A look at a 486 PC wanna-be

[@andrewb9830]

UGH! I remember these - what a mess. Working a summer job at a computer store at the time, the sales guys had the idea of blitzing old customers with upgrade options that included this as a cheap eye catching base upgrade. The hope obviously to convince the client, once they came in, that they should buy a whole new real 486 or even one of those flashy new Pentium machines. Well surprisingly quite a few people took this 386 upgrade option. I still member some customers old 386 computers being really early 386 machines or socketed machines that wouldn’t take the upgrade. Then trying to explain to the sales guy that it won’t happen on these old machines. They really didn’t care what the tech kid had to say and the reply was usually - “We sold it. Make it happened”. Then I’d have to go dig through the old computer cemetery for a 386 board that would take the DLC chip and in the end swapping out the whole motherboard just for these dumb upgrades. These were a bad idea. Maybe only as a way to liquidate late 386 motherboard stock vendors might have left over - not as an upgrade path.

[@OzzFan1000]

Idk, so long as the original chip was socketed, I think there was an appropriate market for these kinds of upgrades. I can say that when I upgraded my IBM PS/2 from a 386SX to the 486SLC2 it really helped the overall system performance running OS/2.

[@ELSTERLING]

Dude, that K6/2 Packard Bell is the exact model of the first computer I ever bought for myself as a tween! I paid for it out of money from a part-time job and learned how to upgrade components and overclock with it! That is a fun nostalgia rush!

[@stotto68]

Packard Bell PC wants Windows ME. They were made for each other.

[@Bwyan]

Good job on the pacing of the narration on this one. Just wanted to let you know that it hasn't gone unnoticed ;)

[@RetroSpector78]

Thanks a lot appreciate it ...

[@BilisNegra]

Same here!

[@nickwallette6201]

A bad reputation...”for some reason” indeed. I had several run-ins with them around the late Win 3.1 to early Win95 era. I was “the computer guy” and people would ask, what kind of computer should I get? Anything but a Packard Bell. Sure enough, that’s exactly what they would bring home. And then have me over to figure out why their crap Aztec sound card doesn’t work or they can’t dial in to AOL. Ugh. I would suggest using it as a boat anchor but that’s unkind to the fishes. Can’t set it on fire either, on account of all the excessive plastic hanging off the front. No good for anything. That adorable little 386 board, OTOH.. ;-)

[@pc-sound-legacy]

You wouldn't believe but a packard-bell branded aztech soundcard is my absolute favorite card for testing and recording fm as well as wavetable/midi module music. Why? Neither it needs any drivers/initialization nor it needs any mixer settings. As it lacks a headphone amp, the line out is crystal clear and noiseless. It works so perfectly well out of the box as I haven't seen on any other soundcard. So please don't treat Aztech that hard😀

[@RobinFowler1982]

Stunts is still one of my favorite racing games, i mean that simple track editor was amazing.

[@RetroSpector78]

It's a really iconic game .... it has stood the test of time

[@RobinFowler1982]

@@RetroSpector78 I have to say it looks, and sounds better then it did on my Tandy 1000 TL/2 8mhz 286 lol. Keep up the great content!

[@GuybrushThriftweed]

Spent soooo much time on it designing tracks with a friend and trying them out.. Still hoping to find the big box once.

[@kuro68000]

The trace routing on those old boards is amazing. The CAD tools were primitive and the chips were huge. >4 layers was really expensive too.

[@bennyrogergundersen3040]

Remember I sold a few machines with the 486dlc around 1995, but we used a motherboard with integrated 387, the user could upgrade to an Intel 486 because the board had a normal 486 socket too... The cheapest entry level machine 😊

[@circuitsandcigars1278]

I used to fix alot of Packard Bells, Gateway 2000 and Sony Vaios in the late 1990's but I only donated pints of blood to insides of Packard Bell

[@dennisp.2147]

This!

[@TheDarrenSR]

I Miss that old Tech When I got my 1st 286 clone I learned stacks upgrading my own hardware + software along the way

[@SidBarnhoorn]

Love those Laser speakers! Use to play a lot on a 386 Laser desktop when I was a kid at a friend's place when we went there to have dinner. Fond memories! Never owned a Laser myself. Did own a Philips NMS 9100 which is a much older beast. Now I finally own two haha, one of them I refurbished and the other one I'm in the process of refurbishing. Also got a Philips P3204 286 that needs fixing. Fun times!

[@RetroSpector78]

Got a video on the channel about a laser 386 :) and also got an old philips nms I still need to look at one day.

[@dormcat]

That Packard Bell has a K6-2 500 + Super Socket 7 mATX MB with SiS 530 + integrated graphics, sound, and even a gameport? Man, if you don't need it I'd bet most of your subscribers would be more than happy to purchase it from you.

