Did I buy a working 286 that doesn't need repairs ?

[@hubertx8222]

It's true time capsule. I'm impressed how it looks inside. It's must been used very rarely by previous owner. As always - great video !

[@raven4k998]

well you know sometimes you get lucky like that one

[@MotownBatman]

That white background switch is sweet. I don't think I've seen that before... Ive seen a B/W to CGA switch before...

[@G.D.Traveller]

Love those old hard drives and their sounds. Used to sleep right next to them, very comforting. Reminds me also of my old 8088 machine with an MFM drive. Almost the same sounds.

[@oldhouseredux7733]

This video was a great look at your 286! I love that monitor!!

[@KeritechElectronics]

...and a joy for ever. XT with a 286 was our first PC. Got a lot of fond memories with that machine.

[@DavidWonn]

Impressive condition for a 286! Even more surprising is seeing Windows 3.1 running on just 1 megabyte of RAM. I'd have expected version 3.0 at best.

[@BilisNegra]

Impressive indeed. In fact I did not expect 3 but one of those fancy DOS file managers/program launchers called Windows 1.0 or 2.0

[@lordoverflow]

Nice found!

[@tyta1]

I think the Kalok drives are named after the usual noise they make when they fail - "ka-lok" 😉

[@cyberp0et]

Those noises/ sounds at startup are the moneymakers :D

[@ianmilo9982]

Wow You got the exact same PC my dad had, and the first PC I came into contact with as a kid. The same Cpu, case, 1mb ram, the exact same Hdd capacity and sound…The exact same monitor too… Wow! You brought me back so many years into the past…The video card was Hercules… I remember playing Prince, Mach 3, Pool, Blues Brothers and some other games on it… Next he got a 40Mhz 386 with the Vga graphics. Seeing all these games that I played on this PC in color for the first time was unreal❤

[@subalpine-fir]

Always a pleasure to see a new video from Retrospector. Keep up the good work.

[@osgrov]

Cool! I've never seen a K/Lok drive before. It sure triggered my desire after hearing how it sounds. :) I also cannot believe the condition of this machine! It must've been in storage since the 80s or something. Looking forwards to part 2.

[@BaumInventions]

Yo can have my Kalok HDD... its broken.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@BaumInventions That’s like telling someone “my VW Bug leaks oil.” ;-D

[@danytoob]

OMG ... I remember (though long time since thought about!) those start-up screens. My 1st comp was a 386, I think bought in 1990 (maybe '91). 1st HD was 90 MB. And the first upgrade I got was a modem ... 2400 baud. Compuserve and Genie. Then came Prodigy! Will watch for your next installment. Thanks for the memories! DT

[@paulwarner5395]

Thanx for the video. Brought back lots of memories from the early 1990s.

[@compugamesarg]

here, i had the same monitor once. the sound of the boot sequence is always a charm. best regards from argentina. looking forward for next video!!

[@Manoel1978Alves]

this kalok HD sounds are... relaxing? not just a thing of beauty... someone could loop some and make such a beautiful tool for decompression and disconnection from mundane problems... beautiful, simple, calm sounds. Awesome.

[@kasimirdenhertog3516]

I remember very well how my dad nearly got ‘conned’ into a Kalok drive. He bought a 386 in 1990 which, according to the spec sheet, came with a 106MB Seagate hard drive. Instead, when he opened the case, there was a 105MB Kalok drive in there. The computer shop argued he wasn’t allowed to open the case, as it was ‘sealed’ - just like the 286 in this video. But obviously, this wasn’t some sort of warranty issue, so the drive was duly replaced and the shop apologized for the ‘mistake’.

[@RandomBSOD]

this is the true definition of "pristine condition"

[@bunsoft2]

That hard drive speaks with dolphins :-)

[@RetroTechChris]

I always love it when a 286 has AMI BIOS. That HDD sure does have a strange way to mount in the case!

