A new ISA graphics card for less than $5!

[@LGRBlerbs]

Well now, ain't that _somethin._ Ordered one myself, along with a couple controller cards. Thanks for sharing, sir! EDIT: they canceled my order, dang it

[@singinglawnchair]

LGR? In *my* VWestlife? It's more likely than you think. ...hi.

[@maniatore2006]

Hey nice to see you here :)

[@keivank1701]

now who didn't? after this post they got flooded with orders like it was black Friday :D even if they changed the price to higher

[@benjaminedwards9751]

They canceled mine too. I told them their system said there were 19 available when I placed my order and I thought that was underhanded. Their response was that they sell stuff from their inventory on multiple channels. Kinda poor customer service if you ask me. It would've been really nice to have one of these cards for my 5150.

[@tomahzo]

ROTFL, yeah, someone started blabbering their mouth for sure ;D. Once something like this gets out it won't stay a secret for long :D. Edit: Or maybe 40 or 50 or 15000 other viewers wanted a card so they ran out of stock ;).

[@yorgle]

Back in the 90s, the company I worked for used SoftICE to help with debugging our hardware under Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Soft Ice had an option to use a secondary Monochrome/MGA/Hercules card for the debugging output (stack trace, memory display, CPU registers, etc) while the software you were debugging continued to run on the VGA display. It was super useful!

[@user-vn7ce5ig1z]

SoftIce was still useful even up to Windows XP. You could actually break Windows itself and step through the code. I guess Microsoft didn't really approve of its low-level access (especially with Microsoft's support of TPM modules ¬_¬).

[@yorgle]

@@user-vn7ce5ig1z understood. :) We were working on device drivers that interfered with the SoftIce copy protection dongle, so we had to run the system without it... so the first thing we needed to do when starting up the system was to step through softice itself to skip their copy protection check... ;D we used their device to outsmart their device. :D

[@FlyingDutchman19801]

@@user-vn7ce5ig1z I remember there also being a program called WinICE, what was the difference? Was it just SoftIce with a windows front-end?

[@TrackZero]

@@FlyingDutchman19801 I believe WinICE was just a component of SoftICE. But many A/V checkers used both names in reference to SoftICE (perhaps just by misunderstanding on their part).

[@carlospulpo4205]

SoftIce was the bomb back in the day. I think prior to that I used something called "periscope" and it was a ISA debugging card. I reverse-engineered many of my Sierra games with SoftIce :)

[@TechGorilla1987]

Not everyone can get away with whipping out The Wang 3 minutes in to a video and stay monetized. Bravo! :D My birthday 2020 comment!

[@Halterung01]

Happy birthday man!

[@EgoShredder]

Shoulda gone here to get gis Wang Wet! ;-) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetwang . Over here in Yorkshire, England we sometimes say, “Wang it over here!” meaning to throw. Here's a few more Yorkshire sayings imfromyorkshire.uk.com/yorkshire-sayings/

[@TechGorilla1987]

@@Halterung01 Thank you, my friend! I hope you're well!

[@TechGorilla1987]

@@EgoShredder You guys also use "Not a sausage" in regular conversation. Most impressive!

[@fungo6631]

Cosmo the speedrunner probably can. He just threatens to shoot up KZbin HQ if he gets banned or demonetized and the problem is solved.

[@andygozzo72]

just had a look on their website, they now list it as a monochrome graphics card, and now at $8.95 .. sneaky !!

[@alakani]

That's the bay area for you. I can't stand being stuck here

[@badreality2]

@@tarstarkusz It will sell, if it is marketed to the correct crowd that values it. For instance, there was little to no market, for C.R.T.s, from 2010-2016, then gamers realized that they display pre-1998 video games properly, and VGA C.R.T.s make PC games look exceptionally well. Now monitors and televisions that were brought to the curb, are being sold for money.

[@qwertykeyboard5901]

@@badreality2 Dont forget crt monitors can have high refresh rates

[@badreality2]

@@qwertykeyboard5901 That is true, but the computer monitor C.R.T.s that I own, are only upper mid-range. 768p @ 85Hz/1024p @ 64 Hz But even though I don't have a really high refresh rate C.R.T., they STILL have better motion blur resolution, compared to a modern OLED. ...unless one uses a black-frame insertion mode (Trumotion), ...but that adds processing time, which adds lag. kzbin.info/www/bejne/sGXbmH-LmbabgaM It makes me wish plasma's were not a thing of the past. kzbin.info/www/bejne/n33HnJyvjsqimpo ...imagine a plasma gaming monitor, with 1 ms refresh circuitry, and modern OLED's anti-burnin technology.

[@Chyrosran22]

They didn't mention that model of Wang has an absolutely horrendous keyboard xD .

[@ilovespamspamisgreat6442]

CHYROSRAN! IT'S YOU!

[@Chyrosran22]

@@ilovespamspamisgreat6442 It'sa me!