[@RetroSpector78]

Was there anything particularly special about the SiS 530 chipset ? I always considered it to be mediocre / budget minded. For gaming it was not really suitable and the lack of an AGP port limits you to PCI in the video department ... I do like that it has an ISA slot for a soundcard should the onboard sound prove to be problematic in ms-dos. The amount of PCI cards that could be paired excluding 3DFX cards is also limited I guess.

[@dormcat]

While SiS 530 is just an average northbridge, SiS 6326, the IGP it coupled with, performed well in 2D software rendering. Personally I'd rather not bother playing hardware-accelerated 3D games on a (Super) Socket 7 retro build due to MB with SS7 + AGP are highly sought after by retro gamers and sellers know that; any MB from Slot 1 to Socket 939 would be much cheaper, easier to find, and performs better with 3D games. In my case the only Socket 7 MB I've got is an Asus TXP4, a hybrid Baby AT / mATX dimension (8.5" x 9.6"), dual power supply sockets, no standardized ATX backplate, no USB, not even PS/2 mini-DIN 6 keyboard socket (it uses an older DIN 5 keyboard socket; the PS/2 mouse socket is not integrated but would occupy an expansion card slot)! Its 430TX northbridge is the last Intel chipset on Socket 7 platform and can only cache 64MB RAM; installing more RAM would SLOW DOWN the system. OTOH SiS530 can cache up to 256MB RAM, more than enough for most Windows 98 apps and games. I got my TXP4 (along with a Pentium-MMX 233MHz) from a scrapyard for just NT$300 (US$10) so I couldn't complain, but that Packard Bell MB (couldn't tell the exact model from the video) would be a much better retro build as long as its internal and external cache can be switched on or off via BIOS.

[@johnathin0061892]

I used to work on Packard Bell computers back in the day. Their reputation is WELL deserved

[@richretrotech9426]

Started my pc building many years ago with this exact case! Now reliving my youth with retro games and building pcs again. Love the channel.

[@ryanyoder7573]

I built custom computers in the 90s at a computer store and we called those Packard Hells as they were underpowered, not super expandable, and just disposable computers.

[@dennisp.2147]

We also called them Puke-rd Bells and Puckered Balls. They were wretched flaming balls of fail and suck

[@timmooney7528]

Bottom end components and poorly written firmware. I also worked at a computer shop for awhile, and our boss thought it was a good idea to get us PB certified so we can provide warranty service. A Best Buy moved into town and they didn't have an in house service center back then. All PBcovered was hardware failures, so if your system crashed because of poorly written firmware or drivers, you were screwed. I felt bad for these customers, since you knew they paid $2000 or more for a flaky system. The parent company that owned our shop was into auctions and salvage, and sent us a couple hundred "refurbished" PB systems to sell at our outlet. Crappy outdated firmware with no way to update it without replacing a rom made me hate it when customers would ask about the refurbs.

[@MikeStavola]

I have reservations about Packard Bell, because I had a friend that got one of the Cyrix-based ones new from the manufacturer, and it kept crashing. He had me open it up. I found it had mismatched RAM (one was labeled HP), and the processor was overclocked out of the box. I think it was 20% overclocked, and the heatsink was discolored from the heat. It was a total loss. He got his money back, thankfully.

[@VK2FVAX]

The SLC and DLC were 486-class CPU's strapped to 386SX and 386DX mainboards respectively. Later there was the SLC2 and DLC2 which were clock doubled. I have a -40 similar to yours in my Fujitsu My333. Some of the later ones featured more cache, but by default it was disabled and you needed to run a DOS util to enable or configure it's mode (WB/WT).

[@AlsGeekLab]

Another great video! I think I remember seeing a 386->486 conversion like that back in the day but my memory is a little foggy. I'll check out that electronics channel you mention as I'd be keen to see the benchmarks compared to a 'real' 486 bus machine. On the Packard Bell, I used to fix up a ton of those back in the day when I worked in 'PC World' as a technician in the '90s. Horrible machines. As much as I say 'never throw anything away', in this case I'd make an exception and donate it to someone who wants it. I'm sure that you have many more exciting PCs hanging around from that era already!

[@sprybug]

We had all sorts of names for the Packard Bell when I worked in computer repair in the late 90's. We were an authorized service center for all types of computers, including Packard Bell. Those were the computers we saw the most, because they were prone to breaking down frequently. The bundled software in the OS sure didn't help either as it hampered it. Talking with their customer service too was a nightmare.

[@Christopher-N]

There's something special about retro PCs, that we're just beginning to appreciate now. (6:45) I wouldn't call _Into the Eagle's Nest_ a great game-tough as steel balls, yes. I was lucky if I finished Mission 1; never finished Mission 2. Yes, I remember _Banner Mania._ Though in retrospect, I would have avoided printing color banners; they likely contributed to my 24-wire print head burning out.

