HP Internet Advisor

It’s time to look at another computer that I find fascinating and been wanting to talk about, and now’s the time to do so, because arbitrary reasons. This is the Hewlett-Packard J2301B Wide Area Network Internet Adviser. With an E4594A-T1 telco under cradle. What even is this?

Well, It is the most complicated and bulletproof laptop I own. Although calling it a laptop is a bit misleading; It weighs 20 pounds! (9 kilograms) You do not want this thing on your lap, and there’s no practical reason to own this nowadays;

it’s just enjoyable overkill. I just like having silly machines like this and as soon as I saw it on eBay some years back, I had to have one, and... well, this is the one I picked out!

My machine was manufactured by HP in 1998, but the division responsible for it is now known as Key sight, which itself is a spin-off of a spin-off of HP known as Agilent. And you’ll see a lot of internet advisor machines under the Agilent brand. They did really well for themselves too!

In fact, in November 18th, 1999, their IPO was the largest in Silicon Valley history up to then, at 2.1 billion dollars!

So yeah, they did really well with the equipment like this. And considering the cost, I mean I guess that makes sense. It was $20 000 for this in 1998, down to $13 500 for the later C model in 1999. I have no clue what the T1 under cradle underneath costs. This module is just probably several thousand more dollars at least. Well, what does all of this even do, though, is the question!

Well it is a 486-based computer so it runs Windows 95 and games and DOS, and, you know whatever. It’s just a 90s computer at heart. But it’s got a bunch of specialty hardware and equipment that the idea is that it non-intrusively monitors and decodes WAN and LAN protocols by capturing packets. Basically, the internet advisor advises technicians about the internet!

And its specialized using various under cradles, like the T1 module in this case. Take that off, swap it out for other things. Whatever you needed. This was leased out to various telcos and other companies that needed this kind of stuff.

It was never really made for consumers, but they ended up flooding the consumer market anyway after they were decommissioned sometime in the mid- to late-2000s.

The more predictable consumer-level hardware is the 486 DX4 100 MHz CPU, 16 MB of RAM, 1.3 GB hard drive, SVGA graphics, 1.44 MB 3½″ floppy drive and a PCMCIA slot. Yeah, nothing terribly groundbreaking, especially for the late 90s. It’s just a million and a half other ports and DIP switches and all these things...I don’t know what they do, but they look great. Makes me feel like I’m doing something important. Speaking of being relatively clueless as to what some of this crap does, I won’t pretend to know what all this software does.

There’s a lot of it that was preloaded on here for doing all kinds of diagnostic doohickeys, but I don’t know. This is completely out of my realm of expertise, so maybe someone that actually worked on these things back in the day could enlighten me in the comments because I am curious beyond what I can already find on Google and Wikipedia.

It also has a 10½″ TFT LCD, which is pretty small for how big the rest of the machine is. And the keyboard itself has a rather cramped layout too, with a really mushy set of keys. I’m not very much a fan of this. And oddly enough, since this was designed for Windows 95 and 98, there’s no Windows keys on here at all. I guess they just didn’t need them, but I don’t know. Kind of strange. Another neat feature is that it’s so big, they just stuff the whole power supply inside the computer. It uses a standard three-pronged PC power cable. “I don’t see any touchpads or anything”, but yes there is!

It has an amazing mouse, look at this!

You press this little mouse square here, and it pops right out!

HP Internet Advisor

Appropriately enough, this is called the HP pop-out mouse, which was also used in their HP Omni book series of computers. It’s a really cool industrial design just all over, and that’s really why I got this. I just like the way it looks:

There’s a lot of metal everywhere, nothing gets in the way, there is no plastic crap hiding things. In fact, when I got this, I replaced the backlight bulb for the LCD because it was really dark. But, oddly enough, that didn’t seem to help. It’s still a really dark screen, so I end up using an external monitor whenever I want to do anything on here beyond a few minutes.

And there’s stuff that I do want to do on here! I mean, it’s got a 100 MHz DX4. Sadly, it does not have any sound card. I could install one via PCMCIA, although I don’t have one of those. It does have a PC speaker that is amusingly

shrill, sharp-sounding. Listen to this!

Anyhow, overall the HP Internet Advisor is just stupid fun to me. Its heavy, its loud and it’s just delightful. There’s all sorts of little features that I just dig, like when you turn it on,

It lights up like a Christmas tree!

Look at all these lights!

They just keep flashing and animating all over the place!

This stuff doesn’t really do anything in my case, I’m not using all of the telco components, but here it is anyway, and I appreciate it. Playing games on a machine that was $20 000 at one point is completely ridiculous, and that’s why I like it.

