Why Pay $1000 for a 25 year old PC! - NIXSYS Windows 98 PC

A brand new Windows 98 PC?! But how? And why would anyone need Windows 98 in 2022?

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

FOLLOW US
---------------------------------------------------

MUSIC CREDIT
---------------------------------------------------
Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
---------------------------------------------------
0:00 Intro
0:43 Who is NIXSYS?
1:37 The machine
3:33 A GENUINE WINDOWS 98 STICKER?!
4:07 Checking out the internals
7:24 Why not PCI Express?
8:52 Why does Anthony have an old weigh station PC?
10:04 Something frivolous
10:45 Some benchmarks
12:34 Peripherals and driver issues
15:02 USB Audio? Maybe not
16:49 Conclusion

[ErickPolsky]

I worked with a company that had million dollar lab equipment. The software was timed to the processor (486) so it only worked on a specific chipset. Their warehouse had a pallet of replacement parts for that one machine standing by to keep it running.

[chrisvan]

I work at a paper mill, a lot of our equipment, HMIs, PLCs, etc are 20-40 years old so we've got a LOT of XP, 98, and some DOS. A computer like this is something we'd definitely get when one of our towers crap out. There's a lot of days I spend just cloning backups and installing 98 and XP on laptops for field usage.

[BenjaminBills]

Also, Linus....Don't lose this guy. He's able to articulate in an entertaining manner the knowledge that many of us have and love reminiscing.

[ittos]

This is EXACTLY what I needed! Our company runs a paging system for several hospitals. The system is running on an old XP machine and requires ISA cards

[danbarnes]

I love how the computer looks like a Windows XP/ Vista computer but it runs windows 98.

[beerfish]

Anthony would do amazingly well as an computer history teacher. Genuinely a joy to listen to

[cyscott]

I forgot how fragile those versions of Windows were. Doing loads of things could lead to a blue screen or an outright crash and reboot. You knew you were in trouble when safe mode wouldn't boot.

[Babihrse]

When it comes to older stuff this fella absolutely blows it out of the water compared to the stuff Linus talks about.
He's really knowledgeable and presents old historical stuff like it was just yesterday. Maybe I'm just nostalgic but he's exactly on point. He'd play red alert on win 98 and it'd crash and he'd say yep that's not an emulation error that's exactly how it'd behave in 98 random computer locking up errors that even ctrl alt delete couldn't fix.

[kernelpickle]

Well, that’s an interesting business model that seems crazy, but I work in manufacturing IT and I had to revive a Win98 PC this past year that was a critical system on a production line that was finally decommissioned less than 6 months ago. The line was already scheduled to finish up its final run of parts and when it went down because the spinning rust in it died, it needed to get brought back online to finish up the run of parts, and it was NOT worth the hassle or cost to upgrade it.

I had to create a bootable DOS USB stick so I could restore a Norton Ghost image.

Fun fact, there are actually companies that make industrial grade SSDs with a native PATA interface, so you can slot it right into an ancient machine without anything else needed. They apparently have smart controllers in them that know how to manage the wear leveling and other modern SSD type features needed to prolong the longevity.

Spending $1, 000 in order to bring up a production line that’s down is absolutely worth it, because the alternative (if there is still a company supporting those PLCs, HMIs and machines will charge $50-100k to upfit that line with newer PCs. We’re literally talking about a PC with some software installed on it, and they’re charging tens of thousands. Anytime I fix an old ass PC at work I save them a minimum of $10k, so I’m well loved by the guys who operate our ancient gauge machines that check parts are built to spec.

[sharpefilms]

I love hearing Anthony talk about why enterprise class stuff will cost more and people will still pay it. I work in film and we get that kinda thing all the time, “why are you paying 10 grand for that workstation, I could build it for half that.” Yes, you could, so could I. However then if anything goes wrong it’s on us to fix it and that takes time away from what we are actually being paid to do. Enterprise customers will GLADLY pay a premium to know that a system has been tested to work and will have the necessary support if it doesn’t. Time is money and it makes so much more sense to spend it and get to doing things we can bill for then to save a buck and miss a deadline later.

