[angular jazz music] Greetings folks, and welcome to an LGR thing
about one of the strangest prebuilt computer designs I have ever come across. This is the Packard Bell Multimedia Corner
Computer, which was a real thing that sold for real money when it was released in the
fall of 1995. $2300 dollars, to be precise, and that was
just for the base configuration with a 100 megahertz Pentium processor, 8 megabytes of
RAM, and no monitor or speakers. And considering how exceedingly hard to find
these are nowadays, I can’t imagine Packard Bell had many customers lining up to buy one. The Corner Computer is one of those machines
that’s downright eye-catching at first glance, but when you take a second to think about
it, the design is amusingly flawed. When Packard Bell first unveiled it at a New
York trade show in July of ‘95, they were boastful of its “innovative, space-saving
abilities,” claiming its design let it fit snugly into small corner spaces around the
home. Like behind this kitchen countertop, as shown
in their carefully-photographed promo material, putting the Corner Computer right by the spatulas
and hanging vampire repellent. And I mean, yeah, cool idea! But then you realize that actually plugging
the darn thing in eliminates any potential space-saving advantages, since the cords are
still hangin’ all out the right-hand side pushing it away from the wall. This also means that the drive bays end up
jutting out the sides in weird, inconvenient locations. It seems the media didn’t quite get it either,
seeing as most articles referred to it as being a “triangular” design. Which uh, no? Looking at it from above, it’s clear that
it’s just your typical Packard Bell desktop with a corner cut out and the drives in a
different spot. Really it’s more heart-shaped than anything. I wish it was a triangular case though, since
the corner idea would’ve been a lot more practical with the drives directly in the
front, but nope. The Corner Computer is effectively still a
square case like all their other machines. In fact, dropping one of those into the same
corner takes up roughly the same space as the Corner Computer. Isn’t that fun! Heh, that being said though, it’s obvious
someone bought one because here it is decades later. And whoever that pioneering purchaser was
in 1995 eventually sold it off, where it was purchased by Billy Coore who kindly lent it
to me for this video. I appreciate you trusting me with this monstrosity,
man, because this kind of technological nonsense is one of my favorite things to experience. I also just love PCs from this generation
in general, from the days when Windows 95 was the hot new thing and Pentium 1 processors
were cutting edge. And even if the design’s actual practicality
was a tad overstated, I’d argue that the Corner Computer still looks cutting edge for
1995. Like other mid-90s Packard Bells though, it seems this was crafted by the “Frog Design” consulting firm. Or at the very least it shares in Frog’s
other designs for Packard Bell with those those wavy plastic ridges all over the place. And check this out, that gray circular center
piece is just that: a piece, in the center. It's not attached to anything, it simply sits
there to hold a monitor, and it can be removed to reveal another Face of Technology logo
on the case behind it. With that outta the way let’s keep the disassembly
going and check out the weirdness inside! The rest of the case easily comes apart, there
are only two M3 screws around back holding on the top and sides. Revealing that the motherboard and power supply
is the same type found in other Packard Bells, just tucked away into the back-left. The bigger difference is that the 5.25”
drive bays are moved down to the far corners of the case for that all-important corner
effect. With the right-hand side originally containing
a quad-speed CD-ROM drive, something swapped out here with a 48x drive from LG. And in the opposite corner is a 3.5” high-density
floppy drive and some molded plastic kinda shaped like CD trays. And while they are the right width, they’re
simply part of the case molding and don’t open up or anything. And yeah that little button is the reset,
not power. That’s hiding all the way over at the bottom
right corner, connecting directly to the 150W Lite-On power supply. And as indicated by that classy Pentium sticker,
the Corner Computer initially came with a 100MHz Pentium inside, but this machine has
since been upgraded with a 200MHz model instead. The heatsink and fan are from an 83MHz Pentium