[@UpLateGeek]

That's an interesting "486" machine! I've got a couple of 486 boards, and one is an older model which is designed to take either a 386 or a 486. It's actually got two sockets, one for a 386 or 486DLC, and the other for either a 387 or 486. Unfortunately I haven't managed to get that board working, although I haven't tried very hard. I've only got a few 486 CPUs, and I only know one works for sure so I didn't really want to risk killing my only known good one if the board is faulty. Hopefully some day I'll get around to testing all the CPUs and doing some more troubleshooting on that board. Also that Packard Bell is a prime candidate for a Voodoo2 upgrade! If you've got one to spare, or manage to pick one up anyway. On-board sound on those SIS chipset boards was pretty terrible, so better get a good ISA sound card like that SB16 in there too. And Windows 98 would definitely be more period-correct, and probably better for DOS gaming too.

[@Tom2404]

Video: 90% 486DLC Top Comments: Packard Bell

[@RetroSpector78]

hehe noticed that also ..... my bad for asking comments on that one ?

[@airfixer9461]

Great review, without sounding geeky : " I love these kinds of reviews ", they do remind me of a lot of stuff as it was years ago... :)

[@orlandokaraoke3002]

I had a 486 exactly like that. Given to me for free, I endlessly upgraded it all the way to a new motherboard and cyrix processor. I put just about every cool expansion card to be found at best buy in it. It ended up being used to take pictures and print them in a flea market novelty photo booth I had. I could even watch TV and listen to the radio with it. I sold it to a guy in sudden awe of its abilities for $800. Then promptly used the money to buy a good used car. I must have had at least several completely different sets of hardware in the same old case as it was given to me. Ah the memories.. Cheers!

[@francoisfritz198]

Sound blaster pro 2 will match perfectly. Thanks for your videos and advices. Take care

[@pianokeyjoe]

Aahhhh :-) you installed a Soundblaster card in.. Now everything is right with the world.

[@OzzFan1000]

Excellent find! 386-to-486 upgrades were an interesting and fascinating lot. The idea that you can upgrade CPU architectures on the same motherboard is a concept long lost to today's systems. There weren't very many differences between the 386 and 486 architectures from a system board perspective. Late model 486s had VL and PCI buses, but I think most had plain ISA like their 386 counterparts. It is true that the 386-to-486 upgrades weren't as good as an actual 486 chip, but they saved a lot of money for 386 owners without having to buy a new PC. Of course the Pentium would later change that if you wanted to play the newer DOS games, but the Pentium was introduced exactly 7 years after the 386, so plenty of time to consider an upgrade.

[@NaoPb]

Oh cool, I've not seen a micro atx case version of that Packard Bell design. I have some similar once that were made before it, and two of this design with full atx case. I am hoping to find this one some day.

[@the_kombinator]

Ouch, OAK and a Conner drive - Stick a Ti486SXL - 8kb L1 cache ;) I would also update the computer with a 4X CDROM and a soundcard (*edit looks like you did;) ) , make it a viable DOS machine. My favourite part of getting old PCs like this is finding cool software or unknown games on it.

[@H4zuZazu]

Back in school we had PCs from old Parts som with SCSI 10k RPM HDDs, it always sounded like a Jet was starting.

[@pc-sound-legacy]

Oh yes, I can also remember these high-rpm SCSI drives. Seagate Cheetah or something like that. I think they were designed for server and main frame units. My brother was a SCSI geek and some day showing them to me. I said I would not take one for free. My Slot-A K7 had a dual orb cooler at that time that was loud enough to my ears😆

[@OtreblaMaslab]

Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker... How many times hath I played thee...

[@Darknoid2517]

I had one of those Oak svga back in the day on my 386 sx, was fast, not too crazy but very good for the price it was worth

[@catriona_drummond]

Ha! The trusty OAK 077! That was my first graphics card. the 1MB version is actually rather rare. God I was so happy it could do the VESA SVGA stuff back in the day.

[@fwingebritson]

Gosh, at least someone understands that, given the period of the machine, VESA local bus was where graphics was at. That is until MMX became the rage and AGP phased out the VLB. Even then MMX (even with a standard pci card) stuck around well after AGP and eventually 3d graphics arrived. Those that would arbitrarily poke a voodoo card in it would be missing the entire point of "retro." HAHA! not that anyone could poke a voodoo card in an ISA slot...

[@catriona_drummond]

@@fwingebritson There was a stint of PCI before AGP took over though.

