I got the Ni-Cd battery out of the Latitude XPi I posted above. It had corroded the connector and the whole connector came off of the motherboard! Thankfully, the pads are still there and in good shape, so if I get another battery for it I can just solder it back on. No big deal. I'm very glad the battery is gone now, and would urge any other XPi owners to also remove their backup batteries, as they will cause some nasty damage to the motherboard eventually. A few of the vias and components had corrosion on them on mine, but nothing too bad really. I gave the area a clean with some 91% IPA to get rid of any battery gunk that was still there.

Also, this machine has a great design, where you take the three screws out of the bottom, and the palm-rest slides down and comes off! No annoying tabs to break.

And yes, it does still work after reassembly 😀 It's really a great Windows 95 laptop.

Here's two family-photos of *most* of my Dell laptops:

Aside from the duplicates I have, the only one missing is my Inspiron 2500, which I was just too lazy to pull out of storage. I'll get a pic of it tomorrow.

From top-left to bottom-right: Latitude XPi, Latitude CPi, Inspiron 8000, Inspiron 8100, Inspiron 4150, Inspiron 8200, Precision M50, and the Inspiron 5100.

I'm incredibly happy with this collection. I should also mention that all of these machines work perfectly.

Another interesting thing to note is that the Inspiron 5100 (the blue & silver one) uses a *desktop* Pentium 4 chip, not a mobile. It does get pretty warm, but it's not too bad, and is a great little Windows 2000/XP machine.

The Inspiron 5100 wasn't nearly as trouble-prone as the Inspiron 5150 that came after it. In fact, the 5100s are actually quite reliable.

By the way, I'm actually using the Inspiron 5100 to type this post!

Stacks of GX100/110 in the office... Some more...
In the lobby on the way to ewaste.. Some more...

genii wrote:

https://i.imgur.com/if69S0u.jpgStacks of GX100/110 in the office... https://i.imgur.com/jyQAPOL.jpgSome more... https://i.imgu […]
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Stacks of GX100/110 in the office... Some more...
In the lobby on the way to ewaste.. Some more...

Dude.. If any of the GX100/110s have the 2x PCI 2x ISA riser for the Low Profile cases, PLEASE I BEG YOU PLEASE grab one of them and a working PSU, and ship them to me before they goes to e-waste. I've been looking for that riser for YEARS..

Are ALL of those getting trashed or just the broken ones? It'd be a crying shame for those to all be junked, as I'm sure most of them probably work fine.

I love the look of that particular case style. I've got one of the thinner, single drive bay models that's a Pentium 166. Very well-built machines (as are most Dells from back-then).

Dude.. If any of the GX100/110s have the 2x PCI 2x ISA riser for the Low Profile cases, PLEASE I BEG YOU PLEASE grab one of them and a working PSU, and ship them to me before they goes to e-waste. I've been looking for that riser for YEARS..

If you PM zipcode/postal code I can figure out shipping and let you know.

Are ALL of those getting trashed or just the broken ones? It'd be a crying shame for those to all be junked, as I'm sure most of them probably work fine.

We got them donated from the City, idea was to install Xubuntu with a modem and distribute to low-income households. The plan fell by the wayside and the machines went into storage for about 5 years until it was no longer feasible to keep storing them. All were working. Many were stripped for hard drives, cards, and CPUs before going to the ewaste.

Okay, here’s my Inspiron 2500.

This is basically a stripped-down 8000. Doesn’t have the dedicated graphics, docking connector, the S-video/TV connector, 1394 FireWire, or a Trackpoint. This is also the base-model with a Celeron and a 12” 800 x 600 screen. It’s a decent little vintage laptop though. I think it’s a very interesting machine. I run Windows Me on it, which is what most of these came with. Windows Me is very stable on these.

I've accidentally collected a a lot of Dell XPS computers in the past year.

