Time to resurrect some Dell systems!
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- čas přidán 18. 05. 2024
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You have my eternal gratitude!
Stuff I used in this video:
Anti-static brushes: amzn.to/3mb35Bw
CR-2032 batteries: amzn.to/45BElUZ
Time to resurrect some of the Dell systems from the Franklin eWaste haul: A Dell Dimension XPS T500, a Dell OptiPlex GX110, and a Dell Dimension XPS D300.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
System 1: Dell Dimension XPS T500
0:22 System 1 Tour
1:54 S1 Teardown and repairs
13:20 S1 Re-assembly and testing
16:04 S1 Drive Repairs
18:40 S1 Winstall and testing
21:14 S1 Verdict
System 2: Dell OptiPlex GX110
21:31 System 2 Tour
22:14 S2 Teardown and refresh
28:12 S2 Testing
32:25 S2 Verdict
System 3: Dell Dimension XPS D300
32:40 System 3 Tour
33:31 S3 Teardown and refresh
38:41 S3 Testing
43:47 S3 Verdict
44:04 Dell PSU info and Outro
"We make our own warranties around here"
Hah! True Story.
My goodness, I haven't heard that RealPlayer startup chime in at least 20 years. That was a real nostalgia moment!
That unlocked some core memories for me!
Realplayer was such a pain, remember downloading southpark episodes from IRC and many of them were realmedia format for some reason.
Thank you for cutting the tail off the cable tie. More people in the world need to learn of your behaviours and apply them to their own cable tie shenanigans.
Oh man, that Dell Dimension brings back memories.
I find these videos strangely cathartic. The lack of music while at first seemed boring actually made me enjoy even more. My brain always focuses on one thing and one thing only during videos, and thats usually the music for some reason. But the lack of music lets me focus on the computers. Love the content Mike! Keep at it bud!
Now that slogan sounds like “dude, you’re getting Adele”
Now this is all I hear 😂
That XPS on the left in the Intro is very similar to one I gave my former private mechanic. It was basically new in box; grandparents of my childhood best friend never used it. He used that thing for years to write up and print invoices, even though it was still running Windows 98 in the XP and 7 eras. Very reliable, nothing on it ever failed.
That last XPS must've been a workhorse in its day. ECC memory, expanded RAM videocard, and a tape drive? Killer.
It was also a W95 machine with *usb*
Wow, I take that back, it had NT workstation on it, which *never* had USB support.
Man I always had the biggest crush on “Steve “ dude you’re getting a Dell lol. I have a Dell Dimension L866r running windows 98se I still use to this day for retro gameplay. I also have a Dell Dimension 2400 running windows xp professional. It’s hard to beat the old Dell systems.
MikeTech, got to commend you for keeping the preamble to only what matters. And the time-lapse dismembermemt is much appreciated!!!
I'm very impatient with a lot of youtubers who like to talk and talk and ****ing talk and feel up their devices-- long before they start to open them up. These kinds of vids bore me into a low-level rage.
Keep it up! This kind of computer teardown is where I'm at!!!
Mike produces this videos at the right pace, very detailed but not everly excruciating :)
Yeah, youtube is full of videos where you get a minute-long macro shot extracting one single philips-head screw with a gold-plated super special screwdriver ( available in the store of course ). MikeTech instead is making a no-nonsense video. Liked.
@@SharkoonBln Absolutely!
agreed, I like how he skips the tedious things.
This is such a good channel. Good work, great videos.
Thanks!
@@miketech1024 You need one of those 'datavac' blowers. Or a cheap leaf blower
I found my XPS R450 in the back alley. I cleaned it up added 384 MB RAM, a 128 MB ATI Radeon 9200, Sound Blaster Live! The HDD even had XP on it, but I took it back to 98 SE.
Dell GX-110----that really brings back memories. I had 6 of them (ex-school computers). All 6 had Maxtor 10 GB hard drives, and all 6 were dead (bad heads). That's no doubt why they got rid of them. But 5 of them fixed up very nicely, the 6th had a bad mobo. Man, are those computers heavy....
16:10 imagine hearing this from another room.
I think I've found another favourite channel. Discovered your videos in my reccomended a few days ago and I'm really liking the content. Keep it up my man.
Thanks!!
