[jazzy jazz music]
Greetings, and welcome to an LGR computer thing!
Related to old computers, but this is not actually an old computer
even though it has old components inside.
This is what became known as the Lazy Green Giant,
a Windows 98 Pentium III build
that I put together last year: 2019.
And this was based on an existing project PC
that I'd used for LGR for, well,
since the beginning really.
I had always wanted to paint it,
make it sort of a dark green, dark teal.
So I finally did that,
and put all sorts of other new components in there
and just re did the whole thing and came up with this.
And originally it looked pretty cool.
I liked the idea of Plasti Dip and stuff
because I'd used it on car components and hubcaps
and things like that.
However, for this is was, it ended up being terrible.
As you can see there's bits of scuffing
that have just, you know, started peeling off.
And sure, I've resprayed it twice now,
but that ends up building up even more of a layer
of this rubberiness
that kind of conflicts with some of these things.
Like this is getting harder to press in
and the disks are like, it's just, you know,
it's adding layers of that rubbery Plasti Dip stuff.
And so yeah, it starts scuffing
and peeling off different components.
And then there's the fact that because of that rubberiness,
you're getting a build up of things like dust and hair
and grime,
and you can take a wet cloth and rub it over there
and get a good chunk of that off,
but it still builds up extremely easily
and it's very visible.
And even then, like the finish is just becoming
uneven at this point.
So yeah, screw this whole situation.
I was never particularly happy with this case anyway,
so I'm just gonna replace the case.
I mean I'm gonna keep it
but I've gotta peel off this Plasti Dip.
I'm not gonna do that today,
I just want to replace it with a better case
as well as swap out some of these components in there.
We'll get to that,
but lemme just show you the case
that we're going to be using.
Oh yeah, here we go, check this out.
This is something that I've been wanting to use
for a good while now.
I picked this up some time ago
and I've just had it in storage ever since.
This is a new old stock Lian-Li case,
the PC-60, or really the PC-62.
A little bit later.
This is like from the early to mid 2000s or something.
I believe the original case design
stems from the late 90s or thereabouts.
So yeah, we're going to be installing it in this case.
But also, I've got some components
that we're gonna be swapping out and upgrading as well.
I'm gonna be keeping a lot of the internal stuff.
The graphics card, motherboard, CPU, and RAM and all that,
and sound card,
but I'm going to replace the optical and disk drives
for a couple reasons.
For one thing, they're green now.
And like I said, I'll peel off this stuff later,
just not today.
I don't feel like doing it.
But I also just wanted to take care of
some of these other things that have been bothering me
ever since I built this.
So um. Yeah first off, got a three and a half inch 1.44
meg floppy disk drive here.
Just standard black drive.
But I am gonna be using one of these here.
This is just a regular one.
This is not, dang it.
This is a CD-ROM drive.
Well I meant to pick up a DVD-ROM from my storage,
I guess I didn't.
I know I have a couple.
Anyway, I'm gonna put a plain DVD drive in there
instead of the burner that's in there right now.
And I'm also gonna be putting in
a IBM Personal Computer
five and a quarter inch 360K floppy disk drive.
It's a new old stock one from Computer Reset
like the one that I put in my NuXT build a while back.
The floppy drive that's in here is a 1.2 meg
high density drive, and it's fine,
it's just that pretty much everything that I play in here
in terms of like floppy disk games
on a five and a quarter inch
are going to be on 360K disks like this.
And the other thing, writing.
I want to do things with writing
five and a quarter inch floppy disks on 360K,
and this just, it's not built for that,
it's not the greatest for it.
There's issues with writing 360K disks
on a 1.2 meg drive like this.
And then the other thing I'm gonna be swapping out
is in the back here.
You may remember that I put in this nice little IDE
to SD card reader instead of hard drive,
and it works great.
I really don't have many complaints about it
except for the form factor itself.
I kind of cobbled together -- well lemme just show you.
Yeah, it was on one of these brackets in the back,
but I discovered that the bracket
was kind of in the wrong spot
and it went right up against the motherboard
and I couldn't actually install it in there
so I just kind of had it dangling around.