[@-Jakob-]

You weren't able to do that with any hard drive, some HDDs were only allowed to be mounted horizontally.

[@leandrocosta3709]

I was also surprised about that battery. Last week I found my long lost 386DX 40 (with a math coprocessor, yay!) with that very same battery installed, and sadly as you said, leaked and probably destroyed the mainboard. I'm trying to save it, but I'm not holding my breath though.

[@hicknopunk]

If you pay someone to use careful wire work to replace traces it could likely work again.

[@leandrocosta3709]

@@hicknopunk I sure hope so. I'll test the traces, hopefully this weekend, and probably do the wire work myself. I don't know anybody who does that kind of thing.

[@hicknopunk]

@@leandrocosta3709 oh cool you can do that. My type 1 diabetes makes my hands shake and it is a rare day when they are stable enough to do fine soldering. I can fix things made through the 90s, usually...well non computers. Like amps, equalizers, etc. I'm glad you can fix it on your own, I wasn't going to make that assumption. Added: btw, I have a 386 dx 25 at home myself. I'm always glad to meet someone else who loves dinosaur computers.

[@paolocoppi7444]

Love to see Windows in Hercules mode!

[@smakfu1375]

Heh, back in 89, I had a Harris 286-20 (CS80C286-20) AT clone that was housed in an identical case.

[@VenturiLife]

Harris in particular and Headland made some great clone motherboards. There are also "Chips" versions.

[@alfabètagamma-k7p]

Nice piece of PC set you have over there. Despite the keyboard is dirty, opposite is the PC itself! Compaq also has a 12 inch VGA Monochrome monitor with the same Invert function. The screen contrast was peaceful for the eyes at late hours.

[@mihaibalint8183]

I have a 386 and it works great!

[@keith303]

looks like it was stored in a sealed vacuum bag of some sort or at least an environment with very low presence of dust and humidity for the majority of its life. very attractive and fascinating piece of computer history.

[@andreasklindt7144]

This is very interesting! The company printed on the two golden seals, "Foto Computer Vernieuwe" seems to still exist as "Foto Vernieuwe" today at the same adresse in Oostende, Belgium. Apperantly it was founded in 1978 and it seems to be a retailer for photo and movie equipment. Since the 286 was not even closely capable of doing anything photographical, and given the state of the keyboard, my first guess is it was used by that company for either accountancy or storage management. But I could be wrong. I'm curious what's on that harddrive.

[@trismegistus2881]

The computer also displays some text in Dutch when he boots the hard drive, at 11:13. Oostende is part of the Dutch-speaking area of Belgium so that makes sense.

[@RETROMachines]

Wow, nice video. 286 is best retro pc ever..

[@harvaldi]

In those old hard drives there was step motor for moving heads. Because of that it was very expensive, loud, slow and failing pretty fast, but man, this bring memories! :D In my case there was model of capacity only 20MB! Sometimes it wasn't spinning up after power up, so I needed to push axis manually.

[@stamasd8500]

I have a very similar 286 motherboard. The memory can be upgraded using SIPP modules, up to 16MB (4x4MB modules). If you don't have SIPP modules, a very simple trick is to use 30-pin SIMM sockets (you can still buy those from places like Jameco) as adapters; the pins of those sockets fit nicely into the SIPP sockets, and you can install regular 30-pin SIMM modules in them. Or you can desolder the SIPP sockets and solder instead the SIMM sockets directly into the motherboard as they have the same pin print, if you don't mind altering the original hardware.

[@redleader6442]

This is the sort of luck I stumbled upon when I bought my Deskpro 8086. Works flawlessly. I'm waiting for tantalums to pop and smoke. For now, however, it is almost completely original, save for the hard drive/controller, second floppy drive, and video card.

[@sublimemauser5904]

Nice system, love those desktop cases with the 5.25 inch horizontal and the 3.5 inch vertical FDDs slots.. my first PC had such a case, back in early 90s, would love to find such a case again.

