Update stuff. Regarding the CPU support, I found this Intel PDF named "SE440BX-2 SPECIFICATION UPDATE". There are LOTS of revisions of this board. I found this information about the Pentium III: BIOS Revision 4S4EB2X0.86A.0021.P14 or later is required for the Desktop Board to properly support 550E, 600E, 650,700, 750 and 800 MHz processors. In addition, the following board PBA’s are required to support these processors: 719945-214 or later 729350-214 or later 754554-200 or later 719947-214 or later 754559-200 or later I don't think I have any of these faster CPUs to test, I could only test with a 1 GHz CPU. But this might of interest to anyone else out there using this board, or looking at buying!
about PBA, is a number which is usually written around the sound ports/solder pads for onboard audio, it can take FSB 100 Pentium IIIs in both slot 1 or socket 370 (via slotket), also can run Celerons as well, be careful since the lastest BIOS won't let boot with Coppermine "D" stepping P3s i belive (the ones rated for 1.75v instead to 1.65-1.7v of older ones)
I've owned one of these boards for about a decade now! Mine has integrated Yamaha DS-XG audio. Based on a quick search, it sounds like it should be an EXCELLENT retro platform!
Hey Phill, I know this is a little bit offtopic, but would you make some video showcasing how do you store all the systems you have, main and capture setups? Overall tour of what you are rocking with for all curious of us. :P
That's good not sure how you would manage to jam more than 4GB's of RAM in that mobo anyway... Pretty sure maxed out would be like 756MB's? SDR RAM I am reasonably sure they maxed out at 256MB's for DIMMS maybe 512MB's max but even that would only get you to 1.5GB's and no need for PAE (Not sure what the other guy is talking about PAE for anyway?)
I was going to say it looks less like dust and more like fine sand. It didn't seem to adhere to the components like 'real' dust does. Maybe that's the difference between damp Britain and dry, dusty Oz.
I was given a 486DX33 system a few weeks ago that was used in a mechanical workshop that serviced coal trucks. It hadn't been cleaned ever. The whole thing was absolutely caked with coal dust. It got hosed in the back yard, then chucked in the dishwasher. Now it looks and works like it did brand new!
Great video. A few people have commented on ESD ruining the electronics. All of my Compaq Proliant ML530 servers spent days completely submerged in water due to flood. After the water receded , I plugged in all 9 power cords for 3 servers and they all work fine. all 36 hard drives operate perfectly. These noisy bastards I swear are bullet proof.
The older motherboards look sooo much more interesting than new ones, because you can see a lot of the absolutely beatiful traces :) I have a Pentium II rig with one of those beatiful green motherboards in it and it's awesome :)
Those capacitors though, absolutely massive! I forgot how elegant modern boards look by comparison. Especially now there are no ISA or old school PCI slots
I love watching old cruddy computers get a new lease on life by being cleaned up. I personally love doing this too. Making me want to acquire some oldies again.
I was expecting it to be much worse. I worked for a company that recycled ex-government computers back in I think it was 2002 - maybe earlier, maybe later, I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, the machines we were getting in to clean up and sell were mainly Pentium 200s and Pentium MMX 233 machines. My job was to open them up and clean everything, and many of them had never been opened their whole life. Many of them were so full of dust that if they were turned on, the fans often couldn't spin as they were literally filled with dust - often removing the case lid left a visible shape from the inside of the lid, all in packed-in dust. I got very sick doing that job, as there was no air-flow in the room and I wasn't issued any sort of breathing protection. Anything less than that dirty looks kinda clean after that experience, lol
When he opened the side panel, at first I thought: "Wow, I can't see much dust, yeah a little bit on cpu fan, but it's quite clean otherwise. And those extension cards look quite cool with a brown pcb" *he wipes the dust of with his finger* "Oh my god that is was not the pcb!!" xD
As bad as that is, it's actually fairly mild for a machine of its age if it's been in service this whole time. I've opened computers with a literal 1/8" layer of dust on the cards, or with the CPU heat sink caked with dirt and/or the PSU enclosure packed almost solid with pet hair. Those were the less-objectionable ones. The nastier machines might be sticky inside and out with nicotine tar (one of the reasons I quit smoking, actually!), or have a layer of bug carcasses in the bottom. And one antique mess full of all sorts of ick (including live bugs) that we later learned the customer had fished out of a dumpster. Yeah, I didn't work on that thing; I double garbage-bagged it and told him to get it out of my shop.
Enjoyed the video, as usual. Just to let you know, I've been using a 37mm paintbrush to clean dusty parts for 15 years, it's nice and soft and has never let me down.
I use a shaving cream brush for cleaning light dust. for really dirty boards and cards when stripped of the coolers I have washed them in water and small amount of detergent, rinse with distilled water and blow dry with an air gun from my workshop compressor, focusing on sockets, BGA devices, slots etc to get all the water out. Then leave them to dry in a warm place for few hours just in case of trapped water. Cleaned many of my own PC stuff over the years like this and saved many dodgy slots that had light surface corrosion on the contacts.
I use hobby paint brushes of various sizes from dollar stores. I never let my hardware get too dusty anyway so they work perfectly for very little money
I very often clean dirty cards/ Maiboards in my shower with water. Just make sure you remove batteries or anything that delivers power. So far I never had an issue with showering a Mainboard.
That 15 pin d-sub connector on the NIC is an AUI (attachment unit interface) connector. It was used on older network cards because there wasn't much standardization in networking, so you could use an external transceiver connected to the card to connect to your network if it wasn't 10Base-T or 10Base-2 which the card natively supported. There were AUI transceivers available to connect to non-standard (at the time) fiber, coax, and twisted pair networks.
I found my first slot one system about a month ago. It's a Dell XPS t450 and it has the proprietary power connector you mentioned at 14:14. It seems ok. I got it up and running but Im thinking I should replace the power supply. Any idea if they make a cable to use with these systems with modern power supplies?
Sweet, I was just working with one of those exact boards today! It's the same one used in the Hydro Thunder arcade game, but without the audio ports. I like how it's not full of bad caps for once.
I have a Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus that didn't have any dust whatsoever on anything and looked pristine. Mainly because the original owner must've cleaned it out before donating the system, or just amazing dust protection. It's 23 years old and it still runs like a champ.
I often joke about my work in IT resembling archeology. Every time I pull expansion cards for cleaning, and blow the dust off, I feel like Indiana Jones.
That DVD drive appears to be a rebranded Lite-On. It might be interesting to try to figure out which model it originally was and to flash either that firmware or possibly that from a higher-end model that shared the same hardware if one exists. I've had lots of good luck working on the firmware from these drives, adding SmartErase support to two DVD burners, LabelTag support to three, DVD-RAM support to one, and even speeding up a 48x CD-ROM drive to 52x.
another great video ! :) for future I would recommend just to blow the dust out before turning it on to test, as the dust can be conductive and you can damage the system or simply create short circuit. And as well watch out for ESD with cleaning with a brush.