If my memory serves correctly, the first PC that I ever bought new (up to that point, I built my own) was a Dell XPS D300 just like that one. I configged it to order on Dell's website, and it arrived just in time for me to play with over the Christmas holiday, using the phone line at my mom's house all night as others slept. Mine had a 333 MHz PII CPU, the fastest at the time. It was IMO the nicest looking computer case that I had ever seen, and I planned on keeping it forever. But as more powerful machines came along, I donated mine to an after-school computer literacy program that I volunteered at.
A winter's Friday afternoon and another MikeTech video! Doesn't get better than this!
Yes I agree and use to have that same Dell picked it up from an auction house. That other card is a DVD codec card in the Dell with the Pentium III the t500. Specific to that model of computer and a very rare card.
Winter? It's summer here in Scotland (we have double digits) 😂
The Dell dimension cases have a front mounted HDD location too, although it takes a pair of longer screws to secure it!!
I loved those commercials with Ben Curtis! Dude!!! You're gettin' a Dell!
My current kitchen Laptop is an 4th gen i7, Dell Latitude E6440. Sporting a Samsung EVO 860 500Gb sata SSD with 16gigs of ram. Grub dual boot with Windows & ZorinOS 16.
Very interesting. Nice to have a visit with my Optiplex's grandpappy.
My bench PC is a baby OptiPlex 3020M. Can't believe I missed the opportunity to do a 'family reunion' skit! 🤣
I have since been able to quench a little bit the jealousy I had for that treasure trove discovery you made :) I replied to an ad for a closed down company here in lisbon (portugal) and I found a storage basement with loads oh hardware, mostly pieces and empty AT cases
But I also found 2 MFM hard drives, a 386 dx 40 mobo with an OPTI slot, a xerox 286, several IBM terminals (with the M mechanical keyboards) several 100/200 mb hard drives etc :)
Tomorrow I go there again because the guy told me that there may be some XT systems lurking in the shadows there...
Gosh retro hunting gives such a rush !
Another great video! I love watching you get into all the older computers, it’s so satisfying! I love the look of the first Dell, that stripe reminds me of the Nike symbol. I remember how annoying it was when a disc drive door would not stay closed. We had one in the math room that did that. I love watching the computers get a good cleaning. I forgot about the little folder that had paper flying from one to the other while copying files. The wall paper on the second computer drove my eyes batty lol. I wouldn’t be able to look at it for long lol. Looking forward to you next video!
02:56 you touched it, hope it's not spunk !
Those proprietary Dell power supplies were quite common, you can find the pin out online pretty easily. The grey wire is the PS ON wire that needs to be grounded to test the supply. I don't believe they have any non standard voltages or anything so you could convert them to standard ATX PSU by splicing the 20 pin connector.
Fun thing is, DELL were not the actual ones inventing that abomination. It was Intel for.. reasons no one knows lol
another banger of a video! one nice thing( I guess lol) about this large batch, is that none of them, have suffered Nicotine Glaze!!
Thanks! Yeah it’s really surprising. So few of them do.
0:01 The one off to the right was our first decent PC for me and my brother to game on. Pentium 2 MMX 233mhz! 8:44 with the fan off hit it with a hair dryer for 10 minutes then drop the oil in. If you can always remove the fan blades when oiling the fan so the motor gets hot, opens the bearing and lets lube in. fans are obviously air cooled.
I LOVE them old dell cases. I retrofitted my modern pc in a Dell 4100 case
I vividly remember wanting one of those XPS 7 series computers back in around 1999 or 2000. I just thought they were so cool. I should have known that something would have been proprietary and of course, it's the PSU. Still, seeing these come back to life like this was heartwarming. Great video as always. :)
A while ago I got a free Dell Dimension 4100, which was in a case just like that XPS T500 in perfect nick, just a bit yellowed. This was before I was interested in vintage computing. First the case broke, so I built a new one out of wood of all things (Tudor Dell), then the PSU died, managed to find another (proprietary). Then the motherboard died. Managed to find a new old stock socket 370 motherboard and built up a system in a new beige case, and used all the original Dell bits and pieces including the cpu, RAM, GPU and drives. It's one of my favourite vintage machines now - it just won't die! A bit like Triggers broom I guess 🙂
Amazing, the last video referenced the first PC I ever owned, which was a compaq, and now this one features Dell, the 2nd PC i ever owned. This man speaks my language.
I remember supporting a number of those Dell Optiplex GX1/GX110 in desktop and tower form, they were very quick machines but sadly had no AGP slot! IIRC its an NLX motherboard/riser design. Windows 2000 with even only 128Mb RAM worked great on them.
Gotta love those old Dells. I have a 4100 and a XPS T600 in my Collection. Nice job on the cleanup. Thanks for the Video
Dell dude!
