Beginning the Eduquest

I finally got one of my white whales, but before I can do much with it, it just needs some spit and polish. Here's that.
By the way, I realize I forgot to answer the pending question "how did I finally get one of these": I bought it. On eBay. I waited until one showed up and placed a bid. I have my patrons to thank for throwing in the cash I needed to get this thing - thank you!
The Dell drive is an FDDM-101. That model number might be used on several designs, so here are some other figures: P/N 7T761-A01 / 243-560390-101-0. If you find something that matches all of those you should be OK for sure, but any FDDM-101 is probably fine as long as it has the USB port.
Support my channel:
/ cathoderaydude
ko-fi.com/cath...

[@gabotron94]

As seen on a bag of cement: "Be sure to clean all tools before cement sets. Afterwards, removal is only possible mechanically."

[@Echin0idea]

"Before calling service: 1) Be certain the machine is plugged into the wall outlet..." Love it!

[@NCommander]

You know that label only got added because IBM support realized it would reduce support calls.

[@indextron2388]

Hello IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?

[@robsemail]

reminds me of a common question from that era: “where’s the ANY key?”

[@thomasleathers7018]

@@robsemail That's why you use 'Press a key'. Either they press a random key, or a.

[@robsemail]

@@thomasleathers7018 yeah, you’re right. That came later. I promise you, “press a key” was a direct result of the howling and screaming from tech support staff EVERYWHERE in the 1980s and probably before about “press any key”. Programmers eventually changed it. In hindsight, I can kinda understand the confusion. Most everything going to or from a computer was in all-caps in those days, and there are so many acronyms used in data processing, I wonder if people thought “any” could be an acronym. Certainly, everyone would have had the experience of having misunderstood computer instructions and taken the wrong action with disastrous results, and so maybe that had something to do with it. I worked in tech support back then and I remember, that question came up way too often.

[@LN997-i8x]

I really enjoy your genuine enthusiasm and sense of wonderment when it comes to the equipment you cover. It dovetails well with your natural gift for presentation.

[@MrRaulstrnad]

fully agree

[@ant64b]

Very late reply but this is why I watch this channel. I don't always agree with his professional or personal views but he's so damn genuinely interesting and interested.

[@Damaniel3]

Stella was a program that was created to model dynamic systems (things like population growth, budgets, environmental stuff, etc.) using a bunch of graphical elements you could link together, passing data from one component to another, transforming it, and outputting graphs and charts. As far as I know, Stella was only used at the high school level in a few different school districts in the US back in the mid-90s - my high school was the only one in the state that offered a Stella class, taught by one of its strongest proponents and an author of at least one book on the topic. I took multiple classes in Stella, and even entered a system dynamics 'contest' held by the makers of the software, where different schools with a Stella program could compete to create the most interesting models. I don't know where they are, but I still have a full set of Stella disks I won by competing in that competition.

[@alexb5766]

You should archive them

[@user-yw8sr3uj1w]

PLEASE ARCHIVE THEM

[@ElHipokondriako]

So, Stella made graphs of how a system evolved by using differential equations and starting conditions? That is so amazing for 90s educational software. I didn't do any of that until Chemistry BSc at uni, and that was 2013.

[@_..-.._..-.._]

Did you archive them?!? We can probably come up with a way to donate for your time. You could very well have the only full set on earth.

[@Damaniel3]

@@_..-.._..-.._ I wish. I haven't been able to find them, not for lack of trying. It was a very obscure program which I don't think was ever used much outside of schools, and only a handful at that.

[@dant5464]

Imagine the large metallic orbs required to unpack a bunch of new PCs and immediately drive a self-tapping screw in to the side of each one, especially given the cost of computers back then.

[@CathodeRayDude]

Hey, these were schools, they're run like a split between a mine and a prison, whatever works works

[@Roxor128]

Also, putting a screw into a CRT monitor just sounds like a risk of KZZZERRRT!

[@alfo2804]

​@Roxor128 Well, assuming the comment above is correct in the fact that this was done right after getting them out of the box, then there shouldn't have been a risk of that. If the screens had never been powered up before, they wouldn't have had a charge. Of course, then there would be the risk that the screw _did_ contact against a live component, and they wouldn't know that until months, weeks, years later when someone accidentally touches the screw head while fumbling with the mouse holster.

