referring to the smoke test, I can vouch for a power supply going "BANG!"...when I was younger, my parents didn't really like the idea of me fiddling with the family computer.....even though I knew what I was doing...they decided to take it to a so-called "professional" to get it repaired. I don't know what he did, but whatever it was....it wasn't right. Once the new power supply was in place, he flipped the switch and there was a loud pop...followed my smoke...THEN the power went out....blew a power supply and a fuse.....
+DvdXploitr Early Last year, I cleaned out my Dad's 2007 AMD Athlon x2 260 PCs PSU. And Fuck me was is a dusty one. Easy clean, ripped off all the 2009 test stickers and warranty shit lmao. But it works still :P I put Windows 10 on it from Windows Vista. And it works just fine :3 ATI X1250 iGPU.. or is it mobo idk anyway a little story to share :)
I run into people like that all the time, somebody has a computer problem and I offer to fix it (for free no less), and they refuse saying they don't want to risk the liability of me messing something up, so they end up taking it to a "professional" (really just some business style computer "repair"), only for it to be returned worse that it was going in, and on top of that, they have to pay for it People that don't know how computers work tend to think only "professional" techs can do repair work on a PC, or that they require more advanced repair techniques that the average joe can't complete
those are the people that need to watch the "Behind the scenes" videos they have been recorded from when some folks disconnected their hard drive and took it to Geek Squad to see what they'd be charged with....they got anything from dead motherboard, dead hard drive and more! Yet, it was just a disconnected hard drive cable
I had a psu blow on me while using it it was an ancient hand me down that I replaced with a custom PC it was a shame I would've turned it into a server pc
Bill ever since "kitchen table electronics repair", we've been hooked! It just makes us poor RUclips viewing peasants feel like we're right there in the kitchen chilling with you man!
Also, the RTM and Service Pack 1 versions of XP had green or blue loading bars if it was Home or Professional, respectively. They also said the version right underneath the XP logo. Later service packs omitted the version and used solely a blue bar.
Those slimline Maxtor drives along with the IBM DeathStar 40 + 60GB drives were the bane of my existence in the early 2000's. Quality Control must have been on acid during those years 😬😉
I'm surprised there's a single 270 out there that still powers up with out a thermal alert during post. One thing I really hated on these clam shell cases was the IDE cable always looked like it had been run over by a team of Budweiser horses, and that removing the hard drive was difficult because it wanted to snag up on all the other cables. And finally, when done you slam the case closed and invariably punch a hole in the IDE cable. And regarding exploding power supplies, back in 2002 I was working at an office one day and suddenly it sounded like someone fired a gun. We could smell smoke also so we ran to see if everyone was ok. There was a computer sitting there with brown fluff sprayed over the wall behind it. It blew a cap. Later that day I found the can of the cap on the floor. I don't quite know how it got out since the capacitor can appeared to be bigger than the vent hole!
I suppose they were marginally better than say something like my old Athlon 550's PCI Hercules type GPU powered by a Tseng Labs ET4000 series graphics. No 3D acceleration at all, just 2D DirectDraw stuff only. The Intel Integrated graphics have actually come an awful long way since the 810 chipset. Granted they're still nowhere near a decent dedicated GPU in gaming but they're certainly miles more capable than they used to be.
@@Samspianopage And now they’re even better. With the recent Iris Xe iGPUs in their mobile processors, some semblance of modern gaming at reasonable framerates is actually possible
@@ThatStella7922 oh didn't realize that. Wonder if I missed the LTT review video about it. Well even if the mobile one's are any good it's a nope from me, if/when I get a laptop it'll be a chromebook. Partly it's not wanting anything to do with windows 11, and looking for an upgrade from my tablet. Edi And I'm done with Intel for awhile
The dell computer could of belonged to a school. Which could elate/relate to why there was a password on the bios. Along with the replacement PSU. Our school used to have the same systems and the power supplies just kept on dying. We hade them in our district from between 2000-2007. Have no idea when these machines were released for the public. They ran windows xp pro with 412 megabyte of ram and really badly burned crt monitors that all had a black outline of the NOVELL Login Client in the middle of the screen as there was no screensaver.
Are you somewhere within the province of Ontario? everything you described is the same as our schools and in the same time period before they got IBM Thinkcenter PC's
Peter Folchi good enough, it's just that that situation seemed too similar to disregard it. just asking, did it have either a Northwood or Prescott Pentium 4 running at 2.8Ghz?, if you can remember it
Devin Hepburn I believe it was a Prescott I can't say for sure as they were returned to dell after I finished 4th grade and then the school districts got dell optiplex 740 small form factor machines. Then in the 2015-2016 such school district upgraded to dell optiplex 9020 which have core i5 with 8 Gb ram and 500 GB HDD
Peter Folchi I've been at 3 school's since, but from what i can remember, the school's PC"s were upgraded in 2014 to later Pentium 4 HT CPU's, no earlier than the year before the Core 2 line was announced. Now i see lower-end PC"s in our school with Core 2 Duo's, were higher end ones (the HP Compaq Elite 8300 specifically) using the i7 3770, 8GB RAM, and a 1TB HDD, which is what we use for my last period class
i had multiple computers the same model as this computer, i can tell you a lot about these models. They are actually a very hardy and quiet computer. The things i don't like about it is the CD/DVD rom uses a slim adapter (like most dell SFF computers) instead of a full size connector. This is very bad when you don't have another one. They break easily and are difficult to repair. But they are cheap. My first OP GX270 was stolen and I got it back with missing parts, but it was my only computer at the time so I had to fix it. The motherboard got fried and so long story short, it died. A year later I was at a yard sale, these girls were selling computers and I picked the GX270. They said it needed a new motherboard. When i went to plug it in, it looked like this computer hasn't even been used. It was in remarkable shape, considering i only paid $5 for it and they said it didn't work. It worked magnificently
Luckily those caps can be replaced. If you are up for a little soldering. The second one I got a little too rough and I bent some of the pins on the processor, long story short it's now just junk. I have a few LGA pentium 4's, but they won't work on this system since it uses PGA socket
Yay! More wild computer adventures with uxwbill! I had a Dell Optiplex GX270 but it was the minitower version. It failed due to a capacitor right next to the CPU just barely starting to bulge. It didn't even leak, just the top was a tad bulged, but it brought the system down to its knees. But this was a fun video to watch, even if you consider the computer to be useless. I love these videos!
Stop 7E: SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED The system generated an exception that the error handler did not catch, causing a domino effect. Also the hardrive spinning down and up means that the spindle is degraded and can no longer maintain a constant RPM speed to remain in a stable working state.
The code 0xC0000005 is a STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION indicating a memory access violation occurred. Probably improperly seated or faulty RAM. Could be the diamondcrash drive as well.
This was (and still is) my favorite Dell computer... The SFF specifically. My daycare had two as a kid, and I just fell in love with the design. Being the young me, I would always vouch to take good care of them (they didn't have an internet connection + Windows 2000). Ever since then, I found one at a garage sale for $5, and she's still running today. However, I can certainly vouch for the capacitor issues... She's got a brand new board now, to say the least. The other board is hanging on my wall - all the capacitors to the left of the CPU were blown. I've also stuffed an ATi x1500 graphics card in there, along with a new 120 GB Maxtor drive (all I could find before I found out there was a SATA chip ;-; ). She runs pretty hot as it is right now, but it's a very quiet and effective machine. I've got it running Windows 7, too.
Lol bad memories of this system. Aptly named the "capacitor oven". We rolled out about 700 GX270 SFF machines back in 2004 of which nearly half of them were repaired under warranty due to cooked capacitors and/or bad PSUs. Can't totally blame the PSUs though as I believe some of them were the victim of students changing the voltage setting to 115V and we are on 240V here in the UK. This resulted in copious amounts of capacitor smoke from the main filter and sometimes a mini fireworks show! I don't remember the GX260 from the year previous having that capacitor problem, but the GX280 did.
