The Original Pentium: The original Gaming Rig

Though I was gaming back as early as the original 8086/8088 IBM PC (and even before that, with Apple 2, TRS-80's, and early 8-bit home computers), the first big jump in gaming came when the first Pentium-based PC Clones hit the market. The 486-DX2-66 I had was replaced by a Pentium 166Mhz Main board with 1 GB of RAM. This was the era just before Windows 95 became available, when most of us were still running DOS and Windows 3. The Pentium gave us a new level of speed and performance that made the classic games, like Quake, possible. Older classics like Doom and Duke Nukem 3-D could now be enjoyed at full speed with the highest resolution offered -- 640x480 or 800x600. The era of the first-person shooter was kicked up a notch with 3D accelerator cards and a Pentium. Don't forget the Sound Blaster!

So I had no intention of getting this Pentium PC. The owner said that it was practically never used. But it was just a generic case and system in general. Then I thought about what I could do with it. With Floppy Drives, I could use it as a floppy drive imaging station or at least a floppy disc reading station for copying software to more modern media. It was only $30 and had a keyboard. Yeah -- just $30, and it looked almost new... but I'm seriously out of space in my computer refurbishing workshop!

I ended up getting it, along with a TRS-80 Color Computer that had a bunch of Program Packs. Total cost $50.

Here's the price sticker!

When I opened it up, I noticed this filth in the corner. It just looked like a load of dust, or maybe rust, but on closer inspection, it smelled of oil. So it was oil mixed with dust that had accumulated over the last 25-30 years. Really nasty. I had to clean this up and see if I can prevent the working computer from having issues related to this spill.

My weapons of choice: Good old Alcohol, and 2 kinds of Contact cleaner. I also used disposable dust-free wipes, cotton swabs, and a toothbrush.

After cleaning, the Soundblaster seemed much cleaner, and looked almost like new. Later testing revealed that it was still working.

The Motherboard was a little tougher to clean. The 16-bit ISA slots were full of oil, and were difficult to get in between, even with my trusty toothbrush. After repeated cleanings, I finally managed to get the oil off of it. I noted that the oil came off when I used the cleaning wipes -- yellow stains on the wipes were oil. Once I was able to clean the board without any more yellow oil stains, I figured that it was good to go. The slots were the most difficult, because I didn't know if oil got deposited inside of them. Fortunately, it looks like that wasn't the issue, as both slots work.

So here are the components that came with it...
We have a Toshiba XM-6002B 16X CD-ROM Drive.

A Western Digital Caviar 2.1GB Hard Drive.

An ATI Mach64 GT Graphics accelerator (Not a 3D accelerator)

A working standard Sony 3.5" 1.44 Floppy.

So I was confused why this was in there. The multi-I/O card had serial, parallel, IDE and Floppy Controller on it -- but the motherboard had all of those already. When I saw this, I immediately went into the BIOS to make sure that all the on-board hardware was enabled. It seems they were really interested in the floppy controller part of the board. The on-board floppy controller was disabled, but everything else was enabled. Th problem is -- nothing on the motherboard is broken, and the performance of this all-in-one card isn't any better than the motherboard. In any case, I'll just use this in another computer.

I added an Audio cable from the CD-ROM drive to the sound card. The PC didn't seem to come with one.

The 2.1G Hard Drive worked, and ran Windows 2000. I decided to leave it out for now, and go with a modern gadget -- the CF-CARD to IDE adapter! This will allow me to use a CF card like a hard drive -- only faster and more reliable -- and I can remove the card and plug it into my modern desktop to install more programs onto it. I can also have a card for different Operating systems. The card requires a power supply connector, and a slot.

The ATI Logo is animated and spins around when it posts.

Everything seems to be working so far...

So MSDOS6.22 boots up just fine on the flash card. See any familiar directories?

LET'S PLAY SOME GAMES!

The last picture is me looking over my cat's shoulder as she makes herself comfortable right in the middle of what I'm doing.

Jocko-Taco's Osbourne 1 Computer

Some background, first. I never used an Osbourne before, and though I know CP/M, I have virtually no experience with this particular machine. I searched on ebay, and saw an auction about to end. With less than 10 minutes to go, and no bids, I bid $50 and won. Nobody else noticed it. Then I noticed that it said local pickup only! DUH! So I contacted the seller, and asked if he was able to ship it. I would pay all the shipping for it. He said no problem. He wazsn't a computer person, and this wasn't really a computer that he used himself. It was part of a barge of stuff in his house that he was trying to get rid of. He then explained that he had cancer, and he would be dead in a few months. Oh, man! Real bummer of a story, but he seemed cool about it. His name was jack, but his nickname is Jock, and his handle on ebay is Jocko-Taco.

I talked to him on the phone, after he called me to let me know it's on it's way. His voice reminded me of Tommy Chong, the classic stoner character. He sounded cheerful, laid back, and he totally accepted his upcoming death. "What am I gonna do," he said, "The doctors say there's nothing that can be done, so I just have to accept it, and live as best I can until it happens." He said he was selling off all the junk he had in his home so that he could travel and do things before he died. I honestly hope he wasn't selling it all on ebay, cause that's a lot of work!

Anyway, when the computer arrived, it was not in as good shape as I thought. The pictures were truthful -- no deception. All of the problems with it were not noticeable until you got it up close. He would have had to post really hires images to make the reality of it show.

What's wrong with it is:

• Case plastic is yellow
• screws are rusty
• foam skids on the bottom are dried out and crumbly
• the leather handle was dried out and crumbling
• dirty, dusty all over
• Interior had lots of dust and what looked like wood chips
• When turned on, the screen flickers

So this is going to be a lot of work to get going again. I started by ordering a new Power supply, since they're only about $30. Less work! The pictures here are from me replacing the power supply.

So I stood it up and started removing the screws and knobs from the face plate.

You only have to remove one wire, after all the screws are out.

Next, you got to remove the screws around the handle.

Then the screws around the power switch.

Before you slide the insides out, you have only to remove these last 2 screws, located under the the left and right corners, under the floppy drives.

So here is the guts of the Osbourne, on the bench. The more I see of the Osbourne, the more I think the Kaypro was a much better-conceived machine. The case, and the way it's put together, combined with the ribbon-cable keyboard connector, and all the ports up front was just really bad design -- not very convenient for the user.

So here is the power supply. I decided to just replace it outright with a newly refurbished one, because I figured that I'd spend a lot more time and money refurbishing it myself. Plus, I wanted to make sure things were working before I started cleaning it and replacing the handle.

Here is the power supply being removed. It only has a ground wire, a connector to the power-switch, and 3 3-pin connectors for drives and main board; very quick and simple to replace.

After screwing the new PSU back in, I powered it up. It works, but it still has a flickering screen. After removing the keyboard cable, I discovered that the problem is not the PSU, but the keyboard. There must be a stuck key, or it's a membrane-type with foil discs falling off the foam pads.
So I'll have to update this after I've had time to explore the keyboard.