[@sohigh10]

I think the floating timing crystal is a feature, it makes light work of floating point calculations 😂

[@nomodz4real]

Looks like gibbs wants their own special shelf to hang out with you :)

[@moconnell663]

You gave me a flashback to the 4th grade and our classrooms Mac IIci that died due to glitter ingestion. The teacher had hung some student glitter - based artwork above it.

[@LaskyLabs]

That's a rough life for a computer.

[@harambo88]

teachers and medical stuff are soooo dumb. not in my country, there the docs protest against corona measurments, but boy are they dumb in the states. our teachers are worse thanks to 68, only hardcore leftwing fascists in that profession

[@rich1051414]

I bet they are still finding glitter in that general area to this day.

[@offrails]

My middle school had one of these in nearly every classroom (to run the teachers' grading software, etc) and office, as well as least one room full of them. I had a class in that room first period in 7th grade - after the teacher told everyone to turn the computers on, that two tone POST sound would echo throughout the classroom. When you were done with your work, you could then play Carmen Sandiego or Oregon Trail, unless it was a day when we were doing stuff in Windows, in which case you could play Minesweeper or Solitaire.

[@crying2emoji5]

You’re a natural at presentation and explanation, maybe it’s because I smoke too much weed but I literally struggle every time I have to explain even the most basic shit to people. In another dimension you are the coolest technology teacher in school

[@ntsecrets]

Freshman year at northeastern university they still had these or something very similar in use. Our professor told us that they had to install humidifiers because the static generated by the crt would zap the memory in the winter.

[@johndododoe1411]

Token ring tips from someone who used it a lot: 1. The traditional Token ring cables end in square connectors that can be plugged directly into each other for a two-computer network. 2. 4Mbit is not compatible with 16Mbit, but most 16Mbit cards are dual speed. 100Mbit token ring was an experiment that didn't take off, as they argued too many years over the specifications as Ethernet ate the market. 3. For multiple computers, all are plugged into a MAU box, which is powered over the network by the turned on computers. There are some "modern" MAU boxes that use RJ45 plugs and require external power.

[@MickeyD2012]

0:41 he has a MAU box.

[@johndododoe1411]

@@MickeyD2012 Where, can't see it?

[@andreas9238]

I remember those MAUs. Token Ring was IBMs way of networking all through the PS/2 series. Compared with the first ethernet cards these were extremely integrated in the late MCA days. As a teen i happened to come across a stack of those that were decomissioned at a company in he early 90s. Basically it's a bunch of 4 pole bistable relais together with a tricky circuit of mostly just diodes, transistors and some passives that will bypass inactive ports so the ring remains closed. (unfortunately i took some of those apart and the others eventually went to the recycler as they were no use to me back then).

[@JimLeonard]

Rather than dd, you might want to start using ddrescue for imaging. Produces the same output, but deals with a failing drive better and can retrieve more data.

[@endersftd]

And shows you a very nice progress indicator *by default* (yes, dd has a status=progress option, but you have to ask it to do it)

[@wraithcadmus]

Yes, the auto-retry and that has saved the bacon of a few friends drives. Just set it in the caddy and let it keep trying.

[@arthurr8670]

I used ddrescure on a drive with bad sectors or data after a power failure. Everything important was saved, windows wouldn't start, but easy enough to get that working.

[@user-yw8sr3uj1w]

Awesome! I'll use that

[@jdatlas4668]

@@wraithcadmus it’s also more clever about it - it won’t stick to a single dead sector and keep retrying there, it does a single pass ignoring all errors and then tries to fill in the gaps. So if the drive does die in the process, it got as much as possible off it.

[@penti8345]

i watch you, the 8-bit guy and LGR every night before i go to bed. retro tech brings me so much comfort and listening to people talk about this stuff helps me take my mind off things when i get down in the dumps. thank you for making these videos, they mean more to me than you’ll ever know :)

[@sethseth6ify]

same here :D

[@hufficag]

Same here. USSR born Canadian engineer unemployed and hanging out in cheap Asia.

[@johndododoe1411]

Future Domain was one of the big names in SCSI controllers back then. I guess IBM ordered a modified board to prevent schools from buying cheap standard cards as spares.

