Eep, passive matrix LCD panel on a Pentium MMX system. That's an unfortunate combo! At least the VGA output is solid 👍 Neat little system otherwise, always appreciated the Sound Blaster compatibility on a lot of the Compaq notebooks from around that time.
So-called multimedia capabilities in computers were a big novelty thing in the mid-90s, so this high-end laptop had all kinds of audio features to boost its multimedia aspect, in addition to its CD-ROM drive, which was the main part of multimedia computers.
You just glossed right over the fan, completely missing the fact that it's _vertically mounted_ which actually has the benefit of blowing the hot air out the back instead of onto your lap/desk, and thus _much_ better cooling.
The display ghosting is due to this being a passive matrix display. According to some offficial maintenance documentation I found it's most likely a "HPA" display, this being one of the lower number Presario 1600 models. Things have indeed come a long way! Awesome!
LGR would of got the facts straight, I am a big fan of this channel but did a lot of cringing as he got a few things wrong and didn't explain why it cost $2,800,
DVD adding "Probably $50-$100" You're probably at least $400 short on that one, if it was even an option at the start. I paid $450 for an internal PC DVD drive in 1997, can't imagine the price on a laptop drive.
Awesome video! I've got some great memories of playing Doom on my dad's IBM ThinkPad laptop around 1995 or so when I was growing up. I had totally forgotten how bad the ghosting and motion blur was on it until I watched this video, but it was still fun and a real novelty to play on back in the day.
I am mindblown by the fact you actually was able to succeed installing a game from floppy disks. That was 50/50 succeed rate back in the day with new disks, don't know how you managed to do it 30 years later lol +kudos
The audio section you mentioned was wrong. It has Headphone out, Line -IN- (with the arrow pointing towards the music note), and Microphone in. All of my early laptops had this feature.
NeoMagic is actually still in business, but they stopped making the mobile video chipsets way back in 2000. The laptop VGA market was too crowded to be profitable, and NeoMagic didn't have the resources to compete in the new 3D accelerated world. Unfortunately when they exited the market they also stopped driver development, so Windows 2000 was the last supported OS. That wasn't such a big deal for laptops like your Presario with an MMX 200 which wouldn't have been suitable for Windows XP anyhow, but NeoMagic was featured on laptops like Sony VAIO up through the Pentium II generation so many customers were disappointed at being stuck on Windows 98 or 2000 due to lack of video drivers. While some other adapters' Windows 2000 drivers worked on XP, the NeoMagic drivers were definitely not compatible. Other note - on a 1997 laptop those slots could potentially be CardBus rather than PC Card (that was the year CardBus rolled out). If that's the case, you could use much faster drives, SCSI adapters, or even USB 2.0 cards.
Yep, I don't believe Compaq started shipping notebooks with DVD drives until Q3 1998, and even then only on the higher end models with 300MHz Pentium IIs.
over 20 years ago.. 20 YEARS AGO... *20 YEARS AGO* .... Thanks, I really needed to feel like an old fart this morning. ;-) Awesome video as always. I really need to go digging through my relics to get a good old rig up and running.
I still get depressed when I realize how old Resident Evil 2 is every time I get hyped for the remake. 20 years man... I was 8 the first time I played that game..
I thought the ghosting on the cursor was bad...and then you got in DOOM II. Holy crap. Edit: I think the preservation and history of tech, computers, gaming, and any hardware and software is really cool and important. Thanks for being a part of that, dude.
The price vs. value was horrible. I used to work at a pc-repair shop back then, mostly warranty repair for hp, dell, ibm and compaq. And compaq pc's and laptops did break down alot! The hardware in this video was not bad for the time. But with horrible value, and poor quality on components (hence the repairs), its no wonder compaq didnt live long.
It’s a shame it has s passive matrix display, all the unusual features are nice on it. I have the Compaq Armada 7730MT, I might suggest you review the 7792dmt next time and use like a docking station to use a quantum3d 3dfx 8x voodoo 2 card with it Also, I saw yours took ages to boot, I have a 64gb pata SSD In mine that makes it boot in 23 seconds, ssds help these old guys run fast Also, there was a version of this with active matrix, mine cost 6000 back at that time, and was from 1997 but had 88mb ram and no screen blur, much better panel, but back in the day most ppl couldn’t afford to spend that just to get more ram and a fancier screen
Thanks for posting and sharing. Never owned a laptop but I really want to get one now. I am an OTR truck driver and a laptop would be perfect in the truck.
Nice vid! I never had a laptop in the 90s but I did in the early 2000s. The laptops back then had so many features it was crazy. I kinda wish I had kept everything but I reformatted everything from my old computers and moved on.
I've got the Armada from a few years later. Awesome little machine, active backlit LCD, great sound, removable floppy and CDROM, and for some reason, the battery holds a charge for one whole hour!
Pfft Crysis that yesterday news man, Minesweeper is the true test for Gaming Laptop, look at 9:50 how much ghosting that Minesweeper cause when MJR open it let alone Play it.
@@skinhead-ej8ff. Um, I know it's a joke, so is mine, I think everybody knows the can it run crysis meme!, but my comment still stands, it really wouldn't fit on the hard drive!