I mentioned something about the blower. This thing with ESD. I've done everything that some people say is evil. Cards on the carpet, I store most parts in sandwich bags. I have never had any issues in that regard. This is how I clean stuff since the beginning, never had an issue. To me ESD sounds like fear mongering more than anything.
I worked as Electronics Analyst at local electronics factory, where we had sensitive computer logic board, and my second responsibility is to teach and implement ESD/EOS protection on the production. ESD mostly discharge when the accumulated voltage gets to + 15 KVolts, where you can hear and see the discharge. When you get to the +50K Volts the sound gets more scary. Mostly it will damage logical components, crystals, LEDs, or simply the place where it is most contact during the discharge. The discharge could be also only 0,5KVolt and you could not see or feel it, but it definitely hit the SMD components, and damaging them or lowering their values in long term. This could effect in computers into BOSDs, Screen tearing, Artifacts, overall instability, with unknown source, or later can result in dead system. ESD/EOS damage is really no fear mongering, just check how CPUmany electronics are made, and everywhere the ESD protection is installed, and also this is why you have all components in ESD bags when received, and why you should always discharge before working with computers. If you want to use brush, use really thin hair soft brush, like cosmetic one, that have less chance to create ESD damage. Maybe you can try to create an video where you intentionally can try to damage for example perfectly working video card like some Riva TNT , by ESD. Try a way where you can get a lot of static charge and simply discharge at memory bank or some components and you can see the resulting effects. On my personal experience, when I was a child, playing my Sega Mega Drive on TV, sitting on synthetic carpet, laying under a synthetic blanket over me, I managed to create such Static electricity, that I got shocked trough the controller, and the system was instantly dead, not working anymore. :)
I killed a PC just picking it up after pulling it out of a box, a spark jumped to from my hand to the case that was over 2cm long, killed most components in the PC except the drives and GPU, everything else..dead The discharge was from the packaging charging up the whole PC, it discharged to my hand and because the whole entire mass of the PC including the internals drained to me, the flow of charge withing the electronics was enough to toast most of it. It definitely real, it just depends on how much charge in the ESD. I also had a issue with static at my last office where the carpet caused massive discharges and one laptop went funny after discharging to it a few times used to crash and get BSOD, my other laptop used to always switch on when I moved my hand near the com port and you hear the crackling sound, did this without fail, no need for pressing the power button. Also killed a SB live 24bit not long ago after I handled it and placed it on my bed, the blanket gets a lot of static, to the point running your hand over it flashes blue sparks in the dark.
I'm in France and I have a lot of old stock of old PC's, this kind of old PC's is great to play on it old Ms-Dos games still Windows 95/98. I have a small tower that I built with a PIII-750 mHz and a GeForce 4 Ti great to play old games 🙂
I remember seeing a specialized computer at a VW service center it had a 386 CPU and it's still working like a champ running whatever it is that they run.
I remember going from a MMX at 100MHz to a Pentium 3 at 650MHz with Windows 2000. It felt like the future. That P3 machine continued to feel fast for around 5 yrs. What a great, but expensive, machine.
Had a client's computer in that was acting up. Opened it up and found a couple inches of blown-in desert dust in the bottom of the case -- bloody wonder it still ran at all. I have a little blower that I use for PC cleaning -- works great. You just have to be careful not to get any closer than a couple inches, because blowers develop huge static charges, more than enough to zap chips, and can jump a gap up to an inch or so. Careful with the brush -- as someone says, they generate static too. Spray the brush with a solution of Downy before using, that will help cut static (and attract dirt to the brush, as it's a little sticky). Heavy is a GOOD thing in PSU. Means it has a good heavy heatsink and big capacitors. I haven't seen age be a problem in itself. I got a tester with a voltage LED display -- catches lots of marginal PSUs that seem to work but aren't right. That's quite a nice case, lots of room to work and lots of HD bays. I'd grab it too. :) Terrific motherboard, what with ISA slots and look at those nice big capacitors! Only problem with that 440BX is that some of 'em have a bug and won't support HDs over 64GB. All in all, heck of a find. I like your open air case :)
Reminds me of the socket 478 board that I washed under running water - that turned out to be rock solid. Those old Intel boards were as dependable as anything.
I remember my first store bought computer had a 300 mhz, my second had a 702 mhz which was an HP. Since I have made a lot of my own built computers from Windows 94,98, ME, 2000, XP, and now 7. I made a lot of builds from the Intel 915 boards since they were very inexpensive and bought quite a few capacitor kits to repair them. Some of the chips were quite expensive but, you get what you pay for.
Nice video! I just recently cleaned an IBM 300 PL from 1999(Should be). I think it has Pentium III by Intel, I think. It was NEVER cleaned up until 2019. 20 years of dust, you dont want to see that. Please everyone, clean your PCs regularly.
Good Tear-down... when I've done mine, if the case was as bad, it got put in a bathtub and rinsed out real good... allowed to dry outside and once everything was dry, reassembled the unit.. the 440BX MB was pretty common.... had one once that supported 2 slot 1 processors, actually got it to see the internet! but it was just too old.
Always fond of using alcohol, white vinegar, a cleaning rag and a brush. I gotta say I got a little nervous with the dusty brush going into the slots, but I suppose if it worked in the end, no problem at all then, right?
Wow Phill I just did a video pretty similar to this one, the machine that was donated to me also was abandoned for 15 years. To my surprise it was a Thunderbird at 1.4ghz
Long ago I happened among a similar setup in a junkyard find. Near exact in parts except I can't recall the sound. Unfortunately, I didn't know as well as I do now to replace power supplies on "junk" machines. It took almost everything in one swoop when it decided to go as I was only able to salvage the RAM.
The worst part is that PC is down right clean compared to one I cleaned out for a friend of mine. The thick layers of dust/dirt all over the board looks so familiar. In addition to that I was pulling dust out by the fist full! I was simply amazed it still ran and did NOT catch on fire!!!
All three of those network connections are actually Ethernet - you have 10BASE-T (twisted-pair), 10BASE-2 (BNC), and AUI, used to connect a 10BASE-5 repeater. I do not miss -2 or -5 at all.
