Meet The Edge

This is a PC you're going to see in future videos, and since my studio is in pieces right now, here's a look at it that I shot a week ago.
In re the "intel propaganda" bit: I initially read an article that seemed to state that DDR was not yet available in 2000, and wrote my script around that. The actual truth seems to be that DDR was available two years earlier and AMD used it on their contemporary CPUs with no problems, but Intel claimed it wasn't ready for primetime as justification for sticking with rambus. The truth is anyone's guess.
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[@RiveTheRat]

"This case is toolless" It better be! The Edge wouldn't want the TOOL vinyl fiasco to repeat itself! (For those unaware: in 2015 U2 accidentally shipped vinyl records containing TOOL's Opiate EP instead of their own Songs of Innocence album. Frankly, for the better)

[@djackmanson]

I wish they'd done that to the album on my iPad too.

[@JonnyInfinite]

Sounds like a win win to me

[@johnnyburritto6367]

The Edge is the Celeron of guitar players.

[@scurvy3113]

Tool is on a whole other level than u2..: not saying which band is better but I’ll let you decide.

[@ChrisJackson-js8rd]

*toothless

[@XbotcrusherX]

The Pentium 4 is, in and of itself, a completely mind boggling part of computer history. This is a dead-end micro architecture that was dragged from SDRAM and RDRAM *through* to DDR3 on some of the 775 era chipsets. Not only that, but they (briefly) glued two of them onto a PCB to create the Pentium D. 10GHz anyone?

[@abhimaanmayadam5713]

The Pentium M was faster than the Pentium 4 in terms of IPC (at least in the laptop division) and was based on the p3

[@no1DdC]

@@abhimaanmayadam5713 It also formed the basis for the later Core 2 Duo and all following Intel CPU designs.

[@jaapaap123]

I've seen 2.6 GHz P4's run like total crap, and I've also seen those run as a totally quiet workhorse. I've used one for about 10 years as a server.

[@Megatog615]

It's what happens in a market when there is no viable competitor. All hail AMD, bringer of the Athlon64!

[@ZiggyTheHamster]

Also, IIRC, this era Pentium 4 is the same as an Itanium, but the difference is the instruction set decoder.

[@theron2119]

I remember this device. I was the IT director over a community health center for around 20 years. I was able to get a subscription to that service donated. It also came with the computer. We ran a VGA cable to the waiting room to play that. Also, having the educational materials of various dental procedures was helpful in a dental clinic that served a high indigent population that spoke Spanish - mostly farm workers. Many of the videos were in Spanish. If I remember correctly it ran Linux. There was a windows client app and also a server control windows app. Thanks for sharing!

[@RemoWilliams1227]

Thank YOU for sharing

[@KOTYAR1]

Thank you, Ron, thank you for sharing that!

[@metaphysicalretardation]

"Dust should just come out." I'd love to see someone saying that while opening a CRT monitor. The stuff inside them isn't even dust anymore - it's superglue.

[@keard558]

Fun fact! That is indeed how the do NOT make super glue. The more ya know. You're welcome 😁

[@johnn8223]

Wasn't expecting to see Patterson here, given that they make the ancient veterinary EMR software I use at work.

[@TSAlpha2933]

I convert their dental databases (Eaglesoft) into something actually decent 😂 Small world.

[@johnn8223]

@@TSAlpha2933 We're using the old version of Intravet to support *paper records.* We have no redundancy for the medical history if a chart gets lost. I live in hell.

[@RajelAran]

@@TSAlpha2933 oh shit Eaglesoft, I just flashed back to supporting old clinic computer systems

[@billrix5309]

One vet tech to another... We all remember this beast 🤣

[@charlie_nolan]

Idexx Cornerstone gang where you at

[@BaumInventions]

Back in the days upgrading was super common. And technology moved so fast that you ended up with old ports on your new mainboard. For example nearly every function of an ISA card was also available in a PCI or fancy AGP card. But you often got 1-3 ISA slots on your brand new mainboard even with PCI and AGP. Just so jou could use your old Soundcard or SCSI Controller etc. I even have Mainboards wich have 2 Power Inputs (AT and ATX) so you could use your AT Powersupply with the hard power off, or you could upgrade to a nice soft power off ATX one... Good old times. EDIT : Industrial PC stuff often uses very old (+ reliable and cheap) parts. Sometimes you can find 386 based systems from around 2000. Wich is crazy to see... But Cheap, Low power use, and reliable. EDIT EDIT: Please do yourself a favour and do not look up old Industrial PC stuff... Everything is so obscure, awesome and rare that you instantly want it... But that stuff is freaking expensive... ;)

[@scurvy3113]

This era is what drove me into this passion. I had like 10 different computers for an agp build a this and that pci . Mini atx.... I’m slowly rebuilding everything

[@Skyhawk1998]

Industrial computers and automation in general is such a fun field to go into. You have to have a certain strain of crazy to enjoy the wild hodgepodge of proprietary products, old products, and just plain bad products, but I call it fun!

