The Packard Bell Projectby cleaverbI took this computer as a trade-in, a few years ago. At the time, was building other computers, and this had a PCI 16MB ATI video card installed.Also a floppy drive, which are expensive no more than you use them. So, I scavenged the good parts, and stuck the computer in my closet.Forgot about it. Years later, I was looking for something to do, and there was the pbell. It booted right up, into that funky packard bell navigator, or whatever it was called. Ugh. Of course, my earlier experience with PB was good, so I really didn't pay any attention to all the nay-sayers . They still sell Packard Bell computers, just not in the USA. |
 It was pretty dark when picture taken;yes, it's turning colors,though. |
| Apart from the missing floppy drive,and an empty slot where the video card was,
it was in good shape. Upon closer inspection, the CD-ROM drive face was hanging on,
and not properly attached. I booted it up, and the CD drive didn't work.The BIOS found it, but it was a dead drive. I pulled out some spare parts from the closet; a CD-ROM drive, floppy drive,and a WD 1.6GB hard disk. So, remove the three screws holding the cover on, and let's get down to business. Hmmm, this is an old computer! First off, I pull the drive cage;PB made this cage that held all the drives in place. And under that, was the SIMM slots. All four were empty. |
 The specs were still on top. |
| Well, I still had a pair of Fast Page 16MB non-parity SIMMs, if that would help.
I decided to search the 'net,first.I could remember PB had a support site called
Priority One. It wasn't any help,because this was an old-old computer.
So I googled Packard Bell and I eventually found Ray's Packard Bell website. It was amazing, they had a picture of the motherboard,and specs and even the jumper diagrams ! After looking through my parts box, I managed to find 4 16MB SIMMs,all fast page. After the memory was installed, I put the drives into the cage, and reset the cage into the case. The BIOS recognized everything, and I put in a Win98 CD, to install an OS. The setup went well, except when it was done, it couldn't figure out what soundcard/modem was installed. I tried a few drivers, searched driverguide,etc but nothing worked. |
 With 8MB of memory built onto the motherboard. |
| Okay, well. I pulled the original soundcard/modem, and was putting in an old ISA SoundBlaster 16,
what they refer to as a Vibra16 anymore.There, in the motherboard, were two empty sockets
for video memory. Ha! It took awhile, but I found what I was looking for; an old PCI video
card that had a pair of similar chips installed in it. No surprise, I guess, that they worked. |
 A Creative SoundBlaster Vibra 16 ISA . |
| I had to boot the PB up, to make sure the video RAM would work with this system.It Did.
The soundcard was instantly recognized by windows, and asked for the disk. No problem,
I just did a manual install and used the native 98 drivers. So there I was, the proud owner of a Packard Bell... um. Nope. Back to Ray's site I go, and looking at the CPU jumpers. They listed the motherboard as being capable of running up to a 133MHz Pentium. I had one laying around,and it worked just great. But it was still a pentium,and though I truly believe the 133s were a great CPU because they only run at double clock speed. I also had a P 200MHz in the same box, and well, even if the computer wouldn't go at 200MHz, maybe it would get a boost from the extra MMX instructions on the CPU. |
 Adding memory to the onboard video. |
| Nope. The BIOS still said 133....but I had upgraded everything I could.
I set out to install several old games, that I never put on my main computer.
I spent the night playing, and reminiscing about the 'old days', when I could sit
and play solitaire for hours... Later on, I got to thinking: I had been messing around with Everest Home Edition. What would this thing do, as far as specs go? Answer, it was pathetic. I had never seen results that low. The reads and the write scores were off the chart - way below anything on the chart. Okay, well, so I wasn't a hero, and this POS was no better now than it was in my closet. Then ,I got to looking, and I noticed that Everest software said the CPU was running at 233MHz . The next day, I tried upgrading the video, by installing a PCI 4MB card, but it didn't make any noticeable difference. So I took it back out. Next, I tried a different hard drive; this one was a 6.4GB Quantum Fireball. Still no change in performance. I even went so far as trying 80 wire cables,but no change. |
 Adding an Intel Pentium 200MMX CPU to the Packard Bell. |
| I had this old DOS game ,called Zone 66 on floppy disk. I wanted to play it,
but the game uses a protected mode that will not run in win98. So, I wipe the hard drive, and I install DOS. Installing MSDOS takes about 20 minutes.Then I get the shocker; the Zone 66 disk is corrupted. Suddenly, I miss that game alot. Too much. I can't live without it. I get to searching, and I find a download on olddosgames, or somewhere like that. You had to register, and fill out a few surveys, and then you could download the game. Yay, I had it. Then it dawned on me; I had no way to get the program onto a DOS system. If I had known how to split up files onto 2 floppies, it would have been easy. The next best thing, was to put the game on another hard drive, then connect the 'other' drive up to the CD cables, and XCOPY it by simple DOS command. It worked, and I dug out my trusty old gamepad that hadn't been used in years. Later on, I re-partitioned the hard drive, with 2GBs for DOS, and 4 for windows. I used a simple program called MasterBoot V3.4 that allowed dos and windows partitions on the same disk. After installing Win98 again, I put all my other favorite games on the windows partition. |
 The BOIS screen says 133MHz, but the system runs at 233MHz. |
| A few days later, I installed a NIC, and did all the windows updates. This was around the time
that they were getting ready to discontinue support for 98. Back around 2006 . I also realized that I had an AMD socket 7 400MHz CPU laying around. Ah-hah, maybe this beast would finally boogie.! I put the CPU in, and just left the jumpers, because it seemed to run any frequency there. It would either be underclocked, overclocked, or running at 400MHz. I plug it in(always unplug computers before working inside them) and press the power button. Nothing but black screen. I couldn't believe it. I tried it again. I've seen on occasion where a CPU might need a twist or pressure for it to be properly seated. So I tried that. Plug it in, and try the power button again. This time, something happened! Um. It was a greyish puff of smoke from the CPU slot area! Lucky for me, I guess, it fried the AMD CPU, but when I put the Pentium MMX back in, the computer came right on, like nothing had happened. I decided to leave it at that. No more wild ideas. Just play your DOS games, and have fun with it, before it dies. |
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