One thing I don't miss from these old machines are the ribbon cables, they are what make up my nightmares when managing cables, the round ones are better but still really bad
i did some work on a pentium 166mmx in a truck repair shop. the reason it's still there is VERY expensive licences on diagnosis software that also have various legal requirements and it uses ISA cards to hook up to trucks diagnosis ports. it's been installed probably during the late 90s and i was the first one to open it. deployed near the test station in a rolling totem with no air filters, it had a thick coat of black tar diesel goo mixed with dust and dead insects over its EVERYTHING inside. a black hell inside a vaguely clean exterior. since that's impossible to clean i decided to leave it as it was since it didn't have any obvious hardware failures other than the cmos battery. OH YEAH it's still working as of now. :) by comparison this P3 is as dirty as 99% isopropylic alcohol. :D
I just resurrected an old case that hadn't been cleaned in 11 years, I just stripped it down and hosed it off. The PC I am watching this on is now in that case.
wow! that dirt is crazy! its like that was a "shop" computer in like a mechanic shop or dusty garage. its weird how only the flat plains inside are dirty and nothing else is :/
Is the power supply newer? The dust on the cabling doesn't appear to match the rest of the case and parts. Seems like the HDD is newer than 15 years too. You'd think they'd clean out the dust when upgrading the parts. I cleaned out a PC that was like that and there was significant dust on the PSU vents and cabling. You would think the ribbon cables would be covered. Maybe it doesn't come through in the video.
I've had three Dell machines similar to this spec out of a skip. Two of them were so pristine they had next to no dust and the monitor, despite being on a 15", worked like a charm. Hardly a scratch on it. The systems even had the original hard drives in them, complete with Windows and the like. Sure, to some people it's just junk. But to some it's gold. When I was growing up we didn't have much and had to make do with what we had, so there's a historical tendency to not throw things away, even if you have the money to replace them. I did dismantle these Dell machines as I was running out of space basically, but kept all the innards in case someone ever needs them. Even though I was mostly an AMD user, it just seems a shame to chuck all this gear away. And as Phil has shown, there is always a use for this stuff as a lot of modern systems are simply way too fast, and incompatible. I played a LOT of games on similar hardware to that shown (including Interstate '76, Carmageddon and Quake, Project IGI), and fondly look back at those days reading computer magazines and learning how it all goes together, and how you could alter the hardware to get more performance i.e. memory, cpu and bus speed. Just getting an extra 33 MHz then was a massive deal (especially if you were blessed with owning a Cyrix CPU lol).
Alcohol like you use to clean CPUs & Heatsinks works well for cleaning electronics too, vs the water spray it evaporates much quicker and less worry about leftover charges from capacitors doing anything. Not a huge thing but works good when you need it to dry quickly.
Incoming was one of those "bundle" games for voodoo 2/3 cards that everyone had. So I had a few copies of it :P. As it was the perfect tech demo even in the menu.
This thing with ESD. I've done everything that some people say is evil. Cards on the carpet, I store most parts in sandwich bags. I have never had any issues in that regard. This is how I clean stuff since the beginning, never had an issue. To me ESD sounds like fear mongering more than anything.
Electrostatic discharge/ESD is real. Ever had a part that just stopped working and there is no visible damage? ESD can damage things a bit and then over time it will erode with every powercycle untill it fails completely. Being paranoid over it is a bit much but just going "well it never happend to me" is just ignorance. Thats like saying that texting and driving is fine cos iv never been in a crash.
For me blowing stuff works best in the bathroom, you can wash away all the dust instantly. Also don't be afraid about getting components wet, you can literally put them under the tap, just let them dry thoroughly afterwards. There is a number of YT videos about washing computer electronics as well, uxwbill even uses a literal dishwasher for that.
Love these older guys!, i actually just yesturday stripped down a few builds with these exact spec, i got a handfull of Pentium 3 cpu's, i got the 500/512/100/2.0v one and the 700/256/100/1.65v one and this exact same mobo, love your builds and content phil ! ***LIKE 100
Looks like this computer belonged to a wood working shop, and it's not surprising that they just ran it and ran it till it quit. Alot of these small businesses will do that.
Sorry Phil, I love your videos, I do really love them, but this one isnt good. My points: 1. A that plastic brush is an ESD generator, thats a big problem, and despite you never got into problems, thats no good, you could damage parts without knowing it. 2. You should get an air compressor. No brush can match it. Can clean inside connectors and a brush cant. 3. Putting moisture to cleant it only makes smallest (invisible to human eye) parts stick to metal and connectors, specially inside sockets and slots. Thats just my 2 cents, maybe you could get a better video in the future. Also, you didnt wash the motherboard like you promised :)
People keep saying all that stuff all the time. But i have never had anything or have seen anything be damaged by any of it. Nothing cleans up a pc like soaking in a bucket of soapy water for half an hour and afterwards drowning any connectors in a bunch of alcohol. Let it dry out for a day and it is as good as new for many many years.
For the Power Supply problematics - Are PSUs from "Chieftec" good? I used the 350W one (Chieftec iARENA GPA-350S8) as a replacement for the 12 year old PC which also used a 360W Chieftec PSU (it had exploded capacitors and didn't start up.) The new Chieftec works fine. But it's fairly obscure, bought it because the big-ass case was also branded Chieftec.
I've been using a dustpan brush to clean pc boards for years, but not any more. Last week I killed a motherboard while cleaning it, and I believe it was due to static from using the brush.
My family had a computer that came with Incoming as a pack-in title. It's technically made specifically for the ATI Rage 128 and similar graphics cards.
I have the same model but with yahama sound on-board, very stable and fast motherboard, and this board support Coppermine core. You can use 1ghz pentium iii 100mhz fsb 256kb cache.
A good high resolution CRT has much better contrast , color accuracy , almost instant response time , better viewing angles ( "flat" crt ) than average LCD monitor these days ( sub 200$ ) add to this list nostalgia factor for retro machine and it's a clear win for CRT.....the only problem is ...it's hard to find a good CRT ( possibly a new one from old stock)
I'd be a bit worried about using a standard plastic brush to clean computer parts... if I were the one cleaning it! I've done my time working as a computer tech many years ago, so it was actually strangely relaxing watching someone else have to clean out and rebuild a machine. Having pubs and RSLs as clients back in the days when smoking was allowed indoors, I've actually come across machines much worse than that! I once opened up a dead machine to find it literally full to the brim of dust and cigarette ash. Needless to say it went straight in the bin, didn't even bother to try fixing it, just replaced it with a brand new one and restored their data from a backup (thankfully the system we used was configured to back up data automatically). As for the motherboard, Nichicon capacitors shouldn't need replacing after only 15 years; they're about the best brand out there! Mind you, I've just picked up some very vintage PCs. They're literally 30 years old, so I've definitely got a bit of work ahead of me!
The Up Late Geek I once had the joy to clean and replace parts of a PC absolutely FULL of cat hair. It took me two days. Then I had to reinstall the operating system, as it was full of junk and didn't work without lag and random errors all the time. I was young so I did all that for free. Never again.
This thing with ESD. I've done everything that some people say is evil. Cards on the carpet, I store most parts in sandwich bags. I have never had any issues in that regard. This is how I clean stuff since the beginning, never had an issue. To me ESD sounds like fear mongering more than anything.