[@BlastinRope]

in 2005 I was 13 and starting my PC journey. I had onboard graphics and had gotten to the point where that wasn't cutting it anymore, I wanted a GPU so bad that I can still vividly remember the dreams I'd have getting one and booting up current gen games for the first time. But my family wasn't computer savvy, I was the most knowledgeable at that point, and my mom was very stubborn in spending money on new/expensive things. I finally convinced her to buy me some AGP Radeon 9800 or something, but I had no idea about AGP, PCI, I just assumed the slot was all the same. So I get home, so excited, but I found out swift and hard about compatibility when my PC only had PCI-E. My hopes were dashed, but at least we could return it and get a proper one... ...but my 5 year old brother had grabbed the box while I wasn't looking and had decided to scribble all over it with markers... I think after that whole scenario it was another year before I got a GPU

[@antigov3944]

I know I’m replying to an old comment here but did you at least try to return it? I “lost” the box excuse or something like that? I imagine worse case scenario is a restock fee deducted from the refund

[@philtheairplanemechanic]

Consider trying a paint brush or another brush like it with the bristles cut shorter so they're nice and stiff but still gentle on plastic for that hard dust. We do that to brushes to get metal shavings out of wire bundles after aircraft sheet metal shavings and it works an absolute treat.

[@Corsix]

A toothbrush is what I use in old cellphones with really nasty packed in crud. I can vouch for its effectiveness and it being reasonably static safe too.

[@jaapaap123]

Just use an air compressor.

[@philtheairplanemechanic]

@@jaapaap123 when we're dealing with foreign debris, blowing it away isn't really an option if we're inside the plane. That doesn't blow it away, it just blows it somewhere else in the aircraft which isn't super helpful. But we do use it for a few things like if we're working on the exterior or working on a part at a bench.

[@Finallybianca]

Irony of cleaning a pc from a dentist office with a toothbrush

[@Joel-ew1zm]

I have worked in IT for a few years and specifically in and around the Dental Industry for much of that. Patterson is a household name, specifically for their Eaglesoft suite, however I never knew of them making workstations.

[@steveheist6426]

I *think* this is something closer to an "edge server" - ie, a server that lives at the edge of the network and that Layer 8 interacts with.

[@Dong_Harvey]

Yeah Eaglesoft has a generally good reputation, from what I've seen, Patterson also branches out to resell hardware for tooth imaging as well..

[@pdegnan4852]

Ah, the "Transition" motherboards, I remember these. At the place I worked when I first started in I.T. circa 2001, they bought tons of whitebox PCs from a local supplier, and as a result I got to see motherboards a lot like the one showed in this video. However, by the time DDR got popular, the organization I was at finally made the plunge to buying from an OEM (Compaqs to start off with, which had pretty decent warranties at the time), and those were the first PCs with DDR that got deployed. Some of the older systems I supported with Pentium 1 and backwards also had dual-support for EDO and SD-RAM (EDO was predecessor to SD-RAM for most folks... they were smaller modules that you inserted into the slot at a 45 degree angle, then "stood them up" to lock them into place). Anybody that's messed around with like 1996ish PCs and backwards has probably has played around with EDO RAM... short of harvesting it from a dead computer, I'm not sure how you'd get your hands on it today. Anyways, with the EDO / SD-RAM mobos, you basically flipped a few jumpers on the board to specify which kind of memory the mobo should expect to "see".

[@KOTYAR1]

Thank you very much for sharing your story!

[@VladMcCain]

As a medical distributor I’m sure Patterson purchased unbranded PCs. But honestly it looks like an unbranded compaq.

[@TommyAgramonSeth]

It reminds me of those PCs for Mattel (Barbie/Hot Wheels), maybe it's made by the same company (Patriot Computers, I believe)?

[@Desmaad]

@@TommyAgramonSeth I doubt it: Patriot went went bust after that fiasco.

[@brentboswell1294]

They used to use DTK systems...my dad's office had a Patterson 286 PC that was clearly a rebadged DTK.

[@Nabeelco]

The Power Macs are supposed to be held by both handles, not by a single one. Considering some of them weighed up to 50 lbs, you'd definitely want to use both handles.

[@yukisaitou5004]

I've refurbished a G5 Quad which involved carrying it halfway through my house and out onto the patio to clean it and I was definitely thankful for the handles. I will say they could definitely be more functional though, they dig into your hands pretty badly if you're not wearing gloves because the extremely low centre of mass even when holding both means you have to angle the machine away from you to stop it swinging and hitting you in the leg every time you take a step 😅

[@SlocketSeven]

I really hope you make a video on the history of Rambus memory now. I remember that stuff, and you've made me intensely curious.

