HP Bubble Systems! Classic late '90s computers - Teardown and test!

[@ForTheBirbs]

Good to see your human malware didn't affect your pun generation. I have a bunch of medical issues and a mate says if my pun generation stops, he's worried. Lol

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

time to do the smoke test

[@KomradeMikhail]

That first system is the pinnacle of DOS retro gaming rigs... Despite being designed for Win95. Socket7 Pentium1 w/MMX is very special to DOS... Ever since Phil and the Vogons guys showed us the setmul utility. That mobo with the 430TX chipset is fabulous... USB ports are not common for Pentium1. The second ISA slot would allow for a -5V Voltage Blaster, to run a good SoundBlaster. The onboard ATI graphics would save a slot on a 2D card, for running a Voodoo 1 or 2. When I was a teenager in 1996 my first high-end system was extremely similar. I had a Gateway P5-200 MMX Full-Tower. The similarly disguised ASUS mobo had a 430VX chipset, also with a couple early USB ports. Though I'm fairly sure it had an S3 Trio 64 of some variety as it's onboard graphics. If I had known back then what I know now, especially that the P1 MMX era would become my bread and butter... I would have pimped that rig to it's max potential, and gamed like mad on it, as if it was going out of style... Because it went out of style real fast. Always trying to get my hands on another one of that exact model... But they just never show up. I still kick myself that I tore it down for parts and recycled it.

[@greypatch8855]

I saw this video was posted and all I could say was "yesssssss"

[@JoshImig]

I bought a hp 8240 in February of 1998 when I turned 16. I save for a year mowing lawns and scraping every penny I could to buy a pc. If i recall it was around $1500 with a I think a 15in crt. The nostalgia I have been looking for one to play with and run some old dos games that friends and I would play.

[@AliceC993]

Around 3:45 - The reason the sound card would need a connector from the PSU is because, at this time, HP often bundled these systems with a complete set of peripherals which included unpowered speakers. The idea was that the PC's sound card would have its own amplifier to drive the speakers - I have come across slightly later Pentium III/4 era systems that have a label on the back which indicates "powered speakers required for sound" or something similar.

[@darrenkhouston]

Had a set to match this exact system back in the day. For unpowered speakers, they could actually get pretty loud and sounded fairly decent. This was our main computer for many years growing up.

[@blakecasimir]

I see a Bestec PSU, I see a time bomb. I had to replace SO many of those in emachines desktops in the 00s. Chuck it! Another great video, Mike.

[@swahkennison7116]

Trigem was an OEM based in South Korea that was in a joint venture with eMachines from 1998-2004 I believe. They manufactured all in ones and many other computers also mainly for the South Korean market up until 2010 until going out of business. Strange to see them supplying HP with a hard drive though.

[@aaldrich1982]

I've been telling everyone I know about this channel. Your presentation and knowledge are top tier.

[@keithbrown7685]

"...this thing was being held together by hopes and dreams..." Hey Mike, don't knock it! ... It's how I got this far in life! 🙂

[@DGTelevsionNetwork]

I absolutely love how the last system glows with the power and hard drive leds

[@geoffreyreuther5260]