People dont believe in ESD until they destroy something. Myself I was lucky enough to get my "esd is bullshit" experiment early in my life, in ~1992 while installing 30pin 1MB SIMM modules in my brand new 386DX40 my friend told me not put them on the floor because magic ESomethinD. Nonsense I replied and promptly swept one of the modules across the cheap crappy carpet, followed by installing it and getting sad error BEEPs, never again.
Nice score. I have the same board also but it has the on board Yamaha sound which sounds great. I found with too much ram installed it takes forever to boot from bios so I just keep it around 128mb, hah. You will be happy with the blower when it comes in. I have the Datavac one but I take every computer outside to blow out and clean. Throws dust everywhere.
I'm pretty sure I had this board with a PII 350 back in the day. I then spent a fortune upgrading the CPU to a PIII 800 but I couldn't get it working so I had to replace the board with one based on a VIA chipset. I did get a performance increase but it was slightly underwhelming.
Dust? That looks like fine sand! I saw some comments about ESD, I've had issues when handling newer cpus, but never with the older card ones. Here up north the dry air and lots of dust probably doesn't help when handling cpus.
Phil, i got this very board, been wondering if you had reviewed one before i start a retro build with it.. and now you do :) cant wait to see more about it.. before i start.. BTW - if you ever dont want the cases i'd be interested in them.
I was of the opinion that the DELL MOBO and PSU were proprietary designs as noted in the video and for systems Pentium 111 CPU, then surprised to see a standard 450W PSU being installed for the MOBO testing. How goes?
I'm a fan of Carey Holzman and he's the one who uses a leaf blower on dusty PCs. In fact every computer he repairs gets the LB treatment., lol. He's been using that for 10 years without issues. This video was very interesting in that I once had a PIII, I think it was 1995 because I got Windows 95 with it. Great machine.
@PhilsComputerLab - for 15 years of dirt , this is very clean , because nearly all dirt isa just (Australia red) fine sand ... a smoker´s dust computer is far harder to clean ... You should air blast the power supply & the CPU´s fan + heatsink very well (with fan stopped/blocked)
Oh man, an Intel Seattle 440BX2! I have the version with Yamaha YMF740C audio. The built-in audio is near-perfect for DOS gaming. If only it supported Windows Sound System mode, it would have the 16-bit sample format support needed for later games. Also has genuine OPL3 FM synthesis for games that don't use MIDI. Lastly, in a Win9x DOS box, you can use the XG Lite MIDI for music in DOS games.
My backup computer has this exact same motherboard, although somewhat differently configured. It has an 850MHz Pentium3, 768 MB of PC100, a GeForce FX5200, and Windows XP.
Can someone help? Ive just build the system on Atrend Atc6220 and I when it comes to install graphics drivers the Windows installs standard PCI video card drivers while I have Riva TNT or Ati Rage Pro both on AGP. Is the AGP port broken? I have 133mhz sdram, maybe this is it?
That board had a bios revision that did support the coppermine CPU line. And IIRC the coppermine cpu's would work even without the bios update. Had a P3-1000 in the one I had.
Here in 2020. I still have a few Pentium III's, namely 2 socket 1.0 GHz towers, a slot 1.0 GHz CPU (unopened box) & a 500 MHz P-III laptop from late 1990's. And probably another one. Using a plastic brush felt cringey, that could potentially create ESD. I usually start with a vacuum, then next use compressed air spray. I also used to work at an Intel motherboard factory for over a decade beginning in the mid 1990's, so it's possible that Slot 1 mobo's may have come through our department for building them alone around Y2k, although most of the time it was socketed CPU motherboards that we built.
I got an AB-BH6 PC For free with the 440BX Chipset and an Intel Pentium II - 400Mhz with a 512kb cache. They are awesome. The resistor for the PS/2 port blew, however USB works fine.
the big connector on the NIC is "ThickNet" officially called 10BASE-5 the Co-ax is 10BASE-2 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE5 and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2
Update stuff. Regarding the CPU support, I found this Intel PDF named "SE440BX-2 SPECIFICATION UPDATE". There are LOTS of revisions of this board. I found this information about the Pentium III:
BIOS Revision 4S4EB2X0.86A.0021.P14 or later is required for the Desktop Board to properly support 550E,
600E, 650,700, 750 and 800 MHz processors.
In addition, the following board PBA’s are required to support these processors:
719945-214 or later
729350-214 or later
754554-200 or later
719947-214 or later
754559-200 or later
I don't think I have any of these faster CPUs to test, I could only test with a 1 GHz CPU. But this might of interest to anyone else out there using this board, or looking at buying!
about PBA, is a number which is usually written around the sound ports/solder pads for onboard audio, it can take FSB 100 Pentium IIIs in both slot 1 or socket 370 (via slotket), also can run Celerons as well, be careful since the lastest BIOS won't let boot with Coppermine "D" stepping P3s i belive (the ones rated for 1.75v instead to 1.65-1.7v of older ones)
I've owned one of these boards for about a decade now!
Mine has integrated Yamaha DS-XG audio.
Based on a quick search, it sounds like it should be an EXCELLENT retro platform!
Hey Phill, I know this is a little bit offtopic, but would you make some video showcasing how do you store all the systems you have, main and capture setups? Overall tour of what you are rocking with for all curious of us. :P
Pentium III line do not support PAE
That's good not sure how you would manage to jam more than 4GB's of RAM in that mobo anyway... Pretty sure maxed out would be like 756MB's? SDR RAM I am reasonably sure they maxed out at 256MB's for DIMMS maybe 512MB's max but even that would only get you to 1.5GB's and no need for PAE (Not sure what the other guy is talking about PAE for anyway?)
This is strange, it's not so much dusty as it's if someone tied it to the back of a dune buggy and drove around the desert.
Welcome to Australia :D
I have seen many much worse that this here, this looks like the average workshop PC
QuantumBraced you know what would be bad, that the user smoked a lot, the dust become sticky and is not nice at all to clean. 😐
I was going to say it looks less like dust and more like fine sand. It didn't seem to adhere to the components like 'real' dust does. Maybe that's the difference between damp Britain and dry, dusty Oz.
Yep leave it in a shed and it ends up with dirt. I need to cover some of my equipment stored in the shed.
You forgot, to plug the Molex of the HDD back in before starting, that's why there was no OS ;)
LOL that explains it :D I totally missed that.
I picked it up when you first tried powering it up. Years of hardware servicing experience says do the basic checks is it plugged in!
I was given a 486DX33 system a few weeks ago that was used in a mechanical workshop that serviced coal trucks. It hadn't been cleaned ever. The whole thing was absolutely caked with coal dust. It got hosed in the back yard, then chucked in the dishwasher. Now it looks and works like it did brand new!
Great video. A few people have commented on ESD ruining the electronics. All of my Compaq Proliant ML530 servers spent days completely submerged in water due to flood. After the water receded , I plugged in all 9 power cords for 3 servers and they all work fine. all 36 hard drives operate perfectly. These noisy bastards I swear are bullet proof.
