Dear all, please note that I am very well aware that floppy and IDE ribbon cables had a red or pink stripe down one side that indicated the direction of insertion when using sockets without a notch or blanked out pin. Just because I do not mention something in what is already a long video does not mean that I am unaware of it! :) The cable I insert into the controller card at about 6:15 is indeed inserted the wrong way around. But given that this is an old, non-functional board - and this is not a “how to” video - this really does not matter. As always, when filming I am working upside down, and leaning back to avoid getting in the way of the camera and lights, so what you can see onscreen is far clearer than what I can see, and when filming I have a lot of other things to concentrate on. I make 52 videos here a year on a very tight schedule. Not everything is perfect. It never will be. But I do what I can to make things as accurate as possible. To those keen to point out below that I have “missed things out”, please note that I do say in the introduction that this video is not a definitive history of motherboards. Rather, it is a gentle discussion of those older boards I have in my possession.

Cable management.... I remember it meaning "How can I actually cram all of these in here and still manage to hook it all up" Now it's "oh look. It's pretty!" Times sure have changed. Great video and it brings back bittersweet memories of the horrors/joys of working on old PCs.

I feel so old. I remember when all this stuff was new. A journey through Memory Lane.

I really enjoy the way you can talk about motherboards in an factual, well organized and interesting way. Very good work!

This is literally a life story of tech enthusiasts of my age. I grew up on these motherboards.

In 1998 I built a gaming PC for a buddy at work and was a little amused when he said it would be his last because he didn't think that they would ever get any faster. SMHLOL

If I remember correctly Slot 1 came about because of Intel trying to save some money. Intel were using L1 and L2 cache on their processors. If they tried to put both caches on the same die, the die became big and expensive. By using the Slot which took a what was a PCB they could put the CPU and L1 on the same die but then have the L2 cache as separate chips on the Slot 1 PCB. Because they manufactured it themselves they could guarantee the quality control and run the L2 cache without problem. It also meant they could put different amounts of L2 cache on the same CPUs without have to use different dies. As manufacturing techniques improved and prices dropped the L2 cache was moved onto the main CPU die. Hence no more need for Slot 1 😊

The days when you accidentally discover overclocking by putting the jumper on the wrong pins

Realy thanks for the little history of Motherboards. Its a pleasure to see old stuff again, that its from my teenager time.

Your home is a veritable museum of ancient artifacts.

Wonderful Chris! Beautifully put together. Thank you for the effort. Looking forward for more of these series :)

I've been experiencing the evolution of pc motherboard since 8086. There has been huge power jumps. The use of PC has leaped from an office use intrument to high-end gaming machine. Thanks for your sharing the change of PCs in decades! I still have the delight of having new CPUs and motherboards introduced from PC magazines.

People in 1990 be like "But can it play solitaire?"

Hey Chris, good summary of mobo developments over the years. Those ISA slots take me back! Look forward to the next one on future of desktop pcs

Motherboards have come a long way. Looking forward to your next video!

Thanks for this upload Chris. I appreciate your time and effort to fit these in. Looking forward to the history of RAM upload in the near future. Keep up the good work.

This video and the previous one similar to it are exactly what the young technicians need to know to understand older equipment they may need to repair. Thanks

Replacing my PC with a self-assembled 286 clone was one of my biggest highlights in computing. I feel so utterly ancient now.

Nice presentation once again Chris. I feel so old now that I watched this because I remember all those boards and some much earlier ones. Thanks for the trip down memory lane

Thank you for this fantastic overview. I am looking forward to seeing the next video.

Well Chris you have certainly succeeded in making me acknowledge my age. I worked with all of the boards you reviewed and some older by ten years. Never the less I found it interesting.

Great video, I definitely remember some of the early stuff being on my early computers as well as when I was in retail having to keep up with the various tech

Thanks for the trip down memory lane Chris. I remember all of those generations well!

Man, I’ve got to tell you these videos are some the top notch tutorials on KZfaq. Here are some things that make them so great: great pace, good voice, nice editing, and simple and professional production.