AWWW YEAH! 90'S HPs, BABY! Been waiting for this one... System 1: Is that a CD-ROM drive, or an out of balance washing machine? System 2: Cards: The modem/soundcard combo from these models were absolutely terrible. I had to replace so damn many of them back in the day. Zip Drive: "Zip drive made by, who else, Iomega?" Answer: NEC had a license to build them. I have an NEC-manufactured Zip drive in my collection. Power Supply: You're welcome! Nothing like having a spare just in case! System 3: Power Supply: Technically speaking, it is a "standard" ATX power supply. It just happens to be a lot shorter in depth than the "original specification". The closest you can get to replacing one of these, barring finding a used one, is an SFX power supply with an SFX-ATX adapter plate. (I say "original specification" because these days there is a plethora of power supplies that are significantly longer in depth than the original spec.) System 4: Celeron: "That's looking Celeronni." Celeronni... the San Francisco treat! Lack of slots and Costcutting: Yeah, small Celeron HPs were designed to be cheap and basic, with a capital C. Not designed for enthusiasts or power users whatsoever. Hard Drive: This one is REALLY throwing me for a loop. The serial number of the computer starts with a KR, which means it was built in South Korea. I know TriGem was one of the OEMs that HP farmed their manufacturing out to in the late 90's and early 2000's, and the motherboard is a TriGem Cognac motherboard (fairly widely used on Socket 370 HPs)... But the drive does NOT bear an HP Spares part label, and I have never seen a TriGem-branded drive in any HP, ever. It looks to me like that hard drive may be original-ish. My two hunches are as follows: 1) Drive is original, and the machine was part of a VERY early production run that didn't have proper labeling available or 2) Drive is not original, machine failed either at QC or delivery, and ended up in the hands of a refurbishment facility, which used a random drive. I'd kinda lean towards the former because I also see no spares label on the ram, motherboard, optical drive, or floppy drive.

[@TheNorwegian]

Those are some pretty futuristic cases for the late 90s

[@Greg1096]

I want to see him teardown some early 2000's enthusiast systems, wish i had kept mine from that era but a series of small apartments taught me to downsize old posessions.

[@SockyNoob]

It's always a great day when MikeTech uploads! Love those little gremlin baby ATs, wish that form factor and removable tray would come back.

[@officersplendidvstheworld1803]

"pinocchio style eject button" has been added to my internal dialogue. glad to see you back kitchen ace and taking names

[@LBJshowedmehisJ]

my favorite computer hunk blessed us with a new video

[@trentl1104]

glad to see you're back, love those strange looking hp cases from the 90s

[@Fahrenheit38]

Wish I could find computers the way you do

[@cullmaster7361]

Great stuff Mike 👍🏻 Enjoy these videos immensely… Was wondering when a new video was to come out… Passing on the great word about this channel to others.. Cheers 🍻 From the U.K 🇬🇧

[@justinprince6840]

Glad to see your feeling better! I loved the style of the 6535! I remember messaging all my friends on aim on mine. The matching crt monitor had a built in microphone and the setup had an optional matching webcam as well! It came with computer speakers made by Polk audio and they sounded amazing! I gave my entire setup to a friend when I upgraded to a compaq 4090us with windows me. I loved the 6535! It was very reliable! I’m amazed of the condition of this one and glad to see it survived to see another day!

[@OctavioGaitan]

I absolutely LOVED those style HP system. I had a Pavilion 6XXX series growing up. A gem to me.

[@alin3836]

miketech... this one's on you! i actually found my first system to restore! i bought for 4$ at a recycling center. it was complete besides it missing the hard drive. sadly came with a defective floppy drive and dvd drive. they didnt want to work. your advice really helped. if i wouldnt have watched any of your videos, i would have plugged it into my wall blindly. but, i thoroughly checked through all the parts to make sure i have a non-lethal machine. i did manage to get it to run windows XP. this stuff that you do, its really cool! one day i hope to do more stuff like this.

[@melterofsnowflakes]

Woohoo, a new video! And with old, and reliable, HPs!

[@westtell4]

OMG UR BACK YAY... So glad ur feeling better

[@Baconpotato710]

these are the styles I learned how to internet on, super hype for this video.

[@RenanSpolon]

I love these motherboards with dedicated 3D onboard video. 👑

[@ThatBritishSnep]

Fair play to the previous owner of S4 for getting use out of a system that would have been a decade old at that point. Seeing XP on a 9x based machine was a surprise too! (although seeing as it was designed for 98, this machine would've been 2-3 years old by the time XP came out)

[@MarksKicksOnRoute66]

Hoping you get better soon Mike! I actually was a computer technician at the Huntsville Alabama plant that made those translucent Pavillion computers. Very problematic machines. How I remember those huge racks of testing and hard drive mirroring processes.