19:26 that’s a wicked driver install screen..
On system 1, you can use snappy driver installer but I think it’s for only NT OSes. I wish Slot cpus were still around. I love 3DMark 2000’s benchmarks, they look so cool. System 2’s sound card is most likely a soundblaster 128 pci or ensoniq audiopci. I love the case for system 2. The taskbar on system 2’s copy for windows 98 looked weird, but I hope no one ever names an education title “Chicks Gone Wild” again. Good luck with Zip drives, not with optical drivers! I though that board on the video card in system is a DVD or MPEG-2 decoder.
OOOOOH its friday... also the early white dell systems YAY
Love those old dell cases, pretty micron was the OEM for them.
i'm fascinated by slot based CPU's it seems so alien today
They still seem so strange to me.
I wasn't a fan of the slot CPU. It came along after the Pentium Pro and was a bit of a move backwards. The Pentium Pro had on die L2 cache that was manufactured by Intel that ran at same speed of the CPU. The slot CPU used 3rd party L2 cache that was effectively off the die that ran at half the speed of the CPU.
The "to become homeless" sticker made me laugh lots, great video Mike.
i recognized the gx110 immediately, that was one of the models my high school bulk purchased
archive has a capture of the old vortexofsound site, died sometime after early 2000's
Repurposed a xps d333 chassis for a XP sleeper pc. Quite neat little thing :)
The grid pattern on the tuner card is known as "copper thieving" and is related to the manufacturing of the PCB itself, nothing to do with attenuation of noise/interference.
There's a few reasons that it could be added, such as reducing the amount of copper that needs to be etched off, or maintaining copper distribution across the board which can help to reduce warping during reflow and also maintain consistent dielectric thickness between layers, and many more reasons.
It comes in a variety of shapes and patterns.
Thanks for the info!
Ha! I loved that screensaver on the second computer! "OpenGL"
My first PC was a 386 but in 98 I got a Dell XPS D300 with the DVD drive ( fancy for then) 17 inch monitor and I still have it. Runs great.
Been jonesing for the Dimension on the right
I found an XPS T500 at the scrap yard, the HDD does have bad sectors, but it works fine
My personal favorite part is where he opens up the computer and resurrects it.
I like the part where there’s a Dell.
System 1 very likely came with Windows 95 OSR2 installed depending on when it shipped (check the service tag if its still on the machine). They were a PAIN with drivers since it wouldn't be until Windows 98 that things like AGP, DVD drives, and the decoder card had built-in OS support. The DVD decoder card is missing the VGA feature connector ribbon that connects to the video card. The cards Dell used were Quadrant Cinemaster C or Cinemaster S. Don't recall which one... that or they used both depending on the build date and Dimension line.
That first PC reminds me my first, where I had all slots filled with something including 3 random network cards and mix-matched RAM just because I could.
You can also sacrifice a dead Dell power supply for the connector and solder a standard ATX socket to the cable to make an ATX to Dell testing dongle._
There will certainly be some PSU hackulation in the next Dell video!
41:10 nice start up sound
Love this channel it's my era of PC's that I remember, my buddy got a brand new Dell with a P3 667Mhz back in 2000 just like the first system and it was awesome back then.
Good to see that none of those proprietary Dell PSU's rendered you homeless! Nice video as always 😉
Great to see you still doing what you and everyone loves
Great to see your subscribers are on the up almost 7 k yes
Love the Chanel
All the best
Dave
London uk
Thanks! I can't even believe it... Looks like 7k is going to happen this weekend!!
Yes it’s amazing thanks for the personal reply I think I remember when I first found you the channel was on 2k
The thing about your Channel is the way you present it in an interesting way and engage with us
Love it
Wishing you all the best
Dave
Nothing like Beige to start you weekend right. I had every one of those at one time or another. Back when I liked Intel and Dells. When I worked on them, they just worked. Unlike the amateur over clockers bad at math would fry their AMD systems.
The hard drive is mounted on the bottom with two long case screws actually.
Finally, a machine (the first one) I actually have something similar to, a Dimension with that nostalgic design of my childhood in elementary school. Gotta love Dell for still having old software available and making well engineered machines. Just avoid the mid 2000s ones and you're good!
I had the Dell Dimension XPS, running Duke Nukem 3D smooth during my first multiplayer days, loved it.
The Dell computers back then were so easy to dis-assemble and work on! - It's this type of accessibility that is so missed nowadays
About them HP writers .
