two dial up connections bonded as a single connection. In the day time I'd use my dedicated phone line, and then at night I'd use my parents phone line and the ISP would combine the connections at their side. From what I remember, it wasn't hard to configure in Windows, but you had to have an ISP that supported bonded connections. I had two 56k modems though, one internal and an external. I do remember something about having to have a 56K modem for it to work, not sure if that was both needed to be v92 compatible or something or maybe it was just one.
Certainly there seems to be a few reasons why they'd have multiple modems in their machine though. It could be that they had one on a dedicated internet access line like I had, and the other for answer voice/fax service. A look at the setup in Windows would probably tell us more than pondering though.
However, I expect as Mike said, they probably just left the old one in there when upgrading. If someone wasn't that technical back then, a manual would have just said to stick it in a free slot rather than removing the existing one - hah - But my guess is they probably just stuck the modem in that chassis of a case while savaging the other components.
For the system with 2 modems, one could have been used as an incoming fax line, while the other was used for dialup purposes. Or if one is a voice modem, they could have been running some sort of voicemail system. There is also the possibility that it was a multi-line bbs system.
Finding those OPL3 chips was lucky... but finding those screws for the faceplate insde the case was EPIC LUCK!! hahaha
I have a Gateway 2000 486/DX266, similar to the second system you showed. Needs Dallas RTC replacement. It does work, going to fit it with a SD to IDE drive. It does have a overdrive processor of 100mhz, 16mb Ram if I'm correct. Manufactured around the same time as yours..
I remember back in the day, you could use 2 dial up modems to speed up your internet connection.
I’ve had it in the past where a Customer has had Multiple Sound Cards / Network Cards etc installed in their PC as the Technician they originally approached were unable to find Drivers for the existing Card/s so they just installed another Card… Unbelievable! 😂🇬🇧
Cocos, imi place canalul asta imi aduce aminte de calculatorele din copilarie, iti doresc sa cresti canalul, numai succes, sunt curios daca citesti si intelegi ce zic!😊
You said "take me to DOS" and my mind automatically set it to the tune of Take Me to Church by Hozier.
That second PC is pretty sweet.
"Why does it look like a chicken?" lol.
That gateway 486 would be a pretty much perfect machine for early 90s DOS gaming. Win95 'works' but it'd be too bog slow to really do much of anything, and Quake really needs a Pentium to play.
i saw a trick by branchus creations where he uses used solder braid to tin traces. really cool recycling technique. Just take the used portions of braid and heat it up and slide it over the trace to tin it.
Fascinating. I am definitely trying that!
I had 2 modems back in the 90s because we had something called analogue leased lines where you paid a fixed monthly cost to the telecoms company and they gave you a line that could only "dial 1 number" (sort of), like to join PABX's between two branches of a company, and I got one from home to the ISP, so we were online 24/7, with a fixed IP, and the 2nd modem was so if I would out, I could dial into home and use my own internet, or at night when my friends got home we could connect the 2nd modem to internet and route all my countries IP ranges through the fixed cost line, and everything else went out over the dial up one, that way I could sit on IRC and telnet/ssh work servers over the fixed line and not lag too much.
That was so cool to read. Thanks! Crazy how much we take for granted nowadays. I can just whip out my phone and VPN back to the house from nearly anywhere. Back then it required real effort!
"...and flux is your friend" Bob Ross Vibes
“A happy little tinned trace here…”
The two deadly sisters of vintage computers: RIFA and VARTA.
"Flux is your friend" except for your lungs lol.
No coincidence that both RIFA and VARTA sound like the names of comic book supervillains!
@@miketech1024 ikr
email bombs, scrolling, blue screeners! AOL punters were so fun!
The wild west of the internet! I was mostly beating up on Yahoo Messenger. Hey I turned those experiences into a successful career in cybersecurity!
WP in the BIOS stands for "Write Precompensation"
All hard disk types in common use after the early 1990s have a drive-specific controller built into the actual drive enclosure. This includes all IDE, SCSI, SATA, and SAS hard drive types, among others. Those internal controllers know everything they need to know about their specific drive, including which strengths of precompensation are needed on which parts of the disk. Therefore, they ignore any WPcom numbers stored in the computer's CMOS memory. Until the late 1990s, many PC BIOS setup programs still allowed the user to set WPcom numbers and other drive parameters for use with older hard disk types should the need arise; it wasn't always made very clear to the user that his more modern drive would almost certainly ignore the setting.
Since then, the WPcom number is no longer even offered as a BIOS setting any more, as it has become a fully automated and internally handled feature of disk drives.
18:07 Back in the day, long before WD Red, WD Green, WD Blue, and their flagship icon WD_BLACK, there was a motto from Western Digital saying "Accept only the finest." (look at the top-right corner of that HDD)
I thought you were announcing a Retro Roundup partnership with that into.
You can mount two 3.5 HDD's side by side on that bracket over the PSU :)
My first computer. Gateway 2000 pentium 60mhz. Gateway was considered the most high end company… above Dell at the time.
A friend of mine in the USA had a Gateway computer in maybe 1999 I think....not a bad machine from memory.
With 2 modems, you could "shotgun" your connections and get 2x whatever your speed was, in my case it was 28.8, the lines where I lived never supported 56K. So only way to get close to 56K was 2 DUN connections.
"WP" in the drive parameters is Write Precompensation. It's used to tell the drive when it should shift to a higher or lower write current, depending where it currently is on the platter. The farther away from the spindle the head gets, the more current the heads need to write data.
