- Hello everybody
and welcome back to another video.
Now in today's episode, yep, we got a package to unbox.
This one right here comes to me from TheDesertLad.
And he's actually donated a couple of packages to me
in the past, but this one right here,
I'm really excited about because I don't know exactly
what's in here.
All I know about this is that this is a 1980s computer
that predates the PS/2 standard.
Now the PS/2 standard is from like 1987
so my guess is an IBM compatible.
But regardless of what it is, I'm really excited.
So without any further ado, let's open it up.
I'm gonna get that one little pesky piece of tape
on the last corner and oh my gosh, that is heavy.
Okay, so we got a box within a box here.
Okay, so I can already rule out this being an IBM 5150
because this box certainly is not large enough,
but I'm just curious now, even more curious
as to what this is 'cause I don't know what,
what could this be?
That is everything, that is everything.
Okay, so we'll set the big box aside.
A 1980s computer is it?
I mean, I assume it's a PC, right,
because he did specifically say pre-PS/2.
Looks like we got some more bubble wrap.
Oh, here we go, we got a note from him, okay.
So it says, "Michael MJD, I would email you ahead of time
but I think this is more fun to surprise you.
I can verify I got it to power on asking for a keyboard.
Since this predates PS/2 and I have been too busy
to dive into it more, I think you and your long list
should get longer."
Yes, I have said it before on this channel
that I do have an extremely long list of video ideas,
but I always appreciate stuff that people wanna send my way
and this was kind of unexpected.
With all that aside, let's see what this is.
Well, let's do this on 3, 1, 2, 3.
Okay, so it looks like we got a desktop, okay.
This is looking a bit too small to be an eighties desktop
so what on earth, what could this be?
All right, well, this is definitely looking more like
a nineties computer to me.
Is this a custom build?
Yep, I'm thinking this is a custom build
because right there that sticker,
what you can make out of it says mini tower case,
at least that's what it appears to say.
All right, so with the computer taken apart here,
I can confirm that this is actually
a Cyrix 6X86 based machine,
which I mean, hey, it's not from the 1980s
but it's still freaking cool.
And again, huge thank you to TheDesertLad once again.
This is gonna be awesome to take a look at.
We'll see if we can boot this thing up.
I'm thinking because it looks like, yeah,
I'm thinking this might be a PS/2 connector.
I mean, this is not a card,
this is literally just you've got these two connectors
that run off the back here.
And this ribbon cable right here
runs from this connector down here.
So let me just grab, I've got a PS/2 keyboard here
and let's plug it in.
And that goes in, that is 100% a PS/2 port.
So we only got one.
So that means you would need to have a serial-based mouse
or get a serial to PS/2 adapter,
which I think I have by the way.
Oh, I do wanna look at this though
because this one connector here was loose
and I bet that's a, yep.
That's another one of these.
So this right here is a 9-pin serial port.
And so what you would do is- it's supposed to,
though it is missing the two little standoffs
that you have, you see for this larger parallel connector
down here.
And so yeah, it acts as an expansion card,
even though it's not actually in one of the PCI lanes.
This just runs to one of the COM ports on the motherboard.
And by the way, check out this power supply right here.
I mean, this thing looks to be in really good,
at least the exterior of it, it's really shiny,
it looks to be really clean and in really nice shape.
But let's see what other expansion cards we have in here.
So it looks like we've got a modem.
It looks like we have, yep that's a sound card, okay.
Also of note, it looks like we've got some ISA lanes
here as well right underneath the PCI lanes.
And in fact, the modem and the sound card
are both plugged in to two of the four ISA lanes.
So yeah, we have a Trident video card,
which has VGA out on the back.
So, I mean, yeah, let's go ahead and plug this thing in.
I mean, we got RAM, we got a power supply,
we got a hard drive, we've got a CD drive.
I mean, if this thing doesn't have Windows installed on it
we could install Windows on it.
But oh, and one thing I did notice if you look at this,
the IDE cable is not plugged into the hard drive.
I noticed this before and before I forget
we're going to plug that in.
We do have have a bit of a mess of cables here.
I wonder if it's unplugged for a reason though?
We will find out.
This hard drive looks like a, it's a Maxtor.
Yeah, I can't make out what the capacity is
but we'll just, I mean, we'll be able to see it
when we turn on the computer.
So, okay, let's go ahead, get this thing plugged in,
get our PS/2 keyboard plugged in,
hook up to the monitor and let's see if she boots.
All right, so we've got everything hooked up.
I've got the keyboard plugged into the PS/2 port,
and I'm gonna use this PS/2 to serial adapter
to plug the mouse in.
But I suspect that the PS/2 port on the computer itself
is supposed to be used for the mouse.
Now, I always thought that even though
the connector is the same that you couldn't use
a PS/2 keyboard in a PS/2 mouse port, or vice versa.
But it turns out that that actually isn't the case
in some cases.
It depends on the computer hardware you have
but you may be able to swap them.
In fact, this is the case with a 98 PC.
I can plug a keyboard into the PS/2 mouse port,
and it works just fine.
And not to mention there are ports labeled for either or
and you can find these on modern motherboards.
But if I had to take a guess
I would say that this PS/2 port is only for the mouse.
