IBM's Eduquest: The Only Good 90s All-In-One

[@smugshrug]

As a former Aptiva owner, I'll have you know that I thoroughly enjoyed sliding the absolutely useless plastic door up and down the front of my case while Windows 95 was loading.

[@plushifoxed]

i have an aptiva currently and i really do think the later ones (like, the 1997-99 towers) are pretty distinctive and cool in a sea of beige sludge they've got this sort of skyscraper-y aesthetic and i like the periwinkle accents idk, i just think they're neat!

[@JaredConnell]

I loved that case and i wish i had one still

[@Dyvon.dynamo]

Netvista owner and Aptiva designs are what lead to Dress Barn one day jettisoning their POS to become MY POS. I'M GRATEFUL TO KNOW THEIR HISTORY NOW

[@bill_and_amanda]

I think our second PC/third computer (we also had an Apple IIe) growing up was a 486 Aptiva 2176. It had the little door in front that slid up and down and the incongruous curvy top handle. Good times.

[@Dong_Harvey]

This plastic doors would also appear in such great hits as HP Pavilion!

[@tayzonday]

I was so excited that the 486 DX2 had a math coprocessor to play Descent at higher FPS. I dreamed of owning one at the start of 7th grade, but by the end of 7th grade my Dad bought me a Pentium 90.

[@BravoCharleses]

I remember that feeling. One day out of the blue my dad came home with a K6-2 to replace the family's 486 and it was amazing! Thanks for reminding me of this good memory.

[@a51mj12]

Eeh i remember my old 486 days, sipping choclit, playing games, even when it rained...

[@enqane]

I move away from the mic to breath in

[@EasyCheesyChodes]

Descent didn't use the math co-pro, it was all integer all the way.

[@DarthGylcolious]

I had a Compaq Deskpro 486 DX 33, and Intel gave my Dad's work a bunch of complimentary 486DX4 100 Overdrives to evaluate. So he brought one home and we evaluated it. Descent was my game of choice and WOW the speed difference was absolutely insane. Never since then have I had a single component upgrade make such a huge difference in *overall* speed, not even upgrading from a crap video card to a modern 3D card (3D cards don't make Windows faster).

[@Jimgress]

I just want to say you’re an absolute hero for inexplicably making an Evangelion reference in the middle of a video about an semi-obscure IBM PC all-in-one. I don’t really know why, and honestly it doesn’t matter why you do it, just please keep doing these random references coming. Despite the high quality of content and effort coming out of this channel it is somehow my absolute favorite thing about it.

[@Kalvinjj]

Next video he's gonna do about the IBN 5100, trying to hack into the SERN and avoid the DURPA finding out.

[@jameslaidler2152]

You know, even with the recent BluRay re-release I'm surprised even on this channel anyone else got the reference too. Though he used the wrong damn song, that one was from End of Evangelion.

[@Squeetube]

It’s so refreshing to hear your view on the relative “boring” nature of covering IBM PCs and PC Compatibles. Other content creators in this space tend to have great difficulty in admitting this reality!

[@a4000t]

seen one x86 seen all x86.. No more a boring appliance than this. dos 8+3 🤮 i can't believe anyone waxes nostalgic on these boring boxes.

[@orangejjay]

@@a4000t I'm in the same boat. I played with it as a kid and it was fun but like ... what would I do with these as an adult? I wasn't a gamer on the PC back then and these days I have no desire to play shitty DOS games. But watching other people pretend they're cool is ... fun.

[@TommyCrosby]

The way you go on a full tangent about all the CMOS thing just to talk about the CDROM is amazing. It's like a full video by itself inserted in the main one.

[@Roxor128]

If there's anything worse than soldered-in batteries, it's this epoxied-into-a-module approach. Whoever proposed it deserves a beating, and whoever approved it deserves two.

[@patrik_x86]

That is why we watch CRD - Feature length rants.

[@gominosensei2008]

It's almost like he's got well integrated and halfway well managed adhd. I wouldn't presume to diagnose someone remotely, but as one diagnosed with it myself, this is literally how it feels to be me, except it's probably happening every, like.... FIVE MINUTES OF MY LIFE! So, while it's not something I can get rid of, it can become some sort of a distinctive talent, if halfway decently managed. Sadly, managing anything, let alone something as unruly as pesky biology of the brain, especially when it's the same piece of meat is responsible about one's sense of self, and surroundings... Well, that's a challenge for the best of anyone, let alone someone with deficitary executive function. So, my dear @cathoderaydude, kudos to you if you don't have this mixed blessing, but especially if you do..... [edit spelling because apparently adhd comes pre-packaged with varying degrees of dyslexia, and while I can spot someone else's spelling mistakes a mile away without reading more than 5 words, I suck when it's me writing it]

[@frogz]

@@Roxor128 ........dallas........

[@sadmac356]

​@@gominosensei2008 …holy shit you just put my life in words…

[@RabbitEarsCh]

This is by FAR your highest-effort "two of them" ever. I love this so much. Never stop making high-effort blink-and-you'll-miss-it memes.

[@TommyAgramonSeth]

10 seconds in and it's already a banger. This is the quality I expect from CRD.

[@wishusknight3009]

I was getting a good chuckle as he was going on about the scsi cdrom and then the bios password. As soon as he said "it had no battery" i knew what he would find... And then bellowed when he tried to power it on without the clock chip. Ohh how many times that bit me badly in the old days. The dallas chip would fail causing the computer to no longer POST. And then have to de solder the dang thing buried in the chassis.