[@Dysturbed-00]

That first pavillion was my first custom modded pc. I cut a hole in the side and made a window and painted the outer shell to be electric blue with gloss black drive covers. Mine was a hand me down from my dads boss and was my first pentium 2 system. I was thrilled because my old pentium couldnt play half-life uplink. I played uplink for a half a year until i could talk my dad into a 3dfx voodoo 2 card. This point in my life was like a religeous experince.

[@ihartmacz]

The first computer I ever got new was from my grandmother. It was an HP Pavilion 6635. It was reliable and I still have it in my closet for some MSFS2004 awesomeness. :) I love your videos!

[@miketech1024]

Thanks! I’m so glad you still have it. A system to be cherished!

[@JohanlastZa]

Me and my brother watches your channel. Happy you are up and about again. We were suffering some withdrawal symptoms...

[@ultrametric9317]

Your videos are great! When I was a boy, in tech support, we didn't need no steeken' MMX or SSE. We didn't even need CPU fans. Nope, we were fans, and that's what matters.

[@Constantin314]

so much dedication for a cd-rom drive! love it! :)

[@jm764]

I've had an HP Pavilion 8580c desktop since I was about 8 years old. Still have its original mobo transfered into a later HP Pavilion 8756c case that's next to my bed and in working condition 25 years after it was built. These were great little machines, and I even used the case of one till 2016 as a portable full atx case that fit in a suitcase for my main pc back then, too. TSA kept stopping me to ask what was in it, though. 😂

[@youtubasoarus]

I had the 3rd one on the right with the flip up hinge. Brings back memories! I think mine was a 533Mhz Celeron at the time. Maybe 32MB of memory.... Takes me back.

[@jimdayton8837]

I love these late 90's HP Computers. My first PC was an HP Pavilion 4540! I still have it along with a 6545C I acquired a few years ago.

[@Voodoodrul]

For S1 cd troubles, the growling spindle sounds are usually the rubber ring on the spindle not grabbing the disc well. This allows the disc to spin free. The spindle stops before the disc itself does so it opens the tray too soon and growls when attempting to change read speeds

[@Qyxen]

PowerPC! What about finding PowerPC Macintosh computers? Wouldn't it be so cool to "renew" old school PowerPC macs. Please let my idea come to life, PLEASE!

[@RetroGamingNook]

Great video. Just got one of those stubby translucent dealies (HP 6735) from a barn find along with the 17' HP monitor... took some effort to clean up and reseat everything properly with new thermal paste, but it's running now. We sold lots of these at Staples in the late '90s and early '00s. It's a Celeron 633 with a loud PSU fan that's most likely to die first. Still, glad to have it and I may drop a Pentium III in when I find a cheap one.

[@eugeniuszgorka8599]

Thank you for the informative video. Hope you get well soon . Greetings from Poland . 👍🤝 Dziękuję za pouczający film . Życze powrotu do zdrowia . Pozdrawiam z Polski . 👋

[@RuruFIN]

I remember having an Aptiva with Pentium MMX 166, it had two USB and after I upgraded to Win98, they worked just fine. :)

[@danielf4423]

I still have a couple of those translucent HP towers at my parent's house. This video made me a bit nostalgic for that era of computers. I know everything today is about perfectly machined all metal cases but I still have a fondness for those colored plastic pieces and the rounded shapes of the front facade. Thanks for another great video!

[@appleontheapex]

Lots of good memories playing AoE on a friend's Compaq which also had this bubble styling. I often think about computers in this style of chassis as ones that ran Windows 98, got upgraded to Windows XP, and always ran like crap because of it!

[@Hi1w2]

awesome video as always, keep up the fantastic work Mike.

[@Nicolas-21]

Good to see you Mike ! And, OMG, I definitely always enjoy biceps action everytime it happens when you lift some PCs or case covers. 👍😜💪 Please accept my greetings, from France. Nicolas

[@MajorOutage]

I still have one of those cases. Once you pop off the plastic panels it actually makes a great test bench since all you're really left with is an ATX sized frame.

