'90s Desktops - Teardown, Test and Turmoil

[@angryshoebox]

The 8-bit Guy might've taken a tech support call for that very AST computer back in the day.

[@fridaycaliforniaa236]

lol not false

[@_Hasboa_]

@@fridaycaliforniaa236 he was a support guy for ast computers

[@SockyNoob]

"Even I have bad sectors!" Can't tell whether to cry or laugh.

[@miketech1024]

I’m doing both 🤣

[@SockyNoob]

@@miketech1024 I'm only 25 and even I have to agree that I have some bad sectors lol

[@DerekWitt]

@@SockyNoobNow I really feel old. I'll be hitting 50 later this year. lol

[@BilisNegra]

@@DerekWitt Same boat except I will next year. And sure enough, I have a hefty share of bad sectors...

[@Biaanca5036]

😶

[@hehe42069-k]

"You win 1 internet." Wow, haven't heard that in a long time.. Which means i haven't earned an internet in a long time. So, Thanks Mike!

[@dezhocob]

The way the previous owner savaged that beautiful riser made he want to cry! Such crualty!

[@JimLeonard]

29:47 "Oh, no!!" exclaimed I, seeing the carnage slowly unfold That riser might not be as unobtanium as you think; AST was a popular brand, so you might find junkers elsewhere with an intact riser board.

[@miketech1024]

A patron of mine located a NOS lot of these exact risers. One is ordered and on the way!

[@JimLeonard]

@@miketech1024 Sweet!

[@tonysmall7182]

I haven’t looked back threw the comments to see if anyone else has asked/said this, but I’d love to see a video more about YOU Mike… Where did your passion for vintage/retro IT systems stem from, what do you do outside this hobby, where did you get the training (that you clearly have), is this “work that follows you home” (or by day are you really a masked super hero), what do you do with all the systems you restore - do you have them displayed (or like most of us, are they stuffed in the spare room/attic). Either way, love the videos Mike, keep em coming :)

[@kleinstarnull]

I just like hearing this guy talk tbh

[@MarkusHalvorson]

I love watching you use techniques and chemicals to clean and repair components! Here in San Diego we've just had a couple of monster "atmospheric river" events in Jan/Feb 2024 and the first one flooded my video production studio in a music recording studio complex with waist high water. In my space I had about 60 hard drives in open plastic boxes on the floor that were underwater for about 24 hours (dirty nasty water too). It was a kick in the gut thinking about all the old video and files that were lost! Using the techniques I saw you use, e.g. deoxIT, rubbing alcohol, paper towels and a toothbrush I cleaned the circuit boards attached to the hard drives, and removed the porous (and wet) foam pad that is usually between the circuit board and the hard drive. Of the 56 hard drives, I only lost 6 of them. Woo hoo! I'm still confused as to why the water did not go into the air hole that every hard drive has (except for helium filled enterprise drives I don't have). I took off the cover of one of the failed drives and did not see any moisture inside. Oh well, I'm not complaining! Thanks Mike!

[@miketech1024]

Sorry you're going through that, but glad you're making it through! In the wake of Hurricane Michael in 2018, several of my clients got utterly destroyed. This included their entire networks. I was scrubbing hundreds of HDDs and associated systems with IPA and DeoxIT to restore the SANs that stored their VMs. It was way faster than waiting for the new SANs and hypervisors to arrive and restoring almost 1PB of data from tape (they were 100% on-prem). It was really difficult to get anything delivered in the weeks after the storm as roadways were impassable. Those zombie SANs kept the company alive until then, and I just vmotioned everything over to the new stuff. Didn't even bother with restoring from tape. The old hardware became my DEV/LAB environment and continued to work for years after. Hardware can be amazingly resilient. Now I work in the cloud and don't even think about hardware (except for my home lab).

[@intheprettypink]

If I had to guess, the water completely covered the airs path to escape before it could. Air is still matter that needs to be displaced via an exit before water can take its place. Its like holding liquids in a straw that you are covering one end of with your finger tip.

