1992 Gateway 2000 4DX-33 Windows 3.1 computer

Review of a Gateway 2000 computer from 1992 with an Intel 486DX-33 processor, running DOS and Windows 3.1.

[@retroronin9587]

Always nice to check your subscriptions and see that vwestlife just uploaded a new video,

[@Autunite]

Retro Ronin Hey, I like your profile picture!

[@jimdayton8837]

Delightful Hardware His profile pic is Windows 95 / 98's My Computer icons and yours is Windows 2000/ME My computer icon :)

[@chmits8282]

can i save ur avatar Retro ronin

[@thereallantesh]

Back in the mid '90s my (at the time) roommate and I worked for a large company. He got a new PC, and was able to sign out his old PC, this same exact Gateway PC from your video, and bring it home. Our company allowed employees to bring home old equipment with the understanding that it still belonged to the company. You were responsible for it, and would eventually need to return it. At this time I was starting to become very interested in how computers worked, and one day I took the thing apart on the kitchen table. My roommate came home, and found me sitting there with the PC in pieces all over the table. He about had a heart attack, lol. This started a decades long PC tinkering and building hobby for me. So I'll always be fond of that old 486 Gateway.

[@EzeeLinux]

Oh, my. This was the first machine I ever used Windows 3.11 on! I went to work for a radio station that had these in the offices. Very cool to see one up and running again. Awesome. :)

[@z1power]

I remember using those 486-33's in high school. Soooooo painfully slow to do anything. The ones we used had 4MB of RAM and a Windows 3.1 install with just the 640x480 16 color driver. These were network-only machines with no hard drives for a swap file. They ran Netscape Navigator and it was the only avenue I had for accessing the web. It was a slow connection to begin with, graphics looked like hell in 16 colors and Navigator crashed constantly with General Protection Faults but it was the only way we could access this amazing new internet thing and we loved it.

[@compu85]

Our first family PC was the full height desktop version of this machine. I have many fond memories of playing Sim City 2000 on that machine :)

[@michaelmcneil2300]

This was my first computer! I was actually a long-time Gateway employee (started there in 1993). I remember this "low-profile" (referred to as "slim-line" in this video). Was a real workhorse, but was really a pain to do any work under the hood!

[@fenchurchmarie5224]

took me a while to find it, but got here.... these machines have a big place in my heart. thanks for showing it off! I'm from NW Iowa... I worked at the North Sioux HQ twice... in 1994, right about the time this machine was made. I was a UPS loader. We sent out at least 10 53-foot trailers of product every 4 hour "UPS shift". The 4MB *SIMMS* that were unloaded each morning had to have TWO Gateway minders to WATCH you cart them to the caged QA area. Each tray was at least 100k, for maybe 256MB of memory, and we got HUNDREDS of trays each day. crazy stuff. Second time was as a tech support rep at the Mexico building on the south end of the complex, 1997 for a few months. #1 best fix in 1997? "FDISK, format, and reload (windows)" it almost always worked! LOL Solid machines. Far, far too many I let slip thru my fingers over the years. GREAT CONTENT!

[@DanOConnorTech]

Great memories. I had a Gateway store near me in that period. It was slick, modern and full of people browsing Gateway products. Looking back, it reminds me of a current Apple or Sony Style store and seemed just as popular. I still have a '98 Pentium 3 Gateway running.

[@donovans.5241]

I have a lot of nostalgia for microsoft publisher. I remember playing around with it at my moms office when I was a kid. I had so much fun making brochures and websites that never got published! Lol

[@troublecluster]

Way back when during university I worked part-time at Gateway. What many of the techs and support folks would do would be to write ANY on that blank key on the Anykey Keyboard with a Sharpie. So, when you install something in Win 3.x or Win 9x and it asks you to "press any key to continue" you would then have an ANY key to press.

[@RattlecanGuitarRestorations]

Nice to see this still going. I worked at Gateway 2000 in '90-91 building systems like this.

[@rcald-gz5jd]

* VWestlife* This video was absolutely fantastic. I used to own a Gateway 2000 486SX-25 mini desktop / 4MB 72-pin DIMM / 170MB HDD / 14" CRT. The price paid was $1,495, if memory serves. It was purchased a gift for me by a family member while I was in high school. I later upgraded it to 8MB. This was truly phenomenal stroll down memory lane, and I thank you for that.

