This computer was FREE in 1999 | eMachines eTower 533id

This computer is not the best and was a budget tower from 1999. But i find the context of why this computer exists to be interesting in its own right. In this video i restored an eMachines eTower 533id that i found on the side of the road and gave it a new life as part of the collection.
SPECS
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CPU: 533MHz Intel celeron
RAM: 64MB PC100
GPU: intel i742 4mb AGP integrated graphics
HDD: 40gb maxtor quick view | This computer had a 15gb HDD from the factory but when i found it it did not have a hard drive.
8x DVD-ROM drive
FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE
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2nd channel: / @yarpahk
Twitter: / ionic1k
All links: linktr.ee/ionic1k
============MUSIC==============
VECTOR GRAPHICS - DESTINE: soundcloud.com/vectorgraphics...
VECTOR GRAPHICS - ALBA83: soundcloud.com/vectorgraphics...
VECTOR GRAPHICS - DRAPES: soundcloud.com/vectorgraphics...

[@jimbozitron]

i love how astolfo just follows you in every video

[@spookynutsack]

arch linux user

[@_lun4r_]

@@spookynutsackfr he has an arch system in the background

[@iplyrunescape305]

Me with Mordred kicking his ass:

[@yueni_bizzare_simp]

A natural way of every software engineer. Some might not realize that even being software developers, but this is how it is. No matter what you do. Since you stepped to this field you will never go back.

[@spookynutsack]

@@yueni_bizzare_simp trans, in 20s

[@dusterpl6093]

"this computer is NEVER OBSOLETE" - i'm not so sure about that... also the fact that it still has all the stickers intact after so many years is simply incredible

[@Paradigmfusion]

They called it never obselete because they had a trade in program that you could send your computer at the end of your compuserve contract and they send you a new one if you renewed said contract. Now Compuserve was $24.95 a month for unlimited 56k dialup. factor that in over 2 years and you paid for that system and them some.

[@rustylasagna]

The stickers are also not torn or obscured in any way, which is pretty great.

[@BilisNegra]

The never obsolete thingy had to do with signing into a scheme to change your machine every couple of years for a new one.

[@ShawnColeman01]

My vape is faster than that computer

[@9852323]

Owoo

[@xaenon9849]

I worked on legions of eMachines; the most common complaint was the power supplies would die. In the original generation of eMachines,the PSU was actually a little too lightweight. After about a year to a year and a half, they began installing slightly better PSUs and it seemed to fix the problem. I bought the upgraded PSUs as a retrofit to the earlier machines. My boss at work had his PSU go out, and he brought me the machine to fix. I ended up installing a standard ATX, and had to carve up the back of the case to get it to fit. It's not everyday a techie uses a dremel to fix a computer....lol

[@donixion4368]

The only problem I have with the hard drive "mounting" on the floor of the case is that it's metal to metal. Those drives produce some vibration and they have a small chance of getting damaged this way. Get yourself some 3M double-sided foam mounting stickies and put some down between the case and the drive.

[@garyr7027]

Or toss a mouse pad in there... be better than nothing anyways.

[@christopher9727]

Don't follow the worldly trends follow Jesus Christ today There is no security or hope with out Jesus Christ in this world come and repent of all sins today Today is the day of salvation come to the loving savior Today repent and do not go to hell Come to Jesus Christ today Jesus Christ is only way to heaven Repent and follow him today seek his heart Jesus Christ can fill the emptiness he can fill the void Heaven and hell is real cone to the loving savior today Today is the day of salvation tomorrow might be to late come to the loving savior today John 3:16-21 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. Mark 1.15 15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Hebrews 11:6 6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Jesus

[@RodknockRhett]

I fried a hard drive's controller board this way. Shorted something out on the board and that was it. The drive never powered back up.

[@rustylasagna]

Thank you for the super chill video. I always love seeing these old machines get put back to good use.

[@mrmerlin6287]

I grew up with a PC really similar to this. I've installed a flash card in it using one of those IDE adapters. Much more responsive than those death Maxtor drives of the 90s.

[@LatitudeSky]

Still have a Maxtor 5.7GB drive from that era. Looks identical to the one in this video. Got it as a CompUSA doorbuster deal in 1999. It ran without fault for 12 years before being retired. And it actually still works. Just loud and slow. And hot.

[@mrmerlin6287]

@@LatitudeSky that smell of hot dust came right back to me as I read your comment.

