Packard Bell Corner Computer - One of 1995's Strangest PCs

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enGreetings folks, and welcome to an LGR thingabout one of the strangestprebuilt computer designs I have ever come across.This is the Packard Bell Multimedia CornerComputer, which was a real thing that soldfor real money when it was released in thefall of 1995.$2300 dollars, to be precise, and that wasjust for the base configuration with a 100megahertz Pentium processor, 8 megabytes ofRAM, and no monitor or speakers.And considering how exceedingly hard to findthese are nowadays, I can’t imagine PackardBell had many customers lining up to buy one.The Corner Computer is one of those machinesthat’s downright eye-catching at first glance,but when you take a second to think aboutit, the design is amusingly flawed.When Packard Bell first unveiled it at a NewYork trade show in July of ‘95, they wereboastful of its “innovative, space-savingabilities,” claiming its design let it fitsnugly into small corner spaces around thehome.Like behind this kitchen countertop, as shownin their carefully-photographed promo material,putting the Corner Computer right by the spatulasand hanging vampire repellent.And I mean, yeah, cool idea!But then you realize that actually pluggingthe darn thing in eliminates any potentialspace-saving advantages, since the cords arestill hangin’ all out the right-hand sidepushing it away from the wall.This also means that the drive bays end upjutting out the sidesin weird, inconvenient locations.It seems the media didn’t quite get it either,seeing as most articles referred to it asbeing a “triangular” design.Which uh, no?Looking at it from above, it’s clear thatit’s just your typical Packard Bell desktopwith a corner cut out and the drives in adifferent spot.Really it’s more heart-shaped than anything.I wish it was a triangular case though, sincethe corner idea would’ve been a lot morepractical with the drives directly in thefront, but nope.The Corner Computer is effectively still asquare case like all their other machines.In fact, dropping one of those into the samecorner takes up roughly the same space asthe Corner Computer.Isn’t that fun!Heh, that being said though, it’s obvioussomeone bought onebecause here it is decades later.And whoever that pioneering purchaser wasin 1995 eventually sold it off, where it waspurchased by Billy Coore who kindly lent itto me for this video.I appreciate you trusting me with this monstrosity,man, because this kind of technological nonsenseis one of my favorite things to experience.I also just love PCs from this generationin general, from the days when Windows 95was the hot new thing and Pentium 1 processorswere cutting edge.And even if the design’s actual practicalitywas a tad overstated, I’d argue that theCorner Computer still looks cutting edge for1995.Like other mid-90s Packard Bells though,it seems this was crafted by the “Frog Design” consulting firm.Or at the very least it shares in Frog’sother designs for Packard Bell with thosethose wavy plastic ridges all over the place.And check this out, that gray circular centerpiece is just that: a piece, in the center.It's not attached to anything, it simply sitsthere to hold a monitor, and it can be removedto reveal another Face of Technology logoon the case behind it.With that outta the way let’s keep the disassemblygoing and check out the weirdness inside!The rest of the case easily comes apart, thereare only two M3 screws around back holdingon the top and sides.Revealing that the motherboard and power supplyis the same type found in other Packard Bells,just tucked away into the back-left.The bigger difference is that the 5.25”drive bays are moved down to the far cornersof the case for that all-important cornereffect.With the right-hand side originally containinga quad-speed CD-ROM drive, something swappedout here with a 48x drive from LG.And in the opposite corner is a 3.5” high-densityfloppy drive and some molded plastickinda shaped like CD trays.And while they are the right width, they’resimply part of the case molding and don’topen up or anything.And yeah that little button is the reset,not power.That’s hiding all the way over at the bottomright corner, connecting directly to the 150WLite-On power supply.And as indicated by that classy Pentium sticker,the Corner Computer initially came with a100MHz Pentium inside, but this machine hassince been upgraded with a 200MHz model instead.The heatsink and fan are from an 83MHz PentiumOverdrive, but yeah, the chip underneath isclocked at 200 here.The memory’s been upgraded too, being broughtup to what