The OLDEST PC I've Ever Worked On

[@HardwareHaven]

Go to www.magicmind.co/hardwarehaven and use my code HARDWAREHAVEN to get up to 56% off your first subscription for the next 10 days!

[@lawrence1986ify]

Well, I think you are in luck. I have an old agp HD 4770 I think laying around and more SDRAM, and I do think I have a few processors laying around that may work if you are interested, let me know.

[@lawrence1986ify]

all I need is CPU socket can be found with gpuz

[@chandlerbing7570]

No

[@janvkn]

Make sure that Athlon XP is always properly cooled. They have no thermal protection and will literally burn up without cooling.

[@Kikay0n]

Back in the day we would RMA these and most of the time it was because someone booted without the cooler. It took some of those Athlons less that 20 seconds to get to 120deg. The enamel around the doe would turn to a caramel color and flake. “Got another Caramel!”

[@davidshepherd265]

@@Kikay0n Yeah, I learned that lesson the hard way about 15 years ago when I tried booting one up without a HSF thinking it would be fine for just a couple of minutes like a Pentium 4. Nope, that was the end of it.

[@robbylatham]

They actually could crack and the die blow off the chip if left uncooled.

[@readycheddar]

Yep. I've both cracked the die of an athlon xp and created the magic smoke putting on the hs/f wrong. And not at the same time.

[@olstar]

The graphics department deserves a pay rise! Looked super realistic and I would've thought it were real if it wasn't for the disclaimer

[@HardwareHaven]

Hahahaha I’ll look into that 😂

[@Le_Grand_Rigatoni]

8:21 There's no way this has 2MB of VRAM, I think it's more like 16.

[@sagejpc1175]

Hey know you are relatively new at youtube, but I wanted you to know that I look forward to your videos. I watch them as soon as they come out and it's getting me through grad school. Please don't stop!

[@HardwareHaven]

That’s awesome to hear! I don’t plan on it haha

[@BenCos2018]

@@HardwareHaven agreed on what Sage said here also your content is always a welcome sight tbh It's rare to find good youtubers on yt sadly and you are one of the good ones

[@GhostieXV]

Those Cases were called GEM cases back in the 90s because instead of having the panels slide back they slid forward after removing the front face, they were sold to antec if I recall correctly. Also power supplies back then had awful caps in them that leaked a lot your a brave man plugging a unit with a power supply that old. I would of yanked out the PSU and put in a modern one before even turning it on lol.

[@HardwareHaven]

What’s the fun in that?? Haha

[@GhostieXV]

@@HardwareHaven well your luck played out well the rest of the hardware worked. When I did it it took all the hardware out with it lol so lesson learned lmao

[@HardwareHaven]

That’s a bummer haha

[@charliesretrocomputing]

@@GhostieXV wow good to know, I use 20 year Macs a lot so maybe I should try and replace it!

[@eDoc2020]

This is actually an Enlight case, EN-7230 to be exact. I have the same case (even the same AMD sticker) on one of my systems. Also in my experience older power supplies are usually fine. It's more slightly newer capacitors with issues. But I would probably do a quick visual inspection of the internals just to be safe.

[@jimholloway1785]

Hey Colten, I am thrilled to see you got this working. I used PC's like this and worked with PC's all the way back to the DOS 3.3 days before windows and those IDE cables brought back so many feelings on using these systems. I was so glad when these ID cables were stopped being used. I look forward to see how this goes and windows 2000 professional was a great OS at the time. We used a lot of these computers at the office I worked at and really liked these instead of using windows 95.

[@HardwareHaven]

That’s awesome! And yeah, IDE seems to be a pain haha

[@otter-pro]

We call it Smoke Testing. We just power it on, and see if it turns on successfully or if it blows up and starts smoking. Usually it won't start a fire, but it's scary as heck sometimes. The old PSU typically will likely have bad or leaking caps so I'm leery when handling anything over 20 years old. EDIT: if the PSU is over 20 years old, and it's a generic no-name brand, and it's never been tested, I'd skip the smoke test completely. Just toss it out in the trash, and just use a good psu on hand. Don't take any chance for any further damage, especially to motherboard and other components.

[@andygozzo72]

actually i'd say some later psus were worse, 'capacitor plague' very late 90/2000s ones, all my really old earlier 90s pc psus have been ok, except one where the mains suppressor cap blew up (yes, a RIFA!)

[@andygozzo72]

its always a good idea to test any psu of unknown state on a dummy load and measure voltages before letting it loose on the machine itself

[@CauseOfBSOD]

6:00 If you are talking about the motherboard power connector, the extra 4 pins of the 20 pin/24 pin connector are basically tacked on the side of the 20 pin connector (on my PSU they are a bit that is held in by the rest of the plug, is wired to the rest of the plug, and slides off if unused) and are for higher power loads If you are talking about the 4 pin/8 pin CPU power connector, I guess your hardware just has a low power draw and the CPU can get all it needs from the 20 pin/24 pin power connector

[@robbylatham]

He's talking about the CPU power 4-pin that usually plugs in at the top of the board, the system he's looking at predates those connectors. Also predates the 24-pin ATX power plug.

