[jazzy music]
[drive buzzes]
[PC beeps]
Greetings, and welcome to an LGR thing
about the Cooler Master Musketeer 2
System Dynamics Detector, model LLC-U03.
And this was something that was sold
for a suggested retail
price of 50 U.S. dollars
when it first launched in 2004.
And it often sold for less than that
depending on where you bought it,
any kind of mail-in rebates and so on.
But yeah, what exactly is
a system dynamics detector?
Well, it detects your dynamical systems
in 5.25-inch drive bay form.
And by that I mean it has dual VU meters
for keeping track of your audio,
it's got some stereo volume sliders,
and a hard disk activity indicator
right in the middle there,
so that's what that is.
And it's also got seven flashing colors.
It's got LEDs with
seven-color backlighting,
and this was before the days
of highly configurable
RGB being all widespread,
so you know, you just get seven colors,
which is still six more
than a single-color device,
so that's something.
And it was available in two
different color schemes,
either silver or black.
I got the silver one here
because I want to pair this
with my LGR Megaluminum Monster build,
the Windows 98 PC with that
Lian Li case in nice silver.
Hopefully they'll be a
matching silver. We'll see.
But yeah, this was manufactured
by the Taipei, Taiwan-based
Cooler Master Company, Limited.
And they're rather well
known in PC building circles
for their offerings of
cooling fans, naturally,
as well as cases and power
supplies and peripherals and...
Yeah, Cooler Master.
They slap their logo on almost anything.
And I do have a question though:
It's like, why is this called
the Musketeer? [laughs]
I mean, you know,
I guess it has three dials,
so Three Musketeers, three meters?
Eh, maybe.
When it comes to these
Taiwanese computer products,
it's anyone's guess, honestly,
but you know, it was also one of three
different Cooler Master Musketeer models,
this one being the second, of course.
I don't know if that was intentional,
but there are three of 'em,
with the first one being
just the Musketeer,
and it was pretty similar-looking
except it also controlled fan speed,
monitored temperatures,
and it also had just one
single VU meter instead of two.
And then, after this,
was the rather
impressive-looking Musketeer III.
Now, this was an audio-only
5.25-inch drive bay thing,
and it had a horizontal VU meter
as well as a volume control,
but the standout feature was
the vacuum tube amplifier.
I'd love to find one of
these. Haven't so far.
But you know, anyway.
There were three Musketeer things
and I've got one of 'em here,
and I'm curious to see how it goes,
because just looking at
reviews from back in the day,
hardware coverage websites were giving it
an average score overall,
maybe a bit above average,
praising its LED lighting
and attractive design,
but weren't so keen on
the $50 asking price
and the mess of wires that
it required to get it set up,
and saying that the original
Musketeer was more useful.
As far as the customer response
when they got their
hands on the Musketeer 2,
it was generally favorable,
with the most common
complaints seeming to be
that a lot of the HD activity meters
weren't doing what they should,
either it was completely bad
or it was just all the way up
or all the way off or, yeah...
I'll be curious to see that.
But yeah, man. I don't know.
I am just always drawn to these
weird 5.25-inch bay things.
There were so many of them to
choose from in the mid-2000s,
as seen in this delightful
photo of a build
from a Tom's Hardware article in 2004.
They just stuck everything
that was on the market
at the time, pretty much,
in a Cooler Master Stacker case.
I'd kinda like to recreate
this at some point, but...
Yeah, you might also remember
the Thermaltake CircleFire
that I covered on LGR a while back.
It's a somewhat similar
idea to the Musketeer 2,
and in fact, that's how I
learned about the Musketeer 2,
was researching that.
But of course, that
had a built-in speaker.
This one doesn't, which
is absolutely fine by me,
considering how awful that speaker was.
Enough rambling though.
Let's get right to opening this,
because I was lucky to find
this sealed in the box.
These are not easy to come
across, especially complete.
Alrighty.
Oh.
Have a nice little assortment
of wires and things in here.
So we've got...
