Why you don't want a vintage 286 PC -- but I like mine anyway

[@afrose71]

I was part of the OS/2 product development team at IBM in the early 90s. Can't believe we've had personal computers for over 40 years now.

[@garulgerm8344]

please make videos talking about it

[@durrcodurr]

OS/2 was so good, I truly enjoyed it.

[@rhuwyn]

If you don't do your won KZbin videos you should consider being a visitor on one of the channels that has talked a lot a out os2.

[@jessihawkins9116]

dam bruh u olds af

[@Jah_Rastafari_ORIG]

@afrose71 If you worked at IBM in Silicon Valley (I forget if it was in Mountain View or Santa Clara), I probably participated in both your in-house focus groups, as well as beta programs.

[@3DGECASE]

"This product is licensed to: Steve Jobs Apple Computer, Inc." I almost spit my drink laughing at that.

[@3DGECASE]

@100 000 Subscribers with no videos Makes sense given both had PowerPC CPUs

[@jamesslick4790]

I think I saw something similar on William Gates' iPad.

[@jamesslick4790]

@100 000 Subscribers with no videos It no longer matters, Apple computers are PCs today. Regardless of what OS you like, the hardware architecture war was "won" by the PC.

[@accordinglyryan]

Came here to say this LOL

[@jamesslick4790]

@@kociemleko1 Yep! A key piece of hardware for the Apple 2 Wayyy back that allows the Apple 2 to run the then standard CP/M operating system was made by..... Microsoft. (Z-80 "soft" card) in 1980! Microsoft and Apple have collaborated for 40 years now.

[@jamesslick4790]

The monitor might not be "period correct", but damn, it looks "right" on that box, and it's the proper aspect ratio. Pretty!

[@sbrazenor2]

Some of those old monitors are still excellent if you're mainly writing and want a simple setup. The current ultrawide designs may offer more real estate, but when you're focusing on a single function you want it to do that job as good as possible. I use an old Dell monitor that I got for $5, and paired it with a Raspberry Pi 3B, to run Wordgrinder. You can't find any better solution with modern features, I feel, if you just want a machine to write on. It's silent, has a crisp matte display, and doesn't offer any bells and whistles that can act to distract you from what you're doing.

[@ninjamaster3453]

I really love the 4:3 and 1600x1200 form factor. I've had that before and enjoyed it on XP systems

[@jamesslick4790]

@@sbrazenor2 When it comes to aspect ratio, I often WANT the outcome to be something other than "modern" ratios. I shoot (or crop) 4:3 when I need to use existing "stock" footage with the new footage. And I usually use 3:2 for stills as I want them to "match" my 35mm work. There's nothing more distracting than native 4:3 video stretched out to fit 16:9, On a vintage PC, a 16:9 monitor trying to fill the screen bugs me, Even if I'm PURELY in text mode. Mono audio and black and white video still have THEIR uses too, and for similar reasons! 😊

[@vwestlife]

Games like Lotus III and Flight Simulator 4.0 actually run surprisingly well on this 286, mostly due to the strength of its onboard Western Digital/Paradise graphics chip, but other 286 systems with plain VGA, like IBM PS/2s, would not do nearly as well. And a 386 opens the door to a whole range of games and programs which simply won't run at all on a 286.

[@Rouxenator]

I got my hands on NCR point of sales machine and they are built very well. Made a video of it, not the best, but I enjoyed that computer. Sold it last month.

[@thepirategamerboy12]

Honestly, I find something really enjoyable about 286 performance though. I have a 12mhz 286 (with 287) PC myself and I'm honestly surprised how much stuff it can run playably. Especially games like Day of the Tentacle and Fate of Atlantis CD-ROMs run shockingly well. Though, I wish mine wasn't so flakey. Might be due to the Trident VGA card in it. kzbin.info/www/bejne/iKXdYWCdmtCZiNE

[@fhwolthuis]

No turbo button, that's a shame

[@mrlurchAU]

The original Sierra games should run pretty well too, with the benefit of being able to easily add a VGA card for EGA support.

[@olik136]

I remember playing Flight Simulator 1.0 (I think) on an old unknown pc at my friends house on an amber monochrome CRT... it managed about 0.5 fps--- it took us ages to take off and we landed ONCE in the entirety of the 90s

[@PCUSER486]

This is really bodacious! Lucky to have found this in a thrift shop! 💕

[@ObligedTester]

We need a vwestlife demonstration of OS/2! Thanks for a great video as always

[@zerstorer335]

In all honesty, I think one of the few reasons I’d be interested in a 286 is the masochistic nostalgia of how limited it could be for playing games. I remember the rush of rifling through the games at the store and finally finding one that should have been able to work. But I also remember sitting around nervously around midday on Christmas Day, wondering if our new games were going to work.

