Troubleshooting the 1996 Micron Millennia

[@Ice_Karma]

Be glad you were able to recover the system from having the wrong BIOS flashed so easily! Almost 25 years ago, my husband tried to update the BIOS and a similar thing happened -- several versions of the motherboard, not BIOS cross-compatible -- but that motherboard didn't have any way to recover from a failed BIOS flash. Fortunately, a few days later, he was going through a drawer at the place we both worked with some dead motherboards, and found the exact same model/variant he had just broken. He got permission to take the board, so he harvested the socketed BIOS chip and swapped it into his dead motherboard, and voilà! He was then *_extremely_* careful when he flashed the BIOS again. 🤣

[@littlegoobie]

I had a bad flashes for several reasons like of a power failure back in this gen of hardware. Back then, many bios/cmos chips were removeable as this one was in the vid. Anyways, I also had access to duplicate boards from work. What works to revive these boards, and added a whole new layer of fun, was pulling the bios from a working board, putting it in the bad board, booting the board with a dos floppy, pulling the bios out of the socket WHILE IT"S RUNNING, putting the bad bios back in and flashing it from a floppy with the right flash files. It was wild at the time because the motherboards were so expensive, but also exciting.

[@Damaniel3]

I spent my summer in 1998 working for the company that did phone tech support for Micron (a terrible job, by the way) - I troubleshooted more than my fair share of that exact model. I'm a huge fan of those anodized passive heatsinks too - I'm surprised I haven't really seen something like them in other brands of PCs from back then.

[@jeffo3141]

At my previous job, about 10 years ago, they hoarded everything, so when clearing out old technology junk I saved a bunch of them and displayed them on a shelf in my office. Sadly I forgot to grab a couple when I changed jobs.

[@intothegreatwideopen2]

Thank you for being a Micron support tech. I started my PC learning journey endlessly calling Micron Tech support.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Especially because the anodised texture should (marginally?) increase surface area. I feel it should be way more common. Not like most aluminium heatsinks are super shiny, but it’s more a natural oxidation dulling rather than full on anodised.

[@Yrouel86]

4:27 you most likely already know but if you don't, Necroware has made a VRM board to fit precisely in those headers

[@darthtripedacus1]

Long live the BIOS Master NecroWare!!!!!

[@rhuwyn]

Fun to run a K6-2 in this guy instead!

[@jeffo3141]

Growing up in Boise, I had so many Micron computers and got to tour that factory at least 5 different times. Being between the ages 10 - 18 of It was awesome every time!

[@Caplax40]

Same here! Do you remember their showroom on Emerald and Mitchell?

[@stamasd8500]

I hadf a Micron Millenia as a work computer back in the late 1990s. It was a later version of the computer (PII-233, slot 1, 440LX chipset) but the case was identical. They clearly used the exact same case for several generations of computers. In fact, when my work computer was upgraded after a few years to a (IIRC) P4, and the old one was going to get scrapped - I asked if I could take it instead. And they gave it to me, minus hard drive. I still have the case and floppy/CD drives from it (the motherboard is long gone). At some point about 15 years ago I turned it into a hackintosh - put a motherboard from a G3 beige Mac in it. It's still in this configuration and still working to this day - yeah it has the floppy drive but of course that's not connected to anything. :)

[@dawnmitchell8213]

I’m amazed at the plethora of old tech I’ve forgotten about that I used to sell when I built custom PC’s back in the late 90’s early 2000’s. Apart from the occasional high end custom game PC I get requested to build I only sell Lenovo now for laptops, PC’s and servers. A custom UNIX server I built back in 2003 came back into my possession a few months ago when I converted it to a VM for my customer. I turned it into a DOS game PC using all the original hardware I built it with minus the tape backup drive.

[@peshozmiata]

The out of the box experience was pretty good because of the Win98SE disc which came out in 1999. By that time 1996-era cards like the Vibra, S3 and Voodoo had been out for awhile and Microsoft could just bundle the drivers for them.

