I do enjoy my Dells, I have a Dimension XPS 266 with a Celeron 500 in it, a Dimension 8200 with a 3.06GHz CPU and 1GB RDRAM, and a dual Tualatin 1266 server with 2.5GB registered ECC SDRAM. All great machines. In my experience, the cases are not as good as high end brand cases though (like cooler master, zalman, lian li etc.), that's their weakness, and the stupid proprietary fan and ATX power connectors (which later models no longer have, fortunately).

I wish the Optiplex cases weren't proprietary.If they wouldn't have been proprietary,just imagine what you could hide in there.

I put an ad in the local paper for retro bits and pieces. I had a lot of success early on; One of them was a Dell Optiplex which I scored for nothing and now runs my domain with Ubuntu server and Apache2. For some reason the Australian government has a huge contract with Dell so they are very easy to come by here.

rgart wrote:

I put an ad in the local paper for retro bits and pieces. I had a lot of success early on; One of them was a Dell Optiplex which I scored for nothing and now runs my domain and apache. For some reason the Australian government has a huge contract with Dell so they are very easy to come by here.

Easy to find them there......question is,how expensive they are?

PcBytes wrote:

rgart wrote:

I put an ad in the local paper for retro bits and pieces. I had a lot of success early on; One of them was a Dell Optiplex which I scored for nothing and now runs my domain and apache. For some reason the Australian government has a huge contract with Dell so they are very easy to come by here.

Easy to find them there......question is,how expensive they are?

I got mine for free and Its a Dell Optiplex GX270. I threw a low profile Geforce MX in there to escape onboard VGA and the difference was huge. If your patient you will get a complete Dell Optiplex system here for anywhere between $0 - $50
There is always someone on ebay here selling a complete system for about 100-150 but those sellers get them for next to nothing.

No reason not to use a dell case with something else.
http://duhvoodooman.com/mitchedo/Dell/casemods.htm
I have a Gateway around the same age (G6 400) and the Dell case is a better layout. How they had the HDD originally is abit strange but I just used the area behind the 3.5 bays Just wish I had another 5 1/4 bay and it would be perfect

Interested in some of the older Dell workstations, but they're pretty hard to find or on the other side of the continent. Any chance I could get one of these Dell Precision MT 620 boards working? Biggest issues here are getting the board powered, processors securely seated and a case to fit the thing in. Don't actually have this board, but I might consider getting one if there's a chance I could get it running. I've been looking around for IBM Z-Pro dual P3 Xeon boards, but the boards for 133Mhz FSB Xeons are pretty hard to find.

Rekon the hardest thing would be a case. The PCI slots being further back then to onboard I/O plate is annoying isn't it.
Although the onboard I/O shield looks bigger then a standard one as well. Case modding time I'd think
I'm missing the tabs at the top of the CPU rails so really its just the slot holding in my CPU. It does get bumped where it is and the CPU hasn't dislodged yet. but it doesn't have a big heavy heatsink on it either, just the standard fan job.
I'd wonder if it uses standard ATX pinout as I know the standard boards didn't till Dell started making P4's.

What about something like a Asus P2B-D? It is based on a BX board though so AGP will be out of spec

Already have an eye on a dual P3 board that'll do 133 FSB. This is a Slot-2 board.

These are going to be different pinouts to ATX, so there's some work to be done there as well. I'm not a stranger to modifying cases or modding pinouts on connectors, so the only big issue is finding out what the pinouts are and finding a case I can modify. It'd have to be something large as the workstations these came from have a non-standard PSU arrangement that folds into place at the bottom of the case.

Heh, so if I got this board, I'd have to figure out how to mount it to the tray as this uses some form of hook that suspends the board partially and a thumbscrew to secure in place.

PcBytes wrote:

I wish the Optiplex cases weren't proprietary.If they wouldn't have been proprietary,just imagine what you could hide in there.

Yeah, I know. I wish I could mount a standard ATX motherboard in them. As it is, though, I already have a 1.4ghz Tualeron, GeForce 9500GT 1gb PCI, and a standard ATX PSU with harness adapter to make it work with Dell's proprietary power connectors in one of mine. The only things I hate about it is A) No AGP slot and B) limited to 768mb of RAM. I also maxed out the RAM on the onboard Rage video because it had a slot for it and I got a box full of GX1 parts on ebay for cheap that included the memory module so I figured I'd put in there.