[@TheSulross]

the 16-bit era of mid 80s to early 90s doesn't get enough retro love - thanks for showing it some

[@jamesslick4790]

Okay, it's for ever and a day to load that 640x480 256 color digital photo, but in 1990, I'd have been STOKED just to be able to DO that!

[@danieldaniels7571]

James Slick I remember in the mid 90s downloading porn jpgs from underground BBSs onto my 286 with it’s 2400 baud modem and then taking that long to display. And yeah, I was totally stoked just to be able to do it.

[@awhooley]

when I was young our family had a 16mhz 286, many many games were played on it.. Crystal Caves, Duke Nukem, Halloween Harry, Commander Keen 1, 2, 3, and 4, Accolade grand prix, Trek (star trek clone) battle chess, prince of persia, xenon 1 and 2, and many many more... That machine was fantastic and gave us many hours of enjoyment :)

[@retrocomputinggrotto]

2MB of RAM on a 286 - that's massive for those days! My first PC came with OS/2 Warp on it! Luckily it had the option to have Windows 3.1 on it instead so I soon got rid of OS/2 Warp :) Love how long it takes to load a photo and great to see you left it in real time rather than speed the video up, it just shows you how far things have gone and how impatient we have become as if a modern photo doesnt open up instantly we get frustrated and think our devices are faulty.

[@dreambyte7926]

IMHO, a 286 deserves at least 4MB of RAM (4x 1MB SIMMs), if possible. That's what I had got in the mid-90s, because I wanted to run Windows 3.1 smoothly. Also, a 16-Bit soundcard comes in really handy. :) Some of the Win16 games (-by mistake ?-) use 16-Bit Wave files, which can't be played back on an 8-Bit sound card. Last, but not least, let's remember that a slow HDD can also ruin the Windows 3.1 experince. Many slow 286es were slow, because they were based on XT hardware: It wasn't too uncommon to turn an XT into an AT by swapping out the 8088 motherboard and installing a 286 motherboard while the rest of the hardware was kept.

[@supermasterPIK]

memory or upgrade memory was VERY expensive, even 40% of the price of the machne (around USD $2000?)

[@Rouxenator]

That is one sleek 286, glad to see it again.

[@8_Bit]

Great take on the 286. For the early DOS games, most of those computers didn't allow software to detect the display's vertical refresh, so they had a busy loop to waste CPU cycles to slow the game action down. When run on a faster computer, that busy loop (and all the rest of the code) executes much faster and the game becomes unplayable as you showed. Most other personal computers of the era (especially those intended to hook up to TVs such as Atari and Commodore) allowed programs to detect v-blank so the games based their timing on that, running the game loop at 50 or 60 Hz. Even though faster CPU upgrades are very rare on those 8-bit machines, for those that have them (such as the SuperCPU for the C64), a surprising number of games still run at the correct speed even with a 20x faster CPU, because of this v-blank based timing.

[@bennyhill5173]

V-blank timing isn't the only method to adjust game speed depending on hardware, and at least half of the games of that era working fine on 386/486+. Most of the time game developers just didn't care, especially when 4.77Mhz was de-facto one and only PC speed.

[@rashidisw]

Alley Cat has better timing works fine be it on 4.77Mhz 8088 or even on more recent PC that can still operates real mode DOS.

[@highpath4776]

I dont really do games or have desire to, but I got a 286 when the x86 something I had was a bit slow, and I used assorted spreadsheet programmes which were slow on the 8086 machine, so I sold that and got a damage ex display 286 one instead, Used if for a number of years under MS-DOS , but Win 3x was slow when I got that , eventually I acquired a 386SX in a rubbish case and just changed the mainboard over which worked fine. At the same time I switched companies and found their stock control system had been written in a datafile program (I forget which) , that used the 386 clock speed and I could not upgrade their computers to 486 as the program fell over. (with the knowledge and programs I now have I could probably hack , or get a better, inventory control programm, or an access front end to do the job). But still interesting and I have far too many machines gathering spiders in the garage now.. !

