The Bizarre 1999 Commodore 64 Web.it Internet Computer

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Күн бұрын

A system so strange I don't know where to begin! This is the Web It Internet Computer from Web Computers in 1999. It's effectively a 66MHz 486 PC with 16MB RAM that not only runs IBM PC DOS 7.0 and Windows 3.1, but also C64 software! To a degree. And the closer you look the weirder it gets.
● LGR links:
/ lazygamereviews
/ lazygamereviews
/ lazygamereviews
● Here's a download for embOS for use in a VM:
winworldpc.com/product/window...
● All background music licensed from:
www.epidemicsound.com
00:00 Look at this weirdness!
01:05 The C64 Web.it Internet Computer
02:10 A web of bankruptcies and acquisitions
02:51 The new Commodore 64 for the 90s
03:14 It's Dutch? But it's German
04:01 Trackpad mouse? Nah, stylus
05:01 Ports and I/O
05:42 Powering on with dual CRTs
06:19 Say hello to embOS from IBM
07:27 A MIDI music test
07:53 Windows 3.1 except not
09:02 No hard drive, it's all flash
10:06 Stuck with preconfigured PC-DOS
10:42 It runs DOOM
11:09 Commodore 64 software
13:21 Dreaming of better hardware
14:22 Eh I'll pretend it's from 1993. This is neat!
16:01 Outroduction
#LGR #retro #computer

Пікірлер: 1 100

@TechTimeTraveller Жыл бұрын

It looks like a manufacturer ended up with a pile of laptop bottom halves and someone in accounting figured out a creative way to dump them.

@matsv201 Жыл бұрын

It's way to cheeply built. The use of a integrated PC is uncommon and also very cheap. This is not the only one. I seen older models use integrated 486 already back I 1995 when it would be a decent pc

@cian87 Жыл бұрын

The chassis might actually be reused from a rackmount keyboard / trackpad for user in server rooms. Almost certain I've seen that exact shape.

@laszlokovacs8348 Жыл бұрын

I was thinking this as well. Lots of odd part/software choices, and that trackpad seems like it literally was a PDA screen they were already sitting on.

@demogorgonzola Жыл бұрын

It's a doughnut hole of computers :)

@chriswathen9612 Жыл бұрын

@@laszlokovacs8348 the track pad seems particularly odd since normal finger operated track pads were common by then and since it wasn't a portable device anyway they could have just thrown in a cheap mouse instead. Def looks like they had a parts bin full of those stylus-operated ones they needed to get used up.

@Peteman81 Жыл бұрын

Feels like this would have been great in 1993, maybe even as late as 1995. But 1999?!

@johneygd Жыл бұрын

🤣

@strategicfooyouagencyfirst8197 Жыл бұрын

i think it's ok for office use. you have word thing ,you have excl thing, you have floppy drive. and it's cheap. As a computer it's not good in 1999, but as a word processor, it;s ok.

@KaiserMattTygore927 Жыл бұрын

Yeah, at that point I only remember floppy disks being used to repair random configuration shit on computers. just seems like a goofy mismash of old and new features that don't mix all that well together.

@JustWasted3HoursHere Жыл бұрын

Yep, like many many tech goodies over the years, it is a victim of bad timing.

@lemagreengreen Жыл бұрын

The C64 had enormous longevity in Europe, you would still find them in homes in 1993, sometimes as late as 94-95! most were replaced with Amigas but the old machine lived on, I remember C64 bundles still being on store shelves and apparently selling in the early 90s. So yeah, this was still way late but the C64 brand did relatively recent life in it in Europe in 1999 which is presumably why this branding was chosen. It just failed to recognise how quickly we had all moved on with PC hardware advancing so rapidly through the 90s, in 1999 this looked like the stone age.

@boijorzee Жыл бұрын

I know exactly the kind of market this was aimed at. Plenty of people around that time in Europe only ever bought a C64 as a computer. But the internet was booming and even they wanted to get into that action. So to put out a C64 that had internet capabilities was not that bizarre of an idea. But yeah starting off with dated technology in an era when even a top of the line PC could get pretty much obsolete in a matter of months was probably what killed this.

@3rdworldgarage450 Жыл бұрын

I remember shopping for my first computer to buy for myself at this time. I waited about 6 to 12months for the cheap ones to go from a 500mhz processor to a 1.2 ghz Celeron. The RAM also almost doubled in that time too! Crazy times!

@kbhasi Жыл бұрын

Yep! The way I imagined it, considering that a lot of software developers would've already dropped support for 16-bit Windows, using it when it was new in 1999 would've probably been like using Windows 98 SE in 2009. As such, I can only imagine how many Netscape Navigator errors Web-it users would've gotten, not to mention not being able to play streaming media, Shockwave, and Flash content! It was probably around the same realm as WebTV over in the US but with the ability to download files to diskettes.

@eddiegill Жыл бұрын

An internet computer

@handlesarefeckinstupid Жыл бұрын

What planet are you on? People in Europe were using C64s in 1999. Lol, absolutely not.

@Chaos89P Жыл бұрын

Not to mention that the C64 was only being emulated via software.

@axelprino Жыл бұрын

Using a PDA screen as a trackpad and that IDE port that's just there with no space in the case to actually be used have to be the weirdest parts of that thing, it's like they just threw together a computer with whatever parts they happened to have laying around.

@LGR Жыл бұрын

Absolutely, it has “let’s just make a stew from leftovers in the fridge” energy.

