It's nice to see you back, and belated happy new year to you and your family, and hope your Mum is keeping well. Looking forward to seing new content from you over the next year. With multi card readers I've pulled so many out of systems that were damaged beyond repair. I've got quite a few of them in a box, and for my retro systems if they don't have one then if there is a spare USB headers onboard then I will install a card reader especially if they have a USB port. I've got one of my systems with two card readers installed that have CF slots as it makes managing my retro CF cards easier to manage and clone from one to another when I need to, or if I'm working on two systems at the same time I can just boot up the system, plug-in the CF Cards, and copy everything over to them. As always another great video.
Those Dell OptiPlex GX1 and other very early OptiPlex systems were a real back breaker to carry, and cause arm pain when moving them around both carrying them, and moving on a desk. As you said, and as I clearly remember I really hated moving them around on a desk when doing internal upgrades like HDD's or adding ISA/PCI Cards like when I was upgrading 10BASE-T to Ethernet cards. The only good thing was the ease of opening them up, and folding the PSU out to do internal upgrades. I much prefer the newer OptiPlex models like my OptiPlex 780SFF.
For the OptiPlex SX1 as it's a business based system I think Windows NT4 Workstation would be appropriate for it based on the year it was released, and the internal hardware.
Laptops with serial ports are critical for software developers who work with robotics or drones. The serial port is one of the few standardized ways electronics can communicate with each other, no matter the year they were made. It's really sad that serial is still ultra-common in robotics, but on PC's, it's like some sort of vestigial tail that needs to be cut off.
Yes. I have had people reach out looking for genuine hardware for that reason as USB to serial just doest work the same. That said, intel has started to release hardware again with serial ports for industrial applications.
My first PC was a Dell GXa with windows 95. The HD failed after 8 months. But this was the olden days, so i had a Windows 95 disc and had it up and running in no time when i stuck in a new bigger HD. Brings back the fond memories.
It's the same with ZIP 750 disks, also you should never format a disk that has a lower capacity in the larger drives, so you shouldn't format a 100MB disk in a 250 drive, or a 250MB disk in a 750 drive. It could result in either problems with the disk, or could damage the actual disk. Iomega put that warning leaflet in the new larger 250 and 750 drive boxes. It also applies to the 1GB and 2GB JAZZ drives, you shouldn't format a 1GB JAZZ disk in a 2GB drive. I once formatted a 100MB disk in a 250 drive and it damaged the disk, but not the drive, and I couldn't recover the disk due to the damage by trying to reformat it in a 100MB drive, so had to throw away the disk which was an ouch moment due to the cost of the disks back then.
Those Optiplex machines are great and incredibly reliable. The best use for that HP machine is a motherboard swap. Either something modern to make a sleeper, or a more expandable HP motherboard from the same era. That's not a COAST module on the GX1. It's video RAM expansion. All the cache is on the PII.
15:05 I have a D8500 with 2 modular batteries, modular CD ROM, modular floppy drive & a docking station, same form factor. Fun fact the modular floppy drive has a mini USB port on it so you can have the CD ROM in the modular bay and have the floppy drive plugged in to a USB port at the same time.
The good thing about those IDE SSDs is that they make them in lower capacities (16 and 32 GB) so if your motherboard can't see more than 32 GB, then they would be perfect for those retro machines.
Also, I think the error with the HDD on the Dell desktop was referring to Drive 1, which was set to Auto in the bios, but it booted off of Drive 0? And the general consensus online seems to be that 250mb zip disks won't work in a 100mb drive.
this is a fantastic showcase of classic computing hardware! It is always fascinating to see vintage systems running smoothly. just yesterday, I rediscovered some old floppy disks containing BBS forum archives and vintage GIFs. It's a shame that I don't have a compatible machine to access these digital time capsules from years long ago
you keep doing this for the same reason I do... I like making old tech useful again with an SSD and ram upgrade. Keep it out of the landfill. Sure it uses more power but whatever.
one cool thing about zip drives is if you try to insert a zip 250 in a zip 100 drive it will automatically eject it without even trying to spin it. because of the sensor that looks at the light reflection that is present on the zip 100 disks but are different in the zip 250.
It said Disk1 missing, not Disk0. ;) The HP with the Celeron may also support a 3GHz P4, and 1GB RAM. HP had some pretty efficient bus setups so they'd sometimes perform above what you'd expect. 128GB in FAT32 is begging for corruption, I think I've gone on about this before. It's a known bug in FAT32 partitions over 32GB. I have one of those IDE SSD drives.... I used it to speed up a painfully slow Mac G4.
I didn't catch that, I'll have to go back and look - thank you! I assume the corruption you are referring to would be minimal if the SSD alignment process was completed first?
@@TheRetroRecall No. The problem is that there's a bug in FAT32 that causes data wrapping once data crosses the 32GB line. It looks just like a failing HD, as files near the "front" of the drive start disappearing. I got hit with this back when 40GB drives were new, and found the documentation in Microsoft's now-gone knowledge base. It was the reason why FDISK originally limited FAT32 partitions to 32GB. Then along come Win98SE and someone who didn't know better upped the limit to 64GB just when the big drives came out, and suddenly there were tons of "failed" 40GB drives. (Note: multiple partitions under 32GB works fine.) Then XP and NTFS came along and the FAT32 problem was entirely forgotten, not helped by MSFT nuking the old Knowledge Base. (I have it archived on some boxed up HD, it's only about 8GB including all the support files, so it's not like it ate much.)
A D600 running 98 makes some sense. While this is definitely not a corporate install, there were probably still plenty of corporate 98 installs around - especially with Novell Netware. Dell only officially supported 2k and XP, but IBM was still supporting 98 on the laptops of the era (until the T42), and there would be quite a few common parts between both. My parents both worked for an organisation that was using 98 over Netware until ~2004/2005.
That P2 desktop was a good find and I would absolutely keep that myself. I actually did a restoration of a Victor 10mhz 286 just recently for Doscember and I made a little video of it you can watch if you want. but that computer required a total re-cap of everything including the hard drive. but it works
The only one I would probably keep is. The Dell as I used to work on them in high school. As far as I know, the 250 drive can read a 100 but not the other way around.
Oh and BTW with the a305w HP 1. I do believe the keyboard and mouse were blue like the case 2. This came with a CRT monitor, HP v72 3. Indeed, it came with a western digital 40gb hdd 4. 2GB is the max, mine eventually had 1.25GB RAM 5. You can always use something like Offline NT password reset to get around the password 6. Yes that's a 10/100 ethernet 7. Cooler Master was the original equipment for this PC
I used to have a D600 identical to that. I used it for Windows 98 era retro gaming, as I had very limited space at the time. There should be a thread on Vogons with all the Windows 98 drivers needed. Also, just out of idle curiosity, see if that SSD is actually an msata ssd in an msata to IDE enclosure. Because that's what I had upgraded mine to, after having several 2.5" IDE drives fail on me.