[@utterden]

Excellent learning experience for you. I'm a lot older than you and I can understand how excited you are finding out all this old/new stuff..

[@AliceC993]

Speaking from experience, be very cautious when mounting and removing coolers from Socket A (462) CPUs such as the Athlon XP in this system. The CPU die is exposed and thus very fragile; it's easy to crack the die at its corners if uneven pressure is applied. Have done it before on a Duron, so thankfully no great loss.

[@HardwareHaven]

Thanks for the heads up! Unfortunately I may have already swapped CPUs… but fortunately was aware and took precautions haha

[@RealJustPotato]

Hey Colten, I am pretty sure I know what happened I’ve got some experience with this, those old power supply’s always have a tiny red switch to change the voltage it will run on but if it’s switch is set wrong it does the exact same thing as what you describe it did a pop with a bit of smoke out the back where the fan is and that pop is a compasitor that exploded it self for protection because without it it would give a bigger explosion and could catch on fire. So if you ever have a device with a little red switch next to the power supply make sure it is set to the voltage that you have in your country Have a nice day, Just Potato

[@planetary2180]

Literally this.

[@morganpg]

at 3:20 we see the switch set to 115v so if he is in a country like me with 240v it would recieve more than double the expected voltage

[@HardwareHaven]

Appreciate it, but it was indeed set to the correct input voltage (115 for me)

[@planetary2180]

@@HardwareHaven who ever replaced the fan might've helped bring the power supply closer to death

[@majoryoshi]

my understanding with power supplies at this time is that the risk isn’t necessarily the power supply being set to 240V when plugged into a 120V plug, it’s more of the other way around (psu set to 120 plugged into a 240 outlet). if it’s plugged into a lower voltage outlet i imagine worst case scenario is that it wouldn’t turn on at all. i could be mistaken on all of this as even if i had a power supply handy to me to get that i’ve never liked the idea of potentially destructive testing

[@DIYDaveOK]

The AGP port was of the early advancements that became mainstream as the industry was rapidly realizing the limitations of the original PC ISA and PCI bus architecture. The speed of, well, everything was racing beyond those designs, along with the fact you typically had to *manually select" interrupts and memory locations for addon cards until the PCI bus really hit its stride and essentially everything became automated and mainstream. Looks like someone got a lot of use out of that box!

[@ExWEIMan]

Remember the video cards with the VESA Local Bus extension? I remember buying an IBM motherboard with one of their in-house 486s and buying a VESA Local Bus video card to fit into the board's slot. Figures I managed to buy a board that was incompatible with the video card and couldn't use my new card. I had to wait until I could afford to buy another motherboard with which the VESA card was compatible.

[@anothersiguy]

Wow haven’t seen SDRAM in awhile, some of the first PCs I got my hands on were like this, Win 95/98 machines with IDE everything. I still have a Pentium II on my desk from one of those machines. Looking forward to part 2!

[@Megatog615]

by the way you probably don't need to replace the CPU fan all you have to do is lift up the sticker on it and put some sewing machine oil into the hole to lubricate it. should fix it right up.

[@HardwareHaven]

Possibly! I already replaced it but haven’t recycled the old one yet. I’ll give it a shor

[@andygozzo72]

@@HardwareHaven may as well try, nothing to lose, i've resurrected a few doing it, it may not cure it totally but it'd be usable for testing purposes

[@1pcfred]

@@andygozzo72 yeah once a fan has done the rattle of death that means metal damage has occurred. What you're hearing is the metal on metal. But oil will still help it out temporarily. Then it'll float on a film of oil. It'll never be quite how it once was though. So oiling them is a kinda fix.

[@andygozzo72]

@@1pcfred thing is not always possible to replace the fan as may be a non standard size/shape and/or unobtainable, the one in a time/mitac laptop i have makes a good racket even though its been well lubricated! i cannot find a 'new' replacement, only old used ones which would likely be similar state

[@1pcfred]

@@andygozzo72 I stay away from laptops because they are difficult to work on. Plus I really do not need the portability they offer. PC tower master race!

[@GhostieXV]

for that fan you can put a little bit of sewing machine oil in the bearings and it will get rid of its noise being these were ball bearings with grease originally.

[@HighestRank]

NAH man all the little old cheap ones were sleeve bushings

[@1pcfred]

@@HighestRank oiling them can still help. I've had to dig holes in the plastic to get to the bearings sometimes though. Then I'll put a little bit of oil soaked rag in there and cover it up with duck tape. It lasts maybe 6 months before it needs another drop. Once the bearing has spun it's wrecked. Oil in them will quiet it up though. Really old fans had circlips and you could take them apart. Then they went to the press fit design.

[@BladeRunner21577]

First rule with old computers is "dust" it out. Spiders like to crawl inside and other such bugs short connections. The 4 pin 12v power connector was introduced with the Intel Pentium 4 processors, we called them the P4 connector because it was 4 pin and the P4 required it, the AMDs didnt need it. TNT2 wasnt bad for an entry level, better than onboard video but thats it. The HDD is contemporary to the other hardware but the CDROM drive is a little bargain basement for the rest of it, DVD and CDRW was more usual back then.