And so what I did to combat that
later on after that video was
I sort of mangled together [laughing]
a couple different brackets
and just sorta screwed it into this one and made it work.
And it doesn't really, it was just a quick fix.
You know, I never intended this to be permanent.
And because it's a project box,
I really didn't care about aesthetics too much.
But I've begun to care, dang it.
So I don't wanna use this anymore.
I was thinking about just going to this
front loading three and a half inch drive bay
CF adapter instead,
and, I mean this would work great,
but I just don't wanna use Compact Flash cards anymore.
And unfortunately I cannot find any SD to IDE adapters
that go in the front like this.
I mean I could make a custom bay
if I had a 3D printer or something,
but you know, or Dremel something.
I don't know, I tried Dremeling something out
and I was not happy with my results.
So I found this instead.
What we've got right here is an SD card to SCSI adapter
instead of IDE.
Same basic idea, but it's a front loading one,
and it has a black three and a half inch drive bay
bezel right here.
So front loading SD card
instead of having to go to the back.
And then it's also got a little Micro USB there
for something, I don't know.
But anyway, I think this'll work great.
Now I already have a SCSI card in there,
so hopefully it's just a matter of hooking up
that 50-pin cable and making it work.
And then finally, the last thing that I wanna do.
This is totally optional, but I wanna try it.
Is I wanna put one of these babies in there.
This is a Creative Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold card.
Yes indeed.
I've never used one of these models.
I've used some of the later ones,
but this is the one I picked up,
I don't even know when.
Doesn't matter, it's just a cool card.
You got RCA out and everything.
But it gives me more compatibility for DOS games and OPL3.
I mean you know, so what I have in here
is the Aureal Vortex 2 card.
And that has some pretty decent actually DOS emulation
for things like FM synth AdLib compatibility.
And the Sound Blaster is supported actually pretty good,
but there's a lot of my favorite games,
especially share ware games
that don't work so well with that.
So I'm thinking if I can set it up properly
and I need to make sure there's no conflicts
then I can get both of these inserted in there.
Whether or not I can use them both at the same time,
I don't know,
but at least have them both in there
and disable one or the other depending on my needs.
So anyway, that's what we're gonna do.
Let's put this all together
and I don't know, play some games or something.
You know, LGR stuff.
I'm excited.
[lounge music]
[box slicing noises]
Hmm, got some thingies here.
Check this out, aluminum PC cases
"designed for high performance PC system."
Okay, what's on the other side.
So they had aluminum bezels even for CD and DVD-ROMS
to match your cases.
Aluminum mouse pads.
Some well illustrated installation stuff.
Very clearly labeled, good grief.
Check out that breakdown schematic.
That is awesome.
[laughing]
That is so much deeper than I thought it would be.
Oh, that's what I said.
Whatever man, I'm committed at this point.
Oh dude.
Back it up, get it all in the frame.
Look at that, that is seriously well put together.
They've even kind of smoothed out these edges.
All right, so oh man, that comes off very easy.
A lot easier than the other case I'm currently using.
Dude.
Got some components and things.
Yeah dude, look at that.
Even got little protective plasticky bits here again,
to make sure you don't scrape yourself on those sharp edges.
Let's see what's in here.
All right, got an I/O shield,
whole lot of screws and rubber stand offs.
Various adapter cables.
What are these?
Oh, fan control.
This is definitely overkill for this computer,
but there we go, look at all these.
Three Noctua fans.
Well those are a little bit different looking
than more modern Noctuas, that's for sure.
Don't have any of that signature tan and brown going on,
but either way, good to have these.
Something else I'd like to give a shout here,
this whole motherboard tray, I/O section,
I think comes right out.
Oh yeah.
Very convenient.
The case that I'm replacing
does have a slide out back portion for the motherboard
but this is, I don't know, a little different.
That's really awesome.
I'm gonna put it together I guess on here
and then slide it all into place.
That, I like this already.
Oh yeah.
Well, let's go ahead and get everything out of this one,
well, all the components that I wanna keep anyway,
and put it in here
and get Windows 98 going with some games.
Yeah, it's disassembly time!
[synthy disassembly music]
And there we go, an empty case once again.
