Compaq 486 PC exploration, restoration and upgrade - Part 1 REUPLOAD

Note: This is a reupload due to a copyright strike on the previous version of this video. There is no way to simply replace the video in that case so my only choice is to reupload with the required changes. On the plus side, maybe some of you will see this video who didn't see it before - it's one of my favorite little video series that I've done and not a lot of people originally saw it.
Here's the original description:
I bought a 486 PC - a Compaq Deskpro XL 466. It's not my first 486 - in fact, my very first IBM-compatible computer was a 486 too (and a much crappier one than this!). But I wanted to relive that era of DOS and early Windows gaming and computing, and DOSBox just doesn't always cut it. It also doesn't give you the fun of tinkering with old hardware!
This is going to be the first of two (or more?) parts in which I explore, restore and upgrade this machine. By "upgrade", I don't mean in performance terms, but I'll be hopefully adding a couple things that will make any old PC more livable... and of course, I've gotta add some gaming capabilities to this old business machine. But I'm getting ahead of myself - most of that'll come in part 2. For now, watch as I tear down this machine, get it cleaned up, put back together and test it out, with a new component or two added. Along the way, maybe you'll find out something about why I think this era of computing is special.
Watch for part 2! Depending on when you're seeing this, it may already be up. Most of it's already shot and I hope to release it in the next couple of weeks.
Socket 3's blog post on building a 486: socket3.wordpress.com/2018/06...
Vocalyst keyboard post (in Chinese, but there are some pics): kbshow.blog.sohu.com/111763398...
Songs in the video:
Good Vibe by Ketsa, licensed with permission from the Independent Music Licensing Collective - imlcollective.uk
Nico Staf - Smooth and Cool - KZbin Audio Library

[@raptorchow329]

That video was so good, I think I'll watch it a second time right now!

[@Inject0r]

I came here to type this. :) I’ve just rewatched it. :D

[@printerpr0n]

I ran into Rod Canion's leg as a kid running around the original office location when my mom was working a nightshift. Both my parents worked at Compaq. I had that 286 with the amber screen and my mom had this 486, as well as the original portable. This video took me back. Discusions around the dinner table about this new thing called EISA. Was such a great company until Rod was out and Eckhard Pfeiffer drove destroyed it.

[@andycristea]

Now THAT's a 486! EISA, PCI and SCSI

[@loganjorgensen]

Excellent video, you really framed your personal history and a lot of Compaq lore quite well.

[@ejstacey]

KZbin randomly suggested this to me, and being a nostalgic 486 fan, I had to watch. I really like an appreciate how you described the reasons behind getting into stuff like this. Really articulate and accurate. Great work! On to part 2 I go...

[@retrocompaq5212]

the ancestor of my baby, i love it thanks for the video, big love for pre 1995 compaqs and people that keeps em alive!!!

[@dave4shmups]

I missed this video the first time, and I just finished watching it. You really did a great job with it! My first PC was a Compaq Presario that a wealthy uncle sent me in December of 1998, when I was in Christmas break from college. It was completely unexpected, and it was a fantastic PC. It had a Pentium II, an ATI graphics card, and came with Windows 98. It also came with the game Moto Racer-not in a big box, but in a CD sleeve. My parents liked it enough to get their own Compaq Presario the next month, and that one came with the game Incoming. I don’t know if Compaq had some deal with game publishers or developers. I no longer have it, and I really wish I did, because it went to an electronics recycler before I got into retro computers and started watching KZbin channels like LGR, your channel, etc. It was a desktop tower PC.

[@NiTye357]

Very interesting and well researched video. Thanks

[@Jerkwad152]

Nice little bit with the old and new P50's 😄 I wonder how many people noticed.

[@richardabkstorm9009]

Good stuff right here fella! 👍🙏

[@thegaybear]

I am so jealous of you. When I was a kid, my dream machine was a 486 dx2 66

[@onelife151]

love those old machines they also helped warm up the room in the later months.

[@shaurz]

I got a pretty good deal on a Siemens Nixdorf 486 a few years ago, but you're right that 486 and older machines are really hard to find now and expensive. Sad to think many of them were simply dumped. I've dumped old PCs in the past and now regret it.

[@shaurz]

Although to my credit I also rescued a Pentium MMX and Compaq Pentium II machine from the dump.

