i-Opener 🍕The 1999 computer with a PIZZA KEY

[@LGR]

🍕PIZZA UPDATE🍕 Here is the exact webpage that the pizza key linked to in 2000: web.archive.org/web/20000815071640/papajohns.food.com/ Shoutout to @MichaelMJD for showing the URL in his video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nafPdIBvl9Obg9Esi=1LcJH53J0cGP6vzM

[@aurastrike]

p i z z a

[@metallaholic]

now that papa john's ordering site takes me back

[@swisse213]

That site went defunct in 2001.

[@slushyglue9167]

That's crazy modern looking all things considered.

[@robsku1]

LOL, from the moment you mentioned it being a locked down system you could only use with their service I was pondering and meaning to write a comment about the possibility of replacing or bypassing the flash storage to boot a custom OS - I should have known that at such price it must have been something people already did back then. I really should, even though I had never heard of the system as I live in Finland, but that was always a thing with any such locked down devices that were fundamentally simply PC's disguised as something lesser... Such devices were simply guaranteed to pull in hackers like a light does moths - whether they actually needed another, probably crappier than their current one, PC's or not ;p

[@crabcrabhathat]

as fun as the pizza button is, its wild seeing something thats functionally a real world fallout terminal, just a dinky pc with some info forever frozen in time.

[@MadameSomnambule]

If I was designing an Internet appliance like this, I’d have a small set of function keys that included a pizza key. One key to order Chinese, one for burgers, and maybe one for ordering breakfast. XD Can you imagine? Ordering pizza by pressing a goddamned pizza key?

[@cmdraftbrn]

@@MadameSomnambule like we cant do that now?

[@LeBoomStudios]

​​@@MadameSomnambuleI was actually Intrigued by that digital mall map. I think I'm gonna make a custom html doc to set as my start page that shows something like this with customized links to several online stores. Like, a guns section with Gunbot, Cabelas, Gunbroker etc., an electronics section (RIP RadioShack) and so on. It's gonna be awesome

[@alalalala57]

​@@LeBoomStudios That sounds so fun.

[@aleksandrbmelnikov]

👍😉💻

[@MrRom92DAW]

I can imagine being the kid in school whose family owned one of these, trying to convince all the other kids that their computer has a special Pizza button

[@Vegas242]

And then during the sleepover trying to stop the other kids from pressing the button a bunch of times before your parents kick all of you out of the computer room 😆

[@Micheal-xr4t]

Seeing "You acidentally hit the pizza key" printed in the product manual is simply amazing.

[@tomyyoung2624]

Yes-frills internet app gain grounded on pc

[@Namedonelettere]

Press the tab key, you accidentally ordered a tab

[@weekendrobot]

I owned a hacked iOpener for many years so this was quite a nostalgia trip. I didn't hack it myself, I purchased it pre-hacked in the early 2000s. The original owner had cut the case and wired in an fan. My iOpener ran Windows 98 and worked really quite well all that time. I kept it for many years. My children used to use to is to play kids games like Freddie Fish and it always just a fun conversation piece. The pizza key was, unsurprisingly, the windows key.

[@mishell128]

The pizza key being the Windows key is actually genius

[@offspringfan89]

Playing Freddie Fish and Putt-Putt games, man that was my childhood!

[@juahnful]

I loved playing Freddie fish!

[@orion10x10]

Freddie Fish is the GOAT of point and click adventure games.

[@FanboyKisser]

You had a custom keycap before custom keycap

[@treelineresearch3387]

I drove like 75 miles to a Circuit City to get one of these to install Linux on back in the day, hacking them was basically a meme on Slashdot. All I really remember about it is how the screen was like a mid 90s laptop in terms of contrast and response time, and the machine itself was not fast even under Linux.

[@stevesether]

I bought one of these as well. The original price was only $99. Thee's also a long forgotten story about Netpliance trying to stop us. They put epoxy on the BIOS, they modded the BIOS so it no longer booted from a second IDE drive, and they sent out scary sounding letter that they were going to try to charge us a bunch of money for not signing up for the ISP. They went out of business not long after all that.

[@c1ph3rpunk]

@@stevesetherthey must work for Apple now.

[@louistournas120]

You should also buy a bunch of XBoxes, Playstation and Switches. They sell them at a loss.

[@stevesether]

@@c1ph3rpunk It wouldn't surprise me. It gets worse. Looking back there's Slashdot stories about how they had to pay a $100,000 fine to the FTC for charging people for internet access before they used the device.

[@c1ph3rpunk]

@@stevesether /. Now there’s one I haven’t seen in a while. ;-)

[@adamsfusion]

Another interesting note in their history is when, mid-purchase, they told a bunch of customers that they had to agree to a $500 termination fee or have their order canceled. Turns out the FTC didn't like that and fined them quite a bit of cash, something like ~$100k.

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

That's amazing.

[@PaphvulMayle]

Back when the FTC still had teeth. *glares at Adobe*

[@jackmcslay]

You know, sniffing the packets to see what's it trying to connect to and then connecting it via a home server that emulates the servers sounds like it would be a neat project

[@RaccoonHenry]

you: using the correct technical terms to describe a reverse engineering procedure me: *sniff sniff*

[@alexisverity47]

We need to.also dump the contents of the flash for preservations sake

[@treelineresearch3387]

It might just be a matter of setting up a fake dialup ISP with a phone line emulator and a decent modem that can be set up to accept any incoming connection attempt and a PPP/SLIP/whatever service that doesn't care about authentication.