[@rpgspree]

FYI: I found that a metal-tipped mechanical pencil works great for fixing bent pins. First get the led out, then carefully slide the bent pin into the hollow pencil tip and _carefully_ reorient the pin back inline with the adjacent pins. If the pin is really crooked, you can use the tip to help straighten the pin out as you work it in. You can look at the bottom of the chip edge-on to check how straight the pin is with its row and column. It might take some slight tweaks to get it aligned well. This will work even if the tip is a little bigger than the pin, it's just awkward. I've saved more than a few CPUs with this trick and have not broken a single pin either. Not to say that's impossible, it's just never happened to me and I hardly have a surgeon's skill.

[@CathodeRayDude]

That's a really good tip, thank you!

[@alfascarlate]

Did this recently to correct a keyboard connector these days... felt like it was the most "Macgyver-ish" thing i did in some time.

[@Finder245]

I fixed a pair of black top Pentium Pros in a similar fashion. Lost of a couple of pins, but they were fortunately not all that important. :)

[@raafmaat]

ah man, i was actually just looking around for something to use for this, a mechanical pen is a great idea! sadly i have none, ill buy one tomorrow :) thanks OP

[@SuperDerek]

I would absolutely watch a video series of CRD talking about 5 -10 strange PCs that he only has 5 minutes of ramblings to say about any of them. Like a "weird PC roundup" video series. I'm not sure if it'd be any easier or more difficult to produce, but weird PCs and CRD snark is what fuels me.

[@BuckoBean29]

I would watch a CRD video about literally anything

[@MaximNightFury]

Well you kinda got your wish with his newest video series!

[@SuperDerek]

@@MaximNightFury been absolutely loving them too!

[@ThisSteveGuy]

Gotta get yourself a polarizing filter to lessen reflections in monitors and elsewhere. It'll also help screw up shots of LCD displays and clear plastics in case you forget to take it off.

[@MaxOakland]

Screw up?

[@ThisSteveGuy]

@@MaxOakland Since LCD displays use polarized light to work, a polarizing filter can make them appear really dim or even totally black. And certain clear plastics will have weird rainbow colors in them due to how they polarize light.

[@MaxOakland]

@@ThisSteveGuy Why would you want that?

[@ThisSteveGuy]

@@MaxOakland It's called a joke, Max.

[@bennyfactor]

There were a few eduquest 55s still hanging on in the back of some classrooms in my high school in the early 2000s. Was never really sure why, we never used them. Our Spanish teacher though had held on to a couple of those model 25s that we used from time to time. Spanish grammar DOS edutainment games are still relevant 20 years later. One of my buddies dubbed them the "MS Dos" (with dos pronounced like the number two) machines. Always made me giggle.

[@intentionally_obscure]

Good lord "only about point-eight" I probably woke up the whole house busting a gut over that. Had to listen twice to make sure I didn't miss something. You have a particular sense of humor expressed largely through editing that has an inexplicable effect on me.

[@uzetaab]

I had to pause the video to look for this comment, point eight is pure gold

[@nickanat]

That endless brightness knob was a feature a lot of education/kiosk-aimed displays had back in the day to keep people from breaking them. I remember it was common on the terminals that were used as timeclocks at a certain grocery store about 2 decades ago.

[@jessihawkins9116]

Kroger’s

[@LoricElf]

Definitely seemed like a feature and not a problem to me.

[@patrick_central]

Came here to post this - kids can fiddle with things to broken instantly, so if you’re making a machine for them, you make some concessions

[@cericat]

@@patrick_central Having been sitting a couple of computers over when a year 7 reached over and flicked the voltage switch on a PSU that's one of the more intelligent things brought to schools. No protective covers on most PSUs then nor auto switching.

[@patrick_central]

@@cericat Kids will always find a way to do something "no one would ever do" - designing for them is knowing and solving for this

[@Douglasvj]

My elementary school had dozens of these. This is what I remember, some details are fuzzy: There were about 6-8 of them in each classroom with a printer. Fridays was computer day in 1st grade, we would all get on and do some educational thing, something done in Sierra's adventure engine. Since there were not enough computers for everyone, we got to use them in shifts throughout the day. There was an option to print a score or something at the end and the teacher was very adamant we don't hit print. I know it happened occasionally on accident and I remember having anxiety that I would hit the wrong button, print something, and get in trouble. I remember Word Rescue was one of the other games we played on these things and got excited to find a shareware copy at a dollar store because that was the game "from school". I also remember that each machine would come up with a nice colorful ASCII splash on startup. This was pulled from the network, because I remember it changing thematically, for example, i think there was fall and Christmas theming. I remember at some point my teacher explaining that one of the first grade teachers controlled it, so I expect she was the more computer savvy teacher in the school. By the time I was in 5th grade, each teacher had a more updated computer with internet access and these things fell into disuse somewhat. I know they were still used for a program called "Accelerated Reader" where you could get points for taking quizzes on books you read and that was about all they were used for by that time.

[@pocketpc_]

Oh my GOD you just unlocked a memory. My earliest computer labs were running on XP, but Accelerated Reader was still around in a (at least somewhat) updated form and I used to CRUSH those AR tests.

[@sosemiteyam562]

Yup free pizzas and books and going out to Cracker Barrel for being one of the highest point accumulators in AR. Good ol' days. Would crank out books way past my grade's level just to get some beefy points. Definitely helped me speed up my reading comprehension.

[@ChakkyCharizard]

Good god, AR's been around a while. We were using it in the late 2000s in late elementary and early middle school, as well.

This video just made me realize that this constantly sidetracked storytelling gives a much more lifelike experience, because if anyone attempts to revive such old hardware this shows very clearly how much buried knowledge you have to dig through to make it work again.

[@scurvy3113]

This

[@softchassis]

All the components being in a sled drawer is STILL such a brilliant design choice. I love this little computer.

[@AllonKirtchik]

Isn’t it a Mac thing? When he did this my first thought was: “that’s like a toaster Mac!”

