Could this prebuilt vintage PC actually be GOOD?!

Рет қаралды 131,365

Күн бұрын

There were an increasing number of cheap, proprietary PCs in the late 1990s -- many of which couldn't be upgraded well, or at all. But this Dell Dimension XPS could be almost as good as a custom-built computer.
Sources:
"Professional PCs," PC Magazine, December 2, 1997.
Ensoniq AudioPCI photo: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensoniq...
"Company News," The New York Times, December 11, 1997.
"Pentium Part II," PC Magazine, June 10, 1997.
Pentium Pro photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Pentium II commercial: • Intel Pentium II Proce...
Pentium II photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
"AMD challenges Intel with cheaper MMX chip," Computerworld, April 7, 1997.
"Intel's Celeron 266," PC World, May 1998.
Slot 1 Celeron photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
"Celeron CPU Caches Up, Adds Muscle to Basic PCs," PC Magazine, October 6, 1998.
"Celeron 300A," Maximum PC Power User Handbook, autumn 2000.
Pentium II in box photo: wiki.preterhuman.net/index.ph...
Socket 370 photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Socket 370 slotket adapter: postlmg.cc/4K6p8jmw
"Rage 128," Maximum PC, February 1999.
00:00 - Introduction
01:11 - Drives and ports
01:53 - Not quite what it seems
04:35 - Upgrades
06:09 - The Slot 1 story
09:24 - Reassembly and cleaning
11:19 - I should have installed Windows Me on this
12:34 - Video cards kinda sucked back then, but we still liked them
13:31 - passport.mid is the best, fight me
15:40 - It's a good computer
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Music by Epidemic Sound (www.epidemicsound.com).
Intro music by BoxCat Games (freemusicarchive.org/music/Bo....

Пікірлер: 501

@MartinaD 6 ай бұрын

You have something very rare here: The heatsink is riveted to the CPU using very special rivets. These can be mounted or removed by turning them using a torx screwdriver. 😉

@jamesstarks3573 6 ай бұрын

I noticed the same thing!

@samholdsworth420 6 ай бұрын

Was looking for this comment

@avamnepohui7260 5 ай бұрын

underrated comment

@LabCat 5 ай бұрын

I'll take that any day over the cheaper heatsinks I currently have for my Slot 1 CPUs. They use spring-tension mechanisms and only fit a 40mm fan if you're lucky. I bet you could fit an 80mm Noctua on that one.

@clark85 5 ай бұрын

@@LabCatriveted on heatsink sounds so god awful backwards, no thanks

@olivierpericat9224 6 ай бұрын

This PC case is superb and super easy to use. It is NOT manufactured by Dell, but by Palo Alto Design Group (PADG), and its model name is the "ATCX convertible". It was used by a lot of manufacturers including HP and Micron. I personally bought one of these case without any OEM badge and still tun it today. 25 years later ! :)

@olivierpericat9224 6 ай бұрын

(also available in the NEC computers of that era)

@buildyourcomputer 6 ай бұрын

there are reviews of the case on anand tech from 1990s (palo alto products on his review)

@arladds 5 ай бұрын

And Umax Pulsar Mac clones! I don't think I've ever seen a side-by-side comparison but aside from the front panel my understanding is that the cases are almost identical.

@olivierpericat9224 5 ай бұрын

@@arladds Yes there was very small improvements through the years. They have distinct front bezels but they are essentially the same. When you bought it directly from Palo Alto (ie not from Dell, HP, Nec...) you didn't get the stabilizer metal bar (designed to strength the structure in case you put a CRT monitor on it).

@BeefJerky4104 5 ай бұрын

Good information. Thanks.

@MrMoogle 6 ай бұрын

I miss this era of computing so much. Every six months, hardware moved on to the next level. The pace at which 3Dfx and NVIDIA were releasing new chips back then was amazing and impossible to keep up with. Even sound cards were constantly getting better with new 3D sound technologies coming out. There was always something new and exciting. Every month getting my PC Gamer and Maximum PC I couldn't wait to see what cool stuff came out that month.

@Toonrick12 6 ай бұрын

On the one hand, it was exciting, but it was also very expensive and painful.

@noemedmedia 6 ай бұрын

I got my start a few years before any "3D cards", the time you could upgrade your CPU from 90 to 133 (Mhz) in the span of 6 months. I was a crazy time but Ioved it - I read the same magazines as you - but we were kind of spoiled. Every "breakrthrough" or "marvel" that has come along since, have felt tiny and incremental compared to the old days. Not all that exciting.

@hang10wannabe 6 ай бұрын

Yea it did... I remember going from a Voodoo 3 2000 (or something like that) to a GeForce 2 MX video card and the jump from a 386 to a Pentium 90...

@harshbarj 5 ай бұрын

I'm actually glad it's over. I used to upgrade my system yearly in the early to mid 2000's. I can now easily get 5 years out of a setup. With luck that will move to 8+ years soon.