[@youdud44]

"You're using a 286? Don't make me laugh! Your Windows boots up in what, a day and a half?" -Weird Al Yankovic

[@minty_Joe]

"You can backup your whole hard drive on a floppy diskette, You're the biggest joke on the Internet!" "You think your Commodore 64 is really neato, What kind of chip you got in there, a Dorito?"

[@MaxHarrison]

In a 32-Bit world, you're a two bit user.

[@alekogosh332]

900 million comments

[@TheSulross]

boot on Monday, start the work week on Tuesday

[@TRLTheRandomLab]

That picture looks like something out of 90s Grindr

[@alexkuhn5078]

9ndr

[@OpenKeith]

where? spill the tea sis

[@OpenKeith]

OH I SEE IT

[@Lilithe]

Probably circulated on Fidonet BBS relays

[@noelj62]

1990s shirtless selfies, 2010s clothes-less selfies, 2030s self-less selfies.

[@MylarBalloonLover]

u left out the 2000s

[@rkan2]

@@MylarBalloonLover And 2020s...

[@ralphhoskins2115]

Lmao!!!

[@grizzlyaddams3606]

@@MylarBalloonLover pantsless

[@grizzlyaddams3606]

@@rkan2 maskless! Ooh la la...

[@Gizzy411]

I was literally just thinking earlier today about older computers and how if you opened a program (or later visited a website) you always had time to multitask various things because everything took forever to load. I really enjoy your sarcastic and dry sense of humor and have been watching your channel for a long time.

[@galacticusX]

The one downvote I see must be from a grumpy spreadsheet anthusiast who still hasn't received his C80287XL math coprocessor in the mail.

[@michac3796]

*anthagonist

[@MikeStavola]

Nice profile image. I'm gearing up to play through Robinson's Requiem, and then Deus in a few days, on PC.

[@diecarro79]

@@MikeStavola Did you do it? Playing those two games is one of my life goals, but I never find the time or energy.

[@galaxymaster]

I wish I would find cheap old Computers like that in europe. The retro community makes everything freaking expensive over here

[@grizzlyaddams3606]

Expensive everywhere. Had to be a dumpster diver ten years ago to get good deals. That's when the schools were tossing them en masse.

[@Farmeraap]

Good deals exist here too, just don't expect to find them in public sales sites. Find a small town with a thrift shop, not a large populated city. These often have a lot more cool stuff. I'm not that into video, but my vintage audio I usually get from a simple facebook marketplace listing asking if anyone has some of that stuff. People come to me with their 'junk', are happy to get rid of it and no one else can steal my deal!

[@rzeka]

@@Farmeraap I live in a small town and I never find any computer or audio stuff worth buying. It's just old printers and DVD players covered in cat hair. But I don't use facebook, so...

[@xmaniac99]

I just picked up a 486SX for 28 euro and an AMD K6 for 25 euro. Sometimes I even find stuff for free at our local recycling center, not now because it is very busy due to quarantine and people cleaning their houses. Actually market places are filled up with cheap stuff that people are trying to clear out from their attics.

[@dlarge6502]

In the UK you cant find an old computer or even a new one in a charity shop. They will sell the accessories, mice, joysticks, monitors etc but not the machines. I think some of the machines get wiped and sold on their ebay pages. But older machines like this probably get scrapped. I once went into a charity shop and found a 3.5" external floppy for an apple laptop. I dont have anything apple and thought maybe it might be interesting to get it but when I asked how much it was they looked at it and said "Oh this cant be sold because of data protection". I told them that its an empty floppy drive but they had no clue, thought that there were names and addresses inside it. All they would sell was the laptops bag.

[@jamesslick4790]

That last photo seems modern and yet not modern based on the camera, but, I guarantee that Polaroids exist from the early '50s that are remarkably similar, LOL We people don't actually change as fast as our gear does! 😊

[@grizzlyaddams3606]

Fact. I am so angry that a friend, bless his heart, "upgraded" my laptop to Windows 10 from XP. When it was XP everything worked and I never ever had an issue running anything on it. All my software worked and was compatible with my hardware. Whereas with Win10, immediately had troubles. Finally the whole thing crapped out. When I took it too the shop the guy said the HD had been entirely wiped out!!! How is that even possible?!