[@BenState]

yeah but still

[@ivanmaglica264]

1:36 - My first CDROM drive, exactly like that, the whole unit came out

[@timothystevenhoward]

Shelby, you can always mix and match parts from the Dell Dimensions made at this time too since its the same chassis with Dell branded faceplate.

[@JVHShack]

On the Macintosh side, it was either Power Computing and/or another Mac clone manufacturer who also used this same basic chassis.

[@michaelturner4457]

1:35 Yes, the Mitsumi alligator jaws drawer CD drive. I had one of them.

[@PrinsessePeach]

This is the second video I have watched on KZbin from this week showing a system with QIK tape storage, LGR did show a system with a 250 MB capacity and how it worked.

[@PrinsessePeach]

🤓 That is some coincide…

[@thesavo]

Bring back the memories. I was in college in 2000 - 2004. They had been donated dell xps t700r machines that used the same case design. I am sure other models too. A vertical hard drive was installed underneath the hd slot you used. The label side side faced in and and two long 6-32 screws from the front.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

6:10 - That CD burner is most definitely *NOT* "standard for the era". 40x12x48 drives didn't come out until the 2000s (it looks like that precise drive came out in 2002.) Even CD-R 2x drives were rare in Pentium-era computers. Heck, the Plextor 8x CD-R / 20x CD-ROM read drive only came out in 1999, and CD-RW was only officially a standard at all in 1997, well after the Millennia was released. That optical drive is an upgrade made at least 5 years after the system was released.

[@autingo6583]

i remember that at least the 250mb style qic80 tape drives (different manufacturers) that i installed in the 90ies came with adapter cables in the box. these allowed you to install two disk drives along with the tape drive on a single standard floppy controller. there was neither extra switching hardware-wise nor special software involved to get that setup running.

[@Gadgetman1989]

I had one of these exact desktops...or rather the MMX version of the system with the 266 as a kid... Sadly I got mine infected with the virus bundled with the game demo for SiN, I don't quite know/remember what GPU I had it bundled with but it was quite the beast of a machine for me at 7-8, long days of playing Doom, and Shadow Warrior and Duke Nukem 3D

[@olivierdebonne]

8:47 You can also 3D print a 3.5” holder for the SD-to-IDE adapter, it is publicly available and works very well. This way, you don’t need a blanking plate where the Iomega Ditto was.

[@Breakfast_of_Champions]

The Iomega Ditto tape drives had a separate Ditto Dash ISA card for faster speed. It was a double speed floppy controller with a single port. Before affordable CD writers and drive imaging software, this was a good system for backups.

[@nickwallette6201]

Just to add to this -- the tape drive doesn't "take up" a floppy connector. If you don't have a dedicated fast controller card, then the drive would have shipped with either a four-connector floppy cable (controller, tape, B and A), or a splitter cable that goes in-line between the controller and normal floppy cable. You can also just make your own cables by buying some 34-pin IDC connectors and ribbon cable. I make my own custom-length cables for all my retro builds. Tape drives just need another untwisted connector, like a 3.5" B: drive would have.

[@KAPTKipper]

TIP, copy the win98 directory on to the HDD from the CD and then run the setup. This way when Windows needs to get filers, they are on the HDD and it will get them without asking for the CD.

[@chucku00]

Or even better, you can copy (by using the xcopy command in the Tool directory of the CD-ROM both the Tools and Win98 directories under a Win98 directory on the HDD before installing Windows, then run the setup program from the HDD. Then you'll only need a Windows bootable floppy disk if you need to do a fresh install on a corrupted Windows 9x system. Another cool tip : you can make your own Windows 98 (or 95) custom bootable CD-Rom plus the complimentary software (DirectX, IrfanView, CD-R burning software...) or drivers you need. I still have a 20+ years old 8 cm Windows 98 CD-ROM + 10 Windows programs that I still use today.