Speaking of that, HPE recently got flooded again, many servers didn't make it......
Well i mean harddrives are completely sealed to keep dust out so i would hope it would keep water out lmao
The older motherboards look sooo much more interesting than new ones, because you can see a lot of the absolutely beatiful traces :) I have a Pentium II rig with one of those beatiful green motherboards in it and it's awesome :)
Those capacitors though, absolutely massive! I forgot how elegant modern boards look by comparison. Especially now there are no ISA or old school PCI slots
They are all 3300uF. I like that capacity, because last year I bought a bag of 100! Panasonic. It's usually these big ones that go first.
Yes well I imagine they are fairly easy to replace compared to modern fiddly components which pretty much mean binning a board when they go
I love watching old cruddy computers get a new lease on life by being cleaned up. I personally love doing this too. Making me want to acquire some oldies again.
I was expecting it to be much worse. I worked for a company that recycled ex-government computers back in I think it was 2002 - maybe earlier, maybe later, I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, the machines we were getting in to clean up and sell were mainly Pentium 200s and Pentium MMX 233 machines. My job was to open them up and clean everything, and many of them had never been opened their whole life. Many of them were so full of dust that if they were turned on, the fans often couldn't spin as they were literally filled with dust - often removing the case lid left a visible shape from the inside of the lid, all in packed-in dust. I got very sick doing that job, as there was no air-flow in the room and I wasn't issued any sort of breathing protection. Anything less than that dirty looks kinda clean after that experience, lol
you got punched in the face with alot of dust didnt you
Why didn't you just bring your own breathing protection?
Pentium 233 MMX was my first computer, back in 1998. Great memories.
My first pc was pentium 100 with w95 in 1996.
When he opened the side panel, at first I thought: "Wow, I can't see much dust, yeah a little bit on cpu fan, but it's quite clean otherwise. And those extension cards look quite cool with a brown pcb" *he wipes the dust of with his finger* "Oh my god that is was not the pcb!!" xD
From the preview picture I actually thought it was some cardboard pieces layed on the PCBs hehe
policegking me too :D
As bad as that is, it's actually fairly mild for a machine of its age if it's been in service this whole time. I've opened computers with a literal 1/8" layer of dust on the cards, or with the CPU heat sink caked with dirt and/or the PSU enclosure packed almost solid with pet hair. Those were the less-objectionable ones.
The nastier machines might be sticky inside and out with nicotine tar (one of the reasons I quit smoking, actually!), or have a layer of bug carcasses in the bottom. And one antique mess full of all sorts of ick (including live bugs) that we later learned the customer had fished out of a dumpster. Yeah, I didn't work on that thing; I double garbage-bagged it and told him to get it out of my shop.
Enjoyed the video, as usual. Just to let you know, I've been using a 37mm paintbrush to clean dusty parts for 15 years, it's nice and soft and has never let me down.
you deserve more than 28k subs
A cheap DIY paint brush is a better bet for cleaning old hardware, easier to handle than a big dust pan brush. Great video.
darkwaterblue I will check at our hardware store!
I use a shaving cream brush for cleaning light dust. for really dirty boards and cards when stripped of the coolers I have washed them in water and small amount of detergent, rinse with distilled water and blow dry with an air gun from my workshop compressor, focusing on sockets, BGA devices, slots etc to get all the water out. Then leave them to dry in a warm place for few hours just in case of trapped water. Cleaned many of my own PC stuff over the years like this and saved many dodgy slots that had light surface corrosion on the contacts.
I use hobby paint brushes of various sizes from dollar stores. I never let my hardware get too dusty anyway so they work perfectly for very little money
Exactly the sort of video I was hoping or Phil, thanks. Really do enjoy seeing all this old hardware, and it's a relief it all worked.
Awesome video, better than ever! I like it how you went from dumpster find, through maintenance and finally testing and benchmarking. Keep it up!
I very often clean dirty cards/ Maiboards in my shower with water. Just make sure you remove batteries or anything that delivers power. So far I never had an issue with showering a Mainboard.
Damn, that takes me back: Slot processors!
That 15 pin d-sub connector on the NIC is an AUI (attachment unit interface) connector. It was used on older network cards because there wasn't much standardization in networking, so you could use an external transceiver connected to the card to connect to your network if it wasn't 10Base-T or 10Base-2 which the card natively supported. There were AUI transceivers available to connect to non-standard (at the time) fiber, coax, and twisted pair networks.
Thanks!
I found my first slot one system about a month ago. It's a Dell XPS t450 and it has the proprietary power connector you mentioned at 14:14. It seems ok. I got it up and running but Im thinking I should replace the power supply. Any idea if they make a cable to use with these systems with modern power supplies?
You should be able to find an adapter!
Sweet, I was just working with one of those exact boards today! It's the same one used in the Hydro Thunder arcade game, but without the audio ports. I like how it's not full of bad caps for once.
Thanks for another great video Phil. I love the Quake 3 FPS stats with the video card upgrade, I found that to be very helpful!
I have a Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus that didn't have any dust whatsoever on anything and looked pristine. Mainly because the original owner must've cleaned it out before donating the system, or just amazing dust protection. It's 23 years old and it still runs like a champ.
This is really satisfying to watch
finally found one of my favorite game I played most of the time, brings back so much memories
I often joke about my work in IT resembling archeology. Every time I pull expansion cards for cleaning, and blow the dust off, I feel like Indiana Jones.
That's not dust, that's red sand or something
Welcome to Australia :)
It's a PC they used on the Mars mission
Looks like industrial dust.
that make sense
played to much prince of persia sands of time
I've come across several of those WD400 drives now and the really nice thing about them is that they have a 32GB limit jumper setting.
That DVD drive appears to be a rebranded Lite-On. It might be interesting to try to figure out which model it originally was and to flash either that firmware or possibly that from a higher-end model that shared the same hardware if one exists. I've had lots of good luck working on the firmware from these drives, adding SmartErase support to two DVD burners, LabelTag support to three, DVD-RAM support to one, and even speeding up a 48x CD-ROM drive to 52x.
another great video ! :) for future I would recommend just to blow the dust out before turning it on to test, as the dust can be conductive and you can damage the system or simply create short circuit. And as well watch out for ESD with cleaning with a brush.
Pretty much this. Those plastic bin brushes are ESD monsters.
I mentioned something about the blower. This thing with ESD. I've done everything that some people say is evil. Cards on the carpet, I store most parts in sandwich bags. I have never had any issues in that regard. This is how I clean stuff since the beginning, never had an issue. To me ESD sounds like fear mongering more than anything.
