Enjoying 1990's Linux on an $8 PC From 1995!

In this video, I found this Packard Bell Axcel 831CDT at a thrift store for $8 and when i took it home, it booted to SUSE Linux 7.0! So in this video i restored this 90's machine and put Red Hat Linux 5.2 on it! its been lots of fun to play with so far!
SYSTEM SPECS
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System: Packard Bell Axcel 831CDT
CPU: 100MHz Intel Pentium
RAM: 32mb 72-pin SIMM
Graphics: Cirrus Logic CL-GD5434 1mb
OS: Red Hat Linux 5.2
FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE
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Patreon: / ionic1k
2nd channel: ‪@yarpAHK‬ Twitter: / ionic1k
All links: linktr.ee/ionic1k
MUSIC
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VECTOR GRAPHICS - DESTINE: / destine
VECTOR GRAPHICS - DRAPES: / drapes
VECTOR GRAPHICS - CASCADE: / cascade
VECTOR GRAPHICS - ALBA83: / alba-83

[@abbey2k1]

Alternate title: Ionic struggles with CRT refresh rates for 20 minutes

[@satokotsu]

babe wake up the 80tb dual xeon 2697 server guy uploaded

[@adamweb]

This is my exact memory of 90's Linux, spending 4 days trying to get X11 to start correctly lmao 😂

[@ncot_tech]

I'm still in therapy after my experience doing that in the 90s. The nightmares about modelines never stop. xf86config, it never worked, they lied.

[@buntomat]

so true

[@tohur]

X has been such dogsh*t for decades.. so glad its being phased out

[@FedericoPedemonte]

yup! it was when we used xfree86 before xorg!

[@wysoft]

Yep. I had a cheap Trident card in my K6-2. It was a complete disaster getting X to work properly on it. Wrong color depth, wrong resolutions for my monitor, etc. I ended up buying an S3 ViRGE card and magically X worked after the first run of xf86config - I also remember how awful that script was. Mess up one key stroke and you have to start all over again.

[@RobertoRubio-z3m]

Seeing that Red Hat box was like going back to my first date. Fell inlove with Linux in the late 90s and this love is still strong. 😂

[@bryndal36]

Same, Red Hat 4.0 was my first foray into Linux and I had fun installing it onto a machine in the pc store I worked in as my boss wanted one up and running Doom. Challenge accepted and succeeded.

[@Vlad-1986]

Aw man, it broke my heart when you overwrote the disk. Some historical and important/irreplaceable media might had been lost!

[@tamazonx]

Linux Desktop really has come such a long way. Thanks for this look back!

[@Max_Mustermann]

$8 isn't bad considering the crazy prices Pentium PCs are going for at the moment.

[@Blink_____]

I got a dell from a Goodwill or some similar type of store a couple years ago for like $10. Pentium II (forget what speed, I upgraded it to a Pentium 3 750Mhz), somewhat busted CD-ROM. The motherboard had a real OPL3 chip on it. Made out pretty well. Threw my old Voodoo2 in it, got a replacement drive. not a bad haul. Still would love to know where all the youtubers keep finding these thrift stores with really good finds though

[@Max_Mustermann]

@@Blink_____ It wasn't as bad couple of years ago I think. Now Pentium PCs seem to go for around 200$-300$ and a Voodoo 2 card alone can cost over 100$. Pentium II/III PCs are a bit cheaper, but $10 is still a great price.

[@iiisaac1312]

@@Blink_____ I think some people pick them up from electronics recyclers. Unfortunately, part of the price is shipping, which has gone way way up to the point where shipping costs about the same as the PC itself.

[@ThePressurizer]

Whoah, I saw XFCE there. I never knew it was this old.

[@MaseTheAce]

This was fun to watch. I recently started getting into learning about Linux and all the different distros that are available. I even managed to install Mint on a new Dell laptop I bought not too long ago. It's cool to see how Linux looked back then compared to how it is today.

[@tronus98]

Memories of my old redhat rig in 98. Turned on xsnow and headed to the relatives for Christmas. Came back and felt all warm and fuzzy in front of my snowy desktop :)

[@seedney]

This and the Johny Castaway screensaver .... Computing was better in those days...

[@adwaitagnome]

BitchX is an IRC client, almost the de facto one on GNU/Linux systems back in the day.

[@mystica-subs]

made better with the crk script; iykyk ;)

[@SamSung-jq4ho]

I came here to say this!

