1990 NCR 286 computer imitates a Samsung Galaxy Note 7

A vintage NCR PC286 proves that you shouldn't go poking around lithium batteries, even 27-year-old ones.
"What's a DIP?" clip from: • Video
A Prairie Home Companion skit from: • Hamstrung - 5/13/2017

[@ColasTeam]

I feel dumb, I somehow expected this to be a crazy experiment where you tried to emulate a modern smartphone with a cluster of old computers.

[@duprie37]

Don't. I thought it would be exactly the same thing.

[@SweetTodd]

That’s what I thought for 2/35ths of a second

[@MarkMeszarosYNG]

I live in Youngstown Ohio and we had several of these at our board of elections. I believe the 4D designation was the: polling location . These were hooked to card readers that read the punched out ballots. At the time our board of directors was happy to buy from an Ohio company. For our election tabulating Poll 4D was precinct 4 and D meant it was the 4 machine. Just my old memory I BELIEVE

[@nicholasgardner1106]

I live in Youngstown to.

[@MrHack4never]

NCR makes ATM's and cash registers these days, it may have come from a supermarket that upgraded their checkouts recently

[@thomase13]

NCR stands for National Cash Register! :)

[@TheComputerGuy96]

Just by reading the title I thought the computer had caught on fire or something...I'm glad it didn't!

[@DodoGTA]

Hi

[@Lachlant1984]

That's what I thought it was going to do too. I remember the video vwestlife did about the Tandy EGA monitor that let the magic smoke out.

[@ToriRocksAmos]

I was getting really uncomfortable when he kept touching the battery and it started leaking.

[@duprie37]

Me too. I was waiting nervously for it to explode and catch fire, but it just fizzled a bit.

[@cooldude5able]

My dad world for NCR. I remember when this computer was brand spanking new. This was as advanced as it got back then.

[@bloodyl_uk]

That baby boomer humour clip at the end...

[@deadmetalbr]

No shit, this is the video that made me start listening to APHC (now known as Live From Here). I owe VWestlife one.

[@bitwize]

Hey, that's Fred Newman! He's gotta be like 80 by now.

[@KurisuYamato]

Well I'm glad the bugger didn't blow up on ya! Soldering the battery in made so much sense back then, I'm sure. No one will be using this thing for that long, right? Almost 30 years later, what do ya know, we still care about this old junk and, well... yeah, it's an issue. Hell, the CD-i has its battery logged inside a chip package - Damn thing gets stuck in a boot loop when that dies!

[@videotape2959]

Those clock modules the CD-i uses were very widespread in the computer world. They were used by many PC manufacturers and could even be found on things like Apple II clock cards. The CD-i is far from being one of the only device to have one of those. They're annoying but at least as far as I'm aware they don't leak.

[@Homemade-Blurb]

This is a lucky grab. Not many 286, 386 from thrift store works like this

[@rommix0]

(sees Galaxy Note 7 in the title) This video is gonna be a "blast"

[@ecksdii]

lol nice one

[@compu85]

Nice that you can up the video ram... that will make it a lot more usable!

[@sersoft_corp]

Clickbait title! I was expecting the whole thing to go up in flames as soon as it was powered on. Still a good video though!

[@uxwbill]

The build quality of that system is far better than that of NCR's later System 3300.

[@Lyrabon]

"Has not leaked, Yet..." *kaboom*

[@ookanehira3408]

Apple went after the commercial with the "What's a DIP?" clip. It's GONE.

[@Halterung01]

And I prepared myself for a Bondwell-like shock therapy in this video :D

[@kylehungerford7746]

other than the battery this is a nice NCR

[@themaritimegirl]

The battery got triggered because you pulled on it a bit? Wow. That's a neat little system. All the fun of a 286 with the convenience of VGA, 1.44 MB floppy, and a PS/2 port.

[@brandonupchurch7628]

It's how these particular types of batteries are designed, the battery has to be sealed and the positive terminal has to be insulated from the the negative terminal which is the case of the battery, so in order to seal and insulate the positive terminal they use glass, as a result you can't put a lot of pressure on the positive terminal otherwise it will break the glass seal.

[@2dfx]

AND decent upgradability! Removable CPU! VGA RAM sockets!

