Ugh! I will never get tired of those biceps and darn smile. I am still just mesmerized by your patience with these old devices. I built so many baby AT systems in those cramped cases, but I really enjoyed doing the work.

I absolutely love that "computer" case badge on the first machine!

Mike! Watching the video now, just want to say how much I enjoy your presentation style and the way you dive into the systems you explore!! Such a blast. Cheers!

I really love that third system. Three digit CPU clock displays were a pretty short-lived phenomenon, but they were a great marketing tool. It was like having a light-up badge on the case that said "look how fast I am!"

I love how you take us along the journey and expose yourself to the innards of these systems the same time you do. No sneak peeks for you prior, just open them up as you record and use that footage. So genuine, Mike!

You are a fantastic baby at daddy! You care for their power supplies making sure they are fully healthy, you are gentle while cleaning their ports, and you certainly make bath time lots of fun! In all seriousness, thanks for the videos, I look forward to them each week!

Every upload from Mike is a feast for the eyes, technology that's looked after so well by Mike and of course the hottest man on KZfaq (Mike)

My week is not complete until Mike voids some warranties. Nice retro selection today. Don't be afraid to put the dirty bezels and cases in the dish washer.

The thumbnail is 13/10. 37:18 this is so goofy I love it.

These baby systems take me back. My brother had one though college in the mid 90s running Windows 3.1 and a 2x CD-ROM drive. I don't even remember how big the hard drive was. It was so slow, I feel bad for him. But it survived like a champ.

KZfaq just recommended me your channel. I love it. Good job and thank you for the nice content!

One of the key aspects of these videos that make them so great is that you can tell how much Mike enjoys doing this. Excellent video! Thank you. ❤️

Mike: "Hello everyone" Me: "Hello beautiful" 😏

16:40 now THAT'S some beautiful caviar! This needs to be top shelf in a display case.

Hi MikeTech. Thanks for another trip down memory lane. I used and upgraded one of the CWI computers, back in 1999, which belonged to a friend of mine. The name on it wasn't CWI, but some brand which was used in the UK, where I live. The PC in question had a Pentium 120 CPU, which I upgraded to a 166 MMX. The O/S was the first iteration of Windows 95, which I upgraded to the 'C' version, which was a significant improvement. I offered to let him have my 'old' copy of Win 98, after I bought the 98SE version, but he declined. I well remember upgrading my COMPAQ DeskPro 4000 with some larger EDO RAM sticks; from 32 Mb to 128 Mb. Tech has definitely advanced and improved since then. My first PC - an Apricot 286 Workstation - came with Win 3.1. I still have the complete set of 10 Floppy disks and the DOS 5 Boot disk, all safely wrapped in foil and stored inside a tin. I've got an old Laptop which is no longer usable, so may install 3.1 on it, just for the fun of it.

guitar picks- the number one tool for retro tech

The doubling up of characters in the copyright message at the start of the BIOS is so that if the contents are split into odd and even images (e.g. for programming into two ROMs) then each ROM gets a copyright message at the start of it.

Tomorrow I'm going to replace the processor in my old PC from 2008. It's supposed to rain here in Poland, so there will be time to replace them. I learned a lot from you. Thanks . Regards . Jutro mam zamiar wymienić procesor w moim starym PC z 2008 roku . U nas w Polsce ma padać deszcz , więc będzie czas na wymianę . Dużo od Ciebie się nauczyłem . Dzięki . Pozdrawiam . I wrote in Polish for better translation. Napisalem po Polsku dla lepszego tłumaczenia . 🤗🤝👍🍂

I miss these old school cases... I'm such a sucker for switches/buttons of all types and ESPECIALLY having an LED readout of the CPU's frequency.

Gotta love that WD Click Of Death... The last one I had, I filled it with water and a few drops detergent, made a transparent top. Bubble bubble ...

27:00 yes, keep us up-to-date. and wow, refreshing fix I really enjoyed it.

I don't think that first machine actually had OpenOffice. Rather when you install certain versions of Microsoft Office it will add two icons to the Start menu, the one you picked up on is called "Open Office Document" and it just means that it will allow you open a document made with MS Office. Also that first machine had a 2.5 GB drive, and with early versions of Windows 95 only having FAT16 and thus a maximum partition size of 2048 MB, it's possible that the first drive has about 500 MB of unpartitioned space. Worth checking out. I guess even today hooking up your CDROM drive to a sound card if possible is a good idea. This way, you can have one drive on each of the primary IDE channels and not have them being slowed down by a CDROM drive. So one internal drive on the primary and an external CF or SD card for copying files to the PC on the secondary is a good option. Great video as always.