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@AllonKirtchik yep, it’s pretty Maccy

[@kepoirvine9258]

The boot from ROM feature was a feature and cost savings as most of these machines were on legacy IBM MAU token ring networks and would get all the software they would run over the shared network resources. IBM generally sold these as a system, not stand alone units. I spent many hours in schools setting up 500-100 of these throughout a school as simple terminals served by a PS/2 model 95 server with a monster 2 gb hard drive, sometimes mirrored in a well funded district. One of the selling features of the Eduquest system was an entire software suite that would do everything from remote profiles and progress tracking base don a student login. WAY WAY ahead of it's time and it certainly was a better solution than Apple's just sell them a machine so their parents will buy the same thing strategy.

[@DeathBlossom867]

YES! My elementary school had this system. One technology teacher could run the entire lab and control all of our terminals directly from her machine.

[@hardrays]

they would teach on this and then we had to go use the monochrome mac's with the over the top times roman font.

[@alext3811]

And now Google is doing this with chromebooks, except they sell them standalone and you have to accept Google's surveillance tracking stuff.

[@McMucko]

Countless Eduquest 30 machines filled the computer labs and classrooms in 1993 when I was entering 5th grade. I was the first class in a brand new school which was touted as providing the classroom of the future. These IBMs where state of the art at the time, especially so in a small New England town in the early 1990's. Prior to this the only computer exposure I had had up until that point was using Apple IIe machines left over from the 80s, so these machines were pretty exciting to 11 year old me. Being a geek I had learned how to bypass a menu and launch all of the games from the command line, causing a bit of trouble for myself when I was eventually caught. Thanks for sharing and the nostalgia!

[@winterwatson6811]

restrictions on school computers were great-they taught us to problem solve!

[@ewohwerd]

Same here! I used these in elementary school. They were set up so an instructor could send individualized learning activities to each student. The activities remind me of HyperCard based educational content - simple interaction with a few animations and places to click. I remember a variety of content - phonics, math concepts, etc.

[@DarthKoonstyle]

Yeah same here in Ohio. I was in third grade when we got them.

[@Saturn2888]

I knew about EDO RAM having to be in pairs because my dad was telling me that's why he bought them like that. This is the first time anyone's told me why. I appreciate the detailed information!

[@iain999999999999999]

I seem to recall network cards of that era had PROM sockets for holding a chip with network booting code. It looks like that ethernet card has such a chip fitted, so there's a chance the odd error message is trying to tell you it can't find the Novell server to boot from or similar. Worth trying to remove that chip and see if the error goes away and the windows driver becomes more cooperative.

[@ax14pz107]

One excuse that could be given for the mismatched soundcard jacks is that it's much easier to feel which jack is which without having to spin the computer around so if you're having to repeatedly plug things in and out of it, you know exactly which jack is which. That's probably not the reason, but that would be my excuse.

[@cericat]

Yep probably not, but as someone that's done a lot of cabling by touch that would save feeling for the 15-pin plug for joystick/MIDI to figure out which was under my fingers.

[@Mr_L1n4x]

As a technician I hate working with All in Ones especially the modern ones that's just a soldered motherboard connected to a screen, but this would've been incredible to work on and I've seen something similar in some schools and offices where the "All in One" is just a small form factor PC mounted on a monitor with a "case" on the back I absolutely love this because is the best of both worlds and sure there are some sacrifices like little to none PCI ports and using RAM form laptops instead of desktop but for maintenance and portability purpose they're the best

[@BokBarber]

Wait. That's the sound card! We had one of those on our '94 Quantex PC. Lord knows why, but it probably had something to do with my dad working for IBM, and dual booting OS/2 on that machine as his work from home setup. This explains so much of my trouble getting that thing to work. So many sleepless nights trying to make it sing after I'd swapped hard drives. It kinda worked on our original setup but I could never find any drivers that played nice with it for any future setups. Thank you for solving this mystery that's been stuck in the back of my head.

[@ChefSalad]

You could put a sound card AND an ethernet card into you EduQuest 30 AND keep your SCSI! It IS possible. What you need is an ISA sound card with SCSI built-in, and such a thing does exist. It, for some odd reason doesn't have an external SCSI port, but you only need the internal one anyway, so you're in luck. What you're looking for is the Media Vision Pro AudioSpectrum 16 (not Basic). It came with a SCSI 2x CD-ROM drive, and it's from the same era. I had one as a kid, and it was great. SoundBlaster 16 compatible and everything.

[@hardrays]

what was that arangement soundblaster had where the cable looked ide but was some creative proprietary connection? i believe it was hosting just one cd rom. ISA normal length.

[@ChefSalad]

@@hardrays I'm not sure about Sound Blaster doing that, but, yeah, some of the models from Media Vision had proprietary CD-ROM interfaces instead of SCSI, so watch out for that if you're going to get into this stuff.

[@hardrays]

@@ChefSalad thanks for the reminder. I had a mediavision card and i do recall having a proprietary wide interface. Did not have cd rom to test so the example didnt register forefront in mind

[@SimonQuigley]

The PAS16 had a weird mini scsi interface, to run the Sony CDU33A 2x cdrom drive it came with. It won't run any old scsi drive.

[@ChefSalad]

@@SimonQuigley are you sure that it's so picky? Or was it just drivers that added that limitation? I seem to remember that Linux had drivers for the PAS16 SCSI interface and I don't recall the notes saying anything about that kind of limitation. Unfortunately, I don't have the hardware to do the tests anymore.

[@strawmanfallacy]

I just come back and listen to these videos when nithing else is new on KZbin. Thanks for having a soothing voice.

[@AddieDirectsTV]

If they were anything like the IBMs we had through 8th grade, they booted and then immediately gave you a IBM Classroom LAN Administration System Login. That likely explains the weird BIOS boot options.

[@swf2e]

Ours were the same. The old blue screen with red and white. Even had individual logins for all students.

