Restoring a TERRIBLE Budget PC from 1997!

hello guys and welcome back to another video cast your mind back to 1997. i personally don't remember much from that year i was only one year old after all this old tired desktop computer needs a bit of work it looks like something has been living in it but it doesn't look like it's missing too many parts we've got a pretty basic graphics card 64 megabytes of pc 100 ram and a power supply of dubious quality i got this old desktop off a guy called john a link to his twitter is in the description below does it still work and can we play games on here i think it's time we power it up and find out [Music] let's start with the good things it posts and the pc speaker is making sounds however the cpu fan is incredibly loud it is spinning perhaps it's just misaligned or clogged with dust in the bios utility i tried to detect the hard disk which was clicking very loudly after some time it did detect a capacity of 1.6 gigabytes it's quite likely that it no longer functions after trying to boot to the hard drive it didn't detect an operating system inside it's missing the cables that connect both the cd-rom and the floppy drive to the motherboard thankfully i've got a filing cabinet full of these things you never know when you're going to need parts for these old computers i think it's time we try and install an operating system to that clicking hard disk just to see if it's even possible another thing that needs attention is the fact that the cd-rom drive doesn't want to eject properly not only that the floppy drive doesn't work either i was able to boot straight to my windows 98 install cd which is nice that being said the windows 98 installer couldn't work with the faulty hard drive thankfully i've got a surplus of ancient computer hard drives this 2.1 gigabyte seagate drive should be a good fit since i originally pulled this from a computer over 15 years ago i don't recall what was on it it looks as if the seagate hard drive is blank now it's time to install a fresh copy of windows 98 the whole installation will apparently take up only 264 megabytes of drive space and about 30 minutes later the system was nearly ready to use here i could put all of my details and provide the product key there is thankfully no internet activation required [Music] i'll never get sick of hearing that startup chime as we can see we've got 64 megabytes of ram and the cpu is a cyrix m2 which is apparently clocked at about 207 megahertz the graphics card is an s3 trio 64v which has no 3d acceleration support at all gaming on here is going to be quite a challenge with this computer so let's try our luck restoring it before we take things further i'd like to tell you that today's video is sponsored by the ridge wallet if you're after a sleek compact wallet then this may be for you it can hold up to 12 cards and there's room for cash on the back there are over 30 different styles and colors and the rich wallet features rfid blocking protecting you from digital pickpockets get free worldwide shipping as well as returns and 10 off by going to ridge.com forward slash p sivry and use the code p civre this style of pc was very common in the low end market all of the designs of these beige towers look pretty similar there is very little airflow or room for cable management but they are at least very easy to take apart i'll be cleaning out the power supply as it does still work all of these drives are held in place with several phillips head screws taking a closer look at the failed wd caviar drive we can see that it has a warranty date of april 1997 from a shop called intel mark i'll do my best to fix the floppy drive and eject mechanism off the cd-rom the front bezel was only held in place by a few plastic clips i wasn't expecting it to pop off so easily though in older desktops like this one the power button is a switch that connects directly to the power supply circuitry cleaning up the remnants of whatever lived in here was quite challenging it looks as if the case set outside somewhere with access to bugs and mice since i plan on spray painting the frame i sanded the problem areas down this revealed that there wasn't rust more so just tarnishing on the surface i went around the rest of the case and sanded back any corrosion i could find next i sprayed on some grey primer which will help the final layer of paint stick to the metal i applied several layers of aluminium silver spray paint throughout the day with any luck it'll look somewhat better i'm by no means good at painting i like to think i've improved since i did this last though since i had some time to kill between painting the frame i decided i wanted to restore the yellowed plastic to something a little more beige i made sure to clean off the plastic with some eucalyptus oil once out in the sun i sprayed on a solution of hydrogen peroxide and whitening bleach i frequently applied more coats as the day went on after an hour i placed cling wrap over the wet plastic and let it sit for a few more hours i ended up placing the other plastics in a bath of the solution as well the hyena power supply was probably one of the cheapest ones you could buy 23 years ago i'll dust out the fan and internals but i'll be not taking it apart any further i'll respray the cover and to avoid damaging the label further i'm going to cover it with some masking tape i did a few coats which definitely improved it somewhat the masking tape did a very good job of keeping the label paint free although it did rip the paper label at the bottom with the internals dusted out i reinstalled the cover it's not perfect but i'd say it does