[@vwestlife]

But it has blinkenlights that illuminate to show you the status of the power-on self test!

[@BlackEpyon]

@@vwestlife I think all wangs should come with blinkenlights. It's already a show, may as well up the production value.

[@KayvonJavid]

Lol you are here!

[@izools]

You've captured the esccence of MGA and the 5151 monitor just perfectly. The choice of apps and games you've demonstrated really show off the "Eerie-green-glow" personality of this system. Great work! Thank you :)

[@NickMurray]

Well I like the new sponsor!

[@Bewefau]

so you like the Wang?

[@Banom7a]

fancy seeing you here, didn't expect that

[@sawyerbass4661]

@@Bewefau The reality is, we all like the Wang. It's just that not all of us are willing to acknowledge that fact.

[@Bewefau]

@@sawyerbass4661 lol :D

[@wimwiddershins]

My Wang really is 2-3x faster...

[@TechKing19]

I just got this card, a display miser, an ISA IO controller, and a project box from this site. Thanks for giving me a new way to feed my addiction lol

[@interlace84]

Still have our first XT clone with its original ISA Hercules monochrome card in the attic.. still remember using a tool called HGCIBM to enable CGA emulation for games :) Thanks for the nice throwback!!

[@Caseytify]

There's also SIMCGA Didn't see a Herc clone card until a friend got a 286 system. I still had a turbo XT back then. Had EGA though, so that wasn't too bad.

[@macdaniel6029]

I´ll bet they wonder why so many people order a serial/parallel port card now... ^^

[@centauri0]

They must've found out because they updated the website and upped the price to $9

[@jamiemarchant]

All these D-shell connectors look the same to the untrained eye.

[@macdaniel6029]

@@centauri0 OK, that was something we could expect... But to be fair, 9$ is still a good deal for a NIB MGA card.

[@kevwang0712]

I didn't know that I made IBM compatibles back in the day! Out of curiosity though, I went searching on a few Taiwanese auction sites, and sure enough I found quite a few people selling bundles of these very generic looking ISA monochrome graphics cards, all with the same MGP port configuration. Couldn't find one with the exact same PCB layout though. I bet the graphics chip was a reverse engineered chip that the chip fabs in Hsinchu were churning out in the late 80s and early 90s.

[@brianleeper5737]

I had a "clone" ISA Hercules card and the biggest chip on the board was made by Hitachi. I bet I still have that card somewhere, I don't recall throwing it out...

[@RetroPCUser]

My mom used a Wang computer back in the late 1980's, early 1990's when doing database entries for Hartford Insurance back then and the monitor had different colors to choose from for the MDA graphics and she chose purple as it was better for the eyes.

[@okaro6595]

@@RetroPCUser You meant the CGA i.e. Color/Graphics adapter (note the slash, you essentially could use either one but not both at the same time)? MDA had no colors, or it has back, green (depending on the monitor) and high intensity.

[@NozomuYume]

Wang was pretty big in the word processor market as well as creating their own line of computers before they dove into the IBM-compatible market as sort of a hail mary to survive in the market. Wang very much went for the boring corporate look and they even somewhat outdid IBM in terms of looking like 1970s computers well into the 1980s.

[@SenileOtaku]

@@NozomuYume I had a (very dead) Wang OIS-50 in my storage shed for a time (but no terminal, even if it was working. I had been planning to do a "case-mod" with it, but then I figured it would be too hard to do. Seeing the case mods people do now, that one would have been a cinch.

[@stevef6392]

Boss walks in. "Steve, you don't need to be wasting your time on that particular spreadsheet. Ned down the hall is already working on it. Told me he'd be done by noon!"

[@jamiemarchant]

I wonder how often those keys actually fooled people.

[@georgemaragos2378]

@@jamiemarchant EGA Trek had one that saved me a few times

[@xx-mreba-xx4051]

@@georgemaragos2378 what if they asked for a specific spreadsheet?

[@Caseytify]

Since everyone else is making Wang jokes... Q: what do you get when you cross a Bell telecommunications satellite with a word processor? A: a six-ton Wang that wants to reach out & touch someone.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

Congrats! The Monochrome CRT monitor actually works :) I love the long afterglow on the phosphor layer. There is something incredibly beautiful about green and black terminal screens. The first Monochrome PC monitor i ever worked with was a Commodore IBM compatible DOS PC with a yellow and black monochrome screen.

[@cheeriosaregood920]

The amber black monochrome is just absolutely gorgeous but the green is a claddic for sure

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

@@cheeriosaregood920 Oh yeah, i miss that amber-black CRT Screen nowdays....

[@RanFuRe]

You are amazing! There are a few games, which I played on my dad's first computer when I was still in kindergarden. I thought I had sought out most of them... but Space War was one I had forgotten about until I just saw this video. It is an amazing feeling to be suddenly taken back like that. Thank you!