[@cantstandya112]

Brought back memories of my first pc at 9 years old: Gateway 2000 386 sx20 with 4mb ram, 80 my hd and 512k video and 32k cache. Good machine and painfully ran windows 95 version A at the end of its life in 1998. I think it's still my parents attic now that I think about it. Thanks for the video.

[@1912RamblerFan01]

I know I've commented on this video before, but I'm seeing it again four years later... This video brings back so many memories. I had pretty much the same exact computer as a kid (like 3-5 years old), which also ran Windows 3.1. I can remember playing around in Microsoft Paint and WordPad on it. I vividly remember the cow wallpaper. I received the computer a hand-me down from a cousin who purchased it new when she was in college. (It was setup in my grandparents house before I got it, but I was the one that used it the most when visiting.) It also had that exact keyboard, Gateway 2000 mouse and the original Gateway 2000 "Crystal Scan" color monitor. My dad never used a computer. So when I accidentally put the machine into MS-DOS mode, we couldn't figure out how to get it back to the Windows environment. (Remember, I was 3-5.) I wish I knew then what I know now. What was strange was even rebooting the machine wouldn't put it back into Windows, so maybe the autoexec.bat file was messed up or something else got messed up. After that, the machine was abandoned. We had that machine right up until we lost everything in a house fire. I hope to someday own one of those Gateway 2000 x486 systems again. They're not terribly special, but it holds a special place in my heart because it was the first computer I used. A few years later we'd get our first modern computer - a HP Pavilion running Windows Vista. It's a shame that Gateway is no more than a badge put on Acer's low-end budget computers anymore.

[@donovans.5241]

Really enjoy your videos. I first found your channel when I was upgrading my Tandy 1000 sx. I just bought a Gateway 2000 sx-33 and again, found this video so helpful. My gateway has the 3.5 floppy and a cd rom drive.

[@DVaEtc]

Man, you make finding old computers at thrift stores sound like a piece of cake!

[@pentiummmx2294]

i have usually just seen clothes, knick knacks and toys, not really much in electronics.

[@BlackEpyon]

Ever since they local Bottle Depot started taking electronics for recycling.... I barely find ANYTHING in the thrift stores.

[@Rivenworld]

Gateway, like Dell was fussy about the type of memory it used. Great video, took me right back, thanks for sharing...

[@mr.nobody6829]

Damn! a lot of keys on that board make me giddy.

[@xaenon]

Those keyboards were favored by a lot of people who made ANSI graphics, because most of the DOS programs that were used to make those graphics assigned the special characters to those keys. Having the keys grouped like they are on the left made it much easier to 'draw'.

[@PC_Tech76]

I had one of these back in the early 90s. The model that I bought was a 386sx-16mhz with 2mb of ram and a 40mb hard drive. It came with Dos 5.0 and Windows 3.0. The middle button between the arrow keys is actually a space bar key. I liked that keyboard so much that I still have it to this day.

[@choi13a]

I think Sierra On-line had a partnership with Gateway back in the day. Being a huge Sierra fan and InterAct magazine subscriber with a lowly IBM PS/1 286, 15 yo me never wanted anything as much as I wanted a Gateway 486. Memories man :)

[@redneckbryon]

Interesting fact, the 486-DX with the math coprocessor could actually run Windows 98, a friend of mine had one in the late nineties and we didn't experiment and actually ran Windows 98 fairly well with a 500 Meg hard drive and 20 megs of RAM.

[@jaykay18]

redneckbryon I have an old PS/ValuePoint tower decked out with a 486DX-66, 32MB RAM, 1.6GB HDD (using an overlay so it sees it), CD-ROM, sound card, etc, and yes it runs Windows 98. It will not run XP, that requires a Pentium processor for sure; I tried. If I recall correctly, you can force Windows 98 to run on a 386DX as well, despite the system requirements needing a 486. I have an old Compaq DeskPro somewhere I shoehorned it onto. I may have had to remove the hard drive and install Windows onto it on a more capable machine, but I cannot recall. Windows 95 won't run on a very early 386-16, the same DeskPro had it. I swapped a different processor onto the board to install it, then once installed I shut down and swapped back to the original processor and it ran!

[@vasileios6301]

+jaykay18 386sx is not true 32bit processor (like 386dx) thats why it cant run win95

[@vwestlife]

+Vasilios As The 386SX is fully 32-bit internally and actually can run Windows 95 just fine. Microsoft just didn't recommend it because it was slow.

