1991 IBM PS/1 Model 2121 386SX computer

Introduced in 1990, the PS/1 was IBM's second attempt at the home computer market, after the unsuccessful PCjr. The early PS/1 models like this Model 2121 from 1991 were an unusual design with lots of proprietary components, while later models were more conventional desktop and tower PCs.

[@ReviewTechUSA]

"He needed a faster modem. Probably to download all the gay porn I found on the hard drive." The way you delivered that line made it ten times more hilarious. What's even funnier is I also have war stories of crap I used to find on people's computers when I used to fix them. Gay porn being on the mild side.

[@TotalImpactGaming]

Dunban Homs BESTEST Nice Meme! No he shouldn't.

[@TheKnuckmin]

rich, i think you owe gay porn an apology

[@TotalImpactGaming]

Dunban Homs BESTEST Nice Meme! My mistake, i thought you was talking about gay porn, hint, why i said no he shouldn't lol.

[@TotalImpactGaming]

Dunban Homs BESTEST Nice Meme! I'M GOING TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT NOW.

[@fluffzone6100]

MAKE A VIDEO OF THESE STORIES, PLEASE!!!

[@thomase13]

There's a convenience store near my house that uses one of these to this day!

[@eclecticreader961]

That's cool. If it works, it should be used.

[@painincorporated8913]

My eye doctor uses a Windows 95 I think it’s for the old equipment.

[@RealEpikCartfrenYT]

The oldest computers in my area run Windows XP

[@tookeydookey]

That is a store of culture, I approve!😁👌

[@X_Leonhart]

This was the first computer I've ever used! I was on elementary school, and it was like magic. It's nice to see it again, working like in those days of 1992.

[@laalki80]

Me too! The first computer we owned. Sold the NES to own this used. Civilization and Dune 2 ran all hours of the day xD

[@TruthLivesNow]

Great video of an older system. You even mentioned the DOSSHELL that came with DOS 4.0. A person watching this video cannot appreciate the strides that were made between a computer from 1989 to 1991. Our first computer was a generic 386SX, 16 Mhz, 1 MB RAM, 40 MB Hard Drive, with DOS 3.3 at the end of 1989. My friend was just amazed because we ONLY paid $1,800 for it. The difference between DOS 3.3 and DOS 4.0 is that DOS 3.3 would only recognize a partition up to 32 MB, so my wife had her 32 MB for her business, and I had my 8 MB. I kept updating that computer, had a person install a 386/40 MHz and a whole 2 MB of RAM for $120. ...and I got off cheap, my sister who worked for IBM spent over $8000 at the end with all their software etc. for their 8088 processor bought about in 1986.

[@mspenrice]

Probably because of the stiff competition they were facing from the Tandy, Amiga, ST, and the colour Macs that had come along. No-one was going to pay $8k any more for an 8088 system with CGA or MDA/Hercules (or even EGA, if they wanted it for gaming rather than hi-rez colour work), terrible sound, a 360k 5.25" floppy, limited hard drive capabilities, messed up memory structure, big clunky box and text interface when they could spend a mere fraction of that on something smaller, faster, and all round more capable. The sad thing is that just as IBM and their cloners were getting their act together, their rivals were stagnating and sitting on their laurels somewhat, so they were able to dive in for the kill...

[@joojoojeejee6058]

@@mspenrice Amiga and ST never really were a "thing" in North America or even much of the world except certain countries in Europe. The competition that PS/1 faced was basically PC clones, Mac and perhaps even Commodore 64, which was still in widespread use in 1990, but of course phasing out fast.. Anyway, the main competition was obviously cheap PC clones. And I guess IBM kind of lost that battle? Of course they totally deserved to lose with their proprietary and complicated hardware implementations. (And speaking of Amiga and ST... Even Atari and Commodore had a range of PC clones available! They totally knew where the money and future was.).

[@maxheadrom3088]

My first x86 machine was a 386SX - monochrome display, generic MB. Had lots of fun with it! This IBM machine is pretty cool! I really liked the idea of putting the PSU on the monitor - longer life for the machine. Nice chassis!