The hp desktop looks like one i had to. But mine was the media pc it had a card reader and 3.5 mm jacks for 5.1 and firewire port and av jacks on the front
I figured out after that it was VRAM and not COAST module. Also, regarding the PSU, everything looks standard but as I mentioned, I am cautious as Dell likes to configure their PSUs pinouts / voltages differently.
Rolling out hundreds of GX1s for Y2K was one of the first things I did when I started my old job. They are absolute tanks but more than a little weird inside.
That module in the Dell GX1 isn't a COAST module its a vram module for the Rage Pro graphics. I did this upgrade myself back in the day with my half high GX2a so I could turn on the fancy graphics effects in Diablo II.
I’m glad you are doing well. Hope you had a great holiday. Seeing all three of your systems brought nostalgic memories. I used to own an HP similar to yours only mine had an Athlon XP. My school used to have the Dell GX1 which ran Windows 2000 if I remember correctly and the Dell Latitude D600 was my first work laptop. All great machines.
2025 will be another great year for the channel. HP did use Sony CD burners around that time. My HP a320n had a Sony CD burner much like yours and it also came with the same keyboard too.
Nice selection. I am looking for a GX-1 of the desktop variety. These had a version of the 440 chipset was very good. I preferred it over the later Intel 810 which seemed like a stop gap chipset. No thrills, just basic blah.
New video! Yay, welcome back!! .. glad to see a new video. I enjoy your videos for a while now. I was wondering why you hadn’t posted anything new, lol. Welcome Back and Happy New Year!
I guess that flat upgrade-socket within the GX1 is for an memory upgrade for the integrated graphics card. The PII should have its cache integrated. All three machines worked right away because you didn't touch the memory. 😁😋 Good to have you back.
The first one, 845GL chipset (Intel Extreme Graphics). RAM performance would improve with dual DDR200 for quad pumped 400FSB, could also take 400FSB Pentium 4 Northwood for 512k cache instead of the 128k of the Celeron Motherboard seems to be the TriGem Imperial GL VE (retroweb)
I have considered it however I may do it just for the before and after when doing restorations / upgrades. That said, welcome to the channel, great to have you here!
I have quite a selection of that era of Dell Latitude and Precision laptops, I’ve always found the sweet spot OS to be Windows 2000 with the newest service pack, XP starts to get sluggish on these pretty quickly once you start using them regularly. I found 98 to be very unstable on them! Also well worth picking up the PD01X docking station for it, they’re dirt cheap and give you an extra drive bay and a PCI card slot!
I was starting to think you gave up on this channel, welcome back! The first system really brings back memories. My very first pc was a Pavilion a345w which looked exactly like that one. Ran it until it wouldn't run anymore lol But don't be surprised if it only takes 512mb max on the memory---I had it's big brother with a P4, and even that would only take 1GB max. The Dell GX1 was also available in tower form (same hardware).....I had at least 8 of them, maybe 10? And yeah, heavy beasts they were!
Glad to be back. I didn't know that about the G1 coming in a tower format, neat. Yes, heavy is an understatement. Thanks for the advice on the other systems.
@@TheRetroRecall Sure thing. Here's another fun fact---I read somewhere long ago that Pavilion systems with the "w" at the end of the model number were made specifically for Walmart, and were only available through them
I'm the same way. try and save um all.... but due to my space I cant keep them all. I marketplace sell them so someone can enjoy them more than I will.
I had this exact same HP pc, except I had the DVD/CD-RW drive. I bought as a family pc to replace a Pentium MMX 233 mhz Win 98SE system. I upgraded it to 1 gb of ram and a Radeon 7500 64 mb gpu. Now I picked up for free a Dell Latitude D610. It has a 1.9 ghz Pentium M with a Radeon X300m gpu and 1 gb of ram. I reinstalled Win XP on it. I got 3 batteries with it, and they all hold a charge for a little over an hour each. Also, the drives can be switched out. I have an extra battery (it doesn't hold a charge), a cd drive, a dvd/cd drive and a floppy drive that can be switched in or out. It comes with a 40 gb hdd.
@@TheRetroRecall indeed, tho those particular units were friends and family, etc. Mine was an AMD K6-2 system from a local shop "custom" build ie basic but old home pc. Original configuration was 128mb ram, 20gb fieball hdd, k6-2 233 and Amptron 598-lmr mobo with SiS 530 chipset, Baby AT. I later found out the CPU was actually a 500! The jumpers were just set wrong, so naturally I set it to 550 lol. Maxed ram to 768MB and loaded XP. I later took all components to another mobo that had an agp slot and threw in an Intel i740 8MB, though only had 2 ram slots for 512mb. Which was actually faster due to cache limit of the other board. Had that for a couple of years. I remember having to press the heatsink to the 740 back on when playing Counter Strike 1.6 back in the day... Never crashed just slowed down, held it on and went back to normal. Later zip tied it on and attached a S7 cpu fan to it. Good times. Lots of Starcraft too!
Haha thanks for sharing. Ah, the K6-2 series CPUs were decent but man, they ran hot - especially if overclocked. You brought me down a bit of memory lane. Thanks!
Dude you got 2 Dells? Happy New Year & welcome back TRR! The last desktop in our household had an identical looking HP OEM case but it was a P4 2.8 Ghz with 512MB Ram. A snappy Windows 98 install on a 120GB SSD in an XP-grade Dell laptop, that's a more unique setup. I have a soft spot for Pentium II / MMX computers, mid 90's goodness!
Glad to be back and I'm pretty sure the HP cpu could easily be swapped to P4. That said, I always had an interest in Celerons - being the under dog and all.
The HP doesn't excite me much 😃 The Dell Latitude is very close to the specs of my Inspiron 600M from 2004. It had an identical port layout. It had the same video but 64 MB and a 1400 x 1050 SXGA screen. I paid extra for those video specs haha The Latitude was more business oriented and the Inspiron was more a consumer model, supposedly not as stout as a Latitude. I had mine for 11 years and gave it away to someone who was going to install Linux on it. The Optiplex is exactly the sort of PC I need to find. I'll make a visit to the CBRM recycling location here and ask if they get old PCs now and then. I want something that will run DOS -Win 3.1-Win 95 and NT 4.0 I might have to go back as far as a P75. Happy New Year!
I have an old hp Pavilion ze2308wm from 2005. I was able to almost max it out with 2GB of RAM, and an AMD Turion MT-34 (Single Core, 1.8 GHz) but, cant get Windows to load (in theory, it'll accept Windows 10) I was going to do Win 7, but, don't have any valid keys!
Interesting. I need to look up what this systems limitations are and go from there. Not sure what I will put on it, however I think a decent Linux distro would definitely be a good possibility to bring it to today's world.
There are manual methods to remove the password using CMD, but there are also bootable tools or Live CDs for these cases, which boot from the USB, and are hosted and executed in the RAM, and are easy to use. They are basically like recovery disks. One of the ones I use is Windows PE and Wondershare Live Boot 2012. Now, it's interesting, and sad, that people throw things out that still work. Instead of doing that, they could donate them to people like you, or take them to recycling centers. It's amazing that the United States throws away working things just because they're old.
Yes, I think it is looking at the ZIP drive as a potential HDD. I didn't see a second physical drive installed. I'll know more when we go to restore this system.
