VOGONS


First post, by oeuvre

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Yet another 90s Dell Optiplex! This one's a midtower and these have a plethora of ISA and PCI slots! Good expansion too. Pentium II 350MHz (gonna upgrade it to 1GHz Celeron + Slocket), 256MB RAM, 40GB 7200RPM hard drive, 3.5" floppy, DVD-ROM drive, 4MB onboard ATI video (upgrading it to 8MB via SGRAM), onboard Crystal CS4236B sound, onboard 3COM 3C905 network, a PCI USB card. A Matrox Millennium G550 PCI is on its way. Right now I've got a triple boot setup with MS-DOS 6.22 + Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows NT4 Workstation, and 98SE... booting is handled by System Commander 7. Spent a lot of time cleaning this guy inside and out; including giving it a retrobright treatment. Here are a slew of pictures! https://imgur.com/a/KooZS

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HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7
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Reply 1 of 9, by retrogamerguy1997

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Ah, I had a Dell Optiplex GX1 tower when I was a kid back in 2009. Mine had a P3 though, but it was clocked at 433Mhz. I got rid of it years ago though.

Reply 2 of 9, by oeuvre

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Aww man you should've kept it! Hopefully today the floppy cable arrives so I can add my 5.25" floppy drive to it.

HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7
ws90Ts2.gif

Reply 3 of 9, by Scraphoarder

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Nice GX1. I wish i had a tower, but for now i have a slim desktop and it will probably be enough. Nice to know about the GX1 and its slowdown option:
Is a Pentium II Too Fast for a DOS Rig?

Reply 4 of 9, by oeuvre

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Hah, sweet never knew about the slowdown in DOS! I gotta try that soon. Thanks.

The floppy drive cable came today so now I am able to use my 5.25" drive in the machine!

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HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7
ws90Ts2.gif

Reply 5 of 9, by KCompRoom2000

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That's a nice looking system, those beige Dell desktops are one of my favorite computers of all time. I've always wanted one but it'd just take up too much space for something that wouldn't be used often since my collection already has a lot of machines to the point where I'm running out of room for more stuff. 🤣

Yours has some really cool specs especially with all those upgrades maxing it out. For some reason, I find maxed out OEM hardware pretty interesting.

Reply 6 of 9, by oeuvre

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Thanks! Unfortunately I wasn't able to get the G550 to play nicely for some reason so I've ordered a cheap NVIDIA NVS280 and hopefully that will play nicely.

HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7
ws90Ts2.gif

Reply 7 of 9, by RobertJ

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Nice! You are quickly becoming the GX forum expert! 😀

8-bit Collection: 4 64Cs, 6 1541-IIs, 1 C128, 2 1571s, 1 C128DCR
Vintage DOS: Dell Optiplex G1, ATI Rage IIC, Sound Blaster CT4520, Thrustmaster FCS Mark II, Gravis PC GamePad
Monitor: Dell 20" 2007FPb

Reply 8 of 9, by oeuvre

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Hah thanks! They're reliable, sturdy and flexible machines. Only downside really is lack of AGP port but I guess that onboard ATI is AGP

HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7
ws90Ts2.gif

Reply 9 of 9, by RobertJ

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oeuvre wrote:

Hah thanks! They're reliable, sturdy and flexible machines. Only downside really is lack of AGP port but I guess that onboard ATI is AGP

The onboard video on mine is more than enough to run any game I've wanted to so far including up to Wing Commander IV, so I'm pretty happy with it. The PCI bus can handle some decent video cards too.

8-bit Collection: 4 64Cs, 6 1541-IIs, 1 C128, 2 1571s, 1 C128DCR
Vintage DOS: Dell Optiplex G1, ATI Rage IIC, Sound Blaster CT4520, Thrustmaster FCS Mark II, Gravis PC GamePad
Monitor: Dell 20" 2007FPb