[@gymnasiast90]

This computer only has a 3.1 GB hard drive, though - I can understand why Shelby hasn’t done so on this particular system.

[@chucku00]

@@gymnasiast90 It only takes 125MB. BTW, he could also install his 40GB Maxtor HDD as a secondary drive for data space.

[@dylanherron3963]

"WHAT I HAVE HERE IS A-" YESSS TechTan upload! -me already stoked af Dude you have an ability to even make TROUBLESHOOTING neat and interesting (obviously once packaged together and edited after your many hours of research and frustration😅)

[@linmal2242]

A modular SFX PSU makes large old cases much easier to work on! You just have to make sure the cables have enough length or add some extenders/splitters for the molex cable. Another good thing is that you can leave out certain cables like the PCI-E and maybe even the SATA cables for a much neater build!

[@JVHShack]

For the hard drive mounting, at least in the Dell equivalent, there was an option to mount it vertically underneath all of the other drives provided the required long screws were on hand. The Dell beige plastic bracket may be required to do that, though. Dell used a very similar case to this Micron Millennia starting with the Pentium 1 and going into the Slot 1 Pentium III era.

[@ruthlessadmin]

What an iconic name... They dominated many ads for PCs I drooled over as a kid! Also, what a weird configuration.... ATX's popularity is late enough in the game that this must have been a super budget system by the time it was manufactured.

[@GeomancerHT]

The CPU cooler looking like a grinder makes this PC awesome.

[@imranahmad2733]

It uses the THC (Total Heat Convection) system.lool

[@SmilyTheMare]

a fellow smoker nice

[@imranahmad2733]

@@SmilyTheMare herb for all occasions

[@Psythik]

@@SmilyTheMare Yeah there's a lot of overlap between stoners and geeks. Computers and cannabis go hand in hand.

[@SmilyTheMare]

@@Psythik agreed and is awesome

[@timcat1004]

The 3-com ethernet card was likely installed by the cable company when they got broadband. I use to work for Shaw Cable and I got the joy of doing plug and pray thousands of those cards.

[@howaboutsomesoyfood]

that's probably the coolest (no pun intended) cooler I've ever seen in a retro machine.

[@erichkohl9317]

I have a Micron just like this that I bought on eBay. I love the case design. When I was taking C++ classes in the mid-90s, the lab at my local community college was full of these.

[@Ice_Karma]

Between 1998 and 2001, I worked at a place where one of the machines we used to do demos was actually just a pile o' parts sitting on the conference room table: A motherboard sitting on an anti-static bag, power supply and hard drive just sitting next to it, monitor plugged into a video card just sticking up out of the motherboard... and usually at least a couple of $10,000 telephony cards. Our conference room also did double duty as our lunch room, and one exciting day, with a demo happening later that afternoon, during lunch I knocked over a can of Coca-Cola and nearly flooded it. 🤣🤣

[@felixcosty]

Thanks for the video. Necroware just did a video on making a power mod to run MMX cpus that fits the slot on your motherboard.

[@twilliamc3]

That heatsink spin though. Love it.

[@colinstu]

My aunt had one of these. Ran Win2k. I remember playing with it around year 2000-2002 at her place. I remember trying to download the latest SP for it at their place but then realizing just how slow 56k was, gave up. Also this PC case reminds me a lot of the Dell dimension/XPS cases from around the same time period.

[@themax4677]

The Palo Alto Atcx case has got to be one of the best ever. I had a millennia mme (200mmx) in tower configuration and bought a couple more generic versions of the case that I used in desktop config. I now have none. 😭 Arstechnica even reviewed it way back when. I think you can still find the article in their archives. You appear to missing the back half of the vertical drive bay cage that lets you mount one to the bottom front part of the case. You should be able to put one there anyway if you have a couple of screws long enough.

[@MakersEase]

awesome... The first computers I bought for the company I worked for were microns.. That brings back memories.. (until I showed up - they bought compacts from a local IT company $$$...)