would've at the time been a morethan substantial 64 megabytes of RAM.The hard drive too, which was 840MB from thefactory, but got swapped to a 1.6 gig ST-31721Afrom Seagate.For sound Packard Bell supplied an AztechSound Galaxy fax/modem combo card,as they often did.And on there is a Crystal CS4231A and Aztech’sAZT2316R providing a 16-bit stereo DAC, WindowsSound System compliance, and ADPCM decompressionwith Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 compatibility.Along with a Yamaha OPL3 chip, the YMF-262M,which is a great thing to have for properAdLib sound in DOS games.And being a combo card, it also has an integrated28.8k data/fax modem, right next to the audiojacks and 15-pin gameport for connecting joysticks.As for video, the Corner Computer makes useof an integrated Cirrus Logic CL-GD5440, aPCI-based chipset with a megabyte of videomemory.But seeing as it only provides 2D, Billy wiselyupgraded things with a Diamond Monster 3D card.A PCI 3D accelerator which packs the delightful3dfx Voodoo 1 chipsetwith 4 megabytes of memory on-board.Definitely gonna try some Glide mode gameshere soon.And other than a 3Com Etherlink 10/100 networkingcard, the rest of the I/O is all standard,with the 2D VGA output passing through theVoodoo card, a parallel printer port, 9-pinserial port, and PS/2 ports for mouse andkeyboard.Speaking of which, they follow the same FrogDesign aesthetic as the case, with soft ripplingwaves laid into the plastic.I’ve never been fond of this style of mousethough, it feels cheap and light, and thosebuttons feel like fondling a couple of potatochips.But the keyboard ain’t half bad.It’s based on the BTC 51 series so it stilluses rubber domes, nothing mechanical or clicky.But the MX-mount sliders, sproingy rubber,and ABS keycaps are surprisingly decent.It also uses a non-ANSI layout with a smaller right shiftand backslash beneath Enter.Par for the course with Packard Bell and it’sactually what I grew up with, so I’m used to it.Another peripheral the company made a bigdeal about was this remote control with aninfrared serial receiver, which they claimedwas a first in the industry.That’s questionable, but no matter whatit’s pretty uncommon in 1995, with the presscalling it “the computer for the couch potato.”Yeah maybe.Good luck reading anything from your couchwith the little 14-inch CRT it came with.Packard Bell offered this style monitor withthe entire mid-90s Multimedia range, and despitethe small size and .39mm dot pitch, it’squite readable at 640x480.And of course it comes with those classicmonitor side-speakers bolted on, with a volumeand treble knob on the right speaker and a3.5mm headphone jack so you can pump thoseAdLib tunes directly into your earholes.But I think I’ve about talked myself intoa corner with all these features, so what’sleft to do but hook everything up, power iton, and get the full Corner Computer experience.Ah those crunchy hard disk noises. Hehe!That Seagate in here is an amazingly louddrive.Ahh, Windows 95.Of all the computer designs that I've used,this one is about the most Windows 95-ish.Just for that pure mid nineties “what theheck were they doing” aesthetic.This Corner Computer is amazing to use justbecause of the way it looks.Not because of the way it is to actually use,necessarily.Because man, there are a bunch of annoyances.There are drawbacks on an objective level,but on a subjective level,I think these things are great!Because they remind me of childhood.It's the kind of computers I grew up with.I had a Packard Bell in ‘95.I was familiar with them having used themin, you know, computer stores.They were always on display somewhere, especiallyplaces like Circuit City.Anyway, applications though, this is another thing.Look at the bloat. Ha!So much stuff came with these computers.Really though, at the time that was a sellingpoint.They were always bragging in their marketinglike, “Oh, it comes with like 90 programs.”Yeah. I can believe it.Look at all this stuff.Most of it requires a CD.Most of these CDs I don't have, a couple ofthem that I do.We are going to try out some of the more,I don't know, memorable in my mind programs.But look at all these things, look at allthis, you have alternatives to a lot of stuffthat Windows can do, but dang it.It just does it with a Packard Bell flairthat is amazingand is just delightfully mid nineties.You're going to love some of this stuff ifyou haven't seen it. Or if you have seen it,you're gonna love seeing it again.I promise! Because I think it's cool.Anyway, like for instance, Packard Bell Navigator,which was their sort of frontend shell toWindows, their