[@MarkusHalvorson]

@@intheprettypink That makes a lot of sense! Air in the straw. Thanks buddy.

[@fridaycaliforniaa236]

Wow, a sad story for sure. Hope you didn't lose too much footage.

[@_derSammler]

The riser may still work for the ISA slots, as there should be no traces for those in the broken area. I would try to remove the ESS chip and supporting components, so their remains do not cause any conflicts, and install an ISA sound card as a replacement.

[@JammyJamJam19]

I watch for the nostalgia and stay for Mike's biceps. 💪🏻

[@TheVintageApplianceEmporium]

They make me feel all funny 😍

[@VideosVlogsThatsIt]

Legit he is turning everyone gay and straight

[@TheVintageApplianceEmporium]

@@VideosVlogsThatsIt He's making me even more gay lol

[@AsmodeusDeviluke]

The riser PCB was in the way of the HDD screws. They couldn't be bothered removing so they ripped the PCB to get to the screws.

[@miketech1024]

Like true monsters do.

[@Epd3mik]

Never EVER stop doin these style and type of videos! Its like breath of fresh air!

[@sjgrall]

Mike, your tech excitement is just how I wanted to start my day! After a crappy day yesterday, perhaps this latest video will help turn today around. 🙂

[@brocka.6479]

And then you finished the video, walking away sadder than you began. RIP riser board.

[@sjgrall]

@@brocka.6479 Ironically, my mood did get worse, but had nothing to do with Mike or his video. If I had someone with Mike's personality in my life 24/7, perhaps my mood would always be good.

[@memorex398]

It’s awesome to watch how you have progressed as you make your videos. You seemed so shy and stiff when you first started. Now there is more personality in how you host and talk about these computers

[@pibbles-a-plenty1105]

Mike, when pulling C clips place a strong magnet nearby. That's where you will find the runaway C clip! 😂

[@livefreeprintguns]

I recently started working at the post office a few months ago, so I haven't had time to keep up with the channel as much... but today is my day off and I just woke up from a nap so it's time to binge watch. 😎

[@themoonupstairs]

Thanks for sharing more retro gold with us, Mike. Keep up the good work

[@fridaycaliforniaa236]

Mike, you should create a t-shirt where you write « Flux is your friend » ^^ I'd buy this one for sure ^^

[@eukat3ch]

Miketech ! back in the house !.. thanks buddy.. love your videos

[@masterkitty]

Another week, another MikeTech upload. Good way to start my day.

[@danmar007]

I wish I still had my first computer from 1989. It was a blast and I had it for a long time.

[@keithbrown7685]

I got my first computer in 1994. It was priced at just over $400, used, but its various parts were sadly obsolete, even by 1994 standards. But I still have some kind of soft spot for it. I guess everyone's first pc is like that.

[@Ilanvain]

I just love these old PCs brings back so much memories

[@richjamjam]

it's the testing that i love... going back to a random time and into someone's life for a moment... amazing watching :D

[@westtell4]

Yay glad to see your back to posting semi regular ♥

[@DeadReckon]

Oh yes, the wonderful 90's form factor of "Just what unspeakable things did they do to cram this PC in this case?". Still love a desktop PC case and I wish I could get a good modern one.

[@keithbrown7685]

I wish I had my old horizontal AT case. It was sturdy enough to put the monitor on top. I gave it away, like so many old things I thought I wanted gone. Now, I am sorry for most of it.

[@branscombe_]

30:45 wow, so glad to see such a beautiful sight this Thursday morning : )

[@thegreatgazoo]

The first computer I bought in 1996 was an AST, Pentium 133. Glad to see at least one of the brand is still out there.

[@LJfromWV]

I think my original comment got lost in the depths of YT, but I think I found that riser card on eBay. It's listed as an ECS 16-bit ISA expansion board for AST. I can't tell for sure, but it has the ESS audio on it and looks very similar.

