Many old Dell cases are like that. Air compressors are your friends.

Originally posted this in the wrong thread. Oops. 😵

Here are my recent finds:

Mildly warm off the heels of my last find, which included a Thinkpad 600E, a bunch of 5.25" and 3.5" bay covers, a couple of boxes of hardware and other miscellaneous things, I present something a bit less cool, but still neat finds nonetheless.

The first is actually the last small haul from my last set of finds that I didn't post. Nothing that interesting - a Doom II manual, a Castle Wolfenstein manual and a Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness manual + game & Tomb Raider II game. I don't need any of them so I'll be giving them to a friend who would like them.

Next up is just a plain old, nothing special sealed OEM copy of Windows 95.

From an Acer machine, which ties into something later on. I have a couple of these but I may open this one up as all my others are sealed. Maybe make some nerd frame set using a bunch of the CoAs I have around.

Now we have what I believed to be a "Delux" AT compatible 107-Key Keyboard. Need to email them? Just chuck an email over to their incredibly long, seemingly ISP-issued. Some quick googling shows their website still exists, and they are making peripherals to this day. RGB and all. Fascinating.

The box, however, was nothing more than a deception. There was a totally different keyboard inside.

Taking a look inside...

Well that isn't what I expected. It's an AT keyboard, which had an AT to PS/2 adapter on the end. However, it's clearly quite old. Metal backplate and a macro key. Now this keyboard also smells like absolute shit. It's a mix of mould, dust and cigarettes.

There were no real identifying marks on the outside, so the only option was to open it up and check out what's inside.

So we know it's been made by BTC, and made in November 1991. I haven't taken off any keycaps yet, but quick research leads me to believe conductive foam. Not too impressive. Still, it's a nice keyboard housing, awful smell aside. Perhaps it deserves a good cleaning if the foam is in good condition, so I can find a new home for it.

Next up we had what I was genuinely excited for. A keyboard that I had actually owned all those years ago!! Not exciting for most, but it was for me. The keyword here being was.

Look at that wonderful non-copyright-infringing Windows logo. That's a real thing of beauty. Unfortunately the magic and excitement didn't last.

It's an Acer keyboard. I'm suspecting the keyboard that came the system the Windows 95 set came from. That said, it's still a '95 vintage 6511 series - the same series I'm using for my Dimension95 project. However, this one is logo-less and also has a metal backplate - a marked upgrade from the plastic backed, logo featuring one I'm currently using.

It is dirty, but it doesn't smell like the other one does. If it works nicely, that will take the place of the other Acer keyboard simply for it's more appealing look (imo) and logoless design. I suspect it may not work, which is why it was swapped out with the Dick Smith keyboard. Alternatively, they wanted one with a Windows key. If it is broken and the PCB is the same, I may just perform a PCB swap instead.

Still disappointed it wasn't the Dick Smith board, but hey, free is free.

Not pictured was a boxed copy of Office Professional 2003 with all manuals and no CD. I didn't have the box but I did have the CD so I can't argue with that. It still had their invoice + receipt in it. Purchased in June 2004 from a PC store in a suburb not too far from here that no longer exists.

thanks for the Windows 95 key

oeuvre wrote:

thanks for the Windows 95 key

Oh please.

Just use 11111-OEM-1111111-11111

Been using that one for decades now.

I use the same key that I've used for Windows NT 4.0 Workstation for all of my Windows 95 installations.

Or 1234-OEM-1234567-12345 🤣

BALLS-FARTS-BALLS-FARTS-BALLS ?

Deksor wrote:

Or 1234-OEM-1234567-12345 🤣

Or dare I say even: 00100-OEM-0123456-00100

In other news I got donated a bunch of hardware:

No idea what that last one actually does at all, apparently it's a Compaq Remote Insight card for Proliant servers, and it has its own CPU and video card.. Weird stuff 😕

appiah4 wrote:

No idea what that last one actually does at all, apparently it's a Compaq Remote Insight card for Proliant servers, and it has its own CPU and video card.. Weird stuff 😕

Probably a lights-out card. Let's say your server is not responding via terminal services/remote management and in a state where you physically need to be there to reboot it. This provides a way to do this remotely by being essentially a mini computer within a server. Those cards usually have their own independent power source as well. When I did data center work years ago we had many Dell servers with lights-out cards and it was great when it worked, but I swear there were constant firmware updates for those cards. The models we had were very buggy and half the time we had to drive in anyway at 3am in the morning. Sigh. Those were the days. Ugh. That was almost 15 years ago now so I am sure the technology has vastly improved.

liqmat wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

No idea what that last one actually does at all, apparently it's a Compaq Remote Insight card for Proliant servers, and it has its own CPU and video card.. Weird stuff 😕

Probably a lights-out card. Let's say your server is not responding via terminal services/remote management and in a state where you physically need to be there to reboot it. This provides a way to do this remotely by being essentially a mini computer within a server. Those cards usually have their own independent power source as well. When I did data center work years ago we had many Dell servers with lights-out cards and it was great when it worked, but I swear there were constant firmware updates for those cards. The models we had were very buggy and half the time we had to drive in anyway at 3am in the morning. Sigh. Those were the days. Ugh. That was almost 15 years ago now so I am sure the technology has vastly improved.

