I could do nothing but watch Clint restore vintage towers for hours. He's the Bob Ross of vintage computer restoration, there's something just so therapeudic about it.

For the record: definitely not boring. You'll always run into troubles along the way, and the troubleshooting is satisfying, on top of seeing everything come together

This computer changed my life. It was my first computer that was just for me and not the rest of the family. My parents spent $3k for this back in the day and I remember feeling so guilty that they were putting out so much money for me. I used this computer for 5 years throughout highschool (1997-2001). Having my own PC gave me the freedom to experiment and learn computers, prompting my desire to go into computer science later in college. This machine holds a special place in my life and I'm so grateful my parents understood it's potential to shape my future.

"PC beeps twice with concern" those subtitles are worth keeping on

I LOVE that in the subtitles it says “PC Plops down”

I may have built that PC! I worked at Gateway 2000 from 1995 till early 1998 in North Sioux City, SD. I hated those power buttons, they used to like to fall into the case if you pushed just a little to hard. As a workaround we used to put tape on the button so it would not fall out until the third party manufacturer fixed the design. That 'blank' fan was covered because this was a holdover design from the awful tower/desktop convertible case design released before this one. That is not the original HDD. It would have been a western digital caviar blue or orange. Any part that does not have a date code sticker on it is not original to the PC, other then RAM and CPU. ( you see it on the back of the sound card at the right of the label - 12/31/1997 and Power Supply on the right) Motherboard one would be located the last ISA slot on the bottom out of view. The CD-ROM would have been either Mitsumi, Panasonic or Toshiba depending on inventory that week. I think Video card in those were the AGP 4MB ATI 3D Rage cards...don't hold me to that. Those were the mid-tier sound cards of choice. Loved those cards, I still have a few. Sound Blaster was top tier or if we ran out of Ensoniq cards. Really cool to see an old friend of mine on your channel. Thanks for restoring it! I'm working a P-120 full tower from 1995.

"MMX-compatible jazz music plays" - always good to have the captions!

that organic fps drop with resonance cascade in hl1 is just pure nostalgia

ahhh the mid-tier beige box, truly the height of nostalgia for a large amount of us

That power button deserves its own episode of LGR oddware Nothing like a classic LGR old PC video

Run of the mill machines like this are so interesting to see nowadays. Unlike rare or noteworthy ones, very few people bothered to keep these around so they've become rare in their own rite, it's like seeing an 80's Corolla still being maintained. Props to you for caring about these sorts of machines!

I absolutely love your restoration videos! Even though this must've been a frustrating one, I just want you to know that your restoration videos are great!

Oh man, those hard drives have this very special kind of whine that only they make. It brings back so many memories of messing around on my computer _all night_ from like 4pm until 6am. After 14 hours straight of sitting in a small enclosed den listening to that whine, when I would finally shut it down and the noise stops, it's like releasing a vice from my head. It's like a pressure in your ears stops and it's relieving. You don't realize how loud and annoying it is until it goes away.

Someone loved this PC, given all the upgrades.

Oh man! A Pentium 2 Gateway with an AGP slot?! In 1997 I was in my mid teens, still rocking a NES and SNES and dreaming of getting a PlayStation. I knew just enough about PCs at the time to know that a machine like this would have stomped the PlayStation, and PC hardware was exploding in performance fast. I did get a used PlayStation in 1998, and it got a lot of use, and I forgot about PC gaming to be honest. Bought a brand new PS2, 6 months or so after its release. 2004, I built my first gaming rig. I have not bought a console since. My roommates and I do have an 1st generation PS3 with full backwards compatibility. We need to get it repaired/upgraded soon. That was the last of the truly good, stand alone consoles ever built in my opinion.

omg the Red Alert sounds were such a massive hit of nostalgia - I need to play that game again

That transition to a stationary camera at 9:25 was just like the transition when sitting down to a computer in a 90's adventure game!

I worked for Gateway support back then, I remember having non-computer users go into their cases to replace parts. Or doing the "FDISK Format Reinstall doo-dah" (sung to the tune "Camptown Races"). The customers didn't hear it, but we needed some "fun" to take off the stress.

44:48 - Definitely not boring. I wouldn't call it roof raising excitement but seeing things like this is always fascinating. These little time capsules deserve to be shared.

Boring? Dude, that is like one of THE reasons why I watch your channel! Keep 'em coming!

Restorations are my absolute favorite of your videos. Pure comfort food.