I've got some nostalgia for this. I was in 5th grade in 1993 & got my first PC. I did a lot of research and took some classes during this time and it's just great to see! Very cool!
I had one of thee back in the day. They actually made active matrix TFT version which had a much better display. The CD control mode was done by quite a few manufacturers, Toshiba laptops having a really nice version too. DVD option was not available on these until the Pentium 2 models, but you could use a DVD drive, it just would not play the video as it was nowhere near fast enough. As for it being thick, they were, yet at the time I used mine with serial GPS dongle for driving around Seattle for work, and breaking the laptop would fly off the seat all the time onto the floor but never had any issues; not sure that would be the case with an unprotected Ipad.
MetalJesusRocks Actually I had a couple of laptops of this era that had mini LCD’s and CD player functionality like thi… oh crap, I’m old! 😛 Re: the display, this would be the cheaper STN display and there would usually be an upgrade to TFT option at purchase.
Awesome video! thanks for review that cool old laptop, almost full feature laptop because the LCD is passive matrix type, which was a less expensive option that TFT LCD's, but those passive displays sucked for gaming even 20 years ago. I have an IBM thinkpad 760XL from 1997 too, that was the "cadillac" of laptops back in the day: TFT screen, the best keyboard, integrated RAM chips onboard and two avaliable RAM slots for uprgrade, mine has 96MB, that was insane for that time!, the desing of that machine is awesome, yo open the keyboard like a car hood to have access to the battery, removable hard drive, RAM slots and you could swap the CD drive for other options like a floppy drive, a second hard disk or a secondary battery. If you have the oportunity to grab one of those machines in working condition, it's a must have!, beautiful machine.
And MMX2, right? It just wasn't advertised for long because it stopped being a unique selling point. I think every special instruction set x86 ever had is still implemented, right? For the backward compatibility that is so integral to the design philosophy. (Of course plenty of old software relies on other hardware that's not present anymore, not just special CPU instructions, so it's mostly academic.)
@@kaitlyn__L There was no MMX2, but SSE was the "next big" instruction set that gained attention. Also, to Thomas: he probably meant the marketing push for MMX.
@@solarstrike33 This was months ago so I don't remember why I brought that up. I have vague recollection of seeing an aftermarket CPU box mention it but that's pretty difficult to check. A quick web search just has things from back in the day calling SSE MMX2 but as an insult, as in, won't be used either. So now I'm wondering if I just imagined seeing it somewhere. Le shrug.
I really enjoy this vintage gear review stuff! I never got to use this old tech when I was a kid, but I think just seeing what the machines are like is fascinating
@Paul Westfall this is precisely the definition of High end. Its like buying a Macbook pr0 these days, you get the average despite some people feeling otherwise.
Major nostalgia. Compaq PCs and laptops were my first experience with computing. My mom had a compaq laptop that looked almost identical to this one but was more of a business machine instead of a MM machine
Just when I'm trying to complete a video I was watching, I see your new video with an intriguing topic. Great work on finding topics that are unique to your channel!
It should be noted that while the "with MMX" branding didn't last forever, that's still a feature of modern x86 CPUs. It's just a pretty standard feature now, so they don't dwell on it. Edit: Holy crap! FireFight! Any idea where one can still get a copy of that? I go looking for it every once in a while, but there's hardly even any record of it having existed in the first place. :(
They keep updating MMX as well. They fixed some of the shortcomings of MMX with SSE (and AMD did the same with 3d-now.) The latest intel CPUs have SSE 4.2 which is the same idea as MMX only updated and better. It's there they just don't advertise it as much.
I had the Compaq Presario 5070 - K6-2 350 Mhz with matching keyboard and Monitor with detachable speakers. It came with a one of a kind 20gb HDD, Sound Blaster sound card, a special area on the lower front for USB and audio out, 3.5" Floppy drive, and a special door on the top for the optical drives, that only needed to be opened if you had a 2nd drive installed. All of that was around $1,200 back in the fall of 97'.
@@nm515 I meant Quake 2 & Unreal 1. My mind is slipping it's been so long. I remember getting the Voodoo 3 to play Unreal Tournament & Kingpin: Life of Crime.
You lie so much... It come in 98 as first game which needed graphic is unreal tournament and because I hade it in 12 mb ram... And for sure did not cost 2.5 k $ :) :) :)
I finally managed to save up for a desktop in 1997 which cost me a whopping £1200 - running win95. I used to see folks on the train/bus on their fancy laptops and I was so jealous. These devices meant so much more back then and I enjoyed the journey.
Nice find! Reminds me of my very first computer which was a Toshiba Satellite 4005 CDT which ran win98se and was hooked up to an external CRT, mouse, keyboard, and speakers. I never had internet on it, but it was great for playing kids games like Tonka Garage, Tonka Raceway, RCT 1, and other kids games from the 90's as I was very young and I got rid of it in 2009 when I entered grade 7 and got a modern laptop for christmas (a Compaq Presario F700, with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-57 and a Geforce 7000m) Keep doing what you're doing, loving the old pc hardware coverage!
