This is like a brother channel to Necroware and I absolutely love it

sam and max hit the road was such a great game back in the day

Woah I can’t believe this channel only has 9,000 subs I just subscribed because of the amazing info and production quality keep it up and good luck sending love from London 😊

Ahhh, Aptivas... My childhood PC was an Aptiva 2136 which I recently located and fully restored beyond its original parts! Back in 96 I had the 2136 with 32MB of ram, a Pentium MMX 166 and the IBM Crystal based sound card, notably with the IBM Aptiva S-W1/C - Wavetable dautgherboard. It took quite some time to track down both a working 2136 and the S-W1/C, but eventually I did and now it's happily running Windows 95 just as it was in the late 90s because I still had my recovery discs!

You have the best content on the 90s IBM "IBM compatible clones" 😉 on KZfaq.

Wow! Thank you very much for the video, was a pure joy to watch. I got a very similar IBM Aptiva in the same case back in late 1995 - early 1996 but with a Cyrix 5x86 at 100 MHz inside (when I saw 5x86 in the title I though you will be installing this CPU as it is natively supported). My motherboard layout was similar to the VLB one from your video, I remember this because in 2001 or so I upgraded the RAM to 40 MB from stock 8 MB (which allowed to finally install Windows 98) and maxed out the cache (which made visible difference in OS responsiveness and improved loading time in some games) and the RAM slots and cache sockets looked identical to yours. Amazing quirk about these Aptivas (and other IBM PCs of this era) is RapidResume which is essentially modern hybernation - that was mind blowing in mid 90s at least to me. OS boot taking like 4-5 seconds from compeletely off state bringing you exactly where you have left off with all the applications and windows restored. But that required the OEM version of Windows 95 from IBM with some additional software to enable it, not sure if you can make it work on a regular Windows 95. Also I had a very similar display but the model was IBM G41 - I think it is identical other than the dispay controls that were rubber buttons instead of the knobs behind the door that you have. But I saw your display in all the marketing materials that came with my Aptiva so apparently that was the default option. Thanks again for the video!

I had a PS/1 for a loong time. It had a 486DX 33 and I upgraded it to a DX2/66 and 24MB RAM. I ran Windows 98 on it and it took 6 hours to install.

I used to repair Aptivas in this era.

Nice work, Love the performance documentation of each of the changes. Those flip down fronts are sexy!

I bought that PC used when I was living in Japan in 1998! I was programming with tinyC and programming fire demos and other graphic stuff for hobby fun. I spent time at the international center on the internet downloading stuff to floppy drives to take home. LOL!

Besides Ambra, Aptiva's other contemporary was the ValuePoint series. My elementary school had a bunch of them, and they all used a CRT that looked just like that one.

Love these machines and the PS/1's... Had a PS/1 Consultant myself... 486 sx 25 mhz, 4 meg ram, 170 MB hard disk...

I would have like to see you solder cache and any extra necessary chips to get it working to the other board and run it with the AM5X86. I am curious to see if it would beat the more expensive board if it had cache installed.

I had never seen this particular design on IBM PCs. I love it!

I have an aptiva 2144-921 with a detachable VRM inserted in the connector "filled with jumpers" . In my experience amd 5x86 works very slow in aptiva, otherwise cyrix 5x86.

Always loved these desktop Aptivas, I have a similar era Aptiva M series tower, 1996, Pentium 120 with Mwave card running Win 95. I love the M series tower, but the desktop is just a nice clean design. I had a much earlier 386sx PS1 'Consultant' based on the same chassis in the desktop form factor, a lovely neat machine but sadly the motherboard completely died. I also have a PS1 tower, DX33. Awesome video, great work, thank you!

I'm a little late to the party, but I have a PC330 DX4-100 (model 6571), which uses the same motherboard as the second (VLB) machine here. Some notes from my tinkering: The VRM header (filled jumper block) takes a small daughterboard with a bog-standard linear regulator and heatsink. These are notorious for cracked solder joints. I can probably get a pinout / photos if interested, though IIRC it's pretty obvious. The opti chipset is a "combo", supporting either VLB/ISA or PCI/ISA risers. I've never actually seen the latter though. These boards take up to 128MB(!) of RAM, and the onboard video memory is mapped right above that so you can even use it all without 16M memory hole shenanigans. I have never managed to get any write-back enabled CPU (eg. am5x86) to run, my BIOS (latest available) stalls with "cache fail" or something to that effect. IBM revision notes state: "1779 Writeback support added (LATER TAKEN OUT) System will only support L1 writethru mode only" IIRC this had something to do with instability running OS/2. If anyone has a BIOS image with WB support, please gimme. The lack of WB L1 really nerfs performance. Correct memory manager setup for DOS can be annoying, my notes in config.sys say: "IBM manual specifies X=C000-C7FF I=C800-EFFF If no shared RAM adapters installed, I=B000-B7FF is mono video area and may be included in most cases." The IBM SurePath BIOS has some weird drive size limitation (somewhere 1

Ibm went through a lot of motherboard revisions for these late ps/1 / early aptivas

That is the exact system my dad's friend bought back in the day. He thought he was the bee's knee's

That connector on the higher-end board looks like its for a VRM module to allow the installation of a multi-voltage CPU.