That thumbnail already cracked me up :D But with Hard Drives I made following experiences: Maxtor: no failures yet, although I had a lot of them (which apparently is kind of a miracle) Seagate prior to acquisition of Maxtor: no failures as well (But I didn't have a lot of them) Seagate after acquisition: Nothing but failures. Especially the 7200rpm drives, no matter if Desktop or Laptop drives, they all died out.
I have one of these SFF GX270s, nearly identical specs too. I bought it for the local city water treatment plant to use, and when they retired it (in favor of a much older PIII Dell system!), they gave it back to me. Of course, by this point, some of the caps have gone south. This was about five years ago or so, and I still have the system, but it never sees any use in my house and I've been thinking about just scrapping the thing entirely. Oddly enough, I'm probably one of the few people who have had decent experiences with Maxtor drives in general. Dunno if I'm just lucky or what, but I've only ever seen a couple Maxtors that have truly been duds.
What do you think of Dell's newer small form factor PCs? We have them at work, I don't know what series they are or what model they are, but I suspect they are small form factor PCs with laptop styled DVD writers in them, the PC I use is an HP SFF PC. The Dell PCs at my work have Windows 7 on them I believe.
According to the service barcode on the back, that model actually did come with a floppy drive, windy why it's gone. I remember those systems from awhile back and actually have a GX260 SFF, with an original 40 GB IBM formatted Hard Drive that magically has not failed and it's still a very quiet hard drive. Your right about the systems getting very hot, as while the capacitors on my motherboard have never been replaced or been damaged in any way, opening up the computer after a long time with it on results in a very hot heatsink even with the fan
I have the GX280 SSF, It came from a daycentre that was clearing out it's old machines.. It mostly gets used to write floppy disks.. Though occasionally it's also been used to aid in the upgrading or reflashing of PCI/E graphics boards, SATA controllers, network boards etc ROMs as well.
Don't really know why, but I've always kind of liked these small form factor or desktop Dell Optiplexes that shared this weird case design. I've got a GX240 that's a desktop, not quite a small form factor machine, and I think it's pretty cool. Got it with a 250GB hard drive in it. Don't know who put it in, but that's certainly a lot of space for a computer that will never be used more than once every couple of months.
Actually now that I think about it, when I worked for a grocery store chain in their IT department, we had a project to replace hard drives in a bunch of 270 and 280 computers because they were failing so much. And we made Dell pay for them.
I never had any trouble with the design of these. But I hated the fact that it was all plastic, therefore absolutely irreparable when scratched. No matter... another great PC video Bill :) I'm still waiting for the GX620 SFF video as promised (or at least mentioned) a long long time ago :)
I have a GX280 SFF and yes, the psu popped so I used a normal sized psu brick sitting on top of it. I use older pc's and , for what I use them for, seem to do well. I have only bought a new laptop but others are found at boot sales or given to me by friends or work. My 280 was an ebay bargain and has been used by me for 8 years now.
My old school used some of these along with some slightly different ones. They kept them going for as long as they could, with Windows 7 being installed around 2011. I wouldn't be surprised if they still have them.
I actually love the design of these. The ones with the flap over the USB ports are my favorites. It's funny when you have a USB with a lanyard plugged in, it looks as if the thing ate your USB!
I ended up with some of these exact motherboards (no cases) and have decided to build one of them into a secondary PC. I will mount it in a larger Dimension case, not a SFF. That cute 160W PSU would probably be hopeless, but thankfully I don't have one of those either so I've been forced to run it with something much more oversized. Capacitors have been replaced and indeed, I put a Prescott and a fairly powerful AGP card in it. :) The Prescott seems to work better than the Northwood for video playback, which is important for how I expect to use it. I have read some scattered comments online saying that these boards will not allow you to boot with a Prescott faster than 3GHz unless it is of a later stepping which apparently didn't run quite as hot as the earlier ones did. The behavior is interesting - people's comments implied that the BIOS was forcibly underclocking the bus in order to slow down the offending CPUs. I've noticed that my bare boards constantly emit a USB overcurrent warning in Windows. I'm guessing it might be caused by a missing ground, perhaps from the unconnected front panel connector, but I haven't tested that explanation. The onboard GbE is a nice feature. It uses the 865 northbridge chip's "CSA" link, thereby avoiding the traffic jams that would occur with a PCI card. In the popular "3DMark" benchmarks, I found that this 865 based Dell significantly outperformed an MSI "enthusiast" board with the sportier 875P chipset. This was with the same components. No amount of tweaking in MSI's fancy BIOS could close the gap without losing stability. It's funny to think that many of the Dell bashers in the gaming crowd back then were actually running a slower motherboard than a Dell business computer.
That unit is older than my Dimension E510 was. Goodness. Then again, Dell's older devices, and even some of their newer ones, are ageless, so, not surprised.
While I'm not about to begrudge anyone their interest in any particular vintage computer, there wasn't much good to say about these when the video was made, and there's even less now... Although, if the one you found still works, that's certainly a plus!
@@uxwbill This machine will see a very minimal amount of use, but I thought it would be a period correct Windows XP machine. The date of manufacture is late 2006. A good dedusting and lubrication of the fans, then it's a preserved piece of crude history.
@@uxwbill Would you happen to know of a Linux variant that could be used on the the GX170L system? I'd like to use that computer for simple email chores and light weight browsing, if possible on such old hardware.
@@MercedesCitarobusvideos You might be able to install A 32 bit version of Linux mint, that's usually gonna be 19.3 as the latest version That will run on these older machines, but you're going to need a video card and more Ram in that comp of yours, but if you are willing to, put a newer motherboard in there like a 790 or 3020 from a 2013 or 2014 Dell octiplex ( Buy one from FB marketplace as a donor machine), you'll be able to run the internet and Windows 10 no problem, I've several projects that I've tinkered with a lot of deal dimensions from 2002 and such, I've Pull out the XP era weather board and put in newer stuff to run windows 10, and later 64-bit versions of Linux, and the motherboard swaps are fun to do and I double dog dare ya to learn how to do it. It's fun as heck, But I think that these pivoting hinge opplexes, from the small form factor to the big mid towers, might be more difficult to modify than the dimensions in which the side panel simply pops. off.
I got a pallet of these (20) from the state surplus warehouse that were never used, I paid like $150 for the lot and they all had the display mounting options and the versions I got hosted Cor2Duo CPUs, 2Gb RAM, and 120GB HDD's, and have PCIe instead of AGP. IDK if these were stock from Dell with those specs but they are still viable even today as a GP PC... I do have OEM replacement parts (Motherboards. PSU's, cases) for the GX270 Optiplex in my shop as well.
As many Maxtor hard drives that I have had, none of them have failed, although only one was actually regularly used. My gaming PC back in 2009 had a 200 GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10 that still runs to this day. Two of my 20 GB Maxtor drives, one from some old Alienware and one from an old HP, both report problems, but still work.
It sounded like towards the end of the video you were probably going nuts trying to diagnose and fix the crappy maxtor hard drive, my grandma gave me two maxtor hard drives and i had to throw one away because unfortunately windows xp died with a bunch of malware thrown into it (my grandma has a hard time learning computers) so you put in a lot of effort and i admire that! maybe next time i get a few old maxors i will fix them and get them to boot as u did. Although im not quite sure how in the world you were able to get the errors fixed on the drive.
I worked on a crapton of these (and quite a few 280s's + a couple of 260's) re purposing them for a local school (equivalent to an elementary in the US). It was in amoungst other donated machines and sadly probably 2/3 of them had scummed to cap failure but were included in the donation pile as the deal was the unuseable stuff + old machines had to go back to the donator for scrap or something.Even if I could solder, they probably wouldn't have let me fix them that way so what I remember them for is the insane RPM the fan would reach if you applied power and the board was dead.
Wahey! You've covered a system I actually own, albeit not one I really ever use (by virtue of it being at my parents' place right now). Mine's a bit less powerful though, with a non-HT 2.26GHz P4, and it doesn't have the bottom stand thing. It once managed to overclock its FSB to 800 MHz from 533 MHz, which resulted in a fast CPU at first, but one that rapidly throttled itself down to sub-PIII levels. And yes, I had a PSU fan freeze up in it and take out the motherboard in the process.