[@fwingebritson]

@@catriona_drummond Yes, and even when AGP took over it shared the first PCI slot. One thing I realized last spring, though, was PCI versions of most cards existed throughout the AGP era. i responded to an ad on CL that said "Computer board for sale" The box said "ATI 7000 PCI" Inside was a voodoo 3000 AGP card. I was a little disappointed because I had use for the ATI 7000 for a computer made around 2001 that has on board video but no AGP or PCIe slot. I do not know if I hadn't realized or maybe forgot the PCI cards stayed around until PCIe came and stayed. BTW, I think they bought the ATI card to replace the voodoo card.

[@OzzFan1000]

My first computer was a Packard Bell 486 with an integrated Oak OTI-076 graphics chip and 512KB of video DRAM. Since it was my first computer and I had little to compare it to, I thought it did just fine until I wanted to play some demanding DOS games like DOOM. :-D

[@spaceman7915]

6:47 - Into the Eagles nest (1987) use to play this on my Wang 286 PC back in 1989, nostalgia right there :D

[@Steve25g]

I'd love to have that K6-II Worked that great ! Used to have one, but board died....

[@winfr34k]

Retro computing ASMR

[@robert1975031]

I have that processor lol, but the math co processor? I have only ever had one. a cyrix fasmath chip which never has seemed to work correctly.. and the connor drive I have a 420mb drive in a bin, it did indeed have that startup sound.

[@enjoythepig]

That's an interesting system. Cyrix made a number of chips that I believe were in whole or in part engineered by TI. I have a Tandy 1000 tl/2 (8Mhz 286) and there was an upgrade card to make that a Cyrix 486 sx/25. There were also several retail boards that used the famous 486SLC processors and were very cheap in the early 90s. I remember when an Intel 486 66 cost about $300, you could get the whole Cyrix board with the SLC and a 386 Math Co-processor for under $100. I have never seen any of these Cyrix 486D or S chips with VLB or PCI bus. I wonder if that connection was even possible.

[@kimnice]

Texas Instruments manufactured these CPUs for Cyrix. It's similar deal as TSMC making AMD CPUs these days. Texas Instruments also made 486 processors with their own branding. This 486DLC is practically 386DX with 486 tweaks (upgraded cache, 486 instruction set ) and it's performance is lower than Intel 486.

[@rasz]

Intel set crazy prices for 486DX. When AMD came out in 1993 with 486DX40 it was priced at 2/3 of Intel 486DX33. Intel 486DX33 itself was 2x more expensive than Intel 486SX33. Insane when you look at the benchmarks.

[@enjoythepig]

@@rasz I agree. This is what raised the average system price at Gateway to over $3000 by the end of 1994. Double what they were when the 386 came out.

[@dsquared_rob82]

Super leuk om weer eens te zien!

[@askhowiknow5527]

I grew up with a Packard Bell tower that we dug out of the trash (it was too new at the time to be in the trash so...was it stolen?). It ran Windows 95 and had a bunch of kids games built in

[@AIM9XSW]

For the Packard-Bell, as others suggest, replace Windows XP with Windows 98SE, keeping RAM under 512 MB. The first PC I built was an AT-style machine using a DFI K6BV3+ motherboard and this exact processor. The K6-2 500 was a very cost effective CPU for the time when paired with a 3DFX Voodoo3 AGP card. Unfortunately, Voodoo cards command hefty prices today, so unless you need Glide support, a GeForce 2, 3, or 4 should work ok, though you can expect AGP 2x speeds. This machine should run mid '90s MS-DOS games (Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Descent, Need For Speed, NASCAR Racing, and many others) with excellent frame rates, but will be a bit too fast for most games made for 386 and older CPUs. Add a decent SoundBlaster ISA card (an AWE64 would be great) and a reliable network card, and you'll have a quality late '90s PC suitable for retro gaming LAN parties. Modern PCs running DOSBox on wired networks (Using the SVN Daum build and NE2000 network drivers) would be able to join IPX network games with these older retro machines as well.

[@RetroSpector78]

Funny cause I totally stopped playing games from the early 2000's onwards. So I missed the sholw Nvidia "revolution". Don't know if I have any Nvidia PCI cards here ... would need to check.

[@rasz]

K6-2 500 was cost effective only if you already owned an expensive SS7 motherboard and a bunch of SIMM ram. It made absolutely zero financial sense otherwise in the face of cheaper Celeron 300A overclocked to 450 MHz on the cheapest available Intel 440ZX/BX board.

[@RetroTechChris]

That's one spectacular 486!! Bone stock until you added that sound card :-) Glad you took some time to showcase the games, that was great fun to see!!

[@sysghost]

The AMD K6 CPU's have this fancy 3DNow instruction set to help 3D applications and games along. Those applications that did use it really did get a nice boost. Sadly it was only used on AMD's CPU's. Later the fully-fledged 3D accelerators took over the role making 3DNow obsolete.

