That's a nice machine. I've always liked the look of these.
At some point I ended up with 2 of these cases, one being a 300 and the other a 333. I ended up disposing one of the cases, combining the best parts into one basically. I'd love to build it into a useful machine as you have.
I think these were the machines where I noticed that the boot screen automatically adjusts it's branding based on what CPU you have installed.

I'm not sure what the original keyboard for these was, but I have a white Dell QuietKey keyboard that seems to be an aesthetic match. But then I found a black version of the same keyboard, so I guess the QuietKeys straddle the transition period from white to black.

I love the SCSI drive. Those go really well with PCs of this age IMO.

Great XPS machine. Really good condition too. That'll be a good all-rounder for DOS/9x.

Thanks! That's exactly what I'm using it for, DOS + 3.11 + 95. It works perfectly now and runs well. They did originally come with Dell Quietkey keyboards

Good to see another Dell with the "evil" ATX connecter still getting some love. as they are actually nice PC's
I was going to make mine the "ultimate" Win3x PC, but practicality got the better of me and I stuck with Win98

shamino wrote:

I'm not sure what the original keyboard for these was, but I have a white Dell QuietKey keyboard that seems to be an aesthetic match.

Also use a quitekey keyboard with my XPS T500. Don't think its what originally came with it either but its a nice keyboard and matches the PC

My parents had an XPS D300 then got an XPS T450 and an XPS T550 in 1999. All of those came with the QuietKey keyboard but IIRC not the coveted RT7D5JTW one.

I serviced quite a few of these back in the day and sold a refurbished one to a collector a few years ago. These machines came with Windows 95 OSR 2.1 from the factory, although that late 1998 shipment might has had Windows 98 as an option. Just about every system I came across had a DVD-ROM drive with a Cinemaster MPEG2 hardware decoder card as the D333 was the top of the line configuration for most of 1997-98.

Specs of the machine I had are here: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?301 … ntium-II-system

All of that is factory shipped hardware.

Good stuff! Mine didn't come with a DVD drive but I've seen plenty of similar era Dells with DVD drives + the same MPEG decorder card. They're tanks and easy to work with.

I also own one and mine came with the DVD decoder connected to an STB Riva 128. The original 2x DVD-ROM was long dead though, replaced with an ASUUS 50x CD-ROM so it was not being used. I will be restoring and refurbishing that system pretty soon, so I will upgrade it with a suitable beige DVD-ROM drive, probably a 16x though.

Also, some of these seem to have come with an SB AWE64 Value, while some came with a Turtle Beach Montego I (or II) but I can't tell why.

In the meantime, mine is lacking one of the 3.5" covers, and the chassis is not really compatible with ordinary case front covers. So I need to find a good way to fill an extra 3.5" bay. Is a ZIP drive a stupid thing to tack onto a 1998 Pentium II system?

Mine came with the Montego I and I added the CT4500 I had lying around. ZIP drive is period correct. My dad's XPS D300 had a zip drive IIRC