[@benjaminedwards9751]

Thank you for making this video. I've had my 5150 since 2012, and I've been looking for a reasonably priced clone Hercules card ever since then. I've got a 5151 monitor, so this is gonna add a lot of functionality as far as games are concerned because I'll no longer be confined to text mode. I was interested to see that your video has caused a bit of a run on these cards which is understandable. There's a pretty big demand for them, and I'm not sure Alltronics knew what they had and what they're actually worth. Alltronics has since updated the listing of the card which now accurately describes it, and as of me purchasing one about 15 minutes ago, they now only have 19 of them in stock. They have also raised the price to $8.95. Still a massive bargain!

[@brianleeper5737]

Back when I was a teen I had one of those IBM Monochrome monitors. One day, I noticed a crackling noise when it was on. I opened it up and found that there was a tiny hole in the side of the flyback and it was arcing. Almost like the high voltage somehow broke down and burned through the plastic of the flyback. I thought about what to do and it occurred to me that I read somewhere that silicone has a high dielectric strength. It just so happened that there was some silicone bathroom caulk left over from some bathroom work my parents were doing..so I covered the damaged part of the flyback with the silicone caulk and let it cure. It stopped the crackling noise and the monitor continued to work for at least the next year or two till I got rid of it.

[@georgemaragos2378]

Hi, We had the same issue with a hmm ?? Rank Arena colour TV, it was lets say 10 years old and had a crackle, initially i thought it was a sound issue but you could hear it was coming from the back not the speaker I opened up the TV and like you said i found the crack / hole. I rang a few tv repair man and explained what happened, most quoted almost as much as what we paid for the tv and said, part is not in stock and once they order it i have t o pay up front, i said no because they would not give a firm price Anyway the last guy i rang was local, he was helpfull, he did say not in stock, but said it i want to give this fix a go i can try it as i cant really make it worse ( well it is still working so i can make it worse ) Basically unplug the tv, open the rear case, sue some sandpaper and scratch clear the burnt section, not use a piece of plastic ( he recommended macdonalds plastic knife ), now turn the tv on its side or upside down so the hole is facing down, use a piece of paper to make a template with 50% overlap so it the hole is 3mm , make the cut 5-6mm more than enough to cover it . Mix some 2 part araldite, if you dont have it superglue will do but it m ay dry out over time and just fall off. Yep i mixed the glue , placed it on the cut plastic knife, and pushed the cut piece in place, then put some newspaper under than and maybe a sponge or some towel to apply pressure , while it is 5 minute glue i left it overnight Next day put the TV upright , turn it on and it worked for another 5 years untill the same part burnt out or failed completely Regards George

[@thegeforce6625]

@@georgemaragos2378 thats epic as heck.

[@MixerVM]

That Wang PC reminded me: wasn't there a video where at the end you showed off a Wang brand keyboard with the humourous phrase of "By the way, I'd like to show you my Wang." Do you remember which video that was?

[@minty_Joe]

Who knew computers and their ads could be sexy(SCSI)?

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

Yeah i remember having played several games as CGA versions back then. Like Magic Pool Billiard, Super Ski and Test Drive. Or the amazing Alley Cat. Still one of the cutest DOS games ever made. It's amazing how well even in Monochrome mode these games were playable and fun.

[@therealbluedragon]

Two things I like, information about old/obscure computers and this soothing voice. 😩👌

[@noelj62]

Kevin's voice is quite unique. It's one of my favorites along side BigClive, Shango066, radiotvphononut, Ashens, and Thinking-Ape.

[@Jimbaloidatron]

Enjoying the clicky keyboard sounds while playing Tetris. :-)

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

Almost ASMR ^_^

[@deletesoon70]

It even sounds beige.

[@kamillatocha]

and people complain how a gtx 3090 is huge

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

Right? And this bad boy here doesn't even have a massive Coolingfan and heatpipe :P

[@jamiemarchant]

I had an ISA sound card that long once.

[@RetroPCUser]

@@jamiemarchant I have a long sound card. An Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro 16 and can be longer with a SCSI or Sony CD-ROM expansion adapter installed, which are hard to find, but will be cool as a collector's item or useful.

[@Roxor128]

Seems like 340*120mm (rounded to the nearest 5mm) is the maximum size for an ISA card. Big, but at least it only takes up one slot. No huge, thick heatsinks.

[@compu85]

And now the price at Alltronics has doubled!

[@und4287]

And they ran out of them... the old tech KZbinr effect.

[@XX-121]

@@und4287 and now their site won't load

[@fuelvolts]

Oh wow, that Block Out intro brought back a ton of memories! Played that on my dad's 286 when he wasn't home. :D

[@user-vn7ce5ig1z]

That slow, unskippable intro seems like a good motivation to leave it running to avoid having to sit through it each time. 😕

[@jesusabelardosaldivaraguil339]

@@user-vn7ce5ig1z It wouldn't be that slow on a 286

[@Halterung01]

Very interesting. My copy of Nyet doesn't have a boss key, it just says "Game paused, press Esc to continue". Now I need to find that version :P

[@kFY514]

Those slow phosphors... It's funny how it was actually marketable as a feature back then - it reduced visible flicker and the resulting eye strain. But just imagine this level of ghosting today... Man the times have changed...

