I like these OEM machines. They usually "just work". Very nice machine.

It's not complete without Packard Bell's MS-Bob lookalike.

GXL750 wrote:

It's not complete without Packard Bell's MS-Bob lookalike.

I really hate that virtual environment interface junk 🤣.

What did you use to clean out the motherboard and components? It certainly looks a lot better than it did 😀

My general cleaning process for the really bad off filthy stuff involves a total wash via hot water using a spray nozzle, then some pat drying, then baking at 210 degrees Fahrenheit (needs to be preheated) for 10-15 mins on a large steel cookie sheet that does not warp, to remove the bulk of the moisture. After that I then air dry for the remainder, basically a day. Its become a pretty reliable process over all. I do this with power supplies also.

When I was cleaning and repairing arcade pcbs, like most of the serious arcade game collectors, I used to wash them in the dishwasher, then just dry them via air dry for 3 or 4 days using a large fan after gently patting them down, but that takes forever. A decent amount of the professional repair techs who specifically repaired arcade equipment that I knew did the baking after hand spray washing, and I finally decided to adopt that as my repair/cleaning process for computer parts as it works better. It requires a bit more effort, and I do not recommend it to people new to repairing electronics.

It looks great, nice work.

I've never been game enough to try the oven thing. I have used the dishwasher on a couple of keyboards though and they always come up looking pretty good.

You mention cleaning PSU's and I assume you take then apart if you're chucking them in the oven, but what about cleaning them intact? Do you think giving them a blast with hot water and them giving them ample time to dry (e.g. weeks) would be OK?

I clean mine using compressed air which works OK, but doesn't ever get them squeaky clean.

ProfessorProfessorson wrote:

210 degrees Fahrenheit

For those watching at home, that's 99°C.

On a power supply, if you are going to wash them, it is ideal to take them apart enough that you can make sure no wet gunk is left under the main pcb. You don't have to take the pcb completely out, but def make sure to lift it and wash under there good, and also make sure that area dries out well, esp if it has a plastic guard layer of some type.

Just sitting there and air drying should be fine if you pat dried prior to get rid of the bulk of water, but the sooner you remove the moisture, the better off you are. You can pat dry/shake out a lot of the water on one, then close it up and run a blow dryer on the fan area in short 30 sec to 1 min burst periodically too. The fan on the power supply will flow the hot air throughout and help dry things up faster. You may have to coax the fan into doing so if the blow dryer is not powerful enough to start the fan spin outright. Usually taking a small screw driver and giving it a nudged spin helps get things going.

I'd also like to note that I re-oil the power supply fans too after they dry. This ensures much longer fan life in general, and it only takes a few mins to do.

This was actually my very first PC. Legend 406CD. However, mine was the slim case. I never knew these came in the double drive height cases.

Very clean little system you have there. The older PBs are neat computers and unsurprisingly have a cult following which tend to reflect prices on the 'bay. Thanks for sharing!

In my youth, my family had two Packard Bell systems, the second one looked like this :

http://www.recycledgoods.com/products/Packard … r-Computer.html

I remember the first computer more clearly, if I recall correctly it was a 386sx/20 with a 20MB hard drive and 4MB of RAM. It supported VGA but not SVGA graphics. It came with 5.25" and 3.5" floppies. I had it upgraded first with a Sound Blaster and later with a CD-ROM.

I would replace that aztech modem combo sound card with a creative soundblaster 16 isa or awe32 and upgrade the ram to 64 mb ram and the os is going to be MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1. my dos config would be on config sys, DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM:OFF
DEVICE=EMM386.EXE RAM
DOS=HIGH, UMA