[@jb_meerkat]

Hey, I’d highly recommend downgrading to Windows 98 SE, you will have a much easier time getting retro games and hardware to work (Windows 2000 was based on Microsoft’s new NT operating system which came with a lot of problems for legacy support)

[@haydenc2742]

I slap on Damn Small Linux or SLAX...

[@Daniel-jt6jb]

That tower brings me back to when I got into computers. The good ol windows 98 days. We would mod one of the front drive bay covers and make our own fan controllers.

[@drakkon_sol]

Manoman does this bring back memories. Having grown up in the days of VIC20's & C64's, then buying My first computer in 2004, I have been exposed to a lot of stuff that would frankly blow your mind with how comparatively low spec it all is. I actually still have that first tower, and it still works. (XP, BABY!) I also have a number of towers from the mid 00's and early 10's. Your videos are fun to watch, bring back a bit of nostalgia for me, and it's also enjoyable to watch someone break into a hobby on YT that I can identify with, bcz the stuff you're doing is exactly how I got started with this, as a hobby of my own. Colton, do the things.

[@HardwareHaven]

I appreciate this a ton. ❤️

[@1pcfred]

I'm pretty sure I had that exact PC case at some time. The metal looks really familiar. My Athlon was only 800 MHz though.

[@SujanSarker]

im waiting for the Burned House Down

[@RuruFIN]

The 4-pin 12V connector was introduced when Pentium 4 hit the market in 2000. Even after that some low-end crap like that PSU didn't have that connector.

[@MrCed122]

Heh, I'm kinda proud I was able to correctly guess the machine specs just from look. The general design screamed late Athlon / early Athlon XP to me, a lot of prebuilts from that time used a TNT M64 for display and 20-40 GB was really common as an upgrade, I had (and still have, but upgraded) a machine that was pretty much the same. That was kinda funny to hear 'That's IDE, right?" and "I think it's DDR", I guess I just spent way too much time messing with machines from that era. I think I can guess a few of the problems you had : the GPU seems to be working fine, but crash the system after a while and / or have random artifacting (AGP GPUs are well-known for that, they're right in the capacitor plague), some cards don't work because the PSU you're using doesn't have -12V because it's to modern, the heatsink was a pain to remove because AMD used an horrible socket at the time, storage was hard because SATA to IDE is slow, PCI cards are annoying to configure and SD to IDE is really slow on NT OS and can cause corruptions... At least, they're all problems that I encountered and see pretty regularly online.

[@unperrier5998]

Wow "250 mm node"... it's amazing how fast litography has improved during the past 25 years :)

[@HardwareHaven]

It’s wild…

[@Pasi123]

Nice typo. 250mm chip would be HUGE

[@2009numan]

its actually amazing how many old PC do work

[@andygozzo72]

yep, i have ones much older still good!

[@Megatog615]

Tantalum? I hardly know him!

[@timeverhartofficial]

I used to red X bad drives. It would be wild if this is a pc I worked on years ago.

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

That sucks! Hope you are OK!

[@HardwareHaven]

All good!

[@tigheb5412]

god i remember findong a few old 90s pcs like this in my attic, one thing i did was i had the little red switch on the back set to 110 instead 0f 230 and the thing blew up like a flashbang. watching him be so confused by how the case comes apart and all the old connectors is hilarious

[@andygozzo72]

i've never come across one...yet... that you have to remove the front to remove the sides, all mine slide backwards !

[@eDoc2020]

@@andygozzo72 Swinging out is also super common for PC cases. A bit uncommon but far from rare are side panels which slide up after sliding the top backwards.

[@andygozzo72]

@@eDoc2020 i have an AT tower where the panel the motherboard screws to can swing out, after taking the combined sides and top off..

[@RuruFIN]

Also the Vanta-16 has 16MB of RAM.

[@CoreyBrasher]

Enlight 7237 case. Used a ton of these to make PC's for friend's and family back in the good old days. I still have parts here for one with a chrome 3.5" cage.

[@DJLKM1]

Socket 462 xp, sdram and a sweet tnt2 riva agp - what a nice little retro setup, if you can find some, you could get some 512Mb ram sticks for it, but they started becoming pretty rare and expensive some years ago. Being older and an old tech i identified all the parts in this system as soon as you opened the side panel :) I loved my xp 1.8ghz cpu back then. The nostalgia is too real.

[@idzan-private]

Ah, late 90's, early 00's PC's. Time when I got my first PC and well, used PC for a first time at old mom's office when I went there for few days in late 90's. That beige case era with CRT's (chonk at start when turning CRT's on is, moment of silence, perfection, right after floppy boot sounds, mmm, memories) and classic, and semi-regular Windows 98 SE or even Windows XP reinstall procedures, man, got me right into my early PC time. Afaik, this seems like OK AMD Build from back in the days, only thing that I will replace no matter what is PSU and later on install SATA SSD using IDE to SATA adapter, just to have some speed and to be safe that old drives wouldn't die. Edit: yes, that faulty PSU is actually ATX, most PSU from late 90's, early 00's up to early 2010's have 20+4 ATX main connector and lot of cheaper ones don't have 4/8-pin CPU connector as it wasn't needed in that time. Older ATX standard, it is prior to 2.x versions that it had 20+4 ATX main connector and most of them in those days didn't used CPU connectors.