[@mohamedsabir5331]

16:42 Now THATS a smol boi! Anyways,keep up the good work!

[@myw4y]

4'th case, i had an identical one, back in the days, nice to see they still exists😊

[@branscombe_]

25:30 beautiful disc drive, loving that !

[@blackheart58]

Glad you’re feeling better. We all had a human malware disruption here too. I had just gotten a human malware vaccine. I remember seeing systems like this in the stores. The disc door in the third system sounded like a fart. I’m glad your sense of humor is intact, you crack me up! I’m a fan of the systems that have a grayish transparent front. They always called to me. Happy you’re back in action, I’ve missed your videos.

[@VhsVcr]

i had that last one, it was so great. I loved it. Spent a many hours sitting in chat rooms and Napster .... lol

[@dmcintosh1967]

I have one of those HP bubble computers mine is pavilion 6736 from 2000 and runs windows ME. I still have EM on it as this identical to first PC I ever used. When I got it the Samsung CD-rom drive was completely dead so I swapped in another from an HP bubble system that had a dead motherboard.

[@dezhocob]

I have one of these bubble systems in my collection. It is a cutie with a semi-opaque blue plastic front. It needs some work. When I get around to it I will give it some love.

[@theslicefactor4590]

Good to see you back Mike ❤

[@angryshoebox]

Cool, I actually had a 4550Z, that very same Pavilion model. It came with a Maxtor 10 GB hard drive (I remember, because I changed it out for a bigger hard drive). $999.00 at my local Office Depot in 1999. Also, I remember I put an AGP video card in it. You had to switch 2 jumpers, to tell the computer to go to the AGP slot for video instead of the motherboard video, which was an ATI Rage IIc with 4 mb of video RAM, if I remember right.

[@falsebaroness]

Good vid. Good vid thumbnail. 💯

[@DeadReckon]

Glad you're feeling better, getting sick sucks! I got a respiratory infection when I was about thirteen or so in the early summer, I sounded like Batman for a week. Hurt to talk but I couldn't stop talking 'cause it was so funny. I visibly twitched when you switched on the PSU from the 3rd system. Way back when, these are the PC's that taught me to test PSU's first. I plugged in a nearly identical system to this that I'd found out for trash, it had the Riva graphics onboard as well as the audio, weirdly enough. The PSU was shorted and gave me a nasty shock as I was touching the PC case when I plugged in the power cable. It somehow didn't damage the system, I transferred the motherboard, CPU, RAM, and optical drive, but used a different floppy and HDD in another case. I had that HP for a long time playing old games on it, it ran Half Life 1 great even with the weird onboard Riva graphics, I think it had 16MB of VRAM but I can't remember. I've seen another one of those Bestec PSU's go up in smoke, it's why 13 year old me was not allowed to test electronics in my Grandma's laundry room anymore, had to do it out on the back porch where the smokers got exiled to or way outside on the picnic table haha

[@miketech1024]

LOL I briefly contemplated doing the rest of the video in the style of Batman when my voice was at its worst.

[@DeadReckon]

@@miketech1024 That would've hurt you as much as it hurt us, we all would've been dying of lol. On a more serious note, please watch out for those Bestec PSU's, I was finding them with failed capacitors and that stupid conductive glue 20 years ago when these PC's weren't all that old, they're dangerous. eMachines and Packard Bell PSU's come in a close second.

[@charleswp71]

I had a few of those systems with translucent panels, they called it the "Skywalker " chassis. Love the CD storage on top. Asus was the OEM for the MB. My top one had a slot 1 P3 533 with 96MB of ram and CD burner. ATI rage onboard graphics and 20GB HDD. Bought my daughter the smaller version with a celeron CPU and 64MB of ram, dog of a system but I got it cheap ( for the time ). I do miss the P3 one, brings back my day on Napster on NetZero dial up

[@dant5464]

30:53 the faceplate of that HP burner looks very Mitsumi. Like a CR-4802TE, CR-480ATE, CR-2600TE or other from around the same few years. I have a 8x read 2x write model somewhere from back in the day with the same pill-shaped eject button, raised bar across the bottom and flip-down door.

