This $30 Compaq Presario PC from 1999 Drove Me Crazy! (SuperDisk drive?!)

[@steventechno]

I miss those days. I was a kid when machines like this came out and gaming was such a major focus back then to where I associated PCs with gaming. Still do!

[@geoffreyreuther5260]

"I know, I have another Compaq, please don't unsubscribe!" Me, coming from the classic PC KZbinrs: Please tell me more!

[@jasonespino2255]

I had this same PC back in '98 when I started college. Having a single mom giving me this "tool" as an investment for my education is something I'll never forget (since these machines were expensive as hell at the time). Thanks for the uploading this video, it brought beautiful and nostalgic memories. Greetings from Puerto Rico!

[@CindyHuskyGirl]

You look like offbrand vsauce in the thumbnail and i love it

[@KomradeMikhail]

I still put LS-120 SuperDrives in many of my retro builds... They were better than Zip in every way. Natively supported by most PC BIOS. As far back as some i486 motherboards, all the way up to intel Haswell, and possibly beyond. Bootable. No drivers required. No software required. Came in either IDE or SCSI internally. USB, Parallel, or SCSI externally. Cracking open an external enclosure nabs you an internal drive. They read/write regular floppies at faster speeds than normal floppy drives. No Click-Of-Death. Etc. Etc...

[@IOSam]

These things were indeed packed with very interesting tech for the time! They were a bit slower than Zip Drives, but far more versatile.

[@CyclonesWorld]

Wow this is bringing back memories. I had the 5030 when I was a kid.

[@KayakTN]

I remember when we were selling those at Best Buy. We got a shipment that had a lot of bad hard disks.

[@Mac84]

I'm very surprised my hard drive lasted long enough to boot... even if I was missing the SuperDisk drive :(

[@CodingItWrong]

I'm relatively new to vintage computers but still, that is definitely the scariest sounding hard drive I've ever heard. The pinging noise!!

[@agy234]

Is it a quantum fireball?

[@BigBadBench]

“Please don’t unsubscribe” 😂 I’m sorry the proper drive wasn’t in there. That would have been a nice find.

[@TheOriginalCollectorA1303]

Another Compaq? Awesome! I love the Y2K design combined with the beige. This era of PC is always cool, sure they might not be the greatest, but Windows 98 with a machine like this is peak Windows! Sorry that you didn’t get the SuperDisk, I definitely know how it is when things do go as intended. On the bright side, now you’ve got another Compaq from the lineup and it’s awesome to see the stickers still on the case! Great video!

[@issacdickinson]

That is not a proprietary port but an "industry standard" DFP - Digital Flat Panel port. It was not widely used and disappeared without much fanfare. I recall seeing them a few times when they were still a new technology back in the day. You can read about it on Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_Digital_Flat_Panel

[@cleanycloth]

I got lucky on eBay and bought a brand new, IBM sealed, Ultrabay 2000 (iirc?) LS120 drive. Reads standard disks way faster! The included disk still works too ^^

[@precisionxt]

I have one of these with all original hardware, including the SuperDisk that I picked up from someone on Freecycle. The case is absolutely a pain to remove and reassemble, however, I do like the way it looks. Very unique. I am kicking myself for breaking the front door hinges. I love that you found one with the original stickers!

[@Mac84]

Nice! Yeah the one I have with the Zip drive - the door won’t stay closed anymore, aging plastics are SO fun. Hopefully with some of the closeups someone can recreate the stickers haha.

[@johnmay4803]

ive just found your channal and i have 2 say i love it! you and adrians basment are the best

[@rottmanthan]

as for desktops of that era i had an hp mini tower with win 98 and a compaq similar to that with win 98se. also a no name case with win 98, that one i had added memory, cd burner with nero express & a network card. i got rid of all those but wish i still had a win 98 machine for some games i have. as for older computers i currently have seven 8 bit machines from 80 to 86, one of them i dont usually count as its pretty much just a smaller version of one of the others.

[@jack68k]

Best. Thumbnail. Ever.

[@ReinMixTape]

I've found the idea of taking one of these old retro cases covered in official stickers... and putting modern parts into as a fun project idea / sleeper computer. Would fit right into a retro themed room.