[@HardwareHaven]

Thanks for the info!

[@idzan-private]

@@HardwareHaven nothing Colten, this is my early PC's time and know them pretty well as we had some older PC's even in our high school which me and few friends from class fixed, so insides of that old systems are nothing new for me :) That include my first 3 PC's as well, mostly AMD machines and one Pentium 4, early version of it with SDRAM sticks which I'm keeping for my personal old PC parts wall.

[@Rangerman9404]

My first computer was a Tandy 1000 TX. A 286, but it ran on an XT, not an AT bus, so it was essentially a turbo charged 8088. When I got it, it didn't even have a hard drive, it ran on 720k 3.5" floppy disks. I upgraded it to support aftermarket IDE hard drives using a card which had built in BIOS and installed a whopping 40MB hard drive and MS DOS 6.22. Windows 3.1 was out of the question, especially given its CGA graphics, but it (sorta) could run Windows 3.0

[@matthewday7565]

There is no 100MHz base Athlon XP (other than low voltage models), so it's probably meant to be 133 x 11, or a 1300MHz "1700+" in AMD speak. Except the motherboard appears to be a KT133 chipset which was flawed and could not DO 133 Does not officially support Athlon XP, though some models and BIOS can run them, but not at full rated speed... FSB OC of 112 is reckoned to be solid, 120MHz is about the maximum that KT133 will tolerate. PS. If the board has a JP9/10 jumper above the floppy cable connector, and a VT8363A chipset, then it is a later KT133A model with support for 133MHz base (aka 266 FSB) - The Athlon is designed for DDR, but you need a later and better chipset

[@HardwareHaven]

Yep. I figure out the FSB in part 2 *spoiler*

[@ewasteredux]

This is really fun because I did a build in this exact case back in the 90's. Digital archaeology in action!

[@mar4kl]

Nice video. I haven't been following your channel (but I just subscribed 😊), but if you're doing hardware vids, it's definitely a good idea to educate yourself as to where all the modern PC goodies you know and love got their start. Here are a few points that I didn't see among the other comments: - Case elements: Yes, the cases we had back in the 1990s had a lot more fasteners than modern ones, required you to wield the ol' screwdriver more often (and sometimes other tools as well) and required some creative thinking to figure out how they came apart and went back together. There was a lot of innovation going on. One thing you learned when working on different cases was that if there was an inaccessible screw somewhere, then you were probably looking at a module that was intended to be removed for installing components such as drives. - Blown capacitor in the PSU: Not an uncommon problem, and even back in the 1990s, when components were generally more expensive than they are today, most of us did not open up PSUs and attempt to fix them. There's high voltage going through the PSU, and if you don't know how it all goes together, it's best not to mess around with it. There's nothing wrong with opening one up and looking around for forensic purposes if you're careful, but unless you're trying to refurbish something vintage or unique (and the PSU that came in the system shown here doesn't qualify), it's best to just replace it. BTW, before powering up a system of this vintage, it's a good idea to visually inspect all the capacitors on the motherboard. Failed, leaking capacitors on motherboards can make it fail to turn on or pass the POST, and will make it unstable even if it does pass POST. Leaking capacitors are common on motherboards that old, and they're even more common on motherboards from 2000-2009. While you're looking at the capacitors, also have a look at the RTC battery. Some motherboards from the 1990s still had soldered-in NiCd RTC batteries, which are known to leak and damage surrounding components and PCB tracers. - 3 RAM slots: Yup, dual channel wasn't a thing yet. - Stray markings ("Good Power" on PSU, "X" on hard drive) were a pretty common sign that the computer had either been assembled by an enthusiast who was juggling a lot of parts or had been to a repair or refurb shop. The markings typically meant that a component had been checked out and was OK to use, although, as you saw, there was no standard for them. It would have been very strange for someone to remove a hard drive, confirm that it was bad, then mark it with a red X and put it back in the computer, especially given how involved it was to take that particular hard drive out. - I was pleasantly surprised that the video output from that computer worked with your modern, large, wide-screen monitor. Video hardware from that era was mostly made for CRTs with relatively low refresh rates and resolutions and 4:3 aspect ratios. Some video drivers of the era would fail when connected to any flat panel monitor, causing badly distorted video output on the screen in 16 or fewer colors. I'm not at all surprised that it wouldn't work with your video capture system. - Windows 2000 was not a common choice of OS for a custom built computer of that time period, partly due to its cost and partly because it didn't work well with games and other software that a home computer user was likely to run. Most companies stuck with name brand PCs for a more consistent experience and better tech support.