A very pleasant walk down memory lane there, well explained also to point out what we take for granted today with configuration / setup gotcha's. I joined the PC space late ( due to costs mainly ) so did not have to worry to much about alot of the nasties really early on. Its also worth a mention as shown in your other video's how pc tech is making into into the SBC arena aka PCI-E and M.2.

What a trip down memory lane. Thank you for these videos!

I'm sure it has already been mentioned several times in the comments, Chris, but thank you for the trip down memory lane. I am really enjoying the conversations you're having with yourself while you talk about the subject (such as the one that starts at 6:50), whatever it happens to be. Funny stuff.

I stared as a hardware tech over 30 years ago and this was a walk down memory lane. Thanks! I thoroughly enjoyed the stroll!

I sure miss those good old cereal ports. Especially in the morning...

Hi Chris. Thanks for this. As some others have said, that was a trip down memory lane. I actually remember back further, into the late 70s/early 80s when my Dad bought a Radio Shack TRS-80 II; this computer was pre-DOS, if memory serves, and the (specially written) programmes had to be loaded from a cassette tape. Unbelievable.

amazing and informative video as always chris camera work too is top notch thanxxxxxx a lot

Once again your wonderful video brought back wonderful memories of my teaching career at the university. Your video beautifully captured my lecture on motherboards. Thanks again for your wonderful video. Keep up the good work.

As usual Chris has this uncanny, nay professional method of explaining technology to the average Joe. I know all this stuff but I'm still watching your videos on Sundays. I must have way too much time on my hands Chris.

I had just watched your pcie slot video, and was hooked.. I subscribed and went hunting only to find you had already made this vid.. as I said earlier I have been playing with computers since the tandy, commodore days.. and building computers ever since.. I really liked the fact that you have connected all of my old memories into a new form to see the evolution that I was hardly aware of.. It really is fascinating to see it in this light.. I am now going to have go digging into my boxes! I know I still have my old 386 and my 486 (with a cd rom drive) But I have old motherboards, cpus, memory and all the good old stuff.. I will have to get my old 3 & 486 running again I even have the monitor, keyboard and mouse for them.. plus maybe get some cases and build some of the early pentiums back and make a little display of them.. you have rekindled the old fire my friend..and for that I thank you! I am only 66 years of age but I worked and played hard when I was young and as a result have worn my body out and need a simple easy hobbie and you have given me that.. carry on tally ho and TA...

This was a great walk down memory lane Chris, thank you. I started out with a 16MHz 386-SX, as a very lucky teenager, later getting a maths co-pro for it when I was using a lot of maths software at University. I then built plenty of PCs into the Slot 1 era, after which I started a long spell with Macs. I'm back on Linux now though, and thinking of building myself a custom machine again. So this has been a great watch for me!

thanks for making this video, its really cool to look back on pc parts especially parts I will probally never get a chance to use or see. The fact you kept hardware for 30 years is amazing. This is why we subscribe, like, and comment. computers rule!!!

I still have all of these generations of computers. I even still have my Commodore 128D, and it still works! :) Nice video!

Wow !! A trip down memory lane. Loved it

Recently I bought an AsRock 4CoreDual-VSTA (L1), excellent for testing components of different generations, certainly my favorite motherboard.😍 Nice video, as always!

Sick video. Keep up the good work. Got to learn a lot of things Processor Slot, IDE, AGP

Nice trip down memory lane. I didn't get started in PC building professionally until the late Pentium days, but I had to troubleshoot some 386 and 486 along the way. I did notice a couple minor things I hope you don't mind me pointing out, not that anyone getting into retro tech is going to use this as their only source. Around 6:15 it looks like you plug the floppy cable in backwards? Red stripe on the side of the cable usually corresponds with Pin 1 on the connector. Also around 13:30 you talk about the Pentium II 300 being a 100MHz bus with a 3x multiplier - that CPU was actually a 66MHz bus with a 4.5 multiplier. The multiplier was usually locked in the CPU, so attempting to set it to 100x3 might result in an unstable 450MHz accidental overclock.

Fun fact about slot CPUs. Intel and AMD were physically compatible, but different electrically. If you plugged one into a board for the other, the CPU would die when you powered up the system. Yay.