[@fisqual]

I think he needs one of those bigass scanjet 4's to hook up to that external SCSI port.

[@johndododoe1411]

@@fisqual Why not an external drive (of any kind)

[@fisqual]

@@johndododoe1411 I guess that would work too, but I love how damn loud the stepper motors are in the old scan jets... The very one with the Fur Elise easter egg built in.

[@SlideRSB]

If you had an 80386 computer in 1985, you were way ahead of the curve. That would have been the computer of my dreams. If a computer lab was stocked with those in 1985, that school would be very well to do.

[@paveloleynikov4715]

Our family first PC was am386 based and it was bought around 1995... And it was pretty actual here in Russia in that years

[@llary]

My entire elementary school in the UK had a single BBC Micro around 1989-1991. I worked my ass off to test into a specific secondary/middle school because they had a newly refurbished computer room with brand new Archimedes RISC computers and even a few Pentium machines.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

​@@paveloleynikov4715we had and 386sx33 iirc at my father's work in 1995, that was considered pretty rad, the rest were 286. When I got a 486dx50 around 1996-1997 that was super cool.

[@brhfl2812]

I use a datavac for dusting out sensitive things. It's not a cheap vacuum, but is ESD-safe, has a variety of normal and brush attachments, and works in both vacuum/blower modes. The small attachments are a bit finicky to use; there's a reducer that you then attach a brush head or whatever to, but the go-between from the reducer to the head isn't a normal bit of hose, it's more like a bendy straw. Besides that caveat, it's a handy unit, and so far at least I haven't blown anything up as long as I'm taking appropriate static precautions.

[@nickwallette6201]

And/or, don’t be afraid to disassemble it and give the motherboard a good spray down in the sink. Use some dish soap and a toothbrush if you need to. I’ve done this with my 5150, 5160, 5162, 5170, PS/2 Models 30, 30 286, 70, and tons of garden variety motherboards... Macintosh, and 386 to Core i. Not to mention whole PSU PCBs, monitor PCBs, expansion cards, consoles... It’s fine. :-) It’ll survive a bath.

[@Mister_Brown]

@@nickwallette6201 you must have some low ion content water. spraying down something with an lga socket or ddr2/3/4 ram slots is a death sentence if your water is hardish

[@deafno]

>It's not a cheap vacuum, but is ESD-safe Does it have some specia lfeatures that makes it more ESD safe than other electric dusters? I didn't find anything in product info. It's just device that blows air on stuff.

[@HazelTheHare]

Vintage computers and cats. The kind of content i'm here for!

[@lucyinchat]

I like this channel a lot! It's genuinely caught my attention in a way like Technology Connections but with more computers than Technology Connections.

[@shanesrandoms]

~5m27s: "remember these?" Pointing to *that* mouse holder. Watching the video until then, that was one thing I noticed, oh the flashbacks of teachers telling me in high-school to remember to put the mouse in its holder after using. 🤣

[@beltofbelt]

The amount of memories of my school life these videos unearth us really remarkable. All these archaic pieces of tech my ancient bones used in the 80s and 90s then completely memory holed, back in KZbin form!

[@chubbyadler3276]

That thing looks like a standard PS/2 sled. The floppy and hard drives of the computers I've worked on have had those, which slid into the front, then the front of the case slid in to cover the drive up. Those were my favorite computers of the area to work on, and I loved their look while on the desk. I would love to get another one.

[@klingoncowboy4]

You have no idea how happy I am to hear DE9 not DB9

[@siliconinsect]

Before an apartment fire claimed it I also had an EduQuest model 30. Bought it on a whim at a school equipment sale for $1. Wound up going a little crazy upgrading the thing. Cyrix 486slc/2, 16mb RAM, SoundBlaster 16 w/ SCSI, and of course an early Yamaha CD burner that used caddies. Great vid as usual!

[@fftech5445]

I remember using these in elementary school from grade K-2 (late 90s into early 2000). I remember ours having headphone inputs in the front and a blue volume knob...think that was EduQuest model 50 or 55. I remember how the BIOS screen would fade in and out- always thought that was cool as a kid. Played so many hours of Number Munchers and Oregon Trail on these things during recess. Thanks for this video and a healthy dose of nostalgia!