I mean, it’s like taking a steamroller to a drive through!

Its huge, and expensive, and way more for the task at hand, but that’s what makes these kinds of things so awesomely enjoyable.

And I hope you at least found this somewhat as enjoyable to watch

as I’ve enjoyed messing with it!

And if you enjoyed this quick look at a thing of computers,

And as always, thank you very much for watching.

IBM 8516 Touchscreen CRT Monitor

Comments

Apple Keyboard Evolution 1983-2015

I don’t have a Lisa Keyboard, and they’re quite rare and expensive. But here’s what it looked like, it was quite large and clunky. Although not really any wider than a modern Apple keyboard . So, this is the original Macintosh keyboard. It’s kind of tall, and notice that it has no arrow keys, no function keys and no number pad. Apparently, Steve Jobs believed that everybody would use the mouse for everything, except typing. It uses an RJ-11 type connector, similar to a phone cord. The mouse actually had its own separate connector, and did not connect to the keyboard at all. This is about as basic as it gets. I can plug my telephone into it, for some reason. So, one thing I noticed about this is that there are no indicators on where to put your fingers. I’ve never heard a keyboard echo before. It’s not real springy or anything. It does have… …metallic kind of noise to it. But, DAVID: This is the Apple Desktop Bus keyboard. As the name suggests, this was the first keyboard to use the new

The AdLib Gold Experience

Greetings folks, and today on LGR I am proud to present the fabled AdLib Gold 1000 Stereo Sound Adapter. An IBM PC-compatible sound card which, after multiple delays, launched at a suggested price of $299 in the US sometime in late 1992. More or less, its release is a bit complicated but we’ll get to that. For now lemme just go ahead and say how much I’m freak in’ out with excitement recording this footage. Cuz dude, seeing an AdLib Gold in person, still in the box, unused? Among retro PC enthusiasts, that’s like finding a golden unicorn that craps diamonds, it’s just not a thing. Yet here it is, looking’ spiffy! And it’s all thanks to Trixter, aka Jim Leonard of The Old-school PC, Check out his YouTube channel if you’re into this kind of thing too, the man’s a fountain of knowledge and some of the items in his collection are literally one of a kind. Not the least of which being this pristine AdLib Gold 1000, a card that I’ve been wondering about ever since I was eight years old lookin

IBM 8516 Touchscreen CRT Monitor

Greetings and welcome to LGR Oddware where were taking a look at hardware and software that is odd, forgotten, and obsolete! And today it is the IBM 8516 CRT touchscreen from the beginning of the 1990s. And yeah you can touch and draw and do all kinds of things that you would normally do with a mouse or light pen or whatever else -- just with your fingers! And so let’s see what this thing is and what it can do. All right so this is the IBM PS/2 Model 8516 13-inch CRT touchscreen monitor first introduced in June of 1991 for a suggested retail price of $1695 US dollars, holy crap. That would be almost $3,100 at the time of this recording, not a cheap price for a 13-inch VGA monitor back then. It was built by IBM to be compatible with PCs running DOS, Windows 3 -- and IBM OS/2 of course, because they were still pushing it rather hard when this came out. And as advanced and awesome as it was for its time it was not the first of its kind as far as touchscreen CRTs, not by a long shot. For

The Advantech I.Q. Unlimited with BASIC and a Z80 CPU.

Hello, and welcome back to the 8-Bit Guy. In this episode, I want to show you this bizarre little computer known as the IQ Unlimited by Advantech. Now, you might be wondering “What is this company Advantech?” Well, if you turn the computer over you’ll see it was actually produced by Video Technology Electronics, otherwise known as V-Tech.” Yes, that’s the same V-Tech that has produced tons of cordless telephones, kids learning computers, baby monitors, and a variety of other things. They are also the ones that built the Laser 128, which was an Apple II clone, along with the matching Laser XT which was a PC clone. They also produced the laser line of portable computers, and even a series of proprietary desktop computers that carried the laser brand name. So, needless to say V-Tech is no stranger to making computers. But, I think this may be the strangest one they ever made. The front of the box claims it to be complete, powerful, simple, and affordable. They are also those that built th