[@alexisverity47]

@@treelineresearch3387 this plus wireshark

[@Codeaholic1]

@@treelineresearch3387 That's not really needed. The builtin system is pretty easy to dump. It's just a flash IDE drive with a minimal QNX/proton install.

[@eXtremeLink859]

Watching you look through cached websites felt VERY reminiscent of Hypnospace Outlaw, particularly the latter portion of the game. That's so cool to see a real-world example of that, thanks for sharing LGR!

[@LGR]

My pleasure! Love Hypnospace.

[@RickinBaltimore]

The early days of the internet were such an amazing time.

[@kirishima638]

Back when internet was about empowering individuals, not harvesting them for data

[@davidhealdjr.513]

The 1960's sure were.

[@cougar2013]

Indeed. It was a time when people appreciated the fact that there was an internet.

[@dredgewalker]

Yep and discovering free porn!

[@WingMaster562]

​@@cougar2013we still appreciate it today

[@lgbtyler6791]

I started watching your channel as a child (around 9 or 10) for reviews of which Sims 3 ep I wanted. And here I am... 11/12ish years later listening to you dismantle computers in the background while taking notes in my programming classes. I also did a bit of studying on Computer Manteince so I **roughly** understand what you're doing. I just wanted to take this moment to comment on how fascinating it is that as my interests evolved over the years, I still come back to your content. And quite frankly, listening to you talk about Duke Nukem makes me nostalgic and want to run up TS3 tbh.

[@LGR]

Heck yeah, I’m glad you ended up sticking around! Best of luck on the classes.

[@nicktechnubyte1184]

Ordering pizza with one click of the keyboard?! Hell yeah!

[@ijmad]

I've finally found my spirit PC

[@AMV12S]

Ordering pizza accidentally and get scared when the deliver is up to your door 🤔

[@RenegadePandaZ]

Too bad it ordered Papa Johns, seems like blatant false advertisement.

[@bibasik7]

@@RenegadePandaZ What did Papa John ever do to you?

[@ValuableBlueberry]

​@@bibasik7 he aint Papa Louie

[@megan_alnico]

I was a poor college kid when these came out. I didn't even have the $99 to spend on it at the time. The local CompUSA sold out though in like a day or two because all the computer science students bought them up and hacked them. The idea of hacking something and just putting linux on it has been around for a long long time and I was so disappointed that I didn't get a chance to grab one.

[@smeezekitty]

I'm sure you could still find an old model to get the experience of nostalgia if you wanted

[@thomgizziz]

I just bought one on ebay, bought the cable on ebay also.

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

How much horsepower does one of these have if you jailbreak them and put in Linux, would it be able to do Duke 3D?

[@megan_alnico]

@0neDoomedSpaceMarine Duke 3D had a minimum system of like 486DX 66 and 16 megabytes of RAM. These chips are well above 100mhz and with 32mb of RAM. On paper the machine should handle D3D comfortably.

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

@@megan_alnico Huh, that's actually not shabby. Given how these were sold off at a huge loss at 99bux for a time, and how easy it apparently was to put a real OS on there, these things must have been pretty good poverty desktops for the technically minded. Not a great screen, but hey, can't beat that 'subsidized' price.

[@VinceGoodrum]

This technically sold for 99 dollars but it had a contract for 2 years and if you cancelled it , you would have a 499 termination fee. But they also made money on the sponsored services...it was a giant advertising billboard with email. But they were easily hacked

[@treelineresearch3387]

Joke was them since they didn't make you sign up at the store during purchase, you just paid cash for your corpo-subsidized $99 linux box and drove off. Contract what contract, was that something in that documentation packet I didn't open or presented to me in the sign up workflow that I never ran?

[@homebusinessking]

@@treelineresearch3387 they had that thing in the box but everyone ignored it. Companies were just loading those things in cars and turning them into thin clients for their businesses. The concept was nice but the problem was that nobody cares about the rules. It was one of the most ridiculous times in computer history and sure brings back memories. I can almost garrantee there are prob still some in use

[@EricJorgensen]

@@treelineresearch3387 Indeed, this was why the steep discounts for signing up for AOL or Prodigy when buying a computer at Best Buy integrated the signup and contract into the POS software at the store - you literally could not get the discount without signing. My older brother actually worked on that project.

[@jupo42]

They did eventually start forcing you to sign up for the subscription at time of purchase and put the early termination clause in, but for weeks (months?) we were able to just buy them from the store and never sign up.

[@adamsfusion]

There was a bit of time where that termination fee wasn't required. In fact, they got the attention of the FTC for forcing it on people mid-purchase. They basically got dunked on twice over it.

[@Sonikkua]

Ha! I had one of these. They were relatively cheap, and picked one up because you could solder in an IDE connector, add a hard drive, and install Windows. So for $99 I grabbed it and used it at work for years as a dedicated Winamp machine running Windows 98SE

[@volvo09]

98SE and Winamp hold a spot in my heart.... Right in the napster era.

[@ollo1968]

I also modded some resistors to run an AMD K6-3+ (that's been close to unobtanium even back then). I shall retrieve the unit from my attic now...

[@volvo09]

@@ollo1968 the K6-3 was the first CPU I delidded to try for better overclocks! I remember overvolting it to try and get 450 to work on my crappy motherboard, and I killed it and had to live with an over clocked Pentium 90 until I could save up for another cpu.

[@grassrootfilms]

Yeah! Win98 and WinAMP set as the shell. No explorer. I got one of these used back then to build out a car MP3 player.

[@jrr851]

I found one of these back in 2002 at a goodwill for $20. It sat on my kitchen counter running Windows 2000 with a USB WiFi adapter. Hacking it was fun.

[@theguitargamer1]

What about the performance? Did it ran decently?

