2002 Time ICEDESK Desk PC Restoration & Exploration

[@paszTube]

Found a windows desktop on the side of the road once. It did not power on but I connected the hard drive to my own computer and found out that the machine belonged to a small business in my town. There was administration stuff, shop inventory lists and even a few shady looking scanned handwritten loan agreements for quite large sums of money. I burned the contents of the drive to a DVD, wiped the hard drive, dropped the DVD in the letterbox of the business with a note that “even if the computer doesn’t start up, the drives might still work fine so don’t dump it on the streets”…

[@Wasmachineman]

lmfao

[@1993MAZDAMIATA]

😂

[@JessicaFEREM]

yup. always zero out or physically destroy hard drives.

[@paszTube]

@@JessicaFEREM it’s not something a non computer savvy person would do, or know how to do.

[@nickwallette6201]

A good lesson in security, but that "awareness" has led to an endemic -- the knee-jerk destruction of perfectly good hardware. Like when you go to a place that sells used computers, and you get an OEM system with no hard drive at all. What are you supposed to do about the bespoke drivers now? It would have been nice if the computing industry had made it a point to focus on proper recycling procedures. Encourage local computer shops to offer offboarding as a service, and raise awareness that this is something you should do. Like taking an old car battery to an auto parts dealer or battery retailer instead of throwing it in the dump. If it were free or nearly so, and the old machine could be sold used afterward, it would benefit everyone to have the shop, who are qualified to know what to do with it, image the restore partition (e.g.), wipe the drive, reload the partition, restore the OS, and then put in on the secondhand market, _usable_ and secure.

[@Anaerin]

The "Password is blank" prompt you were getting was *after* you blanked the password - you can see at 11:00 after you make the selection "1" the message "Password cleared!", followed by the user edit menu again, this time with a note the password is blank.

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

what are the odds of that one🤣🤣

[@rigues]

Those gradient title bars on Win98/2K/Me were really nifty. I wish there was something like that on modern OSes, I'm getting tired of today's flat/colorless designs.

[@DaveVelociraptor]

Zone Alarm, Symantec...I had forgotten all about those type of utilities. I don't miss them

[@Vanessaira-Retro]

Indeed

[@AerinRavage]

Can either of you recommend a modern replacement for ZoneAlarm? I loved the simple way it secured outbound connections by just prompting every unknown attempt.

[@nickwallette6201]

Zone Alarm. I remember dealing with that beast as a young ISP help desk tech. The number of people who heard they should have a software firewall, but had _absolutely no idea how to use it_ made for a fun time. It usually took a while of blindly troubleshooting before you even got some kind of clue that something like that had been installed. Eventually, I learned what the tray icon looked like, and could ask up front when the symptoms matched. I didn't even know what to tell people like that. Just disable it, or uninstall it. Yes, that means you aren't getting the protection it offered. No, there's no easy way to have your cake and eat it too. Either learn what an IP, protocol, port tuple is and how to write policies that use them, or go without. There's really no middle ground.

[@TheBasementChannel]

A powerbook duo I picked up recently was full of Symantec files from the 90s. Owned by a marketing person I think. I had to google them to be reminded what they did 😅.

[@absalomdraconis]

​@@nickwallette6201: "... write policies that use them ..." is nonsense advice, that is something that config tools should walk you through, particularly since they can be written to do the verification before you try to apply the policies. Expecting it to be hand-written isn't minimalism, it's primitivism, and primitivism is very unproductive.

[@Rockythefishman]

Zone alarm used to be a must have in the office around that time. Crazy how much has changed and how much has stayed the same

[@gfdggdfgdgf]

Easiest solution is window blinds with a classic theme, better but more complicated is a classic theme hack

[@Auxodium]

Windows 2000 for me back in the day was never that slow. I loved it and had it as my OS until late XP era.

[@k6kaysix675]

This brought back memories and I'm glad you included the lawsuit at the end as I actually used to work in education IT so was instantly thinking of how similar it looked to the several hundred iDesk computers I used to support back in the day! For the time it was actually quite a neat and innovative solution for a classroom or community site but we ended up spending so much time and money on replacing the (rather proprietary) power supplies after a few years that we ended up just keeping the tables and ditching the slide in PCs!