[@alexsinclair2012]

VWestlife should be careful! That battery may very well be Lithium Thionyl-Chloride based, Which is extremely toxic and carcinogenic.

[@brandonupchurch7628]

It is Lithium Thionyl chloride, the "ER" in the model of the battery means Lithium thionyl chloride.

[@mspenrice]

With the DIP setting for "Multisync / VGA" monitor and the expandable VRAM, I wouldn't be too surprised at it offering some early SVGA-esque modes (e.g. 752x410, 800x560) or even something equivalent to XGA... if you put the extra memory in and had the right video drivers and utilities of course. The 512k "option" would be enough for 1152x864 at 16 colours, if the memory/chipset/DAC could run fast enough of course. Plus it would allow upto 800x600 in 256 colours too. Any more than 256 at any rez is probably beyond it. (I've put together a 286 with a half meg ISA Trident VGA card before, and it ran up to 1024x768 4bpp and 800x600 8bpp... with a surprising turn of speed, even... bit crazy having a machine with almost half as much VRAM as main RAM (1152k)...) Bet that cost quite the pretty penny back when it was new.

[@MichaelAStanhope]

Hilarious end! Knockout plate was for the StarLAN option which was NCRs proprietary "LAN" interface which was basically daisychain serial. Nice box though. Never see them that nice anymore. Most are filthy or full of grease.

[@RetroGamerVX]

Well done getting one so cheap these days, values are shooting up on fleabay :o( Looks rather clean inside :o)

[@dysfunctionalwombat]

@LGR Has a NCR 386. I would love to have an NCR, I personally love the designs

[@WildDiamond07]

In his NCR 386 video, he said SHUT UP WINDOWS 7, YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE.

[@Boemel]

Wow the bios is from my birthday.

[@stannovacki2406]

was NOT expecting the advert at the end! I LOL'ed so much I had to go back and play it three times to catch all the gag lines :-) but seriously, folks... I went to uni in Ohio and NCR was a BIG recruiter at the Engineering school. NCR didn't just make cash registers, but mini- and micro-computer systems,mainly for things like inventory management, Point-of-Sale, and small-to-medium business backoffice operations. with so much customer-facing placement, NCR spent a LOT on a consistent, elegant, industrial design. honestly, I miss the 80s/90s as far as microcomputers go, the vendors hadn't quite shaken out with utterly boring beige-box clones. this tiny AT-type system shows there was a lot of creativity and technical expertise going into products that weren't just a PC, but a representative of the corporation's heritage and engineering capabilities. and the damn thing is really CUTE! IBM had the big red power switch, but NCR's were ORANGE! not only that, they pioneered the AT-on-its-side Tower configuration with a computer called - inscrutably - the NCR Tower!. I'm not a retrocomputing fan, although I do wax nostalgic for the days when PCs weren't simply appliances, but an opportunity to learn about computing in general ("expansion RAM? what's that for?" or "I can add a 2400 bps modem by plugging it in to a slot?") and not become a MS Office drone, where Word and Excel are requirements for being a line cook at Wendy's. Great video Kevin, and another fun walk down memory lane. Many thanks!

[@eukaryote-prime]

I feel like all the old computers and their respective hardware like cards and so forth, just get recycled (ie: destroyed) in my province. I never see anything like this ANYWHERE. I saw a video of computer recycling. Just huge bins filled with motherboards and cards etc of all kinds and kind of died a little inside, because I know there's lots of people who want to build retro pc's or buy retro computers and this stuff is get destroyed. Meanwhile all the stuff on ebay is sold by people who are aiming it at collectors and know they can get a bigger price for it.

[@eukaryote-prime]

MarkNF82 A 386 was my first PC (although I'd had a C64 before that). That 386 was my teenage years. I came back from college (where I got a Pentium 2) and asked my Dad where my old 386 was. "Oh, I took it to the dump". I was mortified! I do have some files still that go back to 1993 (mod and s3ms I made), but anything I wrote, or anything else I made... gone.

[@compu85]

Could you make a system / boot disk of that NCR DOS? I'd love a newer version for my 8088 NCR machine.

[@vwestlife]

Here you go: www.amstereo.org/files/ncr%20ms-dos%204.01.zip

[@compu85]

@@vwestlife Thanks!!