[lordpurchase]

I've built lots of Windows 98 PC's. It all started when I needed an old computer to re-program lots of Motorola PMR equipment that required serial port and slower processor running either DOS or Windows 95/98/2000 and then I realized old Windows 98 PC's sell for good money so I started building retro PC's. There is a good market for old computers.

[wvcollenburg]

I have worked for 'the industry leader' in virtualization and one of my customers was 'that dutch lithography machine builder'. They very often asked for legacy support such as w98 because the machines they build are being delivered with an application set that is built on top of the at that time current OS, but the machine needs to run 20 years + because of the investment they represent.

[dycedargselderbrother]

6:42 Cool, the power supply provides -5V. That's important for ISA device support, though there are purpose-built transformers available these days, at least in the hobby market. Fun fact, the "reserved" pin that is usually empty on the 24-pin motherboard power connector used to be the -5V line.

[lillerosin]

omg this dude is such a great hire for Linus back in the day. he is so knowledgeable and a joy to listen and learn from when he talks tech and specific's. An absolute treat and you rarely find articulate people in this way these days. he makes it all so interesting that you just have to listen to the end. Great job man! But you honestly should have been a teacher in my opinion. this was just great! Thank you!

[xenonkay]

I installed Win98 on a socket 775 system years ago just to see how far it could go and its PCI Express support actually surprised me. It had a PCIe (not AGP) 6600GT in it that that just worked straight away. The OS had no concept of what PCIe was and such cards showed up as ordinary PCI devices in the device manager, but they worked anyway as long as there were Win98 drivers available. I also tried a generic PCIe I/O controller based on a JMB363 chip and that worked too.

[harrybaals]

I worked in a warehouse in Toronto, and we had piles and piles of old computers. We would sell Pentium 2 and Pentium 3 systems for $500 plus to businesses that relied on legacy software. A popular reason was for POS systems. Apparently, most POS software is subscription based, so they preferred to stick with software that they fully owned, as well as not having to deal with the hassle of re-training staff and porting inventory data over

[zfox]

3:12 except that he actually meant RS232. and the long-range one could also be RS485, also a very reliable serial interface

[roberttrains]

Kinda wish I knew about this company a couple of years ago. The IT company I worked for had a water department contract and a new boss got hired. She cleaned house and upgraded everyone’s computer with the help of geek squad. They did a great job. Everything was shinny and new including the very custom SKADA computer that controlled all the pumps and valves in the county. When it came time to make a adjustment to the valves the employee had a hard time communicating to the equipment. After two trips form geek squad they finally call our company and ask us how we fixed it last time that is was broken. we informed the tech the old computer was custom built by the maker of the SKADA system and could not be replaced and it is the only thing that will run the equipment. we suggested that they reinstall the old computer and everything would work again. the computer is by now long gone in some e waste facility by now. The boss of course called us liars and called the manufacturer of the control system. The manufacturer agreed with us saying that the county refused to upgrade the system and the system is going on 32 years old so it needed to be upgraded to the latest system. It would cost over 21 million dollars to retrofit all the valves and pumps to run on the new equipment. So there it sat a beautiful new 21 million dollar computer that could only play solitaire until 5-8 months when the new controllers get installed. Her career was measured in hours not years after that.

[mej]

We had a milling machine from the 70's that needed a new pc. I agree with Anthony, we had to buy an ancient rig to run the serial connections. It was either spend $500 on an old pc or $100k on a new milling machine.

[markphillips]

There's defintely a market for this kind of system.

I used to do IT support for a company that did embroidery (on uniforms, etc) that had a fairly ancient PC give up the ghost. This was the one that handle the designs for embroidery machines (I guess they were like giant sewing machines) so it was crucial to get things going again. The software would only run on Windows 98 and would only export to a 3 1/2" floppy or by serial port. This was back in 2008 so it wasn't too difficult to get it up and running again. Replacing it with a more modern system wasn't an option.

For a business, spending £1000 on a new/old PC or half a million to replace otherwise working machinery is a no-brainer