[@mathieuguillemain]

I really have a soft spot for these generic 286 desktops. I have the exact same TRL monitor with that recognizable back casing expect mine is a color EGA. It pairs very well with this kind of configuration.

[@BollingHolt]

Dear God, no! A Kalok! LOL. I can't believe it was still functioning! I did love the loud noise of them. They used to say that their drives were noisier but they were "more reliable". They were at least half right ;)

[@patrickbateman3490]

Wow simple but very nice and gorgeous machine :)

[@hicknopunk]

Honestly if you had a non luggable PC 30 years ago, you were slumming it. 😅 I never had a 286, but I did have a 386 DX 25 for years. My dad got to bring a Kaypro 2 home on the weekend and it was my game system for years, so many good memories.

[@iHorus]

Cool looking PC. I remember seeing these when I was 12

[@jasonhaman4670]

I have a Hyundai Super-386s with a ~100MB Kalok HDD, that still worked the last time I tried it. But yeah, from what I've read, Kalok HDDs were the least reliable HDDs ever made. My particular Kalok model was apparently one of the last stepper-motor HDDs, made after all the reputable brands had moved to voice coil drives. Also, my favorite era of vintage PCs is 286es and 386es. 486es were current when I first got into computers, so 286 and 386 PCs are recent enough to still be familiar, while being earlier than where I started, kind of seeing what I barely missed. Loved the video, looking forward to part 2!

[@wishusknight3009]

That is pretty late for a stepper. Largest one I have is 60mb. I have a few of the first wd stepper 40mb drives too. The performance is really interesting too.

[@jasonhaman4670]

@@wishusknight3009 Yeah, this ~100MB Kalok I have (Actually rebranded as an Ocatagon I think? Rebranded label applied right over top of the Kalok label, which is how I know.) was, as I understand it, the bargain-basement cheapest HDD you could buy at the time. And its reputation says most got what they paid for.

[@jasonhaman4670]

Also, a label on the Hyundai PC says it came with a 40MB HDD, so this Kalok must have been an upgrade my friend did back in the day (he bought the PC new, and passed it on to me a couple decades ago).

[@wishusknight3009]

@@jasonhaman4670 I can not remember what happened to Kalok, if memory serves they re-emerged as JTS. Which was just as bad. My first ide drive was a 105mb 5.25 half hight ide drive which is a stepper as well. And its still working. Got it new in 1989. I remember compressing it with dblspace on dos 6.2 and stored it that way. When I got back into retro stuff a few years back I dug my original dx33 out and found out how much that machine had been "loved". And just how much software and documents and games I had crammed on that thing. I had the 105 and a Quantum 80mb as drive d also compressed. whoa... lol It was pretty crammed full.

[@jasonhaman4670]

@@wishusknight3009 Curiosity got the better of me, and I fired up and opened up the Hyundai. The Kalok had been rebranded as "BSA", not Octagon. Octagon was somewhere on the original label. That old drive still spins up... after I found the key combination to get into BIOS setup, and found the CHS specs for the Kalok, confirmed that it was configured correctly. I suspect it's not booting because I left the HDD blank the last time I tinkered with it, many many years ago. May have been playing with Minix on it at the time. I'll probably try to partition and install DOS on it soon, to see if the thing's still working fine despite its reputation (AKA the exception to the rule).