@monolalia Жыл бұрын

The actual Commodore did that a lot too…

@DrBagPhD Жыл бұрын

That's almost certainly what actually happened

@38911bytefree Жыл бұрын

@@LGR LOL ... EPIC

@spazzypengin Жыл бұрын

@@LGR As long as it's not Cooking with Jack's garbage stew all should be fine.

@TheSmart-CasualGamer Жыл бұрын

Every time you said something about what's actually running on this, my brain started to break. Its OS is a reshelling of Windows 3.1, but made by IBM. And it's running on a machine branded as a Commodore 64, but one that requires a stylus and released a year at most before the Millennium?! Ludicrous. Daft. Brilliant.

@LGR Жыл бұрын

Glad it’s not just me, haha Truly, the closer I looked the more baffled I became. Each aspect of this that initially looks normal ends up being bizarre in some unexpected way.

@markjames8664 Жыл бұрын

IBM had some rights to use Windows 3.1 left over from their old deal with Microsoft-it wasn’t free but I think they could modify it in ways that others could not, as with the Windows variant that shipped with OS/2, and could still sell their version of DOS. So this machine essentially has spare-part software to go with the spare-part hardware.

@ocularpatdown Жыл бұрын

At least it isn’t running GEOS. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@penfold7800 10 ай бұрын

The fact that IBM let gave them licence to use thier version of the software is most intrigueing. I wonder if the motherboard and main hardware started life as an IBM portable dumb terminal project that got superceded by the internet. Didnt Amstrad sell that ludicrous email and fax machine phone thing around the same time?

@JeffreyPiatt 10 ай бұрын

@@LGRIBM had access to the Windows 3.1 source as part of there breakup deal with Microsoft over OS/2 it's likely they had rights to adapt Windows 3.1 for there own embedded os projects. This probably was IBM attempting to complete with Microsoft Modular Windows that ran on top of MS-DOS.

@PolarManne Жыл бұрын

10:42 Finally, you can run Doom on a Commodore 64.

@indigomizumi Жыл бұрын

I don't remember Doom 64 like this.

@SeeJayPlayGames Жыл бұрын

@@indigomizumi Doom 64 was for the NINTENDO 64, not C=. That's the original DOS Doom.

@shuruff904 Жыл бұрын

@@SeeJayPlayGames it was a joke

@indigomizumi Жыл бұрын

@@SeeJayPlayGames I was making a joke. I know it was on the N64.

@Chaos89P Жыл бұрын

Or at least one that doesn't take 66.6 hours to load from disk.

@AgentWaltonSimons Жыл бұрын

Ah, yes, the days of the Commodore Curse. Those were such... eventful times for those of us with Amigas.

@ozzie_goat Жыл бұрын

Quick let's get cryptobros to buy the Commodore name and have them fail miserably

@theconfusingwords Жыл бұрын

@@ozzie_goat commodore crypto lol

@ozzie_goat Жыл бұрын

@@theconfusingwords Considering what they did to the Winamp name...(or lack thereof)

@J0MBi Жыл бұрын

Yeah I remember those days all too well...

@stevethepocket Жыл бұрын

@@ozzie_goat Or better yet, Google. I'd say Meta but they're already bleeding out.

@ladams391 Жыл бұрын

I appreciate that when most tech channels I've seen say they have something weird to show off it's really not all that strange but every time Clint says he has something weird in a video, it's actually pretty bizarre. One of the reasons I keep coming back to watch these, it's always something interesting.

@williamsanborn9195 Жыл бұрын

The OS intro jingle sounds WAY too epic for its own good and I don’t hate it 😂

@chuckleshelicopterwigwamjo7315 Жыл бұрын

it gives me Metroid Prime vibes

@kosmosyche Жыл бұрын

@@chuckleshelicopterwigwamjo7315 Yep, even Metroid in general. Like you found the Morphing Ball ability or some sh*t lol and the music gets you all pumped up for action.

@davidshepherd265 Жыл бұрын

Its the best part of the machine lol

@CptJistuce Жыл бұрын

Lifted straight from a PS1 RPG, I swear.

@fisk0 Жыл бұрын

@@CptJistuce probably sourced the samples from the same sample CD, or used a Roland D-50, which was also incredibly common in that era (can't recognize the source myself, but so much of the 90s video game sound is straight from sample CDs - Bizzarre Guitars shaping the entirety of the Silent Hill soundtrack, and X-Static Goldmine being used in every single late PS1/PS2 era driving game and platformer).

@badmonkey0001 Жыл бұрын

Note that despite being released in 1999, this had Netscape Navigator v3 which was already two years old and eclipsed by v4+. 16bit (Windows 3.x) support was dropped after v4.08 which was released in late 1998. When this device was released it couldn't run the latest browser, but they didn't even bother to upgrade it to the versions of v4 that it could run.

@agy234 Жыл бұрын

V3 was a bit lighter on resources

@badmonkey0001 Жыл бұрын

@@agy234 A good point. It's been so long since I've used either of them.

@fisk0 Жыл бұрын

Wasn't 4.x quite a bit more unstable as well? Been so long now, but I think I had to have both installed since 3.x was the only capable of handling online communities without constantly crashing or dropping letters when typing messages.

@badmonkey0001 Жыл бұрын

@@fisk0 Yeah, that would probably contribute. As I said, it's been a long time and I really only remembered that 4.x was out in '99. I like these theories as to why it was not used.