+Lukeno52 I forgot to mention in the video that I'd never seen the stand before. I find it hard to believe these computers were stable enough without it, so maybe a lot of them just get lost or broken?
***** You did mention it actually, after I'd posted my comment. It's hard to say how stable they are like that, because mine has a hacked-together PSU (someone had cut the cables off of it) and a full-size PCI sound card.
+s8wc3 Yep! Green was Home Edition and Blue was Professional, but in SP2 the edition branding was removed (dunno why) and the loading bar went permanently blue. Windows Server 2003's loading bar is silver.
Not sure if somebody already mentioned this, in Windows XP RTM and SP1, Home Edition uses a green bar on the splash screen, and of course Professional has the blue bar. In SP2 and 3, every version has the same splash screen.
Same! It's just the most ironic thing ever. I have a theory that there were either some good and some bad models and most people just got a bad model, or that they change the way something on the board was made at a point which became a fatal flaw. I don't think we will ever know, but it's an interesting thought.
+uxwbill I know at least in the UK they do a Optimist 170L SFF, I am of the same mind that the design was somewhat lacking ( easy bake capacitor oven made coffee come out of everywhere lol) I have had a few of the SFF optimists and i think the later design (GX520 etc...) is much more efficient one. I have a couple of 170L mid-tower systems and they are adequate performers and very stable (although one has the fault of not keeping its CMOS memory). I had a SFF of the same model and re-capped the board. But it would seem there is not very much in the way of ventilation or air circulation. Great Video :)
I noticed the antique clock on the table, very nice, looks like an old ansonia 8 day time and strike. Anyway, my experiences with maxtor HDD's have been fairly hit and miss, but 2 of the ones I've had 12 years ago still seem to work fine.
Hello UXWBill, I need to ask you one question. Is it viable trying resurrect Dell Precision 380? I have little to no knowledge about Dell products, but I got two of these, both have bloated caps right next to the RAM bank (if I traced it correctly it should be power for RAM sticks). When I tried to turn them on, both had the same problem. I am not asking how to change the caps, I need to know if it is worth the time and effort. I can't decide because it has really nice sturdy case, but I don't know what cooling performance I can get from that. Both has Pentium 4 Extreme, one has 4 GB RAM, one 1GB, one has Nvidia GT218, one Nvidia 9600GT. Both has one 250 GB drive, floppy drive (so it is real computer, wink wink) and DVD burner. As computer hobbyist and repairman I know this is pretty darn good stuff since it was free (both computers were scrapped from office), but I can put it somewhere else. So I need your opinion. Thank you very much for answer! P.S. If there is some grammar mistakes, excuse me, I don't speak english as my primary language.
In all honesty that is something only you can determine. If you have a good use for these computers, or would like to practice your component replacement skills, it is probably worth repairing them. Replacement capacitors cost very little.
I have no idea what it is about these systems that I like so much. I think that I'm one of those weirdos that likes the design of them, as odd and quirky as the design is. I think my like for the machine has to do with the computers I used in elementary school. They used to have these white-box Seanix towers and then they upgraded to newer Dell OptiPlex machines. They were desktop cases, but not the small form factor desktop cases like the one in this video. I remember walking into school one day (this was in the early 2000s, probably around 2002-2003) and seeing all the (at the time) new OptiPlexes sitting on the floor, getting ready to be moved to the computer room. That was an exciting day. I distinctly remember the Seanix PCs the school used to have were running Windows 2000, and even though XP would have been available when they upgraded to the OptiPlexes, those OptiPlexes also ran Windows 2000, even after I left the school in around 2008.
Had these been Pentium 3 era systems -- and I think Dell might well have made some in this same basic design, only beige -- I'm sure the case ventilation would have been just fine. Same for the midrange Core 2 Duos, had they been around at the time. I pulled a motherboard out of a slightly used SFF GX620 and the area under the CPU socket and northbridge was *noticeably* discolored from the heat. In my experiences, Windows XP wasn't ready for prime time when it landed or for some time thereafter. (I personally didn't approve of or recommend it until SP2 had been out for a while.)
@@uxwbill I've got an SFF GX520, and I had the brilliant idea to install a Pentium D 950 in it. It works, even though the system complains about it. Perhaps I should pull out its board to see if it's discoloured at all. That's kind of funny that should happen, since the newer case design that the GX520 and GX620 use probably have better ventilation than the older, curvier cases. I guess that's a testament to how power-hungry the Pentium 4 (and Pentium D) really is. For example, the Pentium D 950 I put in my GX520 has a TDP of 130 watts. The CPU in my main PC has a TDP of 65 watts and yet its clock is higher and it has 14 more threads. Not a fair comparison, there's over 10 years difference there, but I still find it kind of funny.
+Uxwbill , out of the large range of machines (referring to computer systems) which of them is your very favorite, and which is the most powerful in your inventory?
+Ashton B. Only that it keeps CD audio traffic off the data bus and keeps the drive quieter since it's only spinning at 1X speed. (It could be argued that as this output is analog, there might be some distortion or noise added as the audio travels to the sound hardware. To which I say "nobody cares", "it doesn't matter over such a short distance" and "that's why a lot of drives of the time ALSO had an SPDIF output*".) Some later drives have firmware that is smart enough to slow the spin speed down when digital audio extraction for CD audio playback is being performed. Some modern operating systems appear to make the assumption that digital audio extraction is the only method supported, which can be problematic with older drives. And other operating systems (such as Microsoft Windows, XP and 2000 for sure) have some way of figuring out whether the audio cable is hooked up to your optical drive. I'm not sure how this is done, only that it is and it's generally accurate! * although the SPDIF out didn't always work, as I found with one of the optical drives in my Dimension 8300.
The power supply is original. The Dimension 4600C has the same power supply, right down to the weird SATA adapter plug. It also has the one SATA port, which is just a regular SATA port with a weird plastic cover.
I just got myself today a Dell Optiplex GX1 Small Form Factor computer. I've heard they're quite reliable, what are your opinions about the computer. How does it compare to a Compaq Deskpro from functionality and reliability standpoint. Do GX1 models have any kind of flaws or issues.
I haven't ever seen a GX1 to tell you. I'd guess it's about the same as Compaq's offering. Both companies were certainly building high quality computers at the time.
uxwbill Well, that's certainly odd! I thought these were pretty common computers and I thought you've used or seen at least one of these computers in its time. Well thank's for replying anyways! PS! So far the computer's been working fine and I might make a video about it soon.
My elementary school had a couple of these scattered among their rows and rows of Optiplex GX620's. I ended up having to use one of these and almost wished I didn't. We did a small research project and I almost didn't pass because of how horribly slow it was. Now that might had just been an issue with the units at my school, but regardless I've never been too fond of these machines.
those maxtor "fireballs" had issues with the firmware going. It would stop being detected, and either click, or be detected as maxtor athena, or n40p or etc..
Love this video, also noticed the cool pendulum wall clock on the kitchen table, does it still operate? That blue screen stop error ending in 007 from my experience usually means bad ram. Still a useful computer as a PfSense Box or NAS device pending a few upgrades.
I have a friend who was a teacher at a elementary school. The school had those style of computer(some where small form factor some where full size some half size). One day another teacher came running down the halls calling his name. When he got there, there was thick black smoke coming out of the computer, so he quickly pulled out all of the cables and threw it out the window. When the actual IT director got there he said "Where is the computer!?!?!" and they pointed out the window and by that point there was flames coming out of the computer. I assume there was a broken fan or something like that, probably in the power supply.
One of my sisters old boyfriends gave me 3 of these, 2 that ran. After cleaning it out, putting in a new hard drive and replacing one bad ram chip, the other ran as well. I have it running a headless linux server as a database for my work (low usage that I backup often). One of the others was given to a church to power a self playing organ, and the last is a backup. Other than the 6 month dust blow outs its pretty out of mind and runs reasonably well. Not that I would run more than a low usage headless system on it. The low spec power supply to me was a plus, it doesnt draw that much power.
I am also not a fan of those small form factor systems either. I had one that of course had overheating issues. Just wondering though, was the inside of that computer that clean or did you clean it prior to your video?
