Turning a 1995 IBM Aptiva, 66mhz 486DX2, into an i7 6700k | Hacker News Reader

Turning a 1995 IBM Aptiva, 66mhz 486DX2, into an i7 6700k

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I have an old Aptiva 486 DX2 66 Desktop model waiting for me to try to recover whatever can be recovered from the hard drive.

It was our first PC style computer and we used it a lot.

Fun facts:

- newly booted it could run AutoCAD on the standard 4MB

- of course with a giant extra 8MB it flew and was only limited by us kids knowing nothing

- it had suspend/resume (!) If you hit the power button ut turned itself off and when turned on again it came right back where you left it. For younger people here: this was amazing at the time. Some friends probably stil had drives that had to be "parked" around that time.

- 24/7 IBM Helpware was somehow included and these guys (it was mostly guys) where amazing. As a 15 - 17 y.o. I called them a number of times after siblings had cleaned the "mess" in the C:\ folder etc etc. I called them on midsummers eve and I think on new years eve (it might have been Christmas) and they were always friendly, helpful and patient. Utterly amazing customer support! Could answer anything and would stay on the phone while I ran through the backup disks or whatever I did to solve that days problem. Set a standard for what IT support should be like for me. (Yes, I have done IT support myself since then and those guys and Limoncelli/Hogans book "The Practice of Systems and Networks Administration" was probably the best inspiration for me.)

I had one of these as well. I don’t remember what happened to it, but last time I interacted with it was probably in 2005 or 2006. I was trying to get some MP3s off the thing (I couldn’t find them anywhere else). It was running Windows 95, so no USB. It just had a 28.8 modem, so no transferring it over the network. I ended up using WinRAR to split each file across multiple floppy disks, so I could join them back together on the other side. That was also the last time I used both WinRAR and floppies.

In hindsight, I probably could have moved the files to the D drive, installed Linux to C, got the USB port working, and used that. Or just pull out the HDD and throw it in an enclosure to use as an external drive. Oh well… the floppies work and we’re probably faster.

You can also perform transfers like this using crossover or null modem[1] serial cables if both machines have serial ports. I transferred a number of files like this back in the day.

You could even use them for some multiplayer games that would have otherwise required a proper LAN.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_modem

laplink and a crossover serial or parallel cable!

If you replace each and every part except for the case, are you "turning an Aptiva into an i7" or are you just using an old case for your computer?

I felt that way until I saw what he did with the floppy drive. Best part of the build in my opinion.

I don't know - while impressive, all these sleeper builds nowadays cram some form of card reader in their floppy drives or use them for style only. At this point I'd be more impressed if any one of them featured an actually working floppy drive.

Obligatory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

> The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment about whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. […] The concept is one of the oldest in Western philosophy, going back to the time of 500–400 BC. It is a common theme in the field of metaphysics.

Doesn't apply in case. He didn't gradually upgrade components, but swapped every part except for the case.

Correct title should be: building a modern PC inside an IBM Aptiva case.

Relevant old British comedy sketch:

https://youtu.be/56yN2zHtofM

Skip to 1:35

Thanks! I knew there was a thought experiment around this concept but I couldn't remember the name. You relieved me of my lethologica ^_^

I don't think the answer matters to anyone (except you?), and definitely not to the guy who spent the time and energy to do it. The philosophical point of view of PC building is energy wasted.

This is usually referred to as a "sleeper build," kinda like taking some beat old station wagon and cramming a high performance driveline into it, while doing nothing to the exterior.

When he does it step by step, i would say: turn is the right expression :)

But he didn't. He didn't first swap the CPU, then the ram, and a few weeks later the Mainboard. It's really just "reusing a case".

Hmm, so if you undress your wife and then dress a younger female with same clothes and keep her as wife. Is it still the same wife? You just replaced the fleshy bits...

I suspect if he found a smaller motherboard, it would drop right in. I've always found it a little ironic that IBM, which started the whole PC industry that standardised on the PC, XT, and AT, yet had some of the more proprietary form-factors in their later models. ATX was Intel's effort.

not just proprietary form factors but also buses (MCA) with unreasonable licensing terms, which is why the x86 pc industry stuck with 16-bit ISA and then EISA right up until VLB and then PCI began to exist as a thing. The PS/2 was a terribly proprietary design. Just about the only thing it gave us was the PS/2 keyboard and mouse interface, and widespread use of 3.5" 1.44MB FDDs which would have happened even if IBM didn't exist.

Lots of manufacturers had proprietary motherboards in the early 90s before ATX. The advent of superIO chips led to having on board ports with no standard way to exit the case.

Nice although this would not have been my choice of a case to mod. I'd love to and some day may attempt to do this to a well preserved SGI Octane or O2.