[@franklincerpico7702]

I really enjoy your lengthy narratives. Your video on Norton Desktop was really fun.

[@88ariesk]

This is stupendously useful to getting my EduQuest working. I never knew there was a hard drive size limit. I was getting pissed that a 1GB hard disk kept just not working. I thought it was broken. Now I have somewhere to turn once the files are hosted.

[@Dirt_Piper]

I'm excited to see those drive contents, that demo version of Interactive Physics is something I've been looking for!

[@CathodeRayDude]

For real, that program specifically? Mind if I ask why, does it have personal significance or is it important on a larger scale?

[@vik8218]

@@CathodeRayDude Interactive Physics is what turned out to be ROBLOX. kzbin.info/www/bejne/sKjceIONbL-jas0 Here is a video about it.

[@CathodeRayDude]

@@vik8218 oh my god i'm yelling

[@Dirt_Piper]

@@CathodeRayDude Yeah, vik hit the nail on the head here. Interactive physics was an educational 2D physics simulation program that was made by the same 2 guys - David Baszucki and Erik Cassel - who later went on to adapt the concept into 3D space with more focus on user generated content (and sharing said content over the internet), and that adaptation turned into ROBLOX. I don't play ROBLOX anymore, not for years now, but I have a lot of interest in their early development history, specifically the period from before 2007, where it becomes astronomically difficult to track down actual builds of the software. The earliest that has been found thus far is from March 2007, and that's still 3 years after ROBLOX started development, and 18 years after the first release of I.P.. The stuff is agonizingly difficult to track down, I've been looking for 9 years now and in that time the dates for the earliest builds found have only jumped back twice - once in 2017 when a build from August 2007 was found, and again a few months ago when the aforementioned build from March was found. Interactive physics gets even sparser - I think there have only been a handful of (maybe 2-3?) versions actually archived. So given all that context, there's a reason why I actually jumped out of my chair when you casually glossed over it in Program Manager, ha!

[@CathodeRayDude]

​@@Dirt_Piper Wow, I had no idea. Now that I look at the video, I've used this before, years ago, and didn't think much of it other than "well that's cool" - pretty sure I just downloaded it from Some Website and assumed it was commonly available if I ever wanted it again. I sucked the folders out of the disk image rather than wait to make the whole thing available, get em here: gekk.info/misc/IntPhys.zip. You'll need a 16-bit-compatible version of Windows to run it, e.g. 3.1. If it doesn't work, let me know, I can spin up a VM and figure out what files I missed.

[@curbyourshi1056]

Your enthusiasm is contagious. I'm glad you're making enough bread to buy things to make us more videos. 👍👌

[@krouac]

You are reminiscing about my early IT experiences when all of this was reality and not as quaint. Excellent videos! Also a big fan of "use Linux when in doubt about Windows" - that is my personal philosophy to this day.

[@NunoSilva94]

There's something relaxing about watching someone restore a old computer, it was a nice video, interesting little machine.

[@RobLion]

Interesting that the corrosion on the floppy drive shield is all around the perimeter of all the edges. Probably cut & formed from pre-plated steel sheet that didn't get any treatment to protect the exposed cut edges, and corrosion propagated from there.

[@aitchpea6011]

In the UK, we got some IBM PCs (mostly PS/2s) after there were a glut of clones available...but most of that space was taken up by Research Machines RM Nimbus 80186s

[@kaitlyn__L]

Yeah the entire time I was in school I only ever saw RMs.

[@daishi5571]

@@kaitlyn__L RM had deep hooks in the educational market in the UK with both the Acorn systems (BBC's & Archimedes) and PC's. I worked IT at a school in the 90's and when it was decided that we were moving to Mac's (not my choice) we were deprioritized for service making it harder to get software for the Acorn systems. However Apple stepped up and on the Apple side made better deals for software and hardware than what was the initial deal so it made switching to the Mac even easier. Later RM reversed that decision but the damage was done.

[@paveloleynikov4715]

If you watched last LGR blerb, he showcased very neat 3d printed caddy for checking state of floppy disks

[@kaitlyn__L]

So glad you managed to get a hold of this. There was a ton of other competing retro tech guys in my subs box today but I clicked this first out of all of them!