[@belperite]

Borland took those text user interfaces to a new level with their IDEs for C / Pascal etc. Fond memories of college Pascal hackery!

[@ncot_tech]

I spent many hours typing into Turbo Pascal 6 for DOS on my 90s PC. Back then an 80x25 display on a 14” CRT didn’t seem that cramped either.

[@bwc1976]

Oh yes, my high school computer class ran Turbo Pascal 6 on IBM PS/2 Model 25's, and I've loved those IBM keyboards ever since!

[@leandrotami]

Those interfaces were built using a library that they included with both Pascal and C, called Turbo Vision. From time to time I come across with other Turbo Vision-based projects.

[@bwc1976]

Thank you for answering a question I forgot I even had, what the inside-out power jacks were for! Also, I remember that scene from Tetris with the hockey players, when I first heard of Tetris in a magazine I saw that screen and thought the hockey players were part of the game and shooting blocks into the Tetris board like it was a Breakout clone.

[@heinerwutz3624]

This is a really cool video, I am a fan of old computers myself and I love to see how people still cherish these old miracles of technology. The way it is presented, relaxed and laid back, without the typical youtube hyperdrive mode, makes it very enjoyable to my taste.

[@Palliator]

Thanks for making this vid. I ordered the same card from Alltronics via eBay for a 386 build a few months back (I think it was around $11 shipped). I didn't know why the PC was detecting the LPT port, but no serial. It wasn't until almost a couple of hours of troubleshooting that I actually looked at the port noticed it was not serial. I ended up sticking it in my parts bin and bought another combo card. At least now I now what that port is actually used for. Like yours, mine was advertised as a serial/parallel combo card and am sure it is still listed for sale on eBay.

[@cvbabc]

I remember when I was a kid I couldn't wait to get home so I could go to my room and play around with my Wang. I'd grab my joystick and it was like I was in another world.

[@noelj62]

My WANG model was a bit slimmer but wider. Oh but that joystick really did work fine for like 30 minutes before it went dead.

[@1marcelfilms]

@@noelj62 my wang takes almost an hour to boot up !!!!

[@mileshigh1321]

Since the wife left, i can't wait to get home again to play with my wang !

[@nowthatsjustducky]

Paused for the wang jokes. Came back satisfied.

[@brostenen]

At least you did not show off the wang in the school.... 😉

[@Eyetrauma]

Dang the power pellets don’t remain active long in that Pac-Man clone. Love the phosphor delay in that monitor!

[@georgemaragos2378]

The phosphor delay sort of helped some programs, especially ones that emulate dumb terminals or a talking back to a a maninframe. Most of the screen remains constant, eg bottom line 25 in does, screen heading field names, when you do the data or transaction only the user information is sent or when you do a inquiry only part of the screen changes. The first accounting program i worked on was like this, the instruction manual even had a IT / stats page , showed each screen, number of text characters that are "background / menu" and the number of user data you can enter or is sent back We had 4 AT PC's daisy chained to 1 x 2400 modem and it worked ok as even a full screen of data is 80x25=2,000 characters, very fast even at 2400 Later when 4800 and 9600 modems came in people said , "this is lame or to slow upgrade to 9600" so my answer was - OK here is a stop watch, type and fill the screen lets see how long you take to fill the screen, the 2400 takes 2 to 3 seconds to send your request, get the info of the server and send back the data - people are the slowest component Yeah back to the phosphor delay, "possibly" CGA and better monitors refresh at 60hz, in the early days you got flicker as there was very little video ram and buffer, people used to get headaches from the flicker, the phospher delay partially solved this and the monitor now with the delay of fade was causing almost flicker free images as the original pixel / character had not begun to fade yet A bit of history Commodore 64 monitors were 15hz, The brilliant NEC Multisync ( hybrid EGA+ almost VGA ) was 25-30hz, early CGA was 50/54/60 - but then you need to take into account font size, memory/buffer speed on video card etc Regards George

[@youngus]

*enters today's date* Computer: My god, l survived Y2K!

[@FirstWizardZorander]

That green phosphor is just gorgeous. I had an amber monochrome monitor when I was growing up, but the green ones always looked more vibrant for me. That said, I think I'd prefer an amber phosphor for prolonged use.

[@Epictronics1]

Three times faster with the WANG! Great sponsor

[@SenileOtaku]

That's usually my problem.

[@angieandretti]

Yeah that Spacewars game looks AMAZING on the monochrome monitor given the high-resolution and long persistence!

[@jessen600]

The TV Tuner in my PC is a Hauppauge.