[@bobsonmkd]

I felt like Maxtor was worst HDD you could ever had in your PC, i never had one but i had friends with 40gb maxtor HDD's and all of them failed, funny part is that before they fail they will start corrupting files and then you would have to reinstall windows just so it can corrupt another file few days later lol.

[@mrmerlin6287]

@@bobsonmkd I had a Maxtor 40GB drive around the time San Andreas released on the PC and it was one of the last games I installed before it died. It made the game behave really strangely.

[@TheExtra40414]

This brings back memories. My first pc in high school was a eMachines.. I ran that sucker to the ground. I wish I had kept the case to run my home server from.

[@9852323]

Computers now are seemingly never obsolete lol. I use my core 2 duo from 2007 with windows 11 and it’s runs it fine without slowdowns or problems of any kind.

[@SonicBoone56]

I use my 6 core Xeon HP Z400 from 2011 with no issues on Windows 10 LTSC.

[@9852323]

@@SonicBoone56 yeah my other computer is an i7 2600 from 2011. I don’t get why people buy new computers unless they do something intense..even then.. my 2600 can handle all the games I want to play.

[@mOddEdLiKeHeLL]

Your content is so nostalgic! Keep making more plz!

[@evolutionsfake]

Can we appreciate how well the person who owned this took care of it? Stickers are superb!

[@Seacat17]

Seeing Arch neofetch on the background is heartwarming.

[@RallyElite]

very good and informative video, thank you! been following for a while and know you will blow up big time

[@infinity2z3r07]

you'd probably wait a LONG time to find the correct caddy, but there are 5.25 bay to 3.5 hdd adapters that work pretty well

[@DarKnightKilla13]

Always happy to see a fellow LGR fan!... wellp, that PC has some potential which is surprising considering it's running a Celeron, but I bet with 128 MB RAM and a somewhat decent PCI card (I actually think I have an FX5200 or 5500 around here somewhere) it could legitimately be a great old-school backup gaming PC.

[@christopher9727]

Don't follow the worldly trends follow Jesus Christ today There is no security or hope with out Jesus Christ in this world come and repent of all sins today Today is the day of salvation come to the loving savior Today repent and do not go to hell Come to Jesus Christ today Jesus Christ is only way to heaven Repent and follow him today seek his heart Jesus Christ can fill the emptiness he can fill the void Heaven and hell is real cone to the loving savior today Today is the day of salvation tomorrow might be to late come to the loving savior today John 3:16-21 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. Mark 1.15 15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Hebrews 11:6 6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Jesus

[@jasonwoodruff5186]

no dude! We love you! good video. I'm pretty confident that there was no cpu fan on that cpu from factory.

[@ensibreza4954]

that is an impresive old tech you got there

[@Gw3nygwen]

I love your videos so much!!!

[@KomradeMikhail]

It will always be crippled by the fact that the "AGP Graphics" are integrated from the intel Southbridge chip, and there is no actual AGP expansion slot. But I would still throw like $40 at it... IDE-CF adapter rather than spinning rust. A simple Celeron to Pentium swap. More RAM. A PCI bus GPU. Soundblaster. Ethernet. Check the PSU for Capacitor Plague?

[@Phostings1]

Emachines PCs was the first real upgrade I got from the really old custom build computers with no labels. Unfortunatly, my system had the Windows ME which crashed very randomly at times. Even when I was young I knew it wasn't the hardware because word got around that Windows ME was rushed to meet the Y2K craze. The system worked fine after I upgraded to XP and it lasted for a long time. It was truly the Dell quality back in the 90s

[@J_Erik]

Astolfo is such a good co-host.

[@Girz0r]

I had this same system when it came out except my GPU was an ATi 4MB Card. I eventually upgraded to a sound blaster in the pci slot. Played HL1, TFC (online), Quake III arena, Mechwarrior 3, Red Alert through dial-up... Calling my friend's houses to setup connection!

[@WillWatchAnything]

One of my first computers was an emachine I bought back in ‘99 with a 300 AMD processor. Over its life I ended up replacing the 56K modem, the HD, the power supply, and upgraded the RAM. For what’s its worth these weren’t really that bad of computers but they were built cheaply as expected with the lower price tag.

[@guymerritt4860]

Wow - hard to believe you found that on the side of the road....in that condition. I had that identical computer, by the way.

