Disassembling a school computer

School years are wonderful

The first bell rang and they reminded me about school again.

When I went to school, even though it was 1994, I was far from computers and saw computers only on TV and in encyclopedias…

I remember how, while studying in an ordinary rural junior high school in 1999, we had computer science lessons…

These are the first “modern” computers we worked on. They amazed with their magic, since computers were only seen on TV. And as Clark said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Therefore, I wanted to touch it and at the same time I always wanted to find out what was inside and how it worked. A sort of boyish inquisitive mind. And now, more than 20 years later, I came across decommissioned school terminals.

And now my dream has come true

It turned out that these were standard Hewlett‑Packard VectraVE stations, which were equipped with a standard CRT monitor, keyboard and ball mouse. These complete workstations were purchased en masse and installed in schools in Moldova. According to urban legend, 21 Mig-29s were purchased with money from the sale of 21 Mig-29s in 1997. USA for $40 million, of course, not without its “own” corruption scandals. Therefore, the majority of students in Moldova from 1998 to 2008 probably remember them. We played the first games and mastered MSPaint Word and Pascal.

Well, I came across a stack of systems specialists and chose one “patient” from among them.

So, on the front panel there is only 1 power button and a floppy drive. Also two unoccupied decks for CD-ROM or other expansion devices.

Here we can observe the ports

• parallel LPT port

• Serial COM port

• standard PS/2 for connecting a mouse and keyboard

• VGA video output

• Twin USB!!!

• and a separate network card

I was surprised that USB was already installed there, while such stations were supplied with the Windows95 operating system, which did not have built-in USB drivers, and what’s more, Win98 did not have them either.

Frame

Next I decided to open the system unit… where it is enough to unclip the latch that held the front panel

here on the side they showed how to remove the casing… by the way, the model indicated is VE5 166MMX SERIES4

With a little effort, the body moves away. When disassembled again, access to the insides takes less than a minute and with bare hands.

Inside, a view opened up to the insides of the computer – by the way, the plastic top casing is also additionally lined with metal.

Looking at the layout of the system unit, you can see that it is divided into 2 sections:

Since everything was developed as a single whole, the motherboard layout with instructions for system switches is attached directly to the case.

By the way, here's a close-up of the system switch.

RAM

The motherboard had three DIMM slots that were installed parallel to the airflow from the main fan.

This machine was equipped with one 16 Mb DIMM RAM stick manufactured by NEC from Ireland.

Network card

These stations were supplied connected to a single computer network. What we used “to the fullest” when we played in our school time Quake2 with each other. Which at that time looked incredibly cool, unlike standard single-player games. All this was connected via an external network card (since for the last 20 years they have already been built-in).

With a bunch of different elements located both in China and AMD itself: not only the processors are united.

CPU

The central processor is hidden under a comb radiator without a cooler… Probably, this cooling was enough then.

It unfastens with a simple latch. Probably due to the large amount of time, the thermal paste hardened and turned into glue, and therefore, during the removal process, the radiator came out along with the processor.

It turned out that it was Socket 7, and the Pentium I processor itself was made in the Philippines.

And here is the percent itself, washed a little of the thermal paste (and it was oily and viscous) and for more than a quarter of a century has not dried completely

A processor with a clock frequency of 166 MHz, 16 KB L1 cache, created using 350 nm technology, presented in January 1997.

Intel Pentium

Ports for external devices are located almost on the side of the motherboard. ATA. By design, they are pressed against the board, one after the other, and immediately exit into another compartment without interfering with air circulation. For convenience, they are equipped with a tongue, which makes it convenient to pull them out of the connector.

Also on the unusual board is a heatsink with a “hedgehog” design, which probably cools the power transistor.

Next, having removed all the wires connected to it, you can try to pull the board out from the bottom of the box. Since it was held in the connector of the side expansion board, you need to get it out from the other side… Manually move the metal edge

Just pop out the latch and pull. And with a slight movement of the hand, the entire motherboard comes out of the grooves.

Having pulled out the motherboard, a sticker was found that the board was assembled in Malaysia.

A rubber bumper against deflection is attached to the reverse side.

As on modern boards, all elements are placed on one side.

This machine was equipped with a built-in Q5C3CD chip, memory frequency 60 MHz, SDRAM type, bus width 64 bits, production date 1997, VGA S3 Trio64V2/DX Q5C3CD chip, memory frequency 60 MHz, SDRAM type, bus width 64 bits, production date 1997, VGA although this line was developed in 1995

and North Bridge SiS 5581 and Southern PC87317VUL

The ports I mentioned earlier

• parallel LPT port

• Serial COM port

• standard PS/2 for connecting a mouse and keyboard

• VGA video output

• Dual USB production Foxconn.

  And this is 1997. Before that, I thought that they only collected iPhones and motherboards after 2008, but it turned out that it (Foxcon) was founded in 1974.

  All additional devices were connected via an additional expansion card

  

On which there are 3 PCI + 1 on the other side and 3 16-bit ports tiresI/O ISA

Since the motherboard does not have a built-in sound card, external ones were used (not on this machine).

Hard drive

Next, the Hard Drive was pulled out – just pulled out, since in order to get to it, you had to pull the backing ring to which it was attached.

Having removed it from the metal substrate, I found out that it was a standard 3.5-inch Quantum hard drive with 2 (two!!!) GB. Now the film weighs more…

Peripherals

There were no other peripheral devices except the Floppy drive, although space for them was allocated and hidden behind a tin plug

An ATX power supply manufactured by DELTA ELECTRONICS was located above the hard drive.

During disassembly, the date of manufacture was marked on the case from April to October 97 – with the possibility of production until 2000

After disassembly I had to put it all back together. Get a keyboard and mouse with PS/2 somewhere, as well as a monitor. Which is not so easy these days

After which the station took on a divine appearance

The time has finally come for the final denouement.

Launch

After pressing the start button, after the crunch of the 28-year-old hard drive, the creaking of the disk drive, nostalgia immediately washed over me. After the BIOS time reset alarm it started.

The monitor, of course, failed – it did not want to process signals below 85G. Well, where is it, then 60Hz was enough, on the CRT monitors that came with the kit… and a message from the monitor popped up, which was interfering. There was no other monitor.

It turned out that Windows98 SP2 was installed there, although when I studied there Win95 was installed.

A bunch of shortcuts and files left by former students

Old school My Documents with files

A Kangaroo program teaching algorithms was also found

And also games

Quake ||, which we played at school on a grid, did not start… (most likely the executable files of the game were damaged).

Finally, you can turn off the computer.

Bottom line

Of course, there were no other goals than to close the gestalt and find out what was inside the first computer of my childhood.

We see a standard Pentium I station, which are still working today.

I can say that the layout itself looked pretty good, heavy, sometimes even too much metal, the elements were designed and arranged for easy access… and this was in 1997. Everything was done for quick and easy replacement of elements. Literally with bare hands.

I was also amazed by the deep cooperation that arose in production even then. Elements for an American company Hewlett-Packard were collected from all over the world: Philippines, Thailand, China, Ireland, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, etc.

And finally, we can say thank you to these computers for introducing us to the world of personal computers and the first computer games, hours played on them, which we watched at that time only on TV.