LGR - The Monorail All-In-One Windows 95 PC

True or false? You can get Mono from using the Monorail.

Gary Leigh

I need to look back at how the emachines of that year compared...

AlexPeaks

Yeah it's whole different history when we start taking about industry workstations and such. Still, very cool machine! Wonder how much it cost in '94, must have been a ton.

LGR

Not sure if it counts, but the Sun Voyager was an all-in-one released in 1994 and came with a 12 inch 1024x768 active matrix color LCD! Not really a "consumer desktop", but it can run NeXTSTEP, which makes it kind of like a really early iMac! https://imgur.com/a/fsbHc

Joseph Allen

True that! I really think we'll look back on this era of notches and cutouts and think "wow that was a clunky solution."

LGR

For sure you can't say this screen is bezel-less, but at least it does not have a notch. ;-)

Laurent

Love this type of video, it is always fascinating to look into the history of a machine and company. Good job in regards to your research. For me space is at a premium so I'm always interested in some of the more obscure all-in-one machines. PS That is one nasty screen. 🤮

John Lawson

Yes, the "previous owner's" porn collection... that you saved for "a friend" ;-) Just kidding. I love this type of old 90's computer stuff, and it's always cool to me to know what a computer was used for by its previous owner. Most of the old machines I own have a story behind them from the people I've bought them from.

Eric Siegel

The box should have a warning about that screen. "May cause nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and in rare cases death.". lol

pcwzrd13

Wow, back in 1997 or so I went to one of the many computer fairs and found a crate of these Monorail keyboards. Some were damaged but they were $6 each so I grabbed a few. I used one of them from 1997 up until about 2 years ago everyday. It traveled with me from job to job as well. I've never actually seen the Monorail computer it was supposed to be sold with. Very cool to finally see this. On that note, I still have a stock of Monorail keyboards sitting around.

I don't believe so. They certainly had ambitions to go international, but from what I read they only lasted long enough to see North American distribution.

LGR

Interesting machine but that screen really is horrible!

Luke Herbert

The tutorial rewind is genius, youtube should introduce that as an option.

Mono.. d'oh!

Dan Milner

That machine never saw Europe, sadly?

BastetFurry

I sold Monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook ... and by gum, it put them on the map!

OzRetrocomp

Seriously though! Would be great to upgrade it to an active matrix if I can ever find the right panel for it.

LGR

MVG? That was a good video, as always from him. And yeah it certainly traces its roots to displays from earlier on. Out of place for late 1996.

LGR

Would love to find one of those monsters. Especially the one advertised in the manual for the original Unreal.

LGR

Yeah I keep forgetting I have a subscription to several stock footage archives, hah

LGR

It's mentioned in the opening of the video: the Monorail released in November of 1996! The Model 133 that I have also predates the TAM, it's from January of '97.

LGR

“perhaps the very first all-in-one desktop PC with an integrated color LCD monitor“. Depending on when in 1997 it was released, the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh may have it beat. It was released March 14,1998 and had an active matrix LCD (long before the iMac G5 you mentioned). It also cost $7499, so it was definitely aimed at a different market than the monorail.

Will Herrmann

Also, it can play Age of Empires? SOLD!

Loving the new stock footage use.

Yuck. Passive matrix.

Headset Guy

My god. my eyes hurt just from trying to look at what you were doing on that thing. that's screen is impressively bad.

Western Canadian Guy

Hah - "wank bank"! ... Also -ewww that lcd is horrendous .. I could barely watch your gameplay clips .. Cool vid, Clint.. Never heard of this company before ... Next up you need to find an old Falcon Northwest PC

Evan B

As mentioned in the video, it's not intended to be user serviceable, so everything is crammed in there like a laptop and you have to tear a LOT down in order to see much inside. It's something I didn't wanna risk doing since this is one of the few units I've seen still functioning. That being said, I can at least show me taking the front fascia off. Will add that to the final video!

LGR

You know, I just watched a video on Game Boy graphics, and that screen takes me back to 1989... and not in a good way.

moosemaimer

Amazing piece of oddware/techtales mix! I was dying the entire video to take a look at the guts of the beast; any chance you'll make a video showing the entrails? Is there any mod or hack even possible on that thing? Many thanks for another lovely piece of content, Clint!

LJFox

I couldn't place the voice myself, but he sounded super familiar to me. Could be him!

LGR

Wait... is the voice of Monorail Moe Prince Adam from 80's He-Man? I swear thats the same voice.

Vaggumon

Thank you!

LGR

Even though Thrift is my favorit series, THIS is why I became a patreon! The research! Good job, man!

Grunk

Hope you appreciated the old Egghead ad I put in the video! It was amusing to look at their ads constantly lowering the price on these things as time went on.

LGR

For real though, every phone ever made looks slim next to this beast!

LGR

It was tough not to include the clip in the first few seconds of the video, ha. I anticipate Simpsons quotes taking up half the comments section.

LGR

There were a couple of those things that came through Egghead Software when I was in high school and one or two left when I went to work there after I graduated.

Linh Pham

Hey, you and me both! Hooray for motion sickness! And yeah, I'd happily include footage of the porn folders if YouTube wouldn't gut me for it, haha. Really is amusingly nostalgic seeing those old websites and tiny 120x80 videos again.

LGR

That active matrix really is terrible, even for '96! Heh, and yeah I suppose without context that's a bit strange. It's a quote from the HBO series Chernobyl. Folks in it repeatedly try to downplay the awfulness of things by comparing it to a chest x-ray, and since then it's become a bit of a meme.

LGR

Two things, I think I nearly got sick watching you play Quake and Keen 🤢 lol And maybe it's a bit taboo to mention but we're all human, especially if we grew up as teenagers in the 90s lol but there is a bit of nostalgia for...mature online content lol. The sneaking about and finding 90s lewd content online is nostalgic too for me lol. Back then you'd be made fun of for sure if caught but nowadays it seems so normal. Just a little blog thing that I thought of watching this video since I never see it mentioned and think we all know a feeling of nostalgia like this lol.

I remember these. I also was surprised they used a passive matrix screen. And you know, not all passive screens were equal. Some were much better than others. And I think the Monorail was particularly bad. I also thought the placement of the ports at the top of the computer was bizarre and irritating. I'm a bit confused on your typing in wordpad... How does one compare a keyboard to a chest X-ray?

The 8-Bit Guy

You'll be given cushy jobs! Its crazy how much of an impact The Simpsons has had on the human race. The moment the word "Monorail" entered my brain this song started playing in my head.

DOSdaze

It seems I'm not the only one with the Simpson's "Monorail" song in my head as soon as I saw the title.

Steve Lovelace

Not on your life, my Hindu friend

Monorail will forever be ingrained in my mind by the Simpsons. at least "Monorail" could at least maybe have some meaning because it was an all in one, despite its meaningless nature

mychemicalbromance

What's it called? Monorail.

neuroflare

And people think some phone bezels are big...

What about us braindead slobs?

Dave Hunt

But is there a chance the track would bend?

Frederic St-Georges

...one of the first...! Greetz from Turkey!