That actually isn't a AGP graphics card. it's a "paddle board" that attaches a DVI-D port to the onboard graphics. The dead giveaway is that it has just a single DVI-D port and not the more usual DVI-I port
Viewed from the exterior, it's impossible to tell. I think you'll find that it's described in much more detail, and more accurately, later in the video.
Before sp2, the color of the Windows xp boot bar was different. It was green for home edition, and blue for professional. After sp2, they're both blue.
Hmm, very strange. Here is Eastern Europe these maxtor drives were pretty long living things. Mine was in service for 7-8 years. Hell, I even have 3 alive behind me. :)
i had one of these and my school had these in two computer labs with windows 7 professional, they were the sff not usff. To what i remember they worked real good and were smooth loading programs and other applications. They dont have them anymore. The teachers all got new desktops from dell latitude d830's and they were put in one lab and the second got dell optiplex 9010's windows 7 pro 8gb and 24 inch screens.
There was a company that I worked for before that used this model for controlling the dispensing of medicine. It was one of those systems that you see in hospitals which has drawers of medications
My kindergarten teacher had one just like this and the thing fried the whole motherboard and I was able to watch a dell repair man rebuild a hole new motherboard in 30 minutes, it was a huge mess of wires lol
Hey uxwbill, at 13:04 I noticed that the same exact thing is wrong with my SFF Pentium 4 machine from HP. It uses a proprietary power supply with that nasty glue that becomes conductive over time. Mine didn't blow up, but it stopped working, and I would really like to replace the power supply. But I'm afraid that the replacement power supply will also have this glue. Is there a way for me to buy a replacement part and remove the glue before it gets conductive after being inactive for a long time?
These days I doubt there are any original HP power supplies available that haven't begun to suffer this problem. Removing all the conductive glue can be extremely tedious. You'd have to remove the glued-in components by desoldering them from the circuit board and clean all of the glue off both the part and the circuit board. Some of these power supplies actually are standard form factors, they're just a lot less commonly used. You may be able to buy a brand new one from another manufacturer.
i love the Optilex, i have a GX520 SFF and it is my main Windows Desktop although even with its Pentium 4 clocked at 3.0GHZ it is still usable for my use,
"Maxtor Diamond Crash" Lol., that's pretty clever. My Dell Dimension 4700 had a Maxtor drive that died last year. Also, you mentioned that different editions of XP had different color loading bars, well that was only in XP SP1 (Home was green, and Pro was blue) After SP2 all editions had blue bars.
Speaking of legacy ports: The other day I made a little C program under linux that poked and prodded at the parallel port's io address and measuring the changes with a multimeter. That. That was fun!
It was a pain in the arse to put a low-profile AGP graphics card in slim tower OptiPlexes (clipping the mounting bracket...), I can imagine it is even worse in these minis...
I really like the HP's from the slim line computers. Kind of funny though whenever I saw one of those dells open I would think of a briefcase with something deadly in it.
Constant Guard is legit. It is a Comcast-rated security suite that includes Norton AV, a backup app, maybe a malware utility and Secuna PSI to keep things updated. All for free to Comcast internet customers.
I like these pc's they are one the first pc's I ever used in school and at the time they were very fast. The first computer I ever used at home was my moms 1993 packard bell 806cd with intel inside, and windows 3.11 and dos 6.22, with three and a half floppy drives, ( unfortunately windows deleted the intel drivers awhile back from a virus payload that I was unaware it had on it,) anyways great video uxwbill!
I can answer the kitchen table, being I've forgotten all about you up until now, so I'm doing hours of catch up at once, the kitchen table is the videos that speak to us, I work on computers on any surface I can find, especially the table.
the Dell Optiplex GX270 uses the same case as the Dell Optiplex 170l a computer sometimes have a P4 or clearon but its cool the had diffrent models with the same case for some computers
The startup bar on XP changed with the advent of service pack three...at least I think that's the one. I know it was green under service pack one and it's blue under service pack three. I only upgraded to service pack two once many years ago and never again for obvious reasons, and I don't recall it changing then.
+Rebelkid1112 With XP SP2 they changed it to just say Windows XP with a blue bar (and in rare cases a green one although any fresh install of SP2 /3 I've ever done for Home Pro or Media Centre 2005 has been blue). Before that it would state the edition and be green for home and blue for Pro (not sure what colour Media Centre 2002/3 used, but it probably changed to blue once you added SP2 as that turned it into Media Centre 2004 if you had one of the obscure and rare old Media Centre versions).
That's interesting. I mostly dealt with the home edition, so I don't recall much about the startup on the other editions, but that's good to know anyhow.
I recently installed a fresh version of XP Home Edition on an HP Pavillion ze 5375 "lapcooker"(2.4 ghz desktop Northwood in a laptop-what a great idea!) and can confirm what others have stated below. The OEM installtion disk had SP1 included and when booted, the splash screen read "Home Edition" and the loading bar was green. After SP3 was installed, Home Edition was gone, and the bar was blue. When I got this thing, it had the factory Windows install from 2003 still on it, and it was bog-slow. It's still no speed demon, but now it's at least usable. I'll have to try some Pop-Tarts on it.
Not sure which hard drives you are referring to, but I have loads of Maxtor DiamondMax 200GB and 300GB drives which have been flawless, and have been on for thousands of hours and in very hot environments.
+EgoShredder I've had some Maxtor hard drives that gave (or continue to give) exemplary service, so it's certainly possible. The larger capacity drives have definitely been better to me.
![Gucci Mane & Sexyy Red - You Don't Love Me [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/j7IBqyFKT4c/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm typing this from a Pentium 4 SFF system... albeit a Cedar Mill, not Northwood or Preshott, and by IBM, not Dell.
+vwestlife Wasn't it full of rather blown capacitors?
***** Some, yes, and for a while it was quite flakey, blue-screening multiple times a day. Lately, though, it has been behaving better.
Dell is better than IBM. uxwbill has bad taste in computers.... IBM PS/2's are garbage
Prescott* 😂
Oh man, we used to have these in the writing center back in high school.
At one point XP had different colour loading screens depending on edition. Oddly enough this was changed in SP2.
referring to the smoke test, I can vouch for a power supply going "BANG!"...when I was younger, my parents didn't really like the idea of me fiddling with the family computer.....even though I knew what I was doing...they decided to take it to a so-called "professional" to get it repaired. I don't know what he did, but whatever it was....it wasn't right. Once the new power supply was in place, he flipped the switch and there was a loud pop...followed my smoke...THEN the power went out....blew a power supply and a fuse.....
+DvdXploitr Early Last year, I cleaned out my Dad's 2007 AMD Athlon x2 260 PCs PSU. And Fuck me was is a dusty one. Easy clean, ripped off all the 2009 test stickers and warranty shit lmao. But it works still :P I put Windows 10 on it from Windows Vista. And it works just fine :3 ATI X1250 iGPU.. or is it mobo idk anyway a little story to share :)
I run into people like that all the time, somebody has a computer problem and I offer to fix it (for free no less), and they refuse saying they don't want to risk the liability of me messing something up, so they end up taking it to a "professional" (really just some business style computer "repair"), only for it to be returned worse that it was going in, and on top of that, they have to pay for it
People that don't know how computers work tend to think only "professional" techs can do repair work on a PC, or that they require more advanced repair techniques that the average joe can't complete
those are the people that need to watch the "Behind the scenes" videos they have been recorded from when some folks disconnected their hard drive and took it to Geek Squad to see what they'd be charged with....they got anything from dead motherboard, dead hard drive and more! Yet, it was just a disconnected hard drive cable
What did your parents do to the guy?
I had a psu blow on me while using it it was an ancient hand me down that I replaced with a custom PC it was a shame I would've turned it into a server pc
Bill ever since "kitchen table electronics repair", we've been hooked! It just makes us poor RUclips viewing peasants feel like we're right there in the kitchen chilling with you man!
Also, the RTM and Service Pack 1 versions of XP had green or blue loading bars if it was Home or Professional, respectively. They also said the version right underneath the XP logo. Later service packs omitted the version and used solely a blue bar.