[@juaane]

There is one certain youtuber , who would say, due to the magic of having two of them… honestly a collaboration between you and Alec would be awesome

[@deathdogg0]

Lol imagine TC and CRD together. They strike me as having similar interests but vastly different personalities though

[@ChrisHoppe-wordmeme]

Guys.... this is starting to sound like slash fanfic.😂

[@olepigeon]

If you got one of those 5.25" bay CRTs, you could technically turn any PC tower into an AIO. :)

[@hyperturbotechnomike]

My dad once worked at Siemens-Nixdorf, which were the european equivalent of IBM. Siemens computers had a similar all-in-one system as the IBM Eduquest, called the Siemens Nixdorf FD-200, which came in a nice black chassis. There was also the FD-210 which when i remember had a bigger screen and built-in stereo speakers. It looked like as if someone has put a consumer TV-Set on top of a desktop PC. The machines were very similar in built quality, price and features. But at the end, they met a similar fate as IBM's PC division. They sold to a company in asia, (in Siemens case it was Fujitsu) which over time lowered the quality. Fujitsu and Lenovo kept the quality for the first couple of years, but they soon started to cheap out, especially the laptop and all-in-one PC's got really bad. It's sad to see those quality brands ending up like that.

[@yadabub]

I remember having an MWave based card. Somebody figured out how to frankenstein the DSP code to increase the capabilities, and the result worked fairly well, until it crashed DSP, which it always did. But even the original drivers were never truly stable or completely compatible as I recall.

[@daemonspudguy]

I remember the original Eduquest video. Old IBM PCs are fascinating to me, especially the lack of BIOS settings on the early ones.

[@wishusknight3009]

I think my favorite are some of the blue lightning equipped PS/2's. Though finding cards for my Model 57 is a PITA.. the only thing of note is it has the 8514/a accelerator.

[@TheJamesM]

Those blue headphones are the exact ones we used for all our music lessons when I was at secondary school here in England in the mid-to-late 90s. I have strong sense-memories of taking a set from the bin they were kept in and plugging in to a MIDI keyboard, or if I was lucky, the one computer we had in the music hut (a drafty temporary structure that was about twenty years into its intended five-year lifetime). I also remember the music teacher berating my technique for untangling the inevitably knotted mess of cable. Apparently it was better to start from the middle - I still don't see how that could be right.

[@hyperturbotechnomike]

The only place, where i met a decent pair of "school cans" was at the secondary school, i visited during the 2000's in Germany. They had a contract with Sennheiser. They were just their entry-level pair of headphones with a microphone on it, but they were good enough to occasionally listen to a CD or secretly plugging them into an iPod or the Nokia music phone i had at the time. The most annoying pairs of "scool cans": In the early 2010's i went to a school for professional IT teachnings, as part of the dual education system we have here. They had the cheapest pair of headphones i have ever seen. The kind of headphones they sell you at an InterCity Express train to listen to the armrest radio. They sounded as thin as they possibly could and even listening to voice was annoying and headache inducing, because it all sounded like a snake hiss. There was no bass, no mids, no treble, it was just the very top end of the audio spectrum humans can hear. I also felt sorry for people with longer hair, because the thin sheet metal headband. At some point, the teachers allowed the students to bring their own pair of headphones. The problem for me was, that i always had big closed back Hi-Fi headphones and i couldn't hear something when the teacher was talking, so i had to change the audio settings on the PC to mono and only listen to my left earcup, because i had to put the right one above my ear, so i could hear something from the outside.

[@20windfisch11]

There was a second line of DOS all-in-ones that doesn’t suck: the Siemens-Nixdorf Multimedia Star line. They are based on a Fujitsu design I think because they look very similar to their AiO 486 line but the build quality is better and they had beefier hardware. They might have only been sold in Germany but their recovery media also offered options to reinstall in English, Dutch or French. I had the most popular model, the FD200, which had a 486DX2-66, 8 MiB RAM and a Tseng ET4000 graphics card on board. The special thing was that it already was PCI, even the graphics hardware which was on the motherboard was connected via PCI (ET4000W32P). I upgraded mine to a 486DX4-100 and 32 MiB of RAM and this was a very capable 486. It even ran Duke 3D, GTA 1 and Quake 1 in the lowest resolution but with the full viewport and high details at reasonably playable speeds, around 20-30fps. And Siemens did the same strange thing with the ports. The sound card was on a special PCI slot, it was a bit further behind and only the special Siemens cards fit in there. But being a genuine SB16 I had no intention to change that. The monitor was connected to the motherboard via a short VGA cord so you could use a different graphics card or monitor if you wanted, but again, the internal CRT was fine. It could do 800x600 with up to 75Hz and 1024x768 with 60Hz and the sharpness was ok with both resolutions. You didn’t want to run more with just a 1MiB graphics card and 14 inch CRT anyway. All in all a quite capable little machine.

[@turtledruid464]

Zoomer here, we did in fact still have the computer lab headphones, although ours were a later model that included a headset mic and had 1/8th connectors. Looked pretty much the same though.

[@webluke]

My schools in Southwest Colorado all had a bunch of these systems, but they were not branded Eduquest. During the summer of 2000, I was 15, and I got a job working with the tech maintenance team; we blew the dust out of thousands of these. They stuck around with Windows 3.1 for a while before getting replaced by the Netvista systems. Sometime around 1994, the school ran 2 different OS systems that had some cool UI, but I didn't know what it was, and it was replaced the next year. When you pop the motherboard tray out of these, make sure you don't break the internal video cable, and also make sure you hook it back up; one of the guys who worked with us had a bad habit of not hooking them up and spending 30 minutes going back and hooking his up. Token Ring was all over the school districts, but in 2000, they were slowly replacing everything with Ethernet.