[@2xtreem4u]

i wrote about that and my comment was instant censored

[@SidneyCritic]

Links outside YT always get deleted, even some words - I can't even mention the big cheap orange online site's name lol -. If you try to edit your post a few min latter and it won't let you, it's been deleted, so you copy and paste and mod it and try again.

[@marktubeie07]

Thank you Mike, you cheered me up today with a great video :)

[@TheTerminalGuy1]

Ooh it's always exciting watching you repair theses systems!

[@cullmaster7361]

Awesome stuff Mike 👍🏻 That Texas Instruments CPU needs framing on the wall. Never seen a CPU that had a Print like that. I’m going to have to get some of these systems and bust out my old How to Books from the 90’s. Cheers from the U.K 🍻

[@richjamjam]

I'm 37 seconds in and I am already lol'ing :D love it

[@fft2020]

Beautiful computers

[@gravitone]

Great personal throwback for me this saturday afternoon. That first case is the exact same one we had at home for our family 286 system.

[@GGigabiteM]

Depending on how much of a deep dive that you want to do, it's entirely possible to reverse engineer and clone that riser board. If you just wanted the ISA slots, you may be able to get away with a generic riser. If you wanted the sound card as well, you could document and depopulate the PCB and sand it down layer by layer and scan it to recreate the connections. If the ESS chip is just hanging off the ISA bus, you wouldn't have to do that, you could just find a generic schematic and implement it on the board and make the relevant connections to the ISA bus. If you wanted to do an even deeper dive, the connector on the logic board is an EISA connector, meaning there are extra pins in the slot that aren't used by the current riser board. This likely means that there is a different riser board available for that motherboard that likely has VLB slots on it. It was a common thing to use EISA edge connectors on card risers for VLB/PCI, as EISA had enough pins to support both buses on the riser board.

[@squeakonline]

Awesome. I had the AST advantage 613e in an identical looking case. Cyrex 586. It had that very same cd drive. Slow deliberate and mechanical is an excellent description of the tray.. I remember they didn't send the pc with dos cd drivers and 16 year old me couldn't figure out how to get dos cd games working. They sent me a floppy disk with some drivers...

[@Hi1w2]

Nice now i can watch this as i eat breakfast

[@mattparker9726]

it's hard to watch these videos. I am simultaneously in love with the PCs you find, and jealous that you find so many of them. 🤷‍♂

[@eugeniuszgorka8599]

Thanks for another interesting episode. Regards . Dzięki za kolejny , ciekawy odcinek . Pozdrawiam .😊🤗

[@markcumbriauk]

Retro bright rules, I restored a set of 2000s speakers and base with that, now they look brand new.

[@peteregan9750]

Enjoyable videos Mike - interesting seeing the different ways these early computers where made. keep it up !

[@elit3darkness]

MikeTech gives classic computers the love they deserve. Good to see the can of deoxit! Not to mention AOL for DOS?!?!?!?!

[@EastAngliaUK]

these pcs are before my time

[@iHorus]

I agree on the vertical floppy part, somehow charming

[@Will32768]

Great video as per usual.

[@davidsurety2629]

Ahhhhh another feet up Saturday and all my Christmas came at once with a new video from Mike Thanks for saving me

[@rcairo2595]

I remember a lot of people buying those AST computers from Finger Hut. Heck, they were offering older PC's even in the late 90's via their catalog.

[@pizzaluvah]

Oh wow, I didn't even know TI manufactured 486s! And I thought Cyrix was obscure.. I still love your videos and look forward to watching them every week (when your life allows).

[@AlphaMensae1]

Oh yeah, everyone was making their own Intel clones all the way through the 486. Intel finally got sick of it and gave their next gen chip a trademarkable name, "Pentium", instead of the 80586 everyone else was expecting.

[@SGTMacBC]

Nice 3 day pause to look for that c clip. The wonders of video editing. We didn't even notice. Very nice with the caviar hard drive. I would almost put that somewhere safe just for the rarity of it still being in good shape.