[@rommix0]

27:05 Ah good ol POD. So it's not just LGR who uses it to test out various 3dfx cards.

[@billklement2492]

Nice job! Back in the day, you didn't have the internet to help. Mostly Vendor sites, BBS', and Magazines! You're lucky the wrong BIOS didn't brick the board. Also... I believe Micron was the last American manufacturer. The $100 foreign boards were $1000 for the same specks! But they did work come consistently. The biggest problem I found was foreign memory. I'd come in and drop a couple Micron modules in and it would become rock stable! I had customers who thought Windows was unstable. They'd reboot several times a day. Until they got good memory. At least you're using the PCI era boards. Back in the day you had to set jumpers to set memory locations for interrupts. There were times when you simply couldn't put everything you wanted to because you ran out of interrupts and memory locations. People mod their cases these days because they don't have to work to get everything working! Thanks for the video!

[@RuruFIN]

Gotta love those cylinder-looking passive CPU heatsinks.

[@joncrawford3485]

Flippin' heck - Second Micron Millennia YT video I've seen this week. @MikeTech pulled one apart earlier - his didn't have the cool CPU heatsink but it was a MMX P1.

[@Nukle0n]

For 1996 that seems like an incredibly futuristic case. Very early for ATX too I think? (Quick google says Intel patented it in 1995) Either way modern ATX PSUs often aren't great with older PCs because with shifting revisions of the ATX standards, basically the entire focus has been shifted to the 12v rails, with the 5 and 3.3v rails diminished and the -5v rail removed entirely. One of those PicoATX thingies might actually be a better choice at this point.

[@mmartti2k116]

Never seen dell dimension style case used in another manufacturers before 😳 Atleast the back, both sides and inside reminds me from my old dimension r350

[@waytostoned]

Micron was the OEM for Dell at the time. From 386 era up, Micron supplied all the motherboards till P3/Celeron era.

[@mmartti2k116]

@@waytostoned Nice to know that!

[@tobylifers3390]

Oustanding video as always, Shelby. We love you over here in Aus mate. Keep up the great work!

[@JeordieEH]

I remember when I was a kid, there was a Micron computer store that somewhat nearby. I remember going in there and seeing some of the computers opened and getting to see inside of a computer. Strangely I had weird ideas as a kid thinking that a computer case would be jam-packed with electronic parts and that is why there was such a huge case. I am not sure, but this may have been the first time seeing one opened and getting to the realization there is a lot of open and empty wasted space. However I was transfixed on this futuristic looking cpu cooler and the guy was talking about the parts and said that was the cpu. I didn't exactly register entirely that it was a heatsink, the concept was still somewhat foreign to me. I just remember seeing that and always wanted a cpu like that. It was just so cool looking. I later purchased and built my very first pc and realized that the heatsink wouldn't likely work too well as they all require fans for cooling now. Still, there have been times over the years where I see these micron pc's and still the heatsink is fairly cool looking to me. I have owned plenty more exotic and nifty looking heatsinks and have sold and got rid of many of them, still whenever I see this micron one again after all these years, it just makes me feel nostalgic and it was just a weird time of wonderment by these computers and me just really wanting one, but for a long time we didn't have a home pc. My dad did, he had a 486 133mhz amd system and he wanted to give us his old 386, but I am not sure any of us would have known how to use it. Sure my mom used unix at her work at the time, but I guess I could have learned to use the command line somewhat and I did later. If only I had the time to actually enjoy retro computers. I really should start selling all my old parts and computers tho. I almost wish I kept every era of pc I had intact. I can still enjoy youtube content of it tho.

[@Vile-Flesh]

This was a very nice watch. I have two non MMX Pentium microns, a tower and desktop, with that nifty looking heatsink. You never know what you will run into when you acquire another machine approaching 30 years old as the untampered ones are very rarely seen and usually we wind up with something someone else has tinkered with.