I worked as Electronics Analyst at local electronics factory, where we had sensitive computer logic board, and my second responsibility is to teach and implement ESD/EOS protection on the production. ESD mostly discharge when the accumulated voltage gets to + 15 KVolts, where you can hear and see the discharge. When you get to the +50K Volts the sound gets more scary. Mostly it will damage logical components, crystals, LEDs, or simply the place where it is most contact during the discharge. The discharge could be also only 0,5KVolt and you could not see or feel it, but it definitely hit the SMD components, and damaging them or lowering their values in long term. This could effect in computers into BOSDs, Screen tearing, Artifacts, overall instability, with unknown source, or later can result in dead system. ESD/EOS damage is really no fear mongering, just check how CPUmany electronics are made, and everywhere the ESD protection is installed, and also this is why you have all components in ESD bags when received, and why you should always discharge before working with computers. If you want to use brush, use really thin hair soft brush, like cosmetic one, that have less chance to create ESD damage. Maybe you can try to create an video where you intentionally can try to damage for example perfectly working video card like some Riva TNT , by ESD. Try a way where you can get a lot of static charge and simply discharge at memory bank or some components and you can see the resulting effects. On my personal experience, when I was a child, playing my Sega Mega Drive on TV, sitting on synthetic carpet, laying under a synthetic blanket over me, I managed to create such Static electricity, that I got shocked trough the controller, and the system was instantly dead, not working anymore. :)
I killed a PC just picking it up after pulling it out of a box, a spark jumped to from my hand to the case that was over 2cm long, killed most components in the PC except the drives and GPU, everything else..dead
The discharge was from the packaging charging up the whole PC, it discharged to my hand and because the whole entire mass of the PC including the internals drained to me, the flow of charge withing the electronics was enough to toast most of it. It definitely real, it just depends on how much charge in the ESD.
I also had a issue with static at my last office where the carpet caused massive discharges and one laptop went funny after discharging to it a few times used to crash and get BSOD, my other laptop used to always switch on when I moved my hand near the com port and you hear the crackling sound, did this without fail, no need for pressing the power button.
Also killed a SB live 24bit not long ago after I handled it and placed it on my bed, the blanket gets a lot of static, to the point running your hand over it flashes blue sparks in the dark.
I would recommend a paint brush with natural bristle. You can reach a lot of tiny crevices with those.
I'm in France and I have a lot of old stock of old PC's, this kind of old PC's is great to play on it old Ms-Dos games still Windows 95/98. I have a small tower that I built with a PIII-750 mHz and a GeForce 4 Ti great to play old games 🙂
I remember seeing a specialized computer at a VW service center it had a 386 CPU and it's still working like a champ running whatever it is that they run.
I remember going from a MMX at 100MHz to a Pentium 3 at 650MHz with Windows 2000. It felt like the future. That P3 machine continued to feel fast for around 5 yrs. What a great, but expensive, machine.
Had a client's computer in that was acting up. Opened it up and found a couple inches of blown-in desert dust in the bottom of the case -- bloody wonder it still ran at all.
I have a little blower that I use for PC cleaning -- works great. You just have to be careful not to get any closer than a couple inches, because blowers develop huge static charges, more than enough to zap chips, and can jump a gap up to an inch or so. Careful with the brush -- as someone says, they generate static too. Spray the brush with a solution of Downy before using, that will help cut static (and attract dirt to the brush, as it's a little sticky).
Heavy is a GOOD thing in PSU. Means it has a good heavy heatsink and big capacitors. I haven't seen age be a problem in itself. I got a tester with a voltage LED display -- catches lots of marginal PSUs that seem to work but aren't right.
That's quite a nice case, lots of room to work and lots of HD bays. I'd grab it too. :) Terrific motherboard, what with ISA slots and look at those nice big capacitors! Only problem with that 440BX is that some of 'em have a bug and won't support HDs over 64GB. All in all, heck of a find.
I like your open air case :)
Reminds me of the socket 478 board that I washed under running water - that turned out to be rock solid.
Those old Intel boards were as dependable as anything.
I remember my first store bought computer had a 300 mhz, my second had a 702 mhz which was an HP. Since I have made a lot of my own built computers from Windows 94,98, ME, 2000, XP, and now 7. I made a lot of builds from the Intel 915 boards since they were very inexpensive and bought quite a few capacitor kits to repair them. Some of the chips were quite expensive but, you get what you pay for.
This looks surprisingly clean
Nice video! I just recently cleaned an IBM 300 PL from 1999(Should be). I think it has Pentium III by Intel, I think. It was NEVER cleaned up until 2019. 20 years of dust, you dont want to see that. Please everyone, clean your PCs regularly.
Good Tear-down... when I've done mine, if the case was as bad, it got put in a bathtub and rinsed out real good... allowed to dry outside and once everything was dry, reassembled the unit.. the 440BX MB was pretty common.... had one once that supported 2 slot 1 processors, actually got it to see the internet! but it was just too old.
Always fond of using alcohol, white vinegar, a cleaning rag and a brush. I gotta say I got a little nervous with the dusty brush going into the slots, but I suppose if it worked in the end, no problem at all then, right?
Pretty much :)
I use a handheld electric air duster for the main cleaning and isopropyl on a cotton swab for the detail cleaning.
Wow Phill I just did a video pretty similar to this one, the machine that was donated to me also was abandoned for 15 years. To my surprise it was a Thunderbird at 1.4ghz
Got a toothbrush for that kind of cleaning. Hard enough to get rid of the dust, but soft enough to not damage anything on the boards.
Long ago I happened among a similar setup in a junkyard find. Near exact in parts except I can't recall the sound. Unfortunately, I didn't know as well as I do now to replace power supplies on "junk" machines. It took almost everything in one swoop when it decided to go as I was only able to salvage the RAM.
Thank you for sharing! I have heard many similar stories. I was really relieved that the machine turned on, but I swapped it out right away.
The worst part is that PC is down right clean compared to one I cleaned out for a friend of mine. The thick layers of dust/dirt all over the board looks so familiar. In addition to that I was pulling dust out by the fist full! I was simply amazed it still ran and did NOT catch on fire!!!
All three of those network connections are actually Ethernet - you have 10BASE-T (twisted-pair), 10BASE-2 (BNC), and AUI, used to connect a 10BASE-5 repeater. I do not miss -2 or -5 at all.
What i find interesting is that, to this day, many motherboards are still using the ATX form-factor!
One thing I don't miss from these old machines are the ribbon cables, they are what make up my nightmares when managing cables, the round ones are better but still really bad
Yea I don't miss them either.
i did some work on a pentium 166mmx in a truck repair shop. the reason it's still there is VERY expensive licences on diagnosis software that also have various legal requirements and it uses ISA cards to hook up to trucks diagnosis ports. it's been installed probably during the late 90s and i was the first one to open it.
deployed near the test station in a rolling totem with no air filters, it had a thick coat of black tar diesel goo mixed with dust and dead insects over its EVERYTHING inside. a black hell inside a vaguely clean exterior. since that's impossible to clean i decided to leave it as it was since it didn't have any obvious hardware failures other than the cmos battery.