[@yushatak]

The monitor power plug can be used to power any monitor, it's just a pass-through that's switched to the power button of the PC - I have a cable that goes from that to a normal AC plug for PCs/monitors so I could even chain PCs, lol. Usually I put a VGA monitor on it, though, on a Pentium-era box. Also, wish I knew you needed an MGA card, I could have sent you one.

[@JessicaFEREM]

the rhythm game osu! has a boss key, it's the insert key. and instead of emulating something, it just puts osu in the system tray I think it's pretty nice having the boss key, even playing a game from 2007 to now

[@tw11tube]

The long-persistence phosphor on the IBM 5151 is definitely one of its more notable properties, but I miss the fact that this is not a bug, or a flaw, but a desperately needed feature of the monitor. The refresh rate of MDA/Hercules is a measly 50 Hz, and your card (as many of the cheap after-market cards) uses a 16.000MHz dot clock oscillator instead of the less common original 16.257MHz oscillator, dropping the referesh rate by another 1.5%. A short-persistence phosphor monitor will flicker awfully on the MDA card, whereas the IBM 5151 allows headache-free operation for hours. Thankfully, the IBM5151 clones also used long-persistent phosphor, but having inverse video from an MDA card displayed on my "I can sync anything" TTL/analog monitor with short-persistent phosphor (an EIZO 9050S with a custom adapter cable routing monochrome video output to the "green" input) just hurts the eyes badly. I routed MDA video into green, so I can use the color mode selector "amber/full-color/grayscale" on the monitor to get all three common MDA monitor colors without modifying the hardware.

[@fwingebritson]

i had two Wangs. What i loved about them was they dual booted either to the winchester disk or to a boot rom that contained a business suite. I think it was called apricot, or some fruit name like that. What i did not care about them was their massive weight. if i ever get another one i would see how far i could push it with newer stuff like an sd to ide drive. C-pokeman brought memories. When the dude was eating dots, after a while it started to sound like "This is the life this is the life."

[@TrackZero]

Very nice clean design for an ISA monochrome card; great find VWestlife!

[@chezsnailez]

~sniff~ You've hit us right in the feels remembering the 'green-screen' monitor we'd found at 'Curby's' and used for our Commodore 128 back in the '90s. Had rigged a toggle switch it so it go from the High and Low-res feeds of the comm-ptar... Good times...

[@DanHarkless_Halloween_YTPs_etc]

22:22 - "Sooo, Peter. I see you're working on a spreadsheet there - that's great… Uh, but it looks like you misspelled 'New York' - why don'tcha go ahead and fix that right now?"

[@5argetech56]

I have several Parallel/Serial port cards. 2 ISA and 1 PCI. Remember the Soundblaster joystick/MIDI cable? I have several of those too. I love old PC collectibles. Back in 1994, the Law Firm I did support for in NYC, used Wang computers for Networking just before they switched to all IBM. Yes we did use Manchester for supplies.. They went out of business in 2004.

[@thedude5295]

I love the way it sounds when it boots up and the clickity clack of the keyboard. Brings back fond memories of playing King's Quest with my cousins on my uncle's OG IBM when we were little. They don't make 'em like that anymore.

[@SkiBumMSP]

Wow, does that bring back some memories! I used to have a system like that when I was still in high school! It was primarily my father's as he would use for work, but in the evening, he would let me play on it (where I also initially learned to write software, thus launching my career as a software engineer). I remember spending hours playing that Block Out game. Also Starflight worked really good with the old Herc cards, as well as Ultima III (I still have my copy of that game somewhere around here, complete with the cloth map that it came with). I forgot how friggan long that system would take to boot up. Oh yes, another piece of nostalgia - hearing those sounds that those old hard drives and floppy drives made when accessing data. I also do remember the "boss hide game" feature of many of those games, although it was not a feature I really needed, since I was still in high school and was playing most of those games at home.

[@peteytwofinger]

my first well second asi had a trs color computer but the 8088 was my jam - no hd , 2x 5.25 w/ mono chrome . it was a freaking BEAST of a machine and talk about reliable . i dont miss those days but i love watching your videos so thanks !!

[@ferretman6790]

I whould love it if you did a video of your old computer collection. ( it whould have to be multiple videos probably. ) because you probably have so much that we have not seen and since many of your computer videos are rather old,the collection has proboly changed a lot.

[@richardmerryman9135]

I noticed SPINRITE.EXE in one of the directories. I would love to see one of your fantastic videos on that legendary program. I loved the little things in that program like the ASCII animation sequences used as a sort of progress bar.

[@planetX15]

Didn't Martin wear a Wang Computers T-shirt?

[@Ben333bacc]

Awesome for you to share that link! Great video!

[@VSigma725]

I bought some motherboards from these guys, they were selling mystery untested vintage motherboards for $20 each. I got a Socket 4 motherboard with VLB slots(!!!) and a Compaq Slot 1 motherboard.

[@rmccombs66]

I had a Blue Chip PC back in the day, with Hercules Compatible Graphics, and an amber monitor, but I didn't have that many games.