[@orenraveh1162]

Im so happy mac 84 is getting into pcs :)

[@sugargliderdude]

pretty sure you could not get 52x speed optical drives in 1999, its definetly a upgrade

[@georgwalt7978]

I got a confirmed Nov 2000 Production Date, youre incorrect

[@asdoesstuff]

Used to have one of these, Intel PIII 500mhz version with 20gb HDD. Used to host a FTP server on my really awesome cable modem back in the day :) Good memories, it was also my first PC with a DVD drive! Twas a beast back in the day.

[@CantankerousDave]

I still have my Creative DXR2 DVD drive and decoder board sitting in a retro system. People don’t believe you when you tell them that computers weren’t powerful enough to decode mpeg and mpeg2 video on their own back then and needed a specialized card for to play it back.

[@RowanHawkins]

I like the shorter format. I just cant manage your regular vids on my data budget. up to about 30mins i can pull down to my phone and watch offline away from wifi.

[@cjhawk67]

I have this exact model minus the stickers with its original LS-120 drive. It's very cool it has a micro switch for the eject button so doesnt pop out when a disk is inserted and ejects floppy disks like a Mac. Mine also came loaded with 384mb ram and a 333mhz AMD K6 I replaced with a 500mhz K6-2+ running at 600mhz.

[@douwewelling4429]

Get a brush for dust cleaning. Works great !! Love the video!!

[@iiidiy]

That thumbnail! Then "please don't unsubscribe" in the first 10 seconds, hahaha!

[@RobertKliethermes]

I have the same PC but in the 5190 model. All original parts and runs great... for now.

[@IOSam]

Other than the possibility of a failed super-drive that had to be replaced, there is also the chance someone spotted it, realized its value, and removed it to sell it on its own. Considering the going rate for LS-120 drives (in good working condition) on eBay lately, the super-drive alone could be worth more than the rest of the machine combined... So, I wouldn't be surprised if someone took it out before dumping the PC on a thrift store. But it's still a cool little "bubble" PC on its own nevertheless!

[@Mac84]

This was sold locally by the original owner. They said they found in it their basement and needed it gone. So I'd assume any upgrades / modifications were done ages ago. I remember picking up a new-in-box SuperDisk drive for $1 a few years back, so the prices have gone way up since then. Sadly that drive didn't work.

[@IOSam]

​@@Mac84Yeah, it's just crazy how the prices for basically any type of "vintage" removable drives/media exploded in the last couple of years... Not uncommon to see NOS LS-120 drives on eBay for $100 and up nowadays.

[@ghinckley68]

Failed that drive did not work new out of the box. I had 90 of those bastards not one of those drives worked.

[@Mirra2003-f9s]

Those old Compaq and HP systems really had a weird taste in design when they created those bubble like systems...i mean the business grade Compaq and HPs looked fine but those home grade ones look like they're about to explode. Also i'm amazed it even has front USB ports because Windows 98 was really atrocious when it came to usb stick drivers....mine wouldn't recognize any flash drive without installing a driver or inserting the Windows 98 disc :D

[@WelcomeToMarkintosh]

HEY-where's the HAMMER? I wanted to see a HAMMER!!!! lol! Great video, Steve!

[@Win98-f8p]

I FOUND THE SAME ONE AT AN ESTATE SALE WITH THE MONITOR AND SPEAKERS AND TOWER FOR $5

[@Win98-f8p]

I need help trying to find a restore cd for a compaq persario 6000 desktop (not v6000 laptop)

[@turbinatearc7478]

11:59 - What was in the Recycling Bin? Obviously, you didn’t want to show it, because of the KZbin Police.

[@yueibm]

I just picked one up last week because of the SuperDisk built in! The only way I noticed it was it had the SuperDisk logo on the drive flap. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet.

[@Mac84]

Nice! Yeah I should have looked for that, but it was hard to tell in the photo on the online listing. Thankfully it was only $30 😅 I hope yours works!

[@yueibm]

@@Mac84 I would've assumed it had a SuperDisk drive in it, too, with the prominent stickers! I think I paid about the same but picked up locally. Your tower is in much better shape, let me know if you'd like to swap 3.5" drives!

[@michaelturner2806]

In case you didn't know, an easy way to spot the difference between an LS120 and floppy internal drive is the interface. A floppy drive uses the narrower 34-pin floppy ribbon cable, whereas the SuperDisk would likely be 40-pin IDE, probably sharing the same cable as the optical drive.