Hah, I noticed the thumbnail after watching the video. That's funny. 😂 Great installment and excellent repairs too. It is pretty great seeing the care and attention given to these venerable machines.

Your thumbnails are always something to look forward to hehehe. I needed a laugh this morning, so burnt out from work…

I absolutely love your videos It’s honestly great to see these vintage machines again

Always love your one-liners Mike - the first system was the ultimate nostalgia trip for me pal, my first system ever was almost identical, case and all ! Great vid as usual 🤗

I have that exact same 2nd case! I recently obtained it on eBay for $75 and turned it into a 486 DX4-100 DOS gaming machine! 👍😁

I bought so many of these from thrift stores and garage sales in the 90s. it was great learning about old systems and not being afriad to destroy them, especially because new computers back then were outrageously expensive compared to today.

Such a big, strong, handsome man yet so gentle, tender, patient and loving towards those babies! He will make a great dad one day. He treats those baby(ATs) so well!

As always, fantastic stuff! As an hobby archivist myself, thanks for uploading the BIOS!

This brings back memories. I started building PC's in the 486 era. We had an AMD 486 DX2 100 with 12 megs of ram. It did not run Windows 95 well.

love your channel and your type of humor, Mike :) just finished my 2003 build, hope i'll find older systems too

good morning, just quickly commenting to say how much I appreciate you and your videos, very therapeutic for the mind. I will watch this after work on the big screen! Have a great weekend.

Great video as usual Mike! I'm in the middle of a crazy cross country move so much of my own PC treasure trove is being boxed up for transportation and storage! Your channel is helping me get my PC tinkering fix in the meantime! Thanks! I love all your little trivia and history comments as well!

I've never seen your videos but kudos for the thumbnail image for this vid! And thanks for speading the love for these systems and safekeeping them, so they are not lost.

Hey Mike, in case you aren't familiar with the G4 iMacs shown in your last video, just want to make sure you are aware they can be tricky to work on without damaging anything. Not much room inside so it's easy to pinch wires. If you take apart the LCD, make sure to look up how to do it without breaking the plastic rivets

37:57 "the funhouse inversion continues in the back" LMAO MIKE XD

Loving your videos. I built way too many of those back when. Love your watch face by the way.

Great Video.

I have a Baby AT hanging out in my room, love their mid-90's vibes! I do enjoy those old Caviar drives but definitely not the Varta barrel batteries. I've noticed the NiCD ones tend to be much worse! I know the motherboard maker PCChips did fake cache chips, ugh!

Love the new chip mat! So satisfying

yay another mike video. :D

Yep, built a baby ATA K6-300 back in the day. I love these style cases.

1:30 beautiful sound. I'm sure this was also heard in a galaxy far, far away in a trash compactor : )

Heloo Mike ! I'm already watching. Post-video commentar . Już oglądam . Komentarz po filmie . 🤭🤗

I love you brother. Just subscribed to your Patreon. I've watched every one of your videos. So much fun in so many ways. I wrote my first program when I was 15 in 1968 on an Olivetti Underwood Program 101. Seen it all since then, Mainframes, minicomputers, PCs and Macs. Thanks for all your hard work. Mark

All my desktops are true AT. Love seeing them on here.

21:44 AHH the sound of childhood!

Another amazing video ! You must have a time machine, I haven't seen such a vintage stations for a decades🙂

The reason the characters of the copyright string are doubled (or in one case I've seen, quadrupled) in the BIOS is a holdover from when the BIOS was a pair of chips. That way, the copyright is preserved in full on both chips.

bru you give life to 2nd hand hardware like it was brand new ! damn it you're too skilled haha wish to see you in featuring with Cathod Ray dude for exemple !

24:00 well hot damn! it works! love to see it!