Well, mostly.
We're leaving those in there
cuz I don't know what I'm gonna do with this.
Something, someday.
Yeah.
Okay.
Perfect.
Although I believe a fan controller
should be on the agenda for the future.
No big deal though,
this has never been a warm system by any means
over the past year or so.
Nope, nope, what am I doing?
Gotta install the I/O panel first.
Hehe, I went uh...
So far as
getting the whole thing screwed in before realizing.
There we go.
Now with the shield in place we can get to screwing.
[synth music]
All right, time for some cards.
Voodoo 3 card here.
Diamond Monster Sound Aureal Vortex 2.
Ethernet card that I have still not used in this system.
SCSI controller
and our Sound Blaster AWE64
that I have not installed
beside this particular Aureal card before
so we'll see how that works.
Nice.
That is an awesome set up
and we don't even have it installed in the case yet.
Uh.
[chuckles] Okay!
[music continues]
[laughing] That is so satisfying.
Time for some power cables.
You know, I just now thought to check.
I wonder if this has a PC speaker installed.
Yes it does, huh, right there.
Exact same spot as the other one.
Fantastic.
And it's a cone as well.
It's not a little piezo garbage junk.
All right, let's wire all these up.
[more music]
All right, drives, let's get them installed.
This is such a cool case.
This is not sponsored, I just really like this.
Listen to this.
[metallic scraping] Ahh.
[bass-Driven jazz music]
So I think I'm gonna put this here.
The screw goes right here.
Okay, well guess that's what this little contraption is for.
I gotta say, that's kind of an annoying design
because there's only one set of screws on each side
like that, it's like [clunky clanking].
For not being a floppy drive, that sure is floppy.
I think I am gonna put it the other way around
because at least it'll smoosh downward
onto the floppy drive.
The actual floppy drive.
That makes more sense.
Floppy cable here and SCSI cable.
Nice.
We gotta unbox this lovely thing.
Aww man, opening these new old stock drives
never gets old.
By definition it gets old, but anyway.
Ha-haw.
Fantastic.
You know, there are some existing scuff marks
where I can see that there were a couple of drives actually
installed here previously,
so I guess this case wasn't quite new old stock.
It was lightly used old stock.
It was certainly in really well repacked condition.
Maybe it was a refurb or like return unit
or who knows what, display unit, something.
Obviously it wasn't brand new.
Let me go ahead and.
Oh my goodness, does it not reach?
It does not.
Hah!
Well that's a pain.
Wow!
Yeah, the case is too deep.
It would've reached.
♪ Hello darkness my old friend ♪
[sigh of defeat]
Guess that's gonna have to wait.
Well, at least get the IDE CD-ROM installed.
[laughing]
Gotta say, it's kind of annoying having this here
because I can't see what I'm doing.
For now I guess I'm just gonna take this out
and just dangle it over there a little bit closer.
Ironic.
I got this thing
so I wouldn't have to dangle anything
and here I am dangling things again, dang it.
Yeah, whatever.
[laughing]
It's fine, everything's fine.
See if it works.
Okay, powering it on.
And it powers on, which I already knew,
because I've actually been screwing around with this
for about half an hour
trying to figure out this little SD card adapter.
'Cause it's not as straightforward
as I hoped it would be unfortunately.
In fact there's a few different things
I gotta tweak already.
I'll move this down here
so I can actually get the cable to reach
which is actually what I did with the other one.
I just, I forgot about that,
the whole A and B priority thing.
Anyway, when it loads up the SD card
it's not actually looking at that card itself
to just see what it is.
It actually goes to whatever the default is
on the board itself
and then just tried to load the card
based on the defaults.
Which the defaults weren't good.
It was set to like two gigabyte hard drive.
And I have a 64 gig card in there
formatted to 32 gigs
and that was set for the IDE configuration
that I had on the other build for this Windows 98 PC.
So I had to actually connect it to a modern computer
and download the utility to reconfigure
the SCSI2SD board itself.
Mine's a v5 by the way,
so this is formatted at 32 gig and it's set to 64.
Anyway, it seems to be working and there we go.
We have Windows 98.
It's the same.