[@Mac84]

Yep, I've owned a few SuperDisk drive models with the loog, but since this was listed with blurry photos online, I didn't have the chance to realize it was missing this it was too late.

[@stevencarlson5422]

this needs the video ram upgraded and could do some fun gaming on it also amazing that hard drive made it to windows, change to a solid state drive and have fun with it, also love that the stickers are still there so hard to find them like that anymore

[@Mac84]

I have the VRAM card, since I have two of these models now, it'll be interesting to do before/after comparisons with games. I have some CF adapters, so I'll probably put that in place of the HD.

[@arudanel5542]

Boy they weren't exactly great performers, but holy cow those old beige dumplings were built to last. Amazing how well those old junks worked, and often still do.

[@alanharkleroad4376]

I'm surprised the hard drive didn't give out. It sounded like it was on its last leg.

[@Mac84]

I’m very surprised it booted lol

[@songsan807]

The old days of Plug and Pray. I do love Windows 98 and kept using it until about a year after Win XP came out. Skip the Win ME nonsense. Got 2 of these Compaq systems from yard sales and just gutted them for parts to put into other computers. Love putting old games into these computers and relieve the golden days.

[@AliceC993]

I have a marginally newer machine than this that's still in the 5000 series but with the newer translucent plastic front, ironically it's my go-to Windows 98 machine. AMD Athlon 900, some sort of VIA chipset that I can't remember the name of, GeForce 6200, and its original 40 GB Maxtor hard drive that somehow still works. Really solid little machine, actually, it's remarkably stable. Never had a BSOD or otherwise.

[@Mac84]

Cool, I'm sure with a hard drive replacement this would be a great little early Windows system. As I hint in the video, I may set this up as a SCSI-enabled system to help archive some odd format media.

[@AliceC993]

@@Mac84 While I have no doubt the performance of a K6-2 would leave something to be desired, a machine like this should be more than capable of that task.

[@lftdblazer]

I still rock a Compaq 7ap195 with the 1ghz Athlon. Windows 98

[@AliceC993]

@@lftdblazer I used to have a 7000 series once upon a time as well - 7AP140. Sadly, that system is long gone at this point, the motherboard developed a number of bad caps and at the time I lacked the skills to be able to fix it. :(

[@95Comics]

I had this pc and ong the problems and glitches it had! Anything i tried to install on it caused it to meltdown!

[@DavidStahlOLDHAPPyMACs]

Steve I thought Retro Tech Chris Might have sent that to you he likes his compaqs he sent me one when I said that looks neat.he told me be careful what you wish for. and a week later it showed up. great video enjoy you machine

[@Jurtaani]

oh those old Compaq pc's were indeed fully featured. i mean there aren't many computers that came with build in Geiger counters. 8:06

[@imark7777777]

Oh yes that good old weird flat panel display connector. The two occasions I've seen while I do have to say they are nice to operate no thumbscrews just latching.

[@idahofur]

I can't remember if I looked this up. But I think all or most ls120 drives have the logo on the flap. So when I didn't see it. I was pretty sure it was not. Also something in the back of my head the super disk sticker would show up and yet not be installed. But who remembers 20 years ago.

[@HardDriveGuruOfficial]

I love that shirt!!!

[@nickolaswilcox425]

always fun to find the drives and media for obscure formats, ive had a stack of zip100 disks for awhile, but recently came into possession of a powerbook g3 that had hat its floppy drive swapped for a zip model and it works perfectly. i did have to track down a more conventional drive to go with it though for pc file transfer given that i dont have another zip drive... and the hdd might be failing, reloading the os without a floppy or cd drive doesnt sound fun

[@defconcitydotcom]

AHHHH THE SOUND THE HARD DRIVE MADE BOOTING!

[@Francisco-j1e]

I have very early childhood memories of this computer being like unreachable for me... i had dreams about it... like being so high in the shelf.

[@bahnstormer1]

My kindergarten teacher had one of these! Wow, the mems.

[@GarthBeagle]

But the good news.. you now have TWO Compaq Presarios! Though now I think about it, I suspect you have more than two..

[@Mac84]

*sweating nervously*

[@rndincircles]

I want it... I have fond memories of this, I worked for a small software company and used a farm of these to ingest data.