[@lndriver]

Wow, I had exactly the same case on my 1990 286, bought in Munich :)

[@johnDingoFoxVelocity]

Interesting fact the turbo button actually slows down certain processors in the 286 386 and 486 line

[@olivierpericat9224]

Actually the turbo button was meant to slow down the computing speed (by removing some CPU features such as cache or optimizations) and make it compatible with older software that required a PC-XT or very slow computer. The turbo mode was never designed to accelerate the speed, so the labeling is a bit confusing! :)

[@RetroPCUser]

@@olivierpericat9224 On my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus, I have cache control software that makes my DX5-133 run as a 386 DX-33 for older games, like NHL Hockey 95 for the Roland MT-32 and I also have a batch file that loads the mark software, the SoftMPU (for delaying the SYSEX commands), and after the game exits, the end of the game batch files loads the TSR-REM program to close the SoftMPU software so it doesn't hog resources. That and it also brings the computer speed back from a 386 DX-33 to a 486 DX5-133. Some boards were picky with WB CPUs and the turbo button as it never worked right and only WT CPUs would drop the speed or remove certain CPU features as you mentioned to make it run slower for older software to make it more compatible without hesitation. Even the CTRL ALT -, CTRL ALT +, or CTRL ALT \ was a thing as well. The 8088 clones, like the Commodore Colt, had certain combinations to go from 4.77MHz to 9.18MHz.

[@autobotjazz1972]

Damn that is hella clean, if you had told me it was new old stock i would have been willing to believe it. other than the keyboard of course.

[@sebastianwalker1081]

A gem of a machine where on earth did you get it from its like new old stock! And thank you for the great video!

[@maxtornogood]

It's no secret these hard drives had a rep for going Ka-LONK. Happy for you finding a good one!

[@Kali_Krause]

Finding a working Kalok is rare though

[@jasmijndekkers]

Nice content, Keep up the good job!

[@FabioNicolasSchmidt]

Nice find! I have never seen a 286 so new as yours. I noticed the fingerprints inside the case, please clean it and with a paper towel, apply some wd40 oil for cleaning and protecting it against corrosion from hand's swet.

[@JohanlastZa]

The battery is not a varta so it is safe...lol My first secondhand computer was a 286 with a monochrome monitor that was yellow and black. Very nice find indeed. Literally looks like a brand new old stock

[@johnsmith-fr3sx]

The battery leaking appears to be related to the humidity that the system was exposed to over the years. I have had even recent alkaline batteries leak and corrode components in equipment that trapped moisture.

[@ObiWanBillKenobi]

Maybe adding a packet of desiccant inside the computer case would prevent it?

[@johnsmith-fr3sx]

@@ObiWanBillKenobi The computer or motherboard would still have to be sealed against external humidity variations. This PC appears to have been stored in a climate controlled environment or a very well sealed container. The lack of any dust and corrosion inside the case suggests this.

[@xenonkay]

Storage conditions make all the difference for battery leakage. Particularly temperature, being that these are little cans of reactive chemicals. This machine must have been someplace cool and dry for most of its life.

[@lordmmx1303]

beautiful machine. I wish I had one.

[@CarlosGomez-vt9pk]

That is nuts. I cannot believe the hard drive worked. Glue a microphone to it and collect those unique sound effects while you can!

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

Great deal!

[@goodgoodstuff]

Thats a nice space you got

[@wishusknight3009]

Holy cow... that is showroom condition. And no battery leakage? That must have really low miles on it.

[@VenturiLife]

Probably put straight into storage when a 386 showed up.

[@PeterSwinkels]

Technically the computer is booting from a floppy when it gives the non-sytem disk error. That message is produced by a stub in the disk's boot sector.

[@jonchapman6821]

Superb machine 👌🏻

[@fhwolthuis]

I bought this monitor back in 1991 with my Shi-tec computer. It was VGA.

[@airfixer9461]

I'm flabbergasted...never seen a machine in this good condition. Just awesome....looks so new, so clean on the inside...and a Varta battery of that age not leaking....'it's a miracle'.... were was this machine kept? in a vacuum room somewhere ?....I'm looking forward to part two..what will it further reveal.....? :-)

[@nickwallette6201]

Our esteemed host is holding out on us. He clearly has a time machine. Dust and rust free generic case? NiCad battery that hasn’t leaked everywhere? _A working Kalok HDD?_ You don’t expect us to believe you just found this in 2022, do you?