> well preserved SGI Octane or O2

please at least use a gutted case or something with bad boards. These old computers, especially machines like the SGI risc line, are not being made anymore. At the end of the day, you'll have a bog standard pc inside an old case that looks cool.

IMO, a much more interesting alternative would be to use something like a hyte revolt 3

Wouldn't you want to preserve it rather than gut out the internals?

For something kept x86 I'd have a tough time resisting something like the classic IBM PS/2 with its giant red flappy power switch out front.

Like https://dfarq.homeip.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IBM-PS-2...

or if there were tower variants with the same style power switch

That switch was attached to a ridiculous long metal arm, that pressed the real power switch way at the back inside of the case. Loved it!

It would be incredible if someone came up with a 3D-printable IBM 5100 RPi build.

How about this?

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=76832

This build really resonated with me because the Aptiva was my first IBM ~~compatible~~ PC.

I later broke it learning how to work on PCs as a child. If I can find where it ended up, I may very well do the same build.

Same thing for me, the Aptiva was the first computer I actually owned, and learned how to program on. I still have mine, upstairs in a closet, though it is the flat desktop case and not a tower. Every few years when I am cleaning past debris I think "why do I keep this thing?" and somehow manage to hold onto it.

Yeah, obviously there is nostalgia value for a lot of people but objectively it's a pretty average looking case even for the era... which leads me to ask this: what _was_ the best looking computer case of the retro era?

See the GP's comment about SGI- SGI cases were still some kind of box or tower, but usually with curvy accents and bright colors at least. Otherwise, I wish I had managed to pick up a NeXT when they were not as rare as they are now. Apple of course didn't make any regular-looking towers or desktops while Steve Jobs was in control. Sun tried a bunch of different form factors in the Sparcstation line, but they were generally all beige boxes of some sort or another. In IBM-compatibles, there were... not many I can recall that stood out. IBM themselves had some slightly unusual designs in the PS/2 series, like the model 25, but nothing that was particularly nice-looking.

Curious what other people have to say about other IBM compatibles in this regard. I have a lot of computers but haven't seen everything yet.

The PCjr was a pretty good looking pizza-box case, much nicer than the 5150 IMO.

The PCjr started my collection actually, $15 at a rummage sale in 1997. The infrared keyboard was pretty neat.

I think anything retro will beat anything current because of the nostalgia factor.

At the time I didn’t think about how aesthetically pleasing a case was though.

the SGI Crimson comes to mind

Yeah, that's kind of a boring and not uncommon bit of hardware. I have an old Osborne that would be cool to update. Or an SGI.. or an Next Cube!

Those are such great looking cases.

For an easier conversion job, look for an SGI 540 Xeon tower.

They had a matching really sexy 17" LCD monitor.

The earlier models were more interesting looking, the Professional IRIS is so eighties I'm surprised it didn't make an appearance somewhere in Sneakers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SGI_Professional_IRIS_(1)...

The SD card reader hidden in the floppy disk drive is such a good idea!

(You can see it in action in the second gallery)

Really really well done! I love builds like this and am collecting pieces for my own sleeper PC. I'm an unashamed nostalgia addict and would much prefer an older case in the room than the modern ones we get these days.

It is somewhat wild to me that PC towers are still a thing. So many other tech products have had significant form factor reductions in the past ~40 years yet gaming PCs have largely remained unchanged. (I understand we've had massive increases in computing capabilities, especially around 3D graphics and the power and cooling required for them.)

The cases made today are 100x better than even stuff from the late 00s. Better cable management, better air flow, better aesthetics. I think being able to ditch 5.25 drive bays has been a major positive change. Also not ripping your hand open on random sharp metal, always nice.

I’d say it depends upon the era. Some older cases are amazing, and other less so. If we’re talking specifically about mid-90s, super cheap, beige towers… other than my nostalgia; yes, they are complete garbage.

I hate that modern cases don't have 5.25 drive bays. Some of us like having optical drives.

Worse EMC.

PCs have had significant form factor reductions though. From smaller form factors like mATX to straight up embedded SBCs like the NUC to even smaller lighter-power systems like the Raspberry Pi.

Mid-towers have survived for the same reason cars still leave some open space under the hood in their designs: There are incredibly important practical benefits in being able to easily work in a space.

In addition to being able to work in a space, also being able to deal with a wide array/vendor choice of possible thermal solutions, economically, to deal with up to 200W TDP CPUs and high wattage GPUs in a relatively compact enclosure. I wouldn't want to go smaller than mid-tower ATX case if doing something like a really powerful single socket air cooled CPU and a serious gaming video card.