@Skyspace187 5 ай бұрын

My wallet doesn't miss those days. 😂 At least now, hardware can see a bit longer lifespan before requiring some upgrades to play newer titles.

@ahoyrobi 6 ай бұрын

Turned 35 today and I feel truly vintage now too. Thanks DNC for another great video. I had a Dell XPS 710 as a high school grad gift. The Dell/Alienware craze in the 2000's really made me think they were the best of the best. I really miss that PC and its massive all metal case!

@syriangamer89 6 ай бұрын

Happy Birthday!

@dallesamllhals9161 6 ай бұрын

Tsk, tsk you're but a child! 79'er here...now THAT's vintage 😛

@benjaminpadillaaa 6 ай бұрын

when that passport hit i felt old

@Synthematix 6 ай бұрын

Pffff, im 50 lol

@danimayb 6 ай бұрын

You are still young, Make the most. And isn't this cool? Happy Birthday to both of us I turned 45 today .. Yey! 🎉🎉😂

@f937r 6 ай бұрын

My first PC was a hand-me-down in about 2002 and it was a Pentium II at 333MHz. So while the machine would struggle with 3D games, I knew it would be decent from personal experience. Imagine how amazing it felt to upgrade from that to a Pentium 4 1.3 GHz a couple of years later.

@SaraMorgan-ym6ue 6 ай бұрын

dude I got a Dell🤣🤣🤣

@Jon-hx7pe 5 ай бұрын

the first pentium 4s were complete crap - slower than lower clock p3s and ran hot, needed expensive rdram. took release of northwood core paired with ddr ram to get decent.

@danmar007 5 ай бұрын

My first PC was a 286 which made me regret I didn't go for the 386 but used for 8 years nonetheless.

@ZeroHourProductions407 5 ай бұрын

@@Jon-hx7pe _Even With that in mind_, going from a Pentium 2 to a 4 ought to feel like a banger of an improvement, which is what OP is saying.

@adamchandley2968 5 ай бұрын

⁠@@Jon-hx7pethe only thing that required rdram was the first chipset. Sdram chipsets, even for socket 423, came right afterwards. There was even the awful i840 that brought rdram to the P3!

@parastie 6 ай бұрын

I had a Celeron 366 overclocked to 466. It was on a daughter card to fit into the Slot 1, and I had a TNT PCI card for video. It was good enough to keep up with my friends' more powerful system while playing Quake 3 Arena during some LAN parties. I miss those days!

@BluewindsLegacy 6 ай бұрын

This was also the era where Dell would include "Fingerprints" for the machine when they built the machine. It would just be a standard photo of foot prints but it added to the "Wow, Dell does this differently" I had a XPS R400 and I miss that machine sometimes.

@MrDeelightful 6 ай бұрын

Damn, considering the era this came out that's a really well designed chassis. It comes apart way more easily than 95% of anything from the 90s. Great video Colin, as always. You really go the extra mile when it comes how you frame your shots and arrange the set.

@tarstarkusz 6 ай бұрын

This is garbage for anything but home computers. One of the main reasons Dell was cheaper than a good computer like a Compaq or IBM is that they didn't keep inventory. Inventory costs a lot of money. But when you have 1,000 or 10,000 PCs, you cannot perform repairs with whatever part you happen to have. At this time, this is what Dell did. As long as the replacement part is better or newer, 99% of consumers don't care if they cannot get exact replacements. But in a corporate world, this is a complete nightmare that has costs that balloon out of control. In 2001 I could get exact replacement parts for PS/2 made in the late 80s.

@star__sh 6 ай бұрын

@@tarstarkuszokay? its still built well

@tarstarkusz 6 ай бұрын

@@star__sh Not especially well built. It's just generic.

@star__sh 5 ай бұрын

@@tarstarkusz i know its pretty generic, and was used by various other companies aside from dell, but that isn't really a bad thing imo, when i had a dimension 4100 that used this case, i found it very easy to work with, and i didnt take very good care of it at all, yet it never broke or bent in any way, so yeah it isnt anything special or fancy, but its a solid case, much better than some of the cases that used paper thin metal and would seemingly bend from a strong gust of wind

@tarstarkusz 5 ай бұрын

@@star__sh The physical build quality of PCs dropped off a cliff around 1998 when the prices really started falling. Most Compaq and IBM machines were built like absolute tanks, but you also paid a lot. The generic PCs of Dell and others (like Gateway) is not a big concern to consumers. But this is a big concern to big corporations and government agencies or states who have and have to manage thousands or 10s of thousands of PCs. Today it isn't as big a concern, but is still important. That's why companies like Dell offer enterprise PCs.