[@littlewillie65]

Oh you sweet innocent child... You've probably learned already, but -- The Vanta is a Riva TNT Vanta card by nVidia. Athlon XP need cooling, but you must be careful when installing the heatsink -- I have cracked more Athlon XP cores than I care to remember. Also, the dead XP's tend to take out motherboards when they die, do be careful. A more size appropriate hard drive for that era would probably be 3.2, or 4.3 Gb. A have a VHS tape rack that I repurposed into power supply storage. There are dozens of ATX power supplies, as well a a number of AT supplies. I have boxes of motherboards that probably work (as well as a box of dead ones) - the oldest being 80486 boards (at least 2 work - at least they did last earlier this year when I tested some of them). The first computer I built myself was a Cyrix 486DX-40 at least 30 years ago. I inadvertently killed that one when a static discharge entered the system through the cable going to my video capture card. I'd ordered a new motherboard and was waiting for it to arrive -- instead my daughter did. Yes - I am old....

[@jeremywiginton2502]

I loved that chassis. The good old Enlight EN-7237.

[@dab42bridges80]

I have non-fond memories of working on PCs like that back in the day. The IRQ nightmares of tryingg to get CDROMs and audio cards to play nice with each other and other totally non-PNP components, ridiculously high prices of RAM and hard drives, constant Windows crashes, etc. etc. Younger people have no idea how much easier things are now.

[@waynerowlinson6177]

I love seeing your enthusiasm for this older system. It does make me feel old though. I've been working on systems since the 386/DOS days, and comparatively this is a new system. I owned several computers in the same range as this one. When my kids were younger, their gaming PC's were spec'd out similarly, although the Vanta graphics card would have been a no go. I still have a few old AGP video cards and recently built a Pentium 4 retro gaming machine with an ATI Radeon 9800XT. I would have rather used one of my Athlon XP's, but gave them all away as they were retired from my household. Wish I had them all back to play with now.

[@HardwareHaven]

I got a Radeon 9600xt for part two, which seemed solid. The higher end stuff is still really pricey haha. And I can possibly send out an athlon if you’d like one. I have two now and ones just on a shelf for display

[@waynerowlinson6177]

@@HardwareHaven The 9600xt is a decent card as well. Thank you for the offer of the Athlon. That is extremely kind of you. I have a few CPU's still, but gave away the systems as they were replaced by newer ones. I still had a couple motherboards up until a couple of years ago but gave them away as well. The Pentium 4 is just fine, but I never owned one back in the day. My first computer was a 386 AMD, My second one a 486 AMD, then.... (It keeps on going). I think I've purchased 1 brand new Cyrix and 1 brand new Intel in the PC era. The only time it was truly a mistake was during the last FX period. I had an FX-4100 and still have FX-8350 I use.

[@Phil-D83]

I recall working on 486s. This is rather modern by those standards.

[@yrralsiwel9616]

I would just like to say I got been listening to you into of your videos and that start up fan brings back memories. Thanks

[@HardwareHaven]

Glad to hear it!

[@Floren_Andro]

If it seems old on PC to you... My beginnings in computing were with computers with processors between 1 and 4 megahertz... yes, you read correctly, Mhz, NOT Ghz and with between 1024 and 65636 bytes of memory. (between 1 and 64k). The programs loaded from cassettes. I've laughed a lot seeing your discoveries about ancient technology... and they have made me remember how old I already am in these subjects :P Funny video ;)

[@norndev]

I love these old school cases for mods

[@jonsmith5087]

SDRAM - 2 x 128mb sticks your in the 1990s man- this is so funny to watch

[@HardwareHaven]

Hahaha glad you think so

[@whoisev]

This video was so good! I can’t wait for part 2.

[@1pcfred]

I'm impressed the PC found the keyboard on USB. I was not expecting that. I guess 1999 wasn't that long ago though. What's 24 years?

[@vojtechadame5860]

I have the same motherboard, my is just rebranded for a OEM system builder Shuttle. This is a socket 462/A motherboard for AMD Athlon/Duron/Athlon XP CPUs, it supports CPUs up to Thoroughbred B Athlon XPs. These old socket 462 motherboards consume most of their power from 5V rail, so be careful with using a modern PSU on this thing, since they have very weak 5V rails.

[@semmh_2705]

3:35 instantly made me give this vid a like

[@CauseOfBSOD]

9:32 if one cable connects to up to 2 drives, and has a ton of wires, its probably parallel ATA (aka IDE)

[@patricktrakzel9657]

On the XP processors are little gold dots L1 to L4. If I remember correctly if you connect dots 3 and 4 of L2 ( check it on the internet though, it was a long time ago ) if they are not already connected ) with a pencil ( conducts electricity ). (If the dots are already connected you have an unlocked processor.) With that you unlock the multiplier ( it is an 1.100, so the multiplier now is 11 running at 100 Mhz Front Side Bus/ 11 X 100= 1.100 ). With a bit of luck you can change the multiplier in the BIOS to 11,5 or 12. It also depends on the silicon lotery. I had a Duron 800 and I could change the multiplier to 8,5 ( so it became a 850 ) and I could change the FSB to 103 ( that also changes the SD RAM speed ) so at the end it ran at 875.5 Mhz ( 103 X 8,5 ). Or I could run it at FSB 105 with a multiplier of 8 ( 840 ). A free upgrade that is called overclocking. Have fun with the system. And looking forward to your next video.