@bluntshake5129 Жыл бұрын

I’d like to see how bad the “disturbing contents” that lead to the closure of the chatbase were

@davidshepherd265 Жыл бұрын

If you remember Yahoo Chat back in the day, I'd imagine the Chatbase was probably fairly similar. Lmao

@TheGreatAtario Жыл бұрын

Me too. Earliest capture on the Wayback Machine (from 2000) still has this notice.

@belstar1128 Жыл бұрын

in 1999 they where not as politically correct as today. so it had to be really messed up probably illegal things.

@thesteelrodent1796 Жыл бұрын

Any online chat always turns into a cess pool where there's no moderation or chat filters, neither of which was easy to do back then. The problem has never gone away, it's just moved to different platforms and we've gotten better tools for dealing with it.

@D0NU75 Жыл бұрын

they cracked open the big foot mystery

@pseudocoder78 Жыл бұрын

The shot at 16:05 is just so LGR. Content gold to be sure! 😂

@JaimesonLaLone Жыл бұрын

christmas?

@fitfogey Жыл бұрын

SMILE! Good catch. Didn’t see that first go around.

@SilverKnight16 Жыл бұрын

Wanted to like this, but it's at 69, so obligated to comment instead.

@LM.P Жыл бұрын

I thought 'clone' when I saw it too!

@goontender_lowercase. Жыл бұрын

@@JaimesonLaLone not now clone

@docswatchbox8321 Жыл бұрын

7:03 hit me with a wave of Netscape Nostalgia! Thanks, Clint!

@shuruff904 Жыл бұрын

A part of me thought it was gonna work...

@Ragnar8504 Жыл бұрын

@@shuruff904 WIth a dial-up connection it actually might.

@BilisNegra Жыл бұрын

That Netscape splash screen is sweet. And so was the one for the 4.x versions, of course.

@ferretyluv 9 ай бұрын

I know, right? We originally had Errols (yes, my family was one of those people. My brother had EarthLink). So we could only use Netscape.

@TexRobNC Жыл бұрын

My grandparents had a WebTV. Towards the end, it was impossible to use because of all the spam and it lacked a way to remotely administer it, making it hard to help them with issues!

@MrDuncl Жыл бұрын

Those were quite popular. I wonder what their first impressions were when it was new out of the box.

@ferretyluv 9 ай бұрын

Oh man, I remember some senior family friends who had a WebTV. I was a child so I thought it was cool beans.

@volvo09 Жыл бұрын

That thing is wild... It "almost" has it, but the lack of a configurable bios and inability to boot to a different OS leaves it seriously crutched.... Still a neat thing to have in the collection.

@BastetFurry Жыл бұрын

I bet the BIOS is just closed down, the folks at Tulip certainly did not made a BIOS themselves and a guess would be that it is from the folks at Insyde, they made BIOSes for thin clients and this could be right up their alley. In theory one could make a BIOS setup that runs on the computer, or if we have a disassembly check what address to jump to with DEBUG from DOS to open the setup. Just needs a dump of said BIOS and a silent hour spent in Ghidra or IDA Pro. :)

@J0MBi Жыл бұрын

They probably imagined it selling by the boat load to Internet cafes and museums and the like.

@Quirriff Жыл бұрын

Almost is correct, the Sound card is pretty good, better than the computer I had in 1998 (actually there was no sound card).

@MrDuncl Жыл бұрын

I'm wondering if there was any way this could get a virus. It would almost certainly be immune to the ones written for normal PCs.

@volvo09 Жыл бұрын

@@MrDuncl not easily, the virus would have to be written to take advantage of some loophole on this specific machine. The big hurdle is the OS being stored in ROM, you can't touch it without a way to write to it.... So someone would have to study this machines architecture to figure out how to enable write on the ROM. Without that, any virus that did run would be gone after a reboot.

@cyberwomble7524 Жыл бұрын

It has a bit of a Nissan Juke vibe - in as such it looks like it's suffering from the mumps! Have always loved the concept of a "PC in a Keyboard" type thang, so am surprised I'd never heard of this until now. Thank you once again for helping to keep the memory of forlorn tech alive.

@Morbatx Жыл бұрын

"Forlorn" is such fabulous and fitting phrasing.

@nthgth Жыл бұрын

Lol I always thought of that as a misspelling of "Joke"

@ferretyluv 9 ай бұрын

You mean home computers? That’s the “pc in a keyboard” thing.

@drxym Жыл бұрын

After Commodore's bankruptcy, Commodore and Amiga became zombie brands - rising from the grave attached to some harebrained product that would flop, before being sold to a new owner and rising from the grave again. They must be cursed by this point.

@SeeJayPlayGames Жыл бұрын

they never did find what they needed... BRRRRRAAAAAAAAIIIIINNNS. That's what killed the company in the first place. Too much greed at the top, suppressing the brains working on the hardware.

@another3997 Жыл бұрын

@@SeeJayPlayGames True, but there's the opposite too. The problem with some engineers is that, left to their own devices, a product is never quite finished. "We can just add this, take that out, move this, redesign this and that." And you either end up with nothing but a huge hole in your budget, or with something that almost nobody else wants and costs more than anyone would pay. Many brilliant engineers are terrible businessman.😁

@nerdyneedsalife8315 Жыл бұрын

@@another3997 You just described RCA

@ShitHappensRLY Жыл бұрын

I guess this is more like a cheap asset which was believed to be a saver for already dying companies. They're like "yeah, our finances are in terrible shape, and we don't exactly know what to do, but with some spare change we found in our "pockets" we can buy Commodore, which was on sale again in some kind of corporate Lidl. Everybody knows Commodore, they will be excited" And nobody really was excited because PC market was already pretty saturated at the point.