It reminds me of my Compaq Armada 1585DMT with its Windows 95 OSR2. I used to play computer games on it during my college days. I hated its BIOS software being on its HDD. :(
I actually really enjoy these nostalgia videos. I grew up with my first two computers commodore 64, followed up by the commodore 128D. If you did more videos like this, I'd be down. Thanks for posting. Enjoyed this video
You heard that lyric huh? That's a song called "Fletcher the Dog"... basically a silly song about a big ol' German Shepherd we had... and during the recording, he howled along. HILARIOUS!
This video prompted me to go out to the garage and pull mine off a shelf in the garage. My first laptop was a Compaq Presario 1655 that I bought in December 1998 for about $2100. I still have it in its box and the last time I checked, it worked perfectly for what it was. Mine is almost the same as this one but maybe a slightly later model with a Pentium II in it. I also have the dock for it which worked GREAT when I was home. I also have the NIC for the card slot too. That was the first way I experienced broadband. I played the Original X-Wing and TIE Fighter games on this as well as the original Warcraft Orcs vs Humans. Great video!
LMAO my i7 took longer than 2 mins to boot up until recently. (have a few DB's running in the background, it's my development machine) Upgraded to SSD, and it's like 15 seconds now.
I have the PC version of this computer. A Compaq Presario 2200 from 1997. It's still working to this day, with Windows 95 and I use it to play old DOS games. It also boots up quickly. Better than some of my newer computers!
$50-100 sounds low for the DVD drive , I think it was several hundred dollars more, seems that very few people ever elected for them because when you go looking for parts for laptops from this era the DVD drives are almost impossible to find.
I got a Compaq in 99 as a graduation present. Believe it was $2500 for one with a DVD, was thinking about using it as my dorm TV. Also LAN parties. I want to say it was about $300 more than the similar model without DVD.
Around 99-2000 DVD drives started to become reasonably affordable but during the rein of Pentium Laptops 1996-1998 they were a very expensive add-ons and since laptops were primarily used in the business market where DVDs weren't important at the time nobody could justify paying the extra $500-1000 for a DVD drive.
Super nostalgia. This is the first laptop I used (and subsequently took apart) when I was like 9 or 10 years old. This and my old thinkpad are what got me into computers and gaming. I'm going to have to find me one of these, and mess around with it again.
Great video! I did get a bit nostalgic because I remember the times this laptop came out and I always wanted one, but they were too expensive and I had to settle with my huge Gateway tower lol. I look now and I appreciate how technology has evolved to this day.
I'm a little surprised that the screen is so terrible given that I had laptops with active matrix color screens in the early-to-mid 90s. They were probably a bit more expensive than this though, since $2,800 wouldn't really have bought you a high-end portable in the 90s. It's amazing how far we have come in that respect.
...for some reason though - the old rigs were more fun and muchly cherished. When I got my first laptop in '99 - I used to take it everywhere. We all did.
I was thinking the same thing. I had a cheapo hand me down laptop my stepdad gave me in 98/99ish, and it ran old games like Doom 2 etc flawlessly. There's definitely something wrong with that screen lol.
James Helgason you have no idea what you are talking about. It was ALWAYS like this. I owned a k6-2 version of this. This was a passive matrix panel. The active tft version was super $$$ and rare, it also had 1024x786 on the tft option
gnarkillguch your computer had an active tft. I also owned a digital laptop p1 166mhz and it had a active tft. My pressario and one of my ibms were exactly like this: passive crap screen
The legs allowed it to be used on a bed without overheating. The catches to open the lid were to ensure the lid was opened gently; preventing that dreaded floppiness that still plagues laptops today.
i have a sony vaio pcg-731 with win98 pentium mmx 2.1 gb hd 32mb ram interchangable 3.5 floppy and cd-rom. it is one of the first models of the vaio. the real shocker is that the battery still works.
I still have have my Compaq Armada 1700, which I had new back in the mid-90s and is a few models older than your Presario. At the time it was my most modern system that I had and I did do some gaming with it... a lot of Age Of Empires! Now its maxed out with 160MB of RAM running Windows XP, which runs faster than Win 98 I had installed on it previously. It's last big of use was when I did sound at shows and I was using it to run music between sets on WinAMP., which it okay with. PS.... My speakers are great on my machine too, Compaq did a good job with laptop sound during these laptops era. Your video brought back a lot of memories! Thanks!
nice vid MJ. took me back. I remember having a micro laptop from lenovo that had simular buttons on it. But it could also record audio without booting which was very helpful with classes at school. I am quite dyslexic and it helped me a lot. Cheers.
Really nice, I love watching online videos because you can stumble upon stuff like this. I'd definitely be interested in more old school technology overviews.
![BOWKYLION - วิงวอน (ex-change) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cLdnZWDaO-w/mqdefault.jpg)
Eep, passive matrix LCD panel on a Pentium MMX system. That's an unfortunate combo! At least the VGA output is solid 👍
Neat little system otherwise, always appreciated the Sound Blaster compatibility on a lot of the Compaq notebooks from around that time.
dude your like the bob ross of tech on youtube !, love your stuff!
Do a colab plzzz
Omg... while watching this video, I felt like it was something more suited for LGR! And then he goes commenting on it!
Mind blown!
Your appearance in this comment section was expected.