This setting is a legacy of the MFM and RLL days, it's entirely unused in IDE, the integrated controller on the drive automatically manages it. MFM and RLL drives were dumb and were almost entirely run by the disk controller card, and needed more values set to work properly.
As for that ISA video card that wasn't working, it having a full purple screen is more likely a component fault than a dipswitch issue. I would guess that either one or more RAM chips are bad, or the two EPROMs have bit rot and corrupted the video BIOS to the point the card doesn't work anymore. You'll need a memory IC tester and a ROM programmer to verify those.
There's the Retro Chip Tester Pro, but that thing is very expensive. Might be able to rig something up with an arduino cheaper. For an EPROM programmer, a TL48 or TL56 would work.
You may want to get into the habit of dumping the ROMs in all of the cards/motherboards you work on, because in many cases, they're extremely difficult or impossible to find. EEPROMs, EPROMs and even mask ROMs all eventually go bad.
You beat me to on the WP, and don't forget "LZ" for Landing Zone, another useless setting on IDE Drives, I use to fill WP with 0 or 65535 and LZ as the sectors minus 1, just for the giggles
Solid gold information. Thanks so much! Nothing sends shivers down my spine quite like bit rot... Definitely need to get my hands on a Retro Chip Tester Pro eventually. I have a TL866-3G for reading/writing ROMs. So far it has been sufficient, but I haven't done a whole lot with it.
I can’t see the continuation of the repair work! I don’t think I would have bothered especially knowing it’s likely a four layer PCB… who knows what kind of damage lurks beneath. Great stuff though. Thanks!
I do love a good challenge, though I am about a decade out-of-practice (as you could probably tell). Now I must do the obligatory star-struck comment: I absolutely love your channel! It is absolutely one of my all-time favorites and was the impetus for me to finally start my own. Thanks so much!!
@@miketech1024 Aw thanks Mike. You rock too! It's awesome to see new people in this space. I love your passion and enthusiasm. I dig your angled wooden motherboard/parts holder for getting that good shot and I must say, I've never tried the resoldering alloy. I need to get some!
@@adriansdigitalbasement It’s good stuff, been using it forever. It works like magic for SMD chip removal (which is a sight to behold in itself).
I'm not gonna lie Mike, when I first started watching your videos, I loved your knowledge and passion, but I felt that you were very stiff and lacking emotion, and it made your videos less appealing.
Fortunately as you've gained more confidence and comfort, you've become far more expressive and added in your personality to back up the passion, and I've been loving your newer videos!
Absolutely look forward to them popping up in my timeline now!
P.S. I was also made in 1988 😂
Thanks! It was pretty terrifying getting on-camera for the first time, not helped at all by being a quite shy introvert. Luckily I'm starting to get over it. A fellow '88 baby! It was a good year. 🙂
41:42 - You could use a second modem as a fax machine attached to a second phone line.
There is also Prodigy and Netscape Navigator
Ah the joys of Dos driver’s, 2 modems are more common than you think BBS was still a thing, 2-3 even 4 phone lines in a home or business was a thing until ISDN became cost affective
Wow! I dreamed about owning a 486 for longer than I dare to admit. Well, I dreamed of having anything with a color monitor and a chance to run windows for years. 🤪
Being restricted to DOS, QBasic and a bit of Assembly forced me to acquire essential knowledge I still use nowadays, though.
Lookelike someone was shotgunning thier dialup 😁. I did this back in the day
I enjoy watching you void warranties. :D I wonder if this was an old and very basic BBS server? IT would explain a lot of the unusual choices whoever last owned this made.
That system is definitely worthy of further exploration.
The smaller Gateway 2000 (the first one you broke into) was my first computer back in 1998. This surely takes me back... I can almost hear the AOL "YOU GOT MAIL!! and Playing AOL Games, SLINGO was my favorite =D The only modification I did to this PC was a CPU upgrade by Greenway Technologies from 486 to a Pentium. It was plug and play and came with a little CPU cooling fan. It made things run a bit faster but it was still system bottle necks, the computer itself was way too slow for what I wanted it to do... I recall the PC still had problems even playing MP3's... In the year 2000 I took advantage of the deal they were passing out back then getting a free Compaq computer with a paid dial up plan... Only then was I able to Play Mp3's Rip CD's... Ahh the Napster days...
Slingo!! That game took countless hours from my childhood LOL. I wonder if any backups of AOL’s backup systems still exist somewhere.
Somewhere I have an old Slingo installer that gives 30 days trial period. It’s just enough play time to experience the past… I doubt online player works but you can play it as single player offline mode. I’m currently transferring my cd library to my NAS. When I come across it I’ll be happy to pass it to you.
I'm using a Gateway2000 keyboard at work. Found it at a thrift shop for free still new in the box.
Nice! I have two AnyKey keyboards and a standard Gateway 2000 branded one. All from this same haul. The second AnyKey is missing a few caps unfortunately.
Jealous you are getting to tinker with some classic computers of our past. I'd be in my element having all those computers.
Those last two USR modems are kind of interesting. I wonder if they are based on a design for an external modem because they both have their own on-board 16C550 UARTs.
Presumably the PC talks to the modem via a serial port, only the serial port is entirely internal to the modem card itself.
TH-cam user necroware actually has a board that can replace those Dallas RTCs called the nwX287, it also has a replaceable battery, for further convenience