[@seanplace8192]

I have that same exact computer and I also swapped out the LS-120 with a standard floppy drive. The LS-120 didn't work. You can always tell them apart just by looking at which cable they use. LS-120's connect using IDE rather than the standard 34-pin floppy drive cables.

[@metazshanstark91]

LoL the hard drive sounds like a pinball machine LoL, everytime it made that ping sound, LoL bruh, your reactions are awesome.

[@AnthonyChopra]

i used to Delete the Breafcase back in win2000. My 1Tb NVME Ext Drive is like my digital Breafcase now

[@faceheadman]

holy crap that was the first pc my parents got that i was allowed to use! still have the crt it came with in my basement hah

[@realchef_tom]

Can confirm, that is NOT the original CD Drive. I had that exact model in college. I was so excited for the SuperDisk drive, but I should have gone with the Zip drive option. I swapped out the modem for an ATI All-In-Wonder so I could have TV on my screen, and my dorm had ethernet. I ran Windows NT 4 on it, and it didn't like the superdisk drive.

[@Mac84]

Yeah it’s clearly not the original optical drive, glad you shoved so many upgrades into your system!

[@onceagain77]

It's funny how no one took those stickers off.

[@sjgrall]

Factory SuperDisk drive? That’s something I’d never heard of before.

[@BilisNegra]

I actually have a Compaq machine of quite a smaller footprint in my storage space with one of those. I've never powered it on though, and don't have any Super Disk blanks anyway, but yes, that kind of system was a thing. As a matter of fact, some time ago I watched a video on a Thinkpad laptop that had one such a drive in it.

[@viralprimenetwork]

Awesome💖💖👍👍

[@cabbitkisser2620]

i had the same kind of compaq. but mine had an intel 300mhz cpu & a 8gb hdd. i bought mine thru radio shack.

[@ebodaman]

PC of my high school years

[@macretro_techvintage]

Steve, soon, your channel become : MacPC84 ?! ;)

[@minty_Joe]

Oh geez. That model case is now giving me flashbacks. They were the most WORSE to work on.

[@bigbadhodad3894]

Ls120 drives were great but too much humidity or damp could kill them, that is what happened to mine.

[@CanadianRetro]

Man bummer that super disk was not in there. What a bummer.

[@KzintiCV]

Now I just really want to know what was in the spicy recycle bin, even if I'm sure it was just boring documents.

[@Mac84]

I’ll just say there was a bunch of bookmarks and HTML files related to NSFW material.

[@KzintiCV]

@@Mac84 Oh ho! So genuinely spicy! I wonder if all the different Juno setups was from someone thinking that would hide their history.

[@rutgerjonaker5422]

Windows85 😄

[@i80386sx]

I’m surprised that came with a Seagate. I thought those were Quantum BigFoot country.

[@Mac84]

Yeah, the other model I have had a Bigfoot. But maybe it was replaced, who knows what happened before I got my hands on it… apparently whoever had it before me did their own upgrades - like the CD drive and floppy.

[@kyleschmidt2598]

Had one of these but never knew it had superdisk in like '01 it was slow AF then and smelt kinda burnt like even back then though it was a p2 at 233 MHz forget ram think 128

[@enzofitzhume7320]

👍👍

[@drumboy02]

I got one that looks just like this a few years ago but I could have sworn it had an s3 graphics chip

[@Mac84]

They made tons of very similar models with confusingly similar model numbers and different specs. 😅

[@jdmcs]

Now, now Steve, it said it was a PC... with 200% Faster Graphics* (*as compared to another Compaq Presario model from a previous year and a cherry-picked benchmark), Commanding Power* (*as long as you're referring to its use of line power from your outlet), Tomorrow's Technology* (*at least as of tomorrow when this ad copy was written), Incredible Internet* (*Incredible Internet-brand ISP not available in all markets), SuperDrive* (*made you buy it!), and Creativity Action Center* (*if you're playing games maybe you won't read the marketing text as closely).** (**How well did my cynical disclaimers do to the real thing?)

[@Mac84]

Haha 😂 Guaranteed to work… when powered off!

[@vaelfonia]

Mmm, Compaq. Naughty PC, lying to you!

[@deechvogt1589]

First clue: the Superdisk uses IDE.

