I've got a packard-bell keyboard and mouse. That's it in terms of PB stuff.

Honestly I don't think PBs are really that interesting other than some of the ones that have cool cases and the unreliability of PB hardware in general.

Honestly I'm beginning to think the unreliability is a bit of a myth, every Packard Bell I've come across has only needed minimal work if any. I mean sure it was quirky hardware that often acted a little funky but Packard Bell certainly wasn't the only one doing weird things at the time. And yes I know I've heard a million times from people that "I was a tech back in the day and I fixed these more than any other machines". That may be, but they also sold a lot of machines so it might be just due to sheer volume imo. I've not run into a single one that needed anything more complicated than a new HDD or a new PSU and most of them worked perfectly after sitting for many years unused. I myself had a Packard Bell tower that lasted in daily use until 2008 when I was an idiot teen and threw it out cause I bought a "new" Pentium 4 IBM. Ugh still regret that. 🤣

No longer have a packard bell machine but here's one I used to have a few months ago

http://imgur.com/a/cnpQE

Very nice oeuvre! Too bad you didn't keep it, did you sell it?

I still have this Club 2600 RW running strong after about 17 years.
The weak point was the integrated video card (Intel 810 chipset). The lady in the shop where we bought it told me it has "3D effects" which I interpreted as it includes a 3Dfx Voodoo 3 which was reasonable at the time.
I didn't really see the specs in advance as my parents bought it for me.

However it was quite a disappointment games were only playable at 640x480 low detail. The board lacked an AGP slot but I could have added a PCI graphics card but didn't have the money at the time.

Specifications:
Case
Type Squarius II, micro-ATX
Slots (total / Available) 4 / 2
Slots PCI 3 / 2
Slot MR 1 / 0
USB Ports 2 (1 Back / 1 Side)

Processor
Intel Celeron 600 MHz Socket
Type Socket 370
Chipset Intel i810

RAM
Size 64 MB upgradable to 512 MB. Dynamically shared with integrated Video Card
Type SDRAM 100 MHz

STORAGE
Hard Drive Quantum Fireball Hard drive 15 GB, Ultra DMA-66
Floppy Disk Reader 3 ½ " 1,44 MB
DVD-Rom Reader 16x
CD-ROM Reader 32x

SOUND
Integrated 16-bits sound card Sigmatel AC'97 Codec

VIDEO
Video Card Intel i810 VRAM DVMT (Dynamically allocated)

COMMUNICATION
Modem Data / Fax / Conexant 56 Kbps, V90

Nice! I had one of the similar ones a while back but the PSU exploded and since the American versions lack the Face logo I just tossed it. 🤣

Year: 1998
CPU: Celeron of some sort

Don't remember much else about it unfortunately.

and when I mean the PSU exploded I literally mean it caught fire. 🤣

Almost brand new (100-120 hours). Had to replace a few caps on the mainboard, changed the Radeon VE (7000) to an FX5700 and upgraded the RAM to 512MB PC133 SDRAM. The CPU is an Athlon 1100, Thunderbird if I'm not mistaken.
Still uns on the original Windows ME install from 2001.

Holy crap! I'm totally jealous! 🤣 I wish they hadn't stopped selling them over here. I'd kill to have a Pentium II or better Packard Bell.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Nice! I had one of the similar ones a while back but the PSU exploded and since the American versions lack the Face logo I just […]
Show full quote

Nice! I had one of the similar ones a while back but the PSU exploded and since the American versions lack the Face logo I just tossed it. 🤣

Year: 1998
CPU: Celeron of some sort

Don't remember much else about it unfortunately.

and when I mean the PSU exploded I literally mean it caught fire. 🤣

I remember these cases. I thought they were kinda terrible but I really liked the motherboards.

Did you toss the motherboard?
I actually once salvaged a MS-6159 out of a Packard Bell tower which had a PSU that according to its (now previous) owners also caught fire. They basically told me in such a way that it was a goner, it was toast and it was old and dead. The PSU was a mess I remember, didn't even bother to open it up I think, most likely tossed it along with the filthy case.

The MS-6159 that came out of that tower case (for some reason a webpage showed a desktop case but mine was definitely from a tower case...or my memory must be corrupt but I never take desktops anyway) turned out to still be alive though, but the board has always had a weird POST where it needed a long time before continuing to post and work flawlessly for a number of years. It was my Celeron 400 rig and that motherboard was the center of it.
Your s7 SiS board looks like another one that I used in a build (model number was 850 or something, but with the SiS 5598 chipset and 4 SIMM slots, I also have a version with 2x DIMM slots), but I guess you tested the board and then tossed all of it? Or do you still have the board?