Dimension XPS P100c

• No CPU, RAM, or HD yet
• Number Nine #9FX Motion771 PCI (S3 Vision968) with 2 MB VRAM

Dimension XPS P200s

• No CPU, RAM, or HD yet
• Matrox 4MB

Dimension XPS R450

• Pentium II 450
• 128GB Ram
• STB Nvidia Riva 128 ZX 8MB

Studio XPS 435T

• Intel® Core™ i7-965 Processor Extreme Edition
• 12GB RAM
• 1 TB drive
• Nvidia GTS 450

XPS 730T H2C

• Intel® Core™ i7-920 Processor
• 6GB RAM
• 300 GB
• Nvidia Quadro 5000

That XPS 730T H2C is pretty crazy. It's got a built in lighting system that turns on when I open the case and it's powered by AA batters, so you get the lights even if the power is disconnected.

Didn't know the existence of this topic until now. 😄 It's my first Windows 95 computer and the oldest rig still fully operational.

Purchased in 1995. Specs then and now:

Then:
CPU: Pentium 120 MHz
RAM: 16 MB (8x2)
GPU: Number Nine #9FX Motion771 PCI (S3 Vision968) with 2 MB VRAM
HDD: Quantum Fireball 1.08 GB
ODD: NEC CDR-273 (4x)
Sound (added later): Sound Blaster AWE32 (CT3900)

Now:
CPU: OC to 133 MHz simply by switching FSB from 60 to 66 MHz
RAM: 64 MB (32x2)
GPU: S3 Trio64 V2/DX (86C775) with 2 MB VRAM
HDD: CF adapter
ODD: AOpen 52x
Sound: Sound Blaster AWE32 (CT3900)
NIC: Realtek RTL8139C

I have 8 Dell machines.

1.) Dell OptiPlex GX1 Specs (my oldest from January 2000):
- Intel 500MHz Pentium III CPU
- ATI Rage Pro IGP
- 14 GB IBM Deskstar 75GXP HDD
- 30 GB Maxtor DiamondMax 93073U6 HDD (Added)
- Iomega Zip 100 IDE
- 786 MB ION PC100 SDRAM
- Crystal 4236b Integrated Audio
- 3Com 3C905B Integrated NIC
- Linksys NIC (Added)
- LG CED-8080B CD± RW Drive
- Samsung TS-H652 DVD±R Drive
- Siig Ultra DMA 66 PCI IDE Controller
- 4 MB SGRAM Upgrade (maxing to 8 MB)
- Windows 98 Second Edition
- Office 97 Professional

2.) Dell Dimension 2400 Specs:
- Intel 2.66GHz Pentium 4 (Northwood) CPU
- 2 GB Crucial PC-3200 DDR SDRAM
- 160 GB Seagate DB35 ST3160215ACE HDD
- 160 GB Seagate DB35 ST3160215ACE HDD
- HL-DL-ST GH24NSC0 DVD±RW Drive
- Samsung SC-148A CD-ROM Drive
- ATI Radeon X1300 PCI GPU
- Windows XP Professional
- Office 2003 Professional

3.) Dell Dimension 3000 Specs:
- Intel 2.8GHz Pentium 4 (Prescott) CPU
- 2 GB Crucial PC-3200 DDR SDRAM
- 80 GB Seagate Barracuda ST380011A HDD
- 120 GB Seagate DB35 ST3120213ACE HDD
- Philips DVD8701 DVD±RW Drive
- Lite-On LH-18A1P DVD±RW Drive
- ATI Radeon X1300 PCI GPU
- Windows XP Professional
- Office 2003 Professional

4.) Dell Inspiron 530S Specs:
- Intel 3.33GHz Core 2 Duo E8600 (Swapped from 1.8GHz Pentium Dual Core) CPU
- 4 GB KomputerBay (Samsung) PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM (could possibly go to 8 GB)
- 250 GB Seagate Barracuda ST3250310AS HDD
- 250 GB Seagate Barracuda ST3250410AS HDD
- Sony Optiarc AD-5170S DVD-RW Drive
- 9-in-1 Media Card Reader with Bluetooth 2.0
- ATI Radeon HD 4350 PCIe x16 GPU
- Windows Vista Business
- Office 2007 Professional

Planning on upgrading to SSDs in the relative future.