Words of Krom Ngoy

Words of Kram Ngoy This Brahma song is translated to tell Khmer men and women To be mindful should be diligent. Do not be lazy, do not be too stupid, try to learn numbers, learn the alphabet Learn all the virtues, supernatural wisdom combined with ideas. Born to see through, even from afar Really good at thinking about everything. Fools do not wake up like blind people on both sides There is no image of a cheap sinner born ignorant. The human race, though high and low, descended from the Pao clan. Evil, good, black and white, cut off descendants like ancestors. Ignorant people are not venerated as a religion The monks know the Dharma, the students study hard. The ignorant breed is not very wise, the crooked breed is not very gentle Straight seed until the true seed does not disappear. Innocent parents do not want their children to be ignorant Cursing for the children to know. Ignorant father sees his son never angry

The best gaming laptop for MS-DOS games

The other day, I used to be reading this old Computes Gazette magazine from 1983. and that I saw this card you'll send off for more information. happen if I filled it out and sent it off? Well, stick around till the top and I'll show you the result. Most of the time, stepping into Retro Gaming are often quite challenge. Even the old Atari 2600 her, for instance, it are often very challenging to seek out a contemporary TV or monitor that you simply. On the brilliant side, the games are pretty easy to affect. All you've got to try to to is locate them online, or thrift shop, or whatever and you purchase the sport, and you recognize, But, things get even harder once you start watching old computers. For instance, the Commodore 64 uses a disk format that's essentially foreign today. It's no means to attach to the web, and albeit you've got a pile of blank disks, getting the games copied over to them from the web could be a nightmare. Now, if you fast forward just a

Strangest Computer Designs of the '80s

OMG Mr. LGR!!! You made my day showing the Seiko computer watch series. I collect these things and Have almost the entire lineup up including the weird UC-2200. The only one I'm missing is the "wrist mac" which was essentially a Seiko RC4400 but marketed and sold for Apple. It could be considered the first apple watch! That design for the Elwro-800 actually seems pretty good and I wish I had it for the C64 back in the day. That wire holder could have been used for holding a computer magazine with a user made program which they always had in the magazines back in the day. Even now it would be good for data input from a written copy, or even writers who like to get their pre-writing done on paper. They were the machines we were taught Turing language on -- and compiling even a tiny Turing program on them was unbelievably slow. I really liked the GUI on them though, but we never really used the GUI much; all the programming we did was in a text file run through a compiler

Will Kill Your Computer

Hey guys, this is Austin, and this is the USB Killer. Now, it might not look like much, however this will straight up kill your computer. So, this is a device that’s used to test hardware, so while it looks like an ordinary USB device, instead, there’s a series of capacitors inside. So, if you plug it into a computer, it will charge those capacitors up, and once they’re full it turns around and releases all of that power at 240 volts straight back into the computer, in theory killing it. It doesn’t take much to be able to pop this thing open. Now, before we proceed: Do not try this at home. Seriously. Not only is it very possible for this thing to kill electronics, but it’s also. And by being careful, I mean don’t try this at home. We have an Asus Chrome book. Now, USB Killer claims that this is going to work on around 95 percent of computers, and the reason for that is that while some computers have properly capped USB ports, most have completely unprotected ports, which means that i

Lost Colony of Roanoke

The broken anchor is pretty sketch. Sounds like the colony might have been wiped out and Smith not wanting to return to England and say "my bad they all died" was able to save face by saying "We have proof they are safe and moved location. Near the end of the 16th century, a man by the name of John White embarked on a transatlantic voyage. His destination was the island of Roanoke along the southeastern coast of North America. On this island, White had established an English colony some three years before and he was now returning to resume his position as Governor. After a long and difficult journey, White finally reached the site of the colony only to find the more than one hundred men, women, and children had left behind had disappeared. Before White had a chance to conduct a more extensive search, the ship returned to England and in its wake, it left a mystery. Raleigh was soon thereafter knighted by Queen Elizabeth I and the new land was to be named Virginia in ho

BootSkin XP - A Boot Screen Customization Tool for Windows XP

Hello everybody and welcome back . We’re going to be taking a look at a pretty cool little piece of software for Windows XP, and there’s also a version for Windows Vista, called BootSkin. And this is a little bit of an older program. This was released, I want to say, somewhere in the mid-2000s. This is actually a piece of software that I used on a couple of my Windows XP , and even some my Windows Vista machines like over 10 years ago. It’s been a while since I’ve used this piece of software. But what this software allows you to do is, as you can probably tell by the name, it allows you to skin and customize your Windows boot screen, add a little bit more personality to your system and make your boot screen look more unique so, you know it’s gonna be much different than everybody else’s which just says Windows XP when it boots up. And this is made by a company called StarDock and I’ve used a couple of different StarDock programs before there’s another one of my favorite programs from

168 168 Never Quit

Search This Blog

Ferry Bring Peoples From Side To Side On Mekong River Of Cambodia