[@BilisNegra]

The sticker with "Poll 4D" couldn't mean exactly that: that it was used at a polling station?

[@boggy7665]

Probably "Pole 4D", the location in a building with a pole-supported roof. 59% of employees in such places can't spell words like "pole" properly.

[@WeatherSTARIII]

Nice funny clip from "A Prairie Home Companion" about batteries in general. I also wonder where that clip about the dip switch joke came from. That was so funny!

[@vwestlife]

I added a link to it in the description.

[@SeleniumGlow]

I have worked with many old BIOS systems, but nothing as old as what you've shown in this video. Amazing stuff.

[@NaoPb]

Why did they have to solder the batteries right onto the motherboard in those days? Makes it a pain to replace them.

[@simontay4851]

Makes you appreciate the replaceable CR2032 batteries on modern motherboards.

[@HazewinDog]

even those are sometimes soldered on :)

[@NaoPb]

Tom: Ah, planned obsolescence. How could I forget..

[@NaoPb]

I sure do Simon. I sure do.

[@carstuff4u942]

Naomi Baron so true. I'm also old enough to remember that back in these days, by the time this battery failed, it was time to upgrade computers. Hardware back then was improving so quickly, after a year or two, computers were twice as fast!

[@robert1975031]

I thought that like a samsung galaxy note 7, there would have been a flash then boom!! luckily the title in this video was misleading. and fortunately that vintage computer (and vwestlife) will live to see another day. lol nice find man, those nor systems have been hard to find down here.

[@ajaugenti1976]

i used to have a Tandy computer with a floppy disc and a monitor back on Christmas Day in 1989.

[@arisupersnake]

This is why i went for a 64gb SE.

[@TheRailroad99]

Nice.. I wish i still had my DOS PC, it was an Atari PC3 with an Intel 8088 CPU :( That battery looks like a common lithium type, are maybe you can solder a CR2032 battery holder on that tiny daughter board

[@FoxerTails]

You could try attaching the hard drive to a modern computer and using a program to recover the deleted files. It would be interesting to see what was on it at one point in time.

[@MusicBoxVinyl]

I still have my iMac G3 from the early 2000s. Still works and can still use iTunes.

[@wonderpierrot]

Dang, I was hoping for the computer to violently explode and burst into flames by the end like a real Samsung Galaxy Note 7. D:

[@kawawete]

NCR, they made computers and then, a new republic.

[@BillyLapTop]

The lithium battery was an advance for the time. Previously a Ni Cad battery requiring a charging circuit was built onto the motherboard to keep it alive and because of the internal resistance of that kind of battery, if you let the machine sit for a period of time, unused, it would go dead and lose the settings. Nice video. Electronics did in NCR, since at that time their POS systems were still mechanical and they dragged their feet in catching the digital wave. Overseas competition was the greatest game changer for them. They are still around living off some patents and licensing technology they still develop but no smoke stacks anymore employing thousands.

[@filipmac1545]

My thrift store never has anything, but It does have small separate computer store. But no vintage PCs Those are some nice finds!!

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

No TURBO Button? I'm disappointed :C Oh wait, that came a year later or two... right?

[@Bleachanna]

I can never find any older computers around here, I want one so bad lol.

[@sirmugman]

i think it might beacuse of a few reasons reason 1: it has gotten wet/has been left in a garage which flooded and the old computer was left for a while then was sold and someone fired it up and it chaged up but was still wet or had the water damage reason 2: someone put too much power or was playing around while the machine was on reason 3: the battery has been off for so long a sunnden chagre or turning it on made it explode

[@brandonupchurch7628]

It's a non rechargeable battery, so the computer is not trying to recharge it. It broke because he pried on the positive terminal of the battery which put pressure on the internal glass seal in the battery and broke it.

[@gordonprentice7090]

(NCR) Stand for National Cash Register, So it's probably and early EPOS terminal.

[@voltz15]

It's such a shame that Keillor retired as I got such a kick out of the stories he'd tell. Used to listen on NPR.

[@gmcnewlook]

voltz15 his Canadian equivalent Stuart McLean passed away, vinyl cafe was similar in humour.

[@simonhangan2571]

Finally a computer video!

[@megabojan1993]

So glad I didn't bought a Galaxy Note 7. Instead I went for the 8 :)

[@kbhasi]

Same for me!