[@kaitlyn__L]

Man, I can understand why the computer lab technician gave each computer a code number (C4), but why did they have to do it in permanent pen? Would not a sticker have sufficed??

[@kaitlyn__L]

With regard to the pointless CD-ROM books, they’re pointless, but they show parents the school is high-tech and future-minded and they should get picked!

[@kaitlyn__L]

On a positive note, it looks like our IRL graph of ozone-depleting substance in the atmosphere went a bit faster than this! This seems to reckon they won’t hit 5 million until 2015 or so, when really it happened between 2005 and 2010, and then by 2015 it was less than a million, whereas this graph suggests totally levelling off at 5.

[@kaitlyn__L]

And on the final note, ah, that slight pang of disappointment that fuels one’s desire to chase that collecting dragon into the future. At first you tell yourself it’s super minor, nbd, but before you know it you’re on the hunt again. Glad to see you aren’t in complete denial, to begin that journey from, when it comes to your final remark about selling this to fund that potential acquisition.

[@johndododoe1411]

That menu may have been implemented entirely in batch files, using common utilities to read keys (think choice.exe) and output colors (like ANSI.SYS with escape codes in echo commands or any of several tiny utilities that do things directly using CGA techniques).

[@RobLion]

I was going to say the same thing; there may be quite a bit of complexity hiding in the text of those batch files.

[@nickbooker5579]

That conjures up memories, but not very fond ones however nostalgic I occasionally get (about the batch file hackery that is)

[@silmarian]

This was what I was gonna say. I had a lot of disks with bat-based menus. Iirc some game installers used that as well.

[@rickr530]

More likely a config.sys menu

[@shana_dmr]

@@rickr530 config.sys menu had diffferent style and was more limited - single list line after line selectable by arrow keys and swapping the bg/fg on the selected position. Also you can clearly see that menu's appearing after loading up bunch of drivers and batch files :)

[@JimLeonard]

"The sled got pushed in past the clip. Wonder how that happened." Dropped in shipping. It's always a shipping issue.

[@macboy91si]

We had these machines in our high school computer lab when I was there. We had the 386sx-40 and the 486DX-25 models. We had them in the computer lab from 1993-1999. After that they were relegated to teacher machines when the new computer lab was built (Compaq P-III 667 Deskpros). These are very cool machines, very fond memory of being a student tech having to work on these. Great video!

[@WindowsG]

"on the one hand you get to see stuff you haven't seen, new ways of doing things.. on the other hand, *you get to see stuff you havent seen, new ways of doing things*" istg this channel is amazing

[@cemmy410]

Love the Hand Tool Rescue shout-out 😆

[@bryanday7532]

We had those at my high school in rural Iowa in the mid-90s. We had a lab of Eduquests and separate lab with Mac LC IIs. If I'm remembering correctly, we used those primarily for typing and word processing applications.

[@benjammin2020]

That funky bit of plastic sticking up from the side seems to be a support for long ISA cards.

[@CathodeRayDude]

OHHHHHH

[@KunjaBihariKrishna]

90% of the time I use KZbin to create interesting background noise while I do something else. This channel seemed to have the perfect type of content for that. But it's so damn interesting that I can't stop myself from watching the videos outright, in their entirety.

[@blahza12345]

Great video, as always. This Eduquest reminds me quite a bit of my first PC - an IBM PS/1 from 1992. Quirky little machine - 286 10MHz, 640kb, 30MB HDD, and a 10" VGA CRT. The power supply was in the CRT, as well as the PC speaker (with volume control, no less). Good memories

[@GeorgeTsiros]

I laughed when you said "... some ancient typewritten document that explained how to know this was a thirty? ... _thhhhirty_ " That was genuinely good humor 😄

[@Gulleization]

Thanks for another entertaining video. I recommend using compressed air to remove dust, if you have a small nozzle and enough flow, you can really get into all those tight spaces that otherwise would be impossible to reach with any tool without desoldering.

[@robkorczak]

I remember all this stuff from way back when. I am so glad I stumbled across your channel. Really cool seeing some of the stuff you do with ancient technology. Keep up the good work.