GUI alternative.Welcome from Packard Bell.We offer you two computing environments tochoose from.Packard Bell 's Navigator or Microsoft Windows.You may also begin by taking a quick lessonon using the mouse.I would rather not!So this is Packard Bell navigator and it'sum -- okay, it’s gonna keep popping up stuff.You know what the heck, they spent so muchtime on this, obviously we'll go ahead andlook at these slides, Packard Bell Navigatorlets you learn about and manage your computer'sfeatures and functions from the viewpointof being in a three-dimensional home.My goodness, this is very Microsoft Bob-likeisn't it?And that's because it is.A lot of companies were doing this at thetime, including Microsoft.But instead of Bob's assistants and customizablerooms, you have these pre-made delightfully3D pre-rendered rooms.Look at this. You can just click on stuff around the house.Like for instance, you wanna access the mixerand speaker controls,look at that, there it is.Or fax machine things, I don't have fax installed,but there it is.Or hey MIDI and media sound kinda stuff.Look at this Audio Station and look at thosefonts!Augh, I love this.Like an audio rack is just on your computerscreen.I would have absolutely loved having thisback in the day.The Packard Bell that we had in my householdin 1995 did not have Navigator.It was from right before when they starteddoing the whole Navigator thing of thismid-90s Multimedia range.And I love this range because of all the stuffthat it comes with.We'd call it bloat now but like I said, itwas a selling point back then.We have programs back here.Let's look at these.So this goes to another room, I love the waythis looks.I seriously do.It's like I, you know, the kind of idea thatyou get now with... online storefronts, librarieslike GOG or whatever, doing their virtualbookcases for your collection of softwarethat you can access digitally, or things thatyou own in collection apps and such.But here look at this, they were doing this25 years ago.So again, very Microsoft Bob-like.Just here, here's some quick ways to accessthings.Or like, oh, I just want to do such and such.I wanna view a tax report.How do I do that?Well.You can do it with the mid nineties,that's what.Microsoft Money, again, the aesthetic isjust perfect.Another thing I want to show a real quickis the media controller.I showed it really briefly earlier but youcan move the mouse, even from across the room,provided there's no interference with theinfrared.And it's slow and clunky and awful, but itdoes work.And I mean, this would have been amazing,right?Mid nineties, remote control computer.What the heck is that about?This is your left mouse button, this is yourright mouse button.And you get a whole bunch of little shortcutsto things like opening the CD player, telephoneapp, applying SRS Wow effects.So let's go ahead and open the MIDI playerhere.And here's a list of things we have to playin terms of a playlist of MIDI files.And let’s go over to -- this is so awful.Why wouldn't you just use a mouse, right?Well, I guess the idea was like, Packard Bellwas doing this thing of trying to promotetheir computers for like having a computerfor every room in the home.So if homes have multiple TVs in the mid-90s,why not multiple computers?You can stick this in a corner in the kitchen.One of their towers in the corner in the office.Another tower in a bedroom or something, I dunno.And because TVs have remotes, why not a computer?You can see the thought behind it.Anyway, let's play this.And I have right now set to the wavetablesound to the Audio Galaxy.And yes the speakers really do sound... terrible.Really, really bad.In fact, the little speaker cone that's inthere, it's not even like a cone.It's like a square thing, almost like a teenylittle tiny audio car door speaker.But it's about like an inch and a half large.It might be two or three inches I dunno, it'stiny.It's a little thing right here in the middle.And most of this is just a grill for show.No bass response, a whole lot of mid range,very little high.So let's try that SRS Wow effect.Or 3D, I don't know if it was called “Wow” yet.I think it was.It mostly just makes it louder.But there's a little bit of I dunno, reverberation,kind of.It’s so minor.And these speakers are not good enough toreally hear the difference.I've gone over this difference in a previousvideo talking about one of those graphic equalizer,five and a quarter inch drive bay things thatadded SRS effects.But anyway, that's the media controller.I mean, you also get things like onscreenvolume control, again, very TV-like.Uh, heh.There's some channel selection stuff