@RSProduxx Жыл бұрын

@@ShitHappensRLY 99 was the year when PCs as we know them now were really taking off in Germany, Web2.0 was on its way, the "Year 2000 future fever" etc etc. You also could already play "old school games" on your mobile bone... uhm, phone... No one needed a thing like that in 99, but maybe a few nerds who had their fun with it... Using Germany here, cause I can´t say much about other european countries at the time.

@midimusicforever Жыл бұрын

MIDI support is here! COUNT ME IN!

@wildfire5156 Жыл бұрын

What a great channel! So relaxing videos. Such a pleasure to watch them.

@LGR Жыл бұрын

Thank you, I hope you continue to enjoy!

@wildfire5156 Жыл бұрын

@@LGR Thank you for your reply [an immediate one I should notice]. It means a lot. I will continue to enjoy! Have a nice one!

@mialemon6186 Жыл бұрын

Welcome to the comment section family! It's easy to forget that new people find LGR all the time and it's not just those of us who have been watching forever somehow 😂

@wildfire5156 Жыл бұрын

@@mialemon6186 I Appreciate Your Welcome! ThankU. New people gotta appear because KZfaq gives suggestions in the sidebar. In my opinion each channel will find them sooner or later. Maybe not everyone is brave enough for the comment section, but I at least try to pretend to be one. Have a nice one.

@tomyyoung2624 Жыл бұрын

Yes fans!

@exidy-yt Жыл бұрын

I had COMPLETELY forgotten about this! I remember thinking that I would have liked to had one at the time it came out, if only it weren't specced like my 1993 clone PC that I had recently junked for a Pentium II 233 MHz overclocked to 300 Mhz in 1999. I also wasn't impressed with the choice of CCS64 as even then VICE was far superior. It's great to be able to see one put through the paces though, and confirmed my decision not to break the bank importing one just for the feelgood Commodore branding. Thank you for sharing this with us!

@Teajryan Жыл бұрын

LGR first thing in the morning!!! It's gonna be a good day.

@lvl90dru1d Жыл бұрын

there's 6 p.m in my region but it's still gonna be a good day

@wildfire5156 Жыл бұрын

And If u watch LGR in the evening, you gonna have a fucking good evening!

@belg4mit Жыл бұрын

It was not uncommon to boot Linux from DOS in this era with loadlin, so it's probably no impossible to run something else on it.

@ypoora1 Жыл бұрын

Seeing the Dutch box there this makes a lot of sense to me, people held on to their C64's and software for quite a long time here and the transition to the internet was a pretty slow thing unless you happened to be super into it.

@charleswhitney3235 Жыл бұрын

I dunno, I had the playstation in the 90s and a desktop with dial up internet at home and at work. This machine would have been very disappointing. It was probably aimed at grandparents for when the kids came to visit

@MrDuncl Жыл бұрын

@@charleswhitney3235 Aimed at Grandparents who wanted to check out a few recipes, see what the temperature is in Iceland, and check out the football scores. Amazing stuff for them back in the day.

@SuperHns Жыл бұрын

I dont know man, I am Dutch We had a C64/128, but when Windows 3.1 and MSDOS 6.22 PCs came out (affordable) in 1994/1995, we switched.

@tomyyoung2624 Жыл бұрын

Yes Great at Gaming

@wintermute740 Жыл бұрын

I've only vague recollections of "Some company in Germany is trying to resurrect the Commodore name," but haven't actually seen this until now. I gotta be honest. I kinda love this hot mess of a machine. I'd be surprised if there's not a custom ROM floating around which would allow you to boot from an IDE drive.

@NaoPb Жыл бұрын

You might also be thinking of a relaunch of the Commodore brand in 2007. I've visited their booth on Cebit in Germany back then.

@wintermute740 Жыл бұрын

I was a PC tech the first time, when this strange little machine was made. I was much further along in my IT career in 2007, and do recall that relaunch a little better than I recall this one ;)

@UNSCPILOT Жыл бұрын

*yet, you can bet someone will, even when there are less than a dozen left working

@kevinlaity5931 Жыл бұрын

I love the trackpad / vanity mirror combo!

@shuruff904 Жыл бұрын

But do you really?....

@lemagreengreen Жыл бұрын

That brief late 90s/early 00's "internet appliance" era sure produced some weird hardware. This seems like something that really should have been specced with more era-correct hardware though, a 486 was testing the limits even back then and would always make this look enormously dated despite all the cool internet marketing fluff.

@MrDuncl Жыл бұрын

Remember the "Fridge with Internet Access" that was being touted as the next big thing for a time around this ?

@nthgth Жыл бұрын

@@MrDunclI thought IoT was supposedly actually taking off? That being a collective term for things like that, with Internet access pretty much just for marketing purposes

@MrDuncl Жыл бұрын

@@nthgth What I was thinking of wasn't much more than a fridge with a tablet stuck on the door. Back before anyone had worked out how to get decent battery life on a tablet from internal batteries. It gets a mention in this video kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mdykdtN2rdDafoE.html

@DavePoo2 Жыл бұрын

I think the companies that bought the Commodore/Amiga brand were thinking that the consumers felt some loyalty to the brand, so they could slap the name Commodore on a tea towel and people would rush out to buy it. But what they forgot was that C64 users bought the computer because of it's superior graphics and sound for it's day, the Amiga users bought the Amiga for the same reason, so slapping the Commodore name on a cheap 486 in 1999 and then making it emulate games from 1982 at 1/10th of the speed, wasn't going to fool any of those people who owned Commodore machines back in the day.