[@ozzie_goat]

Now you're gonna create a market of dedicated pizza buttons

[@partytempo]

Amazon dash button launch version with branded buttons 😆

[@bened22]

I just looked for a pizza key for the Glove80. Feels kinda essential now ... 🤔🍕

[@StefanHanrath]

Would pay $ for some keycaps

[@jackmcslay]

The Pizza key goes in place of the AltGR key, it seems it would be simple enough to just put a Pizza sticker on there and configure the OS to open the browser on a internet pizza order website when the pizza key is pressed, you could probably use the Scroll Lock key instead as it's virtually useless nowadays and not likely to be pressed by accident

[@ozzie_goat]

​@@jackmcslayI use AltGr almost every day! Pizza is expensive

[@ironlion45]

That old news snapshot was an absolute treasure trove of historical stuff. That was by far the coolest thing about this.

[@mooniejohnson]

Oh lord, I still have one of these! Granted, I bought it from a thrift store *but* I actually took the Pizza Key off, glued a small magnet to the back of it, and now it currently adorns my PC case! ❤

[@spacedandy7553]

Is there anyways to replace the windows key with it?

[@Sashazur]

If the whole thing was cheap enough, it’s worth buying just to get the pizza key.

[@georgeoldsterd8994]

But aren't magnets dangerous to computers?

[@WA_Stokins]

That's downright ghoulish wtf

[@lukedavis436]

Couldn't you just replicate a Pizza Key instead of stealing it off an I-opener

[@Geeksmithing]

Props for putting the extra attention to every element of your videos including the captions! When the video plays, it says "[jazz music with extra cheese plays]" 😆🍕

[@Afsafs123]

We're at that weird period of time where the UI is somewhat 2D but also kind of 3D. It's appealing in a way.

[@LangleyNA]

Are ya' referrin' to 2023? As far as Microsoft WINDOWS is concerned, they're still doing the flat 2D design they've had since WINDOWS 8 more than ten years ago. The distinction with WINDOWS 11's design is that they're curving more interface elements, and adding to the intensity and size of window and menu shadows. They aren't adding more texture, gradients, or doing any sort of 3D highlight and shadow kind of thing. Maybe you are referring to the early 2000s. :)

[@dolbyprologicii]

more polished 2d i would say. 3d element is so early 2000s

[@LangleyNA]

1990s. By 2001-2002, both Apple and Microsoft began with gradients and textured use. A sort of in between, in my opinion, between the hard 3D and the flat 2D. In the 1990s, you want to think of 3D designs like Motif with the beveled, thick and hard edges, the monochrome and gray color schemes, Windows 3.1-Windows 2000, NeXTSTEP, and Mac's System 8 and 9. These all featured those 3D designs, and were throughout the 1990s. With Apple's OS X and Microsoft's Windows XP, both from 2001, there was a fair move away from those like... industrial and appliance, hard and cold designs. I guess it was still "3D" imitation design, but softer throughout. It really is a hybrid area in terms of design, like 2001-2005. An in between. I feel really the 3D era didn't expire entirely until Microsoft's WINDOWS 8, and Apple's OS X Yosemite, from 2012 and 2014 respectively. You folks aren't wrong, I don't feel, but when I think "3D," I think that hard and cold look of the 1990s interfaces I described, rather than the glossy, bubbly, colorful world we had in the early 2000s. Then, of course, the late 2000s saw more changes. Apple threw out the skeumorphism, I think it's called, opting for smooth and subtle gradients and ditching textures. Softening all lines. And Microsoft did the whole 3D floating glass with Aero that saw 5-6 years of relevance. Although they don't do a great job of dating these things, I suggest to you ToastyTech's GUI Gallery if you're interested in seeing some of these interfaces. :)

[@ThePC007]

Man, I miss skeuomorphism. It was very readable, looked better and more “premium” than flat design, and did a much better job at hiding “imperfections” on the screen (such as visible pixels on low-res displays or dust on the screen). Granted, as someone who’s working in a small family-owned software business, not having to employ a UI designer because everything’s so simple that I can just do it myself kinda works in my favor, lol.

[@TextileGeorge]

loved that aesthetic so much

[@lIlIIlIllIIIllIIllIlIllIllI]

0:59 can i just say thank you for including this in high enough quality to read the full blurb? definitely appreciated getting to gloss over it cause it was a neat read

[@mathewmclean9128]

Omg I remember my family having one of these. That thing was so slow even for its time. Honestly my favorite feature was the weather button. However my brother on the other hand, yeah he discovered a little something else that the internet has to offer and got in quite a bit of trouble... And unfortunately that's the reason we had to get rid of it.

[@adventureoflinkmk2]

Well obviously it can't download mp3s or games or anything... edit: of course that's assuming you're running the hardware as/is Was it corn (replace c with p 😂)

[@BrianIsWatching]

Oh lordy he found the hidden corn button

[@doubleHLabs]

Those pesky teenage boy hackers!

[@mathewmclean9128]

@@BrianIsWatching he was such an idiot too. At the time I was 7 and he was 12. He was in denial and kept insisting that mom had lied. He didn't realize that she could press the back button 20 or 30 times and see the recent history. She would get up a few minutes early several times just to check the history and verify that it was him getting naughty and no one else. She even showed him the back button and checked history right in front of him and he still denied it.

[@alaeriia01]

Managing browser history of a shared computer is something of a lost art these days; now everyone just uses their phone for that stuff.