OH YEAH it's still working as of now. :)
by comparison this P3 is as dirty as 99% isopropylic alcohol. :D
I just resurrected an old case that hadn't been cleaned in 11 years, I just stripped it down and hosed it off. The PC I am watching this on is now in that case.
wow! that dirt is crazy! its like that was a "shop" computer in like a mechanic shop or dusty garage. its weird how only the flat plains inside are dirty and nothing else is :/
Is the power supply newer? The dust on the cabling doesn't appear to match the rest of the case and parts. Seems like the HDD is newer than 15 years too. You'd think they'd clean out the dust when upgrading the parts.
I cleaned out a PC that was like that and there was significant dust on the PSU vents and cabling. You would think the ribbon cables would be covered. Maybe it doesn't come through in the video.
It's not really dust, more Australia desert sand. Literally.
I've had three Dell machines similar to this spec out of a skip. Two of them were so pristine they had next to no dust and the monitor, despite being on a 15", worked like a charm. Hardly a scratch on it. The systems even had the original hard drives in them, complete with Windows and the like.
Sure, to some people it's just junk. But to some it's gold. When I was growing up we didn't have much and had to make do with what we had, so there's a historical tendency to not throw things away, even if you have the money to replace them.
I did dismantle these Dell machines as I was running out of space basically, but kept all the innards in case someone ever needs them. Even though I was mostly an AMD user, it just seems a shame to chuck all this gear away.
And as Phil has shown, there is always a use for this stuff as a lot of modern systems are simply way too fast, and incompatible. I played a LOT of games on similar hardware to that shown (including Interstate '76, Carmageddon and Quake, Project IGI), and fondly look back at those days reading computer magazines and learning how it all goes together, and how you could alter the hardware to get more performance i.e. memory, cpu and bus speed. Just getting an extra 33 MHz then was a massive deal (especially if you were blessed with owning a Cyrix CPU lol).
Alcohol like you use to clean CPUs & Heatsinks works well for cleaning electronics too, vs the water spray it evaporates much quicker and less worry about leftover charges from capacitors doing anything. Not a huge thing but works good when you need it to dry quickly.
I think most CMOS batteries are still using the CR2032 part number, seems to still be in use today as well :)
Incoming was one of those "bundle" games for voodoo 2/3 cards that everyone had. So I had a few copies of it :P. As it was the perfect tech demo even in the menu.
A plastic brush is a huge ESD generator that can damage the parts.
This thing with ESD. I've done everything that some people say is evil. Cards on the carpet, I store most parts in sandwich bags. I have never had any issues in that regard. This is how I clean stuff since the beginning, never had an issue. To me ESD sounds like fear mongering more than anything.
Same, i've been cleaning and built my latest PC without any static protection, on a carpet, in humid weather and not even a hint of static damage.
Right? I cringed when he started brushing everything.
I guess I had bad luck as i killed the Ethernet controller on a motherboard setting it on carpet
Electrostatic discharge/ESD is real. Ever had a part that just stopped working and there is no visible damage? ESD can damage things a bit and then over time it will erode with every powercycle untill it fails completely. Being paranoid over it is a bit much but just going "well it never happend to me" is just ignorance. Thats like saying that texting and driving is fine cos iv never been in a crash.
For me blowing stuff works best in the bathroom, you can wash away all the dust instantly. Also don't be afraid about getting components wet, you can literally put them under the tap, just let them dry thoroughly afterwards. There is a number of YT videos about washing computer electronics as well, uxwbill even uses a literal dishwasher for that.
Love these older guys!, i actually just yesturday stripped down a few builds with these exact spec, i got a handfull of Pentium 3 cpu's, i got the 500/512/100/2.0v one and the 700/256/100/1.65v one and this exact same mobo, love your builds and content phil ! ***LIKE 100
I also have 2 extra Expansion Risers for this , i wanna send ya one if able lol
Looks like this computer belonged to a wood working shop, and it's not surprising that they just ran it and ran it till it quit. Alot of these small businesses will do that.
My PC : *Hasn't been cleaned for almost 10 years*
This PC : HOLD MAH BEER
I found a 2004 pc in the basement and it was disgusting too . It was grey even the Black parts"cpu cooler"
Sorry Phil, I love your videos, I do really love them, but this one isnt good.
My points:
1. A that plastic brush is an ESD generator, thats a big problem, and despite you never got into problems, thats no good, you could damage parts without knowing it.
2. You should get an air compressor. No brush can match it. Can clean inside connectors and a brush cant.
3. Putting moisture to cleant it only makes smallest (invisible to human eye) parts stick to metal and connectors, specially inside sockets and slots.
Thats just my 2 cents, maybe you could get a better video in the future.
Also, you didnt wash the motherboard like you promised :)
Motherboards are durable as hell, I washed mine and plasti dipped it and it works.
People keep saying all that stuff all the time. But i have never had anything or have seen anything be damaged by any of it.
Nothing cleans up a pc like soaking in a bucket of soapy water for half an hour and afterwards drowning any connectors in a bunch of alcohol.
Let it dry out for a day and it is as good as new for many many years.
For the Power Supply problematics - Are PSUs from "Chieftec" good?
I used the 350W one (Chieftec iARENA GPA-350S8) as a replacement for the 12 year old PC which also used a 360W Chieftec PSU (it had exploded capacitors and didn't start up.)
The new Chieftec works fine. But it's fairly obscure, bought it because the big-ass case was also branded Chieftec.
I've been using a dustpan brush to clean pc boards for years, but not any more.
Last week I killed a motherboard while cleaning it, and I believe it was due to static from using the brush.
can exposing sensitive electronic devices like motherboards to moisture potentially damage them irreparably ?
I've always used an air compressor to air blast computers that are dust ridden like this. I guess a dustpan brush might be something to try as well.
My family had a computer that came with Incoming as a pack-in title. It's technically made specifically for the ATI Rage 128 and similar graphics cards.
I have the same model but with yahama sound on-board, very stable and fast motherboard, and this board support Coppermine core. You can use 1ghz pentium iii 100mhz fsb 256kb cache.
i wish you'd use CRT's
You gain nothing by using old pc crt monitors.
Its not the same situation with crt tvs which they really make a difference.
i just think in going with the old computer theme he should use CRTs and to me CRTs are perfect for late 90's machines
A good high resolution CRT has much better contrast , color accuracy , almost instant response time , better viewing angles ( "flat" crt ) than average LCD monitor these days ( sub 200$ ) add to this list nostalgia factor for retro machine and it's a clear win for CRT.....the only problem is ...it's hard to find a good CRT ( possibly a new one from old stock)
I use CRTs for all my computers, even my main rig.