This was very nice and good video for whom who don't know how it was evolved. hats off for the research and keeping those M/B handy.

Computers used to take research to build often with some troubleshooting. When you got upgrades, it would mean more tweaking. Now there is so little chance of things not working as long as you get the basics right. I built a new computer the other day. I spent maybe 15 minutes buying the parts in my local electronics store and it took me probably 15 minutes to put it together. The majority of my time was cable management.

Nice, stroll through memory lane, back at the time I used to build PCs myself... xD Nowadays, even with the ressurgence of PC builders, I just buy them ready to use. Here in Brazil there was a quirk back in the 90s and early 2000s for anyone who lived close to the Paraguayan border - it was waaaay cheaper to buy parts and build your own PC. That plus me being a tinkerer who broke lots of electronics as a teen and early adult, I'm familiar with a whole ton of stuff Cris is talking about. I started opening up desktop cases to see what's inside back at PC-XT times... but my first builds were probably back at 386 DXII desktops. I think that went on up 'till Pentium III, which I had a Slot 1 cartridge for. Perhaps a bit longer than that. From that time on things started getting super complicated on the ram memory side. There was a transitioning period that had lots of motherboards that were only compatible with certain RAM memory brands and speeds, things got a heck lot more confusing, and worst of all - poorly documented. So what you effectively had to do (which I did) was talk a lot with people working on stores to know what combination worked and what didn't. As they assembled multiple desktops a day, they knew what worked better and what didn't. They had lots of headaches with assembled desktops coming back from costumers because they weren't working properly. You gave a base configuration of what you wanted and they took care of matching brands and whatnot so that the build would work. Things I don't forget from that time... the moment RAM memory prices crashed down, which was almost unbelievable at the time, and the moment RAM memory speeds became a thing, which was the point assembling your own desktop became too complicated - like I said on previous paragraph. From that point on I never went back to building my own desktops. It doesn't make economical sense anymore these days here in Brazil... difference in price isn't that big anymore, parts are harder to find, and warranty plus paying in installments just makes buying a pre-assembled branded desktop the better choices nowadays. But the benefits lives on. My current desktop is over 5 yrs old now. I got a Dell. But I put an SSD in it right after buying it, most people didn't even know what it was. And I'll probably replace the aging graphics card and push it for some more years before retiring...

Good show that brings back lots of memories of the pc's i had way back starting in 1985 and man the pc have come a long way just think what they might look like in the years

Really great videos, Chris. Keep bringing the great content!!!

Slot 1 and jumpers...I had completely forgot about them. I feel quite proud having built the things back then. That side of things - it never occured that it was difficult, its just how it was. But you had to be careful hey! The tougher jobs were getting early CD writers to work for me. SO many WASTED blank disks!! Cheers for doing this I'm doing a build, first time this century from scratch - its been quite a refresher learning about all the stuff I missed, that I'll never need, like DDR3 and SATA hard drives!

Great episode. Thanks from Orlando

+ExplainingComputers That slot1 board is quite the rarity! It's an AT form-factor when most slot1 boards were ATX. It also has both AT and ATX power connectors. And yet it also has a USB connector? Very rare combination indeed!

I had a P2 233, 32MB RAM and a 4.01 GB HDD back in 98. I overclocked it up to 252 without knowing exactly what I was doing in a time the OC could actually burn the CPU, OC was not a thing in those days so no safety features or safe OC whatsoever. That´s when I felt in love with computers! Thank you for the memory lane trip!!

I learned so much on this channel

You got me thinking of lovely old days.. thank you Chris!

Another gem of a video from this channel.

I had a 386 PC in 1987 ish. Quote from Wikipedia, "The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985". It didn't half seem fast compared to my 286!!

You are absolutely genius, ur videos is very useful, thanks a lot

Excellent video and all very well explained. I've had all those motherboards except the last one at one time or another and only moved from a Pentium 4 3.2Ghz in 2010 to a quad core Phenom. That was very significant at the time.

Love your videos and keep up fantastic information.

I think I just died and went to pc heaven. Really good video from one nerd to another.