[@clintthompson4100]

Thank you for the video!! Yes I would love to see how that 486 chip compares to other 486 processors in the same range due to it was originally a 386/486 chip and bus that has a 486 upgrade and how much the ISA slot video card compares to Vesa or even pci performance. Do I love the sounds of old computers? You bet I do!! I love vintage computers and its always great to see others that do as well. Will you be installing a CD- Rom Drive as well or any other upgrades in this machine? Thanks again I loved it! Sorry almost didn't give a shout out to the Packard Bell computer. Yes a K6-2 500Mhz for some more retro goodness or if you do decide to get rid of it, Billy Core from The Nostalgia Mall absolutely loves Packard Bell computers. He would probably be more than happy to take it off your hands.

[@DolganoFF]

It compares badly to the real 486 :)

[@clintthompson4100]

That is true but still would love to see at what point it becomes a point of no return.

[@rasz]

The big TLDR is it was pointless. DLC40 is around 486@25MHz. TI 486 SXL-40, the fastest 486 in 386 socket cpu is almost as fast as 486@33MHz - meaning you can "comfortably" play Doom with Low details in full screen at around 15 fps with fast ISA VGA. 386DX40 meant 10fps in 70% screen window. Not a huge jump, and that was the only game that went from my eyes are bleeding to hey I can almost play this after upgrade. ISA to VESA was huge. VESA to PCI pretty much made no difference under DOS, CPU was the limit.

[@rootbeer666]

I have that exact case. I've had a bunch of different motherboards in there over time, started out as a Biostar mobo with Am486DX4, then I put an ASUS mobo with a P200 MMX in there, and I've also got an AT ASUS PII 333Mhz (I think) board that I can stick in there as well, but never did.

[@bionicgeekgrrl]

They were known as packed hell for a reason, though not quite as bad as amstrad. The reasons were often due to a number of non standard features, cost cutting measures and especially the bioses iirc. The non standard not being unique of course as dell, hp, Compaq all used proprietary motherboards and power supplies. This packard bell however looks more standard due to being later mind.

[@HuntersMoon78]

Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker, loved it on the Atari ST

[@RetroSpector78]

I remember playing it a lot also but don’t remember if it was on my amiga or on my PC. Leaning towards PC as my interest in snooker couldn’t have been all that high in my earlier computing days :)

[@JeordieEH]

I remember my packard bell vaguely, it had 486 dx100 16mb ram, so it wasn't horrible, but it had a riser card and windows 95 on it. I can't remember what I had for a video card, but I do remember putting a kairo in it as it was pci. I remember having fun on it till I had a chip fall off of it. Sadly it stopped booting and I didn't know anyone that knew how to solder it back on.

[@senilyDeluxe]

I have two tiny identical mainboards. One has the CPU socket unpopulated and instead an SMD 40 MHz 386 soldered next to it (it died a few months ago sadly, I don't know why - not the PSU, not the RAM, not the battery corrosion) and the other mainboard has a socket with the exact same TI 486, an Intel 387 FPU and both have the OPTi chipset... the 486 one still works. An OAK tech video card in GREEN!? Never seen one in green. Mine (and I have a dozen) are all yellow, even the one with 1MB VRAM. My second PC was a Packard Bell Multimedia 486 and I loved it. (the cheap side of it was that it didn't have any L2 cache installed and even though there was a manual on how to upgrade it and it even included photos, it wouldn't detect any cache I installed - but damn 10-15 year old me loved this machine!) Btw. it still works. Back then I checked Oak tech cards versus Trident and... performancewise they were like less than 5% apart. The 512k OAKs could all do 800*600 with 256 colors while most Tridents couldn't do that, but some could. Also weird is that on most OAKs I noticed slight horizontal timing glitches (a few scanlines jittering a few pixels to the right for a frame every now and then) in any video mode except 800*600. The Tridents didn't do that. I also thought the colors on the Tridents kinda looked better. The Tridents do have different RAMDACs though, so that could actually be true.

[@SOF006]

You deserve more subs, I'm glad I discovered you. Your videos are fantastc!

[@scharkalvin]

That SB card appears to have a CDrom interface. Computers of that era could have had a CDrom, you should add one.

[@RetroSpector78]

Yes it does, I even think it supports standard IDE cdrom drives (and not only proprietary mitsumi or panasonic interfaces). But I like the clean look without it. might throw in a networking card to load stuff from the network. Would be more practical nowadays than a cdrom drive.

[@anomaly95]

@@RetroSpector78 Ah, someone else remembers CDROM interface hell. It's not very fun to upgrade the sound card and then realize the CDROM has to be replaced too. Unless you were able to get your hands on one of those rare or uncommon cards that just had the sony, panasonic, and mitsumi interfaces on it.