@bullettube9863 5 ай бұрын

The reason there are two disc drives is that it's easier to copy discs, with one drive you have to keep swapping discs in and out. Dell wasn't as bad as Compac, I had a friend whose Compac had the keyboard permanently connected to the monitor! Compac also had weird memory specs, 768mb being common, and access to the bios being quite complicated. I built my own PC333 from parts, for $1400. A 250mb hard drive cost $400 when I built the system, but a 500mb drive a year later cost just $250. Opting to spend money on 16mb of memory was a good investment, and of course two 3.5 drives and a 5in drive because someone had to be able to copy your old floppies onto a 3.5 in disc!

@heyjero77 6 ай бұрын

I worked at Dell as tech support during this, and later model Dimensions. This was a time when support was factored into the cost of the machine, and you had REAL support to rely on if needed. So many hours spent walking a customer through how to install a replacement part, or reinstall 95/98/NT + drivers. The Pentium II 350/400/450 MHz DID have a way to overclock, by covering up one of the pins on the slot 1 socket. In the BIOS, you could flip the speed accordingly - so long as the processor was a 'good one,' and could handle the boost. Good memories!

@6mtzhp55 3 ай бұрын

I just woke my XPS R450 up after a couple decades. Runs like a top. I was too afraid to overclock it back then. I remember being jealous of my friend who overclocked his Celeron 300A to similar performance (though still a little slower).

@greyATK 5 ай бұрын

The AudioDrive sounds so nostalgic. I'd listen to a playlist that sounds like that Awesome video BTW!!

@johnnycha 6 ай бұрын

9:00 A note about Socket 370, they debuted with the Second Generation Celerons before the Coppermine Pentium IIIs, and with the cache embedded onto the die, they slowly started to phase out Slot 1 CPUs as they have sorted out their CPU and cache manufacturing issues. Slot 1 Coppermine Pentium III CPUs have on-die cache too, but the socketed ones were the norm at that point in time.

@HappyBeezerStudios 5 ай бұрын

Afaik they kept Slot 1 alive until the end, even the 1 GHz Coppermine was available for it.

@johnnycha 5 ай бұрын

@@HappyBeezerStudios I am well aware that Coppermine PIII Slot 1 CPUs were available at the same time as the socketed ones with the transition from slot to socket, and you can also use socketed CPUs in Slot 1 form factor via Slotkets.

@J.Wick. 6 ай бұрын

I grew up with this exact PC other than it being a 333 P2. Barely noticeable difference. My dad spent a lot of money on it at the time, only for the 350 to come out a month or 2 later with 100mhz fsb lol. Ours had a 16.8gb hd 128mb ram, turtle beach Montego sound, riva 128 card, zip drive, and dvd. It was loaded for the time. I remember getting it in March of 98. That riva by stb in yours is the original. Same one I had.

@Cyber_Horse_Studios87 6 ай бұрын

Every dell that I’ve encountered from the 90’s up to the 2010’s have been some of the most robust and reliable PC’s I’ve encountered in my life. My very first computer was a Dell laptop and so while I do have bias, I can say that these machines have stood the test of time. They especially display this when given their highest end upgrades to speed them up significantly. A lot of other makers like IBM and HP have held up well, but I think the dells have held up the best out of them all as even their pentium 4 laptops were pretty impressive, and can still work with enough upgrades put into them.

@michaeljohnson1413 6 ай бұрын

Love the computer MIDI music from that era.

@kaeptn 5 ай бұрын

Your videos are such a joy to watch!

@Andrew_G4CH 6 ай бұрын

Oh, gimme that SB128 all day, every day. Another great video, Colin

@boydpukalo8980 6 ай бұрын

Dell did move to proprietary builds. I had a Dell XPS90 in the 1990's as my first computer, then started building my own until around Vista timeframe where I bought a Dell pre-built. I had proprietary motherboard form factors, case, and PSU. It was horrible. Cool video. Blast from the past to my college days.

@stevencarlson5422 5 ай бұрын

Love these dells I used many over the years and always loved the support on their web pages and ease of use and when it came to upgrading stuff it was easy to work on loved this beige era dells

@raycreveling1583 6 ай бұрын

I worked in a Print shop that had one of the 266 models. It was bought new as a prepress machine. At some point it was updated to Win 98 and had been moved into shipping when I started in 2004. When I left 8,5 years later it was still running UPS world ship and our Dymo thermal printer. The thing was an absolute rock.

@Chriva 6 ай бұрын

Turned mine into a late 2000's sleeper. Really good looking chassis :)

@lucasrem 6 ай бұрын

sleep with it, or do new hardware in it, any need ?

@Chriva 6 ай бұрын

@@lucasrem I sleep with your mom and put more modern hardware in the computer :D

@Markimark151 6 ай бұрын

Those Dell Dimension computers from the late 90s were so fun to use in middle school, because they had multiple disk drives like Zip, 3.5 inch, and CD-RW drive which we need to save for PowerPoint projects.

