I actually own such a machine too - they're very easy to work on, fairly quiet, and the case is sturdy. I've had no issues with diskettes either - as far as I know they include all of the ribbon cables already wired in (at least, mine does), so unless yours has been cannibalized it should just be a matter of finding a drive and hooking it up. If I remember right the integrated audio does not have Windows XP drivers (it works in Vista and 7), but it will take both PCI and PCIe cards so it shouldn't be a problem to add something more compatible if you need. CPU-wise you should be able to put a quad in there without much fuss. Graphics-wise it's pretty flexible, especially if you have the 525W PSU.

obobskivich wrote:

I actually own such a machine too - they're very easy to work on, fairly quiet, and the case is sturdy. I've had no issues with diskettes either - as far as I know they include all of the ribbon cables already wired in (at least, mine does), so unless yours has been cannibalized it should just be a matter of finding a drive and hooking it up. If I remember right the integrated audio does not have Windows XP drivers (it works in Vista and 7), but it will take both PCI and PCIe cards so it shouldn't be a problem to add something more compatible if you need. CPU-wise you should be able to put a quad in there without much fuss. Graphics-wise it's pretty flexible, especially if you have the 525W PSU.

Yep, it sure does have the FDD ribbon cables, and I even have a spare drive I will use.

Awesome! Nice find...I'd be pretty stoked too. I found a nice core 2duo in the trash last year. It was a custom build on a really nice SLI asus board. No ram or hd and the case was in bad shape but the board, cpu and psu worked perfectly. It amazes me what people will pitch!!!

Nice score! Those things are amazingly well built, especially the cases. I've definitely got a bit of a soft spot for those machines, I've got a 390, 490, and a T3500 and all are running strong. There's just something so cool about using computers that were built not to be cheap, but to be good.

Nice system 😀

I found a Dell 960 mini-tower in an electronic waste dumpster last year.

I diddnt take a closer look at the box until a couple of weeks ago thinking it was some kind of slow Celeron or Pentium Dual Core.
It seems like a nice system with a Q9650 quad, 8GB memory and some sort of non fancy Quadro video card.

The system was probably a victim of the 5 year cycle.

Ah yes, the T3400, those things are literal tanks. I've worked in 2 enterprise environments where those were used as high end workstations for CAD, programming/software development, and man, every last one of them are still kicking around past the 5-year cycle. They are one of the very very few computers in the last 10 years from a major OEM that I consider being close to or as good as something built in the 1980's or early 1990's.

The only problem I ever see with them involves PXE boot and having to do a power drain (unplug, hold power + PSU Test button for 30 seconds) to clear some kind of reserve powered buffer that holds stale network information. That's not a problem in the home though. For a computer made in the last 5-10 years, that's a excellent track record.

Found a Dell Optiplex 745 in the dumpster last weekend. Hard drive is toast and it only has 512MB of RAM but hey, everything else works and it's a C2D 😀

Do you guys think I should upgrade to a a Core 2 Quad? I've been looking at the 2.4 ghz C2Q and thinking about OC'ing it (or not). I already have a 3.16 ghz C2D in it.

If you are going to use the system for XP era gaming the 3.16 GHz C2D will be faster than a 2.4 Ghz Quad.
I do not think Dells BIOS will let you overclock the CPU.

If you are going to use the system with Windows 7 as a daily driver then I guess the 2.4 GHz quad could be a good idea.

That's a great find. I'm amazed anybody throws something like that out.
Seriously, the 90s are over. 5 years is not that old anymore. I wonder how long this rapid obsolescence mindset with computers will persist.

Stuff gets uneconomical to repair as soon as warranty is expired for most businesses. I used to get all sorts of good stuff just casue the HDD had failed. New drive and engineers time to reinstall everything and no guarantee how long till something else fails.
vs
New PC with windows pre installed and warranty for the next 3 years, its ashame but I can see the thinking.

I'm keeping an eye on a couple of T5500's which the HDD will enviably fail, and I'm doing them a favour by tacking them away rather then have to pay to dispose of them securely properly!

chinny22 wrote:

Stuff gets uneconomical to repair as soon as warranty is expired for most businesses. I used to get all sorts of good stuff just casue the HDD had failed. New drive and engineers time to reinstall everything and no guarantee how long till something else fails.
vs
New PC with windows pre installed and warranty for the next 3 years, its ashame but I can see the thinking.

I don't see what else would be likely to fail besides the hard drive. Maybe some fans, but those would take minimal time to swap preemptively if they felt it was necessary.

Keeping a disk image file would have a better effect than buying one from a PC manufacturer with a different computer wrapped around it. 😀 It would be better customized to the needs of the office, requiring less customization, and it would keep the hardware that was already known to work with their needs and consistent with the rest of the fleet. To my mind, swapping to an entirely different computer would cause more potential headaches and time wasted setting things up properly.
Of course, if their needs actually changed and the machine somehow wasn't suitable anymore, that's different.

I'm keeping an eye on a couple of T5500's which the HDD will enviably fail, and I'm doing them a favour by tacking them away rather then have to pay to dispose of them securely properly!

Their loss is your gain. 😀