@ but it was referring as Primary 1 and the ZIP is on Secondary 1. But in the setup Primary 1 is set to Auto. My guess is that someone removed the second drive maybe they used that to copy all the files over and the BIOS remembered there was a Primary 1 before. You see what I mean?
@TheRetroRecall i guess it won't appear again after a safe shutdown as it should remember there would be no Primary 1 or else set that entry to None in BIOS. Should fix it. But I was more a Compaq guy, there it was enough to accept the new config once with F1.
Ah yes, the HP a305w.. had one of these, lasted quite a long time I gutted and cleaned mine in April 2014 to give it modern hardware Edit: my other favorite memory is this one time I put Longhorn 4074 on this PC. And to keep with starfox 64 coming in the algorithm on TH-cam with these starfox videos, I ran starfox 64 within project 64 and somehow I got full 60fps on a whole ass beta OS on a decent size window. Meanwhile in windows XP it was struggling to run SF64 in PJ64 on a decent window size, I had to shrink it quite a bit 😂 Funny how starfox ran much better on a beta OS than a retail official release... go figure
About optiplex 1. There's no way to increase the amount of L2 cache on ppro and later systems, that slot is for video ram extension (and it seems to be populated ‐ model number ends with plus and you've seen 8 megs video ram in bios info) 2. Power supply in these dells are proprietary but look like regular atx ones. 3. Cs4235 is an Isa card, just cheaper than vibra16 in gxpro model. BTW, do anyone know how to get gameport/midiport interface outta there? 4. The board supports coppermine cpus, but if you wanna go higher than 800mhz, you need to downgrade to a07 bios version. 5. And I like so much the mtbr (towered) version of these optiplexes. 4 isa slots are not so common in such modern (p2/p3) systems. The only downside of the series is lack of agp port.
1 - I discovered that after, so thank you! 2 - I thought as much - hence my warning in the video of testing 3- are you referring to the chipset? This system did not have a card installed. 4 - thanks for this info. 5 - AGP may seem like a limitation, however to most of this era (P2), a decent pci video card will be more than sufficient.
@TheRetroRecall 3. the sound card components are soldered to the motherboard like a network card or videocard. the cip os connected to isa interface (not pci) and got decent soundblaster pro compatibility. in windows device manager we see ”joystick port with MPU401 interface”, but there's no physical connector for it on the motherboard. there's some pinheader on the riser, but I didn't find any info about it. btw, the exact model number displayed on the startup screen is detected by the bios as "cpu_speed"+"riser_model". you can pull the riser out and start the system to see it's new name ) or switch fsb speed to 66 mhz by corresponding jumper. 5. I'd prefer to install agp geforce4 as primary accelerator while having v2/sli as secondary. in minitower variant you can install 3 pci and 4 isa cards simultaneously, that's great for retrogaming pc build
The nostalgia hit me so hard with that HP that I could smell it when you opened it. My first actually powerful home computer was one of those HP's but it came with a Nvidia Geforce FX 5200 iirc (sometimes I forget exactly the model GPU because I did upgrade it later) and it came with the Pentium 4 that had hyper-threading. As well the CD burner was actually also a DVD player on mine. (it didn't burn DVD's but I sure watched a lot of movies with it) It even came with a built-in card reader in that expansion slot underneath the floppy drive. For me if I ended up with your model now after all this time I'd hot-rod it just like I had been attempting to do. That PC did get another motherboard for me way later when I was doing crazy stuff like painting the case. I still have photos of that PC post getting painted.
Nice! I love when these video spark old memories. Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what I will do with the system just yet. Even a motherboard swap may be a fun project.
@TheRetroRecall yeah it's a basic micro-ATX layout, even the power supply is standard but I'd say in general since the cases ventilation isn't great you can start with a low power build. If you were going for something super modern I'd say start with an APU. Like the X3D chips from AMD. They're really quite powerful. Later if you need a GPU for it you go with something mid to low range that doesn't require extra power (idea being that if it doesn't require a ton of power it's going to produce less heat) although the case especially after getting rid of the hard drive and going with hopefully an m.2 nvme on the motherboard can actually fit some pretty big graphics cards. You're just going to have to plan around heat dissipation. In general though putting more powerful hardware in that case is going to be easy. It would be nice to get a new button for the front of the case, not the power button itself but the big plastic cover that you push into. I remember I detached and reattached it when I painted the case. If I remember correctly I had to trim the plastic rivets but I reattached it with either crazy glue or hot glue at the time. Epoxy would be better but I didn't have any back then
That laptop is nice! Particularly with an IDE SSD! Those are not cheap, compared to SATA. In my collection, I have a D610 from a year later. My GF, who had used it for work back in 2005, said it was great. I bought a module that replaces the optical drive for a hard drive, but I can't get it to work... it was cheap, so that is likely the problem. Other than that, it's still running quite well for a twenty year old machine. Anyway, fun vid, thanks! ;-]
Because I do it too ;-) Plenty of old computers, some are mine, some were "saved" from the waste - I was just interested what the HW was and it happened I kept it all. Almost. Andi t is a pleasure to find out there are other "psychos" who do it too. Happy year 2025!
Great video, as usual, dude! I was pretty sure the Dell laptop was going to have an SSD in there! Windows 98 booted far too quickly for a spinning drive.
I got the same exact issue as you man. I do gotta ask though, what happens to the machines you get and dont upgrade later on? Ive ended up with a lot of LGA 775 machines and Im clueless on what to do with em.
Personally I'm not interested in having any computers of this vintage however, I did get my start in computers with MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11. I also have an Asus TUSL2-C motherboard that is fully equipped with a CPU and memory. I had mentioned before about getting that board out and getting it going again. Currently my oldest "ready to go" computer is a Dell Dimension 3000 that came new with Windows XP. It belonged to my Dad and occasionally I'll drag it out and boot it up. I've also got a lot of stuff that "one day" I'll use, but that day usually never gets here. I just cleaned out a bunch of old keyboards and mice that I've been hanging on to and just decided that a person does not need 15-20 keyboards and mice.
Man, grab a Lazy Susan for doing the 360-degree reveals. It'll make it so much simple to rotate a heavy machine like that Optiplex. Systems like that D610 that have a serial port are still in demand for engineering use (communicating with programmable controllers and other instrument/controls hardware). Hope to see more of your stuff in the coming years.
Yes.. I have to get one for sure. It will be so much easier to move them. I know intel has brought back the serial port on their new industrial boards as the USB to serial adapters don't make the cut.
The laptop hardware drivers would work better with Windows XP Home Edition as they will be current. Windows 98 SE will be retrospective compatibility drivers.
a couple voodoo2's and a yamahahaha pci card or audigy or vortex! Does chipset have driver support for windows 95/98/Me? edit: for that HP and Dell win98? ... nGlide! for the Glide thing. Be really neato if there are DOS drivers for that sound card! ... on linux? showme! Oh, Desktop fits into the Living Room TV retro computing!! I wonder if it's BIOS has USB Keyboard support? a Logitch K400 keyboard or Extensions for Game Controllers!!?
