Needless 286 Machines

[@praskieva]

I never manage catch your uploads as soon as they happen due to our time zone difference. I was about to go to sleep, but so much for that!

[@kai990]

Glad to see youre back. Very entertaining review

[@interlace84]

Those MFM drive sounds hit me right in the memories every time :) time for a nerdy nostalgia dump: Dads first pc after the atari/c64 days (a 10mhz 8088 clone) had a 20mb seagate drive he traded with a neighbor for a case of beer. It sounded exactly like that *decades* ago and I still remember playing outrun, blockout & prince of persia on the amber-colored hercules monitor as a toddler. Leisure suit Larry & Police Quest taught me english, hgc2ibm suddenly made all CGA games work & I got completely hooked on the thing. Later dad upgraded to a 386 & got me a 12mhz 286 to mess around with. It ran windows 3.0 (not 3.11) and even games like Goblins 3! That one was awesome but the 386 could handle MK...

[@HighTreason610]

There's definitely something I miss about the sound of hard drives, you at least knew when it was _trying_ to do something. The Conner in there at the very end is almost silent though, unusually so for the time it was made. Was actually contemplating running Windows 3.0 on the 16MHz system as everything in there seems to be supported under that OS. It'd be a little limited, but it would be nice to have set up.

[@lameguy64]

I like the inclusion of the clean up and applying finishing touches montage at the end. Still kinda wish I nabbed my uncle's 286 all those years ago even though I would most likely never get it to work as it was missing a bunch of things if I remember correctly. Knowing my luck, I may stumble upon a 286 machine one day and while its pretty needless to own such a machine these days even as an old computer enthusiast, it'd still be novel to have one around just for the historical value really.

[@thegeforce6625]

Liked this video purely for the HDD spin up sounds section :P, those older drives are so satisfying to hear.

[@charonunderground8596]

Nice 286. Perfect for Grand Prix Circuit, Prince of Persia, Fire Power and Police Quest 1 :)

[@HighTreason610]

Prince of Persia has certainly been on my list to play again for a while now, as well as the Larry games, at least as far as I can go with them on this platform before having to move up to something faster for the later ones.

[@charonunderground8596]

@@HighTreason610 First Prince is a legend :) On the first 286 I was still playing 4x4 Offroad. Very nice game, and in Fire Power you could play with the second player on a split screen. Jesus... when was that? 1991 ? if I remember correctly, and even Wolfenstein 3D worked quite well on 286 16Mhz.

[@Ben333bacc]

Really was a great video my friend! Hope to TTY soon!

[@RetroRawit]

Nice work fixing the case. Makita!

[@HighTreason610]

Had a cheap 4" 650W Draper before with a missing handle. That 5" 1400W Makita is one of the best presents I ever bought myself and is one of my favorite toys to play with. It's funny how increasing the power so far resulted in less biting and kickback, because if you put a cutting disc on that Draper it really liked binding and trying to rip the grinder out of your hands (away from me, luckily, as I'm not _that_ reckless). The Makita just eats through the workpiece like it isn't there without so much as slowing down. Discs also last longer on the Makita, despite simply being larger versions of the same ones, which I assume is due to similar reasons. Admittedly I might have laughed maniacally the first time I used it, and the neighbors were in their garden, they look at me funny now. "Hahahahah! Buhbye rust!" (Zuzuzuzu!) "Wahahahha! Buhbye weld slag!" (Bzzzz!) "Muahahahah! Goodbye, vestigial jackshaft frame!" (Vvvrrrrrrr! Clang!)

[@JapanPop]

First machine I built myself was a 286-16 with 4mb DIP RAM on board. Upgraded to 486sx in same AT case.

[@HighTreason610]

Technically they're before my time, so I started with old 486 and Pentium era parts towards the end of the 90s and didn't get to build a 286 until 2009, simply because I wanted to. Recycling cases, drives and whatever else you could get away with sure did used to be common - disposable culture wasn't quite there yet, it was too costly.

[@msdosm4nfred]

By tha way: nice remixed intro @HighTreason610 Sounds good even in Dolby Digital. :D

[@ErikZarth]

Yes, I agree. Fantastic sound.

[@RJRC_105]

Ahhh, the 286. I didn't get a PC till 1995 but had a school friend who had a 286. It ran at 9 MHz which was a bit odd and was actually the base of a laptop with the screen wrenched off and a CRT display podged on. VGA but no sound card so we had to make do with PC Squeaker with our Commander Keen and Eye of the Beholder.