[@polypolyman]

ddrescue is a good linux/unix program for recovering data off bad hard drives - it has pretty good policies about getting the most good data off before it fights the bad sectors. Glad you didn't need it on this one, but good to have in your back pocket.

[@CathodeRayDude]

yep, I've used it before, I just usually don't bother with the effort of obtaining it until I actually hit errors. I don't keep linux installed on anything so I'm just running from live usb, and installing packages is irritating

[@RobLion]

That (broken) plastic clip at the front left would be for supporting the front edge of full-length ISA cards, especially old ones with a short 8-bit edge connector and packed full of heavy logic chips.

[@CathodeRayDude]

WOW, THAT MAKES SENSE. It's also REALLY poorly made, god, how the mighty had fallen.

[@RobLion]

@@CathodeRayDude Probably a low-priority design afterthought, and almost never actually needed on a system like this. Card support features like that are quite common in chassis designs, but almost always pass by unremarked; I guess I've spent too much time thinking about form-factor standards.

[@kpanic23]

​@@CathodeRayDude Also, that broken piece of plastic you finagled out in the back is meant to stabilize the riser card. Probably broken in transit as well.

[@silmarian]

I was taught back in the day to not wear a static strap when working on these sorts of machines until I was certain the CRT was discharged. Always a toss-up when protecting old hardware. Though less of a danger with these than old Macs, I admit.

[@burntoutelectronics]

I couldn't imagine a more a-typical document to find on a school science computer than a file about CFC's and Ozone! awesome find

[@SnownelVEVO]

The PSL was indeed the IBM 7694 Personal Science Laboratory, a little device specifically for the EduQuest that samples various optional probes and sensors and dumped the results over RS-232. We never had PSLs but we did have TI's version, the CBL (Calculator Based Laboratory), which did more or less the same thing but on a horrible little TI-83 screen. Both came with a variety of little experiments you could do - pH tests, distance/speed/acceleration, temperature readings, et cetera.

[@kstark4963]

Standard case screws are usually Imperial 6-32 screws, whereas the finer pitch ones you find on CD-ROMs and 3.5" floppies are Metric M3 screws.

[@z185284]

“I’m not gonna make a 45-minute video”

[@mikeey6804]

25:15 - "Well that's a dumb solution to a dumb problem" *Carefully sits vintage computing hardware back atop Big Mac box*

[@senialgoat911]

Another really good oil for dealing with dead grease is Hoppes gun oil. Works great for breaking things free & further oiling whatever you use it on. It is also extremely thin oil.

[@stevenjlovelace]

We had (I think) IBM Model 25s in my middle school computer lab, circa 1993. They looked pretty much like your Eduquest, but I do remember them being IBM brand.

[@sunnohh]

I went to an apple school, but on Wednesdays I got catholic indoctrination at the catholic school and they had these weird machines, and tons of those 386 machines too. Crazy weird boxes.

[@nylint]

extremely underrated channel. CRD, dude, you are hilarious. "'But you're just buying a CRT!'...Correct."

[@johnkashka803]

That machine came with a bunch of add one like thermometer, speed sensors, and many other things like that. I have had many of those machines apart. They were pretty decent for their time

[@ImOnlyHereToWatch]

The menuing system is a stand-alone version of what would become IBM ICLAS. I'm willing to bet one of the batch files on that disk was "g.bat". ICLAS would have been the Netware GUI for larger environments. This is wonderful. I used/supported Eduquest and ICLAS for 10 years and this is a wonderful timewarp. And YES, PSL would have had a microscope or some other lab equip like a light sensor. The card you thought was ethernet is actually the PSL interface card.

[@theholymacintosh]

in terms of size/form factor, it really reminds me of Apple's mid-90s EDU darlings , the Performa 520/550/575/580 - right down to the caddy-CD drive. "the motherboard acts as the power distribution" is also extremely mac-like

[@CathodeRayDude]

yeah exactly, it's basically an IBM performa

[@leam1978]

@@CathodeRayDude that’s the comment

[@RobLion]

I actually wonder who did it first; IBM was pretty far ahead of the rest of the PC industry in tool-less maintenance with things like the other PS/2 models. It takes some extra investment in the design and tooling, but I can certainly see the advantages for maintainability.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@RobLion especially when IBM lived off maintenance contracts for decades. Easy for you but hard for your competitors to maintain is peak IBM thinking

[@233kosta]

Having switched to linux earlier this year I'm really beginning to build an appreciation for a lot of the simple tools you get with GNU, for example dd. That'll rip a hard disk in its sleep, it's also great for writing images, so preparing your bootable USB or SD card becomes one line in the terminal.