[@airfixer9461]

@@nickwallette6201 I'm glad that April fools day has past already 😉 Past

[@alfwaibel4773]

I got a 486 DX/2 66 this weekend from a school, which they wanted to discard. Started it up, but sadly just a black screen and some beeps. Have to go into that further to see, what´s wrong. Interestingly, the CMOS battery was a pack with 4 1,5 Volt AA batteries - never saw that. Maybe I have just to put in the batteries for to give this thing a start. Or there is something wrong with the VGA card.

[@RetroSpector78]

Sometimes reseating the expansion cards / RAM and CPU can also help. Fact that it beeps means it is at least doing something

[@alfwaibel4773]

@@RetroSpector78 Thanks a lot! I reseat the VGA card one slot, and I am getting a video signal now! There are just some issues with Bios mismatch thingy (and of course missing keyboard, I have to buy one with a DIN plug). Fingers crossed, maybe this good ol fellow will work.

[@Ramdileo_sys]

​@@RetroSpector78 is like have (when we were born) a tube radio like the one in the gangsters days .. A machine from 1990 ... a machine of 32 years old... in perspective... it will be like in 1999.. have one of thouse old furniture players from the 60's for mono vinyl records like in 1989.. have a Coca-Cola refrigerator from the 50's (Marty Mcfly and his father in the gas station) in '79.. an old tube radio almost like the one in the gangsters days Yeah.. she is old..

[@dennisp.2147]

I've NEVER seen a working K/Lok drive. And it's been 25 years since I last saw one, so that tells you how reliable they were. Are you a time traveller and brought that machine back from 1990?

[@wishusknight3009]

Maybe a couple years later, it had windows 3.1 on it. I still have a working kalok, not sure of its size. And it is kept very safe from people even looking at it, for fear of it failing.

[@Kali_Krause]

@@wishusknight3009 Nice! It's rare to hear of a working Kalok drive. I saw another youtuber who got his from a workplace that had two working ones as well

[@RetroNora7734]

That type of monitor seems to be some kind of OEM one. I have one looking the same, but it's VGA - it claims to be a product of Voltron company.

[@TheMikeMan777]

You are just another one of those camera shy KZbinrs. With those big arms of yours what do you have to be afraid of? You could clobber any stalkers or retro computer collection robbers with arms like those! 💪😁🤳

[@Act1veSp1n]

It better have that turbo button..or else.

[@bundesautobahn7]

Maybe the battery is a lithium battery, which does not leak? The problem with the leaks is with Nickel-Cadmium batteries.

[@matthewday7565]

Kalok, that's the sound it makes when it crashes

in 2000 this 286 is rare, in 2022, wowww ultra rare

[@Kali_Krause]

Why would anyone get rid of an almost perfectly good machine? PC's like that are rare :)

[@JenniferinIllinois]

That hard drive sound. Ahhhhhhh......

[@vinniepie1989]

Mooi hoor z'n oud beestje. Zit er nou nog een MFM HDD in?

[@looks-suspicious]

How much did you pay for this beauty?

[@ching-chenhuang8119]

Damn, that sound of the hard drive is very wrong, sound like something is scratching the drive disk, perhaps the reader head is dragging its leg......

[@Agnus78]

I wanted to write that the hard drive sound is similiar to my Velociraptors from the past but no, this 40MB drive has much better, less metallic and more.. i don't know, refined sound? :) Thx for great vids, you are into computers i've always wanted to have and eventually ended up with 486DX4 as my first PC. But i've been dreaming about XT/AT in my childhood :)

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

what about a IDE2SATA adapter to let you use a 1TB SSD.