[@hFloyda]

i have a pentum 3 era micron millennia and apart from a different front panel the case is pretty much identical to that one. unfortunately all of the weird toolless parts like that fan and hard drive holder (and one on the 3 1/2" floppy drive too) were missing so i had to make a few modifications in order to put that stuff back in. the case was in really rough shape when i got it, so i didn't feel too bad about butchering a few parts. i also reconfigured it to be a horizontal desktop instead of a tower, the 5 1/4" drive cage could actually come out and be rotated, though i dont think it is intentional given the slightly wider base, which just hangs off the edge of the desk now.

[@dormcat]

13:00 I had not one but TWO motherboards destroyed by a faulty RAM: they requested reading BIOS from floppy at startup, and if you don't have one ready the BIOS got erased and system bricked. Sure, I could desolder their BIOS chips and flash them with an external programmer, but after calculating the cost of money and time I gave up and just purchased another motherboard. I didn't know that RAM could kill BIOS before this incident; later I performed MemTest86 on all RAM modules I had and recycled those with faulty chips.

[@xXBeefyDjXx]

Man, I first got my toes wet in Voodoo a few years back with a Voodoo 1, stuck it in my maxed out Packard Bell Multimedia, of which originally I ran an MMX overvolted, then switched to a K6 III with interposer. I remember having those EXACT issues with pod to begin with, and I have both the POD OEM PB release and the POD Gold release...

[@ClaymoreClay101]

Super cool video! Your comment about the early 3d era being wild is totally on point.

[@Nukle0n]

Those SD to IDE mounts can be fit on a rear bracket, you might be able to print one, then you can also access the card from the back.

[@daw7563]

I could bet money that the case manufacturer did older beige Dell Dimension/XPS cases too, very similar. What I liked about them was that they were very slim.

[@jacobmarzynski7719]

The UMAX SuperMac Macintosh clone also used the same case.

[@daw7563]

@@jacobmarzynski7719 Cool. For the Dell systems only the lower half of the front bezel is different.

[@mmartti2k116]

That what i got on mind when i saw the back of the machine. Liked these too, really nice looking.

[@patrik_x86]

Yes I was thinking this! Reminds me so much of 96-99 era Dimensions

[@daw7563]

@@mmartti2k116 even the rattling sound of the side panel reminds me of rhe Dell cases. 🙂

[@Roadkill7878]

Very common that bios on motherboards of this era only support 8GB hard drives.

[@GL1zdA]

I have a similar Millenia (same Motheroard but P133). Mine still has the original W95 install on it. This board has a Goldfinch connector to upgrade this Vibra to a AWE32 with a CT1920 card.

[@intothegreatwideopen2]

VERY similar to the PC I first purchased on my own, a Micron with a Pentium 133 and a 2GB SCSI HDD.

[@thecorruptedbit5585]

17:03 I've had this exact same problem! Linux was able to detect the rest of the drive once it booted from a partition below 8.5gb, though

[@ml.2770]

Feels like every build I experienced in the 90s.

[@bzuidgeest]

If you really like the OEM memory in there, get one of the new "vintage" ram tester boards made in the last few years and replace any bad chips. It's not that difficult a solder job.

[@daw7563]

Some older 3.5" drives gets unhappy mounted upside down. Something to check in the datasheet.

[@ViperMD]

Watching "Investigating Massive Assortment of PCs" and now this, makes me want to rummage through my old hardware and cases to slap a 98 or XP retro machine together.. :D

[@AmstradExin]

Wow! That's the case from a bunch of Mac Clones! Where you have the gfx card installed is where the ADB bracket goes!

[@CandyGramForMongo_]

Brass threaded stand-offs can mount anything. Buy a kit. Oh, and mark the partition active.

[@cjhawk67]

The OEM for those Micron and similar Dell computers was Palo Alto the case model was the ATCX. The case is pretty modular if you take the face plate off and remove a single screw you can remove the 3.5 and 5.25 cage.