[@megabojan1993]

If I went with the Note 7 I would've unknowingly bought a ticking time-bomb :)

[@IntellitechStudios]

MegaBojan1993 finally returned mine last month, still waiting for my refund

[@megabojan1993]

You had the note 7 for until now? Yikes, you were risking a lot.

[@IntellitechStudios]

MegaBojan1993 not really, I used it no problem until then. I don't fly and I had already stress tested it and it never got hot or acted funny. But now I'm waiting on my refund and I'm back on my Note 5. It was annoying to use since it kept wanting to install updates that shut it off, so once that happened I banged it around a bit then sent its ass packing!

[@LightTheUnicorn]

That a very neat litttle 286. Kinda funny isn’t it, batteries were soldered on, then they weren’t for a while, now they are again. What goes around, ha!

[@thepirategamerboy12]

What's your secret to finding this stuff? In all of my years of thrifting, I've still never come across any computers of this age in my life. I really wish I could...

[@BilisNegra]

Wow, you've filmed and published this video in a under one day (according to the time settings in the bios, at least).

[@mr.nobody6829]

One of the reasons I love 8 bit computers is that they don't produce noise.

[@vwestlife]

My 16-bit Tandy 1000RL is fanless and doesn't produce any noise, either (al least without a hard drive).

[@georgemaragos2378]

Hi All, nice machine, i have a NEC 286 powermate for a while back in the day when they ruled. Re the POLL 4D, there is a chance that it may have been used in a early networking with lan card or serial port based communications, here each PC was connected to a specific port on a cluster controller, in the day the hard drive or floppy would have the port number in the autoexec or as a parameter in loading the driver, very similar to say sound blaster settings work, the 4D can easily be where the wiring from that pc's desk bach to the controller or hub terminated on port 4D

[@caveman123ization]

Should've known VWestlife was a fan of Prairie Home Companion too. Most radio geeks do.

[@djcmike]

Cute little box. Hope you come with a part two on that one. Would like to see what it could be upgraded to as well :)

[@AncientElectronics]

Ah, I just picked up one of these today at a swap meet though mine is badged as a UMI ProQuest 900 Series Workstation. other than that it seems identical to yours. Unfortunately, when I try to power mine up I get 5 beeps and nothing on the screen. I'll need to mess with it some more.

[@SJBrianexe]

Just make sure that stuff doesnt drip onto the motherboard - ick!

[@floatpvnk]

I live in ct and never find crts or any retro computing stuff in my local goodwills and other thrift shops. I’m always wondering where you and other retro guys like LGR always find your retro tech! I know he goes thrifting quite a lot to find his machines, is it a matter of just going back tons of times to the same stores for you too?

[@carstuff4u942]

Love this. What a cool motherboard. Thanks for sharing!

[@KuntalGhosh]

that is just a normal lithium battery , you can replace it with a 18650 lithium ion battery or the original battery type! , lithium battery normal never leak until you punctured them with a screwdriver or something like that...........

[@nikhildabas]

There's no 'normal' lithium battery, there are several types all known as lithium batteries. In this case it might be a non-rechargeable type. An 18650 will most certainly not fit in there. Anyhow, I don't think he'll have a problem finding a replacement -- the problem is in desoldering that battery, getting that little carrier board out, and soldering a new one (or a socket or whatever) in.

[@KuntalGhosh]

Nikhil Dabas I think soldering is very easy to do , the main problem is just to find that type of battery....

[@KuntalGhosh]

Nikhil Dabas brand new er4 battery will cost you 13$ and it is non rechargeable 2100mah battery........

[@brandonupchurch7628]

It's a Lithium Thionyl Chloride primary battery, you could replace it with a fully recharged Lithium ion rechargeable but the battery wouldn't recharge but the self discharge of the battery would make it last a shorter than replacing it with another lithium thionyl chloride battery

[@fixman88]

I saw a D cell that was German-made that may have had similar chemistry a couple of years back. It was 3 volts or so and was designed for low-drain; long endurance applications. I thought about getting one - until I discovered they were $30 apiece.

[@trr94001]

Reminds me of a PS/2 Model 30-286. Right down to the long rod for the power button.

