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The Worst Computer Of All Time
- Thread starter Xacalite
- Start date
T-Squared
Veteran Member
Worst Computer i've ever encountered?
Toshiba T6400SXC.
The display hurts my eyes after a while, the memory is non-standard, the motherboard is very wasteful on space, the display is too small for its bezel, there is very little expansion capability, and the floppy drive is also very non-standard. (Even when compared to the 34-pin and 26-pin standards.) Also, the capacitors seem to not be the best. They seem to require a reconstitution period now before the computer completely turns on.
Toshiba T6400SXC.
The display hurts my eyes after a while, the memory is non-standard, the motherboard is very wasteful on space, the display is too small for its bezel, there is very little expansion capability, and the floppy drive is also very non-standard. (Even when compared to the 34-pin and 26-pin standards.) Also, the capacitors seem to not be the best. They seem to require a reconstitution period now before the computer completely turns on.
Stinkpot
Experienced Member
I'm going to take the definition of "worst" in a slightly different direction - products designed to intentionally deceive the market.
My example comes from the notorious motherboard manufacturer PC Chips. Back in the Socket 5 / Socket 7 days of the mid to late 1990's, the bus speed wars were full on. Just as the 100mhz threshold was being crossed, PC Chips brought the M590 "Super Socket 7" motherboard to market advertised as "PC100" compliant, and I bought one as part of a system from a local builder. In the BIOS setup it offered a 100mhz bus speed option. Selecting that along with a CPU multiplier would result in a CPU speed displayed at boot that indeed matched 100 x the chosen multiplier.
Problem was, it was all a lie. The chipset on the board was actually an earlier product designed to run at 75mhz, but was known to typically overclock comfortably to 83.3mhz. PC Chips glued fancy heat sinks (labelled "PC100") to the chips so you couldn't see what they really were, and then pushed them a little more to 90mhz. When you selected 100mhz bus speed in BIOS you were actually getting 90mhz. So for instance when I selected 100mhz x 3.5 for my K6/2-350, it told me I was at 350mhz (and I believed it), but it was actually at 90mhz x 3.5 = 315mhz. And even at that the system tended to be a little flaky anyway with the OC on the chipset.
At the time I was unaware of this deception, I just knew that my computer just didn't seem as fast as it should, and would occasionally misbehave or freeze. It probably would have run better and faster if I had set it to 83.3mhz x 4 = 333mhz or 75mhz x 4.5 = 337mhz.
My example comes from the notorious motherboard manufacturer PC Chips. Back in the Socket 5 / Socket 7 days of the mid to late 1990's, the bus speed wars were full on. Just as the 100mhz threshold was being crossed, PC Chips brought the M590 "Super Socket 7" motherboard to market advertised as "PC100" compliant, and I bought one as part of a system from a local builder. In the BIOS setup it offered a 100mhz bus speed option. Selecting that along with a CPU multiplier would result in a CPU speed displayed at boot that indeed matched 100 x the chosen multiplier.
Problem was, it was all a lie. The chipset on the board was actually an earlier product designed to run at 75mhz, but was known to typically overclock comfortably to 83.3mhz. PC Chips glued fancy heat sinks (labelled "PC100") to the chips so you couldn't see what they really were, and then pushed them a little more to 90mhz. When you selected 100mhz bus speed in BIOS you were actually getting 90mhz. So for instance when I selected 100mhz x 3.5 for my K6/2-350, it told me I was at 350mhz (and I believed it), but it was actually at 90mhz x 3.5 = 315mhz. And even at that the system tended to be a little flaky anyway with the OC on the chipset.
At the time I was unaware of this deception, I just knew that my computer just didn't seem as fast as it should, and would occasionally misbehave or freeze. It probably would have run better and faster if I had set it to 83.3mhz x 4 = 333mhz or 75mhz x 4.5 = 337mhz.
sev
Experienced Member
IBM Deskstar 75GXP.
NeXT
Veteran Member
sev
Experienced Member
mykrowyre
Experienced Member
I think the problem with windows 10 has nothing to do with the OS necessarily, but it's behavior. It's like hiring someone who is actively working against you. Need to get something done before 9am? Sorry time for a forced update. Hoping it will be a quick reboot? It won't... Need to know how long it will take? It's not going to tell you. Think it's almost done? SURPRISE it's doing ANOTHER update and rebooting again before you ever made it to the desktop. Think you're done? WRONG... now we need to "Set up your desktop". This could take an hour.
