it's getting to be extremely uncommon to find vintage computers at the thrift store
anymore and by vintage I mean anything older than the mid-2000s so when I saw this cute
little thing on the shelf for $14.99 I knew I had to pick it up even though it doesn't work
at the store I grabbed the power cord plugged it in and tried to turn it on and absolutely nothing
happens none of the lights light up there's no sounds coming from it it's totally dead
that may not be so surprising when I turn it around and you'll notice how rusty it is and
the worst of the rust is around the power supply there even looks like there's some soot coming out
of the top of the fan so something violently bad might have happened to this power supply
but before I try to repair it let's take a closer look at what we've got here on
the front it has a 3.5" floppy drive a CD-ROM drive there's the power button a
reset button that's the power indicator LED hard disk activity LED and a sleep mode LED
on the back it has no expansion slots but it has enough ports to satisfy a sailor in addition to
the expected VGA monitor output it also has PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports two USB ports,
ethernet, a built-in modem, parallel printer port, a joystick port, and audio jacks for headphones,
line input, and microphone and it has two things you don't normally see on a
vintage PC of this era a composite video output and an S-video output
there is no manufacturer name anywhere on this but it does list a model number
of BKi810 I looked up that model number and it turns out this was made by PC Chips they called
it the Book PC and there's a very helpful web site which has all the drivers for it
and you may think it's about the same size as a typical late 1990s
small form factor desktop PC like a Compaq Deskpro EN but it's actually
a lot smaller and all the way back in 2010 I did a video about its successor the
Book PC II so now I'll get to review the original Book PC if I can get it working
inside it's not nearly as dirty or rusty as I thought it would be we
can see it has a very small power supply, a Mitsumi floppy drive,
and the CD-ROM drive was made by Top Glory Electronics never heard of them
on this side you can clearly see a pattern of dirt and rust that
matches the pattern of the cooling vent in the side of the case so this
must have been in a damp location like a basement or a shed or garage
most of the motherboard is covered by the drives but I can see a Socket 370
CPU of some kind and two SDRAM slots one of which has a 64 megabyte stick installed and
hiding underneath the CD-ROM drive you can just barely see the 3.5" hard drive
there it is with the drives and CPU cooler removed it actually has an
Intel 810 chipset which I didn't expect for a PC Chips motherboard
they usually used VIA chipsets now let's see what kind of CPU it has
OK it's a 500 MHz Celeron and this is actually the second fastest CPU that
could work in this computer because the only faster one
that Intel had was a 533 MHz Celeron which is barely any faster than this
this is the original 2 volt version of the Socket 370 so unfortunately it does not support a Pentium
III because those require lower voltages so for now I'm just going to put back in the original CPU
there's the audio chip made by SoundPro and it has a little picture of a telephone on it and
right next to it is this ribbon cable going to the modem so I believe the modem functionality
is built into the sound chip you can also see the onboard piezo buzzer for the PC speaker
but as for the graphics it's just using whatever is built into the
Intel chipset and it's sharing the video memory with the main system
memory so needless to say this will not be a gaming powerhouse
I did install a new coin cell battery because the
original one was totally dead but for now I'm just going to leave this alone
because the more important thing is to troubleshoot the power supply
here's the inside of the power supply and what I think happened to it is that
it has a lot of this glue that was used to hold the parts in place and especially when
it turns dark brown like that that glue has a nasty habit of turning conductive
and especially if this thing was exposed to moisture and that glue absorbed moisture
into it it became even more conductive and it probably shorted out the circuitry and popped
the fuse because this thing is totally dead it's not even putting out the standby voltage
so it would be a rather extensive repair to clean out all that glue and replace
whatever components got damaged but luckily this thing just puts
out 5 and 12 volts DC so I can easily substitute a different power supply
the power supply uses a six-pin Molex connector which is the same size that's
used by PCI Express graphics cards but not the same pinout but luckily it follows the
ATX standard for the color coding of the wires
so using one of those graphics card connectors I jury-rigged an adapter to replace the faulty
power supply with a standard ATX power supply and hopefully I got got the pinout