[@PavelUrusov]

My favourite 286 games: Wolfenstein 3D (runs very well on a 286 at 16 MHz), Sid Meier's Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Dune 2 (probably the only RTS except Planet X3 that works well on a 286), F19 Stealth Fighter and it's sequel F117A Stealth Fighter 2.0, all Commander Keen games, early Might and Magic games, Pinball Dreams I/II and Pinball Fantasies, Nomad (a very quirky but charming space exploration game), Simon The Sorcerer, Lemmings, almost all of LucasArts classic adventures... I know this because I had to use a 286 until 1996 when we finally had some cash to upgrade to a Pentium-class machine.

[@Slashco]

My first PC was actually a 486, but I definitely played Wolfenstein and later Doom, Dune 2 (first RTS), and all those Apogee shareware games like Crystal Caves, Halloween Harry, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, etc. Mortal Kombat, SimCity, Civilization, and a bunch more I'm forgetting. :)

[@HBC101TVStudios]

Oh man, you really deserve the silver play button for your aesthetic and vintage content! Congrats on 100,000 subscribers Kevin!

[@wishusknight3009]

That screen looked really good, especially at the end.

[@MikeStavola]

I scored a Samsung equivalent to this out of my work's scrap him a few months ago. I need to diagnose some bad memory chips, but I'm looking forward to the chance to do it

[@JasonStevens]

So true about the 286/386 clock speed. On the one hand going from a 286-16Mhz to a 386DX-16 was a let down in terms of speed, but being able to run 32bit code was incredible. No, fabulous even! No more 64kb segments!! And dos in a window!

[@Chyrosran22]

Very interesting, I had considered getting a 286 to play some vintage games on, but I might look into something different, I think. Thank you!

[@croquette_fr]

I had a 286 when I was young (it was already obsolete by the time), and I remember that when you finished the solitaire game, you had this animation when all the cards were flying down. On my 286, this animation took like 2 or three minutes, the cards were dropping one by one, and I was shocked later to see for example on a 486DX2-66 that the same animation takes like 20 seconds!

[@RetroSpector78]

Love that case and power button. Have an AT&T branded pentium 60 with a similar look (albeit a lot bigger, but same power button)

[@realjackofall]

The first PC that I started to use was a 286. Didn't have a hard disk and I had to boot it using a 5 1/4 inch bootable floppy disk (as against the PC in the video which has a a 3 1/2 inch floppy drive). I had only one of those 5 1/4 inch floppy disks and so I took good care of it. No windows. Only DOS. I wrote programs in GWBasic. Monochrome monitors. Was delighted when I saw the first 386 PC with windows and a color monitor. Just being able to see the colors generated from my graphics programs was a thrill. This was all between 1993-96. Saw my first multimedia PC in 95 I think.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

That loading of the photo really puts things into perspective at the difference of computational speeds we have today.

[@mhmrules]

Wow! I didn't know you worked out! XD

[@villeville6838]

So glad to see some old x86 content by VWestlife! I've missed sthis tuff so much!

[@the_kombinator]

9:43 - hah, so when restoring my own NCR 386, I noticed the LED had two different colors. I don't have the original mobo in there, but I did wire up the LED to work like that too, except for me, regular speed is green LED, and turbo is orange (as 99% of retro PCs I had do have a yellow/amber turbo LED) I did have an Epson Equity III+ 286 machine that had three selectable speeds (it was a 286) - red LED for 6 MHz, orange for 8 Mhz, and green for 12 Mhz.

[@esseferio]

The end was... unexpected :)

[@compu85]

Ya... it caught my attention! My mind went to the window washer / kittens meme floating around.

[@vwestlife]

In case you want the original file: www.amstereo.org/images/mavicaguy.jpg

[@frankowalker4662]

I did'nt think anything could display pics slower than my 98 laptop, but yeah, wow. Well done.

[@grizzlyaddams3606]

This is how I learned to meditate. We'll actually waiting for ETH transactions to go thru but... Same difference. 😄

[@user-of9mo5wz8o]

​@@grizzlyaddams3606how's your eth doing

[@markenetube]

Loving your videos! What is amazing is the memory requirement now. 2mb was ok for Win3.1 . Loaded in in a few seconds. Now we have win 10 , where you need 4gb , 2000 times more. Your video shows if you just want to word process etc, the old pc's are fine. The 2000 times more memory gets you nicer websites & multimedia. You see it when people use windows 95/8 laptops today , they look smooth & can even play DVD, but when you go on the internet they struggle to load a page. Partly due to the browser, but mostly the memory .