The first 486 boards were an absolute pain to configure. You had about 40-50 jumpers to set to correctly address things and configure the CPU. Half of those acted as little killswitches, upon first start releasing curious blue smoke if set wrongly. Those really were the pioneering days of PC building.

I've recently subscribed to your Channel and really enjoy your content. You make learning fun for us who like to know more about the different functions on computers. Hopefully KZfaq will present you with your very own plaque for all the hard effort you put in your videos.

brings back memories I have owed all these motherboards in the past, started building PC's as a kid in the 90's

Love your videos, feels like I'm in a university class

Those "cartridge" CPUs are kinda cool to be honest. Just think how easy upgrading CPU would be, just as easy as changing ram.

Lovely presentation, thanks for the info!

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. It's funny how MB's from the 90's use to have colors like a pack of Skittles and the new ones have a uniform color scheme.

I miss building the old 386 and 486 PCs. All those jumpers and DIPs meant that one error could fry the whole kit. That anticipation after triple checking and you press the power button to either get a boot up or a popping sound. You just no longer get that same all or nothing gratification. Seriously though, I do miss having to get everything just so. Nowadays literally anyone can plug and play a system together and it'll work. I'm not saying it'll work well, but it will work. I remember getting the Abit P5Q motherboard. It was the world's first jumperless motherboard and it was amazing in the fact you could just go into the BIOS, set a multiplier or ratio or FSB and reboot for some overclocking goodness. I still have that old system, haha. Great quick explanation for the uninitiated. This is a good video I can reference people to when I try to explain that things were much more difficult way back when. I'm getting old...

Nice to see old names and logos, reminded me of Zalman, i checked them out, they are still in business ... i remember asking some one in early 90s "why do you need a fan for the CPU" because back them all i know is 386 without a fan, just heatsink.

Overclocking via dip switch? This is fascinating. I got into PC hardware around 2002, but learning about older motherboards is an experience. Nice video.

Thank you for this video. Now I see how MB's have changed and that I won't be able to use my old cards. It is so much easier to build your own computer now. You brought back a lot of memories, some were good and some were very frustrating. Thank you, Chris.

Leave up to gigabyte to put the cpu fan pins over the memory slots.

Gosh, the weirdest thing to me is seeing how much I had forgotten about hardware, and watching you talk about what I always thought was common knowledge as... history. I feel old : o ).

I love your videos and I learn so much from them. it is so well designed and detailed. keep it up.

Really fantastic and interesting video. Love your content Chris! Thank you.

How nice,... a trip down memory lane. I recognize all of it and of course, since I can't throw away anything... I have plenty of those in my shed.

Wow brings back a lot of memories. My first PC was a 486 (my first gaming rig). Then, a P2 500, a P3 1ghz, P4 2.4Aghz Prescott core, athlon x2 1.4ghz, core2duo e6600 (2.4ghz), core2quad q6600 (2.4ghz), i5 2500k, and finally the i5 6600k. Weird coincidence that I have 3 of Intel's same CPU nomenclature numbers although different eras. I still have all 3, the e6600, q6600, and my current PC with 6600k. By the way, I loved Zalman coolers too, but I could never afford or get one from where I used to live. I remember them topping the old Anandtech charts. Fun fact, I bought the Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120 (TRUE120) which cooled my e6600, q6600, 2500k, and is now mated to my 6600k!! Thanks for this awesome video I totally loved it. Felt kinda old, TBH, but wise too. Kids these days wouldnt know what to do with a jumper, except maybe wear it.

Brings back memories, I remember building many of these during the 'migration' from AS400 to desktops when I worked at Seven Seas in the late 90's, each one was hand built and configured including a number of Novell Netware servers and a treasured Microsoft Exchange Server. Those were the days. A shout out to any of your subscribers from Seven Seas with thank's for giving me the opportunity to switch from Quality Assurance to PC Support, it was a life-changer. Thanks for sharing Chris.

very nice video, thank you for making these videos

6:20 so true, you just need to see the verge PC build to understand what he meant . Nowadays you can really do everything BUT the recommended way, and it still works! Progress, I guess

That first board looked rather familiar, I had a similar one, with an 80386SX-16, and you could use SIMMs in 256KB, 512KB or 1024KB. In the 80386 days, SX referred to the "folded bus" 16bit data bus, rather than the DX with a 32bit data bus. In the 80486 days, the meaning changed, and SX meant the CPU didn't have a built-in Math Co-Processor. My first 486 was an SX that was over clocked, I think it was a 25MHz over clocked to 33MHz. Then I got to try the DX2/66 and I was hooked on the speed boost, LoL!