[@LionWithTheLamb]

TNT2 M64 Vanta is a common low spec'd graphics card. The TNT was reduced with 1/2 the memory bandwidth from 128bit to 64bit for the M64, then the Vanta lowers the Mhz of the card and the memory speed and amount. A TNT2 or variant could come with up to 32MB memory. The best TNT2 would be The TNT2 ULTRA 32MB. Creative Labs even had a horrible software wrapper to allow you to run Glide games (kind of).

[@MarcosCodas]

Graphics department is on fire!

[@charleswheatcroft]

The first PC I used at work was a 286 with a 20Mb (yes really!) hard drive. That was in about 1994 and the tech was second hand and ready for the bin. Those were dark days...

[@peterjantzer4767]

Ah youth. At 67 I can't begin to estimate how many of this generation of PC I"ve built over the years. A solid "A" for effort on the video though.

[@qwertykeyboard5901]

My oldest computer is probably my VTECH Precomputer 1000. 1990! It's basically an 8 bit home micro.

[@jumpmaster5279]

Second 🥈 59 secs Seeing this stuff makes me feel strange, since i never saw this kind of pc and never got the opportunity to see a ide hhd

[@BenCos2018]

Lol not sure how I didn't see your comment before

[@HardwareHaven]

Yeah it’s interesting for sure haha

[@oddball119]

I recently came back to this channel and oh my gosh I forgot how good the music is.

[@HardwareHaven]

Welcome back haha

[@dragonrider6875]

I have had the same thing happen. I was quite lucky and missed the 2nd/3rd degree burns. I flipped the power switch and it exploded shooting fire out of it! It was a small form factor IBM workgroup server back in the early 2000's. I was using ghost and getting the server a 20 workstations ready to put into a bank branch.

[@sync1563]

Yay! New video!

[@Pasi123]

Nice Enlight PC case

[@Nikkerston]

how perfect. i was doing stuff with a Windows 2000 VM when you booted up this old machine with an XP era CPU i guess and it booted to Windows 2000

[@coolduder1001]

I'm not shocked at all, it looks like the film cap blew which is pretty normal for old power supplies of any type. Low chance of it causing a full on fire, it's kinda like a dangerous fuse.

[@andygozzo72]

poly/film caps rarely give trouble in my experience, if it was a paper based RIFA, wouldnt be surprised 😉

[@frozendude707]

9:28 Those look like UATA cables, they are backwards compatible with IDE, but you cannot run UATA reliably over a normal IDE cable.

[@kingneutron1]

Good job, I was expecting it to be a crappy K6 and you got an Athlon :) Those 52x cdrom drives were garbage tho, I had a library audio cd EXPLODE in one! You might be able to run some kind of Linux on it but 256MB of RAM might be a limiting factor

[@davidthomspson9771]

This was standard back in the day....1990ish?? I remembered having to get new Voodoo video card just to play Doom2 and Quake

[@laynix964]

That was the case I used when I built my first PC in the 90s.

[@Cyber_Akuma]

As someone whose first PC was from the mid-90s, I admit I caught myself yelling at the screen about some of the things he screwed up at first. It really was a different time, RAM not needing to match (Unless you had RDRAM...), no CPU power, those awful IDE cables and their two channels, pre-DDR RAM, how small and simple those CPU coolers used to be, the floppy power connector that was easy to accidently plug in backwards and fry it... It was funny seeing "Y2K" settings in the BIOS.

[@eDoc2020]

Before DIMMs were used for RAM SIMMs were common. These often needed to be used in pairs (sometimes sets of four) to match the data bus width or your system just wouldn't work.

[@AngstyBiscuit]

10:39 i had an old hdd that had identical "x" on it and it was working just fine

[@NSHG]

ECS K7VZA. Neat lil' KT133A board once recapped - it ain't no ABIT KT7A levels of great but it is quick and stable once freshly recapped. I have self-recapped mine last year and it's been chugging great with an XP 1700+.

[@soldiersvejk2053]

I do not remember a chipset that supports Athlon XP and SD ram. The CPU was likely upgraded already and thus much newer than other opponents.

[@DarkDragonEWA]

Damn, I was guessing a socket 7 system from the thumbnail. Really unusual to see it running Windows 2000.

[@simonsonjh]

Well, I remember when computers like that were a big improvement over previous ones. I started working on computers before they were small enough to pick up. Oh, except I could lift the common slide rule. Realize humans lived over 100,000 years before kids started saying they could only accept the latest phone. I was once given a copy of Windows 2000 by Microsoft for going there to participate in some user testing. I like W2000; and it was the last Windows without any copy protection. I liked the AMD Athlon processor too; it was one of the first that was easy to overclock.

