IBM 300GL Part 2 - Lets (try to) put this 300GL to some use!

[@sarym]

Thank you for doing videos on this awesome computer, I use to work on one daily so it's nice to see one (kinda) back in action! Looking forward to Part 3 :))

[@RetroSuperhighway]

Thanks! I hope the one you worked on was a little more co-operative than this one! It's still fighting me, but I will follow up with a part 3 when I have it all working.

[@sbirchsbirch6232]

Nice two videos. With the size of that thing, looks like it barely fits on your desk. The keyboard would barely fit. How deep is that thing? And how big is your table?

[@RetroSuperhighway]

Thanks, they do have quite a large footprint, about 45*45cm. The desk (at the end of the video) is quite small though, only 53cm deep which I think makes it look at bit bigger than it is.

[@O.Shawabkeh]

Iconic design, doesn't get old. Like most of tge mid 90's of Compaq, HP, Dell and others.

[@RetroSuperhighway]

Yeah, at least the big OEMs were trying to differentiate themselves a bit, at least as much as you can do with a mainly beige box!

[@chrisw443]

I am excited to see it working correctly soon

[@RetroSuperhighway]

Me too!

[@FOIL_FRESH]

hope you got that cd drive sorted. i recently rebuilt a PC350 - P200MMX model with the slidey-front cover. The S3 video kept booting in grayscale, HDD was toast, no CD drive at all and no soundcard. I shoved in a Trident PCI video card, 8GB CF card as the HDD, an IBM branded CD-ROM (probably anywhere from 8x to 24x speed, I haven't really benchmarked it), 3Com 10mbit network card and a very capable ESS AudioDrive ISA sound card. Now it's a beast! My first ever IBM too. Such a cool design and was something I only dreamt of back in the day :) Cheers for the vid!

[@RetroSuperhighway]

Thanks! I'm slowly making progress with the CD drive, but there are a couple of other issues I'm trying to sort out too. Your IBM sounds great, I like specs you have gone for, hopefully I can get this one sorted out too.

[@tunkunrunk]

I still have mine , but the cpu , cdrom and power supply are missing . back in the day I upgraded the CPU to celeron 450mhz using and adapter ( socket 370 cpu to slot 1), I went beyond the ram limitation and reached 728mo EDO. if you had pci grahic card like geforce2 MMX you would be able to emulate 90s consoles , and play over a hundred pc games

[@RetroSuperhighway]

Nice! Those Slot 1 adaptors were great for giving a bit more life to systems as they aged.

[@tunkunrunk]

@@RetroSuperhighway yeah , I even tried to mount the famous Pentium III-S tualatin 1.4ghz on these adapters , but the system didn't even boot up. Maybe the limitation to FSB66 on the motherboard was the problem . If any one got the 100-133mhz slot one motherboard and could try to mount pentium III tualatin on them using the adapter, that would solve my old interrogation

[@AncientElectronics]

I've always loved the look of these cases. I have an IBM 300PL, very similar to yours except it supports slot 1 Pentium IIIs and has an AGP slot. makes a great Windows 98 machine. Currently have a Pentium 800MHz, TNT2 Ultra, and Sound Blaster Live! installed though it does have ISA slots if I ever wanted to make it a bit more DOS oriented

[@RetroSuperhighway]

That spec sounds awesome, and very versatile as you say. That TNT2 Ultra and SB Live! are an inconic windows 98 combo.

[@jdebultra]

Cool PC, I have one but it is not in working order and has been sitting in a box waiting on me (4 years). I have and use my IBM PC P350- P166. It has a wonderful IBM ESS ISA 1868f sound card, Matrox Millennium /4gb GPU, Intel 1000MT network, 64 MB ram, IBM CD ROM and floppy. 2 hard drives 1.2gb, and 4.3 GB. I have OS/2 Warp 3 as the primary OS and it also can boot into DOS 6.2/WIN3.11 which I rarely do. I also have an old IBM printer (dot matrix) with it. My IBM crt recently bit the dust so just using an old Sony 17" LCD. On the lookout for a matching IBM CRT but not holding my breath.

[@RetroSuperhighway]

Thats sounds like some sweet specs on your machine! Good luck finding an IBM CRT, they must be getting quite rare now?

[@StansAuto83]

Nice mines defrag and right now hopefully that fixes it all the issues

[@soviet9922]

Get a raritan kvm, they support serial and ps/2 i have one and work great to mix AT and PS/2 systems.

[@RetroSuperhighway]

Thanks for the tip! Not a brand I had heard of before but I'll keep a look out for one.

[@DarrenAntich]

Hi i got ibm 300gl just wondering what kind of graphic cards are good put in this old system? I got sound card bottom row , 2 rows are free then 3rd row network card then last row up top is free kind stuck what card to put in Darren

[@RetroSuperhighway]

What do you want to do with the system and what CPU and RAM does the system have? Lots of good options of to pick from depending on what you would like to use it for.

[@wdd6864]

Great Video and a new Subscriber. Nice system. The Token Ring ran over RJ45 connection or over the 9 pin. Token Ring was a network where a token was sent around the network to collect data. Rather slow compared to the Ethernet but the RJ45 can not connect to the Ethernet network on that card. Only RJ45 Token Ring Networks

[@RetroSuperhighway]

Thank you! Thats a great explanation of Token Ring, easy to understand for someone totally new to it like me. Did it still have some sort of central hub/switch like a 'standard' Ethernet network to manage the network traffic? Or was it connected in a literal ring where one machine connected to the next and so on. (A little like the old BNC type connectors where you had no switch, but they all connected to each other with a terminator at each end).

[@wdd6864]

@@RetroSuperhighway I believe it was a logical ring not a physical one. I read about it but never really used it

[@zarkeh3013]

I remember these. Don't remember an optical uh, panel and thought it weird without one. I might say the onboard video might be more than adequate for DOS Win9x usage. S3 video chipsets are decent though if ya has the Matrox... heh ****shrugs**** Keep trying different KVM's? or cables? I like the KVM's with detachable cables that can be replaced, however those connection add their own set of problems. bleh. the KVM I used while being a technician, I attached Power and Network cables making for easy plug and go. DOS and BIOS usage is important and I would keep investigating for sure.

[@RetroSuperhighway]

I'm sure the onboard video would be fine, its certainly more powerful than the Matrox, but back when I had my original 486 I always wanted a Matrox Millennium for that sweet video quality, so I'm determined to fit it into this build. Investigations are ongoing, but it seems the 300GL might be a bit more poorly than I first thought. I'm going to be scouring the internet for some parts before I can make much progress with it.

[@zarkeh3013]

@@RetroSuperhighway still a Beut' though! but as a primary DOS and Win95 machine? I think it's a bit much. toss the matrox into another build and stuff a voodoo2 or banshee or other fun video for winME and FreeDOS or uh whatevah! ****shrugs**** makes for gud videos for sure ;D

[@daviddadut4620]

hello my quest for you know any solution? i plan my ibm hinkpad 770z this ibm pl 300 laptop version a overheat problem for cpu upgrade time? the 366mhz pentium 2 cpu i plan upgrade 450mhz pentium 2 for treatment a pc 100 memory for real pentium 2 fun thanks forward :)

[@dim0n1]

Forget about KVM, add some games testing, especially dos ones with sound test (some midi tests) and add voodoo 1 or 2, and enjoy nice 2D a 3Dfx games 🙂Or replace Matrox with some RIVA TNT(2) card, coz u dont have enought slots 😀