Project time: Restoring a Packard Bell Legend 406CD to general use/gaming spec

[ProfessorProfessorson]

Spent the past few days working on a Packard Bell Legend 406CD. The thing was a total mess inside and out. Got it fully working, new battery installed, upgraded the ram, yanked out the old 800 sumthin mb hard drive and replaced it with a 4gb Seagate one, installed a newer cd drive and diskette drive. Replaced the Crytsal Audio/modem combo for a ISA SB Vibra original model that had the legit OPL chip. Win 98 installed and updated, and Dos mode configured for gaming. I already have a ton of computers as is, so even though its a pretty nice one, I'm going to sell it on ebay.
Before:



After:

[rag-time4]

You had me at "packard bell"

Just reading that name brings back memories of roger wilco and ultima underworld...

[nat]

I don't do much in the way of working inside PCs anymore, but looking at those Before pics makes me think back to when I used to work on the old IBM XTs and ATs. I'd open those things up sometimes and the dust buildup would be similar, or worse. The best part, though, would be the GIGANTIC MFM harddrives that weighed about 50 lbs and could hold a whopping 10 or 20 MB. Firing up one of those things sounded similar to starting up a jet engine.

[ProfessorProfessorson]

I don't usually even care to mess with anything pre-MMX, but I felt like this one deserved to be saved from the heap since it is rare that I find anything Socket 5 based that doesn't rely on those shitty Dallas RTC clusterf*cks or some garbage battery that has leaked all over the place. If I had the space, I would keep it, but I don't, and I already have my huge Gateway 2000 Pentium 100 mhz tower with Awe32 for the really old stuff.

[Arkhan]

That was a sweet computer.  My grandparents had that same shit.   They threw it out though. -_-.

I remember our first PB was a P2 233mhz beast. \o/

You gonna post the ebay link for that thing when it's up?  I'm tempted to bid.

[Tatsujin]

This must be an American thing

[Arkhan]

This must be an American thing

DOS era games kick f*cking ass.  Commander Keen, Wolf3D, World of Xeen, and all kinds of other stuff.   This is the kinda machine you bust that stuff out on and rub yourself while playing.

Ultima VII would be awesome on that thing.

[guyjin]

I also had a packed-in-hell. My parents would have been better off getting me a IIGS (like I suggested) but the salescritter talked my dad into paying too much for a computer that was 2 years out of date in 1992. no sound card, no modem, and a ghetto pseudo-windows launcher. At least it had VGA.

Best game I had for it was Castles 2. I bought Master of Orion (the original) but couldn't play it due to insufficient ram. (I had 2 megabytes of RAM, but the game needed 2 megabytes *free*.)

so... mixed memories on that.

[ProfessorProfessorson]

That was a sweet computer.  My grandparents had that same shit.   They threw it out though. -_-.

I remember our first PB was a P2 233mhz beast. \o/

You gonna post the ebay link for that thing when it's up?  I'm tempted to bid.

I will send you a link to my list of items for sale on there via pm. I really don't want to post any ebay links publicly here, since anyone can see them including non-members. It can attract bad behavior from the Dave types.

[Arkhan]

This is true.

If the price is right, I may consider grabbin that bitch though.  I got rid of all my old shit.  I wish I had kept at least one of them. 

As long as I can play World of Xeen and Descent in front of a giant-retarded-box, I am set.

[ProfessorProfessorson]

This is true.

If the price is right, I may consider grabbin that bitch though.  I got rid of all my old shit.  I wish I had kept at least one of them. 

As long as I can play World of Xeen and Descent in front of a giant-retarded-box, I am set.

Depends on what you'd consider as being the right price then I suppose. The older you get, the higher the price can be on the stuff in general, esp pre-MMX machines that have been restored. If you have just a couple of games you'd want to play, it may not be worth it, but if you have quite a bit that you'd need a older machine for, then it becomes more ideal to buy one. On this one, I bench tested it with a 1 hr loop of Doom 2 demo mode, then played a bit, and also played Mega Race, Dune 2, XWing, Wolfenstein 3d and a few others. It has a turn of cache option in the bios, which I guess would slow it down for the really old 80's stuff, though I am not 100 percent positive on that, because I don't run any games from the 80's.

[Arkhan]

I have a bitchload of games I would play on it.

Depends on where the price goes, and if I find any Apple II games this week or not.

[Bonknuts]

People actually want/buy old Packard Bell systems!?!?! God, I hated these things back in the day. I started my PC tech/repair career back in 1996 at a local PC repair shop in town and learned to hate Packard Bell fairly soon afterwards. People would bring these hunk of junks in and ask for upgrades... ugh. These things were the slooooowwwwest computers around. Even brand new, stock for stock match to any of our custom built line (with low end parts too), the PB's would just chug/mope along in comparison. I was very happy in the early 2000's to stop seeing them come into the tech shop or repair or worse (upgrades). Funny how yesterday's trash is turning into today's gold (well, maybe copper or something less precious).

 Anyway, enough ranting. Thanks for the pics/post. Took me down memory lane.

 PS: I also hated AST PCs back in the day too

[ProfessorProfessorson]

I cant really comment on how they ran back in the day, but as far as loading and running games as of now, this one has been performing very close to my Gateway 2k, which is 25mhz faster, and the onboard chips are all well known quality chips for that time period. When you refer to low end builds, do you mean boards that have fake cache, etc, because the only real low end boards back then were the ones with the fake cache chips. If so, then it is not going to outpace any Packard Bell with the same cpu since the PB would have real cache and the other would be a crippled mess, unless the actual Windows installs from PB were shoddy or busted with bad drivers. That, and you guys would have been cock smokes to pass off systems with fake cache onto people too. Hard drive quality could play a factor, but I don't use the stock hard drives that came in machines like this unless I really have to, so I cant comment there. Same with the original factory OS install, usually they are bloated so I do my own.

[Shrapnoid]

I had an old P3 that came in a housing like that that someone threw out. I think it had belonged to a bank or something and had what looked like a strip full of dip switches inside.
Unfortunately our water heater leaked through the wall and into the closet where I was storing it so, I pulled all of the good stuff and chucked the housing.