Look at all of those recommendations! This exactly answers the question as to why we do this VS tossing them into the trash. Love it. Not sure what I will do with these systems just yet, so stay tuned.
@@TheRetroRecall it’s a ten disk recovery cd but to change it to recovery disk it will be 8 disk recovery doesn’t work on usb but I can try this weekend you may need to use 10 blank cds
Happy new year to you as well. I'd have to check, I imagine the info was written on the other side which was hidden by the drive cage. That said, I check amazon and they are readily available.
Pentium 2's don't support COASt modules, ... that expansion slot is actually for vram since that particular motherboard comes only with 4mb of soldered video ram.... and if you want support for p3's you need to downgrade the bios to anything between A06 to A09 (you have A10)
great to see you back ,hope you had a great holiday, truthfully , you owe no one an explanation as to why you have these machines, bigger question is , WHY is anyone even questioning you here even watching if they have no interest? some people are just shit disturbers that cant stand to see anyone enjoy a hobby they couldn't possibly understand
Because you never know what you might find. Personally back in the summer I thrifting found a HP Pavilion Elite desktop with a pretty nice OEM motherboard (only compliant is it only has pciex1 slots) equipped with a Core 2 Quid q8200 with 8gb ddr2 ram, I plan torebuild it into a xp/7 early 00's gamer rig. So far I have A Cooler Master N200 case EVGA Geforce gtx 560ti and a SB Audigy fx v2 Four port usb 3.0 pcie card To get soonish A modular PSU becouse I dont want to do the hide the extra cables lol A ssd for 7 and a 1tb wd blue 128mb cache 2.5 hard drive xp, I've had nothing but good experiences with them in other machines and from what I've read apparently XP goes overboard with write cycles to the point of shortening a SSDs life span. 4 blue led fans are a must for the case Usb 3.0 to 2.0 header adaptors so I can use all three front panel ports
It's nice to see you back, and belated happy new year to you and your family, and hope your Mum is keeping well. Looking forward to seing new content from you over the next year. With multi card readers I've pulled so many out of systems that were damaged beyond repair. I've got quite a few of them in a box, and for my retro systems if they don't have one then if there is a spare USB headers onboard then I will install a card reader especially if they have a USB port. I've got one of my systems with two card readers installed that have CF slots as it makes managing my retro CF cards easier to manage and clone from one to another when I need to, or if I'm working on two systems at the same time I can just boot up the system, plug-in the CF Cards, and copy everything over to them. As always another great video.
Those Dell OptiPlex GX1 and other very early OptiPlex systems were a real back breaker to carry, and cause arm pain when moving them around both carrying them, and moving on a desk. As you said, and as I clearly remember I really hated moving them around on a desk when doing internal upgrades like HDD's or adding ISA/PCI Cards like when I was upgrading 10BASE-T to Ethernet cards. The only good thing was the ease of opening them up, and folding the PSU out to do internal upgrades. I much prefer the newer OptiPlex models like my OptiPlex 780SFF.
For the OptiPlex SX1 as it's a business based system I think Windows NT4 Workstation would be appropriate for it based on the year it was released, and the internal hardware.
Thank you and she is doing well! Yeah, a card reader is quite handy especially if you want to swap OSes on the fly!
Nice! Those SFF system are awesome. Even more recently the micro form factors - there's almost nothing to them with the Msata and sodimm ram.
Probably right. I'm not 100 % sure what I am going to do with it yet. It's in great shape.
Laptops with serial ports are critical for software developers who work with robotics or drones. The serial port is one of the few standardized ways electronics can communicate with each other, no matter the year they were made. It's really sad that serial is still ultra-common in robotics, but on PC's, it's like some sort of vestigial tail that needs to be cut off.
Yes. I have had people reach out looking for genuine hardware for that reason as USB to serial just doest work the same. That said, intel has started to release hardware again with serial ports for industrial applications.
My first PC was a Dell GXa with windows 95. The HD failed after 8 months. But this was the olden days, so i had a Windows 95 disc and had it up and running in no time when i stuck in a new bigger HD.
Brings back the fond memories.
That's awesome, thanks for sharing this.
You can use Zip 100 disks in a Zip 250 drive, but you cannot use Zip 250 disks in a Zip 100 drive.
That's as I recall as well.
Thank you, I appreciate it!
Thanks!
It's the same with ZIP 750 disks, also you should never format a disk that has a lower capacity in the larger drives, so you shouldn't format a 100MB disk in a 250 drive, or a 250MB disk in a 750 drive. It could result in either problems with the disk, or could damage the actual disk. Iomega put that warning leaflet in the new larger 250 and 750 drive boxes. It also applies to the 1GB and 2GB JAZZ drives, you shouldn't format a 1GB JAZZ disk in a 2GB drive. I once formatted a 100MB disk in a 250 drive and it damaged the disk, but not the drive, and I couldn't recover the disk due to the damage by trying to reformat it in a 100MB drive, so had to throw away the disk which was an ouch moment due to the cost of the disks back then.
Those Optiplex machines are great and incredibly reliable. The best use for that HP machine is a motherboard swap. Either something modern to make a sleeper, or a more expandable HP motherboard from the same era. That's not a COAST module on the GX1. It's video RAM expansion. All the cache is on the PII.
I agree with you on the HP, and yes I figured out later it wasnt a COAST. Thank you!
15:05 I have a D8500 with 2 modular batteries, modular CD ROM, modular floppy drive & a docking station, same form factor. Fun fact the modular floppy drive has a mini USB port on it so you can have the CD ROM in the modular bay and have the floppy drive plugged in to a USB port at the same time.
I've heard of those however have never seen one, that's a great use of resources.
The good thing about those IDE SSDs is that they make them in lower capacities (16 and 32 GB) so if your motherboard can't see more than 32 GB, then they would be perfect for those retro machines.
I think it's so cool that in 2025 we can resurrect these old systems with new tech. The Retro community is strong!
Also, I think the error with the HDD on the Dell desktop was referring to Drive 1, which was set to Auto in the bios, but it booted off of Drive 0? And the general consensus online seems to be that 250mb zip disks won't work in a 100mb drive.
Yeah, quite possible. I need to take a closer look at the cabling and bios settings. So much fun digging into these old systems.
this is a fantastic showcase of classic computing hardware! It is always fascinating to see vintage systems running smoothly. just yesterday, I rediscovered some old floppy disks containing BBS forum archives and vintage GIFs. It's a shame that I don't have a compatible machine to access these digital time capsules from years long ago
Agreed and that's awesome!
Youre doing great! These are a lovely bunch of machines!
Thank you!!
you keep doing this for the same reason I do... I like making old tech useful again with an SSD and ram upgrade. Keep it out of the landfill. Sure it uses more power but whatever.
Using an i7-2600 for TrueNAS when I could have bought new hardware. Heck, it’s winter, I could use the extra watts in the house :P
I'm of the same mindset. I find there are always some kind of uses for these systems once restored.
Hahahha! Should run a P4 If you want some heat lol
When I saw 120gb disk on that dell, I thought: wow, standard ssd size. And I wasn't mistaken.