Okay. Wasn't expecting this.
[laughs] How does this work?
All right.
So apparently you get some
switches for the LEDs,
one in a 3.5-inch floppy
drive bay, it looks like,
and one goes around back as a PCI bracket.
That's interesting.
I was wondering how the switches worked.
I've got some more wires here.
I know there's some pass-throughs
for the hard disk
indicator and other things.
All right.
Mm, even more wires.
I see what they're talking about
in terms of the mess
of wires required, agh.
This is to be expected though.
This is just the audio
pass-through, very similar,
it looks like, to what the
Thermaltake CircleFire was.
Got some screws in there.
Some instructions.
This is another thing I
saw contemporary reviewers
kinda praising it for was
the in-depth instructions
relative to how simple
the device really is.
It looks like most of it
is other languages, but...
Still, you get eight
pages of stuff in English.
So, uh.
Yeah!
All right. And the device itself.
This is my first time
seeing it with my own eyes.
Mm.
I can smell it already.
That's got a... [inhales]
Smells of paint
and freshly-printed stickers. [laughs]
It's not a bad smell at all.
Anyway, yeah, here is the thing itself.
So we've got two VU meters right there
on the left and right side
for the decibel level of
your computer's audio.
Got some volume sliders.
And they do slide. They
don't feel cheap, really.
They feel pretty good.
And then we have the hard disk indicator
there in the middle,
which a lotta folks were saying
that it doesn't work, but I don't know.
I'm assuming it would just turn on
if it's just connecting to
the HD indicator LED thing,
but whatever, there's where that goes.
Standard Molex power.
Got the area for the
audio to go in and out.
Another HD LED, so that'll
go to the front of the case,
I'm assuming, and then here is the switch.
Yeah, pretty simple,
and very similar in
theory to the Thermaltake,
but it feels so much
better-constructed than that one was.
That one has all these cheap,
plastic, weird components
and the meters were dangling
around and stuff inside.
They do move in here, it looks like,
but not nearly as much, but we'll see.
Maybe, at least, if they
actually do indicate something
that is anything even close
to what's really going on,
that'll be 100 times better
than the Thermaltake CircleFire.
Yeah, let's go ahead and actually...
I wanna open it up really
quick just to see what's inside
before we get it installed in the case.
[screws rattling]
Oh, just voided the warranty.
Well, yeah.
There's not much going on there.
Not that I expected very
much, but there it is.
Do have a little potentiometer there
for adjusting something,
perhaps VU meter sensitivity.
Oh. So this is just for holding
the little volume sliders.
Huh.
And there the VU meters are just soldered
directly to the PCB with
little LEDs behind them,
little single LEDs.
Interesting, I wasn't sure
how they'd be handling
the whole multicolor aspect of it,
considering it's not a
fully-adjustable RGB thing, but...
[component-inspired chuckling
There it is, and each of the
meters do seem to be identical,
at least just looking this way,
and they just have different
faceplates behind them,
so I wonder if that means they're all
sensitive in the same way.
Maybe that's why people
were having problems
with hard disk activity indication.
Anyway, I'm gonna get this
put back together real quick.
All right.
Reassembled and ready to go.
Now let us connect up the
Cooler Master Musketeer 2
and see what happens in the Windows 98 PC.
[piano music fades]
Okay, let's just get this apart,
and let's start with the
back area of the case
and the little slots back there.
So it is a little more complex
in this particular sound card setup,
'cause I have two sound cards in here,
an AWE64 and an Aureal Vortex 2.
They're connected together for reasons
I've gone over in the
past, but it'll still work.
I just need to get a free slot here.
So this is gonna be where everything
sorta connects to each other, and
I've got these two 3.5-millimeter cables
that are just gonna go
between this back bracket
and the Musketeer 2 itself up front.
And this literally is just
acting as a pass-through
from one thing to another.
I'm just gonna stick that right there.
And that's that. Doesn't
need any power or anything.
It's just audio cables.