They were ,as i remember,a rename/rebrand of some major drive maker,i remember flashing 'em with an original firmware.
Speaking of HP burners, i came across a few unopened cases of the litescribe discs at goodwill recently and was hunting for a surviving drive on ebay, turns out some companies are still making them new, blew my mind since i assumed it was dead tech since i hadnt heard anything about it in years.
I have to ask - Has our favourite Hot Geek dialed back on the workouts? The Gun Show seems to be smaller than it used to be. And we can't have that!
Love you Mike. Keep up the great work! 😃🥰
No. I keep track of stats and see no decline... Must be camera angle differences as I'm not very consistent with those.
You should take one of your working Dell PSU's and take some voltage measurements on it while it's under load, so you'll have a frame of reference for testing power supplies that have problems. If the older ones are anything like their more modern counterparts, I'm betting that the "standby rail" is 12 volts, not the usual 5 volts of a standard ATX supply.
I worked for Dell in Customer Support for about 7 weeks about 20 years ago. I was impressed at the time with the diagnostic lights that were included on the back of the machines at that time. They also had a really good knowledge site for how to work on their computers back then. If I remember correctly all of the Dell cases of that era were named after MASH characters, and the first and last computer you worked on had the name of Klinger, because they could be configured as a tower or a desktop layout due to how the drive cutout was created.
Named after MASH characters… I love that!
do you remember anything about older dell computers...
i tried to research a older dell only to discover dell deletes the product information after 2 years
the computer in question is a dell computer corp. model 333d desktop computer
"a ibm clone"
capable of running msdos
when i got it.
it was not stock and unfortunately i cannot find out what was stock because that info was lost to the void
Nice STB Riva TNT video card and Aureal Vortex 2 AU8830 sound card. Classics.
Dude, you're getting a Dell! That last system having a QR code on the HDD is interesting, QR codes have only been around since around the time that system was new, I guess IBM was on the ball with those. Cool finds on tehse, especially the last one with the matrox.
It's good to watch the whole video, here! Great channel, great contents. Cheers, M
34:10 nice, i love to see vram additions
Yes, yes, and yes! I have all three of these systems and many more. I am a Dell hoarder for sure! Glad to see these systems get more attention and care. The proprietary power supply Dell inflicted upon them definitely made a lot of owners upset (rightfully so) and to this day dissuades many from collecting these things. However, the 20-pin connector relocation isn't necessary for installing a standard ATX power supply. There are adapters you can get for about $10-$15 that convert standard pin-out to this Dell one. I have them in my Optiplex GX300, GX110, and another tower I don't quite remember the model of. So far so good, though these adapters seem to be getting harder to find nowadays. Definitely recommend trying to get that before re-soldering stuff. Looking forward to more from the Franklin haul!
do you have a 1st gen 333d desktop computer...
because i do.
i actually have most of the original external stuff minus the monitor
it's got a branded 1st gen mechanical pinrod keyboard with a ps/2 connector
[hope i'm using that term right but the keycaps are on plastic rods]
i mean i did source a 1st gen dell monitor but it's from a newer system
and also doesn't power on at all but a little electronic surgery and it should power on.
(i don't have a question mark on my digital keyboard i'm on a tablet i have to use "..." instead)
yay, new retro pc channel! Can't get enough of these
Good video. Thank you
Greetings from Poland ! I'm watching another interesting video. Pozdrawiam z Polski ! Oglądam kolejny ciekawy filmik . 🤩👍🤝
It's always fun to guess the year the computer is from and what components are inside from the first overview. Like a little mini game for myself when watching the video :)
It's funny how many machines you have covered from my childhood. My Moms folks had the Dell Dimension D300 you did in this video, and my dads folks had the Compaq Presario 2240 you did last week! Now, if you come across a Quantex, you'll have the machine my folks had in the mid 90s!
There could be one in this lot somewhere!
Wow very informative and cool to watch! ❤️
Super cool.
Oh i LOVE the GX110.
I have one myself and i can safety say its been a roller-coaster but I'm super happy to have it in my collection...
That case really surprised me! So easy to service...
@@miketech1024 I'm surprised you didn't mention the case lock, you slide the button across to physically prevent the case button on the front from being pressed,
Also yes... I love the drive cage too!.