[@HighTreason610]

You'd be surprised how many screenless laptops I've seen being run like that over the years, my boss at my old job used to do that with his busted old one that he wouldn't give up on.

[@Blurredman]

I always enjoy your videos. What happened to your website and ftp!?

[@HighTreason610]

The site should still be running, despite weirdness from the DNS service.

[@s3vR3x]

yes!!!!!! new vid!

[@k7a]

Can't think of anything I'd actually choose a 286 to run, but they're awesome tinker toys if you just like playing with the hardware. Massive boards just totally saturated with chips. I'm actually building one right now but in a brand new case just to see what ridiculousness I can get away with. I've already got the board installed and working with a classic full-height tandon floppy drive in a Fractal Define 7 XL with a glass side panel, and my next stupid idea is to try and build a riser to mount the RAM in the vertical slots. Whether it works or not it'll at least make for an interesting experiment.

[@alvaroacwellan9051]

This time I can only agree. 286s are at least as much fun as they're useless. I just like the 286. I should repair that huge board with the ceramic CPU, I never had luck with ceramic 286s. This one just has an exploded tantalum cap, hopefully nothing more's wrong. I saw it boot before the cap popped... But the "modern" 286-20 system I built (with SIMM memory) just feels right to use.

[@DxDeksor]

That suntac board you have looks a lot like my datamini motherboard in my 286. I even have the manual for it. Maybe we can swap things around to check what could be wrong ? As for the TMC board, I've had a board doing this kind of stuff, but only when the bios isn't setup and that you mash the "del" button at POST. If you press it exactly once it won't be stuck

[@HighTreason610]

Maybe, though I think it's just going to come down to lengthy reverse-engineering of what jumpers and dipswitches do, it's not like anything is going to blow up if I randomly change them to see what happens. Try as I might, the TMC wouldn't respond to the CTRL-ALT-ESC sequence whether I pressed it once or many times, until it would lock up and the CPU would go nuclear, even running a different BIOS. I suspect chipset failure, it was cheaper to just use the Chaintech.

[@DxDeksor]

@@HighTreason610 hmm I have to check but it's possible that I could have a ruined board by battery leakage with a suntac chipset

[@thepirategamerboy12]

You mention maybe wanting to try a CD-ROM drive in one of your 286s sometime. There are a few CD-ROM games that will work on one. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective and MadDog McCree are FMV games with a 286 as a minimum requirement. Also, I personally think there's a lot of charm to 286 performance. I have a 12mhz 286 with a 287 co-processor and it at least let's me play some games that I can't play properly on my 486 like Bubble Ghost and Qi Xiao Quan (a very obscure Taiwanese DOS PC game that to me feels like it was made with a 286 in mind). Mine actually seems rather fast for a 12mhz 286 in some ways, like the scrolling in SimCity is very smooth on my real 286 compared to when I emulated a 286 at the same speed in PCem. Does the 287 being present make a difference for stuff like that? I don't own a 386 or anything older than a 286 yet. The only unfortunate thing about my machine is that it's extremely flakey. Programs half of the time just crash for no reason. I think what might be the cause is that the Trident VGA card in it is defective, as it fails video memory tests in PC-CHECK.

[@HighTreason610]

The 16MHz system has a CD drive now, as I realized Willy Beamish will run on a 286 (or so I'm told) and I'd wanted to try playing through it, so now there's an excuse to do both things. The 287 actually tends to slow the system down for integer operations, though not usually to any tangible level, perhaps the game really likes your video card or something or your ISA bus is maybe set to a higher clock as some boards allow this, can't really say without having the system in front of me. Some of the later boards have fancy features on them, this Chaintech supports memory interleaving.

[@thepirategamerboy12]

@@HighTreason610 Yeah, I've played a little bit of Willy Beamish CD-ROM on my 286 with no issues. I don't have a functioning CD-ROM drive in it, so I played it by copying the CD version's files to the HDD. The loading times are obviously longer than on a 486, but still not on the level of the Sega CD version. I think it's a really underrated game, and more people should be judging it by the PC CD-ROM version rather than the mostly very lacking Sega CD one. The atrocious loading times and glitches make me wonder how the SCD one got past quality control, honestly. I think the only thing better about the SCD version is that using the Nintari in your room lets you play an actual mini-game, where on the PC version it just plays a non-interactive animation. On the other hand, Rise of the Dragon's Sega CD port is excellent, and better than the PC version imo other than the lower color palette.