[@miketech1024]

LOL it did take a good 30 minutes of searching. That part of the garage isn’t exactly tidy, so it really did feel like a miracle finding it. Oh yeah that ol’ boy is going to be well-protected.

[@livefreeprintguns]

20:12 HOLY CRAP VERSION 1.6!! Not gonna lie I spent YEARS on AOL 2.0 because my Macintosh was only 33Mhz w/ 8MB RAM so using anything higher was out of the question... but honestly I think it was their best version as it was still fairly lightweight and pretty fast.

[@GGigabiteM]

I remember using AOL 2.6/7 on my Macintosh LC III for years because that's all it would run well. There was an AOL 3.0 release for 68k, but it chugged and needed a fast 68040 to run well, something I didn't get until very recently.

[@livefreeprintguns]

@@GGigabiteM Dammit it was AOL 2.7, I can't believe I forgot! I was big into the macwarez scene and that's actually where I learned to code AOL Hells for things like mass mails and such. 😅

[@GGigabiteM]

@@livefreeprintguns I used it primarily for the shareware games in the mid 90s. My LC III remained in regular use up until 1997/1998 and all of the AOL shareware for the Mac kept it alive. I recently got two capacitor bombed Quadra 605s, where the cases were destroyed in shipping. Not that I blame the seller, mid to late 90s Apple plastic would turn to dust if you looked at it wrong. But UPS had their way kicking it off the back of the truck going down the freeway. But the Quadra 605 used the same logic board form factor, so I was able to swap it in to the LC III, with the slightly higher capacity PSU. I also overclocked both Quadra 605s to 33 MHz, so the "sleeper" LC III is a whole lot faster, and has a ton more memory at 68 MB. I still need to source at least one full 68040 CPU, and two 512k VRAM SIMMs to get 1 MB of video RAM.

[@256byteram]

27:19 Quiet, you! As others have said, the capacitors on the first board are 47pF. They connect from the data signals to ground to reduce the slew rate of the pulse edges, to help reduce interference that could be emitted from the keyboard cable. They can also help reduce interference received on the cable from going back into the keyboard controller (a little). 47nF would make the slew rate so slow the controller wouldn't receive anything, which would explain the keyboard controller complaining. Cheers.

[@weepingscorpion8739]

That poor riser. And 0 for 2 on FDDs is interesting indeed. Great video as always.

[@alisharifian535]

As far as i have seen, the BIOS antivirus is just BIOS sending warnings if a program is trying to write on the boot sector.

[@photolabguy]

AOL for DOS! I love it! I remeber using this version of AOL on my 8088.

[@freednighthawk]

Those funky chunky ram clips are designed to pop in and out, if you look closely, they clips are triangle shape, meaning the same resistance (theoretically) installing and removing.

[@tiagosolano9728]

Your collection of AOL disks is impressive 😂

[@WelshProgrammer]

In the UK, AST machines are super rare. It was the first PC and last branded desktop machine I owned and now I've got a working Advantage! 624 sat on my desk here fully upgraded with a Pentium 120, 64MB RAM, SCSI and a whole host of other upgrades. I love it but man it's full of quirks and gotcha's. I learned never to buy OEM ever again based on my experience with AST, Dell and Packard Bell machines that the rest of my family and friends owned and I went full custom build from that point on.

[@savagepigNG]

He’s so cute lol.

[@branscombe_]

20:10 AOL 1.6 so nice splash

[@AlphaMensae1]

Just started watching, and have to say that I have a desktop case almost like the one shown with the first system. It was my 486DX4/120 before I transplanted it into an AT midtower case. Doesn't have the lock LED, but everything else including the side vertical 3.5" bay. It has a "CCI Computers" badge, I think it was just the case brand, as that 486 was the latest evolution of my original 386, which was a Leading Tech pre-built. I still have the case even though it's empty now, I just don't want to get rid of it, LOL

[@dabombinablemi6188]

Whomever owned system1 originally probably saved to and ran everything from the 3.5" FDD. That's what my mum did with her old 368 (that became mine). Still have most if not all of her original 5.25" and 3.5" floppies and diskettes as well - and the 80MB Caviar from it.