[@jokerzwild00]

When I was a young lad our first pc was a PS/1. I spent most of my early teens on that thing. Ours must have been slightly different than this one though, as I was able to add a knockoff Soundblaster into it (sweet Wolfenstein3d music and sfx). It looked exactly the same as this one though, and it had the same 16mhz 386sx with 2 megs of ram. It had little dials on the monitor adjustments too, instead of those lever things. So many nights spent tweaking it to get various games working. Mmmm dat Ultima VII... I also upgraded to Windows 3.11, and I upgraded to MS-DOS 5.whatever. I knew it was time to start begging mom for a new PC when no amount of tweaking could get DOOM running. Couldn't get around the 4 Meg ram requirement :(

[@juicewrldextendedunrelease5274]

Thanks a lot VWestLife I was watching this out loud when he started talking about the modem......... My family was in hearing distance......

[@retroftw]

LOL 😂

[@DVaEtc]

Dang. This became a nostalgic video. I remember when this came out when I was middle school. Now watching it again, 10 Years later. Glad you’re still posting. Your videos got me through a lot of life hurdles.

[@markbanash921]

Love the Princeton Record Exchange bag. Used to frequent it back in the 80s when I was a grad student at the U. Nice to know they're still there.

[@JohnVance]

This was my first PC, thanks for the nostalgia.

[@WinterCedar]

14:14 What the hell is this document....

[@kosztaz87]

Shiiit, I have just read it. Apparently there were crackpot ideas out there even before AlexJones.

[@sieonigh]

has a headphone jack, better than the iphone 7

[@geraldsmerea9369]

its more better than a mackbook or apple

[@levicassidy9312]

it's more better? wow this computer is better then your grammar.......

[@arootube]

"then your" :^)

[@coriscotupi]

@@levicassidy9312 Watching someone trying to be the grammar police, but up messing up grammar in the process: priceless. ROTFL

[@vwestlife]

David Kehley Some of it, yes. :-)

[@douro20]

I believe the Barco Data delta-gun XGA monitor I saw once in an old computer shop had a cooling fan in it. It also had a built-in facility for performing display colour calibration. And you read that right; it was a delta-gun XGA monitor. It had a special CRT hand-made in Belgium by Barco.

[@mspenrice]

What the heck is a delta gun?

[@TLSingleton1962]

I ran the first iteration of my BBS using TBBS on an IBM PS/1 computer. Good times... I took this PC from 2MB RAM to 6MB RAM for the crazy prices of something over $250.00. It's weird how my brain says computers were more fun then than now.

[@pettttson]

That pc speaker could probably get louder than a decent car audio setup. Incredible!

[@Trance88]

That's a very nice user friendly computer for back then. Still to this day, I for some reason find it amazing that there were consumer available online services in use before the internet and the WWW.

[@vwestlife]

In the 1980s there was an online service for Commodore 64 users, whose main screen is very similar to that of Windows 8 today: Vintage Q-Link (AOL) Promotion Video (1986)

[@logicone5667]

In 1993/1994 I was using a IBM PS1 in my 3rd grade classroom playing "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego", if I remember correctly..

[@RJARRRPCGP]

I did on a 486 at 25 mhz or 33 mhz in 1994 as well, IIRC, LOL. Sometime after moving to Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center, in Greenfield, New Hampshire, on July 5, 1994, IIRC, which despite being in southern New Hampshire, was out in the boonies. LOL. (In their library) It was of course Windows 3x... (and non-NT)Unlike The Vermont Achievement Center in Rutland, Vermont, they were an IBM-clone fan and in 1994, most were 386s and 486s and by 1996 or 1997, Pentium 100s seemed to be popular followed by 133 Mhz, and 166 Mhz in 1997. Then Pentium IIs by probably 1999. I think the library had 400s. Followed by Pentium II 350s, especially Tech Ed... I think the only Macs I touched were a couple, the second classroom I had and my buddy's, LOL.

[@paulisthebest3uk]

lol haha everything seemd so serious and professional until you unexpectedly said all the gay porn i found on the hard drive, couldnt help but start laughing

[@vwestlife]

Dreambro1 I am gay myself. Thus, I never said finding gay porn on the hard drive was a bad thing! :-)

[@InsaneMetalSoldier]

Dreambro1 You're the typical dramatic that thinks everyone is intolerant because they say something that doesn't worship gays? lol 90% of my friends are gay, (most of them are girls) and the last thing we do is complaining about intolerance

[@InsaneMetalSoldier]

I don't know if all women are bisexual, but what I know is that you could never know what they really are.