[@tituslafrombois1164]

I feel like someone else has already done a video on it... LGR, or the 8-Bit Guy perhaps?

[@daemonspudguy]

@Lassi Kinnunen 81 if there is, I couldn't find it.

[@AdamChristensen]

I was recently trying to understand why I have no nostalgia for this era of XP/Pentium 4. This PC really helped me remember how awful that period was. I'm looking forward to the party tricks with those fancy cards though. 🥳

[@Gatorade69]

It wasn't that bad. Lots of advancements in GPUs. I was also more of an AMD guy.

[@AdamChristensen]

@@Gatorade69 Yeah, I still have my Athlon 64 3200 based desktop.

[@Gatorade69]

@@AdamChristensen I had mine up until 2016 when the motherboard finally died. Was a great system. The system ended up paying for itself with how much Photoshop work I did on it.

[@volvo09]

I never cared about the P4. It seemed "fake" to me, growing through the 486, pentium, PII, PIII, when the P4 came out it just felt 1/2 baked to me. And all the consumer hardware of the era was bubbly and plasticy like this. I had a P4 laptop that i never kept because it was a plasticy clam shaped ugly beast. I think i have a p4 in my junk bin, but that's it, haha.

[@SteelRhinoXpress]

The only Pentium 4 worth a damn back then was the Pentium 4 northwood with hyperthreading. Willamette was terrible. Prescott was a firepit. And Cedar Mill no one cared because the core 2 duo was out by then.

[@felixecho]

This reminds me of a case I saw at Fry's back in the late 90s. It had a handle, probably for portability at LAN parties. I picked it up in the store, the empty case, no components... And the handle came right off. We dubbed it Faurtbility (Faux portability).

[@ziginox]

Do you remember how afaurtable it was?

[@volvo09]

I always hated stuff like that! If you're going to put a handle on something make it STRONG and trustworthy. Not some flimsy piece of crap.

[@scurvy3113]

God.... frys. That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while

[@Roxor128]

Never had a P4. AMD at the time was better value for money, so I was using an Athlon of some sort. Interesting to hear about the quirky stuff going on surrounding the P4 that I only vaguely remember hearing about at the time.

[@alleykat6273]

Damn, a crd vid and a technology connections vid in one day?

[@RhizometricReality]

Love both these channels!

[@cthecheese1620]

Just had to scroll down on my home page and there Technology Connections was! What a good omen for the day.

[@forzai3612]

And techmoan!

[@domramsey]

Not sure why anyone would want a Pentium 4. Seems like a bit of an edge case...

[@Roxor128]

At the time, the more budget-concerned of us bought Athlons or Phenoms instead.

[@scottdotjazzman]

Nice. 😂

[@c222]

On the subject of "hard dust" some friends of mine and I griped about its cousin, which we named "datacenter grease" when fiddling with old and used rack servers. Datacenter grease is not grease but the incredibly fine dust that appears inside old servers after having been run for years nonstop in nearly sterile environments. The server never looks dusty, but once your sleeve, hand, or arm touches a spot or crevice where the grease had accumulated, it leaves a dark smudge that would not come off without a laundry machine or washing your hands with soapy water, and even then it took effort.

[@megamef]

That computer looks identical to my 700mhz PC. It was branded as ‘Time Computer’ I think it was a UK only brand.

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

Ohh it was Time? Sorry I thought it was Tiny, your right! I remember it coming with some kind of Pentium II or III

[@pyeltd.5457]

It was TIME in the UK and ran Windows ME. It's my first ever childhood Computer and the freezing was normal

[@archaon8853]

We had one as well. It was an AMD Duron running Windows ME. 700MHz sounds about right.

[@SamNalty]

@@archaon8853 Sorry to come back to this so late, but we had a ghz athlon in one of these from Time Computer in the UK!

[@HurricaneWanderer]

An old British OEM PC manufacturer called "Time Computers" used the exact same case for their Time Machine model. Leonard Nimoy did several TV commercial/advert for the Time Computers Time Machine kzbin.info/www/bejne/bWLQlpyYlNZjg7s Venmill Industries is a CD/DVD/Blu-ray/etc disc buffer/resurfacer/repair machine manufacturer, that also used this case for their VMI 3500 Buffer. Also RAMBUS RDRAM has another weird quirk. You could not leave any of it's slots empty. RAMBUS's solution for this was to fill any empty slots with blank voltage pass-through sticks.

[@Ruinah]

I remember this, they called them continuity modules.