[@smakfu1375]

Man, these videos are weirdly entertaining, even if, at 48, I grew up during, and started my career through this era (starting with my first computer, a Vic20 that I still have - along with a bunch of others). Anyway, to answer a couple of question raised about the 486SX: early 486SX CPU's were identical die's to the DX, but with defective FPU's. Yields through 89 were apparently not very good, so there were a lot of defective 486DX-25s. Since floating point math wasn't a common requirement outside of CAD/CAM packages, heavy Excel users, and a few other use cases, the 486SX ended up being a nominal success (ultimately, it would be Quake, and other 3d titles, that would make x87 performance a selling point, but only after the 486 was already relegated to the low-end). With said success of the SX, Intel then produced a dedicated 486SX die (actually they made several, IIRC, including lower power variants) which had the FPU fully masked off. So why the dopey 487 / overdrive socket? There was no way to reasonably decouple the integrated FPU as it was closely coupled to the 64bit internal (actually 2 x 32bit) data bus (the P5 would be the first x86 CPU to implement a 64bit external data bus), overall pipelining, instruction cache, and other uArch internals. Their options were to either reuse the i387, which would have been a fraction of the performance of 486's integrated FPU (similar to their initial reuse of the 287 as the FP coprocessor for the 386, prior to shipping the 387 two years after the 386 - something that led to the rise of a competing FP coprocessor market), or just stick a second (non-standard) socket that took a complete 486DX labeled as a "487". Of course, if you had a standard PGA 486SX, you could just pull it out and plop in a 486DX but, believe it or not, even early PGA boards in 1990 had those idiotic 487 sockets. The 487 socket primarily lived on, well beyond their removal elsewhere in the 486 ecosystem, on later 486SX implementations with SM quad flat package implementations, as an upgrade path (like the machine you featured in this video). This might seem wasteful by todays standards, but similar concepts were very common in other platforms with Processor Direct Slots, like certain Mac's and my beloved Amiga 3000, where a full upgrade CPU board disable the onboard CPU.

[@CathodeRayDude]

Okay, that makes a lot of sense, thank you for explaining. I was not thinking of the FPU as being that deeply coupled, I imagined it being essentially a couple sets of registers that the CPU would treat more or less like a peripheral. Obviously in retrospect that was not likely.

[@smakfu1375]

@@CathodeRayDude Just to give you an idea of how much faster the 80486's x87 FPU is, versus the i387 external FP co-processor, LINPACK float64 is 0.49 MFLOPS for the i387, versus 2.4 MFLOPS for the 486's FPU, with both running at 33Mhz. Love the content. IBM sure made a lot of weird stuff back in the day.

[@joemoorman9103]

Hey I'll totally buy your Compaq all-in-one from you! I love those things. They are not boring to me. My very first computer was a Presario 425. For a kid an all-in-one PC was an excellent option because it was easy to setup and work with, and it took up less space on a kid's desk. It's still nice to this day, all things being equal, to have to use less flat space for your retro setup. Of course it's somewhat more annoying to work on, but when it works, you've got the same monitor and computer, and so you get the same experience every time.

[@jgrutza]

I'm only four minutes in, but I have to say, the black t-shirt look from this and the last video is really working for me. I do like Da Share Zone shirt, but this is a simple, sustainable look. Great.

[@c4sper877]

Man, that ending was sooo smooth. Just the way the PC boots perfectly in time with the script as you nonchalantly carry on - pure talent. Great content as always. And I love that you're not only doing longer videos recently, but you're releasing videos more regularly. Keep up the awesome work CRD! =) x

[@CathodeRayDude]

Thank you so much. I was surprised, I got it in three takes!

[@c4sper877]

@@CathodeRayDude Like a boss! Ha ha 😁

[@daviddavis4824]

First computer I ever used in Kindergarten. They were connected through token ring to a server located in the principals office. They loaded a blue text based screen with all the educational apps and games you can run. Of course, they booted 3.1 too. Definitely responsible for starting my fascination of computers and my career today. I remember stacks of these in storage at school by the time I hit 5th grade.

[@ambostralian]

This is probably my favourite video of yours. I realised half way through why I enjoy your channel so much. Other channels that I greatly enjoy like LGR and 8bit guy, when they talk about old hardware, do tend to mostly focus on pre-90s (obviously LGR pushes into the 2000s but generally only when he's focusing on gaming). But you focus on the hardware that was making computers exciting when I was a kid in the mid-late 90s and 2000s. It's the time that these things that I couldn't have, or maybe my parents or my aunt had but I didn't have my own and I was so intrigued by it. But you're right, it feels like no one wants to talk about tech from this time because it's when things were refining rather than first coming out.

[@deeiks12]

I think they were only sold to educational clients, and mostly bought through government subsidies, so they weren't upgraded with custom ISA cards a lot. After a certain period they were 'given back', and switched out to newer ones. At least thats how it was over here in my country. Since IBM didn't have a 'official' presence here it might have been a local resailer thing as well. Token ring was important for network boot and some educational software.

[@abbiedoobie]

Oh wow, I remember these! We had them all throughout my elementary! I'm not sure what version, but it had those awful headphones plugged into the front 24/7 and at some point someone was kind enough to put Oregon Trail on them! What a blast from the past, love the vid!

[@ki85squared]

Feature-length CRD! ♥️

[@stephenj4937]

I used an Eduquest in high school for my computer programming class (in Pascal). We did not have CD drives, but did use the token ring network to connect to the printer. We had to print out a physical copy of our code to turn in.

[@marcberm]

Some of the audio here reminds me of the "WAV driver for PC speaker" included on a disk with some computer mag in the early 90's. After installing it on my 386SX with 2MB I was in awe of what I was able to press the machine into doing. It did sound like the audio was coming from inside a sealed tin can though. 🤣

[@Adoline]

I am a Zoomer, and I went to some pretty underfunded elementary schools where I used that exact pair of headphones for a hearing test they made me do. The only other option were the incredibly fragile and uncomfortable plastic ones that arguably sounded worse

[@chateuaxfaygeaux]

Our school was full of these, token ring network and all. I recall the lower-end models lacking a hard drive and having a ROM DOS available if it didn't already boot from the network. IBM's solution was to network all of these with NetWare and a DOS-based management program called ICLAS (IBM Classroom LAN Administration System). Booting a lab of these things was fun with the relays of the ring concentrators going nuts under the desks.