[@metalworksmachineshop]

I have a case like that. it has an early socket 370 board in it. mine has a floppy, zip 250 drive and a 24xcd

[@bs_blackscout]

Did something happen to the mic? I heard what sounded like bad grounding issues during some moments of the video. Around 4:09 for example. There's also some hiss but that's usually fine.

[@MxArgent]

I had a Micron Pentium Pro machine for a while. Kind of wish I still had it, but I sold it a few fests ago in pursuit of more unique fare.

[@skoal9372]

I had one too for a while and maxed it out. Micronics motherboard, 2 Pentium Pro 1MB cpu's, 512MB of ram. I have only seen 1 on ebay recently. Last year someone had one for sale and wanted $1200 for it. I have not seen one since then.

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

The late 90s we had a Pentium 233mmx on a Super socket 7 board with a 3d blaster Vooddo Banshie and Sound Blaster live value. I miss that computer

[@Error42_]

Less than 30 seconds in, yes I agree it looks great! And a nice selection of drives there too including a tape drive which I think might be a travan (edit: no. it was a Ditto). @3:55 perfectly centered 360 spin was also appreciate :-)

[@manos7958]

The selection is not nice for the time period apart from the Ditto drive and the 3 1/2 floppy. The CDRW drive is from 2002 and for that PC it should be a SCSI drive 6x2.The first ATAPI drives were released a couple years later. Also by then the 5 1/4 drive was considered obsolete and was not included with Pentium machines .

[@Error42_]

@@manos7958 That's a fair point. I was just thinking from the perspective of so many different types of media in one box 🙂

[@manos7958]

@@Error42_ Actually, the truly widest range of media installed in one box was in 2000s with the first digital camera craze. The 3 1/2 floppy was still a thing, there was a CD-rw drive as well as a separate DVd-ROM drive and many PCs were equipped with a front bay for all kinds of memory slots (Compact flash to memory stick and SD,SDHC,miniSD, etc) as well as the USB slots on the front to connect anything else available.

[@LostieTrekieTechie]

4:54 incredible demonstration of tool-less removal using a tool. :P

[@lttbriantheelectrician]

Hey Shelby, it's great to see that you got the Micron going! It's good that at least on the hardware side it was just some bad ram and that was a good catch on the bios issue. Honestly, I'm surprised that the bios on that is flashable... most machines that old were eeprom chips and not flash memory. Those old Caviar drives are awesome too... Our first family system had a Caviar 11000 (1Gb) and the sound of them is quite distinctive, especially when they startup and go through their self diagnostics. Your systems looks like it's a bit older than mine, as mine is a normal ATX board and doesn't have the mounted cable connected connectors. I think the VRM on mine is built in as well, I don't remember it having a separate one and it's definitely dual voltage and I'm running a 200MMX in it. Ironically, I also have a voodoo in mine (my first ever) but I think I paired it with a Matrox Millennium for 2D. Not 100% if your case is the same but as the one I have is the one Colin at LMG did the sleeper build in, it had a large hole drilled in the bottom steel. The bare metal chassis was the exact same as the PII/PIII era Dell Dimensions and I had one that the plastics weren't great on (and I already have a few anyway). I was able to swap all the Micron plastics onto the Dell chassis and it all swapped perfectly. If you ever want yours to be restored (the brace at the PSU), that should be a way to do it, plus those Dells aren't too hard to find. I believe mine is dated 1997, and was originally a P166MMX, but Colin kept the original CPU because of that gorgeous anodized heatsink. For the tape drive, maybe see if you can find an IDE Zip drive. My system came with one in that spot, and they're period correct and still handy for moving files around especially if you also have a USB external zip drive too. I just wish I was able to catch your live stream where you were diagnosing it!

[@johnmax5652]

i see through a lcd monitor but i feel and see this monitor of yours looks very relaxing for the eyes... it was the time when change "made in USA" ...