No I tossed the whole thing months back unfortunately. Sort of wish I hadn't but it was kinda junky after all and I mainly just collect the face logo Packard Bell machines.

Nothing special mine. This was a PC repair job I was asked to do, but the owner couldn't afford to buy a new PSU and so essentially discarded the whole PC as a lost cause. 😲

It was used for sometime as a bedroom PC, but now sits gathering dust mostly and as you can see from the picture it needs a bit of cleaning.

It's most recent usage was as my sole Hackintosh and used for early-mid 2000s Mac OS X gaming.

Spec:

Packard Bell iSTART 2380
Biostar MCP6PB M2+ Socket AM2+ Motherboard
AMD Sempron 3500+ @ 2.0GHz (Overclocked to 2.7GHz)
2GB PC2-6400 DDR2 RAM (Underclocked to 533MHz)
200GB SATA HDD
Nvidia GeForce 6150 SE 128MB Onboard Graphics
Nvidia GeForce 7300 LE 128MB PCIe Graphics
Onboard Sound
Onboard Ethernet
1x CD/DVD Re-Writer

OS: Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Not an amazing spec and I realise I could easily upgrade the CPU, but it is presently able to outperform my PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0GHz in many areas - so much so that I actually prefer this Hackintosh for OS X gaming. 🤣

Nice! Almost bought one of the iextreme ones off ebay not too long ago, but changed my mind on it. Some of the Core 2 Duo era ones are quite cool looking. 😁

King_Corduroy wrote:

Very nice oeuvre! Too bad you didn't keep it, did you sell it?

Thanks! I did sell it, even with shipping made a $100 profit.

oeuvre wrote:

King_Corduroy wrote:

Very nice oeuvre! Too bad you didn't keep it, did you sell it?

Thanks! I did sell it, even with shipping made a $100 profit.

Ah good, I was hoping you'd say that and not that it got scrapped 🤣

King_Corduroy wrote:

Nice! I had one of the similar ones a while back but the PSU exploded and since the American versions lack the Face logo I just […]
Show full quote

Nice! I had one of the similar ones a while back but the PSU exploded and since the American versions lack the Face logo I just tossed it. 🤣

Year: 1998
CPU: Celeron of some sort

Don't remember much else about it unfortunately.

and when I mean the PSU exploded I literally mean it caught fire. 🤣

The motherboard seems to be a socket 7 one.

It was, super socket 7. The CPU seemed to be glued in too which is a little odd. I'm probably thinking of Cyrix not celeron. 🤣

King_Corduroy wrote:

It was, super socket 7. The CPU seemed to be glued in too which is a little odd. I'm probably thinking of Cyrix not celeron. 🤣

Glued in?? That's weird 🤣, but sometimes those heatsinks get stuck really good by cooked TIM, some of the print on top of the heatspreader may even come off along with the TIM 😵
Mine came with a Cyrix MII-300 (233MHz actual speed).
Your board is a Socket 7 btw, not a Super Socket 7...or at least it was 🤣

Nice machines guys! My family's first PC was a Packard Bell Legend 20CD. I've never seen that exact model anywhere, but if I ever do it'll be hard to resist. It was a 486 DX2-66, with 4 megs of ram and a 420MB hard drive.

Keep the posts coming!

Hi everyone.

My first post. Couldn't find an 'introduce yourself' bit on the forum, and I couldn't resist posting to this thread 😀

Admittedly, I don't own any retro/vintage hardware, but do take a keen interest, and have been following this forum for some time for general information and reading.

As for this thread, my first PC was a Packard Bell. I'm based in Scotland, so we never got the 'Legend' branding. Instead mine came under the name "Executive Multimedia" (but was otherwise identical looking to the USA Legend systems). It was a Pentium 75MHz, 8MB RAM, 850MB HD. In amongst the massive amount of software those old Packard Bells use to come with, we got the game Descent, which I still play (and Descent II) on DOS Box to this day. I sadly don't have this machine anymore, and massively regret ever having got rid of it - it still worked perfectly the day we got rid of it 6 years later.

I do however own a newer Packard Bell which I use as my daily driver, and I thought would be fun to share to show how things have changed.

General Info:
Model: iMedia S3810
Year: 2010 (just about to turn 7 years old)
Originals Specs: i3-550 3.2GHz, 3GB DDR3 RAM, integrated i3 graphics, 500GB HD, Windows 7.
Current Specs: i3-550 3.2GHz, 8GB DDR3 RAM, nVidia GT 730 Zotac (passive cooling), 128GB SSD + original 500GB HD, Windows 10.

##EDIT: SKIP ON 4 POSTS FOR THE PICTURES - DAMN YOU PHOTOBUCKET!##

I'll add this, these 1st gen Intel i3's really are cracking wee processors!