[@exlibrisas]

Respet, man!

[@TorutheRedFox]

+VWestlife since when lmao

[@lmull3]

wow, a bit surprising to find that sort of raunch on a PS/1. some things never change!

[@RJARRRPCGP]

That's a lot more like I expect with a Pee4 PC, LOL. (Along with a fucked up Internet Explorer!)

[@mspenrice]

I remember finding a number of dirty images and even a program that ran some gif animations full-screen on a monochrome 386 laptop my dad had borrowed from work... the floppy I copied them on to sadly being long since lost (I wonder if anyone found it?) :D ... also got in a bit of trouble, as it had a 14.4k modem with it, which we used to sample early AOL and internet stuff, when I found how to get access to the adult newsgroups and downloaded a few things of my own, ahem. That would have been around the same machine was in its second or third year of use, so it probably wasn't too uncommon by then...

[@thespacemonkeyist]

What a strange computer...

[@gwenynorisu6883]

Well, it's not THAT odd. It's just IBM's attempt to out-Mac Apple without falling foul of copyright/trademark/patent laws. A lot of people gave it a go in the 80s and even 90s, including Compaq and even Amstrad...

[@EzeeLinux]

Thanks for the flashback. I remember being blown away by one of these at the time and now it looks so primitive. Amazing. :)

[@pixelmentia]

My very first computer I had all to myself. Was so stoked! I ran every game I could find on it. Most adventure games of the era worked fine, but Doom was out of the question. Wolfenstein worked, though! And since the hard drive was about 30MBs I had to constantly uninstall Windows 3.1 in order to play some of them. Fun times & floppy discs.

[@shadowg3]

I had that computer when I was a kid I loved to play in windows, it was a huge difference with the computers only running ms-dos

[@PsionicArchon]

The number of proprietary components in this computer is staggering. It's a good thing they built things to last in that era.

[@RJARRRPCGP]

They weren't shit, unlike a fair amount of early-2000s' motherboards, especially 2 of them I had, for socket 462, which both required a BIOS flash just for it to work right at stock speeds!

[@RJARRRPCGP]

"The number of proprietary components in this computer is staggering." ->Like old skool Compaq, LOL. My Compaq DeskPro 386, which was given to me in 1997, was a 386 SX that showed "5,120 KB", IIRC, thus, 5 MB o' RAM, which was considered an oddball number of RAM capacity, LOL. I was also given an ISA SoundBlaster 16 to pop into it and it did reasonable with the old skool audio file format, ".wav"... But it sadly was a slow-fest, a slide show with Nesticle, LOL. I thought that even the RAM was proprietary, LOL. But, thanked the Lord that it had IDE for the HDD! I put in a Conner 100 MB hard drive and reformatted the hard drive. I installed MS-DOS 6.20, IIRC and Windows 3.1...

[@MamoonBakeer]

Oh.. That sound of buckling spring Model M keyboard is just amazing

[@ruimiguelcarreira3097]

My first PC, Windows was garbage that time. I used to tune config.sys and autoexec.bat on DOS to milk every last byte of memory and run my games. Even managed to run some games under the minimum specs. Beautiful machine, changed my life.

[@pele512]

My first PC as a kid (when I was around 12) was one model 2011 (286@1MHz 1MB RAM and 30MB HDD). I absolutely loved the loud built in speakers and the phone jack, quite good sound quality for a PC speaker. Although it was very slow, I could get module players (Visualplayer) and some games running on it. Windows 3.1 would run as well, but incredibly slowly. VGA graphics were definitely excessive for the little 286 running at 10MHz, recalling playing Wolfeinstein 3D in a reduced screen size. :) I quickly discovered the serious limitations the proprietary expansions meant. After two years I traded in my little friend for a generic PC. - I missed the speakers the most! Thanks for the review!

[@wysoft]

These and the slightly later 486SX PS/2 models defined my middle school computing experience - along with some Macs and Apples here and there.

[@RJARRRPCGP]

My first post-elementary real school, was an Apple fan, mostly Apple IIs that are pre-IIe and Apple IIes... I thought I saw an Apple III as well! Even Macs seemed rare, LOL. The typical latest ones, were the gray Apple IIes and an Apple IIGs or the like, IIRC. And folks there would be lucky to hop on an IBM at all! (Vermont Achievement Center, Rutland, Vermont) (I was there from sometime in 1988 to July 5, 1994, IIRC.) If you were there during the period I mentioned, I swear that you were more likely to see an Apple III! Or an Apple II Plus, wow. Just wow.