Those hard drive noises from the first machine are the best things ever! The last system is actually really neat, a Pentium 166 is actually useful for me and my retro PC gaming needs!😉👌

My grandpa had one VERY like that first one in his RV. Played 'the incredibly machine' for the first time on it. Windows 3.1, those were 'the' days

When you checked the auto bulb and said it had "a crazy low resistance", bear in mind that a cold bulb filament has a MUCH lower resistance than it does when it's white hot. I did a little math based on you saying it was a 60 watt bulb that runs at 12 volts, and determined that it draws 5 amps of current, and its resistance when lit is actually 2.4 ohms, not the 0.3 ohms your meter shows when testing it cold

Once again your humour cracks me up. Hmmm, ghost-busted PSU? The sacrificial HDD's have more lives than a cat

I am always envious of finding the first chassis you showed off. That by far was my favorite AT chassis design of the day. Surprising to find an X5-P75 in that system, given that a lot of SiS 471 motherboards didn't have support for a x4 multiplier.

5:08 early 2000s Linkworld atx cases also have this feature, but i havent seen it on any other atx cases

You could tile a couple of walls with all those dial-up modems you've collected! Another fun video. Watching this made me cringe with all those sharp, finger and wrist slicing metal panels. I don't miss the days of building and working on these things!

Nice to come home from work and see another good retro computing video. If you ever get a Pentium 60 machine you need to run chkcpu to see if its a rare one with the floating point bug that did not get replaced.

If you want easy cleaning, use an Australian classic eucalyptus oil! Will clean it right up!

Good bit about the programmer :) thanks for dumping the BIOS. I bought one myself, it saved me hundreds of dollars on bad BIOS flashes so it paid for itself. Very handy when you do need one.

Baby ATs are my favorite

That first system was pretty maxed out for 1995-6! VLB disk controller. Bring on PCI! Excellent little machine.

13:40 - I'm using this word in my everyday vocabulary.... starting Monday. "Cromulent". 🧐😉

Thank you for explaining everything. I found a fresh tube of yellow unused (golden) UV curable solder mask at the dump. Now I know how long it takes to cure!

Great thumbnail! I love the baby AT systems. I know a little about Reveal computers, I believe they were a subsidiary of Packard Bell. I don’t believe they were around long. Maybe a few years. I never saw an inverted computer before. That was a new one for me. I like strange things though, it appeals to me. Once again your sense of humor shines through. Can’t wait to see all the other computers you have. I wonder if I will recognize any of them.

Love the video. A note about early CD-ROM Drives. I too used to think that the sound card connectors were due to protocols, and that is partially true. It actually has to do with the nature of the original IDE standard. The use of cylinders, tracks, and sectors was required on IDE, but didn't translate to the world of CD-ROM. As a result, CD-ROMs used the same communications standard as SCSI (which were later incorporated into EIDE and ATA-1). So, for all intents and purposes, our sound cards were doing quadruple duty, as a sound I/O card, MIDI Interface, Controller Port, and SCSI controller. Pretty impressive for a device that could be only $50. The use of the SCSI communication standards continues today with SATA and MVmE, as both show as SCSI devices in most hardware trees.

starting to feel like getting into this, maybe not as old but 2010 upwards such as alienware retro and sony vaio for starters.

Nice video as always. Yesterday i got a 14" IBM 3370 HDD!

20:17 I'd love to see the process on adding that clock sometime Mike!

I had a variant of that first case, and some of those exact stickers. I couldn't remember if mine had the display in it though some of these would have the hole and mounts for one . but the sticker in the front would be blank in that area. so who knows. I did notice that you decided to start opening up the power supplies. might be a good call rather than leaving things to chance.

Just like the very first PC rig I ever created in the mid 90's. Good times.

Great channel, love watching your content. I'll still be watching when you reach 100ksubs!

0:58 LMAO Pack it up kids!

24:30 very cool! Disco Disco!

Yeah, those were some good ones.

I thought the motherboard in that first system looked familiar until you full uncovered it. I have an almost identical Socket 3 M-Tech motherboard that came with a 486-DX100 and 52Mb of RAM. I think mine's a little newer, it has 3 PCI slots, 4 ISA slots, and IDE/Floppy/Serial/Parallel are built into the motherboard. The best part, it uses a CR2032 as the clock battery! It also came with an S3 Trio32 video card and an ESS Audiodrive sound card. Someday I'll turn it into a Windows 95 machine when i get an appropriate Baby AT Case.

The missing LED panel - there's an article on hackaday where someone filled that hole with a small OLED screen ("OLED Display Lets Vintage PC Engage Turbo Mode In Style").