Judging just by the front that CD-ROM drive is made by Mitsumi.

The wierd header is likely for a voltage regulator board for different voltage cpus.

Having had a AMD 5x86 in the past, with its own adapter PCB, I can recall there was a jumper setting for which cache mode you needed, write back or write through. Ideally, you'd want the faster of the 2, but some machines acted up or just didn't boot with it, and you'd have to select the other. Maybe check to see which cache type the CPU is trying to use, and see if you can force the other mode?

I recommend adding a l2 cache to get better frame rates

I would guess that odd socket is for a power regulator for newer model CPUs

Had I known there would be a market for these old PC’s in the future (this day and age) I wouldn’t have thrown away the hundreds that I did as they came through my shop.

You think that's low end? My first multimedia PC was an IBM PS/2. It only ran at 25 Mhz, with 4MB RAM. still was enough to play games like Doom and King's Quest 6

Why do you gotta go and make things so complicated by Avril Lavigne comes to mind when working on an ibm

The first board (type C1) is an evolution of the PS1 board (type B1). The second board (type F1, if memory serves me well) requires a VRM plugged in place over the block of jumpers right below of the processor socket to recognize fastest processors . The 55 in front of the serial number indicates the country of origin of the machine.... 23-US,78-Mexico,82-Brazil,41-Indonesia,55-Greenock,Scotland

Also: might be a good candidate for a VLB 3d card if you have one to hand.

Could you share where you found the jumper settings to go to 33MHZ on the slower board? I've got a PS/2 76i from a year earlier that runs at 25MHz fsb, and flatout refuses to boot with a different crystal, faster or slower.

Just because curiosity, did you try overclocking that MB-installed Cirrus w/ MCLK? I never tried Cirrus-overclocking with MB built-in chips, but I overclocked many Cirrus-based cards back then. And it actually helped in some 2D-era games. Same with early S3-cards.

CL-GD5429 is a zero wait state 16bit VLB card... The CL-GD5430 has wait states as it is Cirrus Logic entry level 32bit VLB. You could try replacing the 5430 with a 5436 chip as that is a faster device but should be pin compatible.

I have got exactly the same Aptiva and wants to upgrade the cache

Bios is very similar to PS1 late models. Maybe may it works on Ps1 as an update to overcome HDD limits?

I remember when the Multi Media PC concept came along and I never understood it as all I saw was a PC with CD rom drive. I was right. It meant nothing, just marketing hype.

I have a MT 6144 Model 30 that's a Pentium 75, I wonder if they were all sold at the same time?

Should've tried with a postcard.

As a guy who was an Amiga user at this time, I gotta say, we all had a good laugh at the "MPC standard" - Multimedia was practically invented on the Amiga. Of course by late 1991 the writing was on the wall and C= was being plundered by a vampire BoD who just wanted to raid the company for cash. But seriously from 1985-1991, your choices for "multimedia computers" were: A $900-$2000 Amiga A $10000 Macintosh-II A $25000-$30000 SGI PCs of course brought brute force and a massive userbase and that was all she wrote...

have you try it without grapic install alot time i find them dont work with graphic card some reason maybe onboard graphic

I have the C1 motherboard. It come with 512k of video ram and a Cyrix 486 66. I upgrade the vram to 1 mb and 16 megs EDO ram. According the bios vga and 1st ide channel are in vesa local bus. Mine also is not working with ET4000. Im looking how to populate the cache ram , bios update and 😢 fix the front cover hinges. It runs win95 rather well.

hello bios version?

IBM: Let's ditch MCA for VL-Bus. Rest of industry: VL-Bus sucks, let's use PCI instead.

I know its good to keep stuff out of the land fills and stuff but why fix the power supply? Why not just buy a newer one than you know its not going to break any time soon and your get clean power? Is it proprietary pin out like HP or something and Dell ?

Your BIOS for those Aptivas is way out of date. Based on some googling, the last BIOS released for those systems was dated in the year 2000...

Nvidia need some lessons from old power connectors design…..