[@VideoEnjoyer-m3z]

The reason it's telling you, you have blank passwords, is probably because (as a W2K machine), this was more than likely connected to a Windows Server / LAN / Novell environment that managed all the identities. Given that this was a council system (and not a home system), that would be my guess.

[@wimwiddershins]

Jean, Jean Built a machine. Joe, Joe Made it go. Art, Art Did a fart, and blew the whole damn thing apart.

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

Boo Urns Boo Urns!!!🤣🤣

[@Bjerrk]

Rees Rees did a sneeze ... ?

[@kellingc]

ICEDESK Intergrated Computing Environment desk, may be? The eventvwr will have some usefull info about what was running and what was being done. The security logs can give a nice snapshot.

[@Garoninja]

I would like to see the overclocking with a pencil trick. I've heard about it but never seen it

[@e1woqf]

Me too!

[@MacMelmac]

Heard about it but never believed it, please do,

[@RetroTinkerer]

​@@MacMelmacwhy not? You can test the conductivity of a thick layer of pencil graphite on top of a paper, you are bridging a very small distance and it worked on ceramic CPUs from AMD, the later ones have an small gap that need to be filled with non conductive material like epoxy before you can bridge these contacts.

[@absalomdraconis]

​@@MacMelmac: It was real, but dependant on details of the packaging. If they'd packaged the CPUs differently, then it never would have worked.

[@CotyRiddle]

if you do overclock get a better heatsink. them old athlons and durons loved to get stupid hot. Had a athlon xp back in the day and the ac went out in the apartment came home from school with the cpu fan literally melted to the heatsink and the heatsink was hanging off the socket. yup that was not fun explaining to my dad that it jest cooked it's self.

[@nickwallette6201]

It never occurred to me that there's a "correct" way up for USB ports. It's a 50/50 chance, so you will almost always get it right on the third try.

[@animalyze7120]

Except you know that there's always that one twit still flipping it around and swearing 20 years later about that usb drive that won't go in lol

[@Dutch3DMaster]

Or push a USB plug in the RJ45 connector :D

[@nickwallette6201]

@@Dutch3DMaster I will neither confirm nor deny that I have done this countless times.

[@MagikGimp]

I have strong nostalgia for old Time shops. Something about the obfuscation of reading the tech blurbs and small print but not understanding the architecture of the PC back then combined with the visual thrill of rows of brand new machines at gradually increasing price points. I don't think I'm selling it as well as the guys hoped they were back then but I loved just browsing as a kid.

[@datassetteuser356]

Nice. If they had included the speakers into the desk as well, that would have been nearly perfect. Anyway, fascinating stuff.

[@MimiWhiskers]

Haha, I like how the computer slides out like a component. reminds me of those Macintosh LC's from the 90's, how the Mainboard slides out of the back. Though from the looks of it, you might be able to replace that motherboard with a one that supports a modern APU. Then you can play some Doom Eternal on it haha.

[@MxArgent]

It's funny, trying to integrate a computer into a desk is a surprisingly '70s idea. (Takes me back to Tandy briefly licensing a ADDS workstation design, to be exact)

[@MarkTheMorose]

Trying to get a patent for putting a fairly standard PC in a desk sounds pretty thin. It's hardly innovative, and invents nothing new. Bizarre why a patent was even pending. I expect they got more money from the court case than they ever got selling PCs in a desk.

[@MxArgent]

@@MarkTheMorose Yeah, it's a really unwieldy form factor - especially for what's otherwise a pretty standard ATX machine. Almost seems like a solution without a problem.

[@IkarusKommt]

@@MxArgent That's very convenient, though.

[@jon-paulgrainger1303]

Used to use a TIME machine back in the day, fond memories playing Lara Croft on that machine still have the Microsoft mouse branded by TIME too👍.