right or else we'll be testing how good the protection circuitry is of this power supply
and for some reason even though there are two perfectly good fan power headers
on the motherboard they decided to use a Molex adapter to supply power to the fan
which plugs into the motherboard here so I'll plug that in I'll plug in my homemade adapter
and I'll also need to connect the front panel connector
because that has the power switch on it
OK I'll plug it in and we get a standby light now if I press the power button
the fan comes to life
and we get a beep so I think this thing is working
I'm so confident in this thing working that I reconnected all the drives a
keyboard a mouse and I connected it to my TV as a monitor so I'll plug it in
and push the power button
certainly can hear the hard drive
I'm not getting any... oh there it goes it took a while Intel Celeron 500 MHz it said
here's the CMOS setup utility he thinks we're in October 1999 but I won't worry
about that right now looks like it has an 8.4 gig hard drive detects the 3.5" floppy drive
and 64 megs of RAM internal and external caches are enabled
apparently it can support an LS-120 or a Zip drive
on-board IDE is enabled USB controller is enabled I'll enable USB keyboard support
on-board audio and modem chip is enabled the LAN chip is disabled for some reason but I
won't worry about that right now because I'm not planning to connect this to my network anyway
TV system selection so that's for that composite and S-video output you can select NTSC or PAL
floppy Drive controller is enabled on-board infrared port which is interesting I'll have
to see if there's a header for that on the motherboard not that I would actually use
it for anything it does support ECP parallel port mode PC health status the voltage core
is 2 volts so this does not support the later Coppermine CPUs it only supports the original
Socket 370 Celeron not the Pentium III. so I'll just save and exit setup see if this thing boots
I know it's shifted over to the right but that's just my TV doing that
how many times is it going to check that RAM? OK it detected the hard drive and the CD-ROM drive
and it's booting up Windows 98.
hopefully this has all the drivers already installed
I think I heard some kind of sound let me turn up the volume on the TV
OK we've got Microsoft Word Outlook Express Microsoft Works AOL Instant Messenger
Pagis inbox America Online 5.0
the mouse is working let's check that sound again
yep sound is working I'll turn it up more
this mouse is rather fast I got to turn it down
motion... slow that down
that's better
OK let's see
Windows 98 Second Edition registered to OEM so it's the original OEM copy
Intel Celeron 63 megs of RAM so I guess it's sharing some of that for the graphics
let's just take a quick look at what's in the My Documents folder
we have girlfriends I don't think I want to look in there hola picture research paper Texas
there are many pla... places that impress me like the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls but those places
are in something and Untitled
it has a driver for a Lexmark 3200 series printer and a copy of Microsoft Word 2000
as well as Microsoft Works but notably no games on this thing which is just as well
because a Celeron with the built-in Intel graphics is not going to be very good for gaming anyway
but the sound chip in this does have OPL3 synthesis and a DOS
mode MPU-401 emulator so it should be fine for running old DOS games
the Book PC is all back together and looking as good as new if you don't notice the retrofitted
power supply hanging out the back and it's really cute when paired with a 9" monitor
and a tenkeyless keyboard because everything is totally proportionate to its size it looks just
like a full-size desktop computer that has been shrunken down to about two-thirds scale
only when you equip it with a more normal sized keyboard and monitor do you really
notice how small the Book PC is and despite its small size the Book PC has everything
that a typical entry-level non-gaming intensive PC user would have needed back in the late '90s
it would have been perfect for typing papers in Microsoft Word
sending e-mails and chatting with your buddies on AOL Instant Messenger which
is what the original owner of this Book PC used it for
and aside from the original power supply we which fried everything else in this Book PC is still
working perfectly and it also uses standard PC-100 SDRAM modules a standard 5.25" half
height optical drive and a standard 3.5" IDE hard drive making it easy and inexpensive to upgrade
and at least when it was working the power supply was internal rather than the ungainly
external brick on a leash power supply used by more modern compact PCs and Macs
and can you tell I'm standing here talking about a computer that isn't
turned on because my homemade power supply adapter came apart when I was
shoving everything back into the case and I can't be bothered to take it all
apart fix it and put it all back together just to record this few minutes of video?