[@BrassicGamer]

Needless is definitely the word. I've got a couple. One is a (actually 2) Toshiba T1600 and the other is an AT clone which has an epic case. Haven't got either of them working yet and, I'll be honest, is there any need?

[@HighTreason610]

Can't speak for the T1600, but the T1200XE (you'll notice it wasn't dug out for this video, though I think it was stolen anyway) is definitely pointless. Crap screen, very temperamental "CGA" graphics and a belt driven proprietary floppy drive. At least Zenith's machines could run the same things as desktops and they did so at an impressive speed. Desktop wise, I _do_ have to make myself use the older 286 rather than just letting the 386 do the job instead. I like the hardware for how crude it is, but the software side is lacking.

[@AmstradExin]

Adaptec controllers work really well on old 286 machines.

[@HighTreason610]

It works great until you change certain things in the configuration of the machine, then it forgets parameters and you lose access to the drive, which makes moving to a new drive even more nail biting.

[@AmstradExin]

@@HighTreason610 Huh? Never happened if you don't change the base config. I can take a look at the aha-1542b and cf, the most common ones. I have them in IBM AT's from 1984. It doesn't matter on 386 and above. But the jumpers and dip switches cannot be fooled around with. I'll write down the config as soon as I'm out the hospital.

[@HighTreason610]

Fiddle with anything on the system too much, like alter the CMOS, disconnect a drive or swap it to another machine and the card resets completely. You can get it to talk to the drive again, but all of the data will be lost. I have no idea why it works this way.

[@AmstradExin]

@@HighTreason610 Well, on 386 systems, I mainly use them as CDROM controllers. Work better than IDE. (:

[@m.c.9008]

Hi Treason ! I had an Idea ! Using old Machnies, like a 286, with a serial or parallel Port, connected with a newer PC, for Software based data transfer of Files, Real Time graphics and remote Control at the XT or 286 to work with, but you need a software that can do this. Best Regards

[@HighTreason610]

Lameguy and myself actually experimented with remote control over a 486, but it didn't work very well as the tools had some serious limitations. File transfer is generally something I'd do with InterLink or Ethernet. In extreme cases, I've sat in debug and copied out INTERLNK.EXE by hand, which was shit and not worth mention. What I _would_ consider worth mentioning, though, is how I have successfully used an EPROM to get a file into a computer, by burning the file I wanted to said PROM with a modern system, then dumping that data to the hard drive of the target system with DEBUG. It was _still_ a crap way to do things, but was the fastest way to get it done with no other way to get files onto the target machine. I don't recommend it in any case. Best avoided.

[@deewhy7376]

Hi Treason, Looking for an opinion on the best AT motherboard to use with a 200-300mhz chip. I have too many to make a decision, and you are the expert in this!

[@HighTreason610]

Expert? I might not go that far, but OK. Don't know what boards you have on hand and as always would suggest that nothing is a given until it has been tested under whatever configuration.

[@magnum333]

You have multiple BIOS for XTIDE, did you try the appropriate one for your computer?

[@HighTreason610]

Several, some of which weren't east to find. No matter as there's now an AT focused alternative written by somebody else, though I'm not sure if it's available to the wider public yet. It has worked under my tests so far, so will be fine for this machine if its current drive ever fails.

[@magnum333]

@@HighTreason610 Well, I had to learn a few things to get it to work. I'm using SCSI cards or NICs to load it. The crucial part is that before flashing a .bin you need to open it with the XTIDE editor and save it again. That changes the file structure. And also, something very crucial is that you should get a file with the same size as your eprom/eeprom. So, if you have a 32k eprom and you have an 8k xtide rom, you need to concatenate it four times to get a file of the same size as the eprom. And that should work. Stick to the "xt" rom. I find no difference with 286 computers between the at and the xt roms anyway. There's a 2x change in speed if you cache the xtide rom. I hope this helped! By the way, what's that alternative you mentioned?

[@HighTreason610]

These things are all trivial, but do not solve the problem. The ROM is simply ignored by most systems. About the most luck I ever had was getting the obscure 'late initialization' version to hook on the older 286, but it makes the bus clock go crazy. I know we figured out the likely cause, but don't recall what it was beyond thinking it had something to do with some PCJR compatibility, or similar, and some specific area of memory. In any case, this renders XT-IDE useless on that system. You won't be caching any ROM on most 286 machines. By the time features like that appear you probably won't need a ROM like XT-IDE anyway. The alternative ROM is called LATA.