if youhave a TV tuner card.Look at this, there's a remote reference justto kind of show you what things are.But yeah, I don't have a lot of the thingsinstalled on here or like a capture card oranything to show that.But that's the idea behind the remote.It's neat, I guess, but man.You just never want to use it because thescreen's too small to really use it from a distance.And what's the point of using it up closewhen you've got a mouse and keyboard.Anyway! So it goes.The idea was sound,execution was Packard Bell.So look at all these things.Such as Spider-Man Cartoon Maker, oh yes!This right here is a legend among a certainsubset of weirdos.And it's well worth checking out and gettingsome of that prime, mid-90s Packard Bell experience.Oh yeah.Well, that’s gonna take a while!So the whole idea behind this is you make Spider-Mancartoons.And there's a lot of sounds for everything.Let's go his bedroom here, I think that'swhat this is.Somebody's bedroom.So let's put a flaming pumpkin Green Goblinthing or whatever.There we go.Uh ya got coloringbook pages.So yeah, if you want, you could just likeset up a whole coloring book thing,print it out.You can also just place down little, littlebits of things, color stuff.There we go. And you play it back.Yeah that’s the idea behind this, make yourown cartoonsand you kind of animate them somewhat.Wow, that was terrible.This mouse... hasn't been cooperating necessarilytoo well.I’ve cleaned it.I've replaced the ball even, but it's stillkind of iffy, but yeah.My goodness.And we have some preloaded ones here.Look at the animations!Stop fighting.Or you will miss the show!That's a good -- it's a great cartoon.Anyway, so that's the whole thing.You can make your own little animated segmentsand such.Another mainstay of the Packard Bell mid-90sexperiencehas got to be Journeyman Project Turbo.And it did come with that.So this is an update to the original JourneymanProject from, I think was it ‘92?The year is 2318.It's true.The location, the sky born metropolis knownas Caldoria.The earth is finally at peace after a longbloody battle against a few tyrants who soughttotal world domination.Daggum world tyrants.What a lovely day in the bio dome.It's a blue skies, I don't know if they'rereal, probably not.I just wanted to flush the future toilet.It's got a flanger effect applied, it's awesome.Report to the temporal security annex?Well, I'm just trying to get out of my room,sir.You got some futuremassage chairs.It’s actually like VR or something, I don'tremember.Something cool happens here though.Somebody’s laying into the Casio keyboard,that's what it’s doing.A hi-rez 4D environ, audio, visual.I knew it was some kind of a VR thing, it'smore like augmented reality room.Like imagine playing this as a kid.Or maybe you did play as a kid, but if Iwas a kid, 10 years old coming across thisI’d be like, whaaat?The future is now!Of course, something else that I alwayshave to try is just checking out the compatibilitywith games in general, but specifically DOSgames, especially when it comes with cards likethis Sound Galaxy that's in there right now.Cuz those have a tendency to not be the mostpredictable in how they work.So let's open up Duke 3D here.And yeah, it works!And it’s making use of the OPL3 chip.Let's rock!And yeah, I mean, in terms of compatibility with SoundBlaster it's pretty good.Yeah, piece of cake!Holy cow!So good, it makes me wanna die.Maybe not that good, because something elseI wanna show here.So this is Jill of the Jungle, it’s alwaysa good test because of the Sound Blaster implementation.Sometimes these later clones don't necessarilydo it justice.This is one of those cases.Music sounds great, I mean, it's -- it's anOPL3 chip, it's gonna sound good.But listen to the Sound Blaster sounds.It's not good!Augh!Ahhhh!Most tend to work just fine, especially ifit's something that's well programmed.I mean you know, the obligatory Planet X3,this is just using AdLib.So of course that sounds great.And it works great because this works on absolutelydaggum everything.And then you got something Xargon here, whichuh.The music sounds fine,but the sound?Like yeah, there's just no sound effects for those.No sound effects for shooting.But yet you get those kinds of little sounds.And that sound, I don't know.It's just inconsistent.Vourse it also came with some of the MicrosoftEntertainment Pack stuff.So we got SkiFree, of course.I mean, why not?You know, mainstays of the mid nineties.Of course, what am I doing using a real mousefor SkiFree?C’mon, this is the Corner PC with its remotecontrol multimedia nonsense.I’ve got a remote control to use.Oh