[@oliverlotus]

Thank you for this video Kevin, it's encouraged me to fire up my 486DX Value Point!.

[@matthewjbauer1990]

Was that a "long" WANG I saw in the sponsor spot? Oddly enough, I work for the IT service company that that is what is left of Wang's service division. I used to have a few co-workers that worked directly for Wang labs but they have all since moved on or retired. I do have 1 co-worker that was around for the WANG days (although he didn't work for the Wang division as they called it and thus he didn't service any legacy Wang products). I am sad at the state of the business and how a good name in the industry can go down hill and be lost to time.

[@TheMrMarkW]

I used to have one of those Wang PC’s. It had a 10Mb RLL hard disk, ran MS-DOS 2.1 and Lotus 1-2-3

[@HighestRank]

All hard drives were MFM, but with an RLL controller card on an MFM drive you could double its storage capacity.

[@JessHull]

I really enjoyed the part where you talked about how the showdow on the monitor looks like a moon. That was really cool and nice to hear.

[@Squirmish89]

Thank you for this. I just obtained around 20 IBM pcs and clones so this will definitely help!

[@boden_staendig]

Didn't know there were such amazing games for monochrome graphics, Blockout especially.

[@tahustvedt]

12:45 - Those really early hard drives sound so nice. Brings back memories to hear the faint bleep-bleep. 90's hard drives are just annoyingly noisy.

[@Gravarty]

22:55 funny how in this intro scene there is a high pitch tone which tries to "emulate" the sound of this reflection effect.. I can still hear those frequencies in my right ear, but it's completely "dead" in the other.

Been after an ISA gameport card for an old Microsoft Sidewinder controller for quite a while. The ones I have managed to find have only parallel and gameport

[@brianleeper5737]

See if you can find an 8-bit soundblaster, they have a game port on them.

[@nate_d376]

Those startup sounds....takes me back....

[@JohnDlugosz]

Re the game speed: A limiting factor was the speed of the graphics RAM access. But, since you have RAM on a card, that original system is probably doing the same for all memory access. It takes several bus cycles (at 4.77 MHz) to access one byte. I could not find a statement of just how many when I searched the web now, but I do recall that the later ISA bus would use a different protocol with fewer cycles; reading/writing a 16-bit value took one bus cycle less than transferring an 8-bit value! BTW, what you have there is not an ISA card, but a 8-bit PC/XT card. What (even later) became known as ISA was the 16-bit version.

[@TerryMcKean]

I remember that exact same version of "NYET" was installed in my first computer, which was an '83ish IBM PC XT 'Industrial' with an IBM CGA monitor and IBM model F keyboard, which I bought from a co-worker back in '96. That image you have on that monochrome monitor in text mode is exactly how it looked on the color graphics monitor in CGA mode, except the pieces were in color.... otherwise, it's exactly the same. I loved to play that little game. :-) The full size 10 meg hard drive in my XT also sounded exactly like that one in yours. What make/model HD is in that one? It's been so long I don't remember the make/model of mine, but I do remember that the make name started with "Micro..." , anyway, same exact cool little whooshing/beeping sorta "wheeping" sound like that one in your PC...lol! :-D I had a total blast with the XT back in those days. Thanks for sharing, VWestlife

[@marvingarden4587]

@VWestflie my father obtained a full Wang system for my college days. I held back the laughter as I opted for my C64 instead. Geez I feel old thanx. Love your channel and your incredibly intelligent but fun posts. :)

[@mjouwbuis]

It's even as new as 1991, according to the date codes on the memory chips.

[@tomahzo]

18:51: Noone's going to point out "B Seiler"? Is that Bill Seiler of Commodore fame? (worked with Chuck Peddle on Pet and Vic-20 among other things) Did he still work at Commodore in 1985? Or is this someone else? I have no clue why he would feel compelled to do something like that but still ;). Edit: LOL, now I know why I reacted to that. I read the book "Commodore - A Company On The Edge" by Brian Bagnall where they tell the story of how Bill Seiler (indeed of Commodore fame) ported the classic PDP-1 game "Spacewar!" to PDP-11. I don't think the book says anything about Bill porting it to DOS or writing any Intel x86 assembler (Bill did all of this work in PDP-11 assembler in 1976) but I guess he's credited with the DOS version too (www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,323017/). Either he actually wrote the Intel x86 version or he's credited simply because he ported the code to PDP-11 that someone later ported to x86 (not that the two are binary compatible or anything ;D).

[@XaneMyers]

12:05 It's neat to see the whole character set since it reminds me of MegaZeux's alternative DOS character set. No, I don't use that set, I prefer custom characters...other than the three "gradient" ones on the third row from the bottom here.

[@rothn2]

I wonder if this is how libraries like CURSES started. As a kid, I always thought there must be something clever behind those fancy TUI applications that had things like shadows.

[@kickassv8]

That sponsor ad was GREAT!