Yup to those who are thinking of repasting a slot 1/A CPU BEWARE. Those P2s and Athlon As of the time used an identical horrible plastic clip on mechanism that once its on, its a bit of a destructive way in, you have to go in the bottom with a metal flathead, plastic tools snap, catch or get ruined, then you can ride the sides with a guitar pick, the later pentium 3s were much easier with the bracket you could slide off. The paste has long pushed out and is usually this pink putty that has hardened. Sadly with the athlons of the thunderbird variety like my 900A, its best to get a graphite sheet so you can set and forget as they do run hot as the thermal diodes are in random places and aren't directly comparable between models.Thankfully if you don't care about looks the damage is able to be hidden, the metal clips will put up a fight aswell. Its probably best on higher spec models but sucks on a higher Sku/value offering to get in so brutally. if you haven't at this point decided to just get a P3 anyway, to do a backplate mod, but at that point its just a slower P2 in a P3 cooling assembly so..yeah, not a good design at all.

Great video, LGR. Brings back a lot of fond memories. I'm 39 now, but I grew up in the era of the first home PCs. I played a lot of Sim City 2000, Doom 1 and 2, Strife, Blood, Age of Empires 1 and 2, Command and Conquer Red Alert, Warcraft 1 and 2, Diablo 1 and 2, Starcraft 1, Lode Runner the Legend Returns, King's Quest 6, Oregon Trail 2, The Dig, Myst, Riven, and many other games growing up on our home computer over those years up through high school. When I left home and moved to campus at university, that was the first time I had access to "high-speed" Internet with no dialup. That was in the Fall of 2002. That was incredible. I also had a brand new desktop to take with me during that time. It was during those years I got into WoW, which came out in 2004. That rig lasted me all through undergraduate, and even grad school after. By the time 2009 rolled around, that thing was ancient, but I was still using it to get things done. I finally upgraded with a new rig in 2010. My guildmates in WoW were very happy about that, especially since I was the guild master and raid leader. Ha! I finally hung up my WoW hat in June of 2022 due to various reasons. Anyways, thank you for making these videos. They are very special.

This is my favorite type of video - an average (or below-) computer is what most of us would have experienced back in the day. Seeing it come to life, solving its problems, and upgrading it - all 100% relatable and pure good feeling. Can't get enough of this type of video.

I got my second computer for Christmas in 1997. I went from an IBM PS/1 to a G6-233. It's when my love for computers became solidified. It's when I began gaming online for the first time. Join gaming clans. Countless nights hanging out on Kali and playing Descent and Descent 2. Learning to sail the seven seas using ftp and mIRC. It's when console emulation as we know it really hit the accelerator. Then, one year later, added in a 3Dfx Voodoo2 and experience one of the most significant leaps forward in computer technology ever. Learning how to play fps games when mouse and keyboard control was practically a new concept. So much of who I am and what I enjoy are centered around my memories made on that Gateway 2000 G6-233.

Great stuff! Those biscuit tin snares on the 4MB wavetable were hilarious.

Clint, gotta compliment you on better footage cutting. Editing is evolving which is nice. Video is more engaging because of it, keep it up.

The nostalgia ... I played so much Red Alert on a similar (less pricey) machine - thanks for showing us this!

imagine its 2077. grandpa LGR builds an ultra old school RTX4090 rig with windows 11.

Buddy, not boring. Entertaining and informative. I just picked up a gateway 400c (and an ibm 5170 with a 5153 monitor AND a mystery 486 with a turbo button and megahertz display) and I've run into a similar issue running direct 3d games but sim city 3000 works just fine. I actually just purchased a geforce mx 400 hoping that would fix my issue but now im confident it will after seeing your own experience with the same kind of thing. If anyone was curious my issue was sim theme park freeze in exactly the same way and i suspended this old ati (128?) was the issue since software rendering ran fine even though it was slow. But definitely keep it up man, also thanks for the inspiration you gave me to start my own collection!

As always in our hobby, "a silly series of flubbs" does tend to lead into "a silly series of [swears]." I love these old Gateway 2k machines.

It's been SO long since we've had a computer restoration video from LGR. I miss these.

Absolutely not a boring video! Retro builds, restorations, or just looks back at bland machines are always my favourite LGR videos, especially when they're in the ballpark of an hour long. Machines like this would most likely be totally forgotten about otherwise

Not boring at all, these are so comfy to watch and listen. Normally I would find these types of "why is it not working, god do I have to unscrew the WHOLE THING" situations very stressful, but there's something so comforting and enjoyable about you being curious and so knowledged and just figuring things out. You have a love for these machines, and we love them through you.