man.Heh, there we go.Come on, turn!Ugh!Ohh.Yeah, might be a tad sluggish for gaming.Oh I went through the wrong finish line.Okay. You know what it would be perfect for though?And by that I mean not perfect at all.Doom!Okay.So the way I have this mapped is to mouse controls,which I don’t think this is gonna do anythingin the menus, so...Let's just -- okay. So it is set to mouse controls, so.Oh my goodness.I think each press movesDoomguy forward one pixel, oh my goodness!Okay.So you can sorta ramp it up.And that’s kinda how the mouse works inWindows as well.Nnughh!Well, can I shoot?I can shoot.Not very reliably.It’s even worse than I thoughtit would be!So in case anybody’s wondering if it’smy LED light, I’m gonna turn that off.It’s still just -- just as unresponsive.Like, it’s just not great.It really does work best if you’re justmoving a pixel at a time.And then you kinda hold it -- well, that didwork.Alright!That’s Doom on a remote control.It’s terrible but I had to try it.Let’s move onto some of the other thingson here.Let’s see what MIDI orchestrator is.Just like a straight up MIDI mixer.Nice.Man, I can play with these things all day.Let’s go ahead and make use of that 3dfxcard because it does have 3dfx Voodoo 1.And I've actually gone ahead and already installedTomb Raider 1 for DOS with the 3dfx patch.I love the way that DOS4GW faded out.And look at that!OG 3dfx logo.Oh yeah.3D accelerated menu, man.Oh yeah, there we go.I got some glare going on, but anyway.Uh-heh!Compared to how this looked in software modeand on consoles and whatnot, I remember beingmighty impressed.I mean it’s still impressive compared tonon-3dfx acceleration.All right, gonna be some things to shoot heresoon.Bats!Alrighty.It is a tad dark, might need to turn up thegamma and brightness controls in the -- actuallydo that in the Windows control panel for 3dfx.Cause yeah, it can be a little dark.This is definitely a little dark, especiallywith the glare going on with this screen,augh.So it goes, I’m playing this in the morning.Still though.3dfx.It's a great choice for this computer becauseotherwise yeah, that one megabyte little chipsetthat's in there for the Cirrus Logic videois, it's not great.But combined with this, I mean, it's awesome.However, that sweet spot really is like 1995,1997.So when you start pushing it just a littleto games from 1999 or so,like Unreal Tournament here?Then you start to see some of the limitationsof this particular hardware.And keep in mind, this is a fair bit upgraded.64 megs of RAM, 200 megahertz CPU, Voodoocard.So we're going to be running a 640x480, 16-bit,medium.Okay.Here we go.Ooh man, well.Hey, it's playable right?\"First blood!\"We got first blood!Oh dear.It’s tryin’ real hard.Oof.There we go.Thank goodness for explosive ammo mutators.Aaoough!So yeah, like I said.You start running into the limitations realfast.If you go beyond like 1997, ‘98 or so.It just ain't made for that!Even with all the upgrades that are in here.So yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say thatis about it for this video on the PackardBell Corner PC.Just wanted to let you know what it's allabout, beyond the aesthetic.And really beyond that, there's not a lotgoing on.It's just a Packard Bell from the mid ninetieswith a crazy case design that is a littlebit confusing, when you think about it.I just -- I really wish that it had like aflat front and, you know, was angled on the back.It probably wouldn't look as cool, but itwould actually achieve the whole“space saving” idea.You still have the cables to contend withof course, but they could have done somethingsmart about that too.Like tucking the cables, like in a cut-outunderneath or something.There's things that you can do!To make it work, but they didn't do it.They just took a case, cut a corner out ofit and stuck the drives on the sideand called it a day.I mean, it's cool.I love the fact that it is so weird-lookingand is thoroughly unique in the world of casedesigns.Sure, you can get weird cases that are just*cases,* but in terms of pre-made computersthis one's pretty unique.So once again, thanks to Billy for hookingme up with this, letting me borrow it fora while so we could do this video.And yeah, lemme know if somehow you had oneof these back in the day,what was your experience with it?Or if you had any other Packard Bell Multimediasystems from the mid-90s,let's talk Packard Bell in the comments.Yeah, that's it for this!I hope that you enjoyed watching.Stick around for other videos if you'd like.I do a bunch of videos on computer-y topicseach week and that's it!As always, thank you very much for watching.\n"