Everything is fixable, but in this case it is difficult to know since you tried all of the "easy" fixes. If it was a more valuable motherboard id suggest, re cap but it's just a shitty dell you got from goodwill, that you should be thankful that it worked as well as it did for as long as it did.

Since you already changed the case, and you have all the parts, just get a better motherboard off ebay that will work with your hardware that has an ISA slot.

Make sure the CPU isnt overheating. Are you still using the stock passive Dell Heatsink? If so maybe adding a 40mm molex fan will help. Otherwise agreed with Warlord. Caps or a new board, but a new board of this era even with new caps might still have issues.. 20 year old caps are kinda a crap shoot.

Heh...that was my first retro computer (as in since I started collecting in 2010 or so). I actually really liked the SFF case, it has room for 2 full-height PCI cards through a riser, AGP and one half height PCI slot. Looks kindof cool. I currently have win2k on it with a Hercules Game Theatre XP for some Sensaura action. I still have it running today and it has been really solid, so I don't have any advice on that issue. Not sure what will happen when the SFF psu dies...it's very customized.

Thanks everybody, but the old board now refuses to boot at all. I've got other boards to play with and this one is not worth the time or money so into the recycle in it goes.

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Just thought you might be interested.

I'm having similar issues too. Now that I think about it and the fact that you've had basically the same issues that I have, I wonder if there's something about Windows 9x that the Dell Optiplex GX150 computers don't like. 🤔