It still says Lazy Green Giant right here.
I can change that, but ideally this solution
should not only be more convenient
in terms of having it in the front
whenever I get the proper cable for it,
but should be a little bit quicker too.
From the benchmarks that I've seen,
SCSI2SD with the right configuration
will actually run quicker in terms of like
smaller read writes and everything like that.
Sometimes with a ton of little files,
it would really bog down and took a while
to write to SD cards over the IDE interface.
At least the ones that I had.
But yeah, whatever.
Okay, I'm done with this.
So lemme turn this off
and I'm gonna go and finagle with things
and see if I can get these other deals working.
Morning. [plops down coffee mug]
I've been working on this thing all night.
And I am extremely satisfied with how it's turned out
so I've made some tweaks.
I moved this down here
so that I can actually plug it in
using the same cable.
Still haven't gotten a long enough SCSI cable or adapter
to fit the SCSI2SD thing
but it's down here plugged in and working
and I had to take out the ethernet card, I don't know,
for now, because I was trying to get
both of those sound cards working
and I was running into some IRQ conflicts
and it was just nice to free up
a little bit of resources.
But now it's good I think.
As you can see, I've changed the OEM info
and yeah, now it's updated.
It's called the 'Megaluminum Monster!'
Yeah I don't know, sounded cool at the time
at like 2AM.
So yeah, everything is in here.
And yes, including the AWE64.
I have disabled the Aureal Vortex 2's
Sound Blaster Pro emulation cuz I just don't need it.
We've got the proper Sound Blaster in here now.
The only thing that isn't really working
is the joystick port on the Vortex.
Again, don't need it because the AWE64 has one.
And now that I have these two sound cards in there,
the way I have this set up is around back
I've got the line out of the Aureal card
going into the line in of the AWE64.
And then of course the AWE64's RCA outputs
are going out to some speakers.
So check this out.
Let me just show you, this is so cool.
Look at all these MIDI synths I have.
Yeah, you got MIDI outs and synths
and MPU-401s and wavetables.
So both the AWE64 and the Vortex
have wavetable output for MIDI,
but it also has the Creative Music synth
which is just an OPL3.
So you get that classic Sound Blaster 16
kind of AdLib sound.
[Canyon.mid plays]
Okay, so you got that,
but choose the AWE64's MIDI synth, apply that.
Same track, same spot.
[Canyon.mid plays again]
That's a cool sound.
I know a lot of people are rather fond
of the wavetable on these AWE cards.
But I'm kind of not, it's all right.
I do however,
really like the wavetable sound of the Vortex.
So check this out.
[Canyon.mid plays with Aureal card]
And because of the way it is
you also have access to the effects on the Vortex, so.
[Canyon.mid continues playing as effects change]
Yeah man, I just really like this for General MIDI.
I love the sound canvas,
and of course anything related to Roland stuff
is good, MT-32.
That's not General MIDI but it's a good option for DOS.
But this one in particular,
because they are both card and they're internal,
I don't have to hook up anything else externally.
I don't have to mess with a MPU-401 interface
and like a box sitting outside here
that I have to plug in.
Like I like that stuff for other setups,
but this one, I just wanted everything in one, and it works.
And it also lets me choose different synths
for DOS games that use General MIDI.
So for instance, I've got Duke 3D here,
and if you just set the.
Well okay, first I have the sound effects card
set to the AWE 32, which yeah.
[Bowling pin sound test plays]
So you get that full stereo 44.1 kilohertz sound,
and everything on there sounds really good.
A lot of simultaneous voices.
But then you get to the music,
and right now it's set to the Vortex.
[GRABBAG theme plays]
So you can do that
or because I have both of them in here
I don't have to switch here.
I can actually switch it in the options,
and choosing the General MIDI,
I switch to the MIDI port.
So I have the Vortex set to 300
and the AWE 64, that's on 330.
So now you get that.
[GRABBAG plays again]
So maybe there you kinda get a good example example
or a good reason why I kind of prefer the Vortex
in some cases for wavetable.
I mean, listen to that.
[Aureal Vortex 2 plays GRABBAG]
I don't know, it's got more of a punch to it.