[@magnum333]

@@HighTreason610 I assume you have already tested your card and eprom on other systems and ensured it works properly (i.e. 386, 486). I have only a few 286 and only the XT rom works on the oldest of them. Granted, I don't have an original IBM system and probably those are the trickiest. The newest 286 I have has ROM caching (a fancy M209 PCChips board) and it does help with XTIDE going from about 600K/s to 1100K/s. If you want I could send you the file adapted to whatever eprom size you need. Maybe trying other cards and different memory addresses would be a good idea, perhaps different irqs too. SCSI cards that let you change the address with jumpers or DIP switches are handy. Anyway good to know you have an alternative with LATA. By the way, I appreciate your sincerity and your authentic personality.

[@HighTreason610]

Various systems were tested. XT-IDE works on very few of them. Zero filling unused space in a ROM is no big deal, but one curious thing with XT-IDE is that when it does hook, it tends to report the wrong address entirely, in some cases even claiming to be _way_ outside of the adapter area, though I assume this is a purely visual bug. All I can figure is that it just isn't well suited to running on ancient clone hardware.

[@NightShadowReal]

i think i had the panel on the left with the display on my old desky. no idea what i had back then since i was too young to care. now im just really curious

[@HighTreason610]

If you mean the 7-segment display, you can probably narrow it down if you can remember what numbers appeared on it, though clock speeds did overlap a little from one generation of CPUs to the next.

[@BandanazX]

24:49 Is that a bird shit that dropped?

[@HighTreason610]

I did notice it in editing but couldn't figure it out, possibly a spider falling from the ceiling as they like to congregate in that corner for some reason.

[@AncientElectronics]

I have a VTI (Samsung) 286 I've been messing about with lately. The hard drive on it has been driving me crazy simply because despite what I try the PC refuses to accept any hard drive or hard drive controller than the one that came with the PC which happens to be an 8-bit IDE controller. I've tried various period and HDD's on the controller card but none work. I've even tried a variety of 16-bit IDE controllers and even SCSI but nothing except that original controller card and HDD will operate. As for CD-ROM drives on a 286, I've always been a proponent of it. Unless you're going strictly period correct I think a CD drive makes a good upgrade for at least the faster 286 since so many DOS game collections were released on CD and many of those games will play on a 286. Wizardry, Ultima, Kings Quest, Might & Magic compilations came on CD at least the earlier games run just fine on a 286.

[@HighTreason610]

That sure does sound a lot like the 6MHz machine here, though that's less fussy and generally only cares if the card is too new. You know they'll tell you to try XT-IDE in there and you may as well if you have a spare EPROM to do so, on the off-chance it works. CD-ROM drives would have at least existed in this machine's time, albeit they wouldn't have been in common use yet. One has been installed on the basis that I wanted to try playing through Willy Beamish anyway and apparently it will run on this system, though probably with a similar, if not worse, sluggish quality to the Sega CD port. Not like the drive can't be removed later if it doesn't work out.

[@AncientElectronics]

@@HighTreason610 Your reply got me thinking, I'm at least guessing the reason that 8-bit IDE controller that came with the machine isn't working with any other drive is because its that 8-bit XT IDE that was around for a bit that only a handful of drives work with. I checked the drive model (Miniscribe M8450XT ) and sure enough...I always forget about those. At least that explains why drives are not working with the controller but still doesn't answer why none of the 16 bit ISA or SCSI controllers fail. I really do need to grab a few extra XT-IDE controllers.

[@HighTreason610]

Could be. The modern XT-IDE BIOS is supposed to be able to work around that, but then that leads to the second issue - said BIOS is obviously an option ROM and loading option ROMs is a task for the system BIOS. It seems to have taken manufacturers a while to figure out how to properly clone IBM's BIOS, as if initially they did just enough to make DOS run on their board an didn't clone all functions until years later. As such, ancillary features like loading option ROMs are often unreliable or missing entirely. In the case of mine, and I'm betting yours is similar, it really seems like they merely patched up their clone 8088 BIOS just enough to get a 286 to start. Things like the 16-Bit ISA bus, were the CPU is perfectly able to use it once the OS is running, the BIOS seems to have no knowledge of whatsoever, it doesn't even appear to test the slave PIC at POST. Even when the OS is running, things like 16-Bit DMA can be flaky and mixing certain peripherals makes the system quite unstable.