[@kv4302]

The tab thing on the side of the tray is a support for full size expansion cards. So that they're not flopping in the wind.

[@ZakuIIKai]

This video ironically helped me fix the reverse mechanism on my sewing machine. CLP is amazing and I probably wouldn't have known about it if not for this video.

[@Chaoticmass]

When IBM tried to get control of the PC market back from the clones, a big part of their value proposition was going toward easy servicing, reducing TOC (total cost of ownership). The idea was if they could save time for PC techs while they serviced a PC, then it would pay off with lower servicing costs. A relic from the days when you'd have a field repair tech to service your IBM hardware. Remember, IBM used to sell mechanical typewriters where you'd be expected to have someone come out on a regular basis to service it and keep it in good working condition. Of course, things went a different way.

[@ergosteur]

I’ve had a Dell FDDM-101 for at least 10 years and never realized it had a mini USB port. Thanks for pointing that out.

[@succuvamp_anna]

For removing dust, look into getting some ESD safe brushes and look for an ESD safe computer vacuum. (Or just a battery operated one) I also use a grounded small gallon air compressor.

[@MichiganPeatMoss]

Thanks for the tip. Great advice on keeping ahead of floppy drive contagion with mold. A real-life virus. :)

[@adamwhite2364]

I love the D series Dell floppy drives too! I worked desktop for a few years about the time of the end of the D series, so I was able to glom on to a handful of them. Keeping mini USB cables around is slightly harder, but they're still sold online, at least

[@garbleduser]

I swear I heard "Floral Shoppe" when you were scrubbing that beast!

[@johndododoe1411]

Fading is probably done by rewriting the palette table with smaller RGB values for each color. It's a fast trick from the era and isn't tied to any specific graphics card, anything VGA compatible can do so for any mode with 256 or fewer colors. So it may have been an option in the Phoenix BIOS delivery that not all manufacturers chose. Or it may have been in the graphics card BIOS, triggered by common boot steps.

[@andrewbobulsky3505]

For dusting computers, I use a horsehair vacuum brush that came with my Kirby. I don't content it's static safe, but I have yet to kill a machine with it :)

[@aziztcf]

The screw in the back makes sense when you have that kind of large card on a daughterboard backplane. Might want to grab a small IDE extension cable for that IDE-USB doodad

[@emusunlimited]

i like how the cats tail pointed at the logo at the same time he did. 1:01

[@Codeaholic1]

The piece of plastic sticking up is a support for full length cards to prevent them from sagging. Note the slots on the inside.

[@NinjaSteve69]

I like all your videos, great job! I grew up on WebTV. I would love to see a video on one. I sat on that thing writing html css and Javascript all day for years lol... and we had a community of "table artists" which NO ONE knows about or understands lol, no prob tho. Just making my request known. Keep em coming 😎👍

[@hgbugalou]

I always thought it was clever how Dell made those internal Laptop 3.5 drives USB compatible too.

[@ssokolow]

That wobbly plastic pillar looks like a mechanical support for if you're installing full-length, full-height ISA cards... the broken one might be some kind of mechanical support for the riser the cards plug into. (i.e. To reinforce it when you're trying to plug that very first card into it.)

[@mavis34]

There are various solutions to the 'dust & debris' problem. Mini ESD vacuums are a nice solution. What an awesome looking machine!

[@DuckGWR]

I love those Dell module floppys with the Mini USB connectors, I've found two of them naturally. Never had any issues with 720k disks, which I've heard can be an issue with USB drives. For what it's worth late 80s if not cheap early 90s XT class laptops still used 720k disks in my experience I suspect the broken bit of plastic on the far side of the motherboard is a support for full-length cards.

[@ev2477]

I really enjoyed the noise your cat made when you picked them up.