@spazzypengin 6 ай бұрын

Oh that slot CPU takes me back. Well over 20 years ago now my dad upgraded the network at his office and I got to have the old server, a slot 1 P3 450. Awesome stuff. Also, I managed to kill that CPU very quickly with a 100mhz OC. Whoops.

@SaraMorgan-ym6ue 6 ай бұрын

you forgot the first rule for doing that which is you have to increase cpu cooling when you increase clock speed but it's ok it's just a cpu🤣🤣🤣

@BilisNegra 6 ай бұрын

If it was a decommissioned Pentium III that could not have been "well over 20 years ago"...

@SaraMorgan-ym6ue 5 ай бұрын

@@BilisNegra well if you look at that old Pentium it does not even have a fan on the heatsink so overclocking it would cook the cpu for sure adding a fan would definitely helpp with the cpu's longevity and surviving the overclock longer

@spazzypengin 5 ай бұрын

@@BilisNegra It was a slot 1 Pentium III from 1999. It's almost 2024. That would make it nearly 25 years. So, yeah. It could be, bub.

@spazzypengin 5 ай бұрын

@@SaraMorgan-ym6ue Excuse you, I added a second crappy fan to it. It just so happens that that wasn't enough of an increase.

@zachswy 5 ай бұрын

I had a very similar D333 as my daily use machine through my sophomore year in college - 2006. Mine had been upgraded with a usb2 pci card, a 32mb video card, a cd burner, and a DVD drive. 384 MB RAM, and it was a surprisingly good performer, even nearly 10 years after its launch. Oh, and a second 20GB hard drive for all of my Napster downloads. Fond memories!

@domtomazo 5 ай бұрын

Nice throwback! I recognized the case instantly, we had this (D233 variant, though not exactly as the one in your ad at the end) computer as the "family pc" back in the late 90's. I found a picture of it from 1998, not sure if we got it in 97 or 98. Lasted until 2000 when the next "family pc" arrived. It was actually delivered as part of the "home pc"-offer that was very popular in Sweden in the late 90's (where you got a subsidized PC to increase computer skills/access among the population)

@Idiot505Yes 6 ай бұрын

awesome video!

@xsleep1 6 ай бұрын

Playing the audio over my MacBook Air speakers I'm amazed how much more dimensional the ESS sound is. It's almost as if the Rage is playing mono.

@user-ns8hi2nf9u 6 ай бұрын

i have the dell xps H266 i just looked at my computer ,,it has the built in sound card, BUT no agp slot ,, i went back to windows 95 on it ,,Dell Dimension XPS D300 with windows 98 se,, great video ,, hope to see more videos ,, i also have a tall gateway 2000 P133,, 133mhz cpu really clean, ,, which has a pin on the mothderborad to change the cpu speed for for slower dos games,, i love older computers

@JustinDavenport 6 ай бұрын

Thank you for the great video. I loved the XPS line from Dell. I have a T600, from 1999. A few items that might be useful: * Dell still offers all of the original drivers on their site. It's listed under their retired models section. * The extra front slot is likely for an IDE based Zip drive. Or at least, that's what I have in my T600.

@macktheinterloper 6 ай бұрын

I had one of these way back when, with a 21" Trinitron. And you're right, it would take another couple of years before Dell started going all proprietary. IIRC the only issue with this chassis was a custom motherboard connector. Other than that, it was as upgradable as any other PC of its day. As for gaming, well, anyone who was serious about gaming either had a Voodoo, or later a couple of Voodoo 2s in SLI ;)

@W16isrock 6 ай бұрын

Just picked up a Dimension XPS T450, this machines successor! It was my first computer ever, I really like how they built these back in the day

@allanalmeidapa 6 ай бұрын

When passaport midi file appeared on screen, I already knew how it sound on creative sound card, that is a good memory 😂. Nice vídeo as always and keep up the good work.

@organiccold 6 ай бұрын

Another great video 🎉

@OCDRex11 5 ай бұрын

Memories, that is all this channel is to me! But, I love that! I love how much I know from back then still. I remember my parent's and their first Pentium 1 build. It cost them around $4000 back then and it was utterly amazing. All hand picked parts before the boom of all in ones. When the Cow and Dude showed up those days were limited unless you were caring about what was inside. Great video!

@eddiehimself 6 ай бұрын

I love Dells. I had to solder together a number of pins on a Dell motherboard this week because we didn't have the case with the proprietary power and audio connectors and it will otherwise give you an error on start up about the power button and front I/O failing. Fun 🙃

@HixPrayaman 6 ай бұрын

Nos llena de nostalgia eso equipos que algunos manejamos en la oficina hace varios años. El hecho de escuchar música en el trabajo con esos PC. Gracias por lo recuerdos.😊

@hamesparde9888 6 ай бұрын

Nice presentation of that card with the background 😃

@Cal316326 5 ай бұрын

My first pc was in the 90s and was a custom build 486. Was a kid then and got it from my uncle who bought it and have no idea on pcs then. Thanks the for insight into these vintage pcs.