[@fridaycaliforniaa236]

That last system had to endure some kind of rage I thought we only saw in modern gaming environments. Who da fuck manages to break a PCB so bad ?

[@donstor1]

I can remember getting a Dell with a 486 and 256MB HD thinking that it would hold everything I would ever need. My brother advised me that he had heard about a drive with 1 GB. Man that takes me back.

[@PaulsComputerEmp]

How about pulling the ESS chip on the riser and trimming the PCB edge to tidy it up slightly it might still work for ISA cards, thanks for another interesting video look forward to the next one.

[@Rotterdam93]

Good job

[@officersplendidvstheworld1803]

That poor AST is going to give me nightmares

[@ericsills6484]

I bet Murray's cringing 😆

[@willNotwork126]

The version of AOL on the disc is an early pre-Windows version which uses GEOS to display in a windowed mode. It’s clever and for many dos users may have been their first experience with a GUI.

[@keithbrown7685]

The best first experience I got, was the DOS 4 shell. Maybe it doesn't count anyway. It didn't count back then either.

[@aleksandardjurovic9203]

Thank you for the fun video.

[@RoterFruchtZwerg]

ever considered getting a 3D printer for printing replacement parts? Love your content, thx for sharing this!

[@Michael_Livingstone]

That was crazy seeing that AST computer. Mine was a 4066 which had the same specs but I do believe the CPU was from Cyrix. Also the 5.25 floppy was not on my system nor was the Ethernet port. I was hoping the HD was intact to see AST Works. It was a shell on Windows 3.1 that shipped with mine just before Windows 95 came out.

[@PJBonoVox]

Nice to see you back working on older systems. I'd lost interest when you were tearing down the homogeneous post-ISA boxes.

[@catriona_drummond]

Ha! Now I know what those buttons look like. I have the very case from that C&F desktop but the Turbo and Reset button caps are missing. just some small square pegs down in the big round holes.

[@roveradventures]

Land rover, bentley and rolls royce used those Varta batteries on their seat memory ecus. Some got corroded beyond repair. Rover had one. The others used two. Didnt know they got used in PCs as well.

[@BilisNegra]

2:04 It has certainly become a sinister name... Oh no, Count Varta was lurking in there and has sipped a lot of the copper in the vital board traces, the veins of our computers...

[@richjamjam]

"most of the time the systems aren't a disaster inside" lollll :)

[@richjamjam]

Yay Mike Tech!

[@Consequator]

Oh man I had one of those c&f computers, but it was a targa at the time. 286 with 287 fpu. The keylock could be turned with thin pliers.

[@GeorgeManim]

Greetings from Greece Mike, discovered your channel last year and since then I've been waiting for every week's video to show up! I've started lubricating my old fans instead of trying to find replacements and your RTC mods are way better than mine! I also have a question: How can I find the exact grease for floppies you use and is it more suitable than silicone grease for plastic and metallic parts?

[@miketech1024]

Thanks! The grease I use is regular old white lithium grease. Silicone would work too, but I prefer to use white lithium for metal-on-metal contact. It’s probably just a habit from my days as an auto mechanic.

[@rallyscoot]

good tip is to spray the molex connector in with deoxit.. After threatment it goes a lot easier.

[@arnlol]

Oh wow this week was rough! That first board, so close yet so far. At least the drives were good, and maybe you’ll manage to fix it eventually. That AST though… They definitely ripped through the riser to get the hard drive out of there... With the wrong cursor placement and crashes/reboots, I wonder if there’s something actually wrong with that motherboard, also both floppy drives dead? How does that even happen… Do you think the ISA slots could possibly work despite the carnage? I guess the destroyed internal layers could short everything up though.

[@zuur303]

Curious what jessicat.jpg in the AOL folder was. Catpix archeology

[@-S.T.P.]

