Packard Bell computers

[stiltman]

Inspired by https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=911915#911915

Has anyone own a Packard Bell?

My first Pentium computer was a P90 from Packard Bell.
I still remember their stupid navagator

Took me a month before I realized how to strip everything off except for the plain win95 install...I had a blast surfing the net and downloading warez on my external 14.4 modem

[indolikaa]

I owned a pair of their 486 DX/2 66 minitower computers. They were two of the most stable computers I've ever owned. Go figure!


Good Lord, are those the machines I ran OS/2 Warp on? Has it been THAT long since 486DX was pure horsepower?

[reboot]

286/386/486sx/dx and then I quit buying and started building.
Good thing I did too, because everything they built after that is crap.

[indolikaa]

286/386/486sx/dx and then I quit buying and started building.
Good thing I did too, because everything they built after that is crap.

Did you ever buy the 'upgrade chip' that would make your 486SX computer a 486DX computer?

THAT was livin' the high life back in the day.

[RabidDog]

somebody asked me about these once, and thought thay had a good rep. I said No, Hewlettt-packard has an excellent rep, Bell computers invented the transistor and this company is trying to trade off these other companys.
486/dx4 120 AMd firsts intel kicker

[unclebud]

Mine was the P60 that was selling at Office Max for $900 in 1995 about 3 months before Win95 came out. And that was a great deal!

It was that or the Leading Edge P60 machine they had on display that they could not get to operate right. I went with the PB.

I added the 120 megahertz upgrade CPU chip and additional ram and hard drive space, and a Rendition 3-D video card (it was cheaper then the Voodoo 3-D).

In the end the primary ide channel died but I was able to get the secendary channel to boot. Gave it to a 8 year kid once it was working well. It's in the dump now.

THE END

UB

[888888]

I remember Packard Bell went under (or got bought) around the end of the 90s. I also remember people talking about them as the worst computer "brand" out there. That they broke and the support was bad etc. The Yugo of computers or something. Of course, those people who said that were probably arrogant retards. A computer's a computer. Of course, things were different back then.

[Roundabout]

When I left the "wonderful" employ of Sony in Y2K (or thereabouts), they were STILL using the PB 486DX2/66MHz PC's on the workbench. Thing was slow as molasses in January, took 4 or 5 min. to boot, but ran pretty much without crashing. I hated the Horizontal orientation of the box, took up too much space in my work area.

It was still running Win95 when I left there, they were too cheap to buy licenses for Win98. The machines were surplus from the CCC (Customer Call Center) - when they moved the CCC to Ft. Meyers, FL they gave us their old 486's. They got nice new units and we got crap. All the monitors were faded and burned in phosphor (we could still see the main screen from the CCC burned in). We're considered the poorest part of the company, got the lowest budget and the crappiest equipment. I even had to fix my own O-scope when it died (which was often).

I haven't been back to visit since I left, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're still using those old 486's forever. Since there was little work done on them anyway, parts lookup, customer invoices, etc. there was no need for speed.

IIRC, it only had a 540MB HDD and 20MB RAM in it. So slowwwwwww, but runs forever. You'd think a large co. like Sony would spring for new PC's for everyone, they make the damn things, after all... :P

[Cobra]

I haven't had one but I had to install an extra RAM module into one for a friend. Nackered Bell designed the case so poorly, you had to strip everything off including all the drives to install the RAM!

I build my own, much better!

Cobra

[indolikaa]

When I left the "wonderful" employ of Sony in Y2K (or thereabouts), they were STILL using the PB 486DX2/66MHz PC's on the workbench. Thing was slow as molasses in January, took 4 or 5 min. to boot, but ran pretty much without crashing. I hated the Horizontal orientation of the box, took up too much space in my work area.

It was still running Win95 when I left there, they were too cheap to buy licenses for Win98. The machines were surplus from the CCC (Customer Call Center) - when they moved the CCC to Ft. Meyers, FL they gave us their old 486's. They got nice new units and we got crap. All the monitors were faded and burned in phosphor (we could still see the main screen from the CCC burned in). We're considered the poorest part of the company, got the lowest budget and the crappiest equipment. I even had to fix my own O-scope when it died (which was often).

I haven't been back to visit since I left, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're still using those old 486's forever. Since there was little work done on them anyway, parts lookup, customer invoices, etc. there was no need for speed.

IIRC, it only had a 540MB HDD and 20MB RAM in it. So slowwwwwww, but runs forever. You'd think a large co. like Sony would spring for new PC's for everyone, they make the damn things, after all... :P

You worked at a Sony Regional Service Center, didn't you?

[Faustus]

My first computer was a PackardBell, it was a early graduation preset from highschool, even though I had been begging for a computer since the C64. As such I didn't have much say, nor did I know what I needed. All I knew was there was one game I wanted to play that required 8megs of ram (alot back then) but other then that I didn't know crap.

Ended up with a 486sx50 with 8megs of RAM (yeah my cousins 386 with Mathco played Doom faster) , about 4 months later I took it apart for the first time to try and add a tape drive, even my uneducated self realized there likely should not have been so many empty spots on the board (later found out it was no Cache RAM on the board) go PackardBell! Also thy shipped it without the video driver for windows 3.1 loaded, duh.

Actually PackardBell does not sell in the US any longer, but I know they do in other countries. I've always said if I was rich I'd order one just so people can come over and freak when they see a packard bell sitting there.

BTW never did get that game that needed 8megs of RAM.

[gitreel]

I remember Packard Bell went under (or got bought) around the end of the 90s. I also remember people talking about them as the worst computer "brand" out there. That they broke and the support was bad etc. The Yugo of computers or something. Of course, those people who said that were probably arrogant retards. A computer's a computer. Of course, things were different back then.