Dell iDRACs I've been using since 2011 are pretty solid and work without any problems most of the time. Frequent firmware update are still the case though.

Acquired two laptops, in different states of neglect.

A Dell XPS M1710 with a 2.33GHZ Core Duo, Quadro FX3500M 512MB, 4GB RAM, and a 100GB HDD (might be an SSD. Haven't checked). Screen hinge was broken (Fixed), the integrated sound is non working (Fixed, USB soundcard). Battery is shot. It's missing the faceplate, and the fan LEDs don't work. It's also missing several keyboard keys and needs a new keyboard. I have another identically configured M1710 that just needs a hard drive caddy and one of the backplate covers so I could use this one to fix it but honestly I think I'm going to fix both as I can get all the parts I need for both for $40 and they both have decent screens and internals. I also have a spare motherboard and two spare video cards in a box somewhere. The new XPS was one owner and he said the GPU had been replaced twice under warranty and apparently he ordered it for gaming at the end of high school (this is a 30 year old man now)... with a Quadro.... apparently he just chose the most expensive video card they had assuming it to be the best for gaming. He could have saved $500 and got better gaming performance by ordering it was a 7950GTX. I wonder how many of these laptops are floating around with Quadros for that reason?

The other is an Insprion 6400 with Core Duo (haven't checked the speed yet), the dedicated ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 64MB video card, and a 60GB HDD. It needs a keyboard and optical drive. Probably going to fix this up for my siblings, it would make a decentish little laptop for them if I swap in a Core2, an SSD, put a battery in it, and a decent DVD drive.

HanJammer wrote:

liqmat wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

No idea what that last one actually does at all, apparently it's a Compaq Remote Insight card for Proliant servers, and it has its own CPU and video card.. Weird stuff 😕

Probably a lights-out card. Let's say your server is not responding via terminal services/remote management and in a state where you physically need to be there to reboot it. This provides a way to do this remotely by being essentially a mini computer within a server. Those cards usually have their own independent power source as well. When I did data center work years ago we had many Dell servers with lights-out cards and it was great when it worked, but I swear there were constant firmware updates for those cards. The models we had were very buggy and half the time we had to drive in anyway at 3am in the morning. Sigh. Those were the days. Ugh. That was almost 15 years ago now so I am sure the technology has vastly improved.

Dell iDRACs I've been using since 2011 are pretty solid and work without any problems most of the time. Frequent firmware update are still the case though.

Yes, and I should probably clarify that my scenario is one of many uses it can provide. They were very handy to get into a server's BIOS settings remotely on systems that did not have OS level BIOS access.

Found this boss Pentium while out taking my Saturday morning walk. The turbo switch, 2-digit display, and 5.25 floppy all seem a bit out of place in a P-MMX, so I'm thinking that this case may have originally housed a 386 or 486. Everything works and the system boots right into Win95.

It's powered by a P200-MMX sitting on a 430TX board with 512KB of cache. There's 48MB of EDO SIMMs installed, but since the board also supports DIMMs, I'll probably replace the EDO with a nice and speedy 64MB SDRAM module I know I have kicking around somewhere. Audio and video are provided by an AudioPCI and S3 Trio; your typical 1998 budget PC favourites. There's a nice Enermax supply in there, as well as a 6.4GB main HDD and 130MB secondary drive. Another hint that this tower used to contain something much older than the MMX!

huh that's quite a peculiar case! sweet find.

Nice case (and system). The plastic is still on the BOSS logo.

430TX systems can get easily to 256mb of ram using DIMMs, if you are lucky till to 512
but hey they're really slow to run modern Linux on, so for DOS or windows 98 all that memory isn't really necessary

Unless you're using a K6-x with onboard L2 cache, the 430TX chipset can't cache beyond 64mb. This will significantly curtail performance when using large amounts of RAM.

gdjacobs wrote:

Unless you're using a K6-x with onboard L2 cache, the 430TX chipset can't cache beyond 64mb. This will significantly curtail performance when using large amounts of RAM.

on Linux performance with the latest super socket 7 chipsets with a fast K6 in the 500 mhz ballpark with 512 mb ram isn't that better than a MMX with 256mb and TX. and with 64 mb performance was bad too. I think that for current operating systems generally they are too slow, while every Pentium II and III will more or less work. but modern web browsers are a chore now

ShadowGun92 wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

Unless you're using a K6-x with onboard L2 cache, the 430TX chipset can't cache beyond 64mb. This will significantly curtail performance when using large amounts of RAM.

on Linux performance with the latest super socket 7 chipsets with a fast K6 in the 500 mhz ballpark with 512 mb ram isn't that better than a MMX with 256mb and TX. and with 64 mb performance was bad too. I think that for current operating systems generally they are too slow, while every Pentium II and III will more or less work. but modern web browsers are a chore now

That's probably because Linux is clever and does not start using uncacheable ram before cacheable ram is used, in which case it is faster than caching to the hard drive anyway.