[@doubleatheman]

Hard drive screws in flat to the front of the case. I had a emachines 400i as a kid, parents got it free as well by signing up for compuserve.

[@sandmanxo]

At my old job we had 1 of these that we got for free from a software vendor. It was in a kitxhen so it got extremely gross with all the oil and dust in the air, just like the rest of the machines in the kitchen area(designed to feed 3000ish people in a couple of hours.) After retiring from the kitchen I thoughly cleaned it and maxxed out the ram and I upgraded the cpu as much as I could, probably a 100mhz fsb Pentium 3 and a bigger heatsink. I finished it off by flipping the emachines logo upside down and called it the fallen emachine.

[@kevinf689]

Those actually utilized that externally mounted PSU fan as a CPU fan as well, so I am guessing there was never a CPU fan on the heatsink.

[@brendonelton]

After a thunderstorm here in the UK, these machines would come in for repair in droves if they were connected to power without a surge protector, almost certainly PSU & mainboard would need replacing.

[@joaoc_PT]

IRQ conflit maybe. Check device manager, bios settings for hw int/dma, disable unused com1-2, lpt. Subscribed!

[@kooldudeno-lastname]

It was really cool to see you restore this pc! Very underrated channel

[@zacmitchell_1984]

I think I have this one! All the stickers still intact too!

[@carwashreviewsandmore7609]

I am honestly amazed how much effort you throw into your videos with how little subscribers you have. I thoroughly enjoyed this video, don’t stop!

[@ZblockWoW]

My uncle had that exact model. I played crappy games and surfed the web on dial-up every time I went over there. 🤣

[@fjb1854]

I owned an eMachine and it was so weird I had to take it back. Not surprised they gave them away.

[@BabyBugBug]

I remember this when it was new!

[@livefreeprintguns]

Those Crystal audio chipsets are ROUGH, lack of sound/janky-ass sound doesn't surprise me.

[@KW973]

I almost bought one of these in 1999-2000 but kept an old beater HP for a while longer with a child on the way. I guess I am fascinated by this as a 50 year old guy because I had no idea young guys today would have interest in technology that old. Those nights sitting around an old pentium on AOL chatting really brings back memories.

[@tin.1]

that bios layout from 1999 is IDENTICAL to my 2019 laptop bios💀💀😭

[@Povilaz]

Very interesting!

[@adventureoflinkmk2]

One things for sure, the case itself isn't obsolete 😂 Just swap out the board with a modern micro ATX or mini ITX board and you can rock modern hardware 😎

[@BeastBishop]

Oh the memories, I had the 500 edition. I bought it for $600 and the discounts were not available in my area. I remember I needed to use a custom configuration on my emachine to get sound to work properly in windows. I added a TV tuner card and a network card and both conflicted with the modem.

[@mkrete]

You need to find the dos drivers for the sound chip and install that.

[@markh995]

Literally owned this PC.

[@jimbox114]

There used to be alot of stuff you could get free after rebates back then. Diskettes, cd-r discs, etc. The problem was you had to keep on those rebates. They were always trying to get out of paying them. I remember fighting with Iomega over a $50 rebate when I bought a zipdrive from them. Was a 3 month process and several phone calls, letters to get them to pay.

[@BeautifulMadeline]

I am pretty sure this was the box I had for my PC when I assembled it from stuff I scavenged from various bins lol

[@Cedric_Harris]

Man, between 1999 and probably 2010 my family had two different eMachines, and they were pretty bad ass for the price. Fortunately, I had no issues with sound on Duke3D.

[@Wolferia]

OMFG!!! THATS THE GAME I WAS TRYING TO FIND WHEN I WAS A KID!! 4:50 nostalgia!!!!

[@WhiteoutSnowy]

Great channel , now do a dell XPS 1000R project and test it out , it’s the one with rambus memory on it.

[@ChungusKhann]

The sound issue with Duke Nukem 3D is primarily due to a poor emulation of Legacy DOS Sound Blaster under Windows by the built-in sound chip on this computer. This machine probably has a cheap ESS Solo sound chip that was notorious for its subpar Sound Blaster emulation in DOS back in the day. A sound card like the Yamaha YMF 744 may be able to fix this problem at least when running the game in DOS mode although you may have to disable the USB controller in the BIOS to free up IRQ 5 or 7 for it to work properly.