[@mrhoogles]

re: for cleaning dust, this datavac thing i bought a while back came with attachments with brushes that said they were ESD safe, they seem to have always worked for me pretty well, also the air output is a lot higher than you would expect from such a small device... also its made out of metal :3 ... pretty good blower thingy imho.

[@antidecepticon]

The Floppy only uses the 5 volt power line so thats why its powered by the board. Also isopropyl alcohol wont do anything, you could also wash most of the cards in water in the sink ,and then pour iso on them and leave them to dry, it will only mess up stickers and ink. Short out all the caps first though....

[@CalcProgrammer1]

Our school had these! For the longest time I couldn't find any information or pictures online of them. I remember they were called EduQuest but searching turned up nothing. We had them up until 5th grade, they had been updated to Windows 95 and were terrible at running it. My 5th grade teacher complained I spent too much time playing on those stupid computers (and trying to fix the printer) and not focusing on her class....joke's on her, I'm a computer engineer now.

[@DB-xx6ec]

I think you will find that “anti-static” stuff is really not necessary, Electro boom did a good piece on this showing that it takes A LOT to really damage sensitive parts.

[@zeframm]

"That is a stupid solution to a stupid problem" lol

[@bank8489]

the moment where you just say "correct" at 4:12 might be one of the best moments on your channel in my opinion

[@orangejjay]

Wow. I remember when my elementary school upgraded all their computers ... these were what they upgraded to. They had these in the library and computer lab. I always thought they were just PS/2s. Had no idea they were "EduQuest." This is so cool.

[@hexamex]

I know this video is old, but if you see this: most likely there wouldve been a series of experimental equipment that would feed into this machine. you opened a ph grapher and a velocity grapher, for which you would need a ph probe and a light gate respectively to record data continously and it would generate the graph. nowadays, these would be usb and in the light gate’s case, my lab had a bluetooth one. frankly, modern tech doesnt do anything for me but finding out that they aren’t as modern as thought is weirdly pleasant. That hypercard-esque application you opened was really quite surreal. Love the channel!

[@CathodeRayDude]

Oh yeah! I actually have obtained several of the experiment probes since this video and they work, I just haven't had a chance to make the video yet. Thanks for watching!

[@agentj642]

I can't remember too clearly as it was 1995 or 1996, but I think my high school had some of these. We used them to learn how to type (at least the class I selected, I'm sure it was used for more), and they were all connected in a way that the teacher can take control of them and even share the screen. I think they had the CD drive as well. Don't know too much more about it unfortunately as two years later my school got all new computers and general technology upgrades, and off to Windows 98/WinNT 3.5.

[@LunarHermit]

I've never put too much thought into anti-static dusting, I just use a paint brush like a heathen. However, they do make carbon fiber brushes for cleaning records; I would think those would be conductive enough to be used if you're particularly worried about static discharge!

[@jaykoerner]

The screw for the top card is likely to positively hold the daughter board in I would assume, by having it close to the daughter board probably helped keep stress off the socket, and keep it from moving, but idk just a guess

[@ItsJustElenore]

I always just use natural bristle "artists" (a.k.a. small) paint brushes with wooden handles to clean my electronics. Also alcohol. Not only to drink, but also to clean. Some pure Iso or ethanol works really well. Used those two things for years and years on everything electronic and never had a problem. ALSO: Magic erasers. If you search for "melamine foam" on ebay, you can get, like, 100 of them for 5 to 10 bucks. Perfect for cleaning plastics like the case.

[@FalconFour]

I tried telling you that 256 color was the norm of the era! If you're getting 16 colors on period hardware that came with Win95, you've got a driver problem. ;)

[@tOSdude]

I just looked on a shelf and discovered that my Dell floppy drive is one of those USB drives. Model number MPF82E Thank you for teaching me this wisdom!!

[@michaelyammer]

You know dude is alright when he's so casual with his cat.

[@shizindustries2614]

what i like to use for caked on dust is makeup brushes, most of the time they are cheap and soft but sturdy enough to get most of the dust off but not chip any of the sensitive components off

[@WilliamHostman]

That broken bit is almost certainly the support for a long ISA card - essential in devices with horizontal mounts.

[@AC-ss2sv]

This machine is very similar to a Compaq Presario 425 all in one that I had around the same time. I loved that thing.