[@johncoles]

I’m guessing that “The Edge” might come from video delivery terminology. With delivery networks you have an “Origin” which delivers assets to the “Edge” which then sends it to a viewer/client. At Primary School (in the UK) we had a device that was literally called the “Content Cache” which had educational webpages/videos/animations and now I look back and see it was a literal “Cache” 😅

[@Stoney3K]

In that case it's also a clever pun on SGI's line of workstations which have a similar case style.

[@bigalsenior]

These cases were used by a large now defunct PC oem in the uk in the late 90's / early 2000's called Time.

[@maltreatedpony]

Yep, had a 'Time Machine' in Ireland ~2000, Athlon 1GHz, 128MB RAM, Windows Me... A very useful handle!

[@Dedubya-]

Yeah I acquired one of these desktops, it had a Pentium 3 in it on some OEM intel 810 chipset motherboard, I thought it was n 'E-Machine' but memory is fuzzy so it was probably a Time or the other brands that company used (Collossus, Time and Tiny, all part of a company called Granville Technology Group that went in and out of administration a few times to allow the owner to go bankrupt and reopen again without paying his creditors or something like that.

[@pyeltd.5457]

Running Windows ME

[@mrflamewars]

The P4's Netburst Architecture was More MHz above all else, even if it's doing less work per clock than a 486. They belong in the trash. All of them.

[@sjogosPT]

I have the same opinion.

[@MathewRenfro]

Good editing, video-wise. The little things that take a lot of time to make that dont have a long screen time really show heart and effort,; Really increases the production quality of your videos.

[@letthetunesflow]

“Because it was the 90’s so they just ploughed ahead!” 😂 So true! I kinda miss the insane designs in a way. Just don’t miss the janky reliability and user experience when you just need to get things done. We will never again see the insane hardware designs we got in the 90’s to early 2000’s.

[@MikeStavola]

I think the motherboard in this was one of those deals where ASUS kept producing it for a long time, for industrial purposes. My work had a number of late 00s computers in rack cases using these boards. Like, built in 2008ish, but with a bunch of Celerons in them running Linux on DOMs, and loaded up with 4 port serial cards.

[@CommandantLennon]

I really enjoy your content, especially the mouse video. That's what got me hooked. I hope you keep the "Helps to takt the screws out" or the "Two of them" as a running joke on your channel.

[@kFY514]

With the amount of time you spent talking about the history of Pentium 4 and how that era was a wild time for computing, I'm actually surprised that you didn't mention anything about AMD. I remember Athlon XPs and later Athlon 64s being quite popular and actually preferred by many PC enthusiasts at the time, and given that during that era AMD actually invented the x86-64 instruction set that is now the standard, I think it's safe to say it was the golden age of AMD CPUs. I actually ran an Athlon XP between 2001 and 2007 as my main (or, actually, only) computer and have rather fond memories of it. That being said, The Edge is a wonderfully wacky PC and I absolutely look forward to seeing it in future videos.

[@Gatorade69]

AMD actually didn't invent x86-64 but they were the first to bring it to the consumer market.

[@kFY514]

@@Gatorade69 What do you mean? As far as I know, the x86-64 instruction set was originally called AMD64, first specified in 2000 and first implemented in the 2003 Opteron, a server chip, shortly followed by desktop Athlon 64. Intel was, since 2001, pushing their incompatible IA-64 architecture and Itanium chips, that never really got into anything other than servers and were generally unsuccessful. After AMD's immediate success with AMD64, they incorporated their variant of it, dubbed EM64T and later renamed Intel 64, into the Prescott Xeons and P4s starting in late 2004.

[@Gatorade69]

@@kFY514 You are right. Just in your original post you said AMD invented it. Not true but they did introduce it to the masses and made it popular. The AMD Athlon64's were the first x86-64 released to the public/consumers.

[@kFY514]

@@Gatorade69 Yes, and I still stand by what I said. Both the spec and the first implementation were first made by AMD, which in my dictionary counts as inventing. Unless I'm missing some piece of history that I don't know, but if that's the case, please get me straight. Who invented x86-64 if not AMD?

[@thesmj]

@@Gatorade69 AMD invented the 64 bit instruction set used on all x86 CPUs today, which is an extension of x86 known as x86-64. They still hold the patent, and allow Intel to use it (who in turn lends AMD their x86 instruction set). Intel tried to spin up their own 64 bit instruction set (Itanium) however it was incompatible with existing software written for x86.

[@Fir3Chi3f]

Going through watching every single one of your videos! Thank you for the effort and great production!

[@pcuser80]

What are the six RJ45 ports at the top? Multiport ethernet card?

[@TheCatherineCC]

right? we have to know!