They were famous for soldering the cmos battery onto the motherboard, so it was a pain to change the battery.

[Roundabout]

You worked at a Sony Regional Service Center, didn't you?

How did you guess?

Yeah, they were cheap bastards. Probably the worst thing was lack of training. When they initally hauled in those PB POS PC's they just dumped them on us and we had to figure out how they worked. That was initally in 1997 or 98, at the time I didn't own a home PC and knew little or nothing about them (like now... :P ) and it was a lot of "fun" trying to figure out how they worked.

Managed to get a token ring installed but their lousy net connection kept going down and we couldn't get any work done or units billed until the connection came up again. More than a few times we cursed the entire network (mainframe was in KC, MO) for hurting our production and completion times, which we were graded on, even when it wasn't our fault.

Of course, HQ back in Park Ridge, NJ got the best of everything, and I was jealous when I'd visit there and see all the nice new test equipment and training they got. Hell, they had their own huge cafeteria inside serving hundreds of employees meals. They food was so cheap it was unbelieveable. Meanwhile out here in CA we were scraping by. I guess that's typical of an East-Coast based company, the other coast is neglected completely.

I'll have to ask someone still working there sometime if they're still using those old 486's still. Maybe by now they've been upgraded to Win98?

[offline]

Our POS version of the Packard Bell was the Amstrad. Different company- same sort of shite.

[redwudz]

I bought a used PB years ago as my first PC computer. I had Amiga and MACs before. OK machine, but had a bitch of a time to upgrade it to W98 as it had DOS6 in it. Solid machine, though. Put a CD drive in after I got W98 running. It is a 486 DX/2 66 machine. Still trying to pawn it off cheap to a computer poor person for a first time machine. I looked it up once and it sold for over $3000US. Amazing how things change.

[Roundabout]

I bought a used PB years ago as my first PC computer. I had Amiga and MACs before. OK machine, but had a bitch of a time to upgrade it to W98 as it had DOS6 in it. Solid machine, though. Put a CD drive in after I got W98 running.

Reminds me of the old Steve Martin schtick: "Yeah, I got a vintage car. It's a '57 Greyhound bus. Fixed it up...painted a new dog on the side..."

[hech54]

You can walk into any Mediamarkt or Saturn store in Germany and find at least one Packard Hell in there. I hated the Modem/Sound Card combo in my old Packard Hell the most....that and the stupid Navigator....Geez I had forgotten all about that Navigator until stiltman reminded me.

I also remember buying my IBM computer after the Packard Hell died....calling my dad and giving him the specs of which one I was planning to buy...and him asking me....
"...1 GIGABYTE(Hard Drive)....what the hell are you going to do with all of that?!?!"

Wow....how things have changed.

[flaninacupboard]

packard bell and dell are my two most hated machines. weird PSUs, stupid ram, crazy cases and lame-ass bundled software you can't uninstall.

the monitor you see came bundled with a P-300, which is residing in a corner somewhere (may be used as a streaming audio client somewhere in the house) and i still use the mouse on my capping pc! keyboard died though, well, none of my captures can include the characters asdfghj\zxcvbnm,.or/

[Hardcoreruss]

My first Pc was a packard bell

40mb hard drive

2mb ram

Quality

[gitreel]

packard bell and dell are my two most hated machines. weird PSUs, stupid ram, crazy cases and lame-ass bundled software you can't uninstall.

the monitor you see came bundled with a P-300, which is residing in a corner somewhere (may be used as a streaming audio client somewhere in the house) and i still use the mouse on my capping pc! keyboard died though, well, none of my captures can include the characters asdfghj\zxcvbnm,.or/

amen brother....,what about the stupid exhaust cover over the cpu?

[Cobra]

amen brother....,what about the stupid exhaust cover over the cpu?

Actually, my last PC (a Dell Dimension) had that and it was a damn good design. No recirculation of warm air over the CPU HSF. My current PC has careful fan placement to avoid this, but ducting air is a very good idea when done correctly. It was quieter too.

Cobra

[northcat_8]

My first real computer (past the commodore 64) was the was a Packard Bell Pentium 60!!! AND IS WAS Blazing fast with it's windows 3.1. Actually...I still have it somewhere

[Capmaster]

Packard Bell used to market shite PCs through department stores. They sold mainly to people who didn't know anything about computers.

When PB marketed a "corner case" Pentium 133, without a single byte of L2 cache, and insisted on non-standard motherboards, I decided I'd never own one. I have known a few people who have bought them ...and regretted it :P

[gitreel]

That is why they pulled out of the U.S. They couldn't make a good computer to save their life

[housepig]

first machine was a PB 486/SX 25mhz, with 107Mb hd and 4Mb Ram. I remember upgrading, putting in an extra 4mb of RAM ($160) and a 240Mb hd ($220).

learned a very good lesson on that one - I wanted to make it a tower, and my more computer literate friends were able to tell me that, because of PB's proprietary, non-standard layout, I couldn't do it - I was stuck wtih the horizontal case.

just copped another PB the other day from my alley - the people across the way put it out for trash pickup. since it's a little old lady living there, I figure it probably hasn't been used too hard, so I can strip some parts (floppy, cd rom, etc) out of it.

[sitlet]

my second comp was a packard bell 486dx 100mhz. it had a 300mb hard drive i believe that we upgraded to the 1gb. that thing was a beast. after having a commodore 64, that thing was the shit. it had windows 3.1 and that crappy packard bell navigator os thing that you could never figure out how to use. i actually still have it set up in my basement for when im bored and want to play doom or warcraft 1