My next Dell project is a case/motherboard/PSU from a P4 Northwood Dell Dimension that I found out for trash. It had no CPU, RAM or hard drive when I found it so I assume the motherboard is likely going to be bad. This case and PSU looks like it would handle a standard ATX motherboard and PSU replacement BUT I found out from research that Dell was still doing some tricky stuff with their cases. This time it is the wiring of the buttons and lights on the front panel that they did in a non-standard way so following the pinouts on your motherboard doesn't help if you don't know how Dell wired up the harness going to the front panel so you can modify it to work. I found a matching black monitor to go with it out for trash someplace else about a week later, so I'll have a nice black system to stand out among the beige boxes.

Think its safe to call this PC 99% complete. Most hardware hasn't changed since 2012. Final specs are
CPU: P3 1Ghz, P/N 1000/256/100/1.7v S1
RAM: 3x 256MB, P/N KVR133X64C3/256
Video: Albatron Ti4600
PCI Sound: SB Audigy2 ZS
ISA Sound: SB AWE32 P/N CT3780
HDD1: Seagate 20GB P/N 9T6004-030 (Windows and data partition with windows cab files, drivers, etc)
HDD2: Seagate 40GB P/N ST340015A (Games)
Nic: Original 3Com 3C905C-TXM
CD-Rom: Original LG 48x
FDD: 1.44mb pulled from a HP
OS: Win98SE

For gaming I mostly use my Duel P3 600, that has V2 SLI but only a GeForce 2 MX for D3D so this is supposed to be my fast D3D PC.
however most my Win9x D3D games are not that demanding (mostly RTS games) so I end up playing them on the Duel P3 as well.
although occasionally I'm in the mood to play games using the on-board XG Midi as well.

This is more my "test PC" trying out no-CD cracks, fan made patches or whatever which usually requires installing, uninstalling, reinstalling. Its nice having my main games PC left nice and clean and I can re install windows on this without affecting any of my games.

The only thing I'm on a lookout for is a beige Live drive I/O panel to fill in the missing drive bay cover.
I feel a bit guilty not showing a Slot 1 1Ghz PC more love, but the other PC is more cooler. I definitely need this in my collection though

I've always liked the Optiplex GX1/100/110/150 and Dimension XPS P/D/R/T ones. Versatile and stable, solidly built, reliable. I actually use a 4100 case for my main desktop!

I remember these things. The proprietary PSU was annoying. There was a time nearly everyone I knew had one. I used to drop PowerLeap adapters with 1.4 GHz Celerons in them to keep them going long after their prime.

The '90s Dells just represented quality builds. Looking through 1997 PC magazines at machines such as Gateway and DAN, their prices were very high, yet their specs still did not match up to the Dell XPS series (e.g. 32MB RAM vs 64MB on the Dells). These machines must have been £2k+ at the time.

I am really happy with my XPS M200s. It's served me well for more than 10 years of retro gaming. It still retains it's original PSU, IBM 4.3GB Hard Drive (soon to be replaced with a CompactFlash configuration) and even the original CMOS battery!

There are a few niggles from the proprietary disk drive cage and the way you have to get it out and back in again, and the way the power/reset buttons are attached to the front fascia, but other than that, I'm very happy with it overall.

How is yours so white?

DELL maybe is nice, but every time i compare old brands like IBM, HP, DELL, Compaq, Fujitsu well they all are nice, BUT Compaq and IBM are leagues above the rest, this is why im big fan of both IBM and Compaq.
A Compaq case of Deskpro or similar is more then solid, and is heavy, also the capacitors on all Compaq OEM boards are Japan quality ones, while the same does not apply for HP or DELL so far from what info i have.
But still i did get an Compaq Deskpro EN with PIII 370 1GHz remove the damn OEM board, and did install original PII 450MHz build with Gigabyte BX2000, bcuz is more fun on Slot 1 instead of 370...