Those slimline Maxtor drives along with the IBM DeathStar 40 + 60GB drives were the bane of my existence in the early 2000's. Quality Control must have been on acid during those years 😬😉
I'm surprised there's a single 270 out there that still powers up with out a thermal alert during post. One thing I really hated on these clam shell cases was the IDE cable always looked like it had been run over by a team of Budweiser horses, and that removing the hard drive was difficult because it wanted to snag up on all the other cables. And finally, when done you slam the case closed and invariably punch a hole in the IDE cable.
And regarding exploding power supplies, back in 2002 I was working at an office one day and suddenly it sounded like someone fired a gun. We could smell smoke also so we ran to see if everyone was ok. There was a computer sitting there with brown fluff sprayed over the wall behind it. It blew a cap. Later that day I found the can of the cap on the floor. I don't quite know how it got out since the capacitor can appeared to be bigger than the vent hole!
It probably punched a hole in the case.
I love these kind of channels. uxwbill, vwestlife, imull, RCOP, all of these.
The Intel Extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeme graphics can handle everything and also nothing!
I suppose they were marginally better than say something like my old Athlon 550's PCI Hercules type GPU powered by a Tseng Labs ET4000 series graphics.
No 3D acceleration at all, just 2D DirectDraw stuff only.
The Intel Integrated graphics have actually come an awful long way since the 810 chipset.
Granted they're still nowhere near a decent dedicated GPU in gaming but they're certainly miles more capable than they used to be.
@@Samspianopage And now they’re even better. With the recent Iris Xe iGPUs in their mobile processors, some semblance of modern gaming at reasonable framerates is actually possible
@@ThatStella7922 I'll wait for the official reviews before believing the hype
@@JohnSmith-xq1pz no need to wait, laptops with iris xe igpus have been out for a few months - i recommend notebookcheck’s reviews
@@ThatStella7922 oh didn't realize that. Wonder if I missed the LTT review video about it. Well even if the mobile one's are any good it's a nope from me, if/when I get a laptop it'll be a chromebook. Partly it's not wanting anything to do with windows 11, and looking for an upgrade from my tablet.
Edi
And I'm done with Intel for awhile
gotta love them intel extreeeeme graphics lol
ExtrEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEMEEEEEEEEEEEE
The dell computer could of belonged to a school. Which could elate/relate to why there was a password on the bios. Along with the replacement PSU. Our school used to have the same systems and the power supplies just kept on dying. We hade them in our district from between 2000-2007. Have no idea when these machines were released for the public. They ran windows xp pro with 412 megabyte of ram and really badly burned crt monitors that all had a black outline of the NOVELL Login Client in the middle of the screen as there was no screensaver.
Are you somewhere within the province of Ontario? everything you described is the same as our schools and in the same time period before they got IBM Thinkcenter PC's
I am not based in Ontario. I'm located in the USA and would rather not say what state. For security reasons and I meant to say 512mb ram
Peter Folchi
good enough, it's just that that situation seemed too similar to disregard it. just asking, did it have either a Northwood or Prescott Pentium 4 running at 2.8Ghz?, if you can remember it
Devin Hepburn I believe it was a Prescott I can't say for sure as they were returned to dell after I finished 4th grade and then the school districts got dell optiplex 740 small form factor machines. Then in the 2015-2016 such school district upgraded to dell optiplex 9020 which have core i5 with 8 Gb ram and 500 GB HDD
Peter Folchi
I've been at 3 school's since, but from what i can remember, the school's PC"s were upgraded in 2014 to later Pentium 4 HT CPU's, no earlier than the year before the Core 2 line was announced. Now i see lower-end PC"s in our school with Core 2 Duo's, were higher end ones (the HP Compaq Elite 8300 specifically) using the i7 3770, 8GB RAM, and a 1TB HDD, which is what we use for my last period class
i had multiple computers the same model as this computer, i can tell you a lot about these models. They are actually a very hardy and quiet computer. The things i don't like about it is the CD/DVD rom uses a slim adapter (like most dell SFF computers) instead of a full size connector. This is very bad when you don't have another one. They break easily and are difficult to repair. But they are cheap. My first OP GX270 was stolen and I got it back with missing parts, but it was my only computer at the time so I had to fix it. The motherboard got fried and so long story short, it died. A year later I was at a yard sale, these girls were selling computers and I picked the GX270. They said it needed a new motherboard. When i went to plug it in, it looked like this computer hasn't even been used. It was in remarkable shape, considering i only paid $5 for it and they said it didn't work. It worked magnificently
Luckily those caps can be replaced. If you are up for a little soldering.
The second one I got a little too rough and I bent some of the pins on the processor, long story short it's now just junk. I have a few LGA pentium 4's, but they won't work on this system since it uses PGA socket
Yay! More wild computer adventures with uxwbill! I had a Dell Optiplex GX270 but it was the minitower version. It failed due to a capacitor right next to the CPU just barely starting to bulge. It didn't even leak, just the top was a tad bulged, but it brought the system down to its knees. But this was a fun video to watch, even if you consider the computer to be useless. I love these videos!
i've always look 4 ur "Smoke Test" signature procedures in ur vids :)
Stop 7E: SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
The system generated an exception that the error handler did not catch, causing a domino effect.
Also the hardrive spinning down and up means that the spindle is degraded and can no longer maintain a constant RPM speed to remain in a stable working state.
Interesting. I wondered why the HD spinning down was a bad sign.
The code 0xC0000005 is a STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION indicating a memory access violation occurred. Probably improperly seated or faulty RAM. Could be the diamondcrash drive as well.
163 comments in 7 hours, you, sir are a living legend! Thanks for another great one!
This was (and still is) my favorite Dell computer... The SFF specifically. My daycare had two as a kid, and I just fell in love with the design. Being the young me, I would always vouch to take good care of them (they didn't have an internet connection + Windows 2000). Ever since then, I found one at a garage sale for $5, and she's still running today.
However, I can certainly vouch for the capacitor issues... She's got a brand new board now, to say the least. The other board is hanging on my wall - all the capacitors to the left of the CPU were blown. I've also stuffed an ATi x1500 graphics card in there, along with a new 120 GB Maxtor drive (all I could find before I found out there was a SATA chip ;-; ). She runs pretty hot as it is right now, but it's a very quiet and effective machine. I've got it running Windows 7, too.
Lol bad memories of this system. Aptly named the "capacitor oven". We rolled out about 700 GX270 SFF machines back in 2004 of which nearly half of them were repaired under warranty due to cooked capacitors and/or bad PSUs. Can't totally blame the PSUs though as I believe some of them were the victim of students changing the voltage setting to 115V and we are on 240V here in the UK. This resulted in copious amounts of capacitor smoke from the main filter and sometimes a mini fireworks show!
I don't remember the GX260 from the year previous having that capacitor problem, but the GX280 did.
That "command prompt" part at the end was too funny!
That thumbnail already cracked me up :D
But with Hard Drives I made following experiences:
Maxtor: no failures yet, although I had a lot of them (which apparently is kind of a miracle)
Seagate prior to acquisition of Maxtor: no failures as well (But I didn't have a lot of them)
Seagate after acquisition: Nothing but failures. Especially the 7200rpm drives, no matter if Desktop or Laptop drives, they all died out.
"a glutten for punishment and a eternal optimist lol" thanks autocorrect
I have one of these SFF GX270s, nearly identical specs too. I bought it for the local city water treatment plant to use, and when they retired it (in favor of a much older PIII Dell system!), they gave it back to me. Of course, by this point, some of the caps have gone south. This was about five years ago or so, and I still have the system, but it never sees any use in my house and I've been thinking about just scrapping the thing entirely.
Oddly enough, I'm probably one of the few people who have had decent experiences with Maxtor drives in general. Dunno if I'm just lucky or what, but I've only ever seen a couple Maxtors that have truly been duds.
Constant Guard is the antivirus "bonus" that you get from Xfinity. It includes Norton Security Suite and Freedome VPN.
Glad to see the use of kitchen utensils has returned. Lol
What do you think of Dell's newer small form factor PCs? We have them at work, I don't know what series they are or what model they are, but I suspect they are small form factor PCs with laptop styled DVD writers in them, the PC I use is an HP SFF PC. The Dell PCs at my work have Windows 7 on them I believe.
