Restoring a 1998 Packard Bell multimedia PC

There really is no rational reason to restore a late 90s NEC-manufactured Packard Bell computer. Which is exactly why I’m doing it. Join me in getting this unloved machine back to factory fresh condition!

LGR is one of the best and most entertaining technology channels on YouTube, and his latest video from today hits home particularly hard, since these kinds of crappy, low-budget late ’90s PCs defined my early teens. Nobody in my family, town, or school had Macs or other types of computers – it was all PC, as cheap as possible, fully embracing the race to the bottom which for many people still defines the PC today.

It’s good to see that there are people willing to preserve these otherwise forgettable machines for posterity. They may objectively suck, but they did make computing accessible to an incredibly wide audience, and they served an important role in the history of computing.

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