[@sluxi]

looks like it is still packaged in Fedora 40 but unfortunately not in Debian

[@mrskilz4thrilz]

IrcII too

[@MrGanja408]

Beat me to it by a month lol

[@BlueRidgeCritter]

Two suggestions: I remember this machine fairly well, with your hard drive, that thing still used the old cables, You need to make sure the jumpers on the back of the drive were correct for how it was plugged into the motherboard. If you don't, or should I say didn't, lol, it simply would not see the hard drive. Second thing, your cmos battery was dead. They did some really weird stuff when that battery died, besides just forgetting the time and date. I would have changed that right off the bat. Seeing Suse on there was so exciting and brought back so many memories. That distro was in my opinion the best at the time, the installer was almost perfect.

[@player_unknown963]

Yeah it could be just as easy as setting the jumper to master, but If I remember right I think there is a bios update for Phoenix that allowed larger drives.

[@BlueRidgeCritter]

​@@player_unknown963 Well, that's true, too. Maybe I misunderstood - I thought it wasn't seeing it at all. I honestly can't remember if it would only see it and let you use space up to a max value, or if it would just totally wig out and not see the drive if the bios couldn't handle it. For some reason, I seem to recall that a workaround to that problem was to partition the drive on another computer to the max the bios on THAT machine could see. But it's not an issue I've seen in almost 30 years, so I might just be totally misremembering. Getting old sucks. 😅

[@player_unknown963]

@@BlueRidgeCritter 10-4 to that lol Miss those days though...

[@CAG1399]

I had this exact machine too - my first PC. Now an IT security professional…been a journey my friends 😅

[@dwayneakehurst]

@@player_unknown963 Yes, there was a bios update for this machine to accept bigger drives but heck if I could find it now. However to get around this you could have made several 1Gb partitions on the newer drive. At least your drive would have preformed better and you would have had a few extra partitions for storage.

[@WillOnSomething]

19:40 actually reveals what this computer was used for, it was a control unit for a ham radio repeater, with one of its duties being it's hourly IDing of it's callsign

[@adampippert8314]

This is so cool to see out in the wild. Red Hat Linux 5.2 was my first distribution, and I still remember my roommate trying to convince me to get a CD and put it on an old scrap machine to try it out. I worked at installfest at the university and managed to get a copy of the CD, and afterwards it became my standard distribution. 20 years later, I’d finally come full circle back to becoming an employee at Red Hat, and now I’ve been here almost 6 years.

[@DJPenguino51]

Redhat 5.2 was my first linux distro I bought and tried. That was way back in early 1999.

[@klingoncowboy4]

A few years ago my brother found a late 90s PC left at the e waste and well it followed him home... EVERY does retro windows pcs so he decided to build a retro Linux machine instead and has documented it on Gaming on Linux

[@Marmalard]

I remember in the early 2000s the “windows” modems” wouldn’t work on Linux and you had to go out a buy a proper “hardware modem”

[@RaulWhite]

17:29 Did you just blur how to exit vim?

[@Ionic1k]

Yes lmao

[@riseabove3082]

@@Ionic1k The darkside of you eh. lol

[@die_lokki287]

One shell not exit thy Vim

[@mystica-subs]

@@Ionic1k evil - you just got a subscribe ;)

[@rnts08]

^] don't tell !q anyone

[@kelseystagner7239]

I had one of these and the only way I was able to get a larger hard drive was an Adaptec 2940UW SCSI adapter and a 4.5GB SCSI drive.

[@HannoImmelman]

Open suse lets gooo. The most underrated linux distro.

[@seedney]

It's bloated and... too much YaST will kill you... ;-)

[@rhyleymaster]

Sounds sus(e)

[@colinstu]

this was normal suse, before opensuse!

[@BobSockTwo]

Watching this, we can really appreciate how easier it is now to install Linux!

[@Chalisque]

I can't even remember whether it was Redhat, or Debian, or Stampede I was running in 1999, but it was a joy to use. Back then my desktop was Enlightenment 0.14, or Sawfish, or WindowMaker. Back then I was a heretic who used xemacs.

[@bltvd]

Packard Smell!

[@donborvio]

Straight to hell! Can't believe one of these turds still works!

