This thread will be about my 2004 Shuttle XPC Barebone SB61G2 V3 PC I purchase of our local auction site trademe.co.nz for the princely sum of nz$50 delivered to my door.

Manual etc. is available from Shuttle in Taiwan's site http://global.shuttle.com/news/productsDetail?productId=485 . Shuttle is well known for very small form factor systems anf this model was supplied as kit form. The purchaser fitted the units mobo with the components they wanted to fit in the case. It's got 2 SATA, connectors, 2 IDE connectors, FDD connector, PS/2 kb/mouse ports, 1 Serial port, USB ports inside and out, 10/100 internal nic, onboard Intel vga connection as well as lpt port. Mobo was Intel Prescot ready.

More detail- http://global.shuttle.com/news/productsDetail?productId=485

Pic of system as it was shipped- http://global.shuttle.com/news/productsGallery?productId=485 My research suggest it came in silver or black.

My one had:

Intel Prescot P4 2.8 HT cpu
Onboard Intel video system
2 sticks of 512meg ram for 1gig total. Max ran capacity is 2gigs
Western Digital 40 gig SATA hdd
Multi speed CDRom read/writer
1 pci slot
1 APG slot

I've fitted:

DVD/CD read/writer
3.5" 1.44meg Floppy Drive
Added a small grill to the opening just below the fdd

Everything came out looking great. One ram stick was faulty and prevented the hdd that was in it from booting. Once that faulty stick was remove it booted up to the XP Pro login prompt. I wasn't even going to attempt do see what was on the the hdd. I did a Xandros 3.0 Linux installation to take over the top of the XP install on the hdd. Why Xandros 3.0 and not a newer version? Xandros 3.0 was from the same year, 2004 and it has a very fast installation routine. Around 15 minutes total, reboot and we are up and running. All the hardware was fine apart from the internet nic. The previous owner had fitted one to the only pci slot. Apart from the internal nic the system performed extremely well. Gave the front plastc facia and ali case cover a good clean as well. The insides got a good dedusting. New cmos battery was fitted to the mobo.

To be continued......