[@nNasosssV2]

Astolfo and Arch Linux on the background... the perfect combo ngl

[@manolo5205]

The never obsolete case would be crazy for a sleeper set up

[@lanceleone2704]

I kinda wanna find one of these, take out the internals for preservation, then build a modern sleeper in one and tell people "Yeah, never obsolete!" XD

[@-r-495]

interesting marketing, the late 90s and early 2000s were a wild time. Personally I‘ve given up on hard drives for flash with adapter.

[@Tsaukpaetra]

5:20 stuttering at that level is often causes by the dynamic loader bringing up game assets from the drive, which can be slow?

[@a.c.4054]

I remember seeing lots of those in the garbage piles on the streets in NJ around 2003/2004

[@thekornreeper]

Subbed :)

[@meccanica3754]

Man, I still need to get a drive and windows 98 for my old compaq

[@blackterminal]

Would like you to try one of those pci to pci e slot adapters.

[@LTC_Tiger]

People love to knock on eMachines, but my laptop all through college was an eMachines M6811. It worked wonderfully -- and even still boots to this day.

[@zik316]

That case would make a great sleeper pc.

[@eonreeves4324]

I got one of these, it failed a few months later but was under warranty. Best buy didn't have the exact same one so they gave me a system with a 750mhz duron 😆 I mean that was a big upgrade from the 533mhz celery 😅

[@administrator4728]

I would have installed Windows 11 to test the "Never obsolete" claims.

[@EastAngliaUK]

wonder if any mboard would fit in there

[@DienerNoUta]

Glad you didn't remove the stickers

[@crapasanya]

It looks like music in Duke3D is in antiphase. Try reversing the polarity of one of the channels. By the way you can try some other modes for digital sound, something like Windows Sound System worked perfectly for my Crystal Sound card.

[@mrdingus117]

It seems like I heard something about cd drives helping with audio in some way? I may be reaching a bit though.

[@souta95]

I had an eMachines 633ids at one point which was essentially this exact computer but with a 633MHz Celeron and Windows ME. Same case, same motherboard, 15GB hard drive, and DVD drive. I got my system as a hand me down from a friend a bit over 15 years ago when his family upgraded to a Windows XP machine. The latest video driver from Intel actually gives you 32MB of video memory. It's an Intel 810 chipset which was based on the older 4MB 740 standalone card. Couple that driver with a RAM upgrade to 128MB (or 192, or 256) and you can probably get Quake 3 running halfway decent. With no upgrade you're essentially getting 32MB for your video and 32MB for your system... Which is probably causing access to the swap file and causing the stuttering.

[@danil-old-web]

Thank you for new video, i like retro computers.

[@wikwayer]

Is this arch btw in the back ground ?

[@sedrosken831]

Surprised that a little box with the last Mendocino Celeron and i810 video has, of all things, a DVD-ROM drive and a 15 gig hard drive. Figured you'd have also been working with a 32x CD-ROM and an 8.4GB drive for what this was going for even before the rebates.

[@sburns015]

I had the same pc in highschool except with a 566mhz celeron, 32mb ram and a 7.5gb hdd loaded with Windows Me

[@waldfruchttee]

you seem to be the typical arch linux user (not meant as a bad thing) - the "i use arch btw" - the weard anime figure - tripple monitors

[@Ionic1k]

Lol did not think about that, just wanted something cool in the background.

[@blooder81]

Awesome find. "Astolfo is not a trap".

[@HappyThePirate]

My mom did the mail in rebates for this

[@eastfrisianguy]

In 2015, my parents' elderly neighbor still had an old Pentium PC with something around 400 Mhz processing power and there was a sticker on it saying "20 years of use guaranteed!" (from a German dealer). The older gentleman didn't understand why he could hardly access the internet with Windows 98SE and 128mb RAM because "I was told it would last for 20 years!" 😶🤣 I also had a slightly larger CPU fan on my old AMD K-6 PC 24 years ago and glued it to the cooling frame with hot glue because that's how I read it. 😂

[@MikeyDowdell]

We had this when I was a kid haha😅

[@ArtieOddity]

I have the 566ir since it came out, could never get dos fm sound to work. I Still have the user guide , recovery disc and windows manual that it came with. I might still have the keyboard layout sheet but not the OG keyboard. For budget computers, they have strong lasting motherboards I belive from Trigem a Korean company.

[@spg3331]

Happy 25th anniversary Half Life! Also great video keep it up

[@goclunker]

On the bottom of the case is good. It allows the drive to use the case as a heatsink.