[@DeathBlossom867]

We had those labs too!

[@dintyshideaway9505]

Long time listener, first time caller. First I loved this video. Taking a deep dive into the past is always fun, especially for those of us who lived it. No notes, just great!

[@grrrgrrr304]

Now you have several of them, it would be neat if you could setup a token ring network between them.

[@cericat]

Why would you wish that hell on the man? I have so much pain from working with NE-2000 cards trying to get token ring working.

[@eformance]

The ROM DOS option makes complete sense. Schools often didn't provision machines with HDDs, requiring students (or the teacher) to format a diskette /s to use it is a PITA. OTOH, having to just copy a few files to a diskette and having DOS in ROM would mean they could autoboot into whatever program. DOS also took up a good chunk of space on those old 720k diskettes. Allowing schools to opt for cheaper 720k floppies vs 1.44MB could make a difference. Also, it wasn't uncommon for labs to be setup with Netware and floppy drives. My HS had model 25's connected to a model 60 running Netware 2.12.

[@9.peanut]

These werent shipped with 720k's or floppy deletes. They were shipped without HDDs, SCSI, or Audio though. Boot over Netware was especially common though. I've seen instantiations without local disk, boot over netware with token ring, AND Windows 3.1 support! crazy

[@pdrg]

You always do lovely deep dives, clearly with affection, always with humour.

[@stevedaenginerd]

Another epic entry for your catalog! Thanks for all the research, it must've been quite a bit! A thing of beauty, a joy forever! Thanks for the trip down memory lane! 🙂

[@facebag666]

when you pulled the system out I had a vivid memory of my tech teacher having this machine disasembeld but working with a bare crt no case on his work table for my entire highschool time.

[@aWOLtrooper]

Just want to say you've definitely become my favorite KZbinr, I really love the content you provide and the way you discuss these topics is really engaging and genuine. Thanks.

[@JosiahGould]

I have a vague memory of an Eduquest in elementary school in the mid-90s. It ran some weather monitoring software that had a sensor box outside, probably over serial. I spent hours crafting weather reports using data for the past week... I should have pursued that line of work.

[@scurvy3113]

Lgr did a video on the weather stuff. Very bad ass

[@johnmurray1889]

I was so excited when I saw this drop on my lunch break I was like, YEAH and hour and twenty minutes! Love the content, and you're attitude. Please keep it up.

[@Maxjk0]

39:05 You can't do this to me! 40 minutes in and you sneak an Evangelion reference, i almost laughed way too loud at work

[@ziggybowman6875]

It's beautiful. He even got a Standard Definition camera out for it to be era appropriate

[@xipietotec]

Just a reason why the sound cards and network cards were proprietary for this, makes sense from “business logic”. IBM wasn’t just selling these individually and wasn’t selling these, *most importantly* without a service contract. From a support perspective with early computers you’re going to have the most problems with: Sound Cards and Network Cards. By making those two components proprietary you could make sure that the local administrator didn’t install a 3rd party card and try and make you support it, or make your support techs waste hours before figuring out that the local administrator installed a card that you never supported on that hardware. You still see this in “enterprise” and educational hardware for precisely this reason on “mission critical” components

[@cemmy410]

Oh man I've been waiting for this one!

[@Tarukai788]

“It throws an error that IBM has no description for in any of their docs.” That is possibly the most quintessential IBM troubleshooting, from home to work.

[@GreenAppelPie]

RAM was really expensive AF back then, people who built their own machines were often looking to re-use everything they could from their old PC. Having the two different type of RAM slot was a definite feature. It’s why I bought such a mobo.

[@wotsac]

As I recall, the price of memory pretty much just got stuck at something ugly for several years. I bought a used 386 mobo, and he sold me 4mb of dimms at $25/stick in like... 1992. And then it wasn't until like 1996 that the price came back down to $25 again.

[@strawmanfallacy]

"Boot in to Ram Dass." Truly the most enlightened KZbinr. ❤

[@oliviaiacovou]

watched the first video probably 4 or 5 times, so glad to see more of it !!

[@h-leath6339]

Interesting side note: "Trigger Warning Bee Boop " was an anime that was pitched but passed over for a much weirder, now acclaimed, animated tv series.

[@craned]

When I worked in a computer lab in college we used a program called Deep Freeze on windows. It basically made it so that any changes made to the computer, with the exception of a single drive for storing user files, were reverted back on reboot. I imagine using the DOS on ROM could have been a similar feature. It was great for dealing with students installing random crap from the Internet, or trying to destroy and force us to re-image the machine. I wonder if IBM wanted to sell upgrades for newer versions of the DOS ROM.

[@cashewmilkfan]

you always make such enjoyable videos thank you so much for making this! you are a unique creator.

[@michaelturner2806]

When you opened up the 30 and I saw ISA slots, my jaw dropped. I thought IBM had spread their MCA clutches all through these PS/2 lookalike machines. And two of them. And possibly two that could use internal cards like the XTIDE. Speaking of ISA, from what I remember, the PS/2 Model 25 all in one was noteworthy for actually having an ISA slot in it. I guess it was far enough along in design before IBM switched to MCA? That opens it up to have an IDE controller in it with compact flash, use the parallel port with a Speech Thing board or one of those sound blaster emulators, and you could have... a box that turns on, goes beep, and you can type dir. I guess.