[@franciscom.e.9780]

Hey! Around 4.15 you are writting with Borlad Sprint! I also run it on my IBM 5170 and on my Toshiba T3100e! I also have MultiMate 3.31, WordStar 5, Word 4 and 5.5 for DOS, and even WordPerfect 5.0/5.1 for OS/2 and DOS (character mode). Happy to see you have it too. I still don't have WordCraft. All my software is orginal. I see yours too!

[@chriskalkman3815]

Nope! I love those “old computer” start up noises!

[@xianox8]

Very good video! I love the old commercial clips. I have a similar, prolinea 5120. But it's a 120 MHz pentium 1. These desktop models should have a bulky CRT on it..!

[@Dxceor2486]

320x200 definitely is a 4:3 resolution, just like when you said that we're conditionned to think that PC = tower because of the past 30 years, we're also conditionned by LCD technology to think that pixels are always perfect squares, when in the 90's CRTs could display non square pixels 320x200 isn't meant to be shown at 16:10 aspect ratio as it could make you think, it is meant to be stretched vertically :)

[@bubbles581]

Oh man I remember these all too well

[@ChadQuick270W]

Love those IBM keyboards. Best ever made. I like to hear and feel when I type. Yeah Windows loves to fling files all over the hard drive. Give me DOS any day.

[@cleffei]

Always liked this video so I'm glad copyright BS isn't taking it away from us now lol

[@stephenbobby6715]

Great video. Do you do trains too? I just started with a Kato set

[@bunter6]

The Triflex Architecture was peak Compaq before it also joined the ranks of PC makers going for more basic designs using off the shelf chipsets. I have a later version of this, as Deskpro 590 that uses the same chipset.

[@BurritoVampire]

I actually found a Vocalyst keyboard the other day at the thrift store for a mere $5. I wasn't sure what Compaq it connected to and only picked it up because of the funky connector.

[@DosGamerMan]

Dosbox is okay. But there is just something about doing it on original hardware that makes it a much better experience.

[@RobTheSquire]

i've been tempted to get an old 486 desktop case and slap in modern parts to make it a sleeper pc.

[@mick_hyde]

We had 486's for servers back in the day. Always thought we were pushing the edge of the envelope 😮 I remember the noise 😦

[@lloyddavies5587]

I got a Gateway 2000 486/66 for $50 at a local thrift store last year. I always wanted a Gateway when I was in college in the early to mid 90's It's still a work in progress, but I want to have it up and running one of these days...

[@ModernClassic]

That's a great deal these days. That machine is probably the exact one I was originally looking for.

[@mdrumt]

Would a modern 3 pin fan work? It's probably worth testing that out 😊

[@homelate1306]

I have the same Compaq, but with a Pentium 100 processor. Mine has a faulty PSU unfortunately. It powers on as soon as you plug in the psu and it can't be switched off. It's in storage and I'll fix it up as soon as I have some time.

[@sarreqteryx]

are those EISA slots actually wired for EISA? edit: nevermind, just got there.

[@ClosestNearUtopia]

Oh noo seeing this pc gives me some serious nightmares… why was it that compaq computer NEVER WORKED back in the days…

[@316diag]

I put that fan controller in my first PC build. AthXP 2800+, Asus/nForce2, etc. Never got to try that build with an SSD. Plague caps brought it down.

[@ModernClassic]

I guess I must have shown my Athlon XP fan controller in this video (I don't remember and don't want to watch the whole thing again) - I'm actually right now revamping that machine for another video and I am replacing all the caps because the plague has gotten to it too.

[@geekshed1674]

I had a 486dx2 66 with 4mb of RAM and a 428mb hard disk, no sound card and no CD-ROM. I added those later. Also swapped RAM, to give me a whopping 32mb. My graphics card was from Avance Logic and it had 1mb of VRAM. Sadly it doesn't work anymore due to battery leaking. My board had almost no i/o, only keyboard and that 5 pin plug. Everything else was on a separate card. Both my VGA card and I/o card ran on and ida/vlb bus

[@infinitecanadian]

What is ICQ? I really would like to know at least a little about the previous owners' stories.

[@stevenjohnson7983]

That's the "really old school Discord"

[@CharlesOttman]

You plug an external transceiver, such as an Allied Telesyn Centrecom 210T, into that 15 pin port and that'll get you 10-base-T ethernet. You'll then need to plug that into a 10/100 hub/switch because its quite likely any 1000 mbit switch won't talk to anything that slow.

[@infinitecanadian]

How do you remember what the RAM cost you when you upgraded it?