@MegaManNeo Жыл бұрын

Oh, I remember seeing that one on TV back then. Of course, young young me didn't had 700DM nor did my mom but I always loved the idea. Probably because we had a C64 years prior and maybe reason for why I like the Pi 400 too but yea... Nice pronunciation of DM, Clint!

@rutgerb Жыл бұрын

Quick question about DM. We always said: 100 DM not 100 DMs (like Clint did). How did you in Germany do it?

@MegaManNeo Жыл бұрын

@@rutgerb DM, really. It's both singular and plural, at least that is how I learned it.

@libertyordeaf Жыл бұрын

Wow, the Commodore brand went around Europe in the '90s more than herpes.

@Wythaneye Жыл бұрын

They've literally taken everything you never wanted and fit it into a slim-ish case.

@jwillisbarrie Жыл бұрын

Thanks for adding actual captions for the Deaf - I had a c64 back in the day. Thanks for sharing.

@mirage809 Жыл бұрын

What a fascinating weird little machine and what a weird piece of history. The late years of Commodore are a strange time indeed. Also, how strange that the computer is in German, but everything else is in Dutch. Perhaps a mix up that happened when packaging the machine?

@LGR Жыл бұрын

My guess is that it could've originally sold in the Netherlands but made its way over to Germany at some point, where it was then shipped to me years later. I've never actually seen a Dutch version of the machine itself!

@Njuregen Жыл бұрын

I also saw the dutch lettering and honestly I can't fathom seeing it sold back in 1999, everyone was secure on pentium 2-3 back then! Where the heck does LGr get these odd niche things love it!

@Ragnar8504 Жыл бұрын

@@LGR Where would someone have gotten a German OS install for this weirdness though? It doesn't look like there's any easy way of reinstalling the OS for users and I doubt there was any support for this thing after the company folded. Since the company was located in a very remote part of the Netherlands (overseas territories back then) I suspect they might have been too cheap to print international documentation and boxes. On the other hand they did bother to get the OS localised. Baffling!

@graemecarter3600 Жыл бұрын

Maybe a strange and specific thing to focus on, but love the shooting of this video. That blue background/lighting with the white light up front with the subject, and the wood surface under - plus the super crisp picture? Really nice to watch, and I'm not someone who often notices these things!

@Brianybug Жыл бұрын

I had a C128 when they were new. My brother and I bought it a Federated in Dallas back in the day. Loved our C64 Epyx and EA classic games! I had never heard of this unit and I am fascinated.

@Dj3ndo Жыл бұрын

This is pretty awesome! Always look forward to your videos. Especially the quirky ones!

@spectacledWolf Жыл бұрын

Love these videos, man. My lowkey favorites. Keep up the great work!

@AshleyFoxo Жыл бұрын

What a interesting computer. That drive setup! I wonder if it was an effort to make the OS bulletproof or to just avoid using a hard drive at all (might have been cheaper?). I wonder if the 'trackpad' was some digital signature panel that got reused if it wasn't some random cutdown PDA screen.

@MrDuncl Жыл бұрын

Faulty hard drives started the downfall of Amstrad computers. Eliminating the hard drive and making the OS bulletproof means less guarantee returns, hence more profits.

@Ragnar8504 Жыл бұрын

I don't know - it's not like hard drives were all that expensive in 1999, especially smaller ones. Something along the lines of a 2 GB 2.5" IDE drive would have offered reasonable storage for an affordable price.

@ErwinHolland. Жыл бұрын

The Dutch part in the manual about the flash cards: If you start from a flash card, your web it computer can play games, and other software you got (gifted or received? Doesn't translate that well) on special flash memory cards. The other bit is about using the slots and starting up automatically, not that interesting. It says pretty much the same things about the diskette. So it does seems like sharing games and software was a possibility, or even endorsed. And just for fun, the points on the right side of the box; Surf on the web Send and receive Email Play games Write letters Use spreadsheets Your personal agenda Educational Works with pc monitor or tv Plug and play, plug in and start immediately Startup in a couple of seconds

@augustr6456 Жыл бұрын

that 3.1 content brought back a lot of memories, thanks. great video :)

@johnwildy3481 Жыл бұрын

This is computer gold. i too grew up in that era with the vic-20 and c64 before moving onto ibm clone based computers(first was a zenith 486 dx2). i had no idea this machine existed, very fascinating. Thanks for the education and for what you do..

@4Wilko Жыл бұрын

I remember having to turn off a bunch of things in DOS to get One Must Fall running on an older machine. I'm surprised it's running here shortly after the mentions of the limitations.

@HugoEckener127 Жыл бұрын

I'm so surprised I haven't heard of this! I thought the whole "what if we made modern Commodore 64 for nostalgia" thing only came along later!

@CherryPixelBun Жыл бұрын

Just had a flashback to that attempt from 2011, the one that was asking for like $1000 for an Intel Atom machine shoved into a fancy C64 shell

@90cat1 Жыл бұрын

you really went and took me back to my childhood with some of those games. Doom, The skiing game, Mine Sweeper, and even the one game with the guy picking up the chips (can't remember what it's called).

