Ya same here, I don't think anyone here owns one or has photos of one. I was able to find a tiny tiny 100 x 100 pic on the wayback site but that don't help anyone.

For what it is worth, swaaye I agree totally with you, IGPs are fine and good for a lot more then basic computer usage!

fronzel wrote:

i wanna see a pic of that legendary kmart blue light pc. It must have strong magic powers to justify the interest in it.

My guess would be that the KMart shoppers who owned these computers probably didn't appreciate them enough to photograph them. 😀 Maybe they saved some bond fire photos of its death, however...

I remember the Blue Light PC. Back in 2001, the specs weren't exactly terrible. At it's price point, you couldn't reasonably expect the computer to stay fast and current for more than a year or so. Those things back then I think are akin to the glut of sub-$200 laptops we have on the market now. They'll do the job for long enough to save up another few hundred to spend on a bottom shelf machine.

I think you should set up a XP / 64MB or 98SE / 32MB box and try that out. For the proper experience you'll also need a circa 2000 5400RPM HDD (to slow down all the disk swapping that will be happening immediately). 😀 The cheapest netbook with 1GB RAM is a multitasking powerhouse by comparison.

I imagine they started using Intel 810 when it came out and gave away some of that 64MB RAM to the IGP too? Gag.

There's one on ebay right now!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/K-Mart-Blue-Light-Vin … #ht_9569wt_1163

Awesome thanks for letting me just what I was looking for detail photos. Sadly the price is way to high for just the tower. I emailed and asked for more photos of the inside!

sliderider wrote:

There's one on ebay right now!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/K-Mart-Blue-Light-Vin … #ht_9569wt_1163

The seller says "make offer?" so maybe if it doesn't sell he's gonna be willing to barter. Can sell parts you don't need to make up for the difference i guess.

Actually a bit disappointing. In my wild phantasies i thought it would come with some cool blue LEDs, loads of CCFLs painting an eerie blue light through some side windows or something like that. Personally i'm a bit disappointed as it doesnt seem to have any blue lights at all.

That is, without a doubt, the ugliest computer I've ever seen. Due to the unsightly nature of it, I don't think I'd accept it for free, let alone for $150 + shipping. 32 MB of RAM? Bonny Williams must have had a good time opening her digital camera software on that. The void warranty sticker hasn't been severed, so it is possible that no attempts were made to increase the quantity of RAM.

Considering that the AOL Free Trial icon is still on the desktop, it may be that A) Bonny didn't know how to delete desktop icons, B) Bonny didn't use the computer for very long before tossin' it, C) Thought she would be clever and sign up for the "free trial" on a monthly basis, or D) When plan C failed, stopped using the computer except for photo storage/printing.

I simply cannot get over the hideous outward appearance of that thing. This may be one of the few Kmart PC's left in tact, and if so, may belong in a museum, albiet, behind a curtain.

Whats neat is that it seems to come with a separate serial port as a PCI card if you look closely at the back of the computer. I wonder what the purpose of that is as the board obviously already has a serial port.

🤣 Yes it was pretty ugly, in fact back in the day when I bought it, the 1st thing I did was take about 1000-2000 grit sand paper and sand off that light bulb. So it has just a blue front, I think the keyboard and display had the same logo so I sanded it all off 😉

But it was cheap and did what I needed back then, and I also did not own it very long. I think a few months then I toke it out back and smashed it with a very large hammer like videos you see on you-tube now.

feipoa wrote:

That is, without a doubt, the ugliest computer I've ever seen. Due to the unsightly nature of it, I don't think I'd accept it for free, let alone for $150 + shipping. 32 MB of RAM? ............

feipoa wrote:

That is, without a doubt, the ugliest computer I've ever seen. Due to the unsightly nature of it, I don't think I'd accept it for free, let alone for $150 + shipping. 32 MB of RAM? Bonny Williams must have had a good time opening her digital camera software on that. The void warranty sticker hasn't been severed, so it is possible that no attempts were made to increase the quantity of RAM.