Absolutely. I just had to take it out to confirm. Neat setup and definitely gives a lot of extra speed to the system.
one cool thing about zip drives is if you try to insert a zip 250 in a zip 100 drive it will automatically eject it without even trying to spin it. because of the sensor that looks at the light reflection that is present on the zip 100 disks but are different in the zip 250.
the zip 750 straight up had the reflective piece removed, i guess cost cutting and being a last ditch effort.
Great info, thanks!
It said Disk1 missing, not Disk0. ;)
The HP with the Celeron may also support a 3GHz P4, and 1GB RAM. HP had some pretty efficient bus setups so they'd sometimes perform above what you'd expect.
128GB in FAT32 is begging for corruption, I think I've gone on about this before. It's a known bug in FAT32 partitions over 32GB.
I have one of those IDE SSD drives.... I used it to speed up a painfully slow Mac G4.
I didn't catch that, I'll have to go back and look - thank you! I assume the corruption you are referring to would be minimal if the SSD alignment process was completed first?
@@TheRetroRecall No. The problem is that there's a bug in FAT32 that causes data wrapping once data crosses the 32GB line. It looks just like a failing HD, as files near the "front" of the drive start disappearing.
I got hit with this back when 40GB drives were new, and found the documentation in Microsoft's now-gone knowledge base. It was the reason why FDISK originally limited FAT32 partitions to 32GB. Then along come Win98SE and someone who didn't know better upped the limit to 64GB just when the big drives came out, and suddenly there were tons of "failed" 40GB drives. (Note: multiple partitions under 32GB works fine.)
Then XP and NTFS came along and the FAT32 problem was entirely forgotten, not helped by MSFT nuking the old Knowledge Base. (I have it archived on some boxed up HD, it's only about 8GB including all the support files, so it's not like it ate much.)
I never knew this. I'll have to read into it.. It's an interesting part of history especially if it was forgotten. Thanks again!
A D600 running 98 makes some sense. While this is definitely not a corporate install, there were probably still plenty of corporate 98 installs around - especially with Novell Netware. Dell only officially supported 2k and XP, but IBM was still supporting 98 on the laptops of the era (until the T42), and there would be quite a few common parts between both.
My parents both worked for an organisation that was using 98 over Netware until ~2004/2005.
Thanks for sharing. I'll have to see if the drivers are compatible and see if after installation the system will remain stable.
I had a Optiplex in the early 2000 that looked just like that without the Zip drive added, bought it from Dell used and assumed it was a lease return.
Probably. A lot of these were used in business environments that had short EOL cycles, which forced them to be refurbished and sold to the public.
That P2 desktop was a good find and I would absolutely keep that myself. I actually did a restoration of a Victor 10mhz 286 just recently for Doscember and I made a little video of it you can watch if you want. but that computer required a total re-cap of everything including the hard drive. but it works
I'll check it out, thank you!
The only one I would probably keep is. The Dell as I used to work on them in high school. As far as I know, the 250 drive can read a 100 but not the other way around.
I appreciate it, thank you!
Oh and BTW with the a305w HP
1. I do believe the keyboard and mouse were blue like the case
2. This came with a CRT monitor, HP v72
3. Indeed, it came with a western digital 40gb hdd
4. 2GB is the max, mine eventually had 1.25GB RAM
5. You can always use something like Offline NT password reset to get around the password
6. Yes that's a 10/100 ethernet
7. Cooler Master was the original equipment for this PC
I used to have a D600 identical to that. I used it for Windows 98 era retro gaming, as I had very limited space at the time. There should be a thread on Vogons with all the Windows 98 drivers needed. Also, just out of idle curiosity, see if that SSD is actually an msata ssd in an msata to IDE enclosure. Because that's what I had upgraded mine to, after having several 2.5" IDE drives fail on me.
Will do and good to know, thank you!
The hp desktop looks like one i had to. But mine was the media pc it had a card reader and 3.5 mm jacks for 5.1 and firewire port and av jacks on the front
Nice. Yes there were many configurations from HP that used this chassis.
I was too young to see beige Dell AT's in the field. In the military I became accustomed to the black/blue/gray aesthetic.
For sure. I have lived through all eras.. Now the beige / white cases are coming back for the retro enthusiasts.
Two points on the GX1. The power supply is _not_ standard ATX. Second, the small memory board below the CPU is VRAM expansion.
I figured out after that it was VRAM and not COAST module. Also, regarding the PSU, everything looks standard but as I mentioned, I am cautious as Dell likes to configure their PSUs pinouts / voltages differently.
Rolling out hundreds of GX1s for Y2K was one of the first things I did when I started my old job. They are absolute tanks but more than a little weird inside.
Haha indeed - still going in 2025.
That module in the Dell GX1 isn't a COAST module its a vram module for the Rage Pro graphics. I did this upgrade myself back in the day with my half high GX2a so I could turn on the fancy graphics effects in Diablo II.
Yes, I realized that after, I appreciate it!
I’m glad you are doing well. Hope you had a great holiday.
Seeing all three of your systems brought nostalgic memories. I used to own an HP similar to yours only mine had an Athlon XP. My school used to have the Dell GX1 which ran Windows 2000 if I remember correctly and the Dell Latitude D600 was my first work laptop. All great machines.
I did, thank you, it's good to be back! I'm glad they brought back some memories for you. I agree D600 series were great systems.
2025 will be another great year for the channel. HP did use Sony CD burners around that time. My HP a320n had a Sony CD burner much like yours and it also came with the same keyboard too.
Ok, that's good to know / confirm. Thanks again!
My childhood PC was a HP a200n, very similar to that HP. Wish I still had it.
For sure. There were many systems from my past that I threw into the trash that I wish I had kept.
that last dell is screaming for a 3dfx voodoo 2 or 3, and a sound blaster 16
I was going to say that about the first one
Agreed! I have both options.
About the HP?
Yeah the HP would go well with a voodoo 2 accelerator card and a sound blaster 16
Appreciate it
Nice selection. I am looking for a GX-1 of the desktop variety. These had a version of the 440 chipset was very good. I preferred it over the later Intel 810 which seemed like a stop gap chipset. No thrills, just basic blah.
Yeah for sure. There's something about this system that's pretty nostalgic. I never had a lot of P2 systems.
New video! Yay, welcome back!! .. glad to see a new video. I enjoy your videos for a while now. I was wondering why you hadn’t posted anything new, lol. Welcome Back and Happy New Year!
Happy new year! Glad to be back.
I guess that flat upgrade-socket within the GX1 is for an memory upgrade for the integrated graphics card. The PII should have its cache integrated. All three machines worked right away because you didn't touch the memory. 😁😋 Good to have you back.
Hahaha I laughed when I read the memory comment lol. Yes, you are correct - that slot is for VRAM not for cache :)
I'd like to see how you, "break in" to system #1, maybe in a future video.
For sure. I believe we will do a restoration on it. Maybe a few upgrades :)
Happy new year to you! Glad to see you are back making videos. I need to head to e waste one day, and get some treasures.
Always something to find and thanks, it's good to be back!