[@brumels1570]

PS/2 looked so beautiful back in the old days with those blue accent colors.

[@MarkPMus]

You found my old computer then?! 😛😛 Ha ha ha ha! ROFL!

[@TechnologySpotlight]

Lol

[@dom3827]

you downloaded the gay porns ? :P

[@TechnologySpotlight]

Dominik Lux o-o

[@dom3827]

In the video he said, i guess jokingly, that he found gayporns on the harddrive

[@vwestlife]

It wasn't a joke. I really did find some gay porn images on the hard drive.

[@SebisRandomTech]

Not sure if I ever mentioned this, but one of my neighbors had this exact model including the original box. Unfortunately they chucked it before I could save it. :(

[@vwestlife]

+Øyvind Svanevik 2.88 MB floppy drives were not widely used except for IBM PS/2s and some ThinkPads. www.pcguide.com/ref/fdd/formatKB2880-c.html

[@douro20]

Actually the 2.88MB floppy disk was used in RS/6000 systems more than anywhere else. And the partition type was completely strange.

[@Z3CHYD]

My parents still have one of these in their closet. I remember playing on it a lot growing up just messing around with it

[@dukenukem5768]

I'm sure the reason for the power supply being in the monitor, and for the 5.25" drive being in a stackable module, is that people (at least tech journos) were obsessed with having a small "footprint" - the area the system unit took up on the desk. The reviews at that time salivated over "pizza-box" system units. So the power supply was moved into the monitor to reduce the "footprint"; never mind the fact that the monitor usually overhung the system unit making that area unavailable anyway. It was equivalent to today's obsession with thin devices. In this PS/1 the monitor does not overhang (much) as it is such a tiny screen anyway.

[@leifpp76]

I was looking at your video, look at it from star to end. Thank You for making it.

[@prodfauxes]

Damn you're just throwing heat at that man

[@prodfauxes]

I just watched this video again and had the same thought, went to check the comments and found myself 😂

[@nng1979]

My first IBM based PC. My dad got me this for Christmas 91' at Nobody Beats The Wiz in Herald Square for $999.99. We lugged this huge box back via Subway back to Queens...good times. First game I ever bought was Leisure Suit Larry 5 and first app was PC PaintBrush by ZSoft. I had a external sound card called Disney Sound Source which plugged into the parallel port which made Wolfenstein 3D much better

[@sci3ntologist]

Oh wow, what a throw back, my aunt had this exact computer. I havent seen one of these for like 20 years. I always thought this computer looked so futuristic.

[@jaykay18]

I was waiting a long time for this review. EXCELLENT! Extremely thorough and well done. The PS/1 was so proprietary with the power supply (and fan) in the monitor that we can effectively call it PCjr 2.0. They added some of the "creature comforts" of the era, if it came with the sound card as standard this may have actually been a hit in the home market. The wife tells me she used to have something like this when she was a kid. I have a much later version, it actually has a 5.25" bay which has a 3.5"/5.25" combo diskette drive. Those are pretty rare today. I was going to scrap this unit, but after watching this, I will hold onto it! Dot pitch was a big selling point for early VGA monitors, this "nonsense" went on for years, and is still carried on today with the Candela ratings on LCD/LED and Plasma monitors. Bottom line is you pick a monitor that looks good to you, regardless of what the numbers say.

[@InitialiseDisk]

4:10 wow that escalated fast lmao. You delivered the line perfectly.

[@soteful9949]

4:09 LOL that caught me off-guard.

[@h.albertmayorga5522]

I love the feel of those keyboards

[@Blackadder75]

I actually bought a PS/1 like this last week. for nostalgia (and if they get more collectable (valuable) in the future I won't mind)

[@TimPayne93]

Haha I loved the comment about the explicit images and the conversation transcripts

[@RodLobLaw]

My first Computer....I remember upgrading the memory and the dos and getting rid of the opening interface, also adding a pirated version of windows 3.11

[@christo930]

Text interfaces are more difficult to learn initially, but once mastered are far more efficient especially for the older machines. It also tends to store the information more efficiently. It took long file names to get me to stop using dos (command.com anyway) to manage my files.