@sean-ew2qv 8 ай бұрын

This reminds me of Webtv. I worked at The Good Guys! during the late 90's and your channel brings me fond memories.

@mrjsv4935 Жыл бұрын

Interesting computer 🙂 Released in the time, when flea markets were full of real Commodore 64's with very cheap prices. I regret selling my C-64 C in 1991 and not getting another one in those days, when they were cheaply available in flea markets. I have now the Mini C-64 though, and glad I kept even the Amiga 500. Back in 1999 didn't yet have internet at home, but used indeed Netscape at work and visited even internet cafe's. A cup of coffee and half an hour browsing the net, those were the days 😅

@JasonStorey Жыл бұрын

OMG! You just dredged up some long buried memories. I begged my mum for one of these as a kid. I thought it was a cheaper compromise as an excuse to convince her to get me my first computer. On christmas day, seemingly not knowing the difference I opened a box to an... atari 2600. Not the computer I thought I would get. It wasn't until 4 years later when a library sold off its old computers I got my own grey box pc and bought dungeon keeper for my very first pc game. I had completely forgotten what this thing was called and now it seems young me might have dodged a compromised experience bullet.

@Butterscott_NJ Жыл бұрын

Dungeon Keeper as a first PC game sets expectations VERY high.

@Blackadder75 Жыл бұрын

atari 2600??? those were obsolete TEN YEARS before this thing

@8_Bit Жыл бұрын

You must be thinking of the real original Commodore 64 from 1982-1990ish, not this thing from 1999.

@equious8413 Жыл бұрын

Imagine if this form factor stuck and our keyboards today were mounted on top of 2 feet of graphics cards and liquid cooling

@NeoNorse Жыл бұрын

Great Review! Thanks! For more weirdness, the Alphasmart Dana, the Palm-like, full-size portable keyboard/LCD display device, also had a stylus holder above the keyboard.

@DaveF. Жыл бұрын

Ohm that's weird as heck. I remember playing with a range of earliest C64 emulators for PC in ~1992 - C64S - but I thought they were barely useable on 486 hardware. May be wrong in that. Not sureprirsed this is German though. Explains a lot of the weirdness. That touch screen that's suspiciously like a PDA, sitting right in front of a irDA port like what you'd find on a PDA reeks of the Vectrex - a system entirely designed around a warehouse of defunct vector VDUs. I bet that's whole assembly is a build from a job lot of unusable PDA parts.

@jeremysart Жыл бұрын

That is indeed… a weird thing! It’s own operating environment despite having what appears to be Microsoft Paintbrush. (Ahh, it’s actually a shell for Windows 3.1 😂) It makes me really happy it has Netscape Navigator and Lotus 123.

@PowrUsr. Жыл бұрын

Wow man, that glimpse of that fighting game 'one must fall 2097', really really hit the nostalgia bone! Part of my reptile brain unlocked Instantly. Thx Clint!

@airfixer9461 Жыл бұрын

Weird machine indeed...never saw it overhere in those days. Well done review Clint....greets from Belgium ;-)

@fuzzix Жыл бұрын

15:08 Love that "Diamond Sleath 3D" video adapter - really flew under the radar in its time.

@moojuiceuk Жыл бұрын

Around the same time, in the UK there was the Bush Internet TV / Internet set top box. It used Acorn's RISC OS on an ARM7500FE (around 50MHz'ish) but with the RISC OS desktop stripped out and just a web browser. If you were canny with a ZIP100 parallel drive, you could sideload the missing OS modules and get it to boot to a RISC OS desktop too.

@SchrodingersDinger Жыл бұрын

Thank you for covering this beautiful(?) disaster of a machine. Glorious.

@Lanceb131 Жыл бұрын

LOVE your videos! Thank you so much!

@MiiaFoxx Жыл бұрын

So that IDE header might be able to fit a Disk on Module like you usually see on industrial PC's based around older 486 hardware. Might be worth a look.

@LGR Жыл бұрын

The top of the case is too tight for the DOMs that I have here, I tried that. It'd work with an IDE extension cable, possible routed over to the empty area below the floppy drive. But then you run into the fact that this still doesn't allow you to access the BIOS through normal means, much less boot from another drive. It just makes sense to stick to CF over PCMCIA, I think.

@MiiaFoxx Жыл бұрын

@@LGR 😔😔😔

@nichderjeniche Жыл бұрын

They mention bios access on the lemon64 forum website, but not how: "Many WebIt buyers have connected a internal hard disk and even CompactFlash TRUE/ATA adapters using PCMCIA (has two slots) to boot the system from them so then load other operating systems... Perhaps you could then install new emulators. It's a machine that can be "hacked" so much because their creators launched it to the market hiding half of the things it can do. I.E.: you can access the BIOS, and there is an internal IDE connector, and there is no mention of it..."

@jamiemerian9736 Жыл бұрын

What a beautiful mess. I never would of wanted one back in '99 though.

@Blue-zw8er Жыл бұрын

Nobody wanted one in "99 or 00 or 01. Hence the bankruptcy..

@JessicaFEREM Жыл бұрын

oh my god. I've been looking for that UK video since my childhood. I saw it once and I've been on and off searching for it. and then it pops up in an LGR video

@acerfaser Жыл бұрын

Awesome video on a great piece of computer history 😄

@cannolijoey4986 Жыл бұрын

Now I want to see doom running on the little LCD trackpad!