There's more grit to some of the instruments
like the guitars and what not.
It's just a radical wavetable option.
And so yeah, when you boot up Duke 3D
and it's got the Sound Blaster sound.
[loud boom]
[Duke 3D theme music]
[gunshots]
[keyboard clicking]
That's so cool, I got both!
That's exactly what I wanted to make this kind of setup for.
And I coulda done it in the other case,
but this is just so much cooler.
And it's also means that I get proper sound
in a lot of my favorite shareware games
because as decent as the Vortex is
at doing some Sound Blaster emulation,
it's not quite right.
[Jill of the Jungle music]
It's still not perfect.
I still like the Sound Blaster Pro 2.0.
And some of those earlier Sound Blaster 16's and such
for, you know, I have preferences.
I have a lot of different systems
for a lot of different things.
But this is a wonderful all around kind of solution.
But yeah, let me just show you a couple other things.
So yes, floppy drive, we have floppy drive A here working.
So we've got 1.44 meg on disks.
And so that's cool.
And I have a 360k disk in here right now.
And yeah, the 1.2 meg drive I had before
could read and it could even write to them,
but you wouldn't be able to read a 360k
written on a 1.2 meg
on anything but another 1.2 meg.
So if I wanted to take something
like say I was gonna write Balloon Challenge here
to a 360k disk
and transfer this over to my IBM AT
or something with a 360K drive.
Or even the NuXT.
It wouldn't be able to read this disk
that I am writing now.
Even though it's a 360K disk
on that 1.2 meg drive.
But since this is a proper 360K,
it reads and writes like all my old games,
and it's gonna be fantastic for making backups
and writing software to disks
that I wanna put on older machines with other 360K drives.
And yeah man, it's a convenience thing for me.
I may also put like a 1.2 meg five and a quarter inch
floppy right here later if I can find one
that's actually in decent condition in black.
I only have gray and beige ones.
Oh and of course, the Voodoo card is in here and is working.
And let's open up some Unreal Tournament here
and just get a quick taste of that
as well as showing how it can take advantage
of the Aureal Vortex's 3D audio
which you're not gonna be able to hear
because I'm recording this with a lapel mic over here
and the speakers are over there.
Anyway, trust me, it'll be 3D sound.
[UT99 intro music]
♪ Really dark. ♪
[Intro music continues]
♪ I can't see [bleep!] ♪
All right.
Time to frag.
[UT99 carnage commences]
Well anyway,
I don't know if you could really hear the 3D sound
difference at all over this mic,
but it is turned on.
So yeah, lemme go ahead and put it all back together
and just get the case on there and assemble it all
and get it looking pretty here
and finish up the video.
[Smooth reassembly jazz]
Ahh, that looks slick.
And we can't forget LGR case badge.
Only have a few of them left.
Gave away like 100 of them at VCF Midwest.
Yeah, that's the stuff.
Now it looks complete.
All right, well that is the Megaluminum Monster
put together like 98%.
[Windows 98 startup sound]
Ahh, that dual sound card setup
just makes me so excited to screw around with things
just, I don't know, for fun.
I mean also making videos, but mostly for fun.
And yeah, there's still a couple things
to address in the future.
Like I've just got the bezel
from the SCSI2SD on the front of the case there.
The actual board is still hanging around inside.
And I'd also like to see if I can attach
a hard disk indicator LED to that board.
'Cause while it does have an orange indicator
on the board itself, there's nothing external,
and I like blinking hard disk lights.
What can I say?
I'd like to hook it up to this on the case
but there's no header on the board.
It does actually look like there is a spot
to connect a header
so hopefully that's what it is.
And if that's the case,
I'm just gonna solder one of those in there,
and of course get the DVD-ROM installed
whenever I can find the one I actually wanna put into this.
So whatever, I'll do that
and maybe post an update on Twitter.
Regardless though, I hope that you enjoyed
seeing this come together.
You'll absolutely be seeing it again in the future
as I have a whole bunch of random Windows 9x projects.
And this machine will be perfect for it.
Much more suitable than the Lazy Green Giant.
Stick around for that if you'd like.
Either way though, thank you very much for watching LGR.