look a whole lot better the cooler covering the socket 7 cpu is quite clogged with dust i'm also not sure how effective it is at cooling either underneath i discovered that it's running an ibm branded cyrex ii 233 this black cap variant i have here is quite collectible and was released in may of 1997. opening up the cooler we get a look at just how rusted and dirty it's become after a quick cleaning and painting of the metal tensioning arm it nearly looked like new again on the other side it uses a very small thermal pad i think it's a pad anyway i'm going to remove it and use thermal paste instead it doesn't really matter how much i use literally anything will be better than what it had before cracking open the floppy drive i don't see any obvious signs of damage even after putting in a disc it seems to mount an eject correctly i then decided to clean off the old gunky lubricant from the stepper motor in its place i applied some dry lubricant with teflon this should allow easy movement during normal operation the cd-rom drive was now ejecting fine all on its own well most of the time anyway inside you can see the optical laser and spinning motor rise up when the tray is inserted the eject mechanism problems are actually caused by the drive belt perishing after many years of use replacements can be found pretty cheap online i personally didn't have enough time to purchase a replacement so i simply rehydrated the rubber by putting it in some water now that the paint has dried we can see just how different it looks an improvement for sure all round the frame is a far more uniform silver color i also ended up painting over the drive caddy which had quite a bit of tarnishing on the metal the reassembly was pretty easy that's another thing i really love about these old desktops they're very easy to pull apart and work on i also put in a new cr2032 bios battery which can be purchased for about a dollar online while there isn't much room for cable management i did try my best to make it look somewhat tidy the plastics on the front are also quite a bit wider the cd drive which i haven't whitened was the same colour as the surrounding plastics before there we have the restored system it's great to see it looking cleaner once again we'll have to see whether the fan is any quieter now i also ended up putting in a second stick of memory bringing the total to 128 megabytes with the time and date set correctly we can now finally use this low end pc from 1997. actually we've got one more hurdle the floppy drive is still not working i just decided to simply put in another drive that i restored earlier after looking through some drawers i found a few slot covers to put on the back and now i can struggle to put the poorly designed case back on i would have loved to set up like this when i was really young there's a few areas where the whitening isn't great but overall this computer looks far better it's now time to see what it's like using this old computer i thought i'd create an appropriate background for this computer with 128 megabytes of ram an insane amount for 1997 we shouldn't have any problems with memory apart from some graphical glitching worms 2 runs absolutely great on this system the lack of 3d acceleration hardware really hurts in a lot of games with the settings lowered 3d games like monster truck madness 2 are still playable but the framerate is quite choppy when there are multiple vehicles on screen now it's time to pop in our copy of fresh for gamers including the music and a full version of internet explorer 4.0 is your cd certified fresh for gamers huh i didn't think so this is so 90s that i think my eyes are going to bleed there's plenty of game previews demos and music that i'm pretty sure is copyrighted off of that demo disc we've got kazooie i mean mario 64. no no i mean croc legend of the gobos a 3d platformer that clearly takes inspiration from similar games at the time it's totally playable on this system [Music] once again the lack of a 3d accelerator card really hurts the 3d gaming experience touring car championship doesn't run well at all [Applause] a far simpler game microsoft golf 2.0 ran absolutely great if you want to take a swing at some golf this game is for you an older 3d game at carmageddon was a lot of fun on this computer other simple 3d games such as hover also run great with the s3 trio 64. this was a free game included on the windows 95 install cd duke nukem 3d is another childhood favorite of mine the soundblaster 16 card creates an interesting rendition of the theme song the game itself also runs very well this wouldn't be an old pc video if i didn't show off some of the screensavers the 3d maze was endlessly exciting to me when i was young maybe you should listen to what the sign is saying last of all it's time i created a masterpiece in microsoft paint between windows 95 and windows xp paint stayed largely unchanged it's been a lot of fun cleaning up this old machine hopefully i can find some more like this in the near future so anyway that's all we've got time for today i hope you've enjoyed this video and if you want to see more definitely consider subscribing i'll see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Psivewri

Views: 572,347

Keywords: psivewri, 4k, eucalyptus, oil, australia, tech, vintage, computer, desktop, restoration, fixing, cleaning, windows, 98, retro, build, budget, pc, socket, socket 7, cyrix, M-II, mii, 266, upgrade, 1990s, technology, gaming, test, duke, nukem, 3D, soundblaster, 16, microsoft, DOS, games

Id: YH2zVLc21_4

Length: 11min 39sec (699 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 06 2020