@tHiNk413 Жыл бұрын

It feels strange to see all the stuff on screen in German.... I don't even know why, it makes me happy that Clint has to deal with this beautiful language!

@--Zook-- Жыл бұрын

ahhh fridays. my day off work, alone in the house, and LGR uploads. perfection

@jonahbaker4013 Жыл бұрын

Love your videos LGR 💕💕

@KzintiCV Жыл бұрын

Reminds me of the old WebTV set my grandma had at one point. I remember going to grandma's house and looking up info on Decipher's newest CCGs on that.

@SonicBoone56 Жыл бұрын

Cute icon

@lennaertedens4624 Жыл бұрын

I think Commodore is still part of some Dutch company, as far as i know. I did see something about a smartphone with the Commodore name on it some time ago. May be interesting for a future video! And as always, great video!

@DS9TREK Жыл бұрын

Most of the Commodore IPs are of uncertain ownership. At least three different companies claim to exclusively own the chicken head logo, and sme of the other IPs have such murky ownership that there are rumours of Russian mafia being involved. But who really knows these days

@humanafterallTF2 Жыл бұрын

The freaking chatbase part cracks me up so much. Trust humans to fuck everything up without moderation.

@leebryantutah Жыл бұрын

Hell, it took Yahoo & AOL years to catch on how creepy a lot of their chat spaces had become.

@kFY514 Жыл бұрын

There were some 90s Linux distros (Monkey Linux comes to mind) that used the LOADLIN bootloader to launch the Linux kernel from within DOS. So that's one way to load an alternative OS. Some versions of GRUB also seem to exist that can be loaded from within DOS, so you can try that to chainload another MBR from a floppy or a PCMCIA storage. Never tried that, but in theory it could work.

@abcpea Жыл бұрын

theres grub4dos but I don't think it boots linux

@RetroGamingWithEdgarRivera Жыл бұрын

Ah yes Commodore 64 Web it Internet computer. I only see one of these in magazine and some photos on the internet but never seen them in action at all. This is the first time seen in action which is incredible and fascinating at the same time to me. Pretty Cool.

@Stewcumber Жыл бұрын

Looking at the thumbnail... what in the bananabread is that!? After watching the video... what in the bananabread was that!?

@ivanr3107 Жыл бұрын

"The branding is weird. The form factor is weird. The specs are weird. The release date is weird." * 10 seconds later * "It sold exclusively in Europe" Theeere we go :D

@pupaepedorra Жыл бұрын

Mr. LGR, i have to say that the music you put at the beginning of most of your videos, reminds me strongly of SimCity 2000 :)

@artistwithouttalent Жыл бұрын

4 words (?) that shouldn't go together in any capacity: 1999, Commodore 64, and *_web._*

@robertgijsen Жыл бұрын

I saw this thing a few weeks ago at the Computer Museum in Helmond, NL. What a weird thing indeed😃

@LGR Жыл бұрын

Oh nice! Seems like a thing they'd have and certainly deserving of a spot in a Dutch museum.

@robertgijsen Жыл бұрын

@@LGR yeah it's pretty amazing. Lots of Europe computer history there, as well as some real oddities like an Aesthedes 2 in 98% working order. Amazing! You should come by one day (and let me know so I can buy you a beer😃)

@hellbreakfast1590 Жыл бұрын

It's always a good day when LGR uploads. :3

@BarnokRetro Жыл бұрын

I love that this is a thing. Back in the 90s I worked at CompUSA and we sold a couple of nettop shenanigans that were less than impressive. This one actually looks a little better than most since it is an actual PC, hopefully you find a way to put another drive in and a way to boot from it. Now I have to look closer at the nettops when I'm rummaging or hitting up the thrift shops....

@pedrodossantos5890 Жыл бұрын

In Brazilian Portuguese webit is the sound that the frog makes

@AndrewFremantle Жыл бұрын

I presume the built-in keyboard is connected internally via PS/2. I wonder if it's possible to disconnect it and break it out to a PS/2 port mounted on the case somewhere.

@JeffreyPiatt Жыл бұрын

The PC card slot might allow for more ports.

@jackbaxter-williams8059 Жыл бұрын

I still miss the old lgr. I think I'll go watch one of those videos. This was a good watch. Something I didn't know about.

@abx42 Жыл бұрын

This piques my interest. Thank you I'm going to have to do some sleuthing for this one, here's hoping I can grab one.

@PXAbstraction Жыл бұрын

What an incredibly weird oddity. Also, does this come with Stacker embedded on it?! There's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

@weeraanmelden Жыл бұрын

DM 600 is dirt-cheap for 1999. A regular PC (without monitor) would be around DM2500 / fl 2800 => 1300 USD.

@cloud1930 Жыл бұрын

Interesting! Thanks for showing this.

@LightTheUnicorn Жыл бұрын

Seen these a couple of times, you're absolutely right, had potential to be such a fun weird DOS machine - but too many little limitations. As a oddity in it's own right though? It's very cool, and probably got a couple of people just about online somewhere out there.

@altmindo Жыл бұрын

releasing a 486 windows3.11-based system in 1999, what were they thinking?

@TheBrokenTech Жыл бұрын

4:55 You have also seen a stylus "hole" on nearly every single customer-facing credit card reader you've ever used (at least in 'Murica). For reasons beyond my comprehension, no one ever uses it... except me... because I know it's there. It is _so_ much easier than fumbling around with trying to get the pen to snap back in.