[@AlRoderick]

He explained it earlier in the video without showing us the ports, but those are presumably where the kiosk displays would be connected. I suspect that it's not using ethernet, it's just using the RJ45 cable standard as a generic 8-pin patch cord that you can easily buy and replace. Purely a guess but I bet the kiosk displays themselves have a very minimal digital frame buffer so it doesn't need to have its display constantly refreshed 30 times a second over that cable, when you touch the screen it sends a bit of serial data to the edge and the edge sends back whatever the next page is supposed to be.

[@ireallyamrumi]

It's surreal to have a twenty something perform archeology on processors and computer technology you worked on ... as a twenty something. Your guesses are pretty accurate most of the time - very impressive!

[@mickaka]

A LOT about that case is very similar to the SGi 320 workstation, especially the internal chassis shape, that plastic side with metal shielding on it and a plastic covering piece on the rear of the chassis.

[@pixelsbyprince]

Yeah, my first thought was "my god, they bleached an SGI!"

[@JamesPotts]

I still have nightmares about using P4 machines at work. At home, I ran an Athlon XP and Athlon 64 for a number of years.

[@tenow]

I can confirm those were wild times. My friend had p4 with rambus. I could only afford celeron while keeping sdram. And there wasn't even double performance from p2 366 to celeron 1.8. That's how I switched to athlon 1.7 running at 1473 MHz that forced me to get ddr but also was faster than friend's p4 for much less money

[@jurgenskrause]

This case was sold in prebuilts under the MECER brand in South Africa

[@shriokei]

Ah i remember it had blue trim to go with their brand, hard to find these cases since it has been whitelabled by so many different companies

[@jurgenskrause]

@@shriokei Exactly!

[@codywaller2840]

Honestly this has some looks and vibes as minidisc players from the time. This really unlocks some core memories, I feel like I’ve seen one before but I can’t quite put my finger on where. Amazing video none the less, keep up the great work!

[@ShotecMusic]

Looks like we still haven't four what we're looking for... The next video :) This was amazing, Thank You!

[@redpheonix1000]

That situation of boards with two different memory standards is quite interesting! I have a few boards that can do that as well. One of them is an ASUS A7A266 (AMD Socket 462), which supports both SDR and DDR like yours, and also, I have a couple of Socket 7 boards than support either 72 pin SIMMs or SDR! One of them is an FIC VA-502, and the other is a Jetway J-571B.

[@Stoney3K]

There's also a few 486 boards that take either 40-pin or 72-pinn SIMM memory.

[@acomingextinction]

I'm just commenting so I can say I subbed when you had 54k subscribers. You're going places, dude, this channel is phenomenal.

[@Crazyerics]

Fun video, love the channel. In regards to the Pentium 4 living through "three different eras" in socket interfaces, it's not that strange. Keep in mind Intel chose to use the Pentium 4 brand throughout the entire NetBurst lifespan. Its no different for the previous architecture, the P6, if Intel had just called it "Pentium Pro" throughout its lifespan as well instead of Pentium II and III. It saw packaging in the form of Socket 8, Slot 1 and Socket 370. In both the case of NetBurst and P6, the socket changes were a result of improvements to power consumption, cache packaging, and (of course) cost. Intel could certainly influence the industry any way it wanted back then :) Edit: I think you mentioned you're in the Seattle area? See you at RE-PC :)

[@paveloleynikov4715]

I clearly remember that or very similar case on our landfill destined pile, so it is very likely that in some point that (or similar) case was accessible in retail or small OEM here in Russia.

[@LolaliciousSmiley]

I can identify with this machine. strange looking; unremarkable; "I just wanted to introduce you because you'll be seeing him around"; a few interesting quirks.

[@amyshaw893]

regarding the handle, my Lenovo thinkcenter e73 (thick model) next to me has one too, and its super convenient for me, since i have to carry it a decent amount. Even though its at the corner, like you complained about with a couple of the other ones, its still something that is making me question what i should upgrade to (since its just a bit too small for what i really want)

[@karenelizabeth1590]

8:50 That is so rad! The Edge is my favorite member of U2. Sorry, Bono.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

11:50 - I had a "Pentium Extreme Edition 965" system - the best of the best of the P4/Netburst - a whopping 130 Watt power draw officially, I had it overclocked to 4 GHz, so probably drew closer to 150-160W. I also had a Radeon X1900 GPU, one of the top at the time. When I upgraded to a Core 2 Quad system, I relegated my former gaming rig to server duties - and replaced the CPU with a Core 2-core "Pentium Dual Core" at 2.0 GHz. The Core 2 architecture was so much more efficient than NetBurst that my ultra-low-end $80 Pentium Dual Core did things like transcode DVD rips *FASTER* than the 4 GHz hyperthreaded $1000 Pentium Extreme Edition. All while drawing 1/3 as much power. Combined with the removal of the GPU (not needed in its then-current duties, so I swapped it with some ultra-low-power thing I don't even remember,) and the system at full CPU load drew less power at the wall than with its prior CPU+GPU did at idle. And CPU+GPU were literally the only things changed.