[@Kagahn]

Now that's one seriously loud PC speaker and the output quality is actually pretty good, compared to most PC speakers i know from back in those days. Even tho it really made my ears hurt when you raised it's volume to 50% and up. Amazing piece of hardware.

[@hackerinsidetm4271]

IBM PS/1 Model *Gay Porn Edition* 2121. My sides hurt from laughing.

[@Jeffrey314159]

My family had a Hewlett-Packard 80386SX based PC computer, and it was an empty shell in my opinion. Very little upgradability. Only 16MHz turbo, and a maximum of 16 Megs of RAM. My parents paid almost $2,000 (including software package and peripherals) for this white elephant

[@rarbiart]

Some very early Taxan-"real flat" screens had a fan too. (they came in early 1990ies)

[@Caseytify]

I like the idea of having DOS in ROM.

[@jtpinnyc]

Oh my what a blast from the past. I was on an IT work placement at the age of 17 in 1990 and the showroom had one of these. I remember thinking how dull it all seemed compared to my Commodore Amiga back home. But I do miss the sound of the hard drives and the general humming noise of the thing, it's very relaxing to listen to. The place I worked at had a lot of green screen VDU's as well, really miss those.

[@coffeecomputersandmore2300]

My best friend in high school had one of these. They rocked! I spent countless hours playing Command HQ and Silpheed (think that is how it is spelled) on it.

[@themaritimegirl]

That's a pretty neat computer. The Deskpro EN has the loudest PC speaker (in PC speaker mode, rather than when the sound card has control of it) I've ever heard, but I think this tops it! Regarding uninstalling programs, don't most DOS and early Windows programs have their own uninstaller? Every one I've ever used does.

[@vwestlife]

Later Windows 3.1 era programs often provide their own uninstaller, but earlier ones did not. And uninstalling a DOS prorgam is easy: simply delete the directory (folder) it's in.

[@marccaselle8108]

@@vwestlife The very useful deltree command works great and deletes a directory of your choosing.

[@SuperMewio]

Someone gave me an old Sony Vaio and before they gave it to me they tried to delete all the porn they had on it. They still shown up in the resent files folder.

[@big_toe99]

At 4:10 I almost spit out my drink 🤣

[@Michael-wn4jj]

Starting with PC XT that PS/1 type was my last IBM PC. After that I assembled no-names for myself.

[@seanabsher5577]

Between 1990 and 1991, maybe into 1992, this , but with the sound card, was my first PC that wasn't "the family PC." I was about 8 or 9 then. I remember going in a DOS or windows program and playing MOD files through the sound card and listening to the wild music they had

[@petmey5281]

I trashed my old IBM PS/1 in the late 90's Now that nostalgia is rearing it's ugly head, wish I would have kept it.

[@petmey5281]

that would be fun to turn into a sleeper system. Use in ITX board and lower profile cpu cooler

[@pixelatednate4864]

Nice to hear the Maxtor 7120AT in yours is still working. Mine died. It still powered up but wouldn't work about 80 to 90 percent of the time.

[@Caseytify]

Revisiting to say Texelec now carries an adapter that lets you install a regular 3.5" floppy drive. They also feature two new built MCA sound cards. IIRC, the Adlib clone can use the original Adlib reference disk.

[@Ryoga2K]

this were used back in the day in a well known computer school here in Mexico that still exists, my brother went there to learn accountability software and they had rooms with like 30 of this kind of PS/1 model.

[@RetroCubeXD]

My dad has this in storage, but it's not like this one. It's called a IBM PS/1 Consultant, and it's a desktop tower. I can't find much information about it online!

[@JackOfAllTrades2022]

Interesting, I started with a 386, and to buy memory, it was $50 per Meg.. to add 4 megs it cost me $200... good memories. I wanted it because I wanted Windows 3.0..funny! In DOS, there were games in there also, like "Gorilla" . I still have a sealed package ( never used) of Windows for Workgroups with manual and floppy drives.

[@barrettgpeck]

This was my first PC back when I was a little kid, but we had the bargain basement version, no hard drive and black and white monitor. I wore that thing out back in the day.