[@Rangerman9404]

The early ATX supplies didn't need the 4 pin CPU connectors, because the early chips didn't need it

[@FlammableElectronics]

6:23 Yes you have to be extremely careful when opening one up. The caps can really give a shock. Use a screwdriver to discharge them. I am bit concerned since you opened it just after powering it but for some reason, I opened up a similar psu once to get it's inductors for a different project, no fan spin when given power and initiated power on in 20 pin atx. I opened it up and the caps were oddly not charged. Anyways I recommend discharging them because they hold a nasty shock. Edit: Then it's fine after a few days the bleeder resistor might slowly discharge thr cap

[@HardwareHaven]

Yes, I usually discharge and check them with a mm, however I wasn’t planning to go poking around way too much and it had been sitting idle for about a week. Probably still should’ve checked them. I’m here though haha

[@FlammableElectronics]

@@HardwareHaven Well from the pics if I remember, it's a toasted diode/resistor I think. Still won't recommend poking around since I think the guy who replaced the fan, messed up and made the diode protect everything by sacrificing itself. Btw I got inductors, 3 (I think 4) transformers, those HUUGE caps, also some MKP Type capacitor, ac input connector thingy, sATA Power cables(I am making a 12v powered sATA to usb for 3.5 inch desktop drives from a sATA power cable, a old 2.5 inch usb powered sATA to USB. I did some soldering to some how hook up the cables for 3.3 and 5 from usb, 12v from external psu. It worked Although very sketchy.

[@andygozzo72]

that daughter board is likely for the 'standby' 5v supply, its 'chopper' chip has likely shorted and blown a series resistor or fuse, without knowing what the blown parts were, no real chance of repairing, so best replaced with known good psu...

[@andygozzo72]

you 'may' find internal schematic info on the net if you google its details,

[@max_uaminecraft1827]

YESS RETRO PC CONTENT ON Hh WOOO

[@sageosaka]

Man this brings back some memories. Thanks so much for making this video and also for being excited for this old tech :D

[@SB-qm5wg]

I like the older cases. More 5.25 bays for swap-trays.

[@1pcfred]

It is hard to get a good PC case today. I am not a fan of the new cases with no external drive bays.

[@paulstubbs7678]

Reminds me of an old PC I tried to purposely destroy, it was going into the bin, so why not have some jolly's along the way. I live in 240V land, so the power supply selector should be on 240, so I put it into suicide mode, 115, and turned it on, Darn, no Kaboom. It just took it, although if I'd waited it would surely have died. However I was impatient so I finished it off by other means.

[@GuardianSpeed]

5:07 I think the original owner was like "yeahh who in the right mind would see this anyway"

[@1pcfred]

It was probably good when they wrote it.

[@GendoPrime]

Good ol' Socket A, the first systems I ever built were were based on an Athlon XP 2200+ running at 1.73ghz. This things were very dependent on 5v power, usually liking over 25a on that rail. These CPUs were very easy to OC but very hard to keep cool at the time.

[@FredsTech1]

I enjoyed watching this! I started with computers a bit earlier then that computer ;)

[@Romek_S]

Oh, this brings so many memories from times when everything was better (and I was so much younger ;D

[@ReiMalchiel]

that would be a good starting point to build retro look sleeper PC

[@eDoc2020]

I actually have a system where somebody did just that with the exact same case. Except i5-3350p and HD4670 maybe doesn't qualify a sleeper.

[@brentonhumphries2134]

lol at school in the 90s people used to put the power supply on the 110v US voltage (I'm in Australia) 240v next kid to turn computer on BOOM i helped replaced heaps of power supply's in the end we glued the switch to 240V

[@1pcfred]

I wonder how many people know what that switch actually does? That's why there's two bulks caps in the input side. In 110V they're wired as a voltage doubler. A SMPS trades high voltage and low current for low voltage at high current. So it just works better with even higher voltage on the input side. They do it all to avoid having to use a huge iron core step down transformer. BTW US single phase is 240VAC we just center tap it. That makes common circuits 120VAC. We still have 240VAC though. We only use that for larger appliances.

[@youzernejm]

That Athlon you've got there is underclocked. Should be Athlon XP 1700+ at 1466MHz or something like that, all of them were with 133MHz (doubles to 266) fsb, not 100.

[@kokodin5895]

looks like that one time students at school i work at set power suply to 11v and pluged it in to 230V socket popcorn counds and standby power suply ded also old atx 1.0 standard powers cpu from 5v directly on 20 pin plug not separate 12v line, but any new power suply would work if it suply enough amps on 5v line

[@LeoLijo]

😂 Haha nice render btw i dissasembeled some even older pcs with baby at motherboards

[@HardwareHaven]

Thanks haha

[@Steven_VE9SY]

Started with 8 bit machines. Worked for a company that wrote CPM programs for Horse race tracks. Back in the ""Micro computer days!!!!!" First DOS machine was a whopping 4MHZ with 16k of memory! Then just about every revision up till now! I working for quite some time doing networking, were you had to map out the IRQ's on every machine you added to make sure the network cards IRQ did not interfere.