[@dizquier91]

Patterson dental is still in business. We take care of several clients who use thier software. Great video!

[@ethanator4051]

I have a case similar to that! The Grey accents are more a blue and there isn't the USB front slot stuff. idk if im missing a part but the back plastic cover isn't there either.

[@worawatli8952]

Nice video, I love how you go into details of almost all of the components in depth. I wanted to correct one thing, at 14:01, you said "casting", it's actually"injection", as it is thermo plastic not a thermorset plastic.

[@justinrussell878]

I really want this case for a sleeper build (decal included lol).

[@schelsullivan]

Fun to see a young guy interested in these old PCs. My 1st was TI 99 4a. Worked at best buy tech bench in the 90s. Seen tons of this old stuff.

[@Sauceyjames]

This makes me want to do a deep dive on the small PC builders in San Diego during the 90's & 2000's. I brushed off those things bc they had no inherent value... Like a 90's Kia.

[@NLRamonNL]

Please figure out how to do that benchmark! I would love to know how much performance is affected by ramtype.

[@eDoc2020]

When trying to align an optical drive usually you can reinstall the front of the case before tightening the drive's screws. And regarding plastic cases like that, IMO the worst part is that the sides attach with plastic catches on the bottom instead of the metal structural panel. The side basically won't stay on my Sony VAIO as a result of the clips breaking.

[@maisonmallninja]

that power button's compliant hinge mechanism looks like an accident in Sketchup

[@rudge3speed]

It is an In-Win case from 1999, I had one that I built into a PC around that time. Mine had a pink handle, but they must have had more colors to offer!

[@eDoc2020]

I haven't seen this case before but I know the "Power Mate" PSU is their house brand. Edit: In-Win's house brand.

[@mooseblaster]

I have really strong recollections of this case being used for a brand in the UK (because a family member had one) - I believe it was Pentium 3/4 era, and was either a Packard Bell or a TIME PC.

[@Just.A.T-Rex]

Was definitely TIME if IIRC

[@abscondlinks]

@@Just.A.T-Rex Yup, I had one!

[@chompers5568]

We had one in 2001 in the UK pretty sure it was emachine

[@compwiz101]

P4X266? Funny, I don't remember SG-1 visiting that planet...

[@LeeBeasley]

I may have missed it in the video but what are the cards at the top with RJ45 style sockets?

[@cadman10000]

That case reminds me of going to a "computer show" in the late '90s and seeing table after table of random computer parts, cases, and accessories for sale.

[@zerocooler7]

I went to a few computer shows back then. I really enjoyed it. There was just so much cool stuff at those shows, and I was able to get some good parts. Then one day those computer shows just sort of stopped. I guess the Internet and online shopping killed them off.

[@rmx77]

i had a socket 423 1.3ghz p4 machine the first p4 ever to market and it was a compaq machine. the machine also used rd-ram which didnt last long in its life where it got over taken by ddr. somewhere i still have the socket 423 processor somewhere. i saved it since its very rare and the very first p4 ever made.

[@Ni5ei]

Thanks for this unexpected video! I'm so tired I'm not even going to make it to BigCliveLive tonight so I'm happy you posted this right on time

[@HeadsetGuy]

I actually remember Smile Channel, and I've been trying to find out more information about it for a really long time.

[@irtbmtind89]

I have a bunch of Canadian Tiger Direct catalogs from the mid 00s which are an awesome time capsule of the PC market then. The tech moved so fast then mobos would have multiple interfaces; SATA, IDE, and FDD interfaces as well as AGP, PCI and sometimes even PCIex slots all on the same board wasn't uncommon. VIA was still hanging on selling x86 chips then too. Along with NCIX (rip) they were the best place in Canada to get PC parts online at the time. I need to scan them one day. And SIS chipset gives me flashbacks lol.

[@robertnussberger2028]

You just don't see stuff like these anymore. All the early early 2000's era pc's had dissapeared. But it's nice to see this one. This video made me want to bring out my 2005 compaq desktop my uncle gave to me and power it up. I don't know how to connect it to the web, but notepad and OpenOffice will keep me productive. Good times.

[@workaholica]

For a long time, I used a small HP Compaq P4 workstation on the job, before I was upgraded straight to a Core i7 machine. I would be a fair bit more reluctant to give up on that one later.

[@DavisMakesGames]

Interesting, recently picked up a server with triple channel SDR and a 478 socket. Also had some strange features like a CNR slot and an additional 6 pin aux power connector. Not quite sure what's going on with pretty much all of that, had never seen a P4 with 3 ram slots, let alone SDR. But after all this was made by AOpen, the manufacturers of the motherboard with integrated tube amp, so I'm not that surprised. (Only P4s I've worked with before are the 775 variety, in the dying stages of the Pentium 4 when they added hyperthreading.) I do have an MSI board for the Athlon XP with two DDR slots and two SDR slots, the KM2M Combo. Was disappointed to find out you can't dual wield memory types. Didn't know the same thing existed in Intel systems - suppose it was better for cheaper prebuilts since manufacturers could use the same board for many RAM configs.