[@catriona_drummond]

I have a board with a pseudo-486 just like yours, but it's not posting. Probably due to battery damage :( One day I'll try to fix it

[@SwedishEmpire1700]

LOL that Silicon computer is exactly the same sort of 486 i bought back in the day as my second pc (bought a maxed 386 summer 1994 after Commodore died), heck even the speakers you show in the end are the same, although mine are branded Advance

[@MisterRorschach90]

You’ve gotta build a reverse sleeper. Take your best hardware and team up with either a legit water cooling company to make blocks and accessories, or a machinist capable of milling them. Go heavy on rgb and custom cables, nickel plating, etc. it would be cool to incorporate hidden optical drives someway. I’ve always wanted someone to do this since ltt started the project and never finished it. If I had a channel or the money I would most definitely do it. I also want to do the reverse of that, so I guess a reverse ricer pc. Take a 10900k or 3950x and put it on a green/blue/ or red pcb motherboard with a blower style 3090, the fastest ram available with old server style heat spreaders or no heat spreaders, use a bunch of nvme drives with plain copper or aluminum heatsinks to hide them, all flash storage stuffed inside those dual 2.5 drive bays that look like an old 3.5 hdd, use a titanium or platinum psu that is non modular with ketchup and mustard cables, along with ribbon cables if possible, especially for the Zip drive, super floppy drive, 4k Blu-ray drive, and 5.25 floppy. Put it inside an old fashioned super tower or full tower possibly with an acrylic window mod, lian li would be a good choice. Use either a high end aio modified to look like an old fashioned water cooler with green tubing and anti kink coils, or an old fashioned zalman cooler or something big and copper that looks retro but capable of cooling the cpu. Finish off the build with redux fans or maybe some rgb fans that are clear for rgb but don’t use the rgb so they look like those old ugly clear fans that no one ever wanted. You can complete the setup by building a custom retro themed mechanical keyboard or getting an ibm board, getting the best 32000-20000 dpi mouse and swapping the body with an old fashioned roller ball mouse, and getting the highest resolution/highest refresh rate crt monitor you can find flanked by some Roland speakers and audio gear. To make the build look even more authentic you can throw in a 10gbe card, WiFi card, ae9 sound card without the shroud, and a controller card for the zip and floppy drives. If you have more slots you can even get cards for legacy ports for even more authenticity. This is one of my dream builds. Anyone who sat down at the thing (especially with an acrylic window mod) would think it is a oc from the 90s or early 2000s. If you didn’t put windows 10 on it and instead something that looks like windows 9x-xp or 3.1 it would fool even the hardest core pc enthusiasts. People would start to get confused when they realize it’s 32gb of ram rather than mb or kB, or when you load up flight simulator 2020.

[@YoshiNoir]

I had the same Packard Bell case in France, but it hosted a Celeron 466 MHz, with an Intel i810 chipset for graphics. No AGP port on the motherboard. Also, the IDE cable to the DVD drive was prone to failure and the only solution was to restore the OS. YUCK.

[@dykodesigns]

I remember Operation Wolf, it’s actually one of those games that supported a mouse and that I played a lot on a 486 in the early 90’s as a 10 year old. Nowerdays I tend to play that game on a Sega Mastersystem. That upgraded 386 machine might actually be reasonbly good for playing Falcon 3.0 as it can take adavantage of a math coprocessor. I would also add a cd-rom drive and a 5.25” floppy to make it complete. I remember those Packard Bell Machines getting a bad rep back in the day for their cheapness, it’s the type of system you could buy it at Dixons for little money but most PC magazines where never impresssed by their built quality, or lets say, the lack thereof.

[@Baoran]

Those K6 cpus are good for retro games because you can use software to control multiplier which allows you to set correct speed for computer for old speed sensitive games.

[@chriswareham]

I'd suggest putting a period correct version of NetBSD on that Packard Bell machine, as that's what I did on the similar machine I owned back when it was new. NetBSD 1.3 if memory serves. I chose NetBSD over FreeBSD since I wanted something that also ran on the MicroVAX I owned. And speaking of the VAX, there's definitely a lack of KZbin videos on those fantastic machines. I owned several 3000 and 4000 series machines that I wish I hadn't give away - even ran a webserver from a 4000VLC at one point!

[@p166mx]

I used to build a fair few machines around this time and the SIS chipsets were awful. The 486 era machines were built from parts me and my mates would buy a brand new case, and put in second hand 486 parts inside :p We would sell them as second hand but our new machines always stood out. Our parents put a stop to it though as the venture was a bit dodgy :p I think we sold about three or four machines as kids.