[@FyberOptic]

I remember playing Space War a lot, but it isn't something I've thought about in forever. I have many more memories of the Star Control series.

[@ebm3199]

this video is what I needed this morning!

[@andrewmurray1550]

Love the sponsor's ad - as "retro" as the parts you're reviewing.

[@michaeldonoghue9015]

I wish I had a vintage Wang. I’d bring it out frequently and bang out some work now and then for fun.

[@senilyDeluxe]

Nice 5151. I got mine from someone whose Boss still uses an XT PC in 2016 and it was broken and I was supposed to fix it but couldn't. (I'm pretty certain the LOPT is bad and for whatever reason I couldn't find a replacement anywhere). I also fixed quite a few Vectrices (Plural of Vectrex?). One arrived in pieces with the CRT in shards so I stole a CRT from another Vectrex, fixed the electronix, put the CRT back and then married the Vectrex' electronics with said IBM 5151 and called it Wrectrex. You can see it on KZbin. The long sustain phosphor makes for some awesome effects. Also, Blockout was my first video game and I still love it! EDIT forgot to mention I gave the guy some noname replacement MDA monitor for his Boss and was allowed to keep the Wrectrex as some kind of payment for fixing the seven other Vectrices.

[@NathanaelNewton]

A lot of dejavu or nostalgia or something watching this.. I definitely remember the 'do you want to use a joystick' prompt but none of the games you tried lol... AWESOME VIDEO :)

[@greenaum]

ISA serial / parallel cards don't need a driver disk. They have jumpers. You just need to decide which base address and IRQ you're going to set them to, so as not to collide with other things. Particularly Sound Blasters defaulted to IRQ 5, the same IRQ a secondary parallel port would use. Since most people didn't have 2 parallel ports this wasn't a big deal, and you could always run your parallel port in polling mode, without an IRQ. The original Sound Blaster itself was an ISA card so this was all relevant. Original was 8-bit ISA I think, the SB16 was 16-bit ISA. Quite charming, actually, of IBM to call it "Industry Standard Architecture" on the first model they made! If anything, the Apple II was more of a "standard", a raw 6502 bus, more or less, in the same way ISA was a raw 8088 bus, more or less. More standard than that, would be S-100, although that was already looking creaky just a few years after it's launch as an open inter-company standard.

[@ThriftyAV]

I've order a lot of stuff from "All Electronics" in Van Nuys, CA, but never from Alltronics in Santa Clara but they seem to have similar offerings. Thanks for letting your audience know about them! I had (and may still have) a monchrome ISA graphics card from my very first IBM clone that looks very similar to this one, I'll look for it, and see if there is a brand logo. My old monochrome monitor was amber, not green. And the "click" of your keyboard is awesome! POKE-MAN lol!

[@andrewswanborough7076]

This is good. Looking at your retro tech purchases in front of your retro gear made me think that if this video wasn't shot in 16:9 ratio, with high resolution and clear audio it would be hard to tell what year this was made. Modern high definition is what you want for showing such detail but I would definitely be entertained if you went through the trouble of acquiring video recording equipment from the late 80s and finding a way to get the resulting footage on KZbin. (As long as we don't miss out on any detail.)

[@Musicradio77Network]

These C10 cassettes were used for cassette singles where you can record one song on each side. Another song on the other side. Just like a 45 and a 78.

[@jeremygeorgia4943]

I wish there was a current aftermarket for this stuff. I mean, we have Raspberry Pi, and other hobby electronics. IBM stuff is open architecture. For those that would like to keep these machines running, it would be nice to be able restore the functionality that they used to have, since peripherals are getting hard to find. A flash card reader, that appears like a drive controller could be handy for someone that doesn't want to run cables or find a power plug. It's just a combination of technologies that are already out there. Fast video controllers & EISA stuff might be nice, too.

[@G.D.Traveller]

I could already HEAR it start and boot up in my mind before you hit that switch! Oh man, good memories :-) I used to have these machines. Slept next to them even. I miss the sound of MFM drives...

[@megan_alnico]

Thanks so much for demonstrating Blockout and the Spectrum Holobyte version of Tetris. These were games we had on the family AT back in the day and I immediately recognized them. I remember Blockout out vividly and being rather bad at it but could not remember the name. I also played a Risk or risk like game and Yahtzee. I played them in color though because we actually had a VGA card and IBM color monitor, it made Eye of the Beholder look great. Thanks again.

[@mileshigh1321]

Where you the guy in the Sponsor Add, with the glasses lol I remember back in 1991, a friend got a computer from work that was portable with a strap, and a keyboard that you unclipped to reveal the small monochrome screen and floppy disk drive. We used to play leisure Suit Larry on it!