[@stephenappiah4616]

There is no reason for a 286 system to not get recycled in a world where the 386SX exists.

[@HighTreason610]

From a practical standpoint, definitely. The only appeal of the 286 is playing with the hardware, really.

[@WaybackTECH]

Years ago I had been told that the Pentium was basically 2 286's slapped together. It was a case of the 286 design was better clock for clock than the 386 and 486 so Intel went back to that design. I mean I have never found that online, so it remains a rumor to me, but given what they did with the Core 2 and going back to the P6 core, seems like it may be true. I guess I should put some effort this year to getting my 286 running. Like cars, computers were designed for the era they were in, and trying to go outside of that can turn into problems and unrealistic expectations. I still have not had any luck with the hard cards I have. Can't seem to make motherboards see them, another thing I need to try again as it has been a couple years now since I last messed with them. I like the sound of those MFM drives. I have the same nmos AMD 286 chip but sadly can't seem to get a motherboard for that style as they seem to be thought of as worth their weight in gold. I find this stuff far more fascinating and fun than anything today. It's all the same now days.

[@HighTreason610]

Not sure on that, suspect the Pentium was something new almost entirely, especially going by how dodgy it was initially - wouldn't be surprised if it had some recycled technology in there somewhere, though, probably not from Intel. Then again, it seems the very first Pentiums were slightly faster, clock for clock, than the Socket 5 models onwards, so that's another mess of its own. Wonder if you have to mess with the BIOS on the hard cards, if they even have one, like DEBUG, G=C800:5, the Adaptec controller here requires this before it will work, though unless the drive on the cards was changed, I can't really imagine why it would need that doing again. The parts overall, not just motherboards, have definitely gotten costly. I got lucky by buying broken, that usually works for me, but the CLCC boards definitely seem to be less common - this Chaintech board seems to show up quite often as far as 286 boards go, but usually has the more common PLCC socket from what I saw. Modern hardware is no fun, as said before, it became nothing more than a tool to me somewhere in the mid-2000s, it's useful while it lasts but it's not fun like this older hardware. Whilst the 286 has limited capabilities, it definitely is engaging to mess with.

[@WaybackTECH]

@@HighTreason610 The old stuff is more enthusiast compared to the last 10 - 15 years. Intel "borrowing" technology? they would never ever do such a thing! 😁 I don't remember in the early 90's the 286 really being all that common. I remember most budget machines were XT and the performance rigs were either 386 or 486 based, I just don't recall the 286 being popular except in laptops. I asked VWestlife a few years ago about the hardcard he has in his Tandy 1000 he said it just worked. Without having found any information on setup of the card that was really all I had to go on. Seems like it would be a single channel controller card and hard drive, but I never have had a BIOS recognize it on auto detect nor on manual setup. 386 and newer of course. I have like 3 or 4 of them things just kicking around, would like to use one of them in something.

[@neilgillmore]

Hi geezer, hows tricks ??

[@HighTreason610]

Same as always, really.

[@ZoomPicard]

I have had no issues with floppy emulators, they work well for me but that is on 486 and pentium machines

[@HighTreason610]

Therein lies the problem, they work great on machines that will take CF cards. At least the Stoptek ones (the first ones I mentioned, mistakenly as HXC) were relatively cheap.

[@knightcrusader]

Gotek Emulators with FlashFloppy open source firmware works great. I've used then in Tandy 1000's, 486's, TRS-80, etc. They take USB flash drives full of any image you put on them - 1.44mb, 720k, 360k. They are very versatile, and cost less than $20.

[@HighTreason610]

Much as I have an aversion to FOSS for anything critical, I suppose I could try this on one of the emulators I have, given it will be sat around doing nothing in a box somewhere otherwise. It can't really make the thing any worse. It might not be needed as a broken donor system is on the way (cheaper than buying parts on their own) and may well have enough working parts to get the older machine out of trouble - if its floppy drive works, I do have access to DOS 3 disks. Fingers crossed.

[@Skunk-420]

Glorious.. PC’s just don’t make those boot up sounds anymore

[@HighTreason610]

Hard drive noises need to return, purely as you knew both when it was working and when it was about to _stop_ working, allowing you time to do something about it. Now they're silent and just fail with no warning.