[@vasileios6301]

+vwestlife 386sx has 16bit data bus so its not real 32bit. Same situation with motorola 68000,cant execute 32bit code. Those SXs which run win95 are with coprocessor installed

[@vasileios6301]

+vwestlife By the way I love your old computer videos! Here in Europe those years home computers dominated our homes and we hated pc's and macs :)

[@cndctrdjful]

Just picked up the 25mhz version of this. Such a cool machine. It's odd though that my processor is in a different spot than yours. Also no cache. Good video.

[@Sarkkoth]

Man I had this computer as a kid. Our computers really have come such a long way since then. Makes me wonder where our computers will be at in 20 more years.

[@JPX64Channel]

not so much improvement bcs of moore's law limit, but maybe there will be a replacement for the silicon

[@KK4CNM]

Oh man I had one of these! We also had a 386 25 that was a gateway, huge beast but lots of great memories

[@WaybackTECH]

Quite the personality this system has with the memory! Another wonderful fun thing with these older 486 system :) Just a few slight things I would like to add to the video.. The i486 DX50 was also typically installed without a fan also. Although IMO they probably needed it. Second, although I have not seen one of these era of Gateway 2000 machines for many years now ( I had a 4sx-33 once, fried the motherboard... long story :) ) but at least the P5 and later models, gateway placed similar date stickers on the components installed into the case, to the one found on the back of this unit. I have a P5-150 system, and everything ( except the ram ) has the same date stickers on all components. The crappy sound card installed was missing it, and I knew it was not original because of the lack of the gateway date sticker, and a different screw holding the card in than what was used with the rest of the expansion cards, so I added a SB16 which came out of a gateway 2000 system, as it had the same date sticker on it, just about a couple weeks different from the rest of the system which was interesting, given that I found it in a pile on a shelf. Third, if you have a EEPROM programmer, there are some opti 495 chipset bios files on the internet. I'd be happy to share the link with you if you ever felt like doing some BIOS flashing. What is fun with these old opti chipset motherboards is, many bios files for opti chipset motherboards will work with any opti chipset. I have ran a 495sx bios on a pentium socket 5 ISA/VLB/PCI motherboard, and because the bios lacked PCI support, that was the only part that didn't function. Whether they would fix the 512MB HD limit is another story though. Still is a fun thing to play with. Just make sure to back up the original bios file of course :)

[@ldchappell1]

It's funny how cool that stuff was in 1992 and 1993 and how utterly antiquated they seem now. I took computer classes in 1992 and learned most of that stuff. DOS, Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3. I remember one of instructors saying "Eight megabytes of RAM is the most you'll ever need."

[@1912RamblerFan01]

OMG! This is the first computer I ever owned, although it was a year newer.

[@deasttn]

+1912RamblerFan01 yes...my first computer was a gateway 4 2-50

[@jimthvac100]

I remember this computer for sale in the "Computer Shopper" Magazine I used to have a 486-66. This was a good machine back in the day

[@ilcool90]

Like your retro computer videos. Keep them coming.

[@FlintG]

I somewhat miss my old windows 3.1 machine that I used back in the 90s.

[@ESDI80]

I love the look of those old Gateway 2000 PCs. My 286-12 PC had random RAM errors like that and it was because the DRAM sockets were dirty and the solder connections from the sockets to the motherboard were dodgy. I cleaned the sockets and reflowed the solder and it works like new again. :-)

[@ocsrc]

That was a good machine. Having the on board video, serial, fdd,HDD, and 16 mb for then was good. And 5 expansion slots was really nice. Sound card, additional serial cards and modem and Ethernet

[@LaurentiusTriarius]

The blank key is supposed to be a second space bar but I'd rather paint it black and call it the black hole portal. That's what my brother did to his back in the days.

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

Aaah what a wonderful little computer! It's even got FM sound chip!!

[@kanopus06]

Very interesting video, brings me memories of my 2nd computer ever, a 486 with 4MB, and 120MB HDD, which was very fast with DOS and Win 3.1.

[@cosmickatamari]

So the tower version was the first computer I remember my grandma having. I remember she had 2 hdds, 3.5 and 5.25 drive in it running Windows 3.11 and Dos 6.22. It was awesome because she taught me how to use DOS and Windows one summer. I remember she told me she maxed out most of the specs on the machine and it was something insane like nearly 4k after the monitor and laserjet printer.