[@ocsrc]

Those original ISA cards were something The original ones had the irq and addresses set, no dip switches or jumpers Then the cards had jumpers to set the addresses and irqs. Then the software controlled settings Some cards had programs that were specific for the card that would set the addresses and irqs and they would stay set at those settings no matter if you remove the card Other cards had the ability to be detected by the BIOS and set through the bios I used to need the hardware defined isa serial cards or on motherboard serial ports to program Motorola and RCI and other two-way radios that had DOS RSS that needed the serial ports that were hardware defined. I also remember many times that I was not able to use software because it only could be set for irq 3 or 4, serial ports and it could not see port 3 or 4 Limitations that were in a lot of the software back in the day And you would think they would learn not to put those limitations in software but in server 2000 which the internet had been around for a solid 10 years when this software came out and they still set the highest IP addresses that you could create policies for at 199.199.199.199 Back then the highest IP addresses I believe were maxed out around 150 I remember internal switches had 168 through 174 addresses And retail routers had 192 addresses There was nothing above 192 and the bulk of the internet infrastructure made up of the phone company equipment and the tech companies were all down below 10 I think I remember one of the government servers had a 12 address and another had a 14 As the cable companies started doing internet they were in the 20s I don't remember how the 10 internal IP assignment came about I'm guessing it was in the early days and the colleges and governments used that assignment for all of their internal networks I remember one of the early programs that was like PC anywhere that allowed remote access and control over servers when I first used it to access the servers I was working on there was a scan feature that would scan whatever range you told it to scan and report back any servers it found and I remember finding another server that I had not known existed that was on our Network and I still don't know what that was to this day One of the other really cool software programs that I had back in the day somehow would basically listen to the internet connection and I don't know if it was specifically just the node that I was connected to which had about 500 computers hooked to it or if it was the entire network which would have had 150,000 computers hooked to it. But it would display the packets going across the network over the internet and I could see the addresses and the headers and the packets data It was really something to see I remember the software cost $20,000 and that was 1990s It was a diagnostic software package that was designed for finding problems in the network I remember the packaging had a bunch of documents that specifically said using the software on any network that was not yours or that you were not authorized to use it on was a crime Even back then they had pretty strict laws But back then you could take an unregistered modem and connect it to a cable network and be able to see all the data going across the network Nowadays the modems don't allow that

[@NielsHeusinkveld]

Wow, SpaceWar is so smooth and high res! We had exactly this monitor and Hercules card, but I don't think we had any games using its features. I remember using 'MG' (multi graph?) to get CGA compatibility, which sometimes worked. Some games using the 'not ugly' CGA color pallete tended to be hard to get running. In hindsight I wonder if such CGA 'emulators' caused any slow down on what was already a slow 4.77mhz system!

[@Alexlfm]

I was actually just looking at picking up a Hercules card for my original spec XT. As I need a few other parts and cables, think I’ll give this one a try. At that price, not much to lose. Thanks!

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

omg WANG computers actually exist? Now i get that Simpsons reference with Martin Prince's t-shirt in that one Treehouse of Horror episode that spoofed that Twilight Zone Episode with the Gremlin outside the airplane. Never thought WANG computers was actually a thing.

[@vwestlife]

Yes, founded by Mr. An Wang: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories

[@markhesse2928]

That Manchester ad is going to be the new Rick Roll!

[@Deinonuchus]

Back in the day I had a Hercules Pac Man clone from inside the maze, kind of like Wolfenstein, but with just vector lines. It was pretty impressive for the time. And Tetris was the first time my wife and I ever had conflicts about who's turn it was to use my computer. Played that damned game so much I would see falling game pieces when I closed my eyes.

[@povilasstaniulis9484]

A fun fact is that the original Tetris was implemented in text mode.

[@bf0189]

Block Out looks amazing! Very aesthetically pleasing

[@stonent]

Blockout looks like the game Welltris (By Spectrum Holobyte) that I used to have.

[@StormsparkPegasus]

Pretty sure that's a digital RGB connector. Would have to have a vintage monitor to hook it up.

[@SianaGearz]

The slow luminophore is so gorgeous! Also the spring clunk of the keys...

[@myblujl7503]

Jeez that brings me back. My first PC as a 10 year old was an 8088 with a 40mb MFM hard drive. The sound of that thing winding up and waiting a good 10 minutes for post. Good times.

[@berndeckenfels]

I also had a Hercules and CGA in a XT. The Hercules was not only full length but also had a resistor on the outer border so I had to bend open the card holder on the end.

[@greenaum]

I know you said "for now", but couldn't you take the parallel / serial adaptors out of the bottom slot? Since they're not using the actual slot, just the back bracket, or did I miscount? Then move them up to the empty bracket at the top. Assuming there's room, I haven't seen it all up close. Would be nice to have CGA and MDA as an option. Actually wasn't MDA the IBM option for mono text-only cards? And the default option for a 5150 PC? Then Hercules was compatible with MDA but also allowed mono high-res graphics as an option. Apparently some debugging software, for programmers, allowed both CGA and MDA / Hercules together, the MDA being used to show debugging info as the program ran on the CGA. Handy!