Engaaaageeeee the turbooooo button

7:50, ahh beautiful BIOS ROM

Hope you have enough formula and diapers lol That first case is kinda neat looking

Hey mike I had a pentium 100 system from 96 that had a tower with the optical drive at the bottom, which made more sense when kept on a desk.

There were some HP Vectra models that also used a similar inverted style as well as a few dell's that used a odd layout like that also. There was even a custom tower by silverstone I think called the Reeven that used an odd layout always fascinating to see what some manufacturers have done to change up the old style so to speak.

you're getting cuter day by day

Computer-brand computer, for all your computations large and small.

Why they ever stopped with the removable motherboard trays I will never understand. Such a GREAT thing back then.. I'm actually pretty sure I had a system at one time pretty much identical to this one.. I never had that hdd cover on the 5 1/4 bay, but basically the same motherboard i/o cards, sound card with the matching cdrom.. man, the good times. I really miss the 90s.

Even the keyboard needs a BIOS on the motherboard? This is definitely new for me.

I wonder if an I/O controller on the VLB makes a hard drive connected to it faster than one connected to a controller on ISA

19:54 CattyWompus, technical term. 🤣🤣

Just found your channel - nice zippy pace! Subscribed! I loved these baby ATs too because computer tech was evolving so rapidly. The unmistakable sound of the metal shell coming off! Where's that Matrox card? Which slot for this VLB SCSI adapter! This thing is maxed out! :)

28:46 cache on a stick

I admit, I'm a sucker for baby ATs as well. You have to be careful around those things because they multiply the more vintage computer shows you go to.

Sorry getting to you late today... work related things took longer then normal ❤

*whispers: ummm can u just do a video shirtless. k thx*

S2 - Yep, PC Chips M507. I had one of those exact boards, fake cache slugs and all. The COAST makes it not an issue though and it just becomes a bog-standard Triton I based Socket 7 board (which does have the 'header' for replacement VRMs on the right of the CPU socket but good luck finding one). 'Fun fact' about it though, it doesn't have a PS2 header despite having the pads there for one. Why? Because the IO chip has a bug that makes it so it stops responding when it receives input from both the mouse and keyboard at once. So you're relegated to serial mice with this one.

First off - NOT A KIDDO! Was a PC Tech from the mid 80's! Can you say Bulletin Boards?!? Decent work. HD's of the era: When they fail they usually will give you a minor warning and completely fail, or they'll utterly fail. PC Tools had better diagnostic tools than MS! Windows will usually give you some indication of 'copy'/'move'/'data transfer' errors by spewing up 'alt key' characters. At the time as far as I know - NO ONE USED MS Scan Disk! At first it would corrupt your drive, then it got better... If you are going to 'archive' these systems - you need to take the HD failure into account. WD Dynamic Drive Overlay was a blessing!!! Back in the day optimizing these system (maximizing performance) was hard to sometimes impossible; driver existence and/or compatibility was primary issue; also configuration of devices attached to system; results sometimes in POST, sometimes not lol From the parts Id say your either Central/East Coast USA. IF you find a system with the primary drive that has a "Disks" or "Drivers" folder with subfolders of all the installation disks - that's Possibly a system I setup and/or serviced. There was a prototype VESA board - around the Pentium 100 days - throw any speed of ram on it and it would sync it all up to 'expand' your memory lol Then Auto-Banking came in lol There was one prototype hard drive - you could slot a single Dimm into it LOL OH! LOL USB 0.89 (or so) isn't compatible with USB 1.0!! LOL I have it in my head that they appeared on HP systems and you have no choice but to use the 'original drivers' that came with them.

Great video Mike as usual. Regarding a use for a pile of modems, this video might give you some brain food for ways of inter-networking them within a VLAN or something for a cool retro comm project: v=lTHYDzqjTvE TL, DR: Guy uses modem on ancient PC to dial into a slightly less ancient PC which is actually on a LAN and routes through that for internet access using a phone-line switch. He also sends himself a fax like an absolute Analogue Chad.

5:09 damn son, you got a license for those?

Thank you for another awesome video. I found two dell Vostro 3902s in the dumpster and took them home. I tested them and they worked fine. I have one problem though. they did not have power supplies and I've been looking everywhere for one with no luck. Do you have any suggestions on any other power supply I can use even if its not a dell one?