[@hismastersvoice2729]

man you had so much luck buying this 286 beacouse the old stock 286 requiers at least dusting out

[@mikesilva3868]

💛

[@MarcWeavers]

that is a very pretty computer :)

[@dabbelspeed_]

hello retrospector. is there a chance to get a (working) 5,25 floppy drive from you?? would be nice. here in europe (ebay/...) they are very rare and very expensive if available. maybe you can sell one for a nice price (with shipping to vienna) ?? would be great. thanks a lot

[@ObiWanBillKenobi]

#PCArcheology #PCArchaeology

[@SJ-co6nk]

If you had the data regarding the hard drive, why didn't you use type 47 and just enter it in? It all brings back memories.

[@jasonhaman4670]

I suspect this PC was before user-defined types 47 and 48, when you were restricted to the predefined drive types.

[@EvilTurkeySlices]

@@jasonhaman4670 if I recall late 286 era was when a lot of bios implemented that feature. So it may have it, but it may not. By the 386 era pretty much everything could use user types.

[@EvilTurkeySlices]

Looking back this board does so type 47

[@SJ-co6nk]

The bios screen on the machine said that type 47 is custom. I'm nowhere near clever enough to remember a detail that specific from 30 years ago.

[@jasonhaman4670]

@@SJ-co6nk Your eye is sharper than mine. I stand corrected.

[@hicknopunk]

I think your hdd has a mouse in it.

o need buy on 286

[@TheMikeMan777]

Yeah, too new, advanced, and expensive for my blood! 🩸🤯🩸

[@PicaDelphon]

If you lived near NJ I got Room full of old PC parts, 40 Years of the Stuff....DM me.. I have a lonely ATI 16bit VGA Wonder 24, w/mouse and VGA/CGA/EGA ... Time to Up Date..

[@rallyscoot]

strange way to mount a harddisk in such computer case.

[@Ramdileo_sys]

A machine from 1990 ... a machine of 32 years old... in perspective... it will be like in 1999.. have one of thouse old furniture players from the 60's for mono vinyl records like in 1989.. have a Coca-Cola refrigerator from the 50's (Marty Mcfly and his father in the gas station) in '79.. an old tube radio almost like the one in the gangsters days Yeah.. she is old..

[@dykodesigns]

Wow, this computer looks like it has just been assembled yesterday! Very curious how it is so clean and dust free. There’s not even any rust either. Was this system kept in the climate controlled environment? It looks like it’s mint just out of the packaging 🤗. Even the warranty seal is intact indicating that nobody has been in there before. But, somebody put the disk in backwards…

[@worroSfOretsevraH]

I loan a monitor like this to a friend. After some time he thought it was junk sitting around, an he threw it out. :(

[@illegalsmirf]

Can it run Crysis?

[@OLQS_YON]

replace card with vga instead of ega

[@okona1up]

Please do not use Pozi Screwdrivers in Philips Screws.

[@jjohnson71958]

this hdd kinda sounds like a toad talking lol

[@ForSquirel]

1 MB on a 286? Somone had waaaay to much money.

[@dennisp.2147]

Not by 1990-91, this is a pretty late 286. It wasn't uncommon to see them with even more than that by this time frame.

[@looks-suspicious]

Yes, by 1990, 2 MB of RAM was very common. My 286 had 640 K installed on the motherboard and a 2 MB memory expansion card on the ISA bus.

[@ampere-mam]

That machine was probably never used much. This is probably the most useless machine has ever seen in this video

[@lvlister2005]

First haha :p

[@bufu7763]

Ok chris

[@nicks4597]

if you do a sponsor at beg it detracts from watching

[@laserhawk64]

The way that Kalok drive sounds, it HAS to work just like an old Seagate MFM/RLL job, like an ST-238R... servo driven heads, not a voice coil system. w0wza lol... and to think, 43mb in that era was HUGE.

[@brant2302]

𝔭𝔯𝔬𝔪𝔬𝔰𝔪 💃

[@nneeerrrd]

really? you didn't bother to check the floppy 💾 disk before videoing? dude, what's wrong with you?

[@TheMikeMan777]

Well computers are still pretty new to the Belgian people so they are still learning you know! 😜