[@membrane5565]

I had one of these with the exact same case except it was a 286.

[@CraigTube]

I remember using that Voyetra software to record the tracks for few of my songs back in the early 90s. Those songs are some of my better ones as well. Of course I couldn't record audio with that computer, I had a 4 track cassette recorder.

[@askthecortex]

Great memories. That was the exact computer, same 340MB HDD but with 8MB RAM, that I was accused of stealing in high school. All the others had 4MB at most. It was the newest machine in the computer room and the teacher must have assumed I was one of the only kids to know which was the best computer. I could guess who was guilty but never found out for sure.

[@MontieMongoose]

We had a Gateway 2000 486 just like this. It was a very good computer, plus it was definitely an upgrade compared to our old 286.

[@AiOinc1]

I miss the good old days of computer towers that were taller than some people... I must find myself one for my Pentium 4HT!

[@SudosFTW]

I used to have one of these! mine came with a different package CPU on a board that plugged in, but it was an SX-33. mine was from 10/1993 so I guess it was a cost-cutting measure of some kind. I used it to get DOS on the internet with IRC back in 2008. it was awesome... and then I got cut by the case end.... yeah. I always will forever regret getting rid of it. Mine came with my current CT1740 in my Presario 433. not sure if it was an option or aftermarket orderable upgrade. I used an ET4000 in mine though, I didn't ever use the onboard video. that and an EtherExpress 8/16. mine also came with a 420MB WD drive of which I do still have. I also have the power supply from it as well. wow. Thanks for bringing back some memories. it's also good to note that the CT1740 is the only SB16 aside from a CT2230 that didn't have the stuck note bug most newer SB16's had parsing MIDI through the OPL3.

[@0zfer]

I have the exact same anykey keyboard. All the buttons on the keyboard can be completely reprogrammed with the record button. The preferable ones were the extra function keys since they didn't have any buttons assigned to them by default. All the macros are 100% stored on memory on the keyboard. This could pose a real issue since normal buttons can end up remapped by mistake or the memory can become corrupt after years on non-use. There is a key sequence you can press to reset the keyboard if that happens. Those keyboard were built like a battleship and were very sturdy and high quality. Many people continued to use it long after gateway 2000 because of the nice macro features not present on other introductory keyboards. I also have a dell system from around 2000 that happened to have a DVD card. It allowed the system with the card and software to play dvds on the computer using the hardware for acceleration. The add in card pretty much hard many components of the processing part of a normal dvd player and it used the video overlay connector like you showed to overlay the DVD to the system.

[@TH3G0D5]

Myself and my best friend played through Doom 2 on one of these back in the day. It was a great machine. Thanks for uploading.

[@S.PaulMentzer]

A Gateway 2000 tower with the 133mhz processor was our first computer. Windows 95 was available at that point though. I actually still have the original documentation folder and possibly the original cow pattern box. It came with such gems as "Flight Unlimited" and a Microsoft Sidewinder 3d pro joystick :D

[@YouSoSpice]

Looks beautiful. So slim.

[@psilimit]

This is pretty great as far as slimline 486s go. Only real downside is IF you need both the 5.25 floppy and cdron drive. Also, just get an eprom chip or card for newer HDDs or compact flash cards. Bonus if the built in bios supports shadowing. I definitely want one. Thanks for showcasing this gem!

[@pattyoneill91]

im 24. i remember this hardware from the deepest bowels of my memory lol... thankfully i got to see stuff like this in the days of windows 98. i was maybe 6 or 7 and my computer lab had all these old gateway 2000s that i would sneakily go in and tinker with! fascinated by those turbo buttons!!! i wish that you could have a turbo button to over clock your cpu with!! just press it and it would overclock the cpu to your preset values. hey man. try finding one of those old HP's!!! i forget what they look like... hey came with windows 95 though

[@HowlinAndyDE]

This is my childhood after the Amiga 500 :D

[@tamasvarga4867]

I wish I had my teenage years in the 90s and work with computers like these ones and get through the years of advancement from the few MHz era to the GHz era, through the 95, XP and things like that. I find the early 2000s and the 90s more interesting than these times.