LGR try the same laptop with accelerated 3d graphics, an amd k-6-2 and a passive lcd... sure it did 3d amazingly, but everything was blurry
Back in the day laptops were exclusive to business people (usually) and the rich - I remember dreaming of a laptop as a kid.
Brother.....Have I found you....?
(Same pfp)
@@applepretz5368 Hey brother!
@@pho3nix-
Hey! How's Jasmine and the kids doing?
@@applepretz5368 They are disappointed with the new Aladdin trailer!
I remember when laptops came out too, it was mindblowing!
Really impressed with all the effort they put into the audio
I am as well. The audio sounds better than my 2015 MacBook for sure.
@@MetalJesusRocks Larger drivers mean better sound? This is also a higher end model then Macbook?
It even sounds good through the video! Great breakdown and blast from the past, man time flies.
So-called multimedia capabilities in computers were a big novelty thing in the mid-90s, so this high-end laptop had all kinds of audio features to boost its multimedia aspect, in addition to its CD-ROM drive, which was the main part of multimedia computers.
@@duskonanyavarld1786 all macbooks have horrid sound. from the dawn of time.
personally, i'd like to hear more of those 90's band demo's of yours tbh.
yessssssssss, please
This whole video was a ploy that leaded to this suggestion
me too
I 2ND this
@@Parialated faxxxx
You just glossed right over the fan, completely missing the fact that it's _vertically mounted_ which actually has the benefit of blowing the hot air out the back instead of onto your lap/desk, and thus _much_ better cooling.
I thought the little feet may have helped elevate the laptop and help with hot air from the bottom but obviously not
Man.. 90s PC gaming. Such a magical time for me. Always quitting Windows and running in DOS mode for that “performance boost”
The display ghosting is due to this being a passive matrix display. According to some offficial maintenance documentation I found it's most likely a "HPA" display, this being one of the lower number Presario 1600 models. Things have indeed come a long way! Awesome!
I bought my first laptop in '99, and I made sure to get an active matrix LCD display, though it cost just a bit more.
HPA stands for “High Performance Addressing”
Who's old enough to remember floppy disks? Lol 💾
floppy on a laptop ... blew my mind
Yes! Used to save my wordpad docs on them for fun
Yeah I got 30 of them still
Only those 3.5 inch. I can't remember them being actually "Floppy"
And the noise it made : " tchik tchik vriiiiiiik vriiiiiik tchak. tchak. tchak. tadam tadam tadam....biiiiiiiiiip".
At first I thought I clicked on a LGR video.
Eddie W. What’s lg r
Lazy game reviews is a youtube channel that shows off alot of old computers you filthy millennial
Keelan Holmes I’m in my mid thirties you filthy goon
LGR would of got the facts straight, I am a big fan of this channel but did a lot of cringing as he got a few things wrong and didn't explain why it cost $2,800,
I've reached out to Clint LGR to come hang out in Seattle and collaborate on videos... but he lives like 2,000 miles away unfortunately...
DVD adding "Probably $50-$100"
You're probably at least $400 short on that one, if it was even an option at the start. I paid $450 for an internal PC DVD drive in 1997, can't imagine the price on a laptop drive.
Nice Doug Demuro kinda title! Do more of these, pretty entertaining
Awesome video! I've got some great memories of playing Doom on my dad's IBM ThinkPad laptop around 1995 or so when I was growing up. I had totally forgotten how bad the ghosting and motion blur was on it until I watched this video, but it was still fun and a real novelty to play on back in the day.
What old computers / laptops do you think are worth covering their features & quirks in future videos?
MetalJesusRocks The tiny Toshiba Libretto laptops from the late 90s are fun
Amiga pc
MetalJesusRocks
Atari St series
I dunno if it would be possible but would love to see you cover the Sharp X68000!
Packard Bell
I am mindblown by the fact you actually was able to succeed installing a game from floppy disks. That was 50/50 succeed rate back in the day with new disks, don't know how you managed to do it 30 years later lol +kudos
Oh god, IRQ conflicts. I had forgotten about that nightmare.
Not to mention the infuriating Hi-Memory problems!
Hehehehe $50 to $100 for the dvd drive option in 1999 when the cheapest dvd player back in the early 2000s was the ps2 at $400
My first laptop in 1997 was $2000. It was a Toshiba with a dual-scan. DUAL-SCAN. Yeah, I didn't have cheddar for Active Matrix back then.
The audio section you mentioned was wrong.
It has Headphone out, Line -IN- (with the arrow pointing towards the music note), and Microphone in.
All of my early laptops had this feature.
found this very interesting, would definitely be interested in videos about other older pc devices
check out LGR
Hi Linklight
Check out The 8-Bit Guy.
Was about to recomend 8bit guy and LGR as well They constantly put great content about old school computers
Oh, it's Linklight! Hey!