[@Swiffland25]

My best childfriend in 1990 got this! remarkable machine from his father, he worked at IBM Mainz-Hechtsheim at this time. I owned an AMIGA500 at this time, and every time I was able to get in contact with his PS1, first saw/played Monkey Island 1 (VGA) and Leisure Suit Larry 2 on this machine, I felt sad not having this wonderfull PC for my own. IBMs Interface was/is impressive for ist time, and up today.

[@Klip]

Aw man... I love those retro tunes. Such memories.

[@ThePbatemon]

I laughed when you suddenly mentioned all they gay porn

[@dasbakon]

Our family's first PC. Nostalgia overload

[@ridiculous_gaming]

Here is IBM trying to go proprietary to fight back against clones. I feel sorry for collectors who would not assume the monitor needs to be included with this computer.

[@richtaylor6039]

Great vid. I loved the PS1 I used to have. That custom front end they stuck on it was a pain the arse though. Much better once it had Win 3.1 on it 😀

[@marccaselle8108]

I always used windows 3.11. I never used windows 3.1

[@_Digitalguy]

This was my first pc in 1992... the 286 version with 1MB RAM and the joystick card... No windows on the 286... 386 was too expensive at that time... Still works perfectly...while my 1999 pentium 3 is dead and my 1994 486 is half dead...

[@Hikarmeme]

hope you cleaned that good..

[@sa3270]

My high school computer science lab had the PS/2 Model 25, and my college had PS/2 Model 30, but I don't remember the PS/1.

[@ddelony1]

One of my childhood friends had a later model of the PS/1 made circa 1992. Since it had a Sound Blaster installed, it was probably made after IBM switched to standard ISA slots. That one also had Windows version 3.1.

[@jasond3954]

I like how even in 1990 when a man got his hands on a computer the first thing that goes through his mind is: "hey I can view porn on this!" Lol

[@danr2652]

14:41 still easier using the pull down menu than having to enter the pica number and typesetting tags to correspond to the text like earlier version of ms works. It should have highlighted the the text with one of the 256 colors which determined the typesetting for the highlighted text.

[@ibizenco]

VWestlife, you are (or were) having quite some fascinating machines (and videos). Interesting to look at.

[@romarovinciguerra5387]

Lots of memories playing the old Sierra On-line games like Leisure Suit Larry and Police Quest.

[@cigarobsession]

I had a 286 greyscale ps1 that had on ram dos and just a floppy drive. It was a service merchandise model.

[@molivil]

Uninstalling a program on Windows 3.1 meant deleting the Program group and the Program Files. I never had need for uninstallers. The only exception was fancy things like Win32s, Trumpet Winsock and drivers. Although uninstalling some drivers could be easily accomplished by editing system.ini.

[@doorknobs2369]

Slight correction: The promenade service was "based" on AOL.. It was provided Quantum Computer Services, and hence why the GUI looks like GeoWorks used by AOL at the time. It was interesting though that IBM was owner with Sears with the competing Prodigy service.

[@AiOinc1]

4:24 well then, I most certainly was not expecting that. Out of all the things I expected to be on this computer, that was not on the list!

[@RJARRRPCGP]

The porn? Because you accidentally selected the wrong time marker...

[@dasarge84]

i have a dual floppy model and one exactly like this one my HDD model has the 4MB module in there its a tiny card with 2 blue clips on it, i do have the audio card and internal modem though my dual floppy one has the serial port the dual floppy version is rare due to its frequent use in business applications ware its just running special apps they were mainly 286 systems the 386 was mainly found with the HDD great little computers mainly ment for limited desk space the ISA expantion module replaced the upper case and connected to the brown slot using a daughter card that had the isa slots and a bracket it added about 3 inches to the hight i have one on the HDD model, the 5.25" floppy module im trying to find for it though to have it fully decked out but no luck (normal VGA displays will work but you need to chop out a couple pins the monitor is still required for power and sound from pc speaker the audio card needed external speakers or could send audio to the monitor speaker and no its no adlib or soundblaster but was a major jump in sound

[@christo930]

PS/2 disk drives are the best 3.5" drives I have ever come across in the PC world. Amiga drives are good and the C1581 is good (not sure about Atari ST). Some ThinkPads came with 2.88 drives (Ever install OS/2 from floppies?). Are they as high a quality as the standard PS/2 1.44MB drves? Disk failures and read errors are extremely common with other drives. I kept an old PS/2 in my office in the late 90s so when people had trouble reading their floppy disks, my PS2 would read them, So I would make a copy of the disk and the disks would work fine.