[@Jako1987]

You can pick that lock pretty easily. It's called dimple lock I think. You may also pick it with the casing of the ball point pen.

[@TheLemminkainen]

I had 286 NCR with 512kt ram and EGA. Strange it was same form like your case but it had 720kb floppy which was internal but outside of case. Floppy connector was under the unit. I heard it was mounted to stand which i didnt have so it was always little bit over the table to get floppy drive connector connected. It had 20mb hard drive and small keyboard without arrow keys and esc was next to numlock.

[@jessihawkins9116]

It was probably in a cash register or atm

[@cjhawk67]

I'll give you $20 plus shipping if you go pick up the yellowed one for me :)

[@gerhardprins1412]

Nec? NECK! It's pronounced N-E-C, enn ee see.w

[@vwestlife]

Nope, it's pronounced "Neck". Why else would they have a computer called the NEC Trek? www.mocagh.org/ai/crowleynec-cart.jpg

[@gerhardprins1412]

VWestlife well then it's probably pronounced n e c in the netherlands. Maybe? Edit: Nope, i just looked it up, it is actually pronounced n-e-c.

[@vwestlife]

Because companies pronounce their names in different ways in different countries. That's why Mazda is "mat-su-dah" in Japan, "mazz-da" in the UK, and "mahz-dah" in the USA.

[@kbhasi]

Here in Asia, it's pronounced as it's initials, like what he said. Trust me, as I had saw an NEC corporate ad a number of years ago.

[@johnathin0061892]

A soldered on motherboard battery is pretty bad, but not as bad as the batteries on CDI units where they were "encapsulated" and you had to literally at the encapsulating plastic like an icepick with a screwdriver to get at it.

[@vwestlife]

Plenty of computers used those Dallas clock modules with built-in battery, too.

[@legionofdoom2009]

At least a lot of them were socketed, meaning that you can easily remove it... but finding a replacement could prove a bit more difficult, as Dallas got bought out and they stopped making the RTC units.

[@BertGrink]

That little live segment at the end kind of reminded me of the old band called Spike Jones and his City Slickers ;)

[@sirmugman]

i like that bit at the end, almost goon show but not quite

[@flyingninja1234]

They also make cash registers & credit card readers.

[@jaybrooks1098]

They are all Italian Olivetti machines with ncr badges. Not made in usa.. lol Olf is likely the olivetti drivers

[@GoAnimations]

Who else thought the computer would explode?

[@yerunski]

Actually, I remember my dad's first 286 ran (stock) on 12.5 Mhz. Yup. Half an extra Mhz!

[@Lachlant1984]

Was this computer meant for business use or home use? I'm very pleased the system didn't catch fire like I thought it was going to do, but this proves the point that Lithium batteries are pretty dangerous if you're not careful with them. Let's hope the chemicals that leaked out won't damage the motherboard.

[@vwestlife]

Most likely business use. I don't think NCR (National Cash Register) has ever sold equipment on the consumer market.

[@brandonupchurch7628]

You have to be careful with these Lithium Thionyl Chloride batteries, if you put too much force on the positive terminal it will break the glass seal inside the cell.

[@rimmersbryggeri]

I'd say those extra DIP slots are for cache rather than video memory maybe both.

[@vwestlife]

There is no cache on a computer this old. Most computers didn't have a cache until the late 386 and early 486 era.

[@rimmersbryggeri]

Ok it might have been the AST 486 then but I thought it was the Victor 286.

[@ct1660]

You should check out the Unique by Jamaica center...lots of vintage stuff there too

[@israelgallegos2002]

NCR Was From Dayton

[@Jeffrey314159]

3:00 When it states that it has 640KB of RAM, does that mean 640 thousand words of RAM or 640 thousand bytes of RAM?

[@vwestlife]

640 KB = 655360 bytes

[@XtremeKremaTor]

You can tell those "musicians" spend time creatively at starbucks and use white iphones

[@Sarnexus]

What's the skit for the dip switch thing. Please link it.

[@vwestlife]

It's a clip from an old Apple TV commercial: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ep3UknZpgNuWrZY

[@TranscendentalAirwaves]

Omg you listen to Garrison Keillor? I love Prairie Home Companion. lol Did you hear he recently passed it on to someone else? Just isn't the same somehow. :/

[@ArlenMoulton2]

computers aspire to be terrorists it would appear.