[@rzeka]

I think it's cool to have that weird looking test bench computer on your desk, so when new viewers come they'll be curious about it and maybe it'll be their introduction to the concept of a test bench. Ask me how I know : )

[@wizardorlegend]

You should try and set the multiplier up one and over clock it, rumours we’re back in the day that Intel only ever made 200 mhz chips and labelled the speed accordingly to there stock levels they needed.

[@lemagreengreen]

This is a pretty sweet machine and those first ATX implementations were often a little weird with the ports, I remember Gateway's of this same era with something similar going on. This was also when we first started seeing USB ports, does this motherboard have a header? Also the 5 1/4" drive is a little strange for an ATX Pentium machine, wondering if that came from factory... seems unlikely.

[@miketech1024]

Wow! What are the odds we both released videos featuring a Micron Millenia this weekend! 🤣

[@yosuhara]

I watched your and TechTangent's videos back to back, what a coincidence :D

[@waterflame321]

Congrats on just works hardware! I'm reminded of the rarely heard xp install music

[@chupathingy5862]

8:37 there's this stuff I have called Alien Tape. I used it to mount the mod chip in my ps1. In terms of strength... I have a d-link right angle usb extension attached to my emachines xp build. I can pick up the entire computer from that d-link extension.

[@chucku00]

You can use the appropriate version of MaxBlast (Maxtor version of EZ-Drive) for your 40GB Maxtor HDD if you want to override the bios limitation of your system (even if it will still be limited to ATA 33 I/O speed instead of UltraATA 60/100). Sometimes, the HDD detection problem can also be solved by using a different ATA cable (another 40 pins 80 wires UltraATA cable or a classic 40 pins 40 wire ATA 33 cable). Edit : it's quite wholesome that the wrong bios update can be reversed. By choosing to install Win98SE instead of Win95,that's quite to be expected for not needing any third-party driver on a standard system (S3 Virge, Creative Vibra 16, usual 3Com ethernet card, Voodoo 1) that is at least three years older than the OS. BTW, a Matrox Millenium or Mystique can be a nice update to the S3 Virge, the video signal quality will be improved, especially when used with a Voodoo 1 on a CRT monitor. Oh, and if you want to expand the possibilities of Windows 98 you can also install NUSB (if you install a USB 2 PCI card) to use flash drives and external USB HDD (NTFS supported with NTFSDOS Professional 5 and NTFS Reader 2.1) or other USB peripherals. You can also add useful utilities like MCDU Plus 3.1 and KernelEX if you want to experiment Windows XP software on this machine. And if you keep the same graphics setup, DirectX 5 is the last version that can use this hardware.

[@AlexiaTheFX]

Are these cases like the older dell cases before clamshell ? I see some similarities (dimensions 4100/XPS T500)

[@wdd6864]

Weird question, what about the 5volt Rail on the Power Supply for ISA Cards?

[@Destado1]

This kind of thing still happens to this day. I had a person bring me a laptop that wouldn't update past Windows 10 build 1709. I was too deep in other things to work on it, and he wasn't able to leave it, so I downloaded the Update Assistant, and told him to try that when he got home. A couple weeks later he comes back, and had taken it to another shop, and they wiped the drive and tried a clean install, which did not resolve the issue. He was able to leave it with me, so I went through and checked everything myself, no change. Updated the motherboard's firmware, and BAMM!!!, it updated to the latest build. A lot of people balk at updating the motherboard BIOS (and honestly if you don't know what you are doing it's best to leave it a professional in some cases) but it honestly should be one of the first things checked.

[@ZipplyZane]

I've actually run into that problem before. There was a version of Windows 10 that seemed to require a BIOS update on a lot of machines.

[@jusun2009]

The design language of the case similar to these Dell machines around the same era. Makes me wondering if Dell and Micron collaborated somehow during that period.

[@bandiras2]

I had a win98 on a hard drive with so many system visited, it was some rare occasion if it detected some new hardware if it was put in a new system to troubleshoot and stuff..