[@Skunk-420]

@@HighTreason610 Agreed!

[@laserhawk64]

I bet if you spoke to Adrian Black over at Adrian's Digital Basement, or Shelby over at TechTangents -- both other KZbin channels! -- they could help you sort out your GoTek and XT-IDE issues. I think Adrian might know more about XT-IDE, and Shelby about the GoTek stuff, but I could be wrong :) But, hey, you do you! Also: lovely accent, but I can't quite place it... may I ask where you live, roughly?

[@HighTreason610]

I watch Adrian's stuff. Thankfully I've not had any need to emulate floppies for a while and I'm currently testing an alternative to XT-IDE that seems to work on the 6MHz machine. It isn't needed for now, thankfully, as the system has been fine on a replacement MFM drive so far. I live in a city called Hull, but I do not speak the local dialect nor do I have the accent. I don't know where it's from.

[@laserhawk64]

@@HighTreason610 Hull in the UK? A lovely country, my heart will forever pine for a flat in London. Alas, I'm disabled and thus don't qualify for immigration, so it will be a pining forever unfulfilled. Enjoy your city! Rotting away in this tiny nothing town in the upper Southeastern USA, with nothing to do, nowhere to go, and not even enough resources to leave... I envy you.

[@HighTreason610]

Oh, I assure you it's pretty horrible here. No economy, high rent, crappy people. London is worse, though, wouldn't want to go there and it may as well be its own separate country, as the rest of England isn't very much like it is there. Where abouts are you from? I used to have a friend who's family had moved here from SC and all he ever wanted was to go back.

[@laserhawk64]

@@HighTreason610 North Carolina. Tiny town, at least an hour from anywhere remotely civilized, depending on which way you point the getaway vehicle. I promise you've never heard of it. No housing, no jobs, nothing to do... even the nearest movie theater is a 40min drive. The largest employer is a chicken meatpacking plant and the next-largest, at some distance, is the tiny, tiny Wal*Mart that serves the town and those in the surrounding cow and hog lagoons that aren't decent enough to shop somewhere better. The employment situation is so bad that the chicken plant has a waiting list and Wal*Mart will actively turn you away unless you're specifically willing to push carts. It's so bad I'm pretty sure the folks who normally would start a landscaping business have just out-and-out given up. You know you live in a miserable pothole when the "Holiday Tours" buses don't even slow down as they barrel through at high noon on a Friday, and they're passing the only McDonald's inside of thirty minutes literally anywhere from here. Say what you want about London, and the UK in general, but you have VERY high standards. Come visit NYC. Heck, come visit Durham NC. I've been to very few places where, if I'm accidentally going up the down staircase, because I'm an idiot tourist who can't tell left from right even on a good day, the _locals_ are the ones apologizing to _me_ essentially for my being in their way... all of those places are in the UK, and London is the only one I can instantly name, off-the-cuff. Not to mention it has things to do -- museums, shops, heck, just riding the Underground is nice for me; the local public transit here is so bad I literally cannot use it. We don't even have tourist traps here, at all -- except for one that genuinely does not merit a mention. It's not even worth the price of admission and I'm pretty sure it's free to enter!

[@stephenkennedy6358]

That battery looks pretty crusty.

[@blob5907]

no it doesn't

[@byteframe_primarydataloop]

I want to see your apartment.

[@beingatliberty]

Whats happened to your rubbish collection? don't do the dump over the fence stuff dude enough peeps round here do that, it ruins everything, cars are cheap to hire zipcar etc, if you got a drill press in your shed, you can get a car for £50, its the initial insurance, mot & tax that adds up, always enjoy your videos, just want to wave a magic wand over your abode, and have it all ikea shelves and everything in its place and super neat, but that ain't happening ;) but it would be funny to see your place all mkbhd neat ;)

[@HighTreason610]

Trash collection is rare here. Can't afford a car (and think I'm about to be banned from driving anyway) so have to use a bike to move things, some things don't fit or are too heavy, so it's either sling it on the pile that everyone else uses or face eviction. The drill press was free, it was also broken and is bent. I wouldn't consider this room untidy, it's just dense because I have around 1/3 the living space I did when I got this stuff and I'm not about to throw perfectly good things away solely because some Eurotrash corporation bought out my local government and kicked the local population out of our houses.