[@DigitalMoonlight]

Three memory slots is a common configuration for SDR exclusive boards of the P4 era. Only bargain basement P4 boards were SDR exclusive

[@DavisMakesGames]

@@DigitalMoonlight Thanks, good to know!

[@brickman409]

Oh God, that dental record software gave me flashbacks to when I worked tech support for a dental imaging company

[@Ruinah]

What's amusing to me is that the image in the background when he was talking about dental imaging wasn't Patterson Imaging, but Apteryx XRayVision.

[@rickytizzle123]

This was sold under the Time brand name in the UK, we had one as our family PC for a while… it sucked and we ran it for a while with the side panel off to use a 12” desk fan for additional cooling otherwise it would cook itself.

[@JessicaFEREM]

fun fact: the Fractal Pop PC case has 2 hidden 5.25" bays at the front bottom. there's a magnetic cover over them and by default it's populated with a drawer. such a strange decision but pop off I guess. knowing fractal it's probably a great case, and probably one of the last "enthusiast" cases that actually still has 5.25 bays. it's actually surprising that it seems that there were able to fit it into a ton of different form factors. good on them for keeping this functionality in a cute way.

[@randomstranger6873]

Dude, thanks. So nostalgic, I couldn't wait for you to open it up 🤣 fine tuning the dvd drive, yep, was a thing. Had so many cases from that era each with its own foibles. These vids take me back, do you stream the software side where your mucking about with the drivers?

[@weirdmindofesh]

I'm glad that I never canned my first gaming machine. It's a P4 2.4 built around an ASUS P4GE motherboard. I've been thinking on upgrading it with an uncommon P4 that ran at 3.2Ghz with the 533FSB.

[@D3M3NT3Dstrang3r]

MSI 865PE Neo2 and the Asus P4C800E Deluxe are awesome for the fastest socket 478's. Both fast overclockable rock solid boards. The Asus tends to cost more and is not tremendously worth the extra cost but is a slightly better board overall. If you were to do a P4 on a 775 you might as well do a c2d.

[@dabogabo]

I'm so glad today I can run most apps and games with an old I5 from 2013. In the early 2000s you had to upgrade your machine yearly. Now I can upgrade my build around 5 years and not even completely.

[@datasoftinc.8788]

the case reminds me at the early beige g3 desktop/tower or the performa lines

[@mrcoolr429]

my new favorite channel.. keep up the good work mate!

[@justinchampion5468]

I had a P4 machine back in the day (Compaq, I seem to recall?) with Rambus RD-Ram... It was a flash-in-the-pan kind of a thing back then, and that ram ran so hot you could cook on it. I bring it up because you mention the heat-spreaders on the ram in your machine... RD-Ram was the first ram I recall ever having WITH heat-spreaders, and I've been 'into computers' since the late 1970s. - Thanks for a fun 'walk-around' on that old machine.

[@no1DdC]

My 2001 OEM Fujitsu Siemens PC came with an Athlon T-Bird at 1.3 GHz and 128 MB of SD-RAM. I later upgraded it to 256 MB of DDR-RAM, which this board supported just fine and resulted in a massive performance boost, like putting an SSD into a much newer computer, except that it actually doubled frame rates in games. Everything ran better. I then gradually upgraded the RAM to 1 GB, swapped out the T-Bird for an Athlon XP, upgraded the GPU twice (from 2MX to 9200 to 9600), swapped out the hard drive twice, the DVD drive four times (because they broke all the time), added an Ethernet, modem and sound card. In the end, after almost exactly seven years of use, the only parts that remained original were the power supply, case and board.

[@TroidHunter]

This reminds me of a motherboard I found in a scrappy PC i got for free (as junk) that had DDR2 and DDR3 slots on-board. It was LGA 775 and came with a Core2 chip, but I salvaged a pentium 4 from another 775 system and both DDR2 and DDR3 seemed to work. I donated that board to the PC repair teacher at the local community college.

[@jaapaap123]

Dude, I was running XP 64-bit (NT 5.2) just fine on a dual Xeon X5667 workstation for years! It did really need rebooting after a couple of months, it didn't really respond well when its uptime was around a year. I guess it would have been the same on a 32-bit XP. It's just like you can install windows 7 in uefi mode on a NVMe drive. It needs a little tinkering, but which windows doesn't?