I've got a bunch of those simm stackers still in the box!

[@gaborszucs8935]

There is one of those ast risers currently on ebay in the usa plus i have one if you really end up needing it but im in the uk

[@Daehawk]

Almost exactly like my first pcin 94 that AST. Mine is a advantage 486sx33. Lookes just like it kept mine has a square power button. Came with 512 k vid ram trident and a caviar 210 Meg HD and 9600 baud modem.

[@AJComputerServicesUK]

Mike, You might find that theirs a Jumper on some 286 / 386 / 486 Motherboards regarding Turbo, Just a thought! I might have one of those Risers somewhere but would need to do some digging to see if I can find it if you need one? 🇬🇧

[@justinc4261]

Is the "Desoldering Alloy" you use the stuff called ChipQuik? If it is low-melt solder, I wonder if the same stuff sold for soldering pewter/whitemetal castings would do the job?

[@THEtechknight]

47K is 47 Picofarad. capacitors that dont have the 3rd digit are default as Picofarad.

[@PileOfEmptyTapes]

Exactly. K is just the tolerance code for +/-10%.

[@miketech1024]

Thanks! I so seldom need to replace ceramic caps that I never learned how to interpret their markings.

[@DataDashy]

lol gl fixing that board

[@adamb5160]

Omg I used to have one of those AST Advantage Adventure machines! Although it was a 6066D model not the 466 model. Only had one 72pin RAM slot, but I did have a 133mhz Kingston Turbochip on it. Sucks about the riser on that machine. There's a good chance a riser out of one of the other AST desktops of that model would work though, that looks like the same edge connector mine had. Mine also didn't have sound card bits, it was just 3 ISA slots. Perhaps one of those might be easier to find...

[@agenda697]

Ca-chunk, ca-chunk ? , i shall use that in future conversations !

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

So old school 😍 Fun fact DosBox doesn't have Nicad batteries or bad caps 😉 Edit Our first pc was a AST advantage pro 386sx/25. I wish it was still around or that I could find another one,heck just the case would be nice to have

[@johnruschmeyer5769]

That AOL 1.0 is the original AOL for DOS which was built on top of a stripped down GEOS environment.

[@THEtechknight]

On the TI 486 setup, in theory what you could do, is just saw off the damaged end of the riser board, the ISA slots should in theory still work as the sound section of the riser will just be wired into the ISA bus. Then, just toss a sound card in it and call it a day.

[@miketech1024]

I was thinking about doing that. Luckily, a patron of mine discovered a large lot of NOS risers of this exact model!

[@THEtechknight]

​@@miketech1024ooh nice! Crazy how someone can have random risers laying around, maybe they were used in other systems at the time period. Still though I think it would be fun to experiment without the danger of making it worse now that you have replacement risers

[@86smoke]

About that keyboard in S1: it sometimes happens that if you use more modern keyboards with ps2/AT adapter and hook it up to old motherboards it may give you issues. Try other keyboard.

[@maxtornogood]

You got just a small taste of Varta hell! One thing a Varta can't do though is tear a riser card, who would do such a thing?

[@miketech1024]

Monsters...

[@joetheman74]

I posted a comment on this video hours ago and now it's gone? Anyway it was about the capacitor. The K stands for 10% precision. That is a 47 picofarad cap. Not nano. I just learned about this yesterday watching one of Necrowares videos about repairing a 386 board.

[@miketech1024]

YT algo likes to eat things for strange reasons. Thanks for the info!

[@MLDroid]

I dunno where my message went from earlier but there is an eBay seller selling a ecs ast riser for your ast system

[@miketech1024]

YT algo likes to eat comments for various unknown reasons. I did find the eBay listing though. Thanks!

[@yatapaws]

i love these videos :3

[@seeindarkness]

Mike you should use MHDD to check for drive integrity it gives a much better picture of the health of the drive

[@lukedavis436]

Varta the destroyer sounds like an old Nordic Viking name. 😂