[@ehs03y3ol]

I love AMD K6 plataforms, I can tell you that the difference between K6-II and K6-II+/K6-III is abismal and worth upgrading for 98 gaming.

[@Tigrou7777]

2!47 I had the exact same PC case back in the day (a 486 DX4 100mhz with 8 mb of RAM)

[@CleetusSilversurfer]

That Jimmy White's Snooker is also on the Sega Mega Drive. Very well done port, almost as fast as this one, and that runs only on a M68k and 64k ram. :)

[@mushroomsamba82]

4:01 to the left of the monitor there is a Compaq Presario sitting there that looks exactly like my family's first PC.

[@IkarusKommt]

I like that the previous owner didn't noticed that their DISPLAY driver was misconfigured and wasn't loading the codepage properly.

[@TheTurnipKing]

0:32 Branded pre-builds usually get a bad rep as standard. It's a rare machine that doesn't suffer from all kinds of weirdnesses.

[@kasimirdenhertog3516]

My sister used to call it Packard Hell, referring to what she had to go to with the machine

[@dcikaruga]

I remember that old boot up sound, those were the days.......

[@horaciosaucedo8114]

Hey you have some amazing old desktops are there any fore sell ?

[@Kenny-bw2cz]

I have such a computer with a 486 on a 386 mobo.. I was also bewildered until I researched it.

[@C4nn15]

I had a Tseng Lab ET4000 back in the day, it made my 386DX25 fly, this would've been in about 1992/93 I was 11 years so that was a pretty good machine scavenged together from parts people were getting rid of. I had those speakers as well, amazing speakers.

[@marcuslundblad6977]

The 486 had a turbo button. Was there ever Pentiums with turbo buttons? I have no memory of that… :)

[@32bitrant]

Install 98 on that Packard Bell and use it for some DOS games as well. With that K6-2, it'll be pretty powerful!

[@RetroSpector78]

That is the plan. No idea how compatible the ess soundcard will be in msdos

[@retroftw]

@@RetroSpector78 I would guess it has at least some DOS compatibility in my experience. So it's possibly a great Windows 98SE machine :-D

[@WildDiamond07]

Will that Packard Bell run Crysis?

[@5roundsrapid263]

I had a K6-2 500. With an overclocked Voodoo2 and 384MB RAM, it was a beast!

[@WildDiamond07]

@@5roundsrapid263 Do you still have it? If not, RIP to the K6-2 500.

[@owenrichards1418]

There are (a lot of) reasons we called it 'Packard Hell' on the helpdesk.

[@colescrustycars]

I drug home a functioning packard bell platinum x with Pentium 150mhz recently. I'm quite fond of it so far.

[@JVHShack]

Saying "Now that's music to my ears." while playing music... the pun of the year! lol Now time to go drag my IBM Blue Lightning 66MHz 486 out for some fun!

[@Baoran]

I built 386 33Mhz too not long ago, but I thought the original sound blaster CT1320C was better suitable for it than SB 16.

[@RetroSpector78]

Feel free to send one over :) That one might be a bit too old for this computer ... think around 1993 - 1994 a soundblaster pro might be more suitable. Have one somewhere, but it's inside a PC and couldn't immediately find it.

[@Hakan89]

the stunts soundrack just killed me bro ..

[@RetroSpector78]

Classic

[@hedemegmondom]

My first PC came in this very same case. It was a bit higher spec., .. 486 DX2 at 66MHz. Good times.

[@SuperBee4406]

I built a system back in the day that had the TI 486DLC40 with the math coprocessor. i couldn't afford a Intel CPU. And it was slow..... My brother had a Intel 486 sx25 and it blew my DLC40 out of the water.

[@RetroSpector78]

Was thinking about doing a comparison video.

[@mikerobinson416]

Simply amazing.. the golden era of PCs for sure 👍

[@tech34756]

I think it would be fun to turn the Packard Bell into a sleeper PC, complete with the retro KB/M and CRT monitor.

[@muttBunch]

Also another memory. Back in ‘89 still had a Tandy 1000sx with a whopping 640k memory and 4.77MHz and I was so pissed when I got Super Offroad and couldn’t play it lololololololol

[@dvdbytes4348]

I have a soft spot for Packard Bells. A Pentium III Packard Bell was my first serious computer and I used it for several years. Install win 9X on it, install a period correct video card and play 3D games.

[@RogueScholarMDC]

PB got a bad rap when they were new. When I worked in computer retail in the late 90s those things spent more time in the repair shop than a customer home. That's assuming they didn't just return it and get another brand.

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah that’s also what i heard. But no hands on experience. Had some issues getting it to start. Even with a new PSU it wouldn’t always turn on. Sometimes it would turn on upon inserting the power cable (without me even touching the power button.) and sometimes it didn’t do anything. Disabled the power mgmt in the bios and seems to be working now.