Overdrive, but yeah, the chip underneath is clocked at 200 here. The memory’s been upgraded too, being brought
up to what would've at the time been a more than substantial 64 megabytes of RAM. The hard drive too, which was 840MB from the
factory, but got swapped to a 1.6 gig ST-31721A from Seagate. For sound Packard Bell supplied an Aztech
Sound Galaxy fax/modem combo card, as they often did. And on there is a Crystal CS4231A and Aztech’s
AZT2316R providing a 16-bit stereo DAC, Windows Sound System compliance, and ADPCM decompression
with Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 compatibility. Along with a Yamaha OPL3 chip, the YMF-262M,
which is a great thing to have for proper AdLib sound in DOS games. And being a combo card, it also has an integrated
28.8k data/fax modem, right next to the audio jacks and 15-pin gameport for connecting joysticks. As for video, the Corner Computer makes use
of an integrated Cirrus Logic CL-GD5440, a PCI-based chipset with a megabyte of video
memory. But seeing as it only provides 2D, Billy wisely
upgraded things with a Diamond Monster 3D card. A PCI 3D accelerator which packs the delightful
3dfx Voodoo 1 chipset with 4 megabytes of memory on-board. Definitely gonna try some Glide mode games
here soon. And other than a 3Com Etherlink 10/100 networking
card, the rest of the I/O is all standard, with the 2D VGA output passing through the
Voodoo card, a parallel printer port, 9-pin serial port, and PS/2 ports for mouse and
keyboard. Speaking of which, they follow the same Frog
Design aesthetic as the case, with soft rippling waves laid into the plastic. I’ve never been fond of this style of mouse
though, it feels cheap and light, and those buttons feel like fondling a couple of potato
chips. But the keyboard ain’t half bad. It’s based on the BTC 51 series so it still
uses rubber domes, nothing mechanical or clicky. But the MX-mount sliders, sproingy rubber,
and ABS keycaps are surprisingly decent. [types of typing being typed] It also uses a non-ANSI layout with a smaller right shift and backslash beneath Enter. Par for the course with Packard Bell and it’s
actually what I grew up with, so I’m used to it. Another peripheral the company made a big
deal about was this remote control with an infrared serial receiver, which they claimed
was a first in the industry. That’s questionable, but no matter what
it’s pretty uncommon in 1995, with the press calling it “the computer for the couch potato.” Yeah maybe. Good luck reading anything from your couch
with the little 14-inch CRT it came with. Packard Bell offered this style monitor with
the entire mid-90s Multimedia range, and despite the small size and .39mm dot pitch, it’s
quite readable at 640x480. And of course it comes with those classic
monitor side-speakers bolted on, with a volume and treble knob on the right speaker and a
3.5mm headphone jack so you can pump those AdLib tunes directly into your earholes. But I think I’ve about talked myself into
a corner with all these features, so what’s left to do but hook everything up, power it
on, and get the full Corner Computer experience. [CRT degaussing] [computer powers on] [hard drive clunking away] Ah those crunchy hard disk noises. Hehe! That Seagate in here is an amazingly loud
drive. [Windows 95 startup sound plays] Ahh, Windows 95. Of all the computer designs that I've used,
this one is about the most Windows 95-ish. Just for that pure mid nineties “what the
heck were they doing” aesthetic. This Corner Computer is amazing to use just
because of the way it looks. Not because of the way it is to actually use,
necessarily. Because man, there are a bunch of annoyances. There are drawbacks on an objective level,
but on a subjective level, I think these things are great! Because they remind me of childhood. It's the kind of computers I grew up with. I had a Packard Bell in ‘95. I was familiar with them having used them
in, you know, computer stores. They were always on display somewhere, especially
places like Circuit City. Anyway, applications though, this is another thing. Look at the bloat. Ha! So much stuff came with these computers. Really though, at the time that was a selling
point. They were always bragging in their marketing
like, “Oh, it comes with like 90 programs.” Yeah. I can believe it. Look at all this stuff. Most of it requires a CD. Most of these CDs I don't have, a couple of
them that I do. We are going to try out some of the more,
I don't know, memorable in my mind programs. But look at all these things, look at all
this, you have alternatives to a lot of stuff that Windows can do, but dang it. It just does it with a Packard Bell flair