[@Kris18]

Hey Clint! I have an idea for the date. I'm guessing it's December 31, 1969. I suspect the system is keeping track of time using Unix time and got reset to 0 since the CMOS battery died (or just otherwise got reset at startup). 0 Unix time is January 1st 1970 at midnight and your machine was set up for New York which follows GMT-5, so 5 hours back would be December 31 1969 at 7PM. When you first booted after taking it out of the box, it started ticking, and now the machine shows shortly after 7PM when recording.

[@TheLexikitty]

I need pizza buttons on all my keyboards. Now.

[@sadmac356]

Same

[@sbirkkk]

Me too

[@RikuRicardo]

Bind any key you like to a macro, that opens your favorite pizza place website, auto-logins and picks your saved order. Print a pizza sticker for the keycap, or have a keycap custom made.

[@TheLunaLeo]

Oh hey Lexi fancy meeting you here! Did not realize you were a LGR fan.

[@mycosys]

etsy has you covered (if you have a mech board)

[@AkosJaccik]

Lucky timing with the video, telephone cords tend to ripe just around this time of the year. Wild ones are usually better than farm-produced ones, just don't pick them near highways.

[@DrButthugger]

Phone cords from the highway always have too much traffic

[@Chaos89P]

Both wild and farm-raised have their advantages. It all depends on if you're looking more for price or quality. You can't go wrong with organic telephone cords, however.

[@toshikikarukawa8148]

The Pizza button seems like a good idea, but it was a bit missplaced on that keyboard xD. I remember Everquest 2 adding a "/pizza" command in game to order pizzas from PizzaHut around 2005 or so, it opened an ingame window to do the orders.

[@llMarvelous]

I was thinking from the beginning of the video - whose idea it was to place button there, can’t imagine no one thought of it

[@Safetytrousers]

I have a Nuka Cola buttton on my keyboard.

[@llMarvelous]

@@Safetytrousers does it work properly?

[@Safetytrousers]

I'm drinking cola right now.@@llMarvelous

[@renakunisaki]

There was briefly a Piizza Channel to order pizza from a Wii too.

[@Gymnos2]

That digital shopping mall button layout is really clever! Thanks again for the blast to the past.

[@renakunisaki]

Yeah, it might seem cheesy, but it's much easier to remember and navigate a physical layout than a list.

[@michaelkindt3288]

I feel like Smart TVs are kind of a spiritual successor to this kind of appliance. They're both essentially just computers stripped down to the bare necessity for streaming, news, and stuff. I imagine a spiritual successor would do quite well in the modern day, especially for old people who don't want to get used to computers.

[@D3X1K_AXYZ]

Smart fridge feels even more appropriate as its literally an internet appliance 😂

[@michaelkindt3288]

@@D3X1K_AXYZ-.-Now I'm imagining a refrigerator with the i-Opener's exact interface, but with like Netflix or whatever on it.

[@nitrax8629]

Chromebooks are pretty much today's equivalent!

[@Radu_NG]

​@@nitrax8629actually, yep. But it is linux based so it's actually a full os locked down to Google services..

[@llMarvelous]

@@D3X1K_AXYZit’s kinda missed opportunity for them not to make dedicated pizza button on the fridge, right?

[@robertskitch]

The pizza button reminds me of those 'Dash Buttons' that Amazon brought out back in 2015. Like, they were just stand-alone buttons that you could set to a select set of products and brands, so you could get a laundry detergent button and stick it somewhere convenient, like on the side of your washing machine, and press it whenever you're running low to wirelessly order more of that brand. Confusingly they brought it out just before April Fools so a bunch of people thought they were joking.

[@alexgallagher4594]

God I remember those

[@ingusmant]

I'm surprised the battery and the flash memory works after over 20 years

[@treennumbers]

The battery was probably for the clock, so it probably doesn't work and the date is saved in the OS settings somehow. It's good that it hasn't burst though.

[@mycosys]

@@treennumbers it is booting from the flash memeory

[@absalomdraconis]

The flash isn't _too_ surprising, though it might be kinda borderline.

[@kermitthefragg]

Flash degrades with use. Not time.

[@renakunisaki]

@@kermitthefragg it does degrade with time as well, but we're talking many, many decades there.

[@bipedal_earth_roamer]

I appreciate that you had this sitting around for over 10 years and only just now brought it out for your viewers. It makes me wonder what else you have hidden away.

[@Mick_92]

If you think about it, a longer time passed from the time Clint got this to the time he made this video, than between when it was last used and when it got to Clint's hands.

[@charliemartin-k7m]

I hope he is not like me I've had things in storage so long I forgot I even had them or bought them at Goodwills.

[@TNWWDGTFilms]

This might be space age thinking. They brought "theoretical" Thin clients to market, but charged per month fee to actually operate them. Oof if that isn't 2023 thinking i don't know what is.

[@bchristian85]

Yep. The fact that Internet was still mostly dial-up in 1999 is what I believe kept these from catching on. They were ahead of their time. I'm glad they didn't catch on because I didn't like them.

[@xRepoUKx]

Yeah, but 22 bucks a month in that era was excessive!

[@gluttonousmaximus9048]

Loyalty bond is NEVER a new thing.

[@LockonKubi]

The concept though was pretty ahead of its time. Tablets these days fill the same niche, with the advantage of more prolific internet access.

[@clancykohl]

I mean if that included the Dial-Up service, though it might have been expensive (I really don't know the prices from back then), a monthly payment would be justified, basically like todays flatrates and such.

[@Blacknight8850]

I know there's probably better reasons this thing never powers down completely, but I like to think that it's because they thought their customers would be desperately mashing the Pizza button while they waited for the computer to boot up, and they needed to make sure if you wanted a slice you could get it *_right goddamn now._*

[@clancykohl]

Its use-case was probably thought to be like modern smartphones, to quickly bring up the internet, to look up stuff and such, or order a Pizza, instead of waiting a minute for a computer to boot, connect to the internet and so on. That's basically the only thing this could do anyway.