@CoolDudeClem 6 ай бұрын

Seeing anything from the 90's being referred to as "vintage" makes me feel so OLD, especcialy as I remeber when this stuff was new! To a late Gen X/Early millenial like me, me vintage means 1920s and 1930's.

@ModernClassic 5 ай бұрын

There was a time when Dell and Gateway 2000 were the standard-bearers for PC makers, specifically because they used more or less standard components in their PC's (at a time when IBM was going its own way with MCA and Compaq was going EISA, so someone needed to pick up the torch for what had become the "PC standard" ISA and then VLB and PCI). Building your own was considered a "cheap" way to get to the place you'd be at with a decent Dell or Gateway, albeit ending up with a white-box PC; it wasn't yet the preferred or higher-end way. This looks like one of the models at the tail end of that era for Dell. It was a quick fall for both brands in the late 90's/early 00's.

@Bianchi77 6 ай бұрын

Nice video, thanks for sharing it with us :)

@75slaine 5 ай бұрын

This was fun. I've been considering getting one of these myself for a while now. This was actually the era of my last personal PC, it was PII 450MHz from Gateway. I was a fan of the OEM machines then as you could get really good deals and they were really expandable. I used that 450 for many years with lots of expansions and upgrades before switching to Mac full time.

@GruntUltra 5 ай бұрын

I was given a Dell Dimension XPS PIII system early in my computer days. It was great, reliable system too. Back then there were so many options for upgrades. But the systems only supported Coppermine processors. Evergreen and Lin-Lin sold PIII socket upgrades that allowed Tualatin CPU support that really made these systems fast. They even had Slocket adapters to allow you to put Tualatin Celerons (running 1.4GHz, 100MHz fsb, with the 256kb L2 cache) in systems like the one in the video! I must have bought at least a dozen of these adapters back then, to upgrade systems for people that didn't have the funds to buy a whole new PC. I loved the Dell i815 systems for their features. And the Dell BX440 boards for PII's were indestructible.

@adey88splace 6 ай бұрын

Thanks for the video and the usb tip!

@MNpale 6 ай бұрын

Wow, I miss the old days where computers upgrades were UPGRADES 😂 that audio comparison was everything!

@fridaycaliforniaa236 5 ай бұрын

I remember, when I had my Celeron 300A overclocked to 450 MHz. Good memories... 🥰🥰

@joeMW284 5 ай бұрын

Dells were solid all the way through the mid 2000's. Worth the extra cash.

@harshbarj 5 ай бұрын

Those older Dell cases are actually great for new system builds. I bought a non working tower for basically shipping and built a new system in it. Thanks to the limited airflow I had to be mindful of heat output. But overall feel it was worth the time.

@jonboy602 5 ай бұрын

Took me on a trip down memory lane! My first build was a P2-400 which bus-OC'd to 450 easily on an Abit bh6 with a voodoo banshee. Gave many happy hours on quake!

@tobylifers3390 6 ай бұрын

That soundcard shootout was fun! I can see how Sound Blasters got their rep.

@cooperhuntsman 6 ай бұрын

The soundblaster definitely won. But the audiodrive. I kinda vibed to it.

@bregowine 6 ай бұрын

I had a CPU with that same teal shaped casing accents from the beginning 😂 Always enjoyable to watch these videos. Nostalgia rush

@jasonschubert6828 5 ай бұрын

Those Dell PCs were always pretty flexible, and easy to disassemble. I remember stripping a broken one at work down to the case literally only having to remove one screw (holding the motherboard in)! I guess that made them easier and cheaper to build too.

@markhuebbe 6 ай бұрын

I have very fond memories building PCs in college with that Celeron cpu. Overclocking king. 👑

@boweandrew3 5 ай бұрын

Great music and video

@JVHShack 6 ай бұрын

Fun facts: This case used by Dell was used for a few years if you include the face-lift of the Pentium III models. The base case design was used by Micron and one of the Macintosh clone manufacturers, just different face plates. Also, the 5.25" drive bay cage is completely removable, with very few screws holding it in. The plastic HDD bracket is capable of containing two HDDs simultaneously; one horizontally mounted and one vertically mounted. The vertically mounted HDD would require some unusually long screws, though, and fasten just behind the front face plate.

@timschonherr7674 6 ай бұрын

I own 4 of those Compaq Deskpro Devices seen on the magazine-page. They are quite good and stable devices. But Compaq indeed always had its special things to make it more difficult to get none Compaq stuff added. But so did Dell and others. Overall i quite enjoy messing with them, as i have font memories of this time and the games i played back then.

@babaruskie 6 ай бұрын

We had the pentium 1 233 model with that exact same case. Guessing that because the bios states D333 that at some point the motherboard was swapped out to upgrade to that 333 mhz p2, instead of the 266. It also explains the existing onboard audio port punch outs, which were probably on the original motherboard, and the 3rd party soundcard. Quick way to check if the mobo is original: look and see if the service code on the case matches the code on the bios.