Im just hoping you can replace the missing power button on the HP. Its a silly thing, but it feels like a face without a nose.
Hahah indeed. Maybe a 3d printed one?
Pentuim 2s did not have a coast module as far as i know, they had backside l2 cache.
I think you are correct and made a mistake. It seems that may be video expansion memory?
The first one, 845GL chipset (Intel Extreme Graphics). RAM performance would improve with dual DDR200 for quad pumped 400FSB, could also take 400FSB Pentium 4 Northwood for 512k cache instead of the 128k of the Celeron
Motherboard seems to be the TriGem Imperial GL VE (retroweb)
I think this chipset has win 98 driver support.
Thanks for that.. Ill take a look on the retro web for reference.
That cpu fan is original. I have exact same pc and specs. It did came with a monitor whin i did get it in 2003
Good to know. I knew OEM's did things a bit differently. Thanks for confirming!
I'm new on the channel, but have you considered to do benchmarks? With all your hardwares, you could create a database.
I have considered it however I may do it just for the before and after when doing restorations / upgrades. That said, welcome to the channel, great to have you here!
I have two of the Dell laptops, and I know one of them is a D610. Great laptops.
They are great machines.
Oh Man, Those OptiPlex... Used to have a Few PIIs in those cases that Ran SuSE 9
Neat. Trip down memory lane.
I have quite a selection of that era of Dell Latitude and Precision laptops, I’ve always found the sweet spot OS to be Windows 2000 with the newest service pack, XP starts to get sluggish on these pretty quickly once you start using them regularly.
I found 98 to be very unstable on them!
Also well worth picking up the PD01X docking station for it, they’re dirt cheap and give you an extra drive bay and a PCI card slot!
Good to know about your experience with 98 installed. I was quite surprised to see it there.
that keyboard did come with that desktop I still have mine from back in the day
Oh neat! I found the keybaord at a thrift store at a completely different time. Now to find the rest.
I was starting to think you gave up on this channel, welcome back! The first system really brings back memories. My very first pc was a Pavilion a345w which looked exactly like that one. Ran it until it wouldn't run anymore lol But don't be surprised if it only takes 512mb max on the memory---I had it's big brother with a P4, and even that would only take 1GB max. The Dell GX1 was also available in tower form (same hardware).....I had at least 8 of them, maybe 10? And yeah, heavy beasts they were!
Glad to be back. I didn't know that about the G1 coming in a tower format, neat. Yes, heavy is an understatement. Thanks for the advice on the other systems.
@@TheRetroRecall Sure thing. Here's another fun fact---I read somewhere long ago that Pavilion systems with the "w" at the end of the model number were made specifically for Walmart, and were only available through them
Haha no way, I didn't know that!
I'm the same way. try and save um all.... but due to my space I cant keep them all. I marketplace sell them so someone can enjoy them more than I will.
Yeah, I will say I am starting to run out of that space :)
just picked up a pavilion 8260 among 2 other machines thrifting yesterday lol
Nice!!!!!
I just received my dell desktop GXa a few months ago. I agree it’s pretty solid.
Awesome, hopefully you have yours up and running.
Happy New Year Bud.. I've been gone for a while.. Glad to see your channel is growing!!
Appreciate it and welcome back! I was away for a while myself.
I had this exact same HP pc, except I had the DVD/CD-RW drive. I bought as a family pc to replace a Pentium MMX 233 mhz Win 98SE system. I upgraded it to 1 gb of ram and a Radeon 7500 64 mb gpu.
Now I picked up for free a Dell Latitude D610. It has a 1.9 ghz Pentium M with a Radeon X300m gpu and 1 gb of ram. I reinstalled Win XP on it. I got 3 batteries with it, and they all hold a charge for a little over an hour each. Also, the drives can be switched out. I have an extra battery (it doesn't hold a charge), a cd drive, a dvd/cd drive and a floppy drive that can be switched in or out. It comes with a 40 gb hdd.
Nice! Thanks for sharing.
Feliz año 🥂🍾esas cachangas tienen su encanto
Happy new year to you as well!! Yes I agree :)
I think I've been hands on with at least 2 of those at some point in time lol
Haha nice!
@TheRetroRecall didn't have a lot of money growing up so we ended up with a few older systems from the flea market in the late 90s early 2000s
I bet you got a lot of use out of them.
@@TheRetroRecall indeed, tho those particular units were friends and family, etc. Mine was an AMD K6-2 system from a local shop "custom" build ie basic but old home pc. Original configuration was 128mb ram, 20gb fieball hdd, k6-2 233 and Amptron 598-lmr mobo with SiS 530 chipset, Baby AT. I later found out the CPU was actually a 500! The jumpers were just set wrong, so naturally I set it to 550 lol. Maxed ram to 768MB and loaded XP. I later took all components to another mobo that had an agp slot and threw in an Intel i740 8MB, though only had 2 ram slots for 512mb. Which was actually faster due to cache limit of the other board. Had that for a couple of years. I remember having to press the heatsink to the 740 back on when playing Counter Strike 1.6 back in the day... Never crashed just slowed down, held it on and went back to normal. Later zip tied it on and attached a S7 cpu fan to it. Good times. Lots of Starcraft too!
Haha thanks for sharing. Ah, the K6-2 series CPUs were decent but man, they ran hot - especially if overclocked. You brought me down a bit of memory lane. Thanks!
Dude you got 2 Dells? Happy New Year & welcome back TRR!
The last desktop in our household had an identical looking HP OEM case but it was a P4 2.8 Ghz with 512MB Ram.
A snappy Windows 98 install on a 120GB SSD in an XP-grade Dell laptop, that's a more unique setup.
I have a soft spot for Pentium II / MMX computers, mid 90's goodness!
Glad to be back and I'm pretty sure the HP cpu could easily be swapped to P4. That said, I always had an interest in Celerons - being the under dog and all.
Not all heroes wear capes. Happy New Year!
Awe thanks!!!
Great to have you back! I was about to say you can send me the third computer, until I saw it was a Dell....
You don't want it? Heck... I'll take it if it needs a home.
Hahaha you LOVE Dell.
Haha, Majenko is kidding. That and I will be keeping these systems for future content.
@@TheRetroRecall I do. They are easy to work on, and generally well-built. I got the joke.
Solid machines :)
Because it's fun!! If you get enjoyment out it then it's worth it.
100%!
The HP doesn't excite me much 😃
The Dell Latitude is very close to the specs of my Inspiron 600M from 2004. It had an identical port layout. It had the same video but 64 MB and a 1400 x 1050 SXGA screen. I paid extra for those video specs haha The Latitude was more business oriented and the Inspiron was more a consumer model, supposedly not as stout as a Latitude. I had mine for 11 years and gave it away to someone who was going to install Linux on it.
The Optiplex is exactly the sort of PC I need to find. I'll make a visit to the CBRM recycling location here and ask if they get old PCs now and then. I want something that will run DOS -Win 3.1-Win 95 and NT 4.0 I might have to go back as far as a P75.
Happy New Year!
You never know what you will find. You'll have to get to know the team who would be willing to out aside anything that may come in.