[@nikolinaarvidsson8110]

Yup want a couple of 386 computers (a low end a mid range and a high end model) same for the 486 a pentium system and althlon xp system (which means dos win 98 and win XP

[@SMGJohn]

Damn that is old, they had Windows 2.1 on the school computers at the school I went to in the 90s, that was really ancient they did not see the necessity to upgrade LOL

[@fabian999ification]

I'm sorry for the late reply lol, but do you mean Windows 3.1? I've never heard of 2.1, but there is 2.03.

[@BallisticWrenchGarage]

I used to have one of these PCs. I loved the style of them.

[@MercedesCitarobusvideos]

Thank you vwestlife for uploading a vintage computer video!

[@jannevaatainen]

Seems like a great machine of the era, 486DX 33mhz was top notch in 1992/1993.

[@raydeen2k]

That whole SX/DX thing was one of the biggest scams ever. You'd buy the 486-SX and then eventually find that it just didn't cut the mustard, so then you'd buy the 487 chip not knowing that it was actually the chip you should have bought in the first place, so in the long run, you spent more for a machine that initially did less. There was a lot of f*ckery in the early 90's when it came to computers and peripherals. Like the time my brother-in-law bought was he thought was a stereo CD-ROM. He got a monophonic one. His dad, who knew something about wiring looked at it and realized swapping two wires on the output changed it from mono to stereo. Something that company expected the consumer to pay about $100 more for.

[@alkestos]

2022 here. Just passing by…

[@i_love_animes____likeaboss9661]

best gaming pc for fallout 4

[@fibersilkington]

+I̶_̶L̶O̶V̶E̶_̶A̶N̶I̶M̶E̶S̶ ____LIKE A BOSS fallout 4: 2d edition

[@i_love_animes____likeaboss9661]

:D actualy fallout 4 2D will be realy cool

[@i_love_animes____likeaboss9661]

something like sheltered maybe ?

[@SMGJohn]

Fun fact, it cannot even run Fallout 1

[@fatcat7msk7ru]

Nice old pc :) i loved to play Descent on one of those :)

[@BlackEpyon]

I remember drooling over these in Byte magazines.

[@charlesdorval394]

I know I'm late on this one but wow, Voyetra... I didn't even remember I knew that name! They made the sequencer program that came with the ATI Stereo/FX sound card, yes, they once made a sound card back when they we're Canadian I wish I had kept that one, I bought it new in box when I was a kid, I think it was the first hardware I actually bought. anyhoo, Thanks for the memories!

[@daveb5041]

The blank key is the "anykey" When it says "Press anykey to continue" you pressed that one. Sound blaster came with it.

[@Nico93]

I really wish i had such a computer to play games with.

[@kipkennedy6464]

Usually a few memory tests do get that coming up. As far as I remember a few older dell PCs did do that. This was about the time when a separate test for created for the VRAM (or the video RAM). VRAM tests used to do this color thingie on the screen and has now been standardized to show vertical and horizontal lines and asks you for a response. 1. Check the VGA cable (assuming you are not using DVI because of the computer you are using). You might have a bent or a broken pin on the connector from the monitor. Usually a bent or a broken pin can cause such a thing to happen. 2. If no go : try the gateway with a different monitor. I presume this was the same monitor you used with the Compaq upgrade machine. In that case the monitor is fine : it has to be the built in VGA adapter. 3. Sadly there is nothing to do about an integrated VGA adapter gone bad. If your BIOS supports it , however, you can add a Video card in an ISI slot. You need a half height video card . www.edu.pe.ca/kish/grassroots/hardwarefinal/pics/videomother.jpg (extreme right). Where you are going to source a half height ISI Video card now will be an interesting find. www.ebay.co.uk/sch/ISA-Slot-Video-Cards/27386/bn_618815/i.html Here is a start. I believe I saw a WD one too. Checked the gateway website : us.gateway.com/gw/en/US/content/drivers-downloads No go. Despite the DX series being listed. Besides : Not sure if you have a floppy version and not sure if Winzip was available for Win 3.1 for zip file download. I hope your dos skills are upto scratch for copying the same to a floppy. 4. Check for your BIOS update here: www.wimsbios.com/biosupdates/gateway.jsp SCRATCH THAT. EVERYTHING IS FINE.

[@wysoft]

a friend of mine had the slightly taller DX2/66 version. I played Warcraft for the first time on that machine.

[@isaacwright2247]

What a cool keyboard, it is unusual.