@rollingtroll 6 ай бұрын

I had the XPS M200s. Same case. Mine came with a Pentium 200mmx, 32mb of ram, a 3.2gb harddisk and the same CD-rom drive, but weirdly in 24 speed. It also had an AWE32 and a Matrox Millennium videocard. I stopped using it in late pentium III days and at some point a vacuuming accident saw it fly off a table. Thoroughly broken case, but still working perfectly. Gave it to a friend, not sure if he still has it (I don’t have the friend anymore :D). Mine came with a 17” Dell Trinitron monitor, so also a Sony, the same keyboard, and a Microsoft Intellimouse 1.2a, which is definitely a lot nicer than the one you got there. Great machine!

@Rangerman9404 6 ай бұрын

Whoever owned that DELL was someone after my own heart. I usually build my PCs, but sometimes I acquire pre built systems since I take in stray computers like I'm "the crazy cat lady" of PC's. Every pre built system I currently own, even my laptops have had some kind of repair or modification done to it as soon as I got it and established it worked. The only one that ALMOST remained stock was my Gateway 2000 Pentium 4, but the PSU had other plans, so I had to find a PSU small enough to fit the case. Thankfully, Gateway used a standard ATX PSU, unlike my DELL Core i5, where the standby rail is 12 volts instead of 5, as well as a few other quirks.

@RoderikvanReekum 6 ай бұрын

This is absolutely a great computer! Never seen such a excellent PC in my life!

@WodahsEht 6 ай бұрын

I had one of these handed down to me. I believe it was a 200 Mhz model. I ended up installing a slocket with a 300 MHz Celeron and a Nvidia Riva TNT2. Unfortunately, the TNT2 never quite gelled with it, so I had to limit the AGP bus to 2X instead of the 4X that was typically supported in these setups. This did have a major impact on the performance, but we took what we could get. Lots of Half-Life, Starcraft, Diablo II, Deus Ex, Counter-Strike, Quake 1 and 3, Unreal Tournament. Good times.

@SimplengKristyano 6 ай бұрын

i used a Desktop PC back in college. it is powered by a pentium III 600MHz processor, with only 8MB RAM. 16GB videocard. this video brings back a lot of memories. i remember I used to fix my friends and family’s PCs for free back then. 😂 thank you TDNC for this. 🎉❤

@jdspencer60 5 ай бұрын

My first pc was a 486/33 IBM office pc from Dow Chemical, grandpa bought it for me in a reclamation auction. I tore it apart and hunted down a cirrus logic vesa bus video card, and I bought a 5x86 stacker cpu. that computer was pretty awesome. It ran warcraft 2 flawlessly. I can't believe I got all that stuff working back then.

@Griimnak 5 ай бұрын

The difference of sound between the audio cards is pretty amazing

@HappyBeezerStudios 5 ай бұрын

Yeah, the SB128 is a fine card under Windows. It isn't the greatest for DOS, and hunting down DOS capable drivers can be a pain. Sadly now AWE64 or 5.1 Live as comparison, those were amazing.

@camjkerman 3 ай бұрын

The difference between the sound cards is incredible to me. My first PC was an Acer Aspire tower running Vista on an Athlon 64, so for as long as I've been aware, on-board sound has always been more than sufficient, a solved problem.

@ronlevon4294 6 ай бұрын

Do not expect option upgrades now in this edge. RAM is always soldered, and sometimes SSD as well.

@redleader6442 6 ай бұрын

I love Dell's OEM-facade Palo Alto ATCX cases, especially the ones from the XPS-R/T/B/4100 variants. This one comes in at a close second, though.

@GeorgeDrumheller 6 ай бұрын

I remember some of the computers in those ads. My dad bought the exact Presario 2266. Nostalgia.

@plutoniumshore 6 ай бұрын

These old dimensions bring back a lot of memories of my early IT days.

@kaldorf 6 ай бұрын

I picked up a nice dell slot 1 pc with a 440bx. Subsequently i picked up a range of slot 1 processors both pii and piii. It is my favorite retro pc i own as it is very upgradeable

@kevinf689 6 ай бұрын

I worked for a regional manufacturer in Wisconsin when I was in high school (Omni Tech Corporation). We used the same cases, just had custom front bezels. They are great cases. I might have your missing bay covers. I always liked these cases but sometimes it was obnoxious getting the side panel unlatched. I have four or five machines still with this case. Omni Tech sold their PC division to Micron/MPC (who ironically, used the same cases, along with Dell) when they got out of the PC business.

@Revenant_Knight 6 ай бұрын

I had a Dell D300 back in the day that was just like this with a P2-300. It had a 4MB Riva 128, Awe 64 Value, and Voodoo2 12MB. It was a good machine for a prebuilt back in the day.