[@neck_acrobatics]

Good job on the thermal paste application, just the right amount. 👍

[@douglasdjcosta]

Windows 2000 is wonderful, even today! It is the base of Windows XP as well as its Kernel. This machine with an SD or SSD runs Windows 2000 and has maximum memory as well. I loved this PC architecture, a great idea for assembling other hardware in this same Table-PC scheme

[@nickwallette6201]

Just the other day I was working on a Pentium 4 that shipped with Win2K. I'm pretty sure that was the first time I've ever actually seen the Windows 2000 CD Player app despite using that OS when it was contemporary. I certainly remember using the old CD Player that shipped with Windows 95, and would've assumed that's what would've been in Win2K, if anything other than Windows Media Player existed. But by 2000, I had completely abandoned everything but WinAmp, so not once did I ever run the plain old audio CD player application. That's so weird (I used to try everything in a new OS!) that it almost feels like it was slipped in posthumously.

[@weaselsworld]

The capacitor plague wasn't a "manufacturing issue", it was repeated inept theft of the formula that somebody thought they could get rich off, by undercutting the entire industry with their component instead. Foxconn, Gigabyte, Asus and many other big name manufacturers bought them up like candy, then just about went bankrupt trying to address the failures a year (and often less!) later. Even Dell was brought low by the issue, but they thought they'd just pretend there wasn't an issue at all in the first place to their customers, so they got slapped with big ole class-action lawsuit.

[@garthhowe297]

That was a brilliant solution for an office environment, even if they stole the idea.

[@jjohnson71958]

nice table pc setup bro

[@kalark]

What a cool old desk pc! Great video, subscribed :)

[@karim2k]

The golden era of coupmuters when machines were fun and unique

[@JamesHalfHorse]

Once you have your fun as is you can beef it up and have a gaming pc desk people spend thousands for what little you have in it now. As a bonus it will probably be the only retro sleeper one out there. Least this is the first I have seen one that is in between mini computer console of the 70s and the very few metal and glass gaming desks I have seen out there most of which are fairly recent creations. It would not feel out of place in the retro world or modern gaming world.. or a totally awesome editing rig.

[@VeryWarmBear1]

Did you backup the drivers?

[@RetroSegaDev]

Zone alarm sheesh it's been a while since I've heard that name! 2004 was the year I graduated. I remember using Windows 2000 between 2000/2001 and then shifting to Windows XP 😀

[@WhatHoSnorkers]

Cracking update!

[@TheSudsy]

windows 2000 was an excellent Windows and I only went to XP when support stopped.

[@Mrshoujo]

Win2K is a kludge. It fricked up external hard drives & the occasional USB drive. Noone should be using it.

[@lmaoroflcopter]

Given they were released within a year of each other, not really that much difference.

[@luke9511]

if the old disc drive has any caps on it try replacing them to see if that does anything

[@fredflintstone4558]

I used to go to various computer fairs in and around Manchester in the 1990s and there was always a reseller stand selling Time computers which had been returned as faulty. They had bought them from time and repaired them and then sold them at the computer fairs. There must have been some sort of clause in their purchase agreement with Time Computers that they weren't allowed to sell these repaired machines under the time Brand, so they rebranded them all... as EMIT 😂😂

[@AbooSulaymaan]

EMIT was the name of the shop that sold returned Time hardware. The shop was based in the same industrial park as the manufacturing plant. It is now based in Blackburn. I used to frequent EMIT to buy "bargains" which often didn't work...but it wasn't a problem as you could easily return and get a replacement...and then try again 😂

[@RetroBytesUK]

It's been a very long time since I've had to reset a NT workstations password. In the past I've spent many an hour using that Linux tool to reset lost passwords, for those who used local users and did not have a domain.

[@kpanic23]

Still works with Windows 10/11 ;) Well, at least for local accounts.

[@krumpetwithhoney8567]

I would love to see you try and over-clock with a pencil!! I very much remember when that was a thing. I thought it was only on Athlons though, but am happy to be corrected. I do belive they added an extra coating on later chips to prevent this, but that could also be curicumvented with a knife. But this is just based on memories from 20+ years ago. I'd rather wait for you to do it in a video, than to spoil it for myself by checking the facts ;-)

[@shamon351]

7:40 You could maybe take the front of the non-functionnal CDROM drive and put it on the cerrect one. It may be compatible

[@stavinaircaeruleum2275]

I wonder if it could be a candidate for a sleeper build.