Considering that the AOL Free Trial icon is still on the desktop, it may be that A) Bonny didn't know how to delete desktop icons, B) Bonny didn't use the computer for very long before tossin' it, C) Thought she would be clever and sign up for the "free trial" on a monthly basis, or D) When plan C failed, stopped using the computer except for photo storage/printing.

I simply cannot get over the hideous outward appearance of that thing. This may be one of the few Kmart PC's left in tact, and if so, may belong in a museum, albiet, behind a curtain.

Is it uglier than this?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MEDION-MICKEY-MOUSE-D … d#ht_708wt_1163

And I'm pretty sure this same company also made a pink, Barbie-themed computer for girls.

Nope, I was wrong it's not pink.

fronzel wrote:

Whats neat is that it seems to come with a separate serial port as a PCI card if you look closely at the back of the computer. I wonder what the purpose of that is as the board obviously already has a serial port.

PCI expansion cards for RS-232 serial usually have at least 2 ports. I suspect that the slot cover you seen there with just the one serial port contains a cable that plugs into a COM header on the motherboard. But who know with this beauty queen, your guess is as good as mine. I want to see photos of the inside.

Here is a shot of the mobo it's a mircostar I think with a bunch of bad caps.

sliderider wrote:

Is it uglier than this?

Those are in a completely different class of ugly desktop computers; they are marketed for young children. This Kmart special is by far still the ugliest desktop marketed for the adult user.

coppercitymt wrote:

Here is a shot of the mobo it's a mircostar I think with a bunch of bad caps.

A socket 370 with only 3 PCI slots, no AGP, 2 DIMMS, and 2 riser slots layed out in series. What can you put in the second riser with that configuration? Or were there longer and shorter riser cards at the time, so they put on two riser ports (I forget the official port name, AMR is it?)?

Well, now that the warranty is void, you just as well deck it out with more RAM, a better graphics card, sound card, and a PCI ATA card of some sort.

I don't even see any of those double conductor ATA cables, so could that hard drive be running at DMA33, or worse, PIO-4?

I wonder who made the motherboard? Any brand names on there? LG perhaps?

Upgrading the hardware will ruin its special original authenticity. 32MB is enough for some DOS gaming and Windows 95! 🤣

The case looks like a slightly color-tweaked off-the-shelf model to me.

The board is a Microstar MS-6178. Is it stable with all of those bad caps? BTW, the slot next to the AMR slot is for a proprietary MSI TV output card.

swaaye wrote:

Upgrading the hardware will ruin its special original authenticity. 32MB is enough for some DOS gaming and Windows 95! 🤣

The case looks like a slightly color-tweaked off-the-shelf model to me.

The board is a Microstar MS-6178. Is it stable with all of those bad caps? BTW, the slot next to the AMR slot is for a proprietary MSI TV output card.

LoL, works but barely runs 95 let alone 98se. Good for DoS 😵

Actually, during Win95's time, 32MB was luxury. I had 8MB, which was usable but definitely on the edge.

Of course as time went by the applications became ever more RAM hungry. Gotta love how today we have web browsers that can use a gig of RAM.

swaaye wrote:

Actually, during Win95's time, 32MB was luxury. I had 8MB, which was usable but definitely on the edge.

Of course as time went by the applications became ever more RAM hungry. Gotta love how today we have web browsers that can use a gig of RAM.

Or if they are poorly designed, they will continue to consume RAM until there is none left and the computer comes to a virtual stop. That's why I don't use Firefox anymore. It's always sucking up all of my RAM and CPU cycles and pretty much freezes after a few hours.

swaaye wrote:

Actually, during Win95's time, 32MB was luxury. I had 8MB, which was usable but definitely on the edge.

Of course as time went by the applications became ever more RAM hungry. Gotta love how today we have web browsers that can use a gig of RAM.

Yea now days almost everything sucks up every last KB of ram and a dead shame that one has to have at least 8gb just to get by without things getting dicey. At least Opera isn't to bad and runs on my p55c rig even though it only has 256mb. Yes I once had a compaq with win 95 and only 8mb ram my self but the drive kicked the bucket. Still got the cpu from it though a es 75mhz p1.