[@hypercube33]

I had a Pentium 150 MMX Millenia as my first real 586 box. Memories. irrc they came with a modem, V330 diamond video card, 3com 3c905 nic, SB16 ISA card (maybe we added that, dont remember anymore) Later had many more Micron's. I remember them being a little faster than everything else in benchmarks since they'd customize the motherboard and other parts to just squeak ahead of the competition. They were partially a company that originally started out as (I think?) ZeOS in the twin cities.

[@robertlock5501]

Nice vid... is the Data General going to be making an appearance again soon?

[@Vaskomyr]

Just shows how the landscape of PC's has changed. Basically the wild west of PC building 90's-2000's, no standards hardware was just soo specific and all over the place. I definitely want to build a win98 machine though.

[@aublak7492]

Where did you get that test bench frame? I've been looking for something like that.

[@Hogdriva]

I have this exact computer with the VRM upgrade though. Was my grandfathers. No issues with it whatsoever

[@fenixlolnope361]

Sandstone cooler? That’s a new one for me. Does it have a keef catcher too?

[@erictrauman2879]

that heat sink alone, perfection

[@jozsefizsak]

I really like the computer and that bios issue was a massive puzzle which I don't envy you for having had to face.

[@AiOinc1]

Does the Ditto drive really use the floppy interface? I thought it was QIC interface. How would you set something like that up?

[@rubberduck4966]

Those Floppy-Tape drives are connected in parallel to the existing 1 or 2 floppy drives in the system as a "third" drive.

[@stevesether]

That tape drive is more generally called a Travan drive, developed by 3M. It's a slowish tape technology that can only backup 1.6 gigabytes per tape, and it does that by taking multiple passes through the tape, writing one track at a time. I have a similar model from a different manufacturer though a recent retro-computer purchase. I can't figure out any real use for it either.

[@kirknelson156]

you are probably aware of this but just in case, there is a problem with the default disk cache in windows 98, its the main reason most people didn't like it can complained that it slowed down over time had had to reboot it frequently. Left to its own it will pretty much cache all recently opened files to ram until the ram is full then to virtual memory. as you can imaging doing that brings the computer to its knees. the solution is to edit the system.ini file. under the vcache heading include 2 lines: minfilecache=1024, and maxfilecache=4096, you can set the values to what ever you want but those worked well for me when I was running win 98 and I never again had to reboot due to system becoming sluggish and unresponsive.

[@Space_Debris]

11:14 I've had Roxio GoBack "fails to launch" beachings ... alphabet 's X playing w/zip?

[@CMG78]

that case was used by almost every oem system manufacture for years i had dell P3 1ghz that had that same case

[@zaxchannel2834]

That case looks oddly similar to my first Dell, only that one was a Slot 1 Pentium 3

[@arladds]

Not only is this case similar to some Dell cases, it is the same case (front panel aside). It’s even the same as some Mac Clones (again, with a different front panel). Would be cool to see them side by side.

[@milasudril]

I recognize this case. It looks very similar to Dell Dimension XPS d333, but with a different front panel.

[@jonchapman6821]

17:09 why would a system from 1996, not being able to handle a big hard drive be weird? Seems pretty consistent with my experience.

[@bonno666]

The case looks similar to a Dell case from a dimension 900 series. The front panel is different. The dell case I have also has a support metal bar from the front to the backpanel.

[@Megatog615]

The system probably doesn't support LBA for some reason. I think an XT-IDE might be of some help here to let you get the full 32GB. I had to use one to do that for a 32GB SD card on my 486 machine.

[@jameslaidler2152]

(shudders) Ptsd flashbacks to my early days with Windows 98, pre second edition at that. Urgh! The number of clean boots Dad and I did with that Gateway machine. We also went through three EV-700 monitors too.

[@suelynch]

It is way faster to copy the Win 98 directory from the CD to the HD and install windows from the HD. It is also helpful if you are using the PC as a test bed for other devices. That trick also works for Win 95 and Win ME.

[@robertb6276]

3com support on Windows 98 was actually pretty good out of the box. Especially with 98SE.