5.) Dell Vostro 220 Specs:
- Intel 2.66GHz Core 2 Quad Q9400 (Swapped from 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E7400)
- 4 GB Kingston HyperX PC2-6400 DDR2 SDRAM
- Seagate Barracuda 250 GB HDD
- Seagate Pipeline 500 GB HDD (drive is dead, will be replaced)
- HL-DL-ST DVD±RW Drive
- Lite-On DH16A6L-C DVD±RW Drive
- 9-in-1 Media Card Reader
- ATI Radeon HD 4350 PCIe x16 GPU
- Windows Vista Ultimate
- Office 2007 Professional

Upgrade to SSDs to come.

6.) Dell Inspiron 570 Specs:
- AMD Athlon X2 3.0 GHz Dual Core CPU
- 8 GB Kingston PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM (upgraded from 4 GB)
- 250 GB Seagate HDD
- 250 GB Seagate HDD
- DVD ± RW Drive
- AMD Radeon HD 5450 PCIe x16 GPU (upgrade from integrated)
- 9-in-1 Media Card Reader
- Windows 10 Pro (fresh install from Windows 10 Home)
- Office 2013 Professional

Essentially my daily driver PC. SSDs upgrades to come.

7.) Dell Inspiron 3847 Specs:
- Intel Core i3 4150 Dual Core CPU
- 8 GB Samsung PC3-12800 DDR3 SDRAM
- 250 GB Seagate
- DVD±RW Drive
- 8-in-1 Media Card Reader
- Windows 10 Home

Pretty much stock.

Plans:
- Swap Core i3 for Core i7 4790
- Add AMD Radeon RX 580 GPU
- Upgrade RAM to 16 GB
- Swap/Upgrade to SSD
- New Power Supply? (EVGA 500W?)

8.) Dell Latitude e6410 Specs:
- Intel Core i5 i5-520M 2.40 GHz
- 14.1"
- 2 GB DDR3 SDRAM
- 160 GB HDD
- DVD-RW
- Windows 7 Professional
- Office 2010 Professional

Upgrades:
- Switched to 240 GB Kingston A400 SSD (from 160 GB WD Scorpio Blue HDD)
- Cloned drive
- New OEM battery
- New track point cap
- New OEM charger
- 8 GB Samsung PC3-12800 (from 4 GB PC3-10600) DDR3 SDRAM

I wanted to share the Dell OptiPlex 466LE. This is probably the smallest footprint 486 I've ever seen.

It has an Intel 486 DX2 66MHz, 16MB RAM, 1GB HDD, 256KB L2 Cache, SB16 OPL3, 4x Creative CD ROM, and dual floppy drive. The graphics chip is integrated Cirrus Logic 5249 VLB, and on-board FDC and IDE VLB controller.

It's one of the fastest booting machines I've come across. It has Turbo switching via keyboard shortcut, bringing it down from 66Mhz to something like 12Mhz.

The PSU is a proprietary Dell "ATX" PSU. The power button is momentary just like an ATX case, but the power connector on the board is not a standard ATX one.

Monitor, mouse and keyboard are all OEM Dell too 😌

Very nice! Dell had a real knack for making well optimised pizza box cases back then - I've got a Dell Netplex which is the version just before yours I think, but the mainboard itself can handle a DX2-66 just fine and has VLB graphics so it's pretty quick. Sadly no room to set it up right now 😐

I even made a new front piece to accomodate a CD-ROM drive and 3d printed drive rails to hold it all in place

Also, you've got a 486 with soft power-on? That's rare I think

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2567199/dell- … ude-brands.html

XPS, Inspiron, and Latitude are going the way of the Netplex and Dimension

douglar wrote on 2025-01-07, 15:52:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2567199/dell- … ude-brands.html

XPS, Inspiron, and Latitude are going the way of the Netplex and Dimension

We were talking about this at work yesterday.
Pretty much all our computers are either Optiplex PC's or Latitude laptops. None of us liked the change but admitted more due to familiar with the currant branding then any real problem with the change.
Wished they gave better names though, I can imagine something like...

"I've a Dell xyz that won't boot" Do they actually have a base model or are just dropping the rest of the name?
Same with Pro or Pro Max, Why not simply call the high-end max so it is truly a different name?

Here's my DELL XPS R400 - PII/400/AGP(Voodooo3_3000)/512mb ram/80 GB IDE HDD/ISA16 SB.
With my favorite game on the screen - Red Baron II )

Also there's a P1/120 Dell notebook in my collection - will find it a bit later...