[@ModernClassic]

How does anyone remember anything? It seemed like a lot of my own money to be spending at the time as a college student, so I remembered it.

[@nickwallette6201]

I had an AST Advantage! 486SX/25 that used 72-pin SIMMs. It shipped with 2MB of RAM, which was... _not_ enough. A 4MB upgrade from my local computer store was $165.

[@jorgenkarlsson6654]

I had one of those! But it was 60mhz pentium ..... Yes the first one

[@david78212]

They TRY to sell them for that and on occasion they will get lucky, but if you go back and look at most of those items, they didn’t sell. You can ASK whatever you want for a price, doesn’t mean you’re going to get it.

[@MrSamadolfo]

😏👍 Broh, I still have my Panasonic 24pin dot matrix printer, i have it in storage 😇

[@Ozfrank]

i have Compaq DescPro2000 with P-166mmx inside with integrated(!!) S3 graphic card! Still working

[@the_kombinator]

Hah I recently got a EISA 486 DX2/50 by Compaq. It's to the point where my 4 year old is learning DOS to launch the games he likes.

[@AlejandroRodolfoMendez]

24mb of ram maybe for nt 3.51 or 4 or os2 warp

[@definitelycasualpcs8789]

I wondered..cause i mentioned in the previous one i have a stack of these computers and if you neeeded any parts to let me know lol

[@ModernClassic]

Do you have any with original CD-ROM drives? Or fans that you'd be willing to sell?

[@definitelycasualpcs8789]

@@ModernClassic I don't know if any of them have cd drives...I'll have to check. Which fan? The only one I know of is the one in the weird shaped psu

[@ModernClassic]

@@definitelycasualpcs8789 I'm interested in trying another one of those case fans that seems noisier than it should be in my system. I don't know if it would help but I'd buy one or two if I could.

[@definitelycasualpcs8789]

@@ModernClassicI have 3 that are easy access, 1 is a parts machine since the case is cracked and missing ram and CPU (yet oddly still has the key in its lock) I'll swap in one of the others CPUs board and see if it is quiet

[@definitelycasualpcs8789]

I pulled a known good psu from a more intact one and tested it, the fan was quiet and the power rails were the same between 2 units. I didn't see any other ffans in the pc than that one so I think thats the one your talking about.

[@kaczan3]

Probably best to make your own AI tunes now :D But I don't know sites for that.

[@loganjorgensen]

27:04 Technically no 320x200 isn't 4:3 in pixel resolution but with anamorphic stretching even 256x224 can be 4:3.😉 Definitely the downside of LCD use but it didn't have to be, they just didn't think you needed good legacy screen mode support. 😬 kzbin.info/www/bejne/j6fGnKyNra10f9k

[@frizfryy]

2021?

[@FoxMulder78]

REUPLOAD? Read the description?

[@frizfryy]

Ah okay 😅

[@phillycheesetake]

Shame about the music problem, unfortunately there are a few artists who knowingly let their music get used, only to wait until they think they can get a payday. I know retrohardware had the same problem.

[@CSIG1001]

better off just buying a pentium 133-233 mhz and just disabling the cache if you want to play games all the way to 386 25mhz era.

[@ModernClassic]

Watch part 3…

[@nasir2649]

*promo sm* 😒

[@borlibaer]

Unfortunately people making ThemTube videos on old PC hardware are suffer for misunderstanding the computer development at all. The think that this technology was invented for gaming.

[@goclunker]

I cannot believe people pay this much for 486s. It cannot even emulate GBC. GBC!!!!!

[@ModernClassic]

Why wouldn't you just run GBC games... on a GBC?

[@goclunker]

@@ModernClassic i could ask you the same thing? Why get a molasses slow 486 when you can have a socket super 7 586 like an amd k6-3 AND support for most legacy pci, isa and even agp, with power to run all period correct software maxed out?

[@ModernClassic]

@@goclunker That's asking me the opposite, not the same thing. My answer would be because I don't need to run that software on this machine. Did you watch the video? I explain all of that in there. (And pretty close to the beginning.)

[@lucasrem]

There are some workstation and server fan connections which are also 6-pin, specifically when addressing TACH2 and PWM2 parameters.1994, i loves these Office machines, Compaq was not that bad. Nec you need too, Packard BELL ! 486 DX II nostalgia, or AMD's DX 4 100 ! The best file transfer, Parallel cable, or DVD's