@fredjones100 Жыл бұрын

What on earth do you use a stylus for on a credit card reader?

@TheBrokenTech Жыл бұрын

@@fredjones100 Signatures.

@WalnutSpice Жыл бұрын

This is insane top to bottom, what a mess that makes no sense. And this version of Windows 3 is gold, I notice they removed the minimize and maximize button so you can't easily multitask and realize you bought a computer from 1992 lmao

@Tedybear315 Жыл бұрын

Good lord... I saw the opening with the game "Mule". I wish you had the volume on!! That damn tune is additive...

@SupaCozyGaming Жыл бұрын

It's funny to think how far computers have come - crazy to think about Windows 3.1 🤣

@sinisterthoughts2896 Жыл бұрын

I kinda miss the 3.1 days. maybe I'm just nostalgic for those associated times.

@jamesslick4790 Жыл бұрын

@@sinisterthoughts2896 I loved 3.1! I have a WFW 3.11 VM to this day.

@Chaos89P Жыл бұрын

@@jamesslick4790 DOSBox runs it pretty well, too!

@jamesslick4790 Жыл бұрын

@@Chaos89P Yep. It sure does. and DOS Box saves files to your "REAL" hard drive. A plus for convenience! I do have 3.1 (as opposed to WFW 3.11) on my DOSBox install as well. Fun Rare software for Win 3.1 is Calmira II that gives Win 3x a Win 9.X UI. (For those into THAT kinda thing) LOL.

@killymxi Жыл бұрын

The keyboard module looks very familiar. A lot like the keyboard in my laptop from 2003-2004. Mine was by Cherry iirc. I wonder if this one is an earlier iteration.

@shuruff904 Жыл бұрын

Reminds me of a VTECH toy computer

@EliteSmorechannel Жыл бұрын

That trackpad reflection at the end was the best part of this computer

@pepe6666 11 ай бұрын

laptops without screens are actually a really good form factor. super useful to be frank. form factors are always a game of what if it had this or that (like a built in screen), but screenless laptops have made good companions to my desktop. especially if there is a decent monitor on the desk.

@GBlastMan Жыл бұрын

So, we could technically say that this is the most modern Commodore 64 released back then? because it looks just like any other commodore but with a more early Y2K-ish style, and i kinda dig the rounded curvy style this one has, just that it could had been better if they added at least a bit more powerful processor and prehaps 32 megs of ram, because for work seems a good thing to have at least back then but for anything else? its way too limited specially because it doesnt even have a CD Drive and those were all the rage back then so its kinda hard to sell a pc without one.

@nineteenthly Жыл бұрын

Presumably it has Win 3.1 in ROM? It's impressively fast. There was a terminal with that approach too. I remember this being advertised when it was new. Not upgradeable but also pretty much immune from malware.

@nichderjeniche Жыл бұрын

I had one and it was quite useless 😅

@nineteenthly Жыл бұрын

@@nichderjeniche ah well. It reminds me of the Amstrad em@iler though. Nice to look at but more ornament than use.

@nichderjeniche Жыл бұрын

@@nineteenthly Never heard of that before. For me it was the transition time coming from a real C64 and didn't had a real PC yet, somehow I thought I need it and the name was a another reason to buy it for me as the C64 fanboy I used to be.

@nineteenthly Жыл бұрын

@@nichderjeniche sounds like this is going to split according to the time-honoured fight between 65-series and Z80 CPUs! Maybe the old Speccy owners ended up buying Amstrad em@ilers and the old CBM 64 ones this thing. It was a presumably British device used to send emails and contained a ZX Spectrum emulator with built-in games, and it would stop working, iirc, if you didn't send an email in a certain period of time. Some kind of subscription model, but I'd have to look it up.

@seanlavoie2 Жыл бұрын

That's a pretty amazing combination of thing.

@captainchaos3667 Жыл бұрын

I'm Dutch but I don't remember ever hearing of this. What an odd piece of ware. It's a strange experience to see so much Dutch text on your channel. 😄

@datassetteuser356 Жыл бұрын

It's kinda useless yet kinda fascinating at the same time. There was a time when I would have loved to have one.

@MaikKellerhals Жыл бұрын

I'm gonna be honest: You and Red Letter Media are the only two channels i REALLY enjoy any more on KZfaq ;)

@caeserromero3013 Жыл бұрын

Guy I went to school with 'Joined' Escom in 1996. We kind of passed each other as I joined the company he was leaving a few days before he 'left'. He finished up at our company on the Friday afternoon, but was back by Monday morning. He'd had an urgent call from the guy who hired him on Friday evening basically asking him if he'd 'handed in his notice yet?'. My friend said 'Well yes...I'm supposed to be starting with you on Monday', at which point the guy told my friend to see if there was any way he could rescind his resignation, as Escom were going down the gurgler. The irony was that before joining this company, I'd worked for a few months at the engineering company my dad worked at doing computer stuff and they'd had an Escom PC which blew its CPU. This was 1996 when a CPU was a lot of money. It was under warranty, so one of my last tasks before I left was getting it replaced under warranty. Then only 2 weeks later Escom went bankrupt. If that CPU had blown a few weeks later, it would have cost then approx £400 to replace....most of the cost of the machine...

@mxbunnycatter Жыл бұрын

I remember reading about this in an October 1998 edition of pc active magazine... Kind of amusing to see how much it.... Overpromised and underdelivered, in a way.. Also; webtv.... Another big blast from the past for me