that is amazing and is just delightfully mid nineties. You're going to love some of this stuff if
you haven't seen it. Or if you have seen it, you're gonna love seeing it again. I promise! Because I think it's cool. Anyway, like for instance, Packard Bell Navigator,
which was their sort of frontend shell to Windows, their GUI alternative. Welcome from Packard Bell. We offer you two computing environments to
choose from. Packard Bell 's Navigator or Microsoft Windows. You may also begin by taking a quick lesson
on using the mouse. I would rather not! So this is Packard Bell navigator and it's
um -- okay, it’s gonna keep popping up stuff. You know what the heck, they spent so much
time on this, obviously we'll go ahead and look at these slides, Packard Bell Navigator
lets you learn about and manage your computer's features and functions from the viewpoint
of being in a three-dimensional home. My goodness, this is very Microsoft Bob-like
isn't it? And that's because it is. A lot of companies were doing this at the
time, including Microsoft. But instead of Bob's assistants and customizable
rooms, you have these pre-made delightfully 3D pre-rendered rooms. Look at this. You can just click on stuff around the house. Like for instance, you wanna access the mixer
and speaker controls, look at that, there it is. Or fax machine things, I don't have fax installed,
but there it is. Or hey MIDI and media sound kinda stuff. Look at this Audio Station and look at those
fonts! Augh, I love this. Like an audio rack is just on your computer
screen. I would have absolutely loved having this
back in the day. The Packard Bell that we had in my household
in 1995 did not have Navigator. It was from right before when they started
doing the whole Navigator thing of this mid-90s Multimedia range. And I love this range because of all the stuff
that it comes with. We'd call it bloat now but like I said, it
was a selling point back then. We have programs back here. Let's look at these. So this goes to another room, I love the way
this looks. I seriously do. [laugh of aesthetic exclamation] It's like I, you know, the kind of idea that
you get now with... online storefronts, libraries like GOG or whatever, doing their virtual
bookcases for your collection of software that you can access digitally, or things that
you own in collection apps and such. But here look at this, they were doing this
25 years ago. So again, very Microsoft Bob-like. Just here, here's some quick ways to access
things. Or like, oh, I just want to do such and such. I wanna view a tax report. How do I do that? Well. [MS Money startup sound] You can do it with the mid nineties,
that's what. Microsoft Money, again, the aesthetic is
[kisses fingers] just perfect. Another thing I want to show a real quick
is the media controller. I showed it really briefly earlier but you
can move the mouse, even from across the room, provided there's no interference with the
infrared. And it's slow and clunky and awful, but it
does work. And I mean, this would have been amazing,
right? Mid nineties, remote control computer. What the heck is that about? This is your left mouse button, this is your
right mouse button. And you get a whole bunch of little shortcuts
to things like opening the CD player, telephone app, applying SRS Wow effects. So let's go ahead and open the MIDI player
here. And here's a list of things we have to play
in terms of a playlist of MIDI files. And let’s go over to -- this is so awful. Why wouldn't you just use a mouse, right? Well, I guess the idea was like, Packard Bell
was doing this thing of trying to promote their computers for like having a computer
for every room in the home. So if homes have multiple TVs in the mid-90s,
why not multiple computers? You can stick this in a corner in the kitchen. One of their towers in the corner in the office. Another tower in a bedroom or something, I dunno. And because TVs have remotes, why not a computer? You can see the thought behind it. Anyway, let's play this. And I have right now set to the wavetable
sound to the Audio Galaxy. [CANYON.MID plays] And yes the speakers really do sound... terrible. Really, really bad. In fact, the little speaker cone that's in
there, it's not even like a cone. It's like a square thing, almost like a teeny
little tiny audio car door speaker. But it's about like an inch and a half large. It might be two or three inches I dunno, it's
tiny. It's a little thing right here in the middle. And most of this is just a grill for show.