Think you can disable this? You can ... but not really.
Thinking about bad hard drives, there were those Quantum Bigfoot disks - still 5.25", when all others were already 3.5".
They were very slow, especially the original series (1.2 GB and 2.5 GB), later series were somewhat better.
And they had a hole, covered with just a sticker - must be very careful when installing, because if the sticker is torn, dust makes it onto the platters...
They were very slow, especially the original series (1.2 GB and 2.5 GB), later series were somewhat better.
And they had a hole, covered with just a sticker - must be very careful when installing, because if the sticker is torn, dust makes it onto the platters...
krebizfan
Veteran Member
Bigfoot drives were very reliable. As data drives where the speed didn't matter, they were perfect. As boot drives paired with slow Celerons and weak integrated video (the classic Compaq budget system), it was an excellent way to convince people that Compaq was no longer producing a quality product.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
I still have several operating Bigfoots of various capacities. All have intact stickers. Far more reliable than the 3.5" JTS 1GB drives of the same era.
Oh, and one more Microsoft keyboard from my nightmares...
I can understand vertical layout of Home/End/Insert/Delete/PgUp/PgDn keys - space-saving is sometimes a must - but what's the point of the big Delete key, at the cost of the lack of Insert!?
Grouping the function keys by three, instead of by four, doesn't make sense either.
I can understand vertical layout of Home/End/Insert/Delete/PgUp/PgDn keys - space-saving is sometimes a must - but what's the point of the big Delete key, at the cost of the lack of Insert!?
Grouping the function keys by three, instead of by four, doesn't make sense either.
krebizfan
Veteran Member
I have a Logitech keyboard with a similar oversized Delete key and no Insert key but the Home/End and Page Up/Page Down are in the usual 4 button array. I guess someone thought the market for dedicated keyboards for editors (job title not software) was large.
creepingnet
Veteran Member
Well, worst vintage computer for me is subjective. Depends on the category of what broke or what went wrong and why.
Worst PC of all time to me is the Dell 5150 laptop from the mid 2000's - I know, not vintage, but I swear more than half the calls I got on those I had to replace the screen, motherboard, and hard disk (basically the whole computer) about all that was left was the bottom plastic - or as the call center called it "de bottom plasteek" - and what's worse is the parts distributors for Dell PUSHED me to get that "bottom plasteek" no matter what was wrong because I swear they had an entire 4th of the warehouse probably overfilled with 5150 "bottom plasteeks".
Worst vintage systems, probably Packard Bell, with Dell being second runner up (325SX) - mostly for CMOS Battery leakage issues, corroding motherboard traces, and other terrible maladies. Pulled a Packard Bell Legend 843+ out of a dumpster - the rare EARLY LPX tower they made (with the 70's sunglasses tint swing out front door). What behooves me is my GEM 286 just turned 30 years old, and that thing STILL has the original CMOS battery - same battery type as those Packard Bells - the shrinkwrapped pack of what looks like coin cells soldered to the motherboard - and it STILL has a charge, and STILL works, and zero leakage. These Packard Bells were barely 10 years old at the time (circa 2001-2003). I dunno if the make of the batteries are the same but whatever Octek used was one hell of a battery - GEM must have really known some good motherboard suppliers. Same issue with the Dell but it had one of those black bricks with the wires coming out of it and the genius who put it together must have thought hanging it right over the keyboard address lines was a good idea. I put mine on the floor of the case behind the floppy drives. Far less work to scuff off the crap from the bottom of the case than the scuff it off a motherboard and re-solder hair-thin traces of copper afterward.
Worst for parts availiblity was the Compaq Portable 486c - I hunted for SIX YEARS to find a 128902-001 color 640x480 10" LCD panel for it only to come up short and give up, selling it to someone here. Really a shame as it would have made an excellent retro-gaming rig had the LCD not been cracked. And the worst part is now I get all these weird e-mails from Chinese industrial suppliers now because they would claim to have said screen used. Went to about five different parts places who advertised having it online at a premium and they did not have it in stock. My two Deskpros though - man, I could just dig up Drive Rails, Tadiran batteries, and weird connectors for days for those things. Plus I managed to get the 286 version to support an 810MB HDD on the naitive BIOS but even putting a Seagate 540M in the 486c made it act like a confused robot....
I could add more, but I got stuff to do....maybe I'll come back and reminisce my crazy retro-PC nightmare adventures later.