According to the service barcode on the back, that model actually did come with a floppy drive, windy why it's gone. I remember those systems from awhile back and actually have a GX260 SFF, with an original 40 GB IBM formatted Hard Drive that magically has not failed and it's still a very quiet hard drive. Your right about the systems getting very hot, as while the capacitors on my motherboard have never been replaced or been damaged in any way, opening up the computer after a long time with it on results in a very hot heatsink even with the fan
Truth be told when I was 5 my dell dimension 3600 scared the hell out of me because of that gray piece looked like a demons face :P
I have the GX280 SSF, It came from a daycentre that was clearing out it's old machines.. It mostly gets used to write floppy disks.. Though occasionally it's also been used to aid in the upgrading or reflashing of PCI/E graphics boards, SATA controllers, network boards etc ROMs as well.
Don't really know why, but I've always kind of liked these small form factor or desktop Dell Optiplexes that shared this weird case design. I've got a GX240 that's a desktop, not quite a small form factor machine, and I think it's pretty cool. Got it with a 250GB hard drive in it. Don't know who put it in, but that's certainly a lot of space for a computer that will never be used more than once every couple of months.
I used to have a GX240 and I used it for years. Loved it. Never had a problem with it. Ended up upgrading the P4 to I think it was a 2.4 GHz..
Actually now that I think about it, when I worked for a grocery store chain in their IT department, we had a project to replace hard drives in a bunch of 270 and 280 computers because they were failing so much. And we made Dell pay for them.
I never had any trouble with the design of these. But I hated the fact that it was all plastic, therefore absolutely irreparable when scratched. No matter... another great PC video Bill :) I'm still waiting for the GX620 SFF video as promised (or at least mentioned) a long long time ago :)
That song accurately describes THAT sector.
i love these videos man keep on cracking open old pcs and testing em man i love it
I have a GX280 SFF and yes, the psu popped so I used a normal sized psu brick sitting on top of it. I use older pc's and , for what I use them for, seem to do well. I have only bought a new laptop but others are found at boot sales or given to me by friends or work.
My 280 was an ebay bargain and has been used by me for 8 years now.
Those things'll give me war flashbacks, i swear. As others've mentioned, the school district in my area relied heavily on 'em.
My old school used some of these along with some slightly different ones. They kept them going for as long as they could, with Windows 7 being installed around 2011. I wouldn't be surprised if they still have them.
Remember these machines at my primary school back in 2007.
I was hoping to find a YT video tonight that I could get my teeth into. UXWBill delivers once again. If only Dell and Maxtor had done the same.
I have a DFF OptiPlex 170L and it's honestly my favorite computer ever.
I actually love the design of these. The ones with the flap over the USB ports are my favorites. It's funny when you have a USB with a lanyard plugged in, it looks as if the thing ate your USB!
***** Ah the mental giggles when you were bored at school at the computer room.
I ended up with some of these exact motherboards (no cases) and have decided to build one of them into a secondary PC. I will mount it in a larger Dimension case, not a SFF.
That cute 160W PSU would probably be hopeless, but thankfully I don't have one of those either so I've been forced to run it with something much more oversized.
Capacitors have been replaced and indeed, I put a Prescott and a fairly powerful AGP card in it. :) The Prescott seems to work better than the Northwood for video playback, which is important for how I expect to use it.
I have read some scattered comments online saying that these boards will not allow you to boot with a Prescott faster than 3GHz unless it is of a later stepping which apparently didn't run quite as hot as the earlier ones did. The behavior is interesting - people's comments implied that the BIOS was forcibly underclocking the bus in order to slow down the offending CPUs.
I've noticed that my bare boards constantly emit a USB overcurrent warning in Windows. I'm guessing it might be caused by a missing ground, perhaps from the unconnected front panel connector, but I haven't tested that explanation.
The onboard GbE is a nice feature. It uses the 865 northbridge chip's "CSA" link, thereby avoiding the traffic jams that would occur with a PCI card.
In the popular "3DMark" benchmarks, I found that this 865 based Dell significantly outperformed an MSI "enthusiast" board with the sportier 875P chipset. This was with the same components. No amount of tweaking in MSI's fancy BIOS could close the gap without losing stability. It's funny to think that many of the Dell bashers in the gaming crowd back then were actually running a slower motherboard than a Dell business computer.
I'm stuck using a Pentium 4 530 HT Dell Dimension 5000 as a daily computer, what am I supposed to do now?
That unit is older than my Dimension E510 was. Goodness. Then again, Dell's older devices, and even some of their newer ones, are ageless, so, not surprised.
I found a GX170L at the local recycling spot.
Lovely little room heater, which I knew I had seen somewhere before.
While I'm not about to begrudge anyone their interest in any particular vintage computer, there wasn't much good to say about these when the video was made, and there's even less now...
Although, if the one you found still works, that's certainly a plus!
@@uxwbill This machine will see a very minimal amount of use, but I thought it would be a period correct Windows XP machine. The date of manufacture is late 2006. A good dedusting and lubrication of the fans, then it's a preserved piece of crude history.
@@uxwbill Would you happen to know of a Linux variant that could be used on the the GX170L system? I'd like to use that computer for simple email chores and light weight browsing, if possible on such old hardware.
@@MercedesCitarobusvideos You might be able to install A 32 bit version of Linux mint, that's usually gonna be 19.3 as the latest version That will run on these older machines, but you're going to need a video card and more Ram in that comp of yours, but if you are willing to, put a newer motherboard in there like a 790 or 3020 from a 2013 or 2014 Dell octiplex ( Buy one from FB marketplace as a donor machine), you'll be able to run the internet and Windows 10 no problem, I've several projects that I've tinkered with a lot of deal dimensions from 2002 and such, I've Pull out the XP era weather board and put in newer stuff to run windows 10, and later 64-bit versions of Linux, and the motherboard swaps are fun to do and I double dog dare ya to learn how to do it. It's fun as heck, But I think that these pivoting hinge opplexes, from the small form factor to the big mid towers, might be more difficult to modify than the dimensions in which the side panel simply pops. off.
What about Hitachi? Like the ones used in the older Latitudes and Inspirons?
I got a pallet of these (20) from the state surplus warehouse that were never used, I paid like $150 for the lot and they all had the display mounting options and the versions I got hosted Cor2Duo CPUs, 2Gb RAM, and 120GB HDD's, and have PCIe instead of AGP. IDK if these were stock from Dell with those specs but they are still viable even today as a GP PC...
I do have OEM replacement parts (Motherboards. PSU's, cases) for the GX270 Optiplex in my shop as well.
As many Maxtor hard drives that I have had, none of them have failed, although only one was actually regularly used. My gaming PC back in 2009 had a 200 GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10 that still runs to this day. Two of my 20 GB Maxtor drives, one from some old Alienware and one from an old HP, both report problems, but still work.
I love your way with words. Great video.
It sounded like towards the end of the video you were probably going nuts trying to diagnose and fix the crappy maxtor hard drive, my grandma gave me two maxtor hard drives and i had to throw one away because unfortunately windows xp died with a bunch of malware thrown into it (my grandma has a hard time learning computers) so you put in a lot of effort and i admire that! maybe next time i get a few old maxors i will fix them and get them to boot as u did. Although im not quite sure how in the world you were able to get the errors fixed on the drive.
I worked on a crapton of these (and quite a few 280s's + a couple of 260's) re purposing them for a local school (equivalent to an elementary in the US). It was in amoungst other donated machines and sadly probably 2/3 of them had scummed to cap failure but were included in the donation pile as the deal was the unuseable stuff + old machines had to go back to the donator for scrap or something.Even if I could solder, they probably wouldn't have let me fix them that way so what I remember them for is the insane RPM the fan would reach if you applied power and the board was dead.
Glad im not alone doing stuff like that most Saturday nights.