NeoMagic is actually still in business, but they stopped making the mobile video chipsets way back in 2000. The laptop VGA market was too crowded to be profitable, and NeoMagic didn't have the resources to compete in the new 3D accelerated world. Unfortunately when they exited the market they also stopped driver development, so Windows 2000 was the last supported OS. That wasn't such a big deal for laptops like your Presario with an MMX 200 which wouldn't have been suitable for Windows XP anyhow, but NeoMagic was featured on laptops like Sony VAIO up through the Pentium II generation so many customers were disappointed at being stuck on Windows 98 or 2000 due to lack of video drivers. While some other adapters' Windows 2000 drivers worked on XP, the NeoMagic drivers were definitely not compatible.
Other note - on a 1997 laptop those slots could potentially be CardBus rather than PC Card (that was the year CardBus rolled out). If that's the case, you could use much faster drives, SCSI adapters, or even USB 2.0 cards.
Loved it! And love Doug Demauro too!
And touch the underside of a CD
@RedEyedJedii and give her a Doug score
SAYS THE GUY WHO PUTS MINECRAFT IN ALL HIS PC REVIEWS THAT GAME WORKS ON EVERY PC
Think a DVD player would have added 500 dollars to the price at this time! And...good god...the latency on that screen! Surprised Q1 ran so well!
Yep, I don't believe Compaq started shipping notebooks with DVD drives until Q3 1998, and even then only on the higher end models with 300MHz Pentium IIs.
over 20 years ago..
20 YEARS AGO...
*20 YEARS AGO* ....
Thanks, I really needed to feel like an old fart this morning. ;-)
Awesome video as always. I really need to go digging through my relics to get a good old rig up and running.
Mötley Crüe's Dr. Feelgood album will be 30 years old in September. You're welcome. lol
My back and hips remind me of how old I am every single morning ;)
@@vcvortex6356 motley crue rules
Do not feel old, feel wise ;D
I still get depressed when I realize how old Resident Evil 2 is every time I get hyped for the remake. 20 years man... I was 8 the first time I played that game..
I thought the ghosting on the cursor was bad...and then you got in DOOM II. Holy crap.
Edit: I think the preservation and history of tech, computers, gaming, and any hardware and software is really cool and important. Thanks for being a part of that, dude.
it's the lcd. The had 2 versions of this screen and the one that didn't ghost was an option.
wow this brought me back in time!!!! Thanks for posting this gem for us to enjoy!
Corrections:
3:15 Headphone, Line IN, Microphone.
8:45 MMX is an instruction set that is still used by every single x86/x64 CPU.
virgin. ^
Vile • Shh, virgin
For a 20+ year old machine I don't think it does too badly haha
The price vs. value was horrible. I used to work at a pc-repair shop back then, mostly warranty repair for hp, dell, ibm and compaq. And compaq pc's and laptops did break down alot! The hardware in this video was not bad for the time. But with horrible value, and poor quality on components (hence the repairs), its no wonder compaq didnt live long.
The feet on the bottom are for airflow.
Oh man....gaming in the 90s. What a memory.
That Doom sound, totally takes me back. So immersive.
Would love to hear those 90's band demos!
He can always pass them onto patreon fans as a downloadable mpg file or something.
Me too. Would be really awesome. Very experimental.
The transitional timing of the intro music to the 1st scene music was spot on. Nice one.
It’s a shame it has s passive matrix display, all the unusual features are nice on it. I have the Compaq Armada 7730MT, I might suggest you review the 7792dmt next time and use like a docking station to use a quantum3d 3dfx 8x voodoo 2 card with it
Also, I saw yours took ages to boot, I have a 64gb pata SSD In mine that makes it boot in 23 seconds, ssds help these old guys run fast
Also, there was a version of this with active matrix, mine cost 6000 back at that time, and was from 1997 but had 88mb ram and no screen blur, much better panel, but back in the day most ppl couldn’t afford to spend that just to get more ram and a fancier screen
Metal Jesus. Thank you for the work you do. You have really pushed me in my retro gaming collecting.
Thanks for posting and sharing. Never owned a laptop but I really want to get one now. I am an OTR truck driver and a laptop would be perfect in the truck.
Nice vid! I never had a laptop in the 90s but I did in the early 2000s. The laptops back then had so many features it was crazy. I kinda wish I had kept everything but I reformatted everything from my old computers and moved on.
Never heard of this device before. Thanks for sharing!
I've got the Armada from a few years later. Awesome little machine, active backlit LCD, great sound, removable floppy and CDROM, and for some reason, the battery holds a charge for one whole hour!
But can it run Crysis?
Maybe.
@@RetroGamingWithEdgarRivera. It's only a 2GB hard drive, crysis wouldn't even fit on it!
@@aarongreenfield9038 whoooosh
Pfft Crysis that yesterday news man, Minesweeper is the true test for Gaming Laptop, look at 9:50 how much ghosting that Minesweeper cause when MJR open it let alone Play it.
@@skinhead-ej8ff. Um, I know it's a joke, so is mine, I think everybody knows the can it run crysis meme!, but my comment still stands, it really wouldn't fit on the hard drive!
I've got some nostalgia for this. I was in 5th grade in 1993 & got my first PC. I did a lot of research and took some classes during this time and it's just great to see! Very cool!
Doug DeMuro?! I'm a big fan of his and his channel!
Yep! Love that dude and his videos. I've learned so much about cars I'll never own. HA!
Im a big fan of SODOM
@@MetalJesusRocks Exactly! Hahaaa!!!