But my favourite thing is the Samsung DVD drive, it was built the same day i was born. March 13th 03
Hey Mike, I'm not sure if you know this or have tried it, but if you are going to super-glue something, if you sprinkle a tad bit of sodium bicarbonate on either piece after you put super glue on them before you mash them together, the baking soda will almost instantly bond and dry the super glue. It's like magic and works great for adhesion and drying. It works really well. Zero wasted time waiting for it to set up, even the gel, as that's all I use as well.. Love it, and luckily I have a Harbor Freight very close to me so I get the 10 packs of the gel for 99c when it's on sale!!
I want to go up to Adele's husband and say "Dude, you're gettin' Adele!"
Mike’s Amateur Arcade Monitor R Sixty-eight thousand and fifty six!
Eh, among my stacks of towers from the 90s-00s at least half of them had a pre-installed tv-tuner card, very few got any real use to my knowledge 😅
I suspect they were relatively cheap and easy to add more advertisable features to a "home media center" (which most home PCs seemed to be advertised as those days) as long as it had room for another card, most of my collection consists of "WinTV" cards however
Subscribed! You are very knowledgeable and thorough with your restorations.
Nearly 20 years ago I had a whole bunch of those GX110 at work. Nice trip down memory lane, although now I wonder if I should have kept some of them around...
Yet another great system tour, I love these old Dell systems ,that first XPS system has the same case as my Dimension 4100, i love the 4100 but sadly no ISA slots, there exists adapters that let you connect a standard ATX power supply to those dell boards but i bought mine so long ago I'm having a difficult time trying to track down where i bought mine, but they do exist
Cracked me up a few times! 😂 A++ Would laugh again!
Same!
The S3 has a sticker saying that it belonged to a medical billing company, not a university.
IPA can be rough on plastics, consider heptane as an adhesive remover -- don't forget to spot clean with soap/water after applying heptane.
I'd like to see that power supply worked on. Something you don't do every day.
It takes some work on these older Dells but they can be made into great sleeper PC's
Pile on the ram, an ssd or two as well, maybe some kind of raid arrangement. Then watch 'er fly!!! : )
With some companies being so big the have the old left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, I wonder if any of them are still paying for the 1-800 numbers for upgraded , registration etc ? Be interesting to let the modems try and dial out, most likely numbers got resold , and you will hear "Hello" "Hello". I worked for a large National transportation company and they sent out lists of phones numbers to different regions to see if they were really in use. dozens of FAX machine lines and alarm system numbers etc were found to be just gathering electronic dust
Been looking for a slot 1 Pentium 2 since forever, I had a Dell Optiplex GS when I was a kid with a Riva TNT2, Very fond memories of playing Age Of Empires after school into the night!
Another great video thanks. looking at the broken cd burner @ 17.07, 2 small screws the potentiometers below laser optic these change the laser power i think one for the read and one for the write, usually one for reading cd and one for dvd tiny amount moving these can bring it back to life.
Thanks for the info! I’ll definitely be trying that. There’s just something I like about this drive.
Gotta love a good _rust spinner_ . Hey Mike, love this channel !
Thanks!
Great channel my last Dell pc was slightly newer XPS 200 (a dimension 5100c rebage)
Great little system the upgrades where 500gb SSD better low prifile gpu and more ram think the nax was 8gb (4x2gb) , last upgrade was wondiws 10 , but rolled it back to 7 as performance suffered , gave it away 4 years ago its still in daily use
Good to know Dell has be using strange power delivery longer then modern
That Turtle Beach sound card should be a Montego A3DX I know installing the drivers for those back in the day was "fun".
I've got an old GX100 that had a Celeron 500. Swapped it out for a PIII 900. Works great for retro gaming.
norton system doctor made me feel old.
^.^
I'm so happy I found your channel. It reminds me a lot of the videos I used to make well over 7 years ago, and the ones I used to watch all the time from CZcamsrs who no longer post things. Keep it up! :)
Thanks, I'm so glad you're enjoying them! Ohh, you've covered a lot of systems that are very dear to me. I'll definitely be watching later. 🙂
Netscape Navigator awesome!
They sure were IT friendly,such a nicly built cases!!!
oh man, i think i have every one of those systems still kicking around in my archive :P just found your channel! i'm an og builder from WAY back. probably got some hardware around here that would blow your mind! nice to see 'the kids these days' are still interested in the 'retro' stuff! good times ;)
I have a Dell Precision 490, got it for £10 with a quad core Xeon and 8GB RAM. maxed it out with 32GB RAM and dual quad core Xeon's. Also hate moving it around as it's one heavy tank.
Have you thought about building a light bulb limiter for testing the power supplies?