[@orangehatmusic225]

I had a 286 growing up. But I would get a 486 with a Sound Blaster Live if you are going to go vintage DOS mode.

[@The_Wandering_Nerd]

And here I am feeling impatient when my modern cellphone takes more than a few seconds to render and display thousands of thumbnails from 12 megapixel photos

[@rarbiart]

i had a similar 286 from Olivetti with a similar form factor. I got it used around '92 for cheap and ran several years as as a modem-port for my BBS.

[@danieldaniels7571]

My first PC compatible was a 286 a friend of mine cobbled together out of spare parts because he couldn’t believe I was still using a Commodore 64 in 1994. I loved that POS; ran it until 2001. I played Block Out on it constantly! On a completely different note, I scored a big case of used recorded MiniDiscs. They have the most random music on them so the last few days I have been going through them and titling the tracks. Some of the songs are out of my wheelhouse so I’ve been having to search online to figure out what they are. I just found a Westlife song which made me think of you :)

[@MoosesValley]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Great to see people still using and valuing these great old machines. I still remember some graphics / programmer friends of mine saying in the mid 1980's: "all I need, all I want is a fast 286". LOL, the good old daze ... 😜 💖

[@theprogressiveatheist7024]

I was watching the part of the video where the image downloaded at 21:07 when my dad came into my room to let me know he was leaving.

[@Chris-tf7gi]

Wow. That brings me back. My first PC was a 286. I actually played Wing Commander on it. It DID work. The 286 is still in my basement.

[@phillippereira6468]

Haha those speeds and performance was my life back in 1990 to 1994 before we got a 486. Didn't know better thought it was fine back then. Brilliant review.. Everything you said is exactly as I remember... Games too fast or too slow

[@DavidWonn]

With sufficient RAM and Temp directory space, you can actually Alt-Tab between multiple MS-DOS applications on a 286 running Windows 3.x (or even on the older Windows/286 which had the nice feature of drawing the Alt-Space menu while full-screen.) The downside is that only the active application can do any processing, so there is no concept of background processing as you’d have on a 386. You can also expect some delays in Alt-Tabbing as the application that you leave is swapped to disk. It’s far from optimal, but certainly better than nothing.

[@vwestlife]

Correct, on a 286 you can only task switch between multiple DOS applications, not multitask them.

[@mr649001]

As a fan of your hi-fi related videos I'd absolutely love to see more classic PC stuff from you. Keep up the good work.

[@alexxbaudwhyn7572]

First PC I built was an AMD 286 CPU based mobo circa 1989 Prior to 1990, was better to have a 68000 based machine like Mac, Amiga or St, until the 386 came down in price, as well as Sound blasters and video that could match the sound, gfx of the St, Amiga. Imo, the crossover point was around 92 or so when a PC of similar capabilities with the software support for Amiga, st level sound and gfx became affordable, Maybe even as late as 95. So the Atari St I bought in 1985 had a great 7-10 year run, unheard of in Pcs from 1990-2010

[@VectraQS]

Phil Swift here with Flex Disk! Jokes aside, I like my Toshiba T3100 286, but it only has 640k and thus cannot run 3.1, so it's stuck on 3.0. I spend much more time on my 386, and I have several partitions that I shuffle around on a 10 GB drive with OnTrack. It's even better now that I got TCP/IP set up on it. Currently, it's running Windows 95. And I might just have to get DVPEG.

[@johnwilson2250]

Slimline desktop and pizzas cases are my favorite. That is a very nice 286.

[@TechMaxWare]

How can we be sure that photo wasn't of you in the 90's. I'm honestly not sure I want to know lol.

[@MidwestTechAndGaming]

LMAO 🤣🤣🤣

[@joemck85]

I have a Dell 486 that has a BIOS that doesn't support custom HDD geometries and you choose from a list, like this 286. The largest supported is 525 MB. Larger drives work fine if you set it to 525 MB -- you just end up limited to that amount and any more is ignored. I've successfully used far larger drives with it by using an old version of Ontrack Disk Manager. It's just a very low level TSR that loads from the boot sector before DOS loads, and in-RAM replaces the BIOS disk access routines with more capable ones. It even added CD/DVD access and even booting from them, to a system whose BIOS hadn't even heard of a CD-ROM drive.

[@JonGallon]

I would get both to have it as spare parts for the main one. It's interesting to see how common horizontal cases were common back then. And now horizontal cases are a very small niche on pc market.

[@cirebyte7588]

I always look forward to and enjoy your Videos.