[@MojoWrangler]

The first "modern" PC I purchased was a Pentium 233 w/ MMX Played a lot of Abe's Odyssey and Jane's Longbow Gold on that rig.

[@Greg1096]

I worked at a warranty repair and refurbish facility for Asus in the early 2000's, only once have i ever come across a zip drive that wasnt Iomega, it was a LaCie external zip drive, and im pretty sure that was just Iomega guts in a lacie enclosure, I wonder if iomega had the format for zip under patent for the entire time it was a relevant format.

[@louisvillaescusa]

I had one of those HP bubble systems. It was an HP 8750C. A friend of mine gave it to me. He bought it at the Ingram Micro returned stuff sale at his work. The problem was that the system kept intermittently going into hard lock. I tried swapping everything, but it kept going into hard lock. I looked online and a lot of people were complaining about the same problem with this model but HP wouldn't admit that they had a batch of bad motherboards. So I just replaced the motherboard.

[@Revenant_Knight]

I worked at CompUSA as a teenager and we had these there. They weren't that bad compared to the Compaqs and Packerd Bells of the day. The case was eye catching back then for a lot of people.

[@mattparker9726]

SWEET! Love the bubbles!

[@pierreinthavong181]

Very nice HP desktop PCs!👍

[@maxhand1562]

TriGem always makes me think of eMachines, which was the first computer I bought in 2002 after my work laptop died. There was some relation, so I wonder if that hard drive might have been from one of those originally.

[@BeamerMT1979]

Trigem made emachines for them.

[@Neodestro]

i like the hp 4550z 16:42

[@aleksandardjurovic9203]

Thank you for creating this great video even when sick from flu!

[@alext7538]

That 6535 was my families 1st computer growing up. Nostalgia overload when you booted it up. I think it was purchased 1999 or 2000? It was used as the main computer until probably 2004? After that it was used as an offline only pc we kids used to play pc games on increasingly less until probably the early 2010s. It was finally e-wasted probably 5 years ago after sitting for 5 or more years unused. It had a very long life for what it was, lots of memories with that translucent thing.

[@georgez8859]

Gald to see you back in action. Those HP`s were everywhere back in the day. Thanks for the Video

[@djbryce]

I love your phrase "human malware"! Great description. Hope you are feeling better 😷

[@Quicksilveraus]

Get well Mikey bro i am also getting over flu amazing how your not immune what ever planet side your on, keep up with the vids brah most enjoyable ( in non wierd way) *pun* , love ya vid's mate keep em comming brah :)

[@ScottyBrockway]

Pushing the door closed on drives is what causes them to fail over time, should always use the switch. If discs stick, there's a little gripper on the spindle top and it gets filthy, and sometimes they are some material that degrades and becomes a sticky mess. It's a particular problem in plextor drives and the disc will get stuck and the tray won't open.

[@FromSagansStardust]

Get a bottle of MG Chemicals "Rubber Renue" (yes, spelt right). Make sure you open the window when using! I've used it for 70s and earlier tape decks & turntables on all the rubber parts, belts & idler wheels! BTW, Im the original owner of an HP 760n (exterior perfect, I updated h/w & s/w a while back)

[@TheTerminalGuy1]

I hope you will get better soon. Currently installing Windows 2000 on a Dell Optiplex GX1 !❤

[@316diag]

TriGem is best known in the USA for the eMachines brand and HP using their motherboards, the same ones used in eMachines.

[@CHAOSDixieMan]

damn the 4th system feels like a time capsule with all those Norton stuff and good ol' Office XP

[@ajg7917]

Welcome back 👍

[@taajwarkhan723]

I never opened up these older systems. It's interesting to see these fan duct systems.