[@josephfilm73]

Packard Hell

[@TroyOnymous]

I picked up a cheap Packard Bell quite similiar to this in the early 2000's from a coworker, tossed two 3Com 100 Mbit NIC's in it and installed FreeBSD on it and used it as a router for a couple years. Despite PB computers being considered by enthusiests as kind of a joke computer, it was actually quite well built and very stable. The only thing that didn't work was sound, which I didn't need anyway, the one I had used some properiatary modem/sound combination card that just didn't work with anything but Windows 95/98.

[@prrar]

Trate as me first Linux distro! Thanks for bringing back the memories!

[@sangkang6294]

My first computer was a 80286 Packard Bell. Had the state of the art VGA color monitor. Year later 80386 was released and it was light year ahead in term of performance. Saved enough money and eventually got a 486sx motherboard/cpu with 4mb of RAM. I was the envy of my friends.

[@davidjackson9087]

This brings back SO many memories!

[@bryndal36]

There used to be a company called Conner that made HDDs back in the 80s and 90s. I think that Western Digital bought them out but I'm pretty sure if you're able to find one of the last Conner drives, you might be able to get something around 2-3gb in size. It was one of the quirks of owning a Packard Bell. They were made cheaply with mostly cheap parts and Conner drives were notorious for failing but for some reason, worked well in a Packard Bell. Also, the Aztec soundcard/modem you have there were typical fare in the PBs as well. They were Sound Blaster compatible and the sound wasn't too bad.

[@erikhicks07]

I have PTSD from using Connor hard drives. Every. Single. One. failed. I still have Maxtors from that era running today.

[@2001kb]

Packard Bell was notorious for hard drive lockdowns. The mid-90s was a time when vendors were still forcing proprietary hardware through odd means. Using non-standard IRQ slots for their devices was a common tactic, and it would cause nightmares when you tried to replace something with a non-vendor supplied replacement part. This tactic largely went away in the early 2000s, but the resurgence of some particularly onerous vendors has kept the practice around and it's becoming commonplace again (thanks Apple)

[@VauxhaIIOpel]

That "powered by redhat" sticker is quite rare and some schmuck is trying to sell a set of two for $30; do you think you could make a scan of it someday?

[@ramonmoreno8014]

so you can sell it 🤣

[@VauxhaIIOpel]

so that ionic can make it available on the internet for anyone to download and print; not everyone in the retro sphere a fucking grifter

[@Sigmatechnica]

I had this machine. Was a good machine, lasted me for years, all through school. eventualy upgraded to a K6-3

[@allezvenga7617]

Thanks for your sharing. It bring back the old memories

[@Francisco-j1e]

1:43 thats a nice 3d printer project

[@vidasporsa]

Trip to memory lane... how much time I had wasted trying to install those old flavors of Linux on old hardware... and I still have a working 486/DX4! Kudos man!

[@TheHolyCornflake]

thanks for making these videos. i learnt so much

[@kylefox8822]

To support a drive larger you need a Hard Drive Overlay software which injects itself in the boot order that will allow for larger drive to be detected..

[@patricktrakzel9657]

Nice collection of machines! Indigo2, an old Mac. Cool! And Tux as security guard.

[@emperorarasaka]

This PC case looks so amazing for being basically a large box

[@JoeBruin1999]

Back then, I too was living in the 90s. Don't over think it.

[@prozacgodretro]

Subscribed, I'm seeing some of your other videos. good stuff!

[@BlueRidgeCritter]

Red hat 5.2 was my very first exposure to Linux. Boxed copy, from Staples. Although my box was white and not blue, but I very much remember it. Put it on a Toshiba 105 CS laptop, with a pentium 75 and a 500 meg hard drive. 😂 Fun times. Computing is no fun anymore compared to what it was in the late '90s and early 2000s

[@roseredthorns]

This was really fun thank you for this video

[@dv_dream]

i remember when you had 69 subs!!

[@ccleorina]

I see astolfo. you are man of culture. Great Video btw.

[@AxelWerner]

32MB RAM in 1995 ?! DAMN!! This is some high end server stuff right there! I mean the OS choice speaks for itself. Someone knew whats good!

[@matthewbanta3240]

In the 90's, SUSE with afterstep was my jam. Only had a phone modem until 1998 or so. Getting linux on a pack of CD's was a must. Good times!

[@BlakeRGardner]

It brings me joy seeing others struggle with xf86config and having to use startx like I did back in the day

[@VincentVazzo]

That Red Hat retail box was my first Linux! I bought it at Best Buy and installed it onto my Pentium 233MMX! I remember being really excited when I was able to get sound working on it! Good times!