[@HardwareHaven]

Dang that’s crazy

[@davidg5898]

Welcome to early 2000s computing! My guess on your PSU is that a ceramic capacitor failed into a short which exploded that resistor. There's a ceramic cap (between a big grayish resistor and a diode) that's darker/shinier than it should be and appears to have edge defects. That's probably your main culprit. Why it failed, though, is anyone's guess -- thermal stress, leakage, manufacturing defect, etc. I, too, had a PSU "pop!" and shoot flame out the back. Absolutely terrifying. At the time, it felt exactly like your dramatic reenactment! Mine was due to capacitor plague (look it up, it was a major problem back then but it affected electrolytic capacitors, not ceramic). That crazy POST screen with all of the device info? That's a holdover from the generations before that system, when we had to manually manage I/O addresses and IRQs (and sometimes DMAs) to avoid conflicting peripherals. PnP auto-configuration was mature enough by 2000 that the display was rarely relevant anymore. But most BIOS manufacturers just didn't feel any pressing need to change the look until about 10-ish years ago.

[@andygozzo72]

ceramic caps are usually very reliable, although can occur, i've only had 2 short in 30+years of 'tinkering' .. tantalums are notorious for it but never had one go bad myself.....yet.... i'd say more likely the 'chopper' chip shorted and it blew some series component, maybe a resistor or resistor sized fuse..

[@deterdamel7380]

@@andygozzo72 Tantal caps inside a noname PSU? I don't think so..

[@mar4kl]

Eh, this is nothing. For a real fireworks show, you need to see a big UPS fail! Back in 2005 or 2006, I sent one of those 3000VA/30 amp APC Smart-UPS bad boys out for refurbishing, and apparently the company that did the work missed something. When I got it back, I plugged it in, turned it on and it failed again with a very loud POP and an impressive shower of sparks. It was a good thing I thought to test it before plugging the servers back into it. I never sent another UPS out for repair; I just replaced them after that incident. But I was also usually dealing with much less expensive, lower power battery backups, and when those need more than a simple battery replacement, it's usually time to just recycle them.

[@andygozzo72]

@@deterdamel7380 tants on motherboards 😉, especially older IBM ones

[@deterdamel7380]

@@andygozzo72 Yes, on the motherboard, but not inside the PSU.

[@Genokiller1989]

My first PC was a windows 95 OS AMD and the best upgrade I did for it was went 120MB to 256 MB of ram threw a GeForce MX440 with 256 MB of Graphics Memory on board 😮 I upgraded from the graphics card that was in this video the Riva vanta TNT2

[@Tehzii]

Dual channel had three slots. Remeber max ram in the 9x days was capped to 756 unless you ran a really clean systen. Antime after the 756 you could interfer with system interupts. Dual channel used left slot as one and the 2 right slots as the other. So calling it a1 with b1+b2. The a and b sides had to be equal to run in dual. Widows Millennia was a 9x mess some due to the release dates think Millinnia addition is 2000. 2000 was NTFS and you didnt have those interrupt issues with ram limits 9x systems had. I do remeber you had to add MSCONFIG to 2000. I dont remeber why though. Finially yea as it has been said already 5 volt was you msin power back then. 30-35 amps on 5v was my go to back then for Overclocking those Mobile Barton cores. Bartons didnt come along until a bit later than that SD rig you have there. Anyway thanks for the memories.

[@blakecasimir]

The CPU multiplier might not be set correctly. Athlons running around 1 GHz weren't the "XP" variety, rather the original range of Athlon CPUs. The CMOS battery probably died and the bios didn't remember what the correct multiplier settings are for the CPU. You should investigate this as it's more likely to be 1.8 GHz or higher.

[@HardwareHaven]

It’s 1.7. I figured out the FSB in part 2 haha

[@1pcfred]

Original Athlons were called thunderbirds.

[@JaikrishnaAdithya]

Waiting for the follow up video!!! Also I hope you are okay.

[@HardwareHaven]

I’m all good haha

[@ATSNorthernMI]

Its all metal, its not going to instantly burn your house down. I've been on service calls where the owner wanted me to come over and bring back up their very first PC and have bad caps exploding on us when we plugged it in. Seen magic smoke just whirling out and the breaker or GFCI pops and it becomes less dramatic and me feeling so bad, I never charge them for the service call.

[@1pcfred]

You may want to find out how bulb limiters work. It'll make initial power ups less dramatic.

[@ATSNorthernMI]

@@1pcfred I watch Shango066 and learned about the dim bulb and learned a lot watching his channel. Thanks for the advice. Good tip to know.

[@1pcfred]

@@ATSNorthernMI there's a channel here called learn electronics repair where a guy gets a lot of car boot sale PCs and refreshes them. He has a fairly good success rate getting them going again. He uses a current limiting bulb and he checks for shorts before he powers them up.

[@peterjantzer4767]

Oh, by the way. For that little power supply fart, the term is "spitzinsparkin".

[@acollins319]

Keep up the good work. I remember my first build was a 75mhz processor with 4mb ram. That was many years ago lol.

[@LandonHalley]

Yay new hardware haven video (Im later this time than I was last time )