[@AnonymousAnarchist2]

well. The basic idea was that every home and buisness would one day have terminals and pay for the service. And the whole idea came from a former south american country that had a bunch of far far more primitive teminals installed in every building and used those terminals to track everyones wants, needs, and production, and hours avalible etc. Then they use an algorithm to predict and respond to demand, all without any investors, owners, C.E.O.'s or bosses, just demand. It worked so well that basically all of successfull wall-street companies hired a buuunch of merc's and ended the country before it could spread. Who wouldnt say yes to a (at the time) 15 hour work week average amoung workers, a lower retirement age, whatever job you wanted to try out, and everything locally made free to you otherwise? Cant have that, that sounds like communism. Right after the '60's no less! And they got away with it, there was a crime commited but no way to pursue.

[@Zyo117]

This was Chile's Cybersyn, and it wasn't just Wall Street. Nixon ordered economic warfare against them; the CIA kidnapped high profile people; and Nixon, Kissinger and the govt at large knew about the coup against a democratically elected leader, but decided to let it go ahead because they considered his policies dangerous. Yep, sounds like normal American capitalism.

[@JohnneyleeRollins]

The pizza keycap market is gonna explode now 🍕⌨️

[@tomyyoung2624]

Yes Wi-Fi Games The internet is a toy

[@GC1CEO]

Minus the Pizza key this is such an sample of information portals you might see in the 2000s in public locations with an increasingly number getting their information from the Internet or even allowing customers to check web-based email, do basic web searches, etc

[@Alec_Reaper]

What's funny is they knew the Internet was here to stay and would be a massive market. But they never expected the Internet to evolve beyond to what it is now.

[@Aeduo]

There've been endless "news, weather, stocks and shopping" services which existed or were promised all throughout the 1900s honestly. There was very little imagination about what such a thing could be, even while the internet was here and taking off, and basically zero thought for creators. They pretty much seemed to want it to be more convenient TV and radio and newspapers with home shopping. Basically no interest in communication or sharing of ideas or art. Thankfully it has flourished in that way.

[@Gatorade69]

​@@AeduoAww yes, I remember the internet of the 1950s. Good times was definitely better than the 1940s internet. Joking aside while I agree with your comment you might want to change it as "all throughout the 1900s" implies that the internet was available well, all throughout the 1900s. I think you mean the 1990s.

[@Aeduo]

@@Gatorade69 yeah I was intending to include pre-internet services or promises of services.

[@Mr_Top_Hat_Jones]

@@Gatorade69😂

[@Alec_Reaper]

@@Gatorade69 If you really want to get technical, the Internet started around the late 50s and CERN/Tim Berner's Lee made it consumer friendly and what it is today in 1989-90 or so. What started as a military /research tool became a information and idea tool for all. :)

[@ironlion45]

Back around the age of "Netpliances", I remember getting my elderly grandmother set up with an email device somewhat like this; it wasn't a computer, it was JUST an email machine.

[@joshuablaze9810]

Awesome. I was going to email you and see if you wanted my old i-opener for a video like last week but never dug it out of storage to actually test it. I knew you would love the Pizza Key and so happy you're covering this curious device!

[@robby935]

Thank you so much for doing this video! I remember when this came out and definitely remembered the pizza button! Never knew anyone that had one but always wondered how this whole system worked!

[@CandyBoinz]

1999 PCs: A dedicated key to ordering a pizza 2023 PCs: GPU that run so hot you can cook a pizza We really have come a long way

[@patlefofort]

2043: You can cook a pizza in your car parked in the sun.

[@kaioocarvalho]

@@patlefofort You can already do that in some Brazilian cities like Rio de Janeiro or Teresina. You have to be careful though to not cook your hands too picking it up (or holding the door handle to enter the car).

[@llMarvelous]

And remember that KFC thing, that combines (presumably) game console with an oven? or something? that unfortunately didn’t happen (

[@NopWorks]

​@@llMarvelous Officially, it's still "coming soon" as they've yet to come out and cancel it or say that it's a joke. The official site is still up even today. I'm still waiting for it, checking in from time to time. It'd make for a cool oddware.

[@llMarvelous]

@@NopWorks I mean after all those statements about 240hz video output (which idk whom it is for, coz I’m not aware of 4K 240hz tvs), 4K raytracing and all that, beating up ps5s of the world - they better deliver [we all know they won’t be able to]

[@larrydanna]

Great storytelling, quirky tech can be so interesting when you do it right. Keep up the outstanding entertainment! Thanks.

[@LGR]

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed!

[@larrydanna]

"...jazz music with extra cheese..." in the captions?! Hilarious! Follow through and attention to detail separate the 'greats' from the crowd. @@LGR I only saw that by accident on my desktop.

[@smeezekitty]

@@larrydanna LGR intros are so soothing. Especially for late nights

[@efa666]

Imagine browsing the internet when all of a sudden IT'S RAINING PIZZA!

[@RobertHarrisonBlake]

Hallelujah!

[@HunterXWorld95]

Much better than raining tacos

[@dadscomputerlab]

I ordered one of these in 1999. It took Netpliance weeks to ship it. When I called them to check on status, they told me they were low on stock because people were hacking them. Happy to say mine is still alive and still running Win 98 SE!

[@LoriH2O]

I remember the i-Opener! Back when these had first come out, a friend and I used to hack these to install Linux on them to use as general (and slow AF) little computers. For the price these were too hard to pass up!