[@RJARRRPCGP]

Figures, because disk errors seemed to be common for floppy disks in the late-1990s and the early-2000s :( In fact sometimes, on the PC that I'm getting a file from, it looks fine, when writing, but when I'm back at my PC to read a file, boom, a disk error!

[@mspenrice]

First time I ever heard someone describe Amiga floppies in glowing terms... there was quite a strong aftermarket for non-CBM drives :) Atari ones are fairly solid as far as I know. Certainly never really had a problem with ours and it still works after ~31 years... Modern ones are junk essentially meant for a limited number of uses to transfer the data off your old, standard formatted discs, then be tossed in a drawer and forgotten.

[@drzeissler]

This is a very nice machine! Relative silent.

[@misswomble]

I have this still 😅

[@craggercragger8989]

I'd love one of those - feeling nostalgic for Windows 3.1 now!

[@moardargons8160]

Everett Kaser's MUSIC program is included in his _Hero's Heart_ game for DOS

[@akaJughead]

My aunt bought one of these new in 1993, when I was visiting for the summer. I remember playing Star Trek Judgement Rites on that machine. I think she had the sound upgrade too, but I'm not sure.

[@TheBrunoleocoelho]

Nice video! It works very fine, no slowdown considering the limited resources of the processor and the memory size! It's interesting in 14:02 how Microsoft Works makes me remember it like a Machintosh top bar menu! No wonder that Apple has complained about Microsoft's GUI years before that PC.

[@turnermedman1231]

great computer. it was the first pc I had after the micro computers, zx81, spectrum, commodore 16 ext.

[@alynicholls3230]

someone should copy that memory expansion, it would cost peanuts to get boards made by OSHpark or pcbway, the chips are cheap for originals used, and there are loads of modern alternatives cheap brand new, copying the board is easy it's just a matter of getting hold of an original board.

[@Arieeeee]

This under powered hunk of junk was the first "real" computer I had access to at home not counting an old TI 99/4. It let me get online at 2400 baud on my first BBS, use Prodigy, let me type my homework and overall be the gateway drug for future computers. The mouse was terrible on the computer though because it would just go crazy for no reason randomly and I was too poor to buy another one to try. Also I finally convinced the person who owned it to buy a 14.4K modem from Sam's but it turned out to not fit in there...I didn't know at the time that this was not ISA and used Microchannel bus which had no parts available in stores. Still, lots of fond memories.

[@Intanius]

Relating to low cost PC Clones, I was at a thrift store 3 days ago and picked up a Compuadd 316s with 386sx -16, 4MB of ram, and 125MB WD Caviar 2120

[@Compwhiz128]

Good god, I remember us being the last generation of folks still bringing 3 1/2 inch floppies to our middle school in 03' and me embarrassingly ripping my friends cover off her floppy disk that she just decorated as I tried to look at it up close...

[@survivor030406]

people were doing those kind of chats when the telegraph was invented. You should get this book, The Victorian Internet

[@MarkTheMorose]

What a strange beast; I never knew that IBM used the PS/1 name. Amstrad, foremost of the early PC clone companies in the UK, when they launched their PC1512 PC-compatible also put the power supply in the monitor. And the front-accessible memory slot reminds me of the Amiga 1000.

[@albear972]

I used this model of computer in high school back in 90. Before standardization, all computer manufacturers were sure doing crazy crap in those days with the proprietary BS. Especially IBM.

[@BCProgramming]

Re: Uninstallers, Before Windows 95 it was just a case of deleting the program group and deleting the install folder for the program, just like DOS. Very few programs stored any information in the Registry, which was only used for OLE.

[@vwestlife]

For some programs it was that simple, but a lot of Windows 3.1 programs added their own files to the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory and their own settings in the WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI files, thus deleting them would leave behind a lot of unneeded junk.

[@johna.6840]

I also managed to put Windows 3.1 on this and used the monitor to plug into another computer I remember it being very super slow to download a picture so if any amounts of pornography were on there the person had to be super patient or have another source it originated from ie. Floppy Drive, still amazing the progress technology has made from then to now and the fact that Windows even ran on something that was so slow and 2 megabytes of RAM