[@hubzcaps]

my first system wS. pak bell. multimedia S606. my last great socket 370 build was the best tho

[@dennisp.2147]

They had the same issues in the early 90's.

[@anomaly95]

In the mid to late 90's, PB was also caught putting used/refurbed parts into computers that were sold as NEW. It was definitely one of those markers that the company was on the decline.

[@MrKillswitch88]

Keep the packard as socket 7 systems are only getting hard to find let alone in ok condition so all you really need is to install 98 and maybe a 3dfx card. Also that 386 system is a Good find for games of the period plus being Cyrix based it has the L1 cache which makes it faster than a traditional 386.

[@lelandclayton5462]

I have seen plenty of early and mid era 486 systems with a AMI 386 BIOS Sticker on them. Also seen this happen with early Athlon/Duron systems with AMI 586 BIOS slapped on them. I think the 486 DLC was TI's version of the Intel 486SL that came in the same PQFP package as the Am386. I honestly don't know why people hate Packard Bell so much, I never had any issues with them. Now keep in mind I only played with 386 and 486 variants. Now the IBM PS\1 line in my opinion was terrible.

[@JenniferinIllinois]

Packard Bell got a bad rap back in the day too! Hehehe... Only good think from PB was the color coded ports ( I can't begin to count how many PS/2 mice and keyboards were plugged in the wrong ports prior to the color coded ports). OMB, I had one of those 486DLC CPUs. Probably the worst CPU I ever had in a system (but it was cheap!!).

[@DolganoFF]

These 486 DLCs were the only 486 we could afford as students in 1993. Dos and w3.1 ran allright on them, but by the time w95 came, they were all out...

[@andygozzo72]

i stripped out one of those packard bells and put it into an unbranded black case, for a mate, some 15 ish years ago,he hated tbe beige case!

[@andygozzo72]

it wasnt a 386 though, i think pentium 1., so mustve used that case on several models

[@vanpastel]

I've got a 486, with a Peacock Moviemedia video card, it's got a TV tuner, pip capabilities and other stuff but up til now I have been unable to find the drivers for said card. Can anyone help me, y would love to explore what that card can do.

[@cmr2079]

My PB from 1995 still works.

[@billfreeman5201]

I had one of the first 486 custom PC's in the UK built. Cost me £2.5k. What was I thinking lol

[@thorrollosson]

That era of Packard Bell is pretty much fine. Unlike a lot of their early to mid 90s units, they finally started moving to an almost entirely non-proprietary set of parts. Not super exciting, but extremely easy to service and no hunting for strange parts. Their biggest remaining issue was uninspiring styling and AWFUL stock software bloatware. Fresh loading 98se on those things results in perfectly nice little retro PCs.

[@dave4shmups]

I've heard that the AMD K6-2 is not as good for Windows 98 gaming as the Pentium II. What do you think? Here in the USA, at least, Pentium II PCs go for more money then AMD ones, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're better.

[@hubzcaps]

live linux distro android cd booter. could be fun to try older distros on. my mom had a sony vaio laptop back in the day. then she gave it to me it failed to post repeatedly after a few years. opened it up. no via or mobile geode cou....full size socket 7 k62 3Dnow pipeline extensions aka sse1

[@zxcvb_bvcxz]

Never knew they translated the sound filenames in 3.11 as well!

[@bryandrobny7690]

I like Packard Bell i think they are great computers we had a widows 95 machine it had a weird design but reliable it looked like an upside down T case

[@HB-Productions]

What was the model number of this Packard Bell? As that is very much my childhood PC - it was lost to a lightning storm in the early 2000s!

[@georgemaragos2378]

Hi, Re the Packard Bell - the AMD puts in in the Pentium 2 or Pentium 3 speed range ( I have a generic Pentium 100 running dos 6.22 and a Gateway 2 - 200 running win 98 ) You should be able to run Win 98 unless they have replaced the mother board, but if you want 386 / 486 try turning of in CMOS L1 and L2 memory cache, it will dramatically slow down the cpu - use a dos speed benchmark like superscape 3d bench to compare before an dafter if you make the change. I believe AMD has a small program that you can turn off L1 and L2 via software as well Set up this way you can even play the early 286 dos items that were hard coded to 4mhz or 8/10 in 286 turbo mode Regards George

[@desther7975]

PCem also delivers a pretty good retro PC experience, considering that it emulates full hardware. Run that and you don't really need to invest in an overpriced ancient PC like this one to get the correct look, sound and performance-level of a vintage x86 PC.

[@pc-sound-legacy]

I need the look, the smell, the sound, and all the damn work to get such an old retro pc running to be happy😂 But emulation surely is a good alternative for more pragmatic users like me.