I have an old hp Pavilion ze2308wm from 2005. I was able to almost max it out with 2GB of RAM, and an AMD Turion MT-34 (Single Core, 1.8 GHz) but, cant get Windows to load (in theory, it'll accept Windows 10) I was going to do Win 7, but, don't have any valid keys!
Interesting. I need to look up what this systems limitations are and go from there. Not sure what I will put on it, however I think a decent Linux distro would definitely be a good possibility to bring it to today's world.
There are manual methods to remove the password using CMD, but there are also bootable tools or Live CDs for these cases, which boot from the USB, and are hosted and executed in the RAM, and are easy to use. They are basically like recovery disks. One of the ones I use is Windows PE and Wondershare Live Boot 2012.
Now, it's interesting, and sad, that people throw things out that still work. Instead of doing that, they could donate them to people like you, or take them to recycling centers. It's amazing that the United States throws away working things just because they're old.
100% agree. Too many of these systems end up in the landfill for no reason. Even 5 year old computers!
Beige Optiplexes are a favorite of mine. I have a GX300 tower
Nice!!! Yes, the beige is quite nostalgic for me.
I think the Optiplex had two hard disks and it was complaining about the second drive missing.
Yes, I think it is looking at the ZIP drive as a potential HDD. I didn't see a second physical drive installed. I'll know more when we go to restore this system.
@ but it was referring as Primary 1 and the ZIP is on Secondary 1. But in the setup Primary 1 is set to Auto. My guess is that someone removed the second drive maybe they used that to copy all the files over and the BIOS remembered there was a Primary 1 before. You see what I mean?
I do. I need to go in and reconfigure everything when I do the restoration. I'm sure we'll clear the error.
@TheRetroRecall i guess it won't appear again after a safe shutdown as it should remember there would be no Primary 1 or else set that entry to None in BIOS. Should fix it. But I was more a Compaq guy, there it was enough to accept the new config once with F1.
Ah yes, the HP a305w.. had one of these, lasted quite a long time
I gutted and cleaned mine in April 2014 to give it modern hardware
Edit: my other favorite memory is this one time I put Longhorn 4074 on this PC. And to keep with starfox 64 coming in the algorithm on TH-cam with these starfox videos, I ran starfox 64 within project 64 and somehow I got full 60fps on a whole ass beta OS on a decent size window.
Meanwhile in windows XP it was struggling to run SF64 in PJ64 on a decent window size, I had to shrink it quite a bit 😂
Funny how starfox ran much better on a beta OS than a retail official release... go figure
Its been nearly 2 months! glad your back!
Glad to be back!
About optiplex
1. There's no way to increase the amount of L2 cache on ppro and later systems, that slot is for video ram extension (and it seems to be populated ‐ model number ends with plus and you've seen 8 megs video ram in bios info)
2. Power supply in these dells are proprietary but look like regular atx ones.
3. Cs4235 is an Isa card, just cheaper than vibra16 in gxpro model. BTW, do anyone know how to get gameport/midiport interface outta there?
4. The board supports coppermine cpus, but if you wanna go higher than 800mhz, you need to downgrade to a07 bios version.
5. And I like so much the mtbr (towered) version of these optiplexes. 4 isa slots are not so common in such modern (p2/p3) systems. The only downside of the series is lack of agp port.
1 - I discovered that after, so thank you!
2 - I thought as much - hence my warning in the video of testing
3- are you referring to the chipset? This system did not have a card installed.
4 - thanks for this info.
5 - AGP may seem like a limitation, however to most of this era (P2), a decent pci video card will be more than sufficient.
@TheRetroRecall
3. the sound card components are soldered to the motherboard like a network card or videocard. the cip os connected to isa interface (not pci) and got decent soundblaster pro compatibility.
in windows device manager we see ”joystick port with MPU401 interface”, but there's no physical connector for it on the motherboard. there's some pinheader on the riser, but I didn't find any info about it. btw, the exact model number displayed on the startup screen is detected by the bios as "cpu_speed"+"riser_model". you can pull the riser out and start the system to see it's new name ) or switch fsb speed to 66 mhz by corresponding jumper.
5. I'd prefer to install agp geforce4 as primary accelerator while having v2/sli as secondary. in minitower variant you can install 3 pci and 4 isa cards simultaneously, that's great for retrogaming pc build
Appreciate all of this info, thank you!
The nostalgia hit me so hard with that HP that I could smell it when you opened it. My first actually powerful home computer was one of those HP's but it came with a Nvidia Geforce FX 5200 iirc (sometimes I forget exactly the model GPU because I did upgrade it later) and it came with the Pentium 4 that had hyper-threading. As well the CD burner was actually also a DVD player on mine. (it didn't burn DVD's but I sure watched a lot of movies with it) It even came with a built-in card reader in that expansion slot underneath the floppy drive. For me if I ended up with your model now after all this time I'd hot-rod it just like I had been attempting to do. That PC did get another motherboard for me way later when I was doing crazy stuff like painting the case. I still have photos of that PC post getting painted.
Nice! I love when these video spark old memories. Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what I will do with the system just yet. Even a motherboard swap may be a fun project.
@TheRetroRecall yeah it's a basic micro-ATX layout, even the power supply is standard but I'd say in general since the cases ventilation isn't great you can start with a low power build. If you were going for something super modern I'd say start with an APU. Like the X3D chips from AMD. They're really quite powerful. Later if you need a GPU for it you go with something mid to low range that doesn't require extra power (idea being that if it doesn't require a ton of power it's going to produce less heat) although the case especially after getting rid of the hard drive and going with hopefully an m.2 nvme on the motherboard can actually fit some pretty big graphics cards. You're just going to have to plan around heat dissipation. In general though putting more powerful hardware in that case is going to be easy. It would be nice to get a new button for the front of the case, not the power button itself but the big plastic cover that you push into. I remember I detached and reattached it when I painted the case. If I remember correctly I had to trim the plastic rivets but I reattached it with either crazy glue or hot glue at the time. Epoxy would be better but I didn't have any back then
Appreciate the recommendation! Not sure if I will be doing a sleeper build or not. I think a slightly nicer case may be best for that?
@@TheRetroRecall idk lol, that case is pretty nice to me but maybe I'm biased xD
Haha! Fair.
That laptop is nice! Particularly with an IDE SSD! Those are not cheap, compared to SATA.
In my collection, I have a D610 from a year later. My GF, who had used it for work back in 2005, said it was great.
I bought a module that replaces the optical drive for a hard drive, but I can't get it to work... it was cheap, so that is likely the problem. Other than that, it's still running quite well for a twenty year old machine.
Anyway, fun vid, thanks! ;-]
Love hearing these stories, thanks for sharing. Glad you enjoyed the video!
welcome back, man!
Thabks, good to be back!
Because I do it too ;-) Plenty of old computers, some are mine, some were "saved" from the waste - I was just interested what the HW was and it happened I kept it all. Almost. Andi t is a pleasure to find out there are other "psychos" who do it too. Happy year 2025!
Haha yes, it seems we are very where lol! Happy new year!