[@VintageElectronicsGeek]

I had a pair of GW2K towers....dont recall them being at 486 speeds, thought higher...ran them as servers for about 5 years...they did ok for what they were...

[@willptech7565]

My school still has the original monitor and computer!

[@soup_6463]

My woodshop teacher has one of theese... With the monitor and a keyboard and a mouse with the ball.

[@JCTsFascinatingHobbies]

That takes me back, the 'Intel Overdrive' socket, or the 'P24T' socket. I seem to remember, reading reviews of the overdrive CPUs, as there had been quite a long wait for them. The general consensus, due to falling prices, was to buy a Pentium :)!

[@Alex4SiliconValley]

I bought an almost identical spec custom built computer in 1992 for $2400 ( My first computer ). Back then 1mb ( megabyte of ram ) cost $100

[@raffiglen1796]

The turbo button actually slows down the computer for use with games designed for the original 8086/8088 computers. If you tried to run those games on a newer computer, they'd run a mile a minute. Therefore, they had to put that turbo button on newer PCs to slow it down to the original 4.77 MHz to run those games at the proper speed. At least... I think that's how it works.

[@vwestlife]

You were watching LGR, right? Sorry, but he got it wrong. Most turbo buttons make the computer run at full speed when they are pushed in. When the button is disengaged (not pushed in) then it slows down the computer. You can always tell by the turbo LED, if the computer has one -- if it's lit, then it's running at full speed. Some turbo buttons may have functioned the opposite way, but that was definitely not the norm.

[@raffiglen1796]

I actually got the info from a friend, not the internet. Chances are that he himself got it from a poor source, though. Oh well. It does make more sense for turbo to make things, well, turbo. lol

[@Elfnetdesigns]

The Power Tronics, TK-4230De was an AT PSU rated at 200 watts. The 486 based machines of this era could take an Over Drive Co-Processor (ODCP) The 80386 series CPUs also offered an external 80387 math Co-Processor socket on board. That series of gateway did use parity RAM. That's why your other RAM fails. i have a few of these 486 gateways and some other breeds in my storage closet, some have ODCP's installed, with proper parity RAM up to 16Mb, and some have the pentium upgrade socket kit for the Pentium 1 - 75 MHz

[@ConnerRhoads]

Gateways did not come with Soundblasters. That card in there was an addon.

[@ocsrc]