Worst PC of all time to me is the Dell 5150 laptop from the mid 2000's - I know, not vintage, but I swear more than half the calls I got on those I had to replace the screen, motherboard, and hard disk (basically the whole computer) about all that was left was the bottom plastic - or as the call center called it "de bottom plasteek" - and what's worse is the parts distributors for Dell PUSHED me to get that "bottom plasteek" no matter what was wrong because I swear they had an entire 4th of the warehouse probably overfilled with 5150 "bottom plasteeks".
Worst vintage systems, probably Packard Bell, with Dell being second runner up (325SX) - mostly for CMOS Battery leakage issues, corroding motherboard traces, and other terrible maladies. Pulled a Packard Bell Legend 843+ out of a dumpster - the rare EARLY LPX tower they made (with the 70's sunglasses tint swing out front door). What behooves me is my GEM 286 just turned 30 years old, and that thing STILL has the original CMOS battery - same battery type as those Packard Bells - the shrinkwrapped pack of what looks like coin cells soldered to the motherboard - and it STILL has a charge, and STILL works, and zero leakage. These Packard Bells were barely 10 years old at the time (circa 2001-2003). I dunno if the make of the batteries are the same but whatever Octek used was one hell of a battery - GEM must have really known some good motherboard suppliers. Same issue with the Dell but it had one of those black bricks with the wires coming out of it and the genius who put it together must have thought hanging it right over the keyboard address lines was a good idea. I put mine on the floor of the case behind the floppy drives. Far less work to scuff off the crap from the bottom of the case than the scuff it off a motherboard and re-solder hair-thin traces of copper afterward.
Worst for parts availiblity was the Compaq Portable 486c - I hunted for SIX YEARS to find a 128902-001 color 640x480 10" LCD panel for it only to come up short and give up, selling it to someone here. Really a shame as it would have made an excellent retro-gaming rig had the LCD not been cracked. And the worst part is now I get all these weird e-mails from Chinese industrial suppliers now because they would claim to have said screen used. Went to about five different parts places who advertised having it online at a premium and they did not have it in stock. My two Deskpros though - man, I could just dig up Drive Rails, Tadiran batteries, and weird connectors for days for those things. Plus I managed to get the 286 version to support an 810MB HDD on the naitive BIOS but even putting a Seagate 540M in the 486c made it act like a confused robot....
I could add more, but I got stuff to do....maybe I'll come back and reminisce my crazy retro-PC nightmare adventures later.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
I thought the Packard Bell PB250 was pretty good for its day.
creepingnet
Veteran Member
The only reason I consider it is now I'm looking at 4 machines that I have (Tandy 1000A, GEM 286, Frankenstein XT 486, and an NEC Ready P-100 from 1995), all getting near 25-30 years old now, and everything on those work perfectly. Plus the main issue I had with the older boxes back in the day was just poor choices in component placement (ie, CMOS battery hung above the motherboard to leak on it) which could have been easily prevented.
I find typically, regardless of age it's the OEM machines that are the most trouble. I've had some pretty bad "whitebox" PC's over the years but I was always able to sway them with a different expansion card or some other add-on, but some LPX Pizza Box or some mATX beast crammed together and designed to be cheap typically does not pay off
Chuck(g) - The PB250 is not the era of Packard Bell I've ever dealt with, the ones I dealt with mostly were the Legend, Multimedia, and the other early 90's models from the age when they were getting a rather bad rep in America. Mostly all 386/486 models. I would not be surprised if their older efforts were better.
1ST1
Veteran Member
Worst homecomputer ever should be TI 99/4A. 16 bit processor at slow motion clock and much slower than Commodore 64 because of it's ugly system design.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
The Packard Bell of which you speak is the company founded by an Israeli tank driver and his buddies. They purchased the name of the legendary defunct firm to give their efforts instant credibility. That's always a bad sign. They might as well have called their venture "Curtis Mathes" or some other defunct firm's name.
The PB250 was a remarkable machine for its time and probably holds the title of "minicomputer" before the term was in common use. It'll run from a standard US 120V outlet.
Zippy Zapp
Experienced Member
Even worse than the ZX80/81/Timex? I used both of them very little but I think if I had to get stuck with one I would choose the TI-99/4A. It has a real keyboard a real sound chip and a VDP. Color clash on the ZX was horrible. I get what the design goals were but Yikes, glad they were a disaster over here. I shutter to think what would have happened if 10 million units were sold in the USA. Think of how crappy the games market would have been. LOL