[@boowiebear]

Love when you post. I don’t even care what the topic is I will watch and love it! You have a gift at making things interesting and educational.

[@oasntet]

I swear I've seen that backwards-ISA card form factor elsewhere on machines I worked on in the 90s. And I also think I've seen an ethernet card where you could move the bracket to fit both types of slots. Some googling reveals the backwards-ISA is called Microchannel, and there were cards specifically made to fit in either Microchannel or standard ISA, but those used two different edge connectors, which is just wacky. Maybe I'm thinking of a backwards-PCI that I worked on once?

[@lasskinn474]

mca has different edge connector, though it has it on that side.

[@Futuresolidsnake]

I simply love these videos, really a delightful trip down memory lane. I still have some old hardware and was questioning if I was the only crazy person who just likes to see if I can restore them to functionality. Although I don’t really know why I even should. And you have validated my feelings! 😂😂 Im just playing, I think your work is awesome and I sincerely thank you for your deep dives into hardware history! 😃👍🏻👍🏻

[@akaJughead]

The up and down configuration on the IBM proprietary sound card would be convenient for locating the correct jack by feel.

[@sstrawmann]

I love the recurring mitosis cat meme. I've seen it at least twice on the channel. Quality bits of comedy sprinked in your videos and I recognize that.

[@br0wnd]

I want to believe there's someone, somewhere who only heard things through this mwave card and thinks everything we think is normal is weird, like a weird mandella effect. Thanks for another wonderful video, love all your work!

[@paveloleynikov4715]

Fun fact about volume knobs - I remember vividly my first SB clone, which was hooked to passive speakers, and this setup was somewhat common. At least, soundcard could natively output line out or amplified level signal. Granted, it was used only in DOS games, and volume setting was not a problem, but still. And up and down jacks on rear panel, I suspect, was used to easily accomodate quarter inch adapters.

[@cgourin]

Actually the token ring network is interesting, I new mostly the coax ones but i think the fake VGA is the same: A thick cable loop would be usually at the ceiling and an other cable with a jaw would bite on it to link it to the computer, mega speeds, the computer would pass the token to the next in loop to talk on the single cable, somewhat cleaner than the later collision management standard where everybody shouts together hopping to be heard.

[@jaapaap123]

I think those are called vampire taps.

[@davidmiller9485]

Here's some advice from someone who used to rebuild network systems back in the 90's. I'm fairly sure you can still buy CRT cores. If you remove the cover and take a long screwdriver you can put into the boot near the electron scan gun and discharge the cap on the CRT (Yes, You must do this... well i guess you don't have too but if you don't make sure you have a EMT on hand because when those caps do discharge you're going to need CPR to get your heart going again) and then replace it. If you get burn in issues (since it's old that would be a normal problem) you can change the tube without too many issues.

[@bill_and_amanda]

It's interesting that a lot of SOC/SBC machines like the Pi still don't have an RTC, although since NTP exists I guess it's less of an issue now.

[@VulpesHilarianus]

A big issue that still persists even with network time is when the computer enters sleep mode, the network time can skip forward because of the equation it's using to keep track of time. Meaning you put the computer into sleep mode for a few hours, and when you wake it up a few hours later the DTS says it's two days into the future. I have a laptop without a functioning RTC, and having to type "timedatectl" every time I open the lid gets very annoying.

[@retroattic4647]

I don't know how you do it, but these long, long format videos are very engaging. Great job! Keep it up!

[@SudosFTW]

I know a bunch of older IBM sound options in some PS/2s required you to put ANYTHING AT ALL plugged into the line in to remove an audio loopback that would otherwise make the sound tinny and unbearable. I'm betting your cards are just past their prime and need a good re-cap and such tho. the Walsh site is also UXWBill's site, as he's the PS/2 man.

[@wardrich]

Whoa, those blue headphones you got gave me the strongest nostalgia trip I've had in a long time. Damn... I just went back like 30 years. Grades 1 and 2. I had the same teacher for both grades. She had those same blue headphones plugged into your standard issue tape recorder, you know the one - black or brown, cassette tray that aggressively popped open when ejected, and the row of buttons along the bottom side of the top of the deck. At the table it was on was a stack of photocopied papers - each with the same uncoloured drawing, and a cup full of very abused crayons of varying colours. The tape in the deck contained verbal instructions on how to colour the various sections of the drawing. We'd have to listen and follow the steps. Man, those were the days lol

[@hobbified]

Califone.

[@benjaminrondeau3148]

The password bit made me giggle. Here's a fun little fact about why RTC batteries last for a very long time (and also why PC clocks are notoriously imprecise unless constantly powered on). Instead of keeping time, RTCs simply store the current time whenever it changes so when you turn the system off, the last recorded time becomes the baseline for the next time you turn it on. All it does in the meantime is power the clock crystal and count the number of oscillations. The next time you power up the system, it adds that number of oscillations to the baseline. It mostly work but it's nothing like the precision of an actual clock. Various PCs have different clock speeds (talking about the actual crystals here...) so timekeeping with these is a bit of a hit and miss. Of course the battery also keeps the CMOS content alive so BIOS settings are preserved. A Dallas chip contains the CMOS memory, a variable oscillator (notice that motherboards with Dallas chips don't have a separate clock crystal on the motherboard which means that the 1287 can handle multiple clock speeds), and of course, the battery. Nowadays, our devices regularly check online time servers but back in the days, it was wise to sync time with the network server first thing at bootup to ensure accuracy and performance since network packets are timestamped.

[@franklynpolster8949]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. One thing I remember about PCs from late 90s was if the computer was booted up and on the LAN... Say if you disconnected the Lan cable and then plugged it back in, the network connection would not recover until you rebooted the PC.