[@BreannaMae]

It's so surreal seeing all of those news articles from 2002 because that was the year I graduated high school and began college. Took me right back to that era! It's wild to think that in just three months 2002 will have been 22 years ago. Oh how time flies!

[@ironcito1101]

3:34 There weren't wrong, they only failed to see that the "internet appliances" would actually be mobile devices. They foresaw the simple UI and even the subscription model, but they left the hardware relatively unchanged. If they had made that screen touch-sensitive, added a battery and wireless networking, and removed the keyboard and stand, they would've been on the right track. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20.

[@tetsujin_144]

The technology just wasn't there yet. There were wireless handhelds in the late 1990s and early 2000s, things like the Palm VII and early iPAQ, and then early smartphones. But at that point if you were looking to capitalize on the wave of people who wanted to take advantage of this "internet" thing they'd just heard of, they weren't going to be paying $40 per month for 10MB per month of mobile data service, they were going to be using it at home, dialing in over the phone line they already had. It's like when Netflix started. Maybe they saw online streaming on the horizon but in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the way to make that business work was to mail DVDs to people. They could look forward to that streaming future but with internet speeds being what they were, it would have been difficult.

[@ironcito1101]

@@tetsujin_144 Well, Wi-Fi was already available back then, so they could've potentially made something like a primitive Wi-Fi-only tablet to use around the house or the office. But overall, yeah, this was around 8 years before the first iPhone, so mobile tech just wasn't ready for prime time. The problem with the appliance in this video is that it's basically a very crippled PC. It provided few advantages, except perhaps the price. Everything else could be achieved with an app on a regular PC.

[@mycosys]

apparently you have no idea how rare wifi was in the early 90s & 00s @@ironcito1101, it was almost entirely used for infrastructure links

[@Cooe.]

Usable mass producible capacitive touchscreens simply didn't exist yet, let ALONE one this big, and a resistive touchscreen would have necessitated a stylus and made the device utterly HORRENDOUS to use (ESPECIALLY for typing). The technology for what you describe simply wasn't there yet in 2000-2001, you're about ≈5 years too early. 🤷 WiFi definitely existed (see the iBook), and would have been an awesome addition but it was REEEEEALLY expensive when it first came out. There's a reason Apple didn't offer Airport as standard on their laptops but made it a not-cheap optional add-on for years.

[@renakunisaki]

iPhone wasn't even Apple's first attempt at such a device; remember Newton? What iPhone did right was timing more than anything.

[@IntheBay85]

6:34 I have found great joy in cleaning the old yellowing plastic of these type of devices. I love the way it feels to see a vintage item looking fresh, It's like nerd ASMR for me.

[@Radu_NG]

Hi! How you can clean the yellow color? 😊

[@RobertPlant-wn7qn]

​@@Radu_NGRetrobrite. See: The 8-Bit Guy

[@vurpo7080]

Some people use a hydrogen peroxide bath and UV light (such as the sun) to un-yellow it, but it's still debated whether this is an effective method and whether it's good for the plastic.

[@JomasterTheSecond]

Finally, the only computer I'll ever need.

[@GC1CEO]

I also remember ordering from Papa Johns at the time because it was the first major pizza franchise that allowed online ordering -- and I hated trying to place an order over bad phone lines that were frequent in my area back in the day.

[@tetsujin_144]

I kind of vaguely remember the first time I saw a pizza place with an online ordering option, I didn't quite trust e-commerce yet so I wasn't really comfortable with the idea and dismissed it as silly or something.

[@Airsaber]

Great video, as usual. I thought that the pizza key would be the most entertaining thing about this "PC", but it turned out to be way more interesting than I thought! To be fair... they weren't that wrong about the future of web devices - they just didn't expect it to be phones.

[@Caarajack]

It's always great when you get a LGR video that incorporates Oddware and Tech Tales. Like a pineapple-ham pizza.

[@realityveil6151]

Can I humbly recommend setting up a fake PBX that daisy-chains into your home network? They would give you the ability to put these "modem-only" systems online and see how many of their internet functions still work. Maybe it'd ping an NTP server and update it's clock.

[@JimVeneskey]

Now that I have actually watched the video and seen the insides of your I-Opener, it's definitely not as "locked down" as the later ones were. I believe they stopped populating the IDE header in later ones, and expoxied the BIOS chip so you couldn't pop it out (easily) and reflash it with the same version as the original. Try to break into the BIOS with a real keyboard on startup. If you can - then you are good to go with adding an additional HD - otherwise, you'd need to replace the BIOS. Oh - and as for the humungous heatsink - I believe we just dremel'd a portion away to make room for the IDE cable back in the day. i.e. that heatsink didn't change. And yes - the original ones had WinChip CPUs.

[@Glitchedbit]

Perhaps this was the inspiration for Everquest II to add the /pizza command to order pizza from the game 😂

[@cm.design]

19:21 ahh the Susan Kare throw with all the Cairo icons!! 💕

[@perpetualcollapse]

It may not be the Any key, but it’ll do.

[@MajinTails]

One day, one day we will get that key...

[@llMarvelous]

I wonder how many people actually was searching for “any” key back in a day’s)

[@CMDRSweeper]

That newspaper ad at 1:36 really made me smile and feel some excitement... Guess back in the day, that was when you dreamed of your first PC and salivating over parts lists... Man, how the market has crashed and it isn't as fun anymore as it was back then.

[@spazzypengin]

I was in middle and high school for all the weird "internet appliances," and didn't see the point. They only did a few things and most tended to not do them well.