[@adamr-4343]

Oh man, a PackardHell. That was my first computer ever. My dad gave it to me after he finally had enough of it. Ran MS paint just fine though.

[@Wordsworth-o4g]

A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.

[@johto]

That was the year i started installing Linux on my 486 machine besides Windows with dual boot. My first distros were Slackware and then Red Hat. I did not have active internet connection then as a Linux n00b. It toke me few weeks to learn the basics by reading lot of documentation. Countless re-installs and config tweaks to finally get my Xserver detecting my graphics card and CRT monitors best resolution and refresh rate. 🤓

[@DeadBaron]

Completely immune from crowdstrike and quite literally any post 2000 threats lol

[@tekvax01]

To add the 3com network card (and likely the sound card) you will need to recompile the kernel. They were monolithic back then, with only some basic loadable modules...

[@mtunayucer]

Crazy low price for such beauty, this type of so called “average 90s” pcs capture the aura of 90s so well

[@Purpie_Slurpie]

goodness, what thrift stores are you finding gems like these at?? I freakin adore old tech

[@cherrysdiy5005]

Wowe does that pc take me back! And all those problems you had, I had them too. My Mother got me one of these at a thrift in 2006 for the price of about $10. I thought it was so dope af because I made a matching set of the CRT, mouse, and keyboard. My greatest success was installing The Sims 2 on it. It ran like dog poo and would freeze up solid after a few minutes 😂 I'm talking BSOD up in that lol All it came with was Windows 98 SE and a few little saved webpages, a zine made by a kid, and not much else. Wish I had saved some of those webpages because they were dated from about 1996 and 1997. Guessing it originally ran Windows 95 but was updated which explained weird leftover files in the Windows folder. Good times messing with old PCs and getting glimpses into the digital past which isn't as well archived as most may think. Thank you!

[@capilah6285]

My favorite astolfo enjoyer posted about old technology :3

[@sluxi]

I love the case design

[@syrus3k]

Suse was the first distro I ever used..around this sort of time. It was amazing, and felt really hackery at the time.

[@spunkmire2664]

I remember my friend and i always having what i called "the cpu war". one of us would get a upgrade, and then the other would get a better upgrade. Like optical drive read / burn speeds and the burn protection cache, sound cards, graphics.

[@johnmh3180]

it's so old, but 30 years ago only... feeling not too old 🫠🫠🫠

[@nixter57]

Find some HDD "install floppies" (some generic some specific to the manufacturer) . . Install the n13th extension that will preload it on the bootloader of the drive your installing !! Then have fun !! 😮 I've used it on almost any IDE drive and Capacities much greater than what you're accomplish shong now !!

[@JuanGarcia-lh1gv]

I used to have one of these! It's was an older model with a pentium 75. I'd love to play with one of these again 😢

[@williamkennedy8133]

This is nearly identical to one of my first Linux boxes. LL&P, little buddy.

[@arturwiebe7482]

Yeah, configuring X was a pain in the ass sometimes 😊 still learned a lot of things doing that.

[@raccoroni.]

another banger as per usual :)

[@geddeeee]

Aztech sound cards were everywhere in the 1990s....

[@richardsequeirateixeira]

Packard Bells are the beautiful PCs.

[@mlthmp]

Just subbed.. great video.. looking forward to more!

[@lloydChristmas-j6n]

You gotta find yourself an old Sun SparcStation

[@raylopez99]

$8?? That's priceless. Back in the day as a white collar worker I made big bucks with such a machine, running Windows 3.1 and WordPerfect.

[@cosmickatamari]

What's funny is I've been looking for a machine like this for years. Ended up just custom building a vintage Windows 98/DOS machine.

[@bosnianherba]

god i love watching your videos great stuff man keep it up

[@MrKremvax]

Great video! Would you consider making a detailed RH5.2-installastion video?

[@Ionic1k]

Perhaps

[@dhaneshr]

This brings back memories....😍

[@craigconway4093]

My first computer was almost identical from around early 1996. I think it originally had a 1.2 GB HDD. With DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11

[@craigconway4093]

DOS gaming was fun back then, lol.

[@craigconway4093]

Back then 8 MB of RAM had a retail value of $200 at Best Buy. Wow.

[@user-nu5ib2ri9o]

I had a very similar-looking Pentium 100 / 1GB / 32MB RAM machine, even with the same GPU, when it was brand new. Mine was dual-booting SuSE 6.3 around the year 2000. This PC had adequate performance until like 2001-ish, at least Visual Studio 6.0 worked like a charm, I had so much fun with it...