[@geotechmore8855]

It's wild that you have an old DOS computer! While I am watching KZbin i have been playing DOS games on DosBox! You have the real thing! Very cool! Enjoy!

[@timmooney7528]

I used to work at a place where the engineers kept on using a Mavica in the 2000's even though more modern cameras using CF and SD cards became available. No need to load special software or use a special reader.

[@AintNobodyAtAll]

I ran a Renegade BBS off a 286 in the early 90s. Very nostalgic times for me...

[@BertGrink]

Bill Gates' voice sounds suspiciously like Clint Basinger's

[@Lagrange_Point_6]

I had the exact same thought.

[@Slevin-Kelevra]

It was Clint's voice

[@hrvojegrgic5111]

Amazing. Blast from the past.

[@Tj-uc5sx]

watching this on my thinkpad e545. wathcing your videos gave me the idea to upgrade my memory from 4 to 16gb and it feels like new. This message was brought to you by the thinkpad gang

[@daoutbox9884]

Additional RAM would allow for more programs be running under win 3.x in Standard mode but for DOS to be windowed required V86 mode and demand paging which allows capture of IO ports making this run on 286 protected mode impractical relying on the Task state switch taking too much cycles would need much faster system.

[@pederb82]

I grew up with an Sanyo 12,5 MHz 80286 computer with a sound blaster 16, vga care and 256 color monitor. 40mb hard drive. And I believe it had more than 2mb of ram so I think you remember wrong. I really enjoyed that computer. And played games like civilization, port of call, 688 attack sub, Jones in the fast lane, Larry series, railroad tycoon, and the list goes on and on and on. And they all ran just fine on it. I do remember I was envy of my buddy who eventually got a 486 and could play colonization, and I was very envious. My next x86 computer was A cyrix i686 p166+ I bought when I was 12-13. Fun times. I miss those days where the only worry was If I could get away with playing another hour.

[@ibizenco]

Now, this brings back memories... I still have my "286" (by DTK), stored away, however it will not boot (anymore). When I tried booting it up a few year ago, some error appeared on the screen (related to the hard drive, I believe). The monitor that came with it, is long gone. It ran MS-DOS, some-version. It had WordPerfect 5.1., and a version of "Deluxe Paint", as well as dBase III Plus(?). As for gaming, I remember playing "Crazy Sue". :) And these games on floppy disks that my father used to buy at the local supermarket. Those were the days!

[@RightWing1]

I was transported back to when I was 18 in this video - thanks I feel old now.

[@jaxxrr]

my first pc was a NCR 286 @5MHz very similar in style to this one .. I remember playing Prehistorik 1 on it on a winter night with the window open and a full moon and first day of snow just as the level I was playing in the game .. that left a memory lasting over 30 years..

[@jessicacarter8264]

Really enjoyed the part two of your 286 adventure :) Edit: Also when I liked the video, I was the 286th like. Hell yeah! It seems like your system came from the same era as my Compaq Deskpro 386S (Manufacturered in December 1990 - My birth year!) which had a very choice upgrade. Someone bought the dedicated Compaq RAM upgrade card, which I found in a catalog from 1990 costing $999.95 USD which gave it an extra 4MB RAM to bring it to 6144K, insane for a 386SX at 16MHz. I gave it some love since it needed a a new Dallas RTC clock chip, which I found remanufaturered from China and bought a couple of them incase I need more. I also put in a Soundblaster 16 compatable card and a Genius 2000II networking card (since I thought playing with a DOS Webserver would be fun). It sounds almost brand new too the hardware, the original Conner 20MB hdd is silent. I've swapped it for a 40GB IDE drive (But had to get some 40 wire IDE cables, since it does not like the newer style 80 wire cables). I had to use OnTrack Disk Manager to format it as 4x2GB, and also put in a CF card reader for easy backups. Next on my list is my "New" Compaq Presario 4/100 486DX4 100MHz computer. Just after I'd upgraded the RAM from 16MB to 72MB the power supply blew up, and I replaced the resistors in it to get it working again, but haven't yet had a chance to finish restoring it. Had to desolder the battery on that board (It was a CR2032 but solded in, rediculous!). Hope you're keeping safe, stay crunchy and hope to see more of your vids soon! (sorry for long comment!)

[@Ale.K7]

Great video, as always. Congratulations on 100K!