I love your computer hardware videos, including this one! Your series on building a 486 is one of my favorite things on your channel so I hope you keep doing more of this type. I understand if they don’t get enough views to be worth making though.

Not a boring video at all. I love these longer restoration videos. You're doing important preservation work on a part of computing history that is special to many of us. Thank you!

These videos of these fantastic machines are a pleasure for the eyes. show for nostalgic old people like me🤩

I watched all the way to the end and I’ll tell you right now, this scratches a nostalgia itch I didn’t realize I had! Thank you so much for making these videos!

There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t long for the ninety’s. In my home town there was a gateway store within a mile of a comp USA. Even though they are long since gone I Still get the fun feelings of fresh electronics, computers and big box software while driving by where they once were.

Not all IDE cables worked for Cable Select. The newer 80-conductor UDMA4/Ultra ATA 66 cables should always work. Most 40-conductor cables (as that machine has) needed to be modified for Cable Select to work, the conductor for pin 28 to be cut between the two drive connectors (so one sees pin 28 grounded & becomes master, the other isn't grounded & becomes slave). Although Cable Select drives were the norm, ready-made cables which supported CS were rare - I never came across one. This caused a lot of problems back in the day, troubleshooting 'dead' drives which in reality were just set to CS but connected with a standard cable (as provided with the drive).

Very durable and quiet case BTW. Used one till mid 2010-s. Just milled back panel a bit to fit modern motherboards and PSU.

This was my first PC. Quite a trip down memory lane for me seeing this.

Clint, I just wanted to say I appreciate the work you put into the captioning on your videos!

I'm 99 percent sure this is the exact computer I have in my basement, It's really wild to see it get a dedicated video like this lol.

My dear LGR, I was waiting for a video of this kind for ages. Thank you and bring mooooore

Oh yeah, I love LGR computer stuff in the morning. And rain just makes it better. ☕️☺️👍💯

These are my favorite type of videos that you make! Sometimes I'll just have the playlist of all of your restoration vids on while I work, and the "average PC" ones are my favorite. These are what most people had so they're fun to go back to.

A restoration video, and from my favourite era of computers too? Christmas has come early! AND it’s 40 minutes long to boot!

These system restoration videos are my favorite content of what You put out, so personally I’d love to see them continue 🙏

I've always enjoyed your videos on random PCs, I try to refrain from filling my house with old PCs but at least these videos scratches my itch to try fool around with slightly different hardware to what I already have. Please keep making them!

My grandparents bought a Gateway 2000 in the late 90s or early 2000s (IIRC, it had a Pentium III), and just kept using it for the rest of their lives. I remember playing Runescape on it, and waiting for an hour or so to load up my first ever KZfaq video (which was probably only a few minutes - it's private now, so you guys can't see it 😛) to show them over their dial up connection.

now THIS is the Friday content I love. LGR, MIKETECH and RETRORECALL are my favourite Retro PC channels.

I remember that Gateway used to have their own branded stores, there was even one here in Perth Western Australia.

Man you're content is my life during the 90s....

...this is what im talking about. This is why I love this channel. Thank you and I need more of this exact content. PLEASE

great way to start the friday, I've got a gateway of my own!

I rebuilt and upgraded many of these after they had finished their work like in the office i was working on, then we gave them away to employees as their first home computer in late 90's. Strangely though I always thought they were just a UK brand? Obviously not. Pretty sure most of ours were branded just "Gateway".

As a guy that tends to watch everything with captions on, thank you for putting the little jokes and such for the sounds. It's the little things like that which have always kept me here.

Seeing Cool Crab casually appear in your videos just makes my day.

Thanks for another fasinating 90's PC restoration Clint! I always look forward to an LGR video to break up the Friday work schedule :)

That intro was single handedly the most adorable and most horrific thing you've ever done, thank you. That was truely an unsettling combination of enthusiasm, obsession, and a complete loss of sanity.

The first LGR videos I ever watched were PC teardown and restoration videos, and I enjoyed them very much. Thanks again, Clint!

I adore these kinds of videos. It’s so soothing listening to the music and your voice as you explore and troubleshoot old PCs.

