Installing Windows 1.0 on an '80s Zenith Portable PC!

Zenith is one of the most interesting brands out there. They make the weirdest things ever. (My dad's toyota camry had some in headrest screens made by them)

This is less of a computer than a $5 microcontroller 😭

Loved this video!

I have been binge watching Michael's videos. I'm pretty sure I'll hear "Hello everybody and welcome back to another video." in my dreams.

It's so fascinating to me that this whole floppy disk ritual is just what you had to do to install Windows. This whole era of home compiters fascinates me.

In India, I have seen a lot of Zenith monitors and systems! Surfing through Wikipedia made me know that it is owned by LG!

Liked the Compaq "luggable" better at the time, and they both blew my orginal Osborne 1 away (And CP/M was going the way of the Dodo at the time). Zenith made a couple cool desktops too. Don't really miss 5 1/4 inch disks much. Sigh, the good old days. Great video!

You should tag this with the hash tag DOScember. Some other cool MS-DOS videos right now. I think I used a luggable from HP in the 80s...I recall the screen was tiny.

That CRT blooms just like my Hyperion did when I was using it. After a minute or two, it would nicely stabilize. AFAIK it's in New Jersey now, since at least 2018.

Save it to the USB drive....oh, wait....lol. I have VMs of all versions of Windows. Yes, 1.0, a gloried file manager (yea, it was easier than doing stuff in DOS). I never setup 1.0, I have 3.1 and higher. Wow what a mess, I know it took forever to install Office 4.3 an early version that had like 24 disks, it took forever but, installing 1.0 wow.

Yep, no hard drives, and only working over floppy drives, compared to what we deal with today, primitive for sure...

When I got into computers, it was Windows 3.1 at the time and lived with this, till I got Windows 95 build 224 (someone from across the country sent me disks), and I loved it... and used it every day.

I wonder if this system has a slight power supply issue as the fact the display keeping shrinking for a split second was sad to see

You need a good seagate 20mb MFM or RLL drive in this beast to install. That would make this a pretty cool machine.

Man, although I have a Windows 95 compooter, I really want to do some productivity work on an older Windows computer with a monitor like that. IDK, the amber/green color of these old monitors really feels nostalgic.

Mmm, that amber CRT is soo nice!

I have an orange phosphor portable computer from I think IBM sitting at home somewhere. I know it works because I inherited it from my dad (who used to work for IBM) when he passed and he showed me it working a few times. I don't really have any good ideas for what to do with something quite that old, though. I also don't at the moment have anything that can write 5.25".

Will you make a video installing it on a hard drive?

Could you update the programs already pre installed?

I really wanna get my hands on a luggable like this someday.

What if DOOM ran on the Zenith?

That one clipping was for a store just outside of Pittsburgh. There was a Hooters, a Chinese Restaurant, and a couple of tech shops in a small plaza at that address. They all are now abandoned.

challenge: install a full color LCD into it. good luck 🥰🥰🥰

So I have absolutely zero experience with this type of system, but would it be possible to swap out one of the 5.25” floppy drives for a hard disk drive and install on that?

Alt-F4 to close a window/app. Still works to this day.

You should put in a ISA Hard Disk Controller Card, and a HDD in it :)

Imagine installing Windows 11

why did people actually buy this???

hey Michael love your videos! BTW why don't you install KolibriOS on the zenith? keep up the good work!

Где как

Русский язык

It's quite incredible how ancient these look (both software and hardware) from today's world... and they're only about 40 years old. Development in the IT industry in these last few decades were pretty amazing.

Anyway, imagine having to spend a thousand bucks + software to have this user experience... some shitty clock, a basic calculator, and a program to write in plain text. And a game I could never understand the rules of... I had Reversi on my Siemens C35 phone, and couldn't really figure it out. And you had to constantly juggle these giant disks to do all this...

Portal moment

Very cool

$999 in 1986 is $2700 in 2023 adjusted for inflation.

FYI Alt+Spacebar works on modern versions of Windows too (because of course it does). It saved me many times when some Windows scaling or desktop window position restore bug put one of my windows outside of the screen. Just Alt+Spacebar, Move, arrow keys, Enter, badabing, badaboom. It's funny how little known it is, to the point where the default keybind of PowerToys Run (a Microsoft developed tool!) is Alt+Spacebar. I have to change it to Win+Spacebar every time, because I can change my keyboard layouts with Ctrl+Shift already...

Ahhh the beginning of bill's $347,967.45 per minute paycheck

so cool dude. I never thought that someone would actually install windows 1.0 today in a very old portable computer.👌👌

Merry Christmas everyone. 🌲🌲🌲

i want to install a floppy disk reader and cd/dvd reader to my msi gaming computer

OMG.. the activation key worked lol

There's always something about those amber monochrome screens that I find oddly soothing.

Oh that diskette jonglage...

wow

That really WAS convoluted! So glad so much has changed (improved) in almost 40 years!!

I love it!

Bro i thought that was the compact portable

i member playing reversi on thw pc engine version of legend of heros dragon slayer lol