So the main thing is
we'll need one of these
going from one to the other.
So this is the output for
both of these sound cards
right here, 'cause I
have 'em hooked together.
And this is gonna go to the
input of the bracket here.
And that's that
as far as the rear portion
of the Musketeer 2,
that's all we need to do.
Now, there was also this
other little bracket piece,
if you wanna control the LEDs
from the back of the case.
I don't really know why
you'd wanna do that.
I guess if you just don't want
another button up front, it's cool.
But yeah, I'm not gonna
install this at all
because I wanna use the front bracket,
which will go into a
3.5-inch drive bay up front,
because you can't have too many buttons
on the front of a PC.
Right? The more buttons the better.
I love how easy this is to access.
This case is just awesome.
So yeah, it's just gonna go right here.
If I were to set this up permanently,
I probably would put the thing around back
just because sometimes I like
putting other things in here,
you know, Zip drives
or whatever, but eh...
Yeah, for now I'm gonna
put the front panel on.
All right, it's getting
bright in here. [laughs]
That's that.
So now do I put this
here or here? [laughs]
I don't know.
I guess I'm gonna put it
here because, you know,
I would have these two drives together,
but there's cable restrictions.
Hey.
And not a bad match in
terms of the silvers.
All right, it's in there,
I know you can't see much
'cause of all this junk in
the way, but so it goes.
And so the next thing we'll need
is this little cable that it came with.
Came with a few cables, but
we'll be using this one.
This plugs into the hard disk LED section
of the motherboard normally,
but since I don't actually have
the hard disk LED coming from there,
I've got a different thing,
a SCSI-2 SD system for this system.
[redundant chuckle] System system.
And it's got an LED output on that,
so I'm gonna plug that into there
and string that through, because yeah,
I don't have a traditional hard disk
installed on this computer.
It should still work just fine in theory,
because all it's looking for
is the LED signal. [laughs]
So we'll try it, right?
So this plugs into the HD
LED in on the Musketeer.
And then this wire right here,
this goes to the LED that's actually
on the front of the case,
so it's just sorta passing
that through the Musketeer.
And that's that.
Next up, we'll plug in
the little LED button
in the 3.5-inch drive bay.
Then go ahead and plug in power.
And then, finally, we just
have these audio cables
from the rear bracket to the Musketeer,
so VU in and VU out is
how they're labeled.
And that's that.
I believe it is all
hooked up as it should be.
Yeah, it's kind of a mess
inside, as you can see,
but you know, that's what you gotta do.
It's just passing a lot of things
through a lot of other things
and making sure that Musketeer
can see stuff from the system.
The system itself doesn't
really know that it's there.
It's just all passing through, really.
Yeah.
And get the case put back together,
turn it on, see what it does.
All right. Moment of truth.
Ooh.
[laughing] Okay.
That's quite the light show.
Is it supposed to...
It has settled on red.
Hmm.
[floppy drive buzzes]
There's a little bit of movement
there from the VU meters.
Hey!
Hard disk is starting to move a little.
Yeah! Look at that!
As it's loading Windows here,
anytime the normal HD LED lights up
it makes this one go too.
Aw, that's a neat little gimmick,
although I can see its
limitations already.
It's either on or off.
I mean, there's no other state, really,
for the hard disk LED
in a system like this.
[Windows 98 startup sound]
Hmm.
Yeah, those went pretty
much from 0 to 100 as well,
so kinda wondering what the
sensitivity is actually like,
considering how awful the
Thermaltake CircleFire was.
[Windows ding chimes]
Ooh dear. Yeah.
That maxes them out.
I can hear them clicking
up against the edge.
[Windows ding chiming]
So yeah, no movement, no
movement, no movement,
there's a little bit of
movement right there.
Aw, so yeah.
It's ultrasensitive after a certain point,
and then, in fact,
[Windows ding chiming]
there's a very clear delay
between the left and right.
Look at that.
The right's pretty close.
[Windows ding chiming]
The sliders work, at least.