So glad i'm not the only one who thought of Doug DeMuro. LOL
I approve of this blatant rip off
I had one of thee back in the day. They actually made active matrix TFT version which had a much better display. The CD control mode was done by quite a few manufacturers, Toshiba laptops having a really nice version too. DVD option was not available on these until the Pentium 2 models, but you could use a DVD drive, it just would not play the video as it was nowhere near fast enough. As for it being thick, they were, yet at the time I used mine with serial GPS dongle for driving around Seattle for work, and breaking the laptop would fly off the seat all the time onto the floor but never had any issues; not sure that would be the case with an unprotected Ipad.
MetalJesusRocks Actually I had a couple of laptops of this era that had mini LCD’s and CD player functionality like thi… oh crap, I’m old! 😛
Re: the display, this would be the cheaper STN display and there would usually be an upgrade to TFT option at purchase.
This is an amazing concept for a series. Keep it up MJR!
Awesome video! thanks for review that cool old laptop, almost full feature laptop because the LCD is passive matrix type, which was a less expensive option that TFT LCD's, but those passive displays sucked for gaming even 20 years ago. I have an IBM thinkpad 760XL from 1997 too, that was the "cadillac" of laptops back in the day: TFT screen, the best keyboard, integrated RAM chips onboard and two avaliable RAM slots for uprgrade, mine has 96MB, that was insane for that time!, the desing of that machine is awesome, yo open the keyboard like a car hood to have access to the battery, removable hard drive, RAM slots and you could swap the CD drive for other options like a floppy drive, a second hard disk or a secondary battery. If you have the oportunity to grab one of those machines in working condition, it's a must have!, beautiful machine.
LOVED this video. So many great memories from that era. Please more of these!!!
"MMX technology didn't last for a long time"
Uhm, MMX is still present in modern CPUs and still being used by multimedia applications.
And MMX2, right? It just wasn't advertised for long because it stopped being a unique selling point. I think every special instruction set x86 ever had is still implemented, right? For the backward compatibility that is so integral to the design philosophy. (Of course plenty of old software relies on other hardware that's not present anymore, not just special CPU instructions, so it's mostly academic.)
@@kaitlyn__L There was no MMX2, but SSE was the "next big" instruction set that gained attention.
Also, to Thomas: he probably meant the marketing push for MMX.
@@solarstrike33 This was months ago so I don't remember why I brought that up. I have vague recollection of seeing an aftermarket CPU box mention it but that's pretty difficult to check. A quick web search just has things from back in the day calling SSE MMX2 but as an insult, as in, won't be used either. So now I'm wondering if I just imagined seeing it somewhere. Le shrug.
I really enjoy this vintage gear review stuff! I never got to use this old tech when I was a kid, but I think just seeing what the machines are like is fascinating
Doug DeMuro's videos are awesome! What a wildcard, surprised you mentioned him because I was already subscribed to his channel.
5:58 I cried tears of oldness 😭. You whippersnappers don't know about life till you've install something with 15 floppies. Cheers from México.
This was the high end laptop back then.
no it wasnt, Highend was around $6K, with bigger TFT screen, mpeg2 decoder, sometimes scsi, rugged, etc.
nah, this was pretty average in 1997.
Average? Maybe if you're obscenely rich. That high end listed would be almost like buying the most expensive laptops you could get these days
@Paul Westfall this is precisely the definition of High end. Its like buying a Macbook pr0 these days, you get the average despite some people feeling otherwise.
rasz Except a MacBook Pro isn't high end. Only in price is it high end. It's specs aren't worth the price
My mate at school had one of these... So much fun on the bus!!!
Did Clint at LGR approve this video?
with extra cheese
@Growing Perspective #topbantz
@@adamphillip5305 #topbantz
Too bad your sub can’t grow as big as your perspective. BTW was it multi grain or Hearty Italian and Cheese?
Major nostalgia. Compaq PCs and laptops were my first experience with computing. My mom had a compaq laptop that looked almost identical to this one but was more of a business machine instead of a MM machine
It was really tough to tell whether you had mouse trails enabled, or if it was just ghosting haha :(
Mouse trails, best feature ever!
@@-42-47 except if you are playing the sims, the sims did not like mouse trails at all
Just when I'm trying to complete a video I was watching, I see your new video with an intriguing topic. Great work on finding topics that are unique to your channel!
OMG DOS mode...something just sent me back 21 years back in time. Love this, dude!
Those band demos tho.... :O
Rai Rai Yes a lot
Great video MJR! Thank you so much for the continuous quality content & shout out from Switzerland!
It should be noted that while the "with MMX" branding didn't last forever, that's still a feature of modern x86 CPUs. It's just a pretty standard feature now, so they don't dwell on it.
Edit: Holy crap! FireFight! Any idea where one can still get a copy of that? I go looking for it every once in a while, but there's hardly even any record of it having existed in the first place. :(
They keep updating MMX as well. They fixed some of the shortcomings of MMX with SSE (and AMD did the same with 3d-now.) The latest intel CPUs have SSE 4.2 which is the same idea as MMX only updated and better. It's there they just don't advertise it as much.