[@anthonymarkus6341]

Kernel 2.4 is pretty rocks, remember netfilter's iptables started in kernel 2.4. Now iptables is pretty revolutionary software, modern firewall and IoT usually based on netfilter.

[@Nick_R_]

My Packard Bell machine with a Pentium 100, designed for Win 95, is a bit slow even for Win 98. But it still works and still runs the old Battleground games. Nice.

[@erikhicks07]

Packard Bell's "Navigator" frontend for Windows 3.1 was atrociously slow running on these machines. Once removed and memory upgraded, they were solid PCs.

[@dagamore]

I had one of the Packard Bells from about the same timeframe. I think I got it in like 1997 or so, dont recall the specs but had twin Maxtor drives that clicked and hummed me to sleep for many years. Talk about a walk in the past. Now if only the white noise generators would have that as an option.

[@xccr2]

just exactly want i needed

[@rat_boy_u]

We had this exact computer, or very close to it around then. Memories.

[@SamAlexander1]

I first installed Linux Red Hat 5.2 on a Packard Bell Legand, though I think our PC was a bit older than this. Pretty cool! I dual booted Linux and Windows 3.11 WFW, this was around 1995 or 96, can't remember. I bought Red Hat 5.2 boxed from Best Buy.

[@DOSStorm]

This channel seems awesome. Subbed! BTW If you want to fix the screen flicker use something like the Open Camera app to manually adjust the shutter to match the refresh rate. Edit: Nevermind it looks like you tried. lol

[@StarcrossTV]

Astolfo figure!

[@cj7334]

FYI i had one of those factory refurbished machines purchased "new" in 1998. The model i had was 233mhz and was blazing fast compared to the 100mhz machine that it replaced. The onboard graphics will actually play quake 2 on software mode!

[@glaubhafieber]

My first linux experience was suse in a packard bell P75 MHz. Sax was always a pain lol

[@JunafaniFIN]

Astolfo nerd posted :3

[@maoutted]

dafuk happened to niko dawg 😭

[@FishKungfu]

That was really cool!

[@ncot_tech]

After I stopped using Linux that was free off magazines, i bought a Slackware Linux CD. My internet was so slow I only ever downloaded small things. If it wasn't on the CD, I had to wait for (and then buy) the next version. Also, slow old PC running Linux reminds me of a Raspberry Pi running desktop Linux...

[@augustoschreiner9847]

i think everyone shoulda know this channel

[@mystica-subs]

Holy shit, an Aztech2380! I had a 2320 chipset based soundcard/game/IDE back in the day!

[@PABoss]

Eyy let's go another banger of yours :3

[@thegoldstandard55]

Having owned a similar Packard Bell computer from 1995, that machine was roughly $2000 new then...which would be something like $4500 now adjusted for inflation.

[@Vulp9]

I remember owning a Packard Bell quite similar to that except that it came with 16MB of RAM initially instead of 8MB. Quipping in about the HDD issues, the BIOS back then could only support disks up to 2GB in size. The only way to bypass this was an addon card that added LBA support for drives greater than 2GB. Often times this only had support up to 8GB in size.

[@mystica-subs]

Linux by itself should be able to see any secondary drives, after it loads its own PCI ATA driver. Getting something booted however requires a device the BIOS can see/use. I've used that exact same Promise IDE chipset around 1999-2000 with and I'm almost certain it saw drives larger than the BIOS would..

[@Vulp9]

@@mystica-subs Best recollection to mine was that the BIOS was dated either late 94 or early 95, just after the announcement for Win95. This was the day during dialup internet and something like flashing a BIOS was unheard of. Largest drives I've seen in the market were often 1GB while 500GB were more readily available.

[@elalemanpaisa]

i used opensuse in 1999 on an k6/2-450 64gb ram for the first time that was pretty fine :)

[@aroule]

12:56 when squidward found that canned bread

[@janedagger]

Back in the 1980s I had a rig I built and started just playing and trying to learn some Linux. Then a sys op showed me Unix, and my mind just blew. I prefer Unix but for the stuff I wanna do, well, Linux is a better choice.

[@jim_bocho]

oh god. The OS selector screen at the beginning (almost!) made me cry a little. It's been a while 🙂 SuSE 7.2! 😍 Edit a bit further into the video: WINDOWMAKER! YEAH!