[@ProjectGeek1]

I remember using a 286 in Jr. High. We had a hand-held B&W scanner with it. Use to take about the same time to process the scanner image too.

[@zsoltpapp3363]

My first PC was a 286 with an SVGA monitor and 40mb hdd/1024kb RAM - it was pretty expensive. We played Prince of Persia, Lotus3, Stunts, Secret of Monkey Island, Indy500 on it, good times. I used DOS only on it the first Windows 3.1 i have seen was on a 386

[@DaveMcGarry]

Had an Amiga A1200HD so I didn't jump to PC till the 486 era. Looks like I didn't miss much, but still a great video.

[@caffeinepizza]

that’s one hot selfie

[@nameistunbekannt7896]

Totally agreed.

[@janmarvincentmarquez6925]

the end was unexpected... But liked lol. That reminds me of a pic of a dude with that body preparing twinkies.... Can't remember where I saw it lol

[@RetroGamerVX]

I used to drool over 286s when they were new, but never saw them as a games machine, we had Amigas for that :o)

[@yogibear2k220]

Absolutely fascinating! I do love the monitor!

[@frazzleface753]

I wonder what the selfie dude looks like now, some 25ish years later!?

[@herrbonk3635]

Very nice! And many new games are written for even older computers, like the VIC-64 and ZX Spectrum.

[@MN12BIRD]

I'm nostalgic for the 286 since that's what I had back in ~1992. I never owned a 386, I went from a 286 to a 486 in 1994. My first PC was an IBM PS/2 with a 286 @7MHz (IIRC maybe it was 8 but I seem to remember 7!) and 2MB RAM and I think a 20MB HDD. No math co-processor. I loved it and the games it could actually play always surprised me. I got the machine used and I knew about the 486 even during the time I had the 286 but it was all my parents could afford for me and sure it wasn't as smooth but Wolf3D was playable if you knocked the screen size down a few pegs! 3D flight sims like F29 Retaliator (check that one out if you never have) were playable too! Kings Quest V, Monkey Island 2 and Day of the Tentacle all ran in their full 256 color glory. I eventually got a used Sound Blaster Pro for it and it was definitely worth it! But again many of the point and click adventure games I liked didn't need the speed but took advantage of VGA 256 color quite nicely. Monkey Island 2 was one of my favorites to play on it. Also I remember playing Tank Wars on it a lot and that was one game that never ran right on my 486 when I got it. I'm sure there are ways to slow down the 486 but I didn't know about them back then. Tank Wars gets really weird on a 486 like the interface gets messed up and you can't tell what weapon you select.

[@thepirategamerboy12]

Yeah, I'm really surprised how well Day of the Tentacle runs on a 286. I guess it's a well optimized game.

[@vwestlife]

All of the 286 PS/2s were 10 MHz. But the original Model 50 had wait states so in actual performance it was slower than the Model 50Z (Z for Zero wait states) even though both ran at the same CPU clock speed.

[@MN12BIRD]

@@vwestlife I wonder if these wait states would cause any of the benchmark programs of the time to say it was 7MHz or if I'm just not remembering correctly. Either is possible knowing me. But I swear something on that PC back in the day reported 7Mhz and that's what I always thought it was because of that. I think it was a model 30 but it might have been a model 50. They both look so similar.

[@Slashco]

You think that's old school? In 1991 I was gaming on a Sinclair Spectrum. Dizzy, Saboteur, Manic Miner, Renegade, I still look back on some of those games with nostalgia. :)

[@saxman112]

That music you had during both the real-time loading of those images from the Mavica camera was catchy! What are the tracks you used?

[@vwestlife]

It's from John LaDuca's album "Mr. Fantastic in the Wonderful World of Wurlitzer".

[@thomasjensen1590]

I had a commodore 286 many years ago. It was a nightmare, but I still loved it.

[@xaenon]

It reminds me of an old Dilbert strip. Dilbert was an engineer and needed to do some 3D design, buthe was denied a computer upgrade by Catbert and told to make do with his current 286 machine. "How many times do you need to do 3D modelling, anyway?" Dilbert's response: "ONCE, if I hurry."

[@sl-mb4rb]

It pains me that people see vintage computers as just a way to play old videogames, that is really not what computing was about back then. Games existed but it was obvious then how they were inferior to systems like the NES/SNES that were designed to play games; you would never buy a $2000 (in early 1990s dollars!) system to play videogames, but if you had a computer you'd put games on to entertain your kid. The reason old technology is interesting is that it constrains the programmer, it truly mattered how well you optimized your address book program or BBS program or whatever.