[@iSamYTBackup]

for $33 (150 romanian lei) i got an hp pavilion p6305it it has a.core i3 530 an ati radeon hd 4650 1gb gpu a 500gb wd hdd which i added a second hdd another 500gb and 4gb of ram which i upgradeed to 6gb and a wifi card which i disabled in the bios cuz it cut the gpu performance in half it's my main pc lol for $33 lol

[@JVHShack]

Fun fact: The internal Super Disk drives were IDE.

[@ericwood3709]

I went through two SuperDisk drives back in the day. They had nice translucent enclosures and went well with the Macs of the time, but they sure were a garbage product.

[@aenoymotors]

So where's the hammer?!

[@gsestream]

do you like big macs? :)

[@coryengel]

Who’s gonna tell him that’s not a Mac?

[@Pulverrostmannen]

I never had any good luck with older original Compaq computers in any way. They always had problems and hard ones at that too. the design is weird, the layout is weird, the formfactors are weird, the software is weird. it is almost like they had the express intention to make everything as strange and backwards as physically possible and also include the worst serviceability in the history of mankind with a touch of refined pure madness

[@ghinckley68]

and they worked for crap as well

[@Pulverrostmannen]

@@ghinckley68 very often yes

[@ghinckley68]

@@Pulverrostmannen I dreaded having to work on them, odd part is Asus actually made them for compaq. They were just awful.

[@Pulverrostmannen]

@@ghinckley68 tell me about it. I actually got so tired of troubleshooting a Compaq in the past so many times I got sick of it and actually gave this guy a better computer in the end just so I could have the pleasure to destroy the old one

[@azelusnova]

Handsome 😍

[@richardrios5276]

Those Presarios were the lowest point in Compaq consumer line of computers. No one wanted to work on those back in the day.

[@PKZAIT]

hard drive sound look like broken

[@mirrorcatz]

Al McWhiggin from Toy Story 2 really turned his life around, he no longer does evil stuff in his Al's Toy Barn, he no longer steals toys. He's now a retro computer nerd youtuber. Congratulations man, we all can change, it's never too late 😂.

[@Mac84]

I'm gonna resell this computer for big buck-buck-bucks!

[@ghinckley68]

They were crap in 97 they have to be even more crap now. They however did have an asus motherboard in them. Some of them had quataum bigfoots in them. They kinda half ass worked if you droped kicked them out of a window. I had a fleet of about 90 of them. Ten or so of them were always fubar. Do yourself a favor and deposit it in the nearest trash compactor and put it out of it misery.

[@timmooney7528]

The Superdisk drive was an IDE device. It also had a superdrive logo on the door.

[@stinkertonsden]

Not all of them had the Super Disk logo on the drive bay door. Retail yes, OEM for system integration/USB/parallel port or "smart bay" modules for laptops, no.

[@alaricjeard269]

Do you know you can just use a paint brush to easily clean a heatsink? That was so painfull to watch you "clean" it with q tips...

[@Mac84]

I filmed this in an afternoon and just used what I had sitting around. I’ve used paintbrushes before but didn’t have easy access to one. I honestly didn’t see the screws holding down the fan to the heat sink before I moment unscrewed them. Oops.

[@stinkertonsden]

Anyone else involuntarily cringe at the sound of the heads aggressively parking in the hard drive? I'm only at 8:21 and I can already tell it's an old WD Caviar drive. EDIT: Oh my, the longer the video plays the better it gets!! Juno and Juno Platinum auto dialers, Norton 2005, an HP Deskjet 710c desktop print monitoring agent, ooooh the nostalgia!!

[@THE_CARBON]

I got one for free at a garage sale

[@Miasmark]

once I saw the cable twist I knew it was not a superdisk. did not operate off of the normal connector.

[@sunandmoon9898]

I prefer your Mac videos a lot more.

[@Mac84]

Plenty more where those came from!

[@RowanHawkins]

You really should have separated the processor and heat sink after you took them out and refresh the heatsink compound before reassembling it unless you just skipped that step in editing. Back in the day we called them piss-ario because the budget ones were just junk. Back then I was working for a leasing company and we would get skids of Deskpro 3000 and 4000 off 3 year leases that we would resell to small business after refurbishing them.

[@Mac84]

There was no thermal compound installed on the CPU from the factory - for the time being I’ll leave it this way. This was the same for the other similar Compaq desktop. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but that’s just the way this particular unit is.

[@valentinoesposito3614]

That was my first computer I had