GX1 could be a nice base for retro gaming pc for pentium ii era games
I agree. SB16, and a video card expansion.
Nice video!
Thank you!!!
i fixed my lg laptop and now it works great
That's awesome!! Glad to hear.
For the first system, Have a Angry Aussie Yell at it, and call it a Nugget ;)
Lol, I've never heard of that expression.
@@TheRetroRecall Dankpods ref ;)
Hahaha
Great video, as usual, dude! I was pretty sure the Dell laptop was going to have an SSD in there! Windows 98 booted far too quickly for a spinning drive.
Agreed, went a little too fast haha.
happy haul-idays TRR! : )
Same to you!!! I hope you and yours had a great holiday season!
98 and XP. The best of 'm.
Can't forget 2000! :)
@@TheRetroRecall That one I skipped, actually... 🤣
Haha!
I got the same exact issue as you man. I do gotta ask though, what happens to the machines you get and dont upgrade later on? Ive ended up with a lot of LGA 775 machines and Im clueless on what to do with em.
Haha, for now they stay in storage until I decide what I am going to do.
Personally I'm not interested in having any computers of this vintage however, I did get my start in computers with MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11. I also have an Asus TUSL2-C motherboard that is fully equipped with a CPU and memory. I had mentioned before about getting that board out and getting it going again. Currently my oldest "ready to go" computer is a Dell Dimension 3000 that came new with Windows XP. It belonged to my Dad and occasionally I'll drag it out and boot it up. I've also got a lot of stuff that "one day" I'll use, but that day usually never gets here. I just cleaned out a bunch of old keyboards and mice that I've been hanging on to and just decided that a person does not need 15-20 keyboards and mice.
Haha only 15-20? You wouldn't want to look in my storage lol! There will come a time when I will need to decide what will happen with all of the tech.
@@TheRetroRecall And trying to part with it is like pulling teeth!
Haha exactly!
I still have pavilion a305w from 2003
That's awesome, what monitor came with it... A CRT?
I've owned all 3 machines over years lol
Awesome!
Man, grab a Lazy Susan for doing the 360-degree reveals. It'll make it so much simple to rotate a heavy machine like that Optiplex.
Systems like that D610 that have a serial port are still in demand for engineering use (communicating with programmable controllers and other instrument/controls hardware).
Hope to see more of your stuff in the coming years.
Yes.. I have to get one for sure. It will be so much easier to move them.
I know intel has brought back the serial port on their new industrial boards as the USB to serial adapters don't make the cut.
@@TheRetroRecall Yup. RS232C still has a place in the world.
Absolutely
The laptop hardware drivers would work better with Windows XP Home Edition as they will be current. Windows 98 SE will be retrospective compatibility drivers.
Yeah I was thinking the same.
Nice! :)
Thanks!
a couple voodoo2's and a yamahahaha pci card or audigy or vortex! Does chipset have driver support for windows 95/98/Me? edit: for that HP and Dell win98? ... nGlide! for the Glide thing. Be really neato if there are DOS drivers for that sound card! ... on linux? showme!
Oh, Desktop fits into the Living Room TV retro computing!! I wonder if it's BIOS has USB Keyboard support? a Logitch K400 keyboard or Extensions for Game Controllers!!?
Look at all of those recommendations! This exactly answers the question as to why we do this VS tossing them into the trash. Love it. Not sure what I will do with these systems just yet, so stay tuned.
I do have recovery disk for that hp pc a305w 10 disk of windows xp
That would be awesome to get. Are you able to image them and upload to archive.org?
@@TheRetroRecall it’s a ten disk recovery cd but to change it to recovery disk it will be 8 disk recovery doesn’t work on usb but I can try this weekend you may need to use 10 blank cds
Sounds great, it would be awesome if you could :).
Hey good news i will get a dell inspiron 5100 olso i have a power mac g4 quicksilver it is awesome
That's awesome indeed! Nice find with the Mac!
@@TheRetroRecall yeah i know but 1 more day for the dell inspiron 5100
my first computer was a hp a200n.
Nice!
Nice to "see" you again. Wish you great things for 2025.
What is the part number of that IDE SSD btw?
Happy new year to you as well. I'd have to check, I imagine the info was written on the other side which was hidden by the drive cage. That said, I check amazon and they are readily available.
Pentium 2's don't support COASt modules, ... that expansion slot is actually for vram since that particular motherboard comes only with 4mb of soldered video ram.... and if you want support for p3's you need to downgrade the bios to anything between A06 to A09 (you have A10)
Yeah I had realized that afterwards. I appreciate it!
No the 100 zip drive low level partitioned is different
Thank you, appreciate it!
nice dell inspiron 600m
Thanks!
I had a laptop like that at one time
Nice! They are great machines.
Good candidates for a second life with HaikuOS
I need to check that OS out.
@@TheRetroRecall lightweight Linux distros feel sluggish in comparison and it now has ports of many useful modern open source programs
Appreciate it
The HP system is going to be limited since it only has PCI slots…no AGP slot.
For sure. That said, a motherboard swap is also an option due tot he standardized chassis.
great to see you back ,hope you had a great holiday, truthfully , you owe no one an explanation as to why you have these machines, bigger question is , WHY is anyone even questioning you here even watching if they have no interest? some people are just shit disturbers that cant stand to see anyone enjoy a hobby they couldn't possibly understand
I completely agree. Thanks for this!
Old TV repair men have stacks of TVs all over their house, us PC techs have stacks of PCs all over the house :))))
And it feels good haha
Because you never know what you might find.
Personally back in the summer I thrifting found a HP Pavilion Elite desktop with a pretty nice OEM motherboard (only compliant is it only has pciex1 slots) equipped with a Core 2 Quid q8200 with 8gb ddr2 ram, I plan torebuild it into a xp/7 early 00's gamer rig.
So far I have
A Cooler Master N200 case
EVGA Geforce gtx 560ti
and a SB Audigy fx v2
Four port usb 3.0 pcie card
To get soonish
A modular PSU becouse I dont want to do the hide the extra cables lol
A ssd for 7 and a 1tb wd blue 128mb cache 2.5 hard drive xp, I've had nothing but good experiences with them in other machines and from what I've read apparently XP goes overboard with write cycles to the point of shortening a SSDs life span.
4 blue led fans are a must for the case
Usb 3.0 to 2.0 header adaptors so I can use all three front panel ports
Exactly. And awesome, thanks for sharing your finds!
@TheRetroRecall indeed it'll be awesome once its rebuilt
Agreed.
clean and restore all of them
For sure, they deserve some love.
Good to see you back in 2025 Happy New Year
Good to be back, happy new year to you as well!
its not trash its gold people who say its old never had a windows XPhood
Hahah true.
The max on ram is 1 gig
Good to know.
Athlon XP 1700+ and Radeon 9600 XT...
In the HP?
@TheRetroRecall instead of intel just... windows xp.
my summary good (dell P2), bad (dell laptop), ugly (hp)
Haha!
That latitude looks like someone just installed 98 on it and didn't know anything about drivers.
Agreed. That said, it will be a fun challenge :)