[@Just.A.T-Rex]

Just as my CRD withdrawals were getting so out of hand I was about to sleep in a re-pc dumpster. Thank you Gravis! Ps finances are tough right now and I haven’t been a Patreon supported unfortunately for a couple Months, but am curious have you gotten fully settled in and “organized” at the new studio space? I assume patrons may have been given a newer walk though or your video by now. I’ll be back soon!

[@smooth_9248]

Right off the bat I see the amazing camera quality and highly appreciate your attention to detail. Thank you!

[@UntouchedWagons]

Is that a new kitty I see at 9:02?

[@CathodeRayDude]

:3

[@josuelservin]

From the bottom of my heart I thank you for this videos, they fill blanks I'm my computer history knowledge that I didn't even know I didn't know, and they are throughouly enjoyable.

[@captainchaos3667]

Man this brings back memories. We had a PS/2 model 80 with a 16 MHz 386. I still have it. We also had an Aptiva, with an MWave sound card/modem. You brought back traumatic memories of trying to get that thing to work. 😄 My father worked for IBM and we bought these through various "PC Privé" projects, a government subsidy program that allowed people to purchase PC's from their employers for cheap.

[@wamplertube]

I was a junior in high school in vocational electronics in 94. We spent weeks throwing these types of computers in dumpsters. Tons for sure. They were some of the only things I wouldn’t save. I was only taking home stuff that was useful at the time and those weren’t. Really need content! Love the channel!

[@BearfootBob]

1:27 That's how you get a pinched nerve in your neck 20 years later, not sleeping for weeks on end, unable to sit or lay down. Trust me Bro, I'm a big / strong guy too. Been abusing myself without a thought for decades. Unfortunately it's the kind of thing that you barely notice until one fine day, there's not quite enough space for the nerve channel, and you have entered a world of pain. Cool channel, sub'd.

[@darthwalker007]

I can't believe I am just now seeing your channel. Great stuff. Takes me back.

[@ssjaken]

Real talk. Big props to your humor you interject into these vids. Its right up my alley. I always crack up. The "stuck in the middle with you" line is primo. Right up there with that M1 Garand bit you did with that battery ages ago.

[@Cuperino]

I never thought I’d see those again… Thank you for demystifying them, and for the thorough video!

[@lishd]

I knew about the four sticks of RAM thing! My first real system was a 386DX-33 with 1M of RAM over four 256k sticks. I learned then that they needed to be added in fours. When I was able to get a hold of four 1M sticks to upgrade, I had enough slots and could finally, with 5M of RAM in total, play DooM at its smallest window. :)

[@CalcProgrammer1]

These are the machines we had in school! I remembered the name EduQuest but could not find any references to them searching when I tried to find a picture. These were nice looking all-in-one machines for the time.

[@PiercedJedi]

at around the 1hr mark you're talking about the memory formats, I remember when this was going on, and I even had a motherboard in the early days of DIMM modules, that had 4x SIMM slots and 2 DIMM slots, I believe this was around the Pentium MMX era, and although I appreciated the ability to just upgrade my motherboard and CPU at the time and get new RAM later, I'm actually pretty glad they don't do that anymore :)

[@chriskennedy8525]

This was the first computer I got to work on in my life, in second and 3rd grade. My ld teacher got 3 units the school was going to chuck in the garbage, her husband showed up to fix them and let me help him. We maxed them out . One was win 3.1 and the second one ended up with win 95. Smiths station Alabama school system used these for most of the class rooms into the early 2000's. They're models could run doom smoothly though along with magic school bus games. They also had a normal cd drive and vga out on the back and was the very first machines i ever got on the Internet with. So it was optioned with them at some point. Thanks for the nostalgia hit with this video.

[@68kGold]

This is such a nostalgia trip; It's incredible to see these. My Kansas grade school was entirely outfit with EduQuest machines. I didn't even know/remember they were called that until watching these two videos. Our school definitely had them from '93-ish to probably '98/'99 when they were all replaced with Gateways, in at least two labs with probably 40 units each and then one for each teacher / admin (maybe another 20 total? - small school). I'm not sure if they were Thirty's or Forty's-I doubt any were Fifty's-but they definitely had the front audio panel and sound cards; I don't remember any having the CD-ROM drive. Almost every teacher's was connected to an Apple ImageWriter II leftover from when the school had Apple II's and IIGS's. All of ours were token-ring networked to central PS/2 servers. Not something I understood at the time, but I distinctly remember the cool bulky connectors. What I now know they were PS/2 model 60 or 80 servers in one corner of each lab and probably a couple in an admin closet somewhere. All of them definitely had PS/2-style mice, and also cheap school headphones similar in style to the blue ones you had found. I assume they ran DOS; none ever had Windows, IIRC (although we students never "saw" it-they always started to a customized text-mode "Program Selector" like what's in your first Thirty video). I've also never really known what _that_ shell or software was called-the Program Selector stuff; It had similarity to OS/2's original UI but maybe that was just a coincidence and it was just a thin IBM-y thing over DOS. All of the software I can remember was 16-color DOS educational games that I've never been able to find any references to or screenshots of since. It was all very happy-candy-coated stuff like "you're in a pie factory-type the answer to each multiplication problem to prevent the clown being hit by a pie!" and other such weirdness. I distinctly remember being in late junior high (probably 2002-ish?) and walking into the gym/auditorium one day to see several palettes of these wrapped up in plastic in front of the stage ready to be taken (presumably to scrap or dump). At the time I remember thinking "wow-have those been in storage all these years?"; I assume they'd been under the auditorium stage for several years collecting dust. I do sort of wish now if any ended up being saved by some of our teachers. Thanks for this all. It's always been like a weird fever dream thinking back on these machines, like they never really existed, as there's so little info on them out there. It's wonderful to see them again.

[@ItsJustElenore]

There's already two of them in the thumbnail. This guy knows his audience.

[@northhankspin]

came by to check this one again.. Its brilliant man. the whole thing is re-run worthy.