Really enjoy seeing you feature computer components/machines from yesteryear.
Lol, I thought of Doug the moment you said, "quirks," and then to my surprise you shouted him out at the end. Cool concept, I'd like to see more!
I had the Compaq Presario 5070 - K6-2 350 Mhz with matching keyboard and Monitor with detachable speakers. It came with a one of a kind 20gb HDD, Sound Blaster sound card, a special area on the lower front for USB and audio out, 3.5" Floppy drive, and a special door on the top for the optical drives, that only needed to be opened if you had a 2nd drive installed. All of that was around $1,200 back in the fall of 97'.
Good lord! I remember getting a new Voodoo 2 Graphics card with my Desktop Compaq for $2,500 just to play Unreal II! I feel like a Fossil...
you sure about that? Voodoo2 came out in 1998, Unreal 2 came out in 2003 (and was initially single player only). Did you mean Unreal Tournament?
@@nm515 I meant Quake 2 & Unreal 1. My mind is slipping it's been so long. I remember getting the Voodoo 3 to play Unreal Tournament & Kingpin: Life of Crime.
You lie so much... It come in 98 as first game which needed graphic is unreal tournament and because I hade it in 12 mb ram... And for sure did not cost 2.5 k $ :) :) :)
@@romeolajh1602 you're an idiot... I'm talking about my whole rig cost $2,500 at the time.
I finally managed to save up for a desktop in 1997 which cost me a whopping £1200 - running win95. I used to see folks on the train/bus on their fancy laptops and I was so jealous. These devices meant so much more back then and I enjoyed the journey.
Rick Harrison would of offered you $40 for it, in 1997!
I've got a buddy that's an expert on stuff like this I'll have him check it out.
CEX will offer you $0.50c in store credit for it. 😂
Look I have a friend in the used laptop business, I can have come down and tell us about it
Look he said at auction it will go for 2,800 dollars I still have to sell it soooooooo I'll give you 3 dollars
I'll need to frame it (yea, like a frame costs a million bucks), and it'll sit around (until I could be arsed to auction it). :D
Nice find! Reminds me of my very first computer which was a Toshiba Satellite 4005 CDT which ran win98se and was hooked up to an external CRT, mouse, keyboard, and speakers. I never had internet on it, but it was great for playing kids games like Tonka Garage, Tonka Raceway, RCT 1, and other kids games from the 90's as I was very young and I got rid of it in 2009 when I entered grade 7 and got a modern laptop for christmas (a Compaq Presario F700, with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-57 and a Geforce 7000m)
Keep doing what you're doing, loving the old pc hardware coverage!
It reminds me of my Compaq Armada 1585DMT with its Windows 95 OSR2. I used to play computer games on it during my college days. I hated its BIOS software being on its HDD. :(
Yep, same with my Armada 7800, don't have a working internal floppy drive to restore the BIOS partition either. I'm glad that design didn't last.
I actually really enjoy these nostalgia videos. I grew up with my first two computers commodore 64, followed up by the commodore 128D. If you did more videos like this, I'd be down. Thanks for posting. Enjoyed this video
Hehehehehe "This goes out to all the doggies that have done me wrong" 😂😂😂
You heard that lyric huh? That's a song called "Fletcher the Dog"... basically a silly song about a big ol' German Shepherd we had... and during the recording, he howled along. HILARIOUS!
Dude, that thing is awesome! I would've loved to have had that back in '97! Thanks for sharing.
Now it's $5.50
that's free in todays money
@@garnhamr lol...im dying
So?
This video prompted me to go out to the garage and pull mine off a shelf in the garage. My first laptop was a Compaq Presario 1655 that I bought in December 1998 for about $2100. I still have it in its box and the last time I checked, it worked perfectly for what it was. Mine is almost the same as this one but maybe a slightly later model with a Pentium II in it. I also have the dock for it which worked GREAT when I was home. I also have the NIC for the card slot too. That was the first way I experienced broadband. I played the Original X-Wing and TIE Fighter games on this as well as the original Warcraft Orcs vs Humans. Great video!
LMAO my i7 took longer than 2 mins to boot up until recently. (have a few DB's running in the background, it's my development machine) Upgraded to SSD, and it's like 15 seconds now.
Same I just put 240gb ssd in mine and run Windows on it and a couple other programs and my pc is so much faster booting up.
My MBP machine is my first SSD laptop. Can’t believe how fast it boots.
"You can't use one hand to open the laptop."
This was way before Pornhub, so I don't think it mattered.
LOL
@Bane Lol
I have the PC version of this computer. A Compaq Presario 2200 from 1997. It's still working to this day, with Windows 95 and I use it to play old DOS games.
It also boots up quickly. Better than some of my newer computers!
$50-100 sounds low for the DVD drive , I think it was several hundred dollars more, seems that very few people ever elected for them because when you go looking for parts for laptops from this era the DVD drives are almost impossible to find.
You're probably right. That just how I remember it, but DVD would have been extremely early in 1997 like you said.
I got a Compaq in 99 as a graduation present. Believe it was $2500 for one with a DVD, was thinking about using it as my dorm TV. Also LAN parties. I want to say it was about $300 more than the similar model without DVD.