That was like 6000 dollars in today's money. There wasn't very many people that had one of these in their home It really was the upper class and the very upper middle class that owned these just like the VHS recorders back in the early 80s that cost about $6,000 in today's money. Minimum wage was $3 an hour so most people were taking home $100 a week from their job after taxes so this was over a year's salary just like the original 1980 I believe it was either 80 or 81 that the first VHS recorders came out and they didn't have a wireless remote they had a plug-in wire and the remote had play stop fast forward rewind and I think there might have been one other function on the cable and the cable was 25 ft long or 20 ft long something like that but back then minimum wage was $2 an hour and the average person bringing home 60 bucks a week 3000 a year, VHS recorder cost 2000 Even in the mid-80s they were still around $1,000 The first video rental store they had about 50 regular movies out front and again minimum wage $2 an hour and the cost to rent the movie for a night was $3 which would be like $10 now and you had to either give them a credit card that they would put a $300 hold on or if you didn't have a credit card you needed to give them $300 which $50 was the fee for a membership and $250 was the deposit insurance to make sure that you didn't keep the videos And it was all upper class people that were in there renting videos and it was hysterical because out front like I said there were about 50 videos in the front half of the store and they were spaced quite a distance apart because there was a lot of shelf space and very few videos and then the back half of the store there was beads where the doorway was and signs all up both sides of the doorway and over the doorway in huge writing that said you must be 21 adults only and when you went back the back half of the store was adult videos and they had about 200 adult videos which was huge for that period of time. And you could rent two regular videos and one adult video if you had a credit card on file or you could rent two adult videos but you couldn't rent two adult videos and a regular video or three regular videos but they did allow you to rent two regular videos and an adult video and the reason why they did that was because the father would come in and the mother and the child or children usually there was just one child they would go and they would pick out a Disney movie or an animated movie and they would pick out a regular PG movie and then the dad would sneak back and grab one of the little circular tags off the posts from the adult back room That was how they did it back then they had those little round tags that had metal around the edge and like cardboard a thick paper on the inside and it had a little hole at the top and they would write the number on the tag so the box for the movie would be permanently on the shelf and underneath it would be a little hook where the tag would go with the number and the number would be on a tag on the box so you know you got the right number but the box stayed on the shelf and then they had the VHS tape behind the counter and the adult tapes all the tags had an A before the number. Those were the days but it was something that the upper class had that the middle class and lower class really didn't have or had to save up for a year or two to get They did have two VHS players that they would rent to you for a weekend and it was $50 to rent the player and that included two adult rentals for 2 days That was the college kids rental package for the kids that they couldn't afford to buy a VHS so they would get 10 kids together and they each chip in $5 and then they'd have a stag party. I'll tell you it is amazing to see history because I remember when most people had an 8 mm movie projector or a 16 mm but I think they were mostly 8 mm and it was pretty much a underground type of thing that somebody would go to New York City and they would buy an adult film or the local film shops that every town had where you would go to get your film developed and where you would buy your new film and your flash cubes they would develop the private home movies that people made using the 8mm cameras And before the Polaroid camera which the Polaroid camera was a revolution in people's love lives You had some people that were skilled in developing film and they would usually take photos of their partners and then you had a few brave people that would bring their intimate film to be developed at the local camera shop but for the most part most people didn't do that. But when Polaroid came out oh my God there was a mad dash of guys to buy these cameras and they would take the photos and it was the first time that you literally could take a photo and within a couple minutes have that photo to actually see what you had taken without having to go and spend hours or days waiting for it to be developed And there were guys that were promiscuous that would have 300 one night stands a year and they would take photos with the Polaroid of their conquests and it's amazing but it's also very sad if you come across one of these collections because most of the people in the photos are dead and usually it's when the person dies that the family or if it was somebody you knew or if it's in a place where the person didn't have much of anything and it wasn't assisted living but it was welfare living and they would have shoe boxes and you'd be cleaning out their apartments throwing everything out into the dumpster and you'd come across the shoe boxes and you'd see all of these Polaroids and the guy would be in most of them and it was a capture of a period of time in history that was frozen that you were looking at this piece of History that is unlike anything else and the digital photos don't have the same feel as the Polaroids do. I remember in 95 I think it was that the first HP digital camera maybe it was 94 it was $350 which was a couple weeks pay but it was something people could buy and people did start buying these cameras and the rest is history as they say It's really funny because I remember those early days and I remember everybody and their brother taking photos of themselves and their girlfriends and their wives and they would post them online and it was a big thing for a while and then I don't remember exactly when but there was a huge backlash that swelled up at some point after 2002 When you look at the dates on the photos you see right around 99 to about 2005 that's when all of these photos were widespread and then you see there's not very many after 2005 it's like people stopped posting them and I actually think that's what happened I think there might have been a law or something that got passed Up until that point if you had taken the photo you owned the photo but the law changed and even if you take the photos now you don't own them and you don't have the right to publish anything or post anything without having the release of everyone in the photos And for adult photos I think you need a lot more than just a release I think there's a whole bunch of documents that have to be filled out and that came about because of Cameron Diaz because she did adult work in order to pay the bills before she became famous and one of the guys that paid her when she was nobody went back to her when she became famous and said I'm going to sell these to Hustler and they're willing to pay me x amount of dollars and if you pay me that same amount I'll sell them back to you and she went to the FBI and I couldn't believe that they arrested the guy and then he was convicted and I was like she signed the release he had a copy of her driver's license and clearly he took the photos and he had the check he paid her and she had done the work and gotten paid in a contract and he got arrested and I think he got 20 years and he's still in prison and that was a shockwave and I think that was right around the time that people stopped posting online

[@NJRoadfan]

Parity SIMMs are easy to spot, they have an odd amount of DRAM chips on them. The board in that machine is likely a Micronics, the spec sheets are online to confirm the memory requirements.

[@vwestlife]

NJRoadfan It has the "Anigma" motherboard: webpages.charter.net/dperr/micronics/anigma.htm#Q1

[@NJRoadfan]

vwestlife Weird that a 486 system would enforce memory in pairs, the bus is only 32-bits wide. There also appears to be a parity jumper.

[@liammusgrove6334]

That screen at the beginning was scary yet funny lol

[@prismstudios001]

Corrupted? No. You,Sir have hit the Matrix! Neat channel, just subbed!