This exact model was my FIRST PC, I have fond memories playing UT, Quake on it among others. Mine came with 32mb RAM and I remember upgrading it with a Voodoo Banshee since a VooDoo 2 would not work IRQ conflict or something.. Great video brings back a lot of memories of me sitting on the phone with Gateway tech support and them walking me through re-installing the operating system with the included restore CDs. Also mine had a 18" CRT monitor I loved this machine and still have it in my attic lol. When it first came it included a CD version of Encarta and MS office and windows 95 great video my friend :) It also came with RedLine Racer, Monster Truck Madness and a game called G-Police :)

I remember walking into the Gateway store for the 1st family computer. Still have it too.

2:38 "Why not just put more buttons" I feel this way about everything. Especially modern cars.

Red Alert! I'm always happy to see this selected as a piece of test software in LGR episodes. C&C is my jam.

Aw man... NFS4 High Stakes was always my favorite NFS game-- NFS III was fun cuz you could mod it so easily and make it do silly things, but NFS 4 was just more polished. I remember downloading Super Heavy Bus and just flying around the tracks blowing other cars off the road. The replay mode made it almost infinitely replay-able, and I got a LOT of laughs from the crazy stuff we did.

ive said it before, ill say it again - this is the best type of LGR content!

Far from boring, these are the best LGR things imo 🙏

Coziness overflow. The opposite of boring. Goes perfectly well with some hot black coffee. Thanks, man. Cheers!

90's/00's desktops were like the wild west. You never knew what you were going to get. The internet was much the same, at the time. Not just ruled by a handful of tech giants.

A classic Gateway PC restore video.

The issues are exactly why we referred to any Gateway as “Getaway 2000s” Great vid!!

Billy is great. I really enjoy his channel, the nostalgia mall too

I've owned that exact CPU before, and those are rivets not screws. You'll have to drill them out, or just leave them be

These are my favorite types of videos. The average computers of the 1990s will always be my favorite. Please make more of them just restoring and cleaning.

And thus, Billy's Gateway Curse has been passed on to you. If you haven't seen the videos of him restoring the other computers he got, buckle up; he experienced so many different problems on all of them.

The cool kids have no idea of the struggles us old farts had to endure to play simple games.

This form factor was my first PC. Saved up $2000+ from my paper route for a whole year to buy this thing. Came with POD. I was addicted!

This generation of PC has strong nostalgia for me, as my family had a 300MHz P2 with that exact HP disc burner in it.

Ah, nostalgia. Hearing that high-speed CD-ROM drive speed up like a turbine, knowing it was about to spew some gaming goodness onto your hard drive at unbelievable (for the time) speeds.

I agree Clint, Pod in software mode has a nice crusty style to it. Gives me PS1 vibes

It’s crazy how much pc architecture has evolved since the 90s. Even the early 90s vs the later 90s represented a monumental shift once PnP was introduced. If you know what a DMA channel or an IRQ is, or if you know the difference between extended memory vs expanded memory… you know what I’m talking about! I spent so much time constantly upgrading my computers in the 90s! Good times.

I recently sold my home of 25 years and happily discovered that i had three pcs I’d forgotten about. One was XP era, but two were from prior to when I had bought that home (one being DOS era and one being Windows 95 era). The XP machine was a Dell, but the older two I had built myself. Rather than recycle them I had decided that I would try and restore the PC’s. I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Watching this video has motivated me to get to it ASAP! Thanks!

It’s neat computer time. *grabs coffee*

At the time Gateway was competing with Dell. They were trying to get regular customers as well as regular business contract similar to what Dell now. Nvidia tnt2 is quite nice at the time. 128MB is also quite an update as that is a requirement for games later on (1998+)

Clint has mastered the art! Watching this was almost as satisfying as doing it myself IRL.

Watched till the end! I love these kinds of videos, because this is exactly what I enjoy mucking about with old computers. Giving them a really nice tune up, maybe swapping in some slightly upgraded goodies, is a great way to ensure they are around for a few more years.

45 minutes of LGR about computers of my past? OK!

I've had HP CD burners die in weird ways like that too.

Dang it ! This reminds me of the lost weekends reinstalling Windows 95 and drivers just to get everything working again. The pain, the pleasure and the memories. Takes me back.

Great video, i watched all the way to the end. Clint is one of if not the best narrator on yt.

The case looks like a capacitor about to blow.

Babe wake up, new LGR video!

I actually served in the sound wars under General Midi. Good to see he's being recognized!

These aren't boring at all, I enjoy seeing weird 90s PCs, especially since I like to pick up old computers at auction and clean them up to ebay, so other people can enjoy them.

Clint, is that your storage room or a Micro Center?

It was a _Gateway_ drug.