Around 99-2000 DVD drives started to become reasonably affordable but during the rein of Pentium Laptops 1996-1998 they were a very expensive add-ons and since laptops were primarily used in the business market where DVDs weren't important at the time nobody could justify paying the extra $500-1000 for a DVD drive.
Super nostalgia. This is the first laptop I used (and subsequently took apart) when I was like 9 or 10 years old. This and my old thinkpad are what got me into computers and gaming. I'm going to have to find me one of these, and mess around with it again.
Seeing this makes me want to build a legacy gaming rig. Deciding to go with original hardware, or just use a mini atx board and throw xp and 98 on it.
MetalJesusBalls!
MetalBallsRocks!
MetalJesusDying!
Jesus, Metal Balls!
Great video! I did get a bit nostalgic because I remember the times this laptop came out and I always wanted one, but they were too expensive and I had to settle with my huge Gateway tower lol. I look now and I appreciate how technology has evolved to this day.
Wow, I'm early and I recall how awful the Compaq Presario I had was for me! Compaq was just so inconsistent from my experience with them at the time.
Love this video! There are so many old electronics that need videos like this one. Keep up the great work!
Made me wanna go play the original fallout
YESS!!! My job here is done ;)
And the the fan mods like fallout 2 nevada and fallout 1.5
Set it up on DosBox
I'm a little surprised that the screen is so terrible given that I had laptops with active matrix color screens in the early-to-mid 90s. They were probably a bit more expensive than this though, since $2,800 wouldn't really have bought you a high-end portable in the 90s. It's amazing how far we have come in that respect.
Wow original Fallout! Looks like the same graphics engine they used in Fallout 76
Nah. OG Fallout has a better engine.
These videos are relaxing , take you away from the everyday hustle
5x thicker than a I-Pad but the I-Pad is 50x more powerful....... lmfao
Crazy how far performance has come as well
...for some reason though - the old rigs were more fun and muchly cherished. When I got my first laptop in '99 - I used to take it everywhere. We all did.
you're wrong. ipads are only x1.25 faster than this compaq.
Old PC stuff is always interesting to me, definitely love these videos.
Clearly that display wasn't always like that. I gamed all the time during those days with laptops much cheaper than this laptop. That display is shot.
I was thinking the same thing. I had a cheapo hand me down laptop my stepdad gave me in 98/99ish, and it ran old games like Doom 2 etc flawlessly. There's definitely something wrong with that screen lol.
Maybe it's the refreshrate of the screen and the capturedevice for this video which causes the blur.
James Helgason you have no idea what you are talking about. It was ALWAYS like this. I owned a k6-2 version of this. This was a passive matrix panel. The active tft version was super $$$ and rare, it also had 1024x786 on the tft option
gnarkillguch your computer had an active tft. I also owned a digital laptop p1 166mhz and it had a active tft. My pressario and one of my ibms were exactly like this: passive crap screen
The legs allowed it to be used on a bed without overheating. The catches to open the lid were to ensure the lid was opened gently; preventing that dreaded floppiness that still plagues laptops today.
2GB hard drive?, and now most phones have more than that in ram!
Pretty much every phone has 8GB of RAM nowadays
You know that RAM and Disc Space are not comparable do you?
It is completely different kind of tech...
@Orchestrales Terror Nah budget phones got 8 gb easily. Some high end flag ships have 16
@@JH-ed4mm no...
This guy is clueless btw its 2mb of hard drive
@MetalJesusRocks - this kind of content is fantastic and brings up loads of nostalgia for us older PC gamers!!
MetalJesusBalls!
MetalBallsRocks!
MetalJesusDying!
Jesus, Metal Balls!
MetalJesusRocks!
We need a DOS Games video, make it happen MetalJesusRocks!
Dos games are the best, and has a massive library.
i have a sony vaio pcg-731 with win98 pentium mmx 2.1 gb hd 32mb ram interchangable 3.5 floppy and cd-rom. it is one of the first models of the vaio. the real shocker is that the battery still works.
Yeah! Doug DeMuro is the best!
Just like I remember all my old pc and console games, a blur; sometimes a dark pixelated blur. Brings a tear to my eye
$2800 I will offer $7.
Tree Fiddy?
Hahaha!!
I still have have my Compaq Armada 1700, which I had new back in the mid-90s and is a few models older than your Presario. At the time it was my most modern system that I had and I did do some gaming with it... a lot of Age Of Empires! Now its maxed out with 160MB of RAM running Windows XP, which runs faster than Win 98 I had installed on it previously. It's last big of use was when I did sound at shows and I was using it to run music between sets on WinAMP., which it okay with. PS.... My speakers are great on my machine too, Compaq did a good job with laptop sound during these laptops era. Your video brought back a lot of memories! Thanks!
IBM's ThinkPad i series was the main competitor of this in the late 1990s. Lower end i series also had DSTN screens.
nice vid MJ. took me back. I remember having a micro laptop from lenovo that had simular buttons on it. But it could also record audio without booting which was very helpful with classes at school. I am quite dyslexic and it helped me a lot. Cheers.
Really nice, I love watching online videos because you can stumble upon stuff like this. I'd definitely be interested in more old school technology overviews.