@nickmdunford 6 ай бұрын

We had a brand new dimension 233 with a gorgeous trinitron monitor. Before that we had a 486 from my dad’s office my brother and I would play around with. It was a heck of a jump especially when most of my friends had 166s

@nicholsliwilson 6 ай бұрын

Dude! I have 2 Dimension XPS D300’s. (Basically the same PC.) Both have their original 300MHz P-II’s & whilst one is not in use right now the other has a TNT2 Ultra & 2 Voodoo2’s in SLI installed, along with a Sound Blaster 128 & 512MB RAM & it’s a fantastic retro gaming PC. With Win98 SE on it, it serves as both an early Win 9x & a late era DOS gaming PC & I love it! Fun vid, thanks.

@magcs6233 6 ай бұрын

P4 on a P2 board? huh

@nicholsliwilson 6 ай бұрын

@@magcs6233 where are you getting “P4” from?!

@magcs6233 6 ай бұрын

@@nicholsliwilson somehow commented on the wrong post lol

@nicholsliwilson 6 ай бұрын

@@magcs6233 LOL! 😂

@BrianMaddox 5 ай бұрын

There are so many ways this video takes me back. I remember my absolute hatred for floppies. Before my professors would allow us to email in our work in college, I would have to take the same thing on several floppies to campus since at least one would either magically fail on the way or not be readable in their drives. Also remember the horror of getting drivers to work with Windows 95/98. I remember buying QEMU since I got tired of messing around manually trying to get things to fit in memory. Finally, I used to work on computers for friends and what not and really didn’t like Dells from that era. A friend had a hard drive that was being really weird and I ended up having to low level format it. I’m not sure what Dell did at the factory, but that ended up fixing it and also made more disk space available when I ran a normal format on it.

@misterthegeoff9767 2 ай бұрын

used to carry a box of 10 Floppies at all times at uni and a copy of Pkzip so I could install it on the uni PCs for disc spanning. Back when checking my email meant taking a 15 minute walk onto campus because no student could afford home dial up.

@vladcampos 5 ай бұрын

My first computer was an Apple II+ clone and the more I see new technologies like AI, the more I'm impressed by how fast technology evolved. I love you videos because they give me a chance to appreciate old tech with another perspective. For example, listening to that music coming from such an old marching was so relaxing. Back then things were evolving so fast that we were always thinking about the future, about what would be the next big thing.

@adventureoflinkmk2 6 ай бұрын

7:37 yo Colin, you sure those are rivets? Because upon a closer inspection it looks like star/torx screws rather than rivets

@gregarmstrong552 4 ай бұрын

Speaking of slot 1 processors, I had a Celeron 300A running at 450 with an Alpha heatsink. Brought back memories.

@dalecousins7373 5 ай бұрын

I made the motherboard in that unit!!! I worked for the company in Ireland that did all slot 1 boards for Dell that shipped world wide.

@LoftechUK 6 ай бұрын

I had a dual slot socket A’s. Was great. Just remembered it was my boys bday so it was about 96 maybe 97. I also had the latest creative sound card 128k lol. Omg this video is so good. I remember that CEX started selling computer parts and that was my go to back then. Got to know a member of staff and he used to call me and let me know when the latest was in. I enjoyed it then. Was great fun. These days it’s to expensive due to mining and it’s all gone oblong and nothing is straight forward anymore. I’ve built a gaming rig and I’m happy but it’s using a 1660 super and I’m on the look out for my next upgrade. The GTX2000 SERIES is my next option as it’s great for me VR headset but anything else above I think is a waste of money… Love to you all.

@LucaBlightOfHighland 5 ай бұрын

About putting in a second floppy drive, it happened to me to do it several times and the aim was always the fact that I didn't have that plastic plate-thing to cover the unpopulated slot of the case 😅

@orinokonx01 5 ай бұрын

What an amazing coincidence! My partner was out for a walk a few days ago and happened across a Dell Dimension 4100 with its Dell branded Sony Trinitron monitor sitting out for hard rubbish! Naturally, once she got home we drove back and found it still sitting there, so I took it home. The machine itself was a bit dirty, as expected, and unfortunately the previous owner seemed to have been a heavy smoker so the internals were covered in cigarette nonsense. I stripped the machine bare and cleaned every surface I could access (PSU, CPU fan, case internals etc). I put the machine back together and powered it on to find that it is a Pentium III 1Ghz Socket 370 system with 256MB PC133 RAM, ATI Rage 128 Pro, Sound Blaster Live!, CNET ethernet card, and a generic PCI modem. It had its original CD-ROM drive, and a Sony CD-RW burner (with an integrated Memory Stick slot!), and original floppy and hard drives. The hard drive was a 20GB Maxtor, and it was noisy and ultimately failed a few hours later, so I swapped in a Seagate 80GB drive. Much quieter! The original CD-ROM drive also had failed, showing no signs of life and also causing some really strange behaviour on the IDE controller. I 'upgraded' it today with another 256MB PC133 RAM, the 80GB drive, a Nvidia Geforce2 MX400 (because the Rage 128 Pro was really lacking in... everything) and replaced the faulty CD-ROM drive with a DVD-ROM drive from around the same time. The 4100 and your D266 (D333??) are so very similar, it was uncanny watching you showcase your machine, only a few days after I began working on my machine! Also, I really enjoy your videos, they are extremely enjoyable to watch!