33:24 - I just bashed my head into my desk in shame. Lol
Wahey! You've covered a system I actually own, albeit not one I really ever use (by virtue of it being at my parents' place right now). Mine's a bit less powerful though, with a non-HT 2.26GHz P4, and it doesn't have the bottom stand thing. It once managed to overclock its FSB to 800 MHz from 533 MHz, which resulted in a fast CPU at first, but one that rapidly throttled itself down to sub-PIII levels. And yes, I had a PSU fan freeze up in it and take out the motherboard in the process.
+Lukeno52 I forgot to mention in the video that I'd never seen the stand before. I find it hard to believe these computers were stable enough without it, so maybe a lot of them just get lost or broken?
*****
You did mention it actually, after I'd posted my comment. It's hard to say how stable they are like that, because mine has a hacked-together PSU (someone had cut the cables off of it) and a full-size PCI sound card.
“Eagles may soar but weasels do not get sucked into jet engines” - totally using that! That’s hilarious.
yep the XP loading bar would change depending on edition, however they removed that in SP2.
+s8wc3 Yep! Green was Home Edition and Blue was Professional, but in SP2 the edition branding was removed (dunno why) and the loading bar went permanently blue. Windows Server 2003's loading bar is silver.
Not sure if somebody already mentioned this, in Windows XP RTM and SP1, Home Edition uses a green bar on the splash screen, and of course Professional has the blue bar. In SP2 and 3, every version has the same splash screen.
I have a maxtor hdd over 17 years old and is still kicking! Wonder if the warranty is still good?
lol
Same! It's just the most ironic thing ever. I have a theory that there were either some good and some bad models and most people just got a bad model, or that they change the way something on the board was made at a point which became a fatal flaw. I don't think we will ever know, but it's an interesting thought.
+uxwbill I know at least in the UK they do a Optimist 170L SFF, I am of the same mind that the design was somewhat lacking ( easy bake capacitor oven made coffee come out of everywhere lol) I have had a few of the SFF optimists and i think the later design (GX520 etc...) is much more efficient one. I have a couple of 170L mid-tower systems and they are adequate performers and very stable (although one has the fault of not keeping its CMOS memory). I had a SFF of the same model and re-capped the board. But it would seem there is not very much in the way of ventilation or air circulation. Great Video :)
I noticed the antique clock on the table, very nice, looks like an old ansonia 8 day time and strike. Anyway, my experiences with maxtor HDD's have been fairly hit and miss, but 2 of the ones I've had 12 years ago still seem to work fine.
Hello UXWBill, I need to ask you one question.
Is it viable trying resurrect Dell Precision 380?
I have little to no knowledge about Dell products, but I got two of these, both have bloated caps right next to the RAM bank (if I traced it correctly it should be power for RAM sticks). When I tried to turn them on, both had the same problem. I am not asking how to change the caps, I need to know if it is worth the time and effort. I can't decide because it has really nice sturdy case, but I don't know what cooling performance I can get from that.
Both has Pentium 4 Extreme, one has 4 GB RAM, one 1GB, one has Nvidia GT218, one Nvidia 9600GT. Both has one 250 GB drive, floppy drive (so it is real computer, wink wink) and DVD burner. As computer hobbyist and repairman I know this is pretty darn good stuff since it was free (both computers were scrapped from office), but I can put it somewhere else. So I need your opinion. Thank you very much for answer!
P.S. If there is some grammar mistakes, excuse me, I don't speak english as my primary language.
In all honesty that is something only you can determine. If you have a good use for these computers, or would like to practice your component replacement skills, it is probably worth repairing them. Replacement capacitors cost very little.
***** Oh yeah, I could make it my primary Linux computer and learn that system a little. Thank you!
Me:*watches a video about a pentium 4 on a ibm Thinkcentre pentium 4*
I have no idea what it is about these systems that I like so much. I think that I'm one of those weirdos that likes the design of them, as odd and quirky as the design is. I think my like for the machine has to do with the computers I used in elementary school. They used to have these white-box Seanix towers and then they upgraded to newer Dell OptiPlex machines. They were desktop cases, but not the small form factor desktop cases like the one in this video. I remember walking into school one day (this was in the early 2000s, probably around 2002-2003) and seeing all the (at the time) new OptiPlexes sitting on the floor, getting ready to be moved to the computer room. That was an exciting day. I distinctly remember the Seanix PCs the school used to have were running Windows 2000, and even though XP would have been available when they upgraded to the OptiPlexes, those OptiPlexes also ran Windows 2000, even after I left the school in around 2008.
Had these been Pentium 3 era systems -- and I think Dell might well have made some in this same basic design, only beige -- I'm sure the case ventilation would have been just fine. Same for the midrange Core 2 Duos, had they been around at the time. I pulled a motherboard out of a slightly used SFF GX620 and the area under the CPU socket and northbridge was *noticeably* discolored from the heat.
In my experiences, Windows XP wasn't ready for prime time when it landed or for some time thereafter. (I personally didn't approve of or recommend it until SP2 had been out for a while.)
@@uxwbill I've got an SFF GX520, and I had the brilliant idea to install a Pentium D 950 in it. It works, even though the system complains about it. Perhaps I should pull out its board to see if it's discoloured at all. That's kind of funny that should happen, since the newer case design that the GX520 and GX620 use probably have better ventilation than the older, curvier cases. I guess that's a testament to how power-hungry the Pentium 4 (and Pentium D) really is. For example, the Pentium D 950 I put in my GX520 has a TDP of 130 watts. The CPU in my main PC has a TDP of 65 watts and yet its clock is higher and it has 14 more threads. Not a fair comparison, there's over 10 years difference there, but I still find it kind of funny.
+Uxwbill , out of the large range of machines (referring to computer systems) which of them is your very favorite, and which is the most powerful in your inventory?
Constant Guard:
Seems legit
Does the CD audio input provide much of a benefit? One of my HP Compaq desktops has a CD audio input and the DVD drive also has one of these inputs.
+Ashton B. Only that it keeps CD audio traffic off the data bus and keeps the drive quieter since it's only spinning at 1X speed. (It could be argued that as this output is analog, there might be some distortion or noise added as the audio travels to the sound hardware. To which I say "nobody cares", "it doesn't matter over such a short distance" and "that's why a lot of drives of the time ALSO had an SPDIF output*".)
Some later drives have firmware that is smart enough to slow the spin speed down when digital audio extraction for CD audio playback is being performed.
Some modern operating systems appear to make the assumption that digital audio extraction is the only method supported, which can be problematic with older drives. And other operating systems (such as Microsoft Windows, XP and 2000 for sure) have some way of figuring out whether the audio cable is hooked up to your optical drive. I'm not sure how this is done, only that it is and it's generally accurate!
* although the SPDIF out didn't always work, as I found with one of the optical drives in my Dimension 8300.
The power supply is original. The Dimension 4600C has the same power supply, right down to the weird SATA adapter plug. It also has the one SATA port, which is just a regular SATA port with a weird plastic cover.
the power supply fan will go faster if it gets hot.
I just got myself today a Dell Optiplex GX1 Small Form Factor computer. I've heard they're quite reliable, what are your opinions about the computer. How does it compare to a Compaq Deskpro from functionality and reliability standpoint. Do GX1 models have any kind of flaws or issues.
I haven't ever seen a GX1 to tell you. I'd guess it's about the same as Compaq's offering. Both companies were certainly building high quality computers at the time.
uxwbill Well, that's certainly odd! I thought these were pretty common computers and I thought you've used or seen at least one of these computers in its time. Well thank's for replying anyways!
PS! So far the computer's been working fine and I might make a video about it soon.
*****
So the Pentium 4-based Optiplexes are the oldest Optiplexes you've actually seen or used?
My elementary school had a couple of these scattered among their rows and rows of Optiplex GX620's. I ended up having to use one of these and almost wished I didn't. We did a small research project and I almost didn't pass because of how horribly slow it was. Now that might had just been an issue with the units at my school, but regardless I've never been too fond of these machines.
those maxtor "fireballs" had issues with the firmware going. It would stop being detected, and either click, or be detected as maxtor athena, or n40p or etc..
OOO_ooo
Love this video, also noticed the cool pendulum wall clock on the kitchen table, does it still operate? That blue screen stop error ending in 007 from my experience usually means bad ram. Still a useful computer as a PfSense Box or NAS device pending a few upgrades.