Thanks for a great video! Looking forward to see your predictions about the future :)

What an excellent walk down memory lane. Thanks.

The red stripe on the floppy cable should be oriented toward Pin 1 of the floppy header.

Down memory lane ...🙄 Sorry couldn't resist that. What I remember about those early motherboards are IRQ conflicts 🤔😱

Great video, as always.

Awesome. Very nostalgic to see computer HW from the 90s. Thanks for sharing.

Rewind just a few years and there are motherboards with individual RAM chips and I/O cards for MFM and RLL hard drives.

@3:15 even my sub 2USD microcontroller run on 72mhz, and I only use it for blinking an LED

That is a wonderful trip into the near past, I think I was on the same journey myself, now I wish I had kept all the MB's I went through in my life. I would like to mention about how MB's also gained layers of circuitry throughout their history also along with micro resistors and surface mounting, still a great video!

Great video! Really enjoyed it!

Well that blue barrel battery was pretty much an indication on how PC manufacturers clearly designed their PCs to eventually fail due to Planned Obsolescence. You can see how it leaked, like a Zinc Carbon or an Alkaline Battery does when it becomes dry. Sadly the Amiga 500+ had those barrel batteries that caused a leak that made the Amiga motherboard beyond repairs, even those Arcade machines that had used them for SRAM Hi-Score storage. As for the i80386 lacking a fan it didn't seem as powerful as it was for the Pentium II or III, but it be recommended to have a PC case with plenty of circulation as well maybe having a case cooling fan, to prevent excess heat from damaging the Capacitors and melting the solder. But those PowerPC, Motorola 680x0 processors didn't compete well as Steve Jobs ditched the PowerPC for Intel x86 near 2006 for Apple's iMac range.

My first true IBM style PC was in 1990, an XT clone, no HDs, just twin 5 1/4 floppy drives, one for OS and one for Lotus 123, Wordstar 2000, my C compiler, or whatever game I was playing. I think my CRT colour monitor gave me mild sunburn ...

Christopher - thanks for another great video. It was nice to see all those old types of motherboards again. I loved the "here's a PC I'd forgotten I'd got" moment - I'm sure I've had similar moments too :-) If I remember correctly, the first IBM compatible I owned was an Olivetti PCS 386 that cost me £1399 (with a monochrome monitor and a "free" dot matrix printer) plus another £85 for a mouse, both bought in Evesham Micros, when that was just a little shop in the town of the same name. Later on I upgraded to a colour monitor and added a maths co-processor (liberated from a redundant PC at work). Amstrad PC's were about £100 less than the Olivetti ones - but I reckoned the extra £100 was a worthwhile investment. In those days, new PC's came with unformatted hard drives, a manual and a set of install floppies for MS-DOS.

Great vid! I had a fun Christmas a long time ago with a brand new pentium II and I remember that slot! Thanks for the memories.

A nice bit of nostalgia, though slightly alarming to realise how old I'm getting. [Looks out of window] It used to be all fields round here... I hope I don't forget the video about memory.

7:27 ... what a tiny netword card ?! Unbelieveable. I stopped working inside Desktop PC around 1997. Soundcards and CD drive could be a nightmare. Burning a CD was an even far more nightmare.

I was surprised to see VGA on the last one! Great summary, Chris!

Great video thank you. Motherboards are a thing of beauty/art, all those connections and soldering

That slot processor thing is new to me....this proves "Every day you learn something new...."

If I recall correctly your IDE sockets or headers were also called AT Architecture and then later Parallel AT Architecture to distinguish it from Serial AT Architecture or SATA.