It's only remained unchanged if you haven't decided to downsize: I've been building all mini-ITX machines for a while now. My main PC is in a DanCase A4-SFX, which is a 7.2L case. Even my NAS is mini-ITX. That's all standard parts. You can go even smaller if you are willing to sacrifice standard parts and go for a NUC or whatever.

Don’t jinx it! Really, it’s probably PCI slot form factor graphics cards that is keeping it alive.

We don't have much choice, high performance video card just big and they need a good cooling solution. It will probably take another ten years to reduce power consumption and we would get a small reduction is size and cooling requirements.

There are a bunch of "experimental" and open case sort of builds for people interested in something not quite standard. I'm not sure they have any advantage over the standard case.

When it first came out I was a big fan of the look of the inwin d-frame, but looking at it today I'm not sure its as fit for purpose as a $100 off the shelf box from corsair or whatever.

yet gaming PCs have largely remained unchanged.

I don't think this is really true, lots of smaller form factor devices are now used for gaming. Gaming laptops have been around for a decade+, gaming NUCs started popping up 4-5 years ago, the Steam Deck, a handheld gaming PC came out this year. The tower is still around but 'gaming PC' has diversified a great deal.

I would argue that they are sort of local optima. Box is a nice shape for anything and then you want modularity for space and then the fact it is air cooled.

We could pack them more tightly, but that just make life and many things harder.

Smaller case = smaller fans = louder fans

Having a mid tower case I can only hear my PC when it really ramps up.

My work laptop fan is blasting most of the time.

I would rather work on a tower/desktop PC. Usually has better CPU, GPU, RAM, Storage and much quieter.

A better question is why would they change?

For those into this, r/sleeperbattlestations on Reddit is centered around such conversions.

They're so ugly they become beautiful.

The other day I realized that IKEA Hyllis may work as foundation of a very simple case.

I lack experience in custom builds, but judging by the amount of work, you might as well just buy raw galvanized sheets and build from scratch, no?

The only upside I see from Hyllis is that maybe it's just cheaper than raw materials because IKEA.

I lack experience too. But I thought it may form a frame, and perhaps it could be as easy as drilling holes and working with plywood for anything remaining.

I'd have installed DOOM on it and it'd have been just fine!

It is always quite worrying for me to see something like this. People take a piece of tech which belongs in a museum and effectively destroy it just to get a cooler PC case.

If we go that route what doesn't belong to museum? Do you store all the food packaging? Every magazine? All of the spam you receive? That might be very useful for some historian in couple centuries after all... Where to stop?

Looks like Andy Warhol already did this."Warhol, consigned 300,000 of his everyday possessions to sealed cardboard boxes" https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29125003

I'm sure someone somewhere has preserved one, every additional unit after that was e-waste two decades ago.

Do you want my old one from when i was six? Its probably still at the back of my parents loft somewhere.

It probably belongs more to the trash than a museum.

I just finished seeing the movie Sonic 2. Are you Dr. Robotnik by any chance?

Seriously though, the floppy drive is the icing on the cake. Great build.

This was my first PC ever. Such nostalgia. I still remember the games it came with. Magic Theatre and Hyperman were amazing.

Cool project!

"Using the case from a 1995 IBM Aptiva to custom build my modern computer".

There, I fixed the title.

I have a floppy disk and it's a perfectly fine piece of computing peripheral, I've even recovered some old university projects from 20 years ago. No need to bastardize it into a mockup SD card reader, the same goes for the CD-ROM.

Love it. Personally, I've been looking for a beaten up (non-working) Sun Ultra 20/40 to build a PC in.

When do we see "Turning a 1995 IBM Aptiva, 66mhz 486DX2, into a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W"?

He kept just the case.

...and the exterior of the floppy drive

Love the old keyboard.

I still miss these big desktops

> may contain erotic imagery.

Ha.

I don't have anything to add to this aside from nice job.

I just wanted to marvel at the banner ad that I saw on the imgur page.

https://aeroparts.aero/repair/nitropure-asm/

Replacement parts for Boeing 737s?! I'm intrigued that they take out display ads for those kinds of things.

"If you're seeing this message, that means JavaScript has been disabled on your browser, please enable JS to make Imgur work." :-| Thank you, HN, for being usable without JS.

potential alternative link https://linustechtips.com/topic/553903-my-1995-ibm-aptiva-48...

If only there was a way to display images without JavaScript...

https://github.com/mikf/gallery-dl to the rescue!

I have not disabled JavaScript, but imgur never loads on mobile for me.

Yup. And when I open it in an a little outdated Firefox-based browser, there's just nothing but empty background.

Note: set your UA to something really old or unknown, and imgur direct links will actually become direct links to images instead of redirecting to their JS-filled abomination and then loading the image.

Unfortunately this doesn't apply to collections of images.

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