[@EastAngliaUK]

lucky you caught that in time before more damage.

[@aspectcarl]

Hamstrung :) love it!

[@twocvbloke]

But, there was not burst of flames!!! :(

[@lordwolffurry582]

damn, wish i had an old computer, i got a ti-99 for christmas but it doesnt show up any video so im bummed out on that.

[@vwestlife]

Did you get the right video cable for it? The RF modulator the TIs come with tend to fail, but the computer itself is probably still fine.

[@lordwolffurry582]

well i have an av cable for it, and i bought a generic rf modulator, but both do not seem to work, and i do not know who to go to in order to get this checked out.

[@theatomicpunkkid]

Just an earbud of music makes the minutes sale by, in the most Galactic way. Nice! Hamstrung Galactic 8 wins.

[@danthompsett2894]

Very clean inside shame bout the battery hope u manage to fix that, what a sweet little old pc, bit of a shame it doesn't have its Co Pro installed, and some extra ram, doubt the video ram will make much of a difference though

[@omarkhanlilcurry]

good sir, can you please show your oldest computer running modern internet browser? that would be so cool!

[@james42519]

what is that jumpers and dip switches video from? don't know what olf means still but found this. sure you seen it already though. www.estelebanon.com/comps/ncr0201.html also it says the battery is on a chip that plugs in. you sure it don't just unplug? "Instead of alkaline batteries to keep the CMOS intact, the NCR unit maintains CMOS with a plug-in integrated circuit chip that can be replaced easily. These RTC/battery modules last several years. A warning message appears on the screen at boot-up if the battery is failing. If the battery can't be replaced immediately, the user can boot with the reference disk at each power-up." www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue148/140_NCR_System_3200_Mode.php

[@Fetrovsky]

This computer is a lot like my first computer. Except this is a 12 MHz and mine was a 16 MHz.

[@temporaryscars]

How did you manually enter the HDD info? I have the same system and I can’t find where you’d go to do that.

[@vwestlife]

AFAIK you type P to enter the drive parameters manually.

[@SupraBlack-dp4zz]

I had that same Packard Bell keyboard :)

[@jackforpresident666]

I have that same pc !!!

[@brandonupchurch7628]

Do you think that thrift store still has the other computer? If so would you consider buying it for a little science experiment? I have this idea that the other computer would probably behave the as this computer with a seemigly dead RTC battery. The thing is the battery may not actually dead it may be "sleeping" These Lithium Thionyl Chloride batteries when stored or used in very low drain applications have a tendency to form a layer of Lithium Chloride on the anode which makes the battery behave as if it dead but in theory if you apply a continuous load accross the battery you can break up the LiCl passivation layer and bring the battery back to life. My test idea is that you buy the other computer and then use a multimeter on the dead battery and leave it there for several minutes to see if the voltage rises and if the approx 10k ohm load is enough to break up the passivation layer, if that doesn't work then you could try using a low value resistor and attach the probes of the multimeter to the leads of the resistor and then put it across the battery and see if the voltage starts to rise. Although this whole setup may be pointless if the computer was designed to overcome this problem as it may be possible that the engineers knew about this problem at the time and put a resistor as a continous parasitic load in order to prevent the passivation from occuring, in which case the parasitic load probably killed the battery years ago.

[@vwestlife]

The battery used in this computer is not rechargeable. I know what you're talking about, but I believe that only applies to rechargeable lithium batteries.

[@temporaryscars]

What did you end up doing about the battery? Thinking about just clipping mine out.

[@vwestlife]

I removed it and wired in a replacement. It's not an exact match for the original, but any 3.6 volt lithium battery will work.

[@bubblegoose321]

Cpu speed:........ F A S T

[@onkelklaujo]

1:02 The indicator leds look like USB-C ports to me lol

[@jhonwask]

What thrift store do you shop at? I'd love to go there myself.

[@TerryMcKean]

That was great... thanks. :-)

[@polishhotdog933]

Hey,I shop at Greenbrook Electronics too.👍🏼

[@compactc9]

Hamstrung electronics! ROFLMFAO!!!!!!

[@TransitAndTeslas]

This is the same NCR that is making POS systems? Was this a cash register from back in the day?