@@geo58impala 😂😂
I though the brushing was dangerous for electronic boards. Doesn't it charge them with static electricity?
I had an Athlon XP M that had dust an inch thick dust layer stuck in the cooler.
I'd be a bit worried about using a standard plastic brush to clean computer parts... if I were the one cleaning it! I've done my time working as a computer tech many years ago, so it was actually strangely relaxing watching someone else have to clean out and rebuild a machine.
Having pubs and RSLs as clients back in the days when smoking was allowed indoors, I've actually come across machines much worse than that! I once opened up a dead machine to find it literally full to the brim of dust and cigarette ash. Needless to say it went straight in the bin, didn't even bother to try fixing it, just replaced it with a brand new one and restored their data from a backup (thankfully the system we used was configured to back up data automatically).
As for the motherboard, Nichicon capacitors shouldn't need replacing after only 15 years; they're about the best brand out there!
Mind you, I've just picked up some very vintage PCs. They're literally 30 years old, so I've definitely got a bit of work ahead of me!
The Up Late Geek I once had the joy to clean and replace parts of a PC absolutely FULL of cat hair. It took me two days. Then I had to reinstall the operating system, as it was full of junk and didn't work without lag and random errors all the time. I was young so I did all that for free. Never again.
This thing with ESD. I've done everything that some people say is evil. Cards on the carpet, I store most parts in sandwich bags. I have never had any issues in that regard. This is how I clean stuff since the beginning, never had an issue. To me ESD sounds like fear mongering more than anything.
People dont believe in ESD until they destroy something.
Myself I was lucky enough to get my "esd is bullshit" experiment early in my life, in ~1992 while installing 30pin 1MB SIMM modules in my brand new 386DX40 my friend told me not put them on the floor because magic ESomethinD. Nonsense I replied and promptly swept one of the modules across the cheap crappy carpet, followed by installing it and getting sad error BEEPs, never again.
Nice score. I have the same board also but it has the on board Yamaha sound which sounds great. I found with too much ram installed it takes forever to boot from bios so I just keep it around 128mb, hah. You will be happy with the blower when it comes in. I have the Datavac one but I take every computer outside to blow out and clean. Throws dust everywhere.
I'm pretty sure I had this board with a PII 350 back in the day. I then spent a fortune upgrading the CPU to a PIII 800 but I couldn't get it working so I had to replace the board with one based on a VIA chipset. I did get a performance increase but it was slightly underwhelming.
Dust? That looks like fine sand! I saw some comments about ESD, I've had issues when handling newer cpus, but never with the older card ones. Here up north the dry air and lots of dust probably doesn't help when handling cpus.
Nice one brother!, but where can I buy like this one in Egypt?
Please review an LS120. Used on back in the day and would be nice to see one again.
I don't have such a drive. Would be very cool though!
That brush seem like it could create static build up. apparently not?
why you removed the lan card? it would me more complete if it can be connected
Phil, i got this very board, been wondering if you had reviewed one before i start a retro build with it.. and now you do :) cant wait to see more about it.. before i start.. BTW - if you ever dont want the cases i'd be interested in them.
mperu99 This one I gave away yesterday, so that was a good outcome.
I was of the opinion that the DELL MOBO and PSU were proprietary designs as noted in the video and for systems Pentium 111 CPU, then surprised to see a standard 450W PSU being installed for the MOBO testing. How goes?
@5:25 It is an AUI (Attachment Unit Interface) -connector.
Thanks!
Has that PC been sitting in the Australian outback for 15 years? I've never seen red dust like that before.
I'm a fan of Carey Holzman and he's the one who uses a leaf blower on dusty PCs. In fact every computer he repairs gets the LB treatment., lol. He's been using that for 10 years without issues. This video was very interesting in that I once had a PIII, I think it was 1995 because I got Windows 95 with it. Great machine.
you mentioned rust. would would you use to remove rust on a server case?
Vinegar for example.
@PhilsComputerLab -
for 15 years of dirt , this is very clean , because nearly all dirt isa just (Australia red) fine sand ... a smoker´s dust computer is far harder to clean ...
You should air blast the power supply & the CPU´s fan + heatsink very well (with fan stopped/blocked)
Oh man, an Intel Seattle 440BX2! I have the version with Yamaha YMF740C audio. The built-in audio is near-perfect for DOS gaming. If only it supported Windows Sound System mode, it would have the 16-bit sample format support needed for later games. Also has genuine OPL3 FM synthesis for games that don't use MIDI. Lastly, in a Win9x DOS box, you can use the XG Lite MIDI for music in DOS games.
Nice. I would have loved to try out the onboard audio.
My backup computer has this exact same motherboard, although somewhat differently configured.
It has an 850MHz Pentium3, 768 MB of PC100, a GeForce FX5200, and Windows XP.
My pc has Pentium 3 Tualatin 1.4 ghz 512 mb 133mhz Hercules GeForce 2 ti 64 mb win 98 se
Add two 80mm fans in the rear
Can someone help? Ive just build the system on Atrend Atc6220 and I when it comes to install graphics drivers the Windows installs standard PCI video card drivers while I have Riva TNT or Ati Rage Pro both on AGP. Is the AGP port broken? I have 133mhz sdram, maybe this is it?
Is the digital audio cable the same connector for analouge audio from the optical drive?
Not quite, the digital one is just 2 wires, the analogue one uses 3, but with a 4 pin connector.
Pulling the slot 1 bracket off could have put unnecessary stress on other solder points potentially bricking the board
That board had a bios revision that did support the coppermine CPU line. And IIRC the coppermine cpu's would work even without the bios update. Had a P3-1000 in the one I had.
Hmm I did flash the latest one from Intel. But I admit I didn't spend much time looking further.
Here in 2020. I still have a few Pentium III's, namely 2 socket 1.0 GHz towers, a slot 1.0 GHz CPU (unopened box) & a 500 MHz P-III laptop from late 1990's. And probably another one.
Using a plastic brush felt cringey, that could potentially create ESD. I usually start with a vacuum, then next use compressed air spray. I also used to work at an Intel motherboard factory for over a decade beginning in the mid 1990's, so it's possible that Slot 1 mobo's may have come through our department for building them alone around Y2k, although most of the time it was socketed CPU motherboards that we built.
Its the first dust i see on this channel, :) nice video !
I got an AB-BH6 PC For free with the 440BX Chipset and an Intel Pentium II - 400Mhz with a 512kb cache. They are awesome. The resistor for the PS/2 port blew, however USB works fine.
I'm pretty sure I have that motherboard in storage, as well as an AOpen AX6B Plus.
the big connector on the NIC is "ThickNet" officially called 10BASE-5 the Co-ax is 10BASE-2 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE5 and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2
that twist lock BNC on the network card is 10 Base T
Does that NIC have a BNC connector on it as well?
Yes it does!