[@Lachlant1984]

What's with those cards at the top? Are they some kind of Ethernet cards for hooking multiple client computers to this one? Does this relate to you describing this computer as a server?

[@CathodeRayDude]

Those are cards I put in there myself, and telling absolutely any facts about them would be a spoiler. :P

[@LaskyLabs]

Just as I'm about to leave, you upload. Well, it's not like I've got anything better to do.

[@TheJuggtron]

There is a 3.06 HT Northwood P4 with a 533 bus. Its funny that I didn't notice much difference between my 2.4Ghz northwood celeron and 3.0 Prescott because of the memory limitations (cured when i could get some ddr 3200 ram)

[@_topikk_]

Can someone please identify the large digital organizer…thing on the upper right shelf, please? I had one for a short while as a child ~27 years ago and haven’t seen one since. I tried to look it up some years ago but I couldn’t so much as remember the manufacturer and my search came up empty. I recall it had a mini cassette recorder built in for dictating notes, and I believe a rudimentary word processor.

[@CathodeRayDude]

That's a Convergence Workslate which I need to finish repairing.

[@_topikk_]

@@CathodeRayDude thank you very much! I’ve been wanting to know more about that machine for most of my life!

[@jumsdogpetter7610]

The inside of the removable side panel looks exactly like the closing/locking mechanism of the SGI 320, one of the Intel based Silicon Graphics workstations. My 320 is even annoying to properly close in the exact same way. SGI cases also used similar fragile plastic assemblies for buttons and other moving parts, which would bind very badly with age. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out these share the same designers.

[@Schule04]

A very similar case was also used by the VMI-3500 CD polishing machine.

[@CathodeRayDude]

this has completely obliterated my psyche. I cannot believe they did this

[@the_beefy1986]

For the era, half a gig of RAM was a lot. My Windows XP PC was stock with 128MB and was a dream to use when I bumped it to 256MB.

[@eDoc2020]

For earlier in the XP era, yes. By 2005 any remotely decent new PC would have at least 512 megabytes.

[@robertcioveie8113]

If you play around with quake 3's comfig file you can set it to whatever frame rate you want and do the benchmarks that way.

[@AutistCat]

Love the Compaq you showed, I just got a nostalgia flashback. I had the Compaq Presario 4505, it came out in 1997. I don't think I quite appreciated how cool the design was at the time. I wish I had one now. The case would be awesome as a sleeper.

[@TheE23slack]

Good to see you back.

[@7sevensevern]

In the UK we used to have computers which looked like this. The company was called "Time Computers" exact design.

[@actualhyena]

I've got a machine like this, except late-90s chic. You could install up to four SIMMs or a single DIMM in a whole bunch of configurations. I think having two memory options was popular with OEMs more than hardware retailers, because this was a pre-built as well.

[@thephoenixking1086]

I used to have a PC like this but it curved back even further than this. I have no idea what the PC was called or specs but been wanting to know for years.

[@lnxmachine]

I built my sister a computer in one of these cases in 2000. I think they were made by Palo Alto that made the oem cases for Dell and Micron at the time .

[@travis4798]

I had a Quantex that looked like a normal case, every panel was plastic and had a thin piece of steel crimped to the inside. The plus was that it weighed nothing and it was decently stout. Wish I would have kept it, I had too many computers then lol!

[@LBerti96]

how do you even start to learn about a whole industry and its step for step development and strategies like this? The history lesson you gave near the end was really interesting, but are there books on the topic?

[@The_Future_isnt_so_Bright]

Have you ever seen Dual Fortress boards? Two pentium slot style cpu's side by side. I have 20 I just rescued from the dumpster with confedential pentuim 3 cpu's, not sure what makes them confedential but they are .

[@Ametisti]

I've got a 2003 Dell Dimension I use for XP stuff, even tracked down a Dell OEM XP install disc for it. Think it's like a 3.0Ghz P4HT, 4GB DDR1 & Radeon 9800Pro. I was so lucky that thing had DDR though since I later got an externally identical Dimension, other than exact model number with an older P4 and that thing uses RDRAM. I am a big fan of the case design on that era of Dell stuff though, the grey on grey

[@krz8888888]

P4 went and all the way to badish dual cores. It lasted a really long time for a product that started that badly

[@avronaut]

Remembering how often I pulled a PC out from under the desk to get to the back in those days, I can well imagine that such a handle would have been helpful.

[@RoryStarks]

There's a dentist office near me that has one of these (or something very similar) cut into a window, so it can be accessed without entering the office.

[@n.j.olivercampbell3343]

I used to have that motherboard, I used it to replace a board from an HP system. Interestingly I was able to overclock the 2.2ghz Celeron that came in the HP up to 3.4ghz with just the air cooling that came with the box from HP. I think I purchased the board in 2003. It was significantly better than the HP version of the same board that came with the HP system.