@jacksonxd7834 6 ай бұрын

God I love those Dell dimension XPS (and the gaming oriented XPS from the early to late 2000s) I myself have a Dell dimension 4100 and I'm making a sleeper build on it

@shadowj5639 6 ай бұрын

I had one of these in the 233mhz form. The Riva 128 as well. But I added a Voodoo1 card because most games still did not work with D3D at the time, though that quickly changed. It handled Q2 and then Unreal very well.

@MacDeLorean 6 ай бұрын

13:23 Grooving to Passport, instant nostalgia activated!

@LelandHasGames 3 ай бұрын

The ESS Audio card seems softer but, I like it. It has charm. The Soundblaster definitely sounds more professional.

@wowitsshit9734 2 ай бұрын

£15 for ess audio drive or £100 for ct2030

@cronto_3307 4 ай бұрын

I had that case @ 0:04 in a computer build of old, miss the 90s and early 2000's.

@lemagreengreen 6 ай бұрын

The USB ports are significant, late 96-97 was when I first started seeing them and the big pre-built manufacturers were pretty good at getting them onto their boards very early despite there not really being much use for them until a year or two later. Given this machines era it is very surprising to not see a CD burner in it though! Equally surprising to see no graphics card upgrade. I assume despite being an XPS and perfectly capable for some reason the owner just didn't touch this much as far as late 90s upgrades.

@HappyBeezerStudios 5 ай бұрын

Maybe not a gamer but that uncle who could make you a copy of the CDs you rented over the weekend.

@RC-nq7mg 6 ай бұрын

If I recall correctly you can overclock the slot 1 pII by putting some tape over one of the card edge conductors to trick the system into a higher front side bus. PII 333 runs at a 66mhz fsb with 5x multiplier. If you can trick that board into a 100mhz fsb you can clock that puppy at 500mhz. I have done it many times.

@chubbyadler3276 5 ай бұрын

14:00 Hearing that reminded me of just how much different sound cards would sound when playing MIDI. I also don't remember Pasport having that much going on in it.

@bcarr1122 3 ай бұрын

At the time, Dell was highly regarded for product quality and support, and my father's Dell Dimension XPS M200s (late 1996) was surely the best computer he ever bought. He got over ten good years out of it---practically an eternity for the era. The major drawback of the M200s was its limited RAM expandability.

@tarstarkusz 6 ай бұрын

This type of computer was aimed squarely at the home and small business market. This was Dell's customer back then. Dell kept costs down by using generic parts and by not having defined PCs. They bought the number of parts they needed and built the PCs and shipped them out. If any broke, they would just send out an equivalent or "better" part.

@lordpolvo222 6 ай бұрын

PII-266 is one of my favourite processors to use in my retro builds :)

@37Kilo2 6 ай бұрын

I still really like the aesthetics of this tower. Brings me back.

@slightlyevolved 6 ай бұрын

FYI, the case isn't really proprietary (but also not far from it, and they did use a different front panel design.) It was even used on the Macintosh Umax S700/900 machines. Fun fact, the side panel and bottom "foot" could be changed out by the OEM, then the 5.25 drive cage can be rotated 90° to make it a desktop case; a'la the Umax S700.

@henrybarson2486 5 ай бұрын

Two floppy drives were sometimes necessary when you used a program with copy protection like NIAKWA gold key floppy disk. So the second floppy drive was for saving /backing up your work.

@MrBlazingManic 6 ай бұрын

I also have one of these Dell’s same model and interestingly it has the audio and joystick ports included.

@hang10wannabe 6 ай бұрын

I remember my fathers AMD 700 MHz slot A GATEWAY desktop... it was mind-blowing how fast that computer was at the time.

@HappyBeezerStudios 5 ай бұрын

Oh, I remember that case. The first PC I had for myself came in it. But that highly integrated and hard to upgrade is still true today. The best time for a prebuild to upgrade was probably the mid-late 00s, when they used standard ATX parts. But the previous owner surely went with common upgrades. Keeping the CD drive and adding a DVD. The Riva 128 on the other hand is old. And the ESS Audiodrive is just sweet. I suspect the ESS Audiodrive will give better DOS audio than the SB128. I have one and getting DOS sound is a bit tricky. The driver available at Creative's site doesn't come with the MPU-401 part, so I had to hunt down an image of the original driver CD. It runs fine under Windows.