[@toddstewart9070]

Ive still got that Byte magazine from sept 1989 in a box somewhere. Weird seeing it again after all of these years.

[@guessundheit6494]

MOSLO solved most of my gaming problems back then. An 80286 would have a parallel port. What about using the OPL2LPT for audio output?

[@kirishima638]

Seems fairly snappy for a 286 machine!

[@VK2FVAX]

JPG format uses a lot of DCT/iDCT .. does the viewer software take advantage of the FPU ..or is it just chunking along using the main CPU?

[@mdrake42]

There were a lot of games for 286. Saga Outrun was great for it. However your 286 is quite advanced for having PS2 and IDE. Most had MFM/RLL drives. standard AT keyboard, and mice needed serial. And most didn’t have 3.5inch floppies. But 5.25. Most didn’t take SIMs but raw RAM chips. VGA was standard however. My first PC was 286, after having an apple II for 9 years previously, it was a huge jump. I always wanted a sound card, but couldn’t afford then. Wish I still had the machine.

[@DMadHacks]

9 views 9 likes perfectly balanced

[@stormshadow5555]

I wonder what could be done using OS/2 warp today? Just strictly for running proprietary IBM productivity software of some kind of what?

[@ariefmubiar683]

those EIZO is high end monitor, used to call Nanao if I'm not mistaken.

[@yakovkhalip9714]

I like my 286's machines - have about 7 of them - from IBM AT/5170 to fast 286's - like 20-16mhz. Also have a laptop "Goulipin", 286 based. I like them as from one point of view they are really oldschool PC's - 16 bit, etc, from other point of view really a lot of great games can be run on a fast 286... Also have 286's with EGA and HGA display, not only VGA based..

[@compu85]

I really want to find one of the 286 Turbo cards to put in my 8088 NCR PC4. So far I've been unable to track one down :/

[@TranscendentalAirwaves]

Hello VWestlife! Rewatching some of your old videos, getting back into the hobby a bit. What's the music you play while it's displaying those images? LOVE all of those songs.

[@pmsrodrigues]

Had this same PC with an original grayscale NCR screen. Bought it second hand from a bank, through a buddy that worked there. It came without the hard disk, though. Used it to program in Turbo Pascal and Assembler, and connect to BBS's. Spent many long nights on it, sure did. :-)

[@trailersic]

I think the 286 16 with vga and soundblaster seems to be a great choice for the 2nd period of dos games. I count the Intel 8088 @ 4.77 MHz systems as the first. But the 286 16 will run pretty much everything for faster than that, most of the Sierra games and Lucasfilm games, Wolfenstein, Dune 2, Pretty much everything till the Doom Era, but if you're gonna go there may as well go for the full upgrade to svga, 16bit audio 486/pentium and CD Rom.

[@NALTOHQ]

I kinda love the design of this NCR PC

[@NielsHeusinkveld]

I got a similar 20" LCD as a student. I figured out they had a 3 year warranty and bought a partially defective one second hand. It still had factory warranty so they replaced it. As a broke student I then had the baddest biggest LCD screen of them all for 100 bucks! :-)

[@xenon2Merchant]

Blockout, one of my favs (there is Windoze port of this game). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockout First I've played on PC-XT (Nec V20 cpu) and Hercules graphics card. Was that "dual" bios inside this machine (with high and low presets?). I've never seen this kind of setup.

[@joshpayne4015]

@VWestlife, what is that enchanting background music at 18:54?

[@vwestlife]

It's from John LaDuca's album "Mr. Fantastic in the Wonderful World of Wurlitzer".

[@herrbonk3635]

What do you mean by "the strength of its onboard Western Digital/Paradise graphics chip"? Are you implying games could benefit from anything on it besides its resolution and color depth being better than ega/vga? (Maybe fewer wait states on the AT-bus, if it uses double ported VRAM?)

[@videooblivion]

I’m very happy with my Commodore PC-40 286, thank you very much.

[@kpanic23]

I'm pretty sure there's a key combination to toggle the speed on the fly, without having to go into BIOS Setup. Probably Ctrl+Alt+[+/-], Ctrl+Alt+[S/F], Ctrl+Alt+[H/L] or something like that. Also, great selection of example pictures, nearly spilled my drink on "WIXE"... (Germans will understand). The second picture made the combination perfect...