[LGR chuckling]
Well.
Well, you know, this is, ah,
maybe not quite as garbage
as the Thermaltake one was,
but it's still...
[Windows ding chiming]
Man. Pretty wonky, unfortunately.
Look at that.
What is with the delay on that one?
What would even cause that? I'm not sure.
Well, we know what the first test is.
[funky midi music]
Aw, you know, it's a definite improvement
compared to the CircleFire,
[laughs] not that there was a whole lot
further down to go at that.
I'll run ScanDisk here just to
see some hard disk activity.
That's kinda cool, just as
more of a visual indicator
of things going on in your computer.
It's not particularly
useful. Like the gauges?
Who cares, right? 25,
50, 75, doesn't matter.
It's really just going all over the place
'cause the hard disk LED
is turning on and off
really rapidly. [laughs]
Whatever.
As for the LED situation, let's try that.
So button is down there, of course,
which I'm assuming will just, yeah,
cycle through the different colors.
[LGR laughs]
This honestly looked pretty
good, especially in person.
Okay, there was just the rapid
one that it had on startup.
Oof. That's a bit much.
But the solid colors, I mean,
they look solid, so to speak.
That one, yellow, is
not particularly great,
but all the rest of 'em, yeah.
They're looking awesome.
That's just white. [laughs]
Yeah, especially at an angle here,
I'm looking at it from the side,
and there's this kind of a lens
on the front of each one of these meters
that looks pretty awesome, actually.
It looks like a proper...
Like an aircraft gauge, almost.
Aesthetically it just looks good,
if you don't look to
closely, really. [laughs]
None of the meters are really
telling you anything useful.
It's just the fact that they bounce around
and it provides something to look at,
which really is kinda the
whole point of these things.
You know, you don't get much information.
It's just it looks neat.
So yeah, that is the
Cooler Master Musketeer 2.
It's a thing. [laughs]
I coulda seen myself enjoying
this back in the day.
Eh, you know.
I kind of enjoy it now,
despite its limitations
and generally iffiness.
But at the same time, I
can't help but appreciate
having analog VU meters-
- [Announcer] Sunny California
weather today as we prepare-
- [LRG] Dancing needles.
- For a very exciting race.
- [LGR] Yeah, just that
kind of a thing on anything
is appealing to me.
Audio equipment, you know, any A/V stuff.
Computers though, it's a novelty,
and I appreciate it.
However, would I have wanted
to pay $50 for it back in 2004?
Absolutely not.
I would've been pretty disappointed
if I had done so,
'cause yeah, this is, eh,
not really a $50 product.
Maybe 25 or something.
But eh, considering it was on sale so much
from what I've seen, you
know, rebates and just...
[tires squeal]
Ooh! Ah.
[horns honking]
Dropping in price as the demand for it
wasn't exactly super high,
yeah, I could see it being something
that would be a fun purchase,
especially if you're prone
to just pimping out your computer
and going to LAN parties and, you know,
doing all the 2004 PC things.
That was the earlier days of case modding
and doing RGB, and not even really RGB,
just adding colors, glowing things,
cold cathode tubes
and lights of all kinds.
So yeah, do I wish it was like
a fully-adjustable RGB thing?
Yeah, kinda. That would be cool.
It'd be neat if the hard
disk indicator did something
other than bounce from 0 to 100
and if the left indicator
actually worked for sound.
I mean, it does, but not properly.
Whatever though.
The Musketeer 2.
- [Announcer] The sun is
out, the streets are dry,
and there's an eerie calm
throughout the city...
Until now.
- [LGR] And "Midtown Madness 2".
I appreciate the both of them together.
And if you appreciated this
video, seeing this thing,
then yeah, do check out
some of my others. [laughs]
I've covered the Thermaltake CircleFire,
as mentioned several times,
and I'm sure I'll cover other
5.25-inch drive bay things in the future,
as well as who knows what else,
each week here on LGR.
And as always, thank you
very much for watching.
[tires squealing]
