Oh man... someone gave me an estate-sale Pionex desktop PC a few years ago, with all the paperwork, books for all the components, etc.
I had put it on the back burner all this time, but decided to power it on today to test it out.
WOW... this thing takes me back. Not because I had a Pionex system, and not because it is anything like the computers I used at the time. No no...
Because it is loaded with iconic early 2000s spyware and junk software! It reminds me of the first computers I was paid to fix!
Look at msconfig (I have already unchecked a lot).
BonziBuddy, ClickTheButton, New.Net... save.exe? Patch.exe? In the Windows directory? Oh dear.
Strangely, the entire Program Files directory is missing, so things aren't working so well. At this point I'm not sure if it's due to a virus\malware infection or if the Quantum Bigfoot has been nuking directories to keep itself busy. It looks like it was last used in 2003-2004 or so.
I'll definitely be wiping the drive and testing it to see if it's useful or not.
These systems were sold on QVC (cable TV channel advertising things you could order over the phone), and surprisingly it has an MSI 440BX board with 3 ISA slots (with manual), a decent looking SPI power supply, P2 350, i740 AGP (Apollo brand, with the manual), all in a very compact (for the time) full-atx case with a side mounted PSU to make it shorter.
Now for some blitting from the back buffer.