No bass response, a whole lot of mid range, very little high. So let's try that SRS Wow effect. Or 3D, I don't know if it was called “Wow” yet. I think it was. [music grows nominally louder] It mostly just makes it louder. But there's a little bit of I dunno, reverberation,
kind of. [MIDI tunes continue playing] It’s so minor. And these speakers are not good enough to
really hear the difference. I've gone over this difference in a previous
video talking about one of those graphic equalizer, five and a quarter inch drive bay things that
added SRS effects. But anyway, that's the media controller. I mean, you also get things like onscreen
volume control, again, very TV-like. Uh, heh. There's some channel selection stuff if you
have a TV tuner card. Look at this, there's a remote reference just
to kind of show you what things are. But yeah, I don't have a lot of the things
installed on here or like a capture card or anything to show that. But that's the idea behind the remote. It's neat, I guess, but man. You just never want to use it because the
screen's too small to really use it from a distance. And what's the point of using it up close
when you've got a mouse and keyboard. Anyway! So it goes. The idea was sound, execution was Packard Bell. So look at all these things. Such as Spider-Man Cartoon Maker, oh yes! This right here is a legend among a certain
subset of weirdos. And it's well worth checking out and getting
some of that prime, mid-90s Packard Bell experience. [upbeat Cartoon Maker music plays] Oh yeah. [dramatic Spider-Man tunes] Well, that’s gonna take a while! So the whole idea behind this is you make Spider-Man
cartoons. And there's a lot of sounds for everything. Let's go his bedroom here, I think that's
what this is. Somebody's bedroom. So let's put a flaming pumpkin Green Goblin
thing or whatever. There we go. [random cartoon music, sounds] Uh ya got coloring
book pages. So yeah, if you want, you could just like
set up a whole coloring book thing, print it out. You can also just place down little, little
bits of things, color stuff. [gratuitous rainbow sounds] There we go. And you play it back. [incongruous noises] Yeah that’s the idea behind this, make your
own cartoons and you kind of animate them somewhat. Wow, that was terrible. This mouse... hasn't been cooperating necessarily
too well. I’ve cleaned it. I've replaced the ball even, but it's still
kind of iffy, but yeah. [rockin' musical sting] My goodness. And we have some preloaded ones here. [tense music, cartoon sound effects] Look at the animations! Stop fighting. Or you will miss the show! [chuckles] That's a good -- it's a great cartoon. Anyway, so that's the whole thing. You can make your own little animated segments
and such. Another mainstay of the Packard Bell mid-90s
experience has got to be Journeyman Project Turbo. And it did come with that. [peaceful synth music] So this is an update to the original Journeyman
Project from, I think was it ‘92? [more synthy intro music] The year is 2318. It's true. The location, the sky born metropolis known
as Caldoria. The earth is finally at peace after a long
bloody battle against a few tyrants who sought total world domination. Daggum world tyrants. What a lovely day in the bio dome. It's a blue skies, I don't know if they're
real, probably not. [character bumping against wall] [flanger toilet flushes]
I just wanted to flush the future toilet. It's got a flanger effect applied, it's awesome. Report to the temporal security annex? Well, I'm just trying to get out of my room,
sir. [ethereal future music] You got some future
massage chairs. It’s actually like VR or something, I don't
remember. Something cool happens here though. [even more synthetic musical stings] Somebody’s laying into the Casio keyboard,
that's what it’s doing. A hi-rez 4D environ, audio, visual. I knew it was some kind of a VR thing, it's
more like augmented reality room. Like imagine playing this as a kid. Or maybe you did play as a kid, but if I
was a kid, 10 years old coming across this I’d be like, whaaat? The future is now! Of course, something else that I always
have to try is just checking out the compatibility with games in general, but specifically DOS
games, especially when it comes with cards like this Sound Galaxy that's in there right now. Cuz those have a tendency to not be the most
predictable in how they work. So let's open up Duke 3D here. [explosions, AdLib music] And yeah, it works! And it’s making use of the OPL3 chip. Let's rock! [Duke 3D gameplay does its thing] And yeah, I mean, in terms of compatibility with Sound Blaster it's pretty good. Yeah, piece of cake! Holy cow! So good, it makes me wanna die. Maybe not that good, because something else
I wanna show here. So this is Jill of the Jungle, it’s always
a good test because of the Sound Blaster implementation. Sometimes these later clones don't necessarily
do it justice. This is one of those cases. Music sounds great, I mean, it's -- it's an
OPL3 chip, it's gonna sound good. But listen to the Sound Blaster sounds. [sound effects play on a broken loop] [laughs] It's not good! Augh! Ahhhh! Most tend to work just fine, especially if
it's something that's well programmed. I mean you know, the obligatory Planet X3,
this is just using AdLib. So of course that sounds great. And it works great because this works on absolutely
daggum everything. And then you got something Xargon here, which
uh. [Xargon theme plays] The music sounds fine,