I have a friend who was a teacher at a elementary school. The school had those style of computer(some where small form factor some where full size some half size). One day another teacher came running down the halls calling his name. When he got there, there was thick black smoke coming out of the computer, so he quickly pulled out all of the cables and threw it out the window. When the actual IT director got there he said "Where is the computer!?!?!" and they pointed out the window and by that point there was flames coming out of the computer. I assume there was a broken fan or something like that, probably in the power supply.
:O
One of my sisters old boyfriends gave me 3 of these, 2 that ran. After cleaning it out, putting in a new hard drive and replacing one bad ram chip, the other ran as well. I have it running a headless linux server as a database for my work (low usage that I backup often). One of the others was given to a church to power a self playing organ, and the last is a backup. Other than the 6 month dust blow outs its pretty out of mind and runs reasonably well. Not that I would run more than a low usage headless system on it. The low spec power supply to me was a plus, it doesnt draw that much power.
watching this on a 2.8ghz gx280 sff with 1gb of ram and windows 7
My 260 sff runs just fine. You can upgrade to a duo core if you want. My power supply may not let me. I`m still researching.
@@darrelpetrie8793GX260? No can't get a core 2 duo. Get a Optiplex 755
I am also not a fan of those small form factor systems either. I had one that of course had overheating issues. Just wondering though, was the inside of that computer that clean or did you clean it prior to your video?
+KLM817 The computer was presented as found. I did not change anything about it.
That actually isn't a AGP graphics card. it's a "paddle board" that attaches a DVI-D port to the onboard graphics. The dead giveaway is that it has just a single DVI-D port and not the more usual DVI-I port
Viewed from the exterior, it's impossible to tell. I think you'll find that it's described in much more detail, and more accurately, later in the video.
Before sp2, the color of the Windows xp boot bar was different. It was green for home edition, and blue for professional. After sp2, they're both blue.
In the UK, "You cold stand to lose a few pounds" is a bad saying, I'm sure.
Hmm, very strange. Here is Eastern Europe these maxtor drives were pretty long living things. Mine was in service for 7-8 years. Hell, I even have 3 alive behind me. :)
i had one of these and my school had these in two computer labs with windows 7 professional, they were the sff not usff. To what i remember they worked real good and were smooth loading programs and other applications. They dont have them anymore. The teachers all got new desktops from dell latitude d830's and they were put in one lab and the second got dell optiplex 9010's windows 7 pro 8gb and 24 inch screens.
There was a company that I worked for before that used this model for controlling the dispensing of medicine. It was one of those systems that you see in hospitals which has drawers of medications
My kindergarten teacher had one just like this and the thing fried the whole motherboard and I was able to watch a dell repair man rebuild a hole new motherboard in 30 minutes, it was a huge mess of wires lol
Hey uxwbill, at 13:04 I noticed that the same exact thing is wrong with my SFF Pentium 4 machine from HP. It uses a proprietary power supply with that nasty glue that becomes conductive over time. Mine didn't blow up, but it stopped working, and I would really like to replace the power supply. But I'm afraid that the replacement power supply will also have this glue. Is there a way for me to buy a replacement part and remove the glue before it gets conductive after being inactive for a long time?
These days I doubt there are any original HP power supplies available that haven't begun to suffer this problem. Removing all the conductive glue can be extremely tedious. You'd have to remove the glued-in components by desoldering them from the circuit board and clean all of the glue off both the part and the circuit board.
Some of these power supplies actually are standard form factors, they're just a lot less commonly used. You may be able to buy a brand new one from another manufacturer.
i love the Optilex, i have a GX520 SFF and it is my main Windows Desktop although even with its Pentium 4 clocked at 3.0GHZ it is still usable for my use,
Cool! I prefer Dell Dimensions of that era.
i love them also, i have 3 Dimension E520 and 1 E521 laying under my PC desk right now i buy and re-sell PC,mostly Dell and Acer desktops
Jotech 1991 Do either of those Dells you own have Windows XP Media Center Edition on them? As for me i have a Dimension 4700, 2400, and 4100.
"Maxtor Diamond Crash" Lol., that's pretty clever. My Dell Dimension 4700 had a Maxtor drive that died last year. Also, you mentioned that different editions of XP had different color loading bars, well that was only in XP SP1 (Home was green, and Pro was blue) After SP2 all editions had blue bars.
Speaking of legacy ports:
The other day I made a little C program under linux that poked and prodded at the parallel port's io address and measuring the changes with a multimeter.
That. That was fun!
I actually have the normal tower version of the Optiplex GX270. It's actually a really nice performer.
+Windows OS The tower models were a lot better and the desktops were OK. All of them were pretty ugly compared to the Dimension models, though.
It was a pain in the arse to put a low-profile AGP graphics card in slim tower OptiPlexes (clipping the mounting bracket...), I can imagine it is even worse in these minis...
I really like the HP's from the slim line computers. Kind of funny though whenever I saw one of those dells open I would think of a briefcase with something deadly in it.
Constant Guard is legit. It is a Comcast-rated security suite that includes Norton AV, a backup app, maybe a malware utility and Secuna PSI to keep things updated. All for free to Comcast internet customers.
I like these pc's they are one the first pc's I ever used in school and at the time they were very fast. The first computer I ever used at home was my moms 1993 packard bell 806cd with intel inside, and windows 3.11 and dos 6.22, with three and a half floppy drives, ( unfortunately windows deleted the intel drivers awhile back from a virus payload that I was unaware it had on it,) anyways great video uxwbill!
The ide check at my school took ages I would wait,
I can answer the kitchen table, being I've forgotten all about you up until now, so I'm doing hours of catch up at once, the kitchen table is the videos that speak to us, I work on computers on any surface I can find, especially the table.
Wouldn't removing the CMOS battery or setting a jumper reset the BIOS, including clearing the password?
the Dell Optiplex GX270 uses the same case as the Dell Optiplex 170l a computer sometimes have a P4 or clearon but its cool the had diffrent models with the same case for some computers
The startup bar on XP changed with the advent of service pack three...at least I think that's the one. I know it was green under service pack one and it's blue under service pack three. I only upgraded to service pack two once many years ago and never again for obvious reasons, and I don't recall it changing then.
+Rebelkid1112 With XP SP2 they changed it to just say Windows XP with a blue bar (and in rare cases a green one although any fresh install of SP2 /3 I've ever done for Home Pro or Media Centre 2005 has been blue). Before that it would state the edition and be green for home and blue for Pro (not sure what colour Media Centre 2002/3 used, but it probably changed to blue once you added SP2 as that turned it into Media Centre 2004 if you had one of the obscure and rare old Media Centre versions).
That's interesting. I mostly dealt with the home edition, so I don't recall much about the startup on the other editions, but that's good to know anyhow.
Im early, Let me tell a joke
Comcast
+Andrew Johnstone Sorry, that was really only funny the first time around. :-)
+uxwbill xD
+Andrew Johnstone Meh I have a better joke
Maxtor
+SteveMC no I have the greatest joke
Time warner cable
+SteveMC This one takes the cake
Windows Me/Vista
I recently installed a fresh version of XP Home Edition on an HP Pavillion ze 5375 "lapcooker"(2.4 ghz desktop Northwood in a laptop-what a great idea!) and can confirm what others have stated below. The OEM installtion disk had SP1 included and when booted, the splash screen read "Home Edition" and the loading bar was green. After SP3 was installed, Home Edition was gone, and the bar was blue. When I got this thing, it had the factory Windows install from 2003 still on it, and it was bog-slow. It's still no speed demon, but now it's at least usable. I'll have to try some Pop-Tarts on it.
Not sure which hard drives you are referring to, but I have loads of Maxtor DiamondMax 200GB and 300GB drives which have been flawless, and have been on for thousands of hours and in very hot environments.
+EgoShredder I've had some Maxtor hard drives that gave (or continue to give) exemplary service, so it's certainly possible. The larger capacity drives have definitely been better to me.
"dont quite understand how to do" Pretty much what I was thinking during this whole video.