Now you won't be able to tell this
by looking at the port itself,
because instead of that familiar purple or green color,
it's black, which means that this computer predates
the PC-99 specification, which really quickly
going on a brief side note here,
was essentially an initiative from Intel and Microsoft
to make PCs a little more standardized
by doing things like color coding the ports on the back.
The other huge giveaway is that this computer has
an AT connector on the back.
Now, unfortunately, I don't have any AT keyboards
so if this PS/2 port only works with the mouse,
we're essentially out of luck.
Anyways, with all that aside
let's go ahead and flick the power switch on the front
and see if this thing powers on.
We got a fan, we got some beeps.
Do we have a display?
At the moment we do not have a display
and the keyboard is not doing anything.
Like it's not, it's acting like it's not plugged in.
'Cause normally you can press Caps Lock
and Num Lock and it will light up.
Let's turn this on and listen.
(computer beeps)
Okay, so it's four rapid beeps.
All right, so if you look right there on the motherboard
that is an Award BIOS chip.
Now Award was purchased by Phoenix at some point,
"acquired in 1998", is when they purchased Award.
Now I looked up the Award BIOS beep code listing
and there's this really interesting article from LifeWire,
which literally just says, it's got like
three things listed here and then it says,
"Any other beep pattern code
means that you have some kind of memory problem."
And I think that's a little bit too vague
because they list three things here.
One long beep and three short beeps, one high-pitched beep
and one low-pitched beep repeating,
and one high-pitched beep repeating.
There were four beeps so when it says repeating,
I would think that means like nonstop repeating.
I mean maybe not, maybe what we just heard
was one high-pitched beep repeating,
which says it means the CPU is overheating.
But then if you go by the Phoenix BIOS codes,
four beeps means unconfirmed beep code.
Again, these are really great descriptions here.
"Re-seat RAM chips or replace RAM chips
as a possible solution."
All right, so to get the RAM out,
we had to get the power supply out
so that I could actually see what I was doing.
And to get the power supply out
we had to get the CD drive out.
So yeah, this kind of spiraled and do a bit of a mess.
But I was able to get the RAM out, re-seat it
and well, (computer beeps)
got those same four POST beeps
and we still have the amber light on the monitor.
Okay, we'll turn it off here.
Maybe the video card is just screwed up.
Yeah, this is always the fun
with dealing with vintage computers,
especially when you can't pinpoint exactly
what the POST beep means.
But let's just take out the video card here.
Here is our video card of choice for the day.
So let's go ahead and pop that into the same,
I almost said ISA bay, PCI lane.
Oh my gosh, the amount of...
I'm just removing these.
Oh, look at that.
This cable's not even plugged in,
and okay, these will clear out some space for us here.
So we'll just get these over here.
So those are for the, just remove this one
from the hard drive, so, okay.
So that clears up like a bunch of space here
so you can actually like see. And she's in, okay.
Oh, and we got, (computer beeps)
we got an output.
We got a signal so it was the video card.
Check that out.
Heck yes, oh my gosh, that is exciting.
So yeah, it is indeed an Award BIOS
and it's not going to be able to detect any peripherals
or anything because we don't have anything plugged in.
All right, so we're back.
We've got the computer set up
and a fair amount of stuff has happened since the last clip.
One of the major things I did is I ended up taking out
the power supply again, after I'd put it back in the case,
'cause I thought I was done.
But then I got the idea, I was like, you know what,
I should probably, 'cause it looked like
when I looked in the fan on the side of the power supply
there was a lot of dust in there.
And so I said, all right I'll just take
the power supply back out.
I ended up taking it apart to clean the inside of it,
which was good because it was full of dust.
Cleaned out the interior while I was at it
and well here we are.
And yeah, by the way, if you didn't really notice before
the exterior, the case here is definitely like rusted.
There's parts on the bottom here.
All right, we got the power plugged in,
we got the display, the keyboard and mouse,
see what happens.
(computer beeps) Okay, okay.
There we go.
So yeah, it's working.
Okay, so it's spitting out a keyboard error.
So let's go ahead and plug it off here
and try to plug the keyboard into the
PS/2 to serial adapter.
Keyboard error, press F1 to continue, yeah.
This is the classic BIOS error message, I love that.
Well I think we have reached a bit of an impasse
because I literally, I mean,
I can't press F1 to continue or DEL to enter setup
on this keyboard, and as I've said,
I do not have a serial-based keyboard
that we could use with this.
Yeah, my guess is that PS/2 connector on the back
is for a mouse only.
That's what happens, my friends.
That's just the way things go on this channel.
So yeah, this was definitely unexpected.
I mean, like I said at the beginning,
I thought this was gonna be like an eighties computer,
pre-1987, it ends up being a mid-'90s computer,
which is still awesome.
I mean, hey, I mean it was donated to me.
I do really appreciate it.
So thank you once again to TheDesertLad
for your very generous donation to the channel.
You guys definitely may be seeing this computer again
on the channel at some point, who knows?
But for now, I think that's gonna wrap it up
for today's video.
So if you guys enjoyed this one,
be sure to give it a thumbs up, get subscribed,
turn on notifications, all that good stuff.
And as always, I wanna thank you all so much for watching
and I'll see you in the next video.
(outro music)