[@jamiemarchant]

Nice little computer.

[@ponysoftonline4533]

I have a Gateway TB3 tower for my main computer but iv'e always wanted to own a Gateway 2000

[@HailAnts]

Jeez, that could have been my PC! The mini desktop case was a bitch to work with! I both upgraded the cache (ordered chips from Gateway) and upped the BIOS for a bigger hard drive. Eventually replaced the 5.25" with a CD-ROM. The memory did have to be parity (I think maybe until I upgraded the BIOS). Had that PC for years! Finally got my first Pentium class after it (a Cyrix 586 I think).

[@Nexfero]

that's the kind of PC i used in primary school. To bad modern PCs dont come with 240 watt power supplies :(

[@daveb5041]

Computers were so slow back then: Now I have a gateway 486DX2 with 66 MHZ and its twice as fast as that one.Mine has a 14.4 kbs modem for going on the internet. Still havent filled up the hard drive.

[@AnhDuong-vt6is]

I have computer pentium II running win3.1. I love it

[@pentiummmx2294]

I have a pentium 133 mhz pc, and that's my only pc! I had a dell, but it died after a couple months from bad nichicon capacitors

[@tylerlapointe3477]

I have an old gateway gp6-350 with a pentium 2 processor at 350 MHz. But the power supply is only 90 watts. You said that most computers came with 150-250 watt power supply's, this one only has 90 and this pc runs windows 98. So it's more power hungry but has a much smaller power supply.

[@vwestlife]

Make sure you're looking at the total DC output wattage, not the AC input wattage or the wattage of just one of the DC voltages.

[@tylerlapointe3477]

VWestlife I did and it only has a pentium 2 in the machine so it would be a waste of power to put in a 150-200 watt power supply in a machine that only needs about 60-80 watts of power. I doubt that the power supply in that computer is 230 watts. That CPU probably only takes 5 or so watts so to me that doesn't make sense. But anyway if you find this as hate it is not. Love your content.

[@gencreeper6476]

why does it seem like none of these old PCs processors have to have big coolers or heatsinks like ones today

[@vwestlife]

Because they didn't get hot enough to need a heatsink.

[@IIIJFRIII]

I hope Gateway returns one day and makes there FX gaming rigs again. They really were great computers for what you payed for them. Now they are low to middle end computers only since acer brought them :(. They were a damn good brand. If they came back I would buy them over alienware crap any day.

[@nikolinaarvidsson8110]

BTW make them in a retro style of a case and 420?/69/1337 cases

[@ct1660]

That center button where the arrow keys are at, would have been for the turbo, if it supported it.

[@vwestlife]

I believe that "turbo" key in the middle of the arrow keys just makes them repeat faster, thus making the cursor move faster across the screen. It has nothing to do with the system's CPU speed.

[@Nookdashiddole]

ur vids are cool. nice machine the 486dx kicked ass. subbed ya mate

[@realknoxvegas]

I like how the pamphlet was very 90's with the overuse of the word "cool"

[@Kundalini12]

Windows 3.1 nostalgia

[@MagicFerret69]

Great video dude .i always enjoy them

[@bdlazarus]

The video corruption looks like something that would happen to someones computer that was haunted in a movie.

[@HMods1991]

I have all the manuals, software, and keys too

[@SuperMoleRetro]

Very cool. I have the same machine!

[@Full-stack33]

It's a shame it's hard to find PC cases of a similar Form Factor these days.

[@alynicholls3230]

one of my old gateways liked ecc ram, it didn't have to be all ecc, but you had to have ecc ram in the first slot. i had to make do with 24 megs even though i did have a 32meg "kit", as the only ecc ram i had is what came with it 2 4m simms. an older machine i had used "parity" 30 pin simms, i always thought they looked weird with that extra chip in the middle of the simm.

[@tomgood4291]

You can buy converters so the keyboard can be used on usb

[@HMods1991]

I have a stockpile of Gateway 2000s from this time period Including one of these slimlines which may or may not work I haven't tested it in years. All the rest are the medium-sized desktops and I have them ranging from low end 486 to 75 MHz Pentiums... I can't remember exactly how many I have but it's over 10 if you're interested contact me

[@GeekyGarden]

My second computer after the Tandy 1000 HX. :-D

[@connorm955]

I saw that same error on UXWBill's Dimension B110 video