[@RealEpikCartfrenYT]

i would've trashed that ancient motherboard and put in a reasonably modern one, basically upcycling the whole desk PC and ACTUALLY making it usable in 2024. That IceDesk is just ASKING to be a sleeper

[@TranscendentalAirwaves]

Nice mousepad!

[@GroupNebula563]

game child spotted, instant sub

[@WinrichNaujoks]

Ahhh no before/after fan noise?

[@willaimkazer9754]

If companies didn't sue, we might have more nice things in the world. Thet is a nice configuration that you can probably install a modern system into. It right now fall apart either. I hate snubs that do things like that. Oh, it is good practice to remove the hard drive or other media source from the PC when you get rid of it.

[@dozern]

Service Pack 6a was for NT4. Showing your (and, well, my) age here :) Win 2000 had SP4 as the latest official one.

[@xnonsuchx]

It looks like that mobo supports up to an Athlon XP 2600+ (and 1GB RAM…I forget what it already has) if you really wanted to max spec it.

[@aaroncheah2088]

Should be easy to recreate the desk now with an IKEA Micke or Alex desks plus a micro enterprise desktop. A single 3' desk can house multiple micro desktops, each running a different OS with a single monitor, keyboard and mouse controlled by a KVM.

[@twinshobbytwinshobby3863]

Awesome PC !

[@fattomandeibu]

I'd be worried about accidentally kneeing right under the motherboard when standing up or something. It's not like I knee my computer desk all the time or owt, but with my luck it would definitely be the case on the occasion I did knee the desk by accident, it'd totally go right for the motherboard.

[@Mrshoujo]

If it's got Win 2K, it'll easily run WinXP & I recommend you put it on there. Hopefully you can upgrade the RAM.

[@FamousWorker]

Hi, does this pc have any Time oem files? such as themes or anything? because I am aware some older time pcs did come with those. Edit: I am asking because I am trying to catalog as much Time related things as I can, I do own a time desktop.

[@JenniferinIllinois]

Oh man, ZoneAlarm and Symantec Antivirus. Welcome to Y2K!. Looks like I was calling Jean Gene by mistake. Oops! I feel like we know more about Jean than we should. 🤣🤣🤣

[@TheRealCheesemaker]

"Hello, 'Steeeve'! I've got your 'boring' pictures here... and some that are not quite so boring. I'd be happy to send them over, but happier to have some sort of exchange..."

[@pandacongolais]

Didn't you notice that USB ports are always upside down ? Or three sided : the right one, not working, the wrong one, not working, then the right one, working !

[@comedyhunter]

01:39 there is a wrong way?

[@chadmasta5]

Yep. The solid piece (white for usb 2.0, blue for usb3.0 etc) should be on top. That way it matches the male connector's right side up. On male usb connectors the usb symbol is either printed or embossed on what is supposed to be the top. There are also 2 squares on the metal part of the male connector indicating the top. Some cheaper cables are manufactured upside down but for the most part that's how you can tell which way is correct at a glance.

[@comedyhunter]

@@chadmasta5 yes I have noticed its not consistent, guess not all manufactures are following the same standards.

[@AdaptiveSystems]

wonder if it was signed up t o supanet?

[@chad2787]

It looks like a PCChips BookPC inserted into a desk. These machines would have been sold with an OEM copy of Windows or an image customized by the vendor.

[@woodand]

how strange !.. how can you get a patent for bolting a PC and monitor to a desk ? I might patent my idea of screwing a toaster to a table and calling it an integrated breakfast environment !

[@christophercox6092]

why these weren't commonplace in offices is incredible. tidy cables, computer in a convenient place. pretty easy to maintain. No brainer. Did the lawsuit just kill the whole concept altogether?

[@nickwallette6201]

No, just IT departments. Dell is cheap, and you can buy a thousand of _exactly_ the same platform. And, the support contract is king. White-box and small-run custom retailers never stood a chance.

[@Ragnar8504]

I'm not 100% sold on that idea. How long was a PC useful in that era? Five years maybe, if that? And how long does a desk usually last in an office? I think the desks at the place where I work are mostly from the late 90s when the place was built.

[@danielktdoranie]

Second channel?