[@Sashazur]

They were probably good for people who found PCs too scary or challenging, also less hassle to keep this working at grandma’s place across town compared to a PC.

[@PhillyMJS]

They were aimed at technophobes, and people who just wanted email and limited web browsing but who didn’t want or couldn’t afford a full fledged PC.

[@spazzypengin]

@@PhillyMJS Oh I understand who these were meant for, but that doesn't change the fact that even for what they were meant to do with their limited functionality they were not good devices.

[@RadikAlice]

That's funny, because to someone born past their time like me. They seem less like useless junk than nowadays' IoT devices

[@NightpireVideos]

I JUST watched the old Red Baron pizza episode from like 10 years ago today and now you bless us with another retro pizza video. Good job, man. Also speaking of food. I hope LGR Foods has a return one day, if you feel like it.

[@Blackout_1692]

I can only imagine the havoc caused by a toddler hitting that Pizza key repeatedly while Sally was visiting her grandmother's house and suddenly you have like 10 boxes of pizza at your front door.

[@doigt6590]

Impossible because that's not how the pizza key worked. It's not like one of those amazon buttons that automatically order something.

[@breakfast7595]

​@@doigt6590Those are dumb af in my opinion for that very reason.

[@Blackout_1692]

@@doigt6590 yeah I'm aware of this....

[@smeezekitty]

@@doigt6590 Those are such an incredibly stupid idea (but I'm sure they still made Amazon money SMH)

[@bwbuhse]

I work for TippingPoint/Trend Micro, but was only a few months old when the i-opener came out so this is an... eye opener... to what the company comes from lol

[@siskavard]

Reminds me of the Pizza Hut promotion they did in Everquest 2, you could type /pizza in game & get a hot 'za delivered to you while fighting gnolls. What a time to be alive.

[@nick99nack]

I have one of these systems. Bought it a few years ago, it was a fun COVID project. Like yours, my BIOS was locked and I had to go through a lengthy research/trial and error process of finding the old BIOS and downgrading it through the underlying QNX OS. Mine currently runs Windows Me, which somehow just felt right on such a cheap device. I also picked it for its decent built-in USB support which made it easier to get files onto it.

[@blackmesacake5361]

In an alternate reality, the pizza button became standard, and today were watching videos on kids abusing the personal identity AI verification system to trick the system into believing it's their parents hitting the button 20 times in a row.

[@unklejohn8575]

My first job out of college (1996) was for a start up company (based out of Ft. Worth Tx) named Hungry Mouse (mouse being the computer mouse). We offered a website where people could order pizza from a few of the major franchises and many small mom and pop restaurants. Basically, you would pick the restaurant that was participating with the company, you went through an online menu, and the order would go through our server and sent to the restaurant via fax. I think what set the company up to fail was the concept was too new and that many restaurants just neglected their fax machine.

[@craigcharlesworth1538]

*Sells product featuring a CPU, RAM, a display and a keyboard input* "It's not a computer!"

[@volvo09]

"it's not a computer!" Proceeds to list all the hardware specs of a computer 😂

[@309electronics5]

Ha even cashier check out systems and atms are computers when people think about computers they think about a whole desktop cabinet when you say computer

[@MaximumTheMokona]

So it's a 1999 Chromebook :P The design is cute, IMO. I like the metal hinge for the monitor.

[@MichaelMarucci]

Yesterday I ate an entire XL penta cheese pizza from Dominos. I'm still feeling it, so this is just thematic.

[@mooniejohnson]

I was going to say... if you're not "feeling" Dominos the day after... clearly you ordered somewhere better.

[@mybike1100]

Any pizza can be a personal pan pizza if you try hard enough and believe in yourself.

[@MichaelMarucci]

@@mybike1100 and it was heavenly. Just gunna do a water fast today though lol

[@adventureoflinkmk2]

Was gonna say the other night I ordered me a whole large papa John's pizza myself

[@Sashazur]

You all need an intervention! 🍕😔🤣

[@GigaLem]

I've heard of a Wii channel that let's you order food, but a button on a keyboard? This was definitely a product of its time

[@FatNorthernBigot]

I've not seen anything this "2001" since a large, black monolith.

[@ephektz]

My God, it’s full of stars…

[@FatNorthernBigot]

@@ephektz It should be full of pizza.

[@jeremypenner]

I worked on this! The company I worked for at the time was contracted to port their system from QNX 4 to the recently-released QNX 6. I don't think anything I wrote ever saw the light of day, but I had a debug machine on my desk for quite a while. I'd often find myself catching a glimpse of an interesting news headline on the screensaver and reading the article on the i-opener despite having a full workstation that I was already using on the desk right next to it. There was a particular USB ethernet dongle with QNX support that we generally used for development rather than plugging it into the phone lines, and we had a box plugged in that provided access to a root shell over the serial port as well. Sadly, we were based in Canada, and thus could not order pizza from Papa John's website, so I never got to have that particular delightful experience.

[@2Plus2isChicken2013]

I like how the genres shown in Music are so indicative of this thing's target audience. No rock or rap to be seen!

[@Trusteft]

That looks like an amazing pizza for a 23 year old pizza.

[@opraiderman904]

My mom worked for Circuit City for 18 years, it was cool to see all of these devices come and go in real time. I remember how big of a push they made for Web TV too.

[@Americanbadashh]

I like the hinge the screen is on, it seems really convenient to adjust compared to most monitors I've used before (Not that I've used a lot of them)

[@RetroGamingWithEdgarRivera]

Quite an interesting and delightful thing indeed. I never seen this before and is quite fascinating to see in action with something like this and the fact that the hardware is more like a laptop from the 2000's time period, no wonder that this thing got modded at that time. Pretty cool in my book.