[@sjgrall]

Great videos, great personality. 👍

[@ChuckedTech]

Great video Mike!

[@gedward1475]

Love it my first PC was a Hewlett Packard from good old Circuit City. My second PC was a Packard Bell always wondered were they the same company.

[@Eyetrauma]

10:25 You wanted an optical drive and instead got a demon capturing device, what a deal!

[@Thedamagedbrain1918]

I have an hp pavilion 6553 and it’s all original still working I found it in a woodshop and asked the owner if they wanted it they said take it they didn’t know if it worked it was filthy on the outside it came with the original monitor which was the most dirty I opened up the computer shockingly it was pretty clean still rocking the original hard drive and I got the speakers with it that mount on the monitor everything all original for free I’ve been using the computer now for about a month and a half it has windows 98 second edition it looks like the last computer you go over in this video but different model

[@johnhudson7055]

It’s funny that back in the 90s and early 2000s I hated working on these machines, I was all about custom builds but now I would love to have one of these, especially that first P233MMX.

[@intoxicode]

To remove scuffs from plastics use just some water and a magic eraser Make sure not to scrub too hard otherwise you'll take away labeling and paint..

[@zacmitchell_1984]

I had one like the last small bubble machine. Wish I still had that thing! Lack of agp was so annoying I used it up to 2010ish with a tnt riva 2 pci, a sound blaster live or something like that a USB 2.0 card and 192 of ram!

[@EastAngliaUK]

these hps are before my time i was around in 98 but never had a pc till later.

[@poplaysgames6540]

The first PC my parents bought for themselves was an HP Pavillion 8510, with an AMD K6-2 at 500MHz, and 64MB of RAM, 8MB of which was used by the integrated SIS 530 graphics. Compared to the kind of PC I was using at the time it was junk, except for the case, which I still have. It's had quite the upgrade, as its contents are now a Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro 2 motherboard, an Athlon XP 3200+, 1GB of RAM, and a Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB. That lot would get a bit hot in a case with only the PSU fan, so there's a hole cut in the top of the metal case, and some supports removed from the inside of the top panel to fit a slimline 92mm fan, that exhausts out of a slot cut out of the rear edge. I've thrown out a lot of computers over the years, but that case is just too well built and too nice to work on to get rid of, even if it's just being used to prop up a desk these days.

[@johnHAMMOND-l3u]

thank you for another great video

[@robert1975031]

I had one of those samsung 8.4g (Under the spinpoint series) drives for a long time. seems as there were several trigem branded versions of these drives. the first time I saw a trigem branded drive was in a brand new emachines system that my brother in law was trying to set up for his mother. the thing was actually DOA from the factory lol.

[@Michael_Livingstone]

Hey Cutie, sorry to hear about your malware infection. I got my Covid and influenza vaccine (virus definition update?) the other day and felt like I got ran over the next day but now I’m fine again fortunately.

[@brandonupchurch7628]

37:20 "Fortunately, the motherboard tray is removable."

[@Starhartdeer]

You are the bob ross of retro computer repairs c:

[@dmjoel]

the 8240 and the mid tower version is favorite case to work in. also have the mini 4550z or similar model the mid tower is niuce takes a std atx moibo favorite feature is the dark gray drive bays slide out as a single unit

[@jeffffff]

Think I commented about this on a different video about a similar system but #3 was the same exact one my family had when I was growing up. We were using it into 2007, that was rough haha

[@cpropergol9523]

what a hunk ! hummfff ! :)

[@ironlion45]

That third one looks just like the first computer I purchased with my own money, back in the year 2000. P3533 4g ram and I think the HDD was a 30 gig WD Black. IDE. (PS: I'd format your hard drive any day)

[@HeadsetGuy]

"That is one unlucky Goldstar." I see what you did there...

[@BobboNaught-YT]

The first pc i actually used and replaced parts in as a kid was one of these, similar to S4. Actually might be the exact same model.