[@arisusanchez]

came because of emachine stayed cause of astolfo

[@cozymistbreeze]

this video is feeding my late 90s/early 2000s computer obsession right now, ty. great vid :)

[@dasmin1135]

I think Crystall CS4280 can be configured by selecting Windows Sound System if available.

[@LatitudeSky]

Love seeing the case in the shower. People don't seem to know they CAN wash metal parts in the sink or shower. I see way too many people carefully brushing out all-metal heat sinks. Heck naw, soak that stuff in Dawn and just dry it off. The awful Duke3D sound seems like an IRQ conflict but you checked that and it did work in 98. This is where you cut losses and just get a real sound card. That early onboard stuff was janky.

[@mccalejk2]

0:39 Those dial up contracts were 3 years, not 1.

[@zoeyundergroundcanada]

Wow I remember I had one so so so long ago

[@virgilwalker683]

the eMachine were always my favorite PC, even still today when it comes down to retro gaming. Windows 95 & Windows 98SE with DOS.

[@KrooTon]

Wow I’m so sorry you had such a horrible experience growing up 😂 J/k, but there were so many better options! The only benefit was that this got computers into the hands of folks who may not have bought one otherwise.

[@virgilwalker683]

I lived in poverty for many years. us living in poverty didn't have money for better options. the eMachines were perfect for people living in poverty or didn't have the money to buy better PC's back then. @@KrooTon

[@virgilwalker683]

I have the eMachine imac clone still today from 1999 running Windows 98SE. Worth some money. Even though I had some good offer's I still won't sell it. I play all my DOS and windows 98 games on that machine. @@KrooTon

[@virgilwalker683]

Emachine Eone 433@@KrooTon

[@KrooTon]

@@virgilwalker683 very cool. I mean, yuck, but also anything that you can use to learn or play on is better than not at all! My pre-MMX pentium 166MHz lived to 1998 and was my fav until the Dual P3 1Ghz SMP setup I built in college. So, legit no judgement! Anyone willing to mess with 9x machines gets props in my book. It was a finicky time to compute or game😆

[@Tydusis1]

My knowledge of those that used midi format for songs is a bit limited, but my guess is that either the system audio drivers don't agree with the chip...or the chip must somehow not support that many audio samples at once, which is wild to consider

[@who432]

My first PC was the 500is. Even back then this whole line was obsolete out of the box 🤣🤣

[@michaelcallummayaka]

Hard drive on the floor of the computer gang where you at? I used to do this, have 3 ssds loose my gaming PC and possibly may do this in future. So i can't roast you for it

[@warrenmcclure7819]

I have one like this with its original 10GB HDD and install on it. Might have to break it out soon

[@RetromaniaGamers_64]

i got this pc, but had a pentium III slot 1 and voodoo 3

[@skwealbaag8776]

I’ve just got a 533id2 I just setup

[@hvacdoc]

I had the packard bell version of this

[@Evercreeper]

I saw a video similar to this before... deja vu

[@officialunderfire]

I used to have that same model PC. I nabbed it from a place bought out by sixflags.

[@BilisNegra]

Even if not really free, if this included the monitor like the model in the ad, the price was not bad for the time (computers were certainly more expensive back in the day than they are now or have been in the last decade).

[@creekrocker]

Astolfo... I see you're a man of culture.

[@wakcedout]

i remeber those but never got one. always heard negativity related to them.

[@dobtuwu]

Amazing eMachine but what theme you use for Arch?

[@Ionic1k]

I'm using KDE plasma with some arch linux theme i found on the theme page

[@dobtuwu]

ooooooh okay im gonna use that on my next arch install, Thank you! @@Ionic1k

[@Ionic1k]

I watched you type this response in a discord call.@@dobtuwu

[@dobtuwu]

NUH UHH@@Ionic1k

[@unimatrix82]

I had an old Emachines from the early 2000's all i remember is it had a 2.6ghz Celeron processor. And when Doom 3 came out, it ran like a slide show. HL2 ran way better than Doom 3 did.

[@raysmith5124]

i had i1ghz pentium3 version which was sold as a muti-media pc with agp graphics , as dissapointing as finding out it was onboard agp only was the onboard sound so i canabolized my 200mmx & added my voodoo2 pci card & yamaha32 & it turned out to be not a bad gaming machine for a few years

[@brimless_]

astolfos looking cute today