[@johnnyboyrebell]

Superb info Clint ...as always !

[@vanjavicko20]

Imagine just accidentaly pressing the pizza key... but it doesn't show the phone number.... it just delivers instantly

[@scotth5088]

Imagine a confused uncle getting pissed while thinking someone keeps pranking him w pizzas at odd times of night, and then panicking when he realizes the person ordering the pizzas must have his compkete credit card into and address.

[@station240]

@@scotth5088 Pizzas randomly show up at grandma's house, as she orders pizza for the grandkids occasionally and her cat walks on the keyboard too.

[@80evgeniy]

Pizza instantly delivers by Pneumatic mail :)

[@mewkatlol]

(3D Pizza Printer Drone Has Arrived at Your Location!)

[@clararose1922]

We had a similar farm pc at one point in the early net days that just gave you the stock market and the weather radar. It was really neat to be honest. I played with looking at the weather a lot as a kid.

[@paulmurgatroyd6372]

Why did they decide to drop the pizza key? We need that back right now.

[@pseydtonne]

It was the only thing that I saved when I had to leave my iOpener in Boston when I moved to Los Angeles in 2011. That keyboard has lots of hidden treasures, and not the good kind of hidden. Notice there is no 'esc' key? That way you have to use some other keyboard if you flash the storage to something else and need to edit. Also the PS/2 splitter wiring is reversed: you have to plug the keyboard into the mouse port and v/v. That said, these machines were otherwise a BLAST to hack! My friend and I flashed them into X terminals using Linux Terminal Server Project and a dual-P3 server for a convention. They were a hit.

[@orkanisedcrime]

Nice timing Clint. I was craving some new/old LGR content!.

[@Fletchable]

Clint not starting off saying "Greetings!" gave me slight whiplash

[@asanaya94]

2:49 that Icebox seems like such a cool concept!! DVD player, web browser, TV, and even the security system!! That’s a lot!!

[@thejackal007]

The digital mall shopping this kind of cute, really. I've never had any exposure to this type of device. With the internet lost to it, it is a true time capsule for that exact moment. 18:21 Hey... I like my Packard Bell. :)

[@jamesdye4603]

Never heard of this unit until now. I bought a Gateway in 1999, and I still have it and it still works.

[@TheKnizzine]

Thats actually a pretty cool idea just way too soon to be feasible, like a desktop but the actual hardware is serverside like one of those old hotel N64 and ondemand systems. Hell thats who they should have been marketing this thing to.

[@Sum1WhoExists]

What are the odds that MJD was planning a video on this exact PC and 11 hours later LGR released a video on the SAME PC, did the I-Opener gods just visit a bunch of tech KZbinrs in a dream??

[@AerinRavage]

Iunno... Same odds that MJD and Action Retro released videos on that touchscreen iMac within hours?

[@hustla818]

Dude... so glad someone else saw this too. Kinda lame of LGR to see someone else working on a similar topic and going like "I have to be first to release a video on this"

[@JeffreyPiatt]

It was likely in the pipeline at the same time.

[@GrayT]

@@hustla818this has been out for LGR patrons for almost a week now so he was first

[@Ozhull]

​@@hustla818what a weirdly conspiratorial comment

[@Aremisalive]

If I can make the Pizza button launch Doom, then I'll be happy.

[@Niberspace]

Then how would you order pizza? I guess you didn't think this comment through

[@RealBond101]

​@@NiberspaceDoom is better pizza than Papa John's

[@RealBond101]

Dominoes would be a different story

[@anthonyesc8089]

The UI is really cool. The layout for the mall directory for shopping was so smart. Seems really easy to use

[@Osprey850]

For once, I'm watching an LGR video that's 8 hours old instead of 8 years.

[@pigmentpeddler5811]

2 days for me and that's still unheard of lol

[@Stweak]

thank you for the subtitles

[@busterbcook]

I worked with the guys behind this in the mid-2000's through 2010's as they had pivoted to other new startups: BreakingPoint (network simulation and test gear), and TrackingPoint (computer-controlled rifle scopes). More interesting stuff that were shaped by the team's experiences with the i-Opener!

[@PXKMProductionsGaming]

Seeing the Web Guide section vaguely reminded me of back in elementary and middle school when we'd use a portal in our library/on our network at school to access research sources like EbscoHost and Encyclopedia Britanica and stuff like that. Ahh, memories.

[@DatFMEntertainment]

I’m reminded of all these other internet appliances where they tried selling them on that same “razor blade” business model but quickly realized they messed up when hackers went ham on them. Maybe it would’ve made more sense if they were sold more on like cellular contract type terms or something, but I guess at the same time it wasn’t long before cheap internet-capable PCs flooded the market anyway and even those who didn’t actually want a full PC changed their mind upon realizing what they could actually get out of one compared to those appliances.

[@BirdBobbyG]

Absolutely masterclass in bluegrass and song writing. Perfect performance from all the guys.

[@spokehedz]

OH MY GOD! My grandma sent this (or something extremely similar) a bunch of cash as an investor, that was meant to go in airports I think? Ha ha, that menu reminds me of MIcrosoft Bob with how pleasingly round things are. And that map of the "mall" for "shopping" is hilarious.

[@XYourexMyxSaviorX]

Wow talk about close to home I currently reside in Elmira I have only been here since 06 but puts a smile on my face to see my little corner get recognized

[@stofosaurus]

Making a keyboard with a key for ordering pizza is so incredibly American.

[@qlum]

UI actually looks quite good for what it is. and it's timeframe.