[@thiesenf]

Så it's not a desktop computer... it's a desk... uhm... under... deskunder... perfect... :-)

[@dsallen7914]

There's very little info about this thing out there. Your video and a few articles talking about it are the only things that turn up on Google.

[@TheBasementChannel]

Weird content for this solar channel. But I’ll take it.

[@fra4455]

Great✌

[@xenocide2121]

how you gonna recap the motherboard but not the psu with the very same plague caps in it...

[@franksmith53]

Great machine but personally when it comes to time and tiny computers I'd rather change the motherboard and possibly PSU

[@BurkenProductions]

There is no such thing as upside down usb ports. You still have to turn the cable 5 times before it fits anyway.

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

5:54 But there's only one available pattern on a bare die CPU....

[@BurkenProductions]

Nice network you got... double 69's :D

[@restinpeace-s8c]

ice likely comes from the white and silver coloring

[@booleanBoy]

I guess you must have spent more money on the fans than you did the system :)

[@faumnamara5181]

The original owner council has broken the law I guess letting that pc escape with data.... We have to have a 3rd party destroy data and clear drives these days

[@RyanMercer]

Stop. Police.

[@yogibear2k220]

I do not understand why you went through all that pas-wordy stuff. Personally, I would of just wiped it completely and put a fresh version of windows on it straight away. Still, I was pleased to hear some proper music on it when you tested out that DVD Burner! It's a shame that you never asked them what ICE stood for!

[@animalyze7120]

You would choke to know what some folks have stored on the hard drives they sell or donate. Just be careful, innocent as it may be to find or buy a used drive you can be held accountable if there is some illegal stuff on them. I generally don't bother with it anymore as prices for drives has become ridiculously cheap.

[@JohnMintyTech]

Every time I buy a second hand computer (a rare moment), I blank the disk and install my own os before using it.

[@andycristea]

Windows 2000 is not slow lol. There is something wrong with your machine. It should be super fast on an Athlon.

[@TheFluffyFreak]

If you see a stock speed AMD cpu of that generation you are required to overclock it, it's a moral obligation :D

[@1993MAZDAMIATA]

Ha what are the odds that in your discord with only a couple of people has some ex employees of this company haha. Small world for sure😂

[@natejgee]

That 52x drive would have been an upgrade done to the machine at some point and I agree that the USB ports were inverted during said upgrade.

[@allis0]

It is infuriating that people have the cheek to try to patent something as trivial and obvious as integrating a PC into a desk.

[@Aeduo]

Considering it was working with blown capacitors, you probably have a fair bit of headroom for overclocking.

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Very cool... well minus win2k XP FOR EVER!!

[@BurkenProductions]

You put on the themal compound wrong, there's NO pattern you put it on. you put a little on then smear it out to cover the entire heatsink. If the layer is too thick, which most of the 2000+ noobs do, it's will cause the cpu to be too hot and not work properly at all.

[@tubeDude48]

Once again, it proves people are stupid leaving data on a computer!

[@bobweiram6321]

Apple was the only one actually innovating anything. The rest of the PC industry struggled to differentiate an otherwise boring sheetmetal box.

[@IkarusKommt]

By making weird, unexpandable, repair-hostile designs? No thanks.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@IkarusKommt That wasn't always Apple's MO. Sometimes upgradeability wasn't the _primary_ concern (e.g., the iMac or Mac Mini series in general), but TBF, the "typical" consumer never or rarely altered a computer once purchased anyway, so catering to that crowd made a lot of sense. But to the OP's point... I was a die-hard PC fan back then. But even I had to stop and admire the G4 Cube when they set one up on an end-cap at a local CompUSA. It was beautiful, as was OS X, it was connected to a (then-new) gorgeous LCD flat-panel display, and it just seemed to handle media with no effort whatsoever. Contrast that to the PC isles, where you might be standing in front of a beige Compaq with its bulbous plastic looking like it was a snake that had reared up and was about to strike at you. It would be running Windows 2000, chugging and grinding the hard disk to do anything at all, and flickering away on an enormous CRT set to 60Hz refresh. I wasn't about to jump ship, but boy did it make me question a few things...