but the sound? Like yeah, there's just no sound effects for those. No sound effects for shooting. But yet you get those kinds of little sounds. [death laugh] And that sound, I don't know. It's just inconsistent. Vourse it also came with some of the Microsoft
Entertainment Pack stuff. So we got SkiFree, of course. I mean, why not? You know, mainstays of the mid nineties. Of course, what am I doing using a real mouse
for SkiFree? C’mon, this is the Corner PC with its remote
control multimedia nonsense. I’ve got a remote control to use. Oh man. Heh, there we go. Come on, turn! Ugh! Ohh. Yeah, might be a tad sluggish for gaming. Oh I went through the wrong finish line. [laughs] Okay. You know what it would be perfect for though? And by that I mean not perfect at all. Doom! [Doom intro sting plays] Okay. So the way I have this mapped is to mouse controls,
which I don’t think this is gonna do anything in the menus, so... Let's just -- okay. So it is set to mouse controls, so. Oh my goodness. [laughs in infrared] I think each press moves
Doomguy forward one pixel, oh my goodness! Okay. So you can sorta ramp it up. And that’s kinda how the mouse works in
Windows as well. Nnughh! Well, can I shoot? I can shoot. Not very reliably. [cracks up] It’s even worse than I thought
it would be! So in case anybody’s wondering if it’s
my LED light, I’m gonna turn that off. It’s still just -- just as unresponsive. Like, it’s just not great. It really does work best if you’re just
moving a pixel at a time. And then you kinda hold it -- well, that did
work. Alright! That’s Doom on a remote control. It’s terrible but I had to try it. Let’s move onto some of the other things
on here. Let’s see what MIDI orchestrator is. Just like a straight up MIDI mixer. Nice. [PASSPORT.MID stems begin playing] [song slows down, gets groovy] Man, I can play with these things all day. Let’s go ahead and make use of that 3dfx
card because it does have 3dfx Voodoo 1. And I've actually gone ahead and already installed
Tomb Raider 1 for DOS with the 3dfx patch. [CD-ROM spins up and down] I love the way that DOS4GW faded out. And look at that! OG 3dfx logo. Oh yeah. 3D accelerated menu, man. Oh yeah, there we go. I got some glare going on, but anyway. Uh-heh! Compared to how this looked in software mode
and on consoles and whatnot, I remember being mighty impressed. I mean it’s still impressive compared to
non-3dfx acceleration. All right, gonna be some things to shoot here
soon. [pistols firing] Bats! Alrighty. It is a tad dark, might need to turn up the
gamma and brightness controls in the -- actually do that in the Windows control panel for 3dfx. Cause yeah, it can be a little dark. This is definitely a little dark, especially
with the glare going on with this screen, augh. So it goes, I’m playing this in the morning. Still though. 3dfx. It's a great choice for this computer because
otherwise yeah, that one megabyte little chipset that's in there for the Cirrus Logic video
is, it's not great. But combined with this, I mean, it's awesome. However, that sweet spot really is like 1995,
1997. So when you start pushing it just a little
to games from 1999 or so, like Unreal Tournament here? Then you start to see some of the limitations
of this particular hardware. And keep in mind, this is a fair bit upgraded. 64 megs of RAM, 200 megahertz CPU, Voodoo
card. So we're going to be running a 640x480, 16-bit,
medium. Okay. Here we go. Ooh man, well. [reduced framerate chuckling] Hey, it's playable right? "First blood!"
We got first blood! Oh dear. [laughs]
It’s tryin’ real hard. Oof. There we go. Thank goodness for explosive ammo mutators. Aaoough! [dies] So yeah, like I said. You start running into the limitations real
fast. If you go beyond like 1997, ‘98 or so. It just ain't made for that! Even with all the upgrades that are in here. [drum-laden musical interlude] So yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say that
is about it for this video on the Packard Bell Corner PC. Just wanted to let you know what it's all
about, beyond the aesthetic. And really beyond that, there's not a lot
going on. It's just a Packard Bell from the mid nineties
with a crazy case design that is a little bit confusing, when you think about it. I just -- I really wish that it had like a
flat front and, you know, was angled on the back. It probably wouldn't look as cool, but it
would actually achieve the whole “space saving” idea. You still have the cables to contend with
of course, but they could have done something smart about that too. Like tucking the cables, like in a cut-out
underneath or something. There's things that you can do! To make it work, but they didn't do it. They just took a case, cut a corner out of
it and stuck the drives on the side and called it a day. I mean, it's cool. I love the fact that it is so weird-looking
and is thoroughly unique in the world of case designs. Sure, you can get weird cases that are just
*cases,* but in terms of pre-made computers this one's pretty unique. So once again, thanks to Billy for hooking
me up with this, letting me borrow it for a while so we could do this video. And yeah, lemme know if somehow you had one
of these back in the day, what was your experience with it? Or if you had any other Packard Bell Multimedia
systems from the mid-90s, let's talk Packard Bell in the comments. Yeah, that's it for this! I hope that you enjoyed watching. Stick around for other videos if you'd like. I do a bunch of videos on computer-y topics
each week and that's it! As always, thank you very much for watching.
