Hello, I also have a dell dimension e520 which still works very well after 10 years. and I use it daily. Once upon a time quality computers were manufactured. now you buy it new and after 2 months the motherboard already fails. so I am more and more satisfied with the old PCs.I am from Romania, I follow your channel with great pleasure, I wish you much health and happiness in life.
Hi there. First off, thank you and I'm glad to have you aboard! Secondly, I agree. There was a time when systems were made like a tank whereas today they are throw away machines.
I guess it's a mix of experiences that everyone had during this time. I for one did not have cap issues with any of my systems from this era - I guess I consider myself lucky haha.
Lovely bit of nostalgia, I had the 5150 growing up but with the Pentium 4 HT 630 and it was a beast. Since then ive given it a pentium D 945 ,4gb of ram and replaced the radeon card with a gt 610 and it does a great job at running windows 7 as well as any early 2000s games.
I've run through a number of these Dell BTX systems, though mostly staying with Optiplex because I assumed they were more rugged than Dimensions (for home use). Though in all honesty they were the exact same stuff inside. I always liked how easy they are to work on, short of gaining access to ram slots. All tool free and easy to upgrade. My newest one, that I doubt I'll part with is an XPS-420. I just love the look of the case. I've upgraded it with a Q9650, 8 gigs of DDR2-800, a 500 gig SSD and a GTX-560Ti, AC wifi and BT and it runs everything I throw at it on Win 10 Pro. I don't game, so that's not really a concern, though it'll play a lot of older games. My daily is an 11th gen i7, but I still use the XPS a lot and I love how quiet it is, well, and the looks. Good review of these old systems, and kudos for keeping them alive.
Nitpicky point here: the BIOS defaults to 2003 but Dell didn't start using AMD CPUs until 2006. Dell was the last of the major brands to exclusively use Intel CPUs and Intel gave Dell incentives to stay that way.
And Intel got into hot scandal later because later it was found that Intel purposely will sell their processor to the computer manufacturer company on much higher price or will make it difficult to the company if the company is found to also built computer using AMD processor (AMD back then and still now Intel's biggest rival), so much so that Intel got a huge fine for it
I remember as a teenager getting one of these on the cheap from a business upgrading to core 2 duo machines when they were still relatively new. I was so confused the first time i opened it up and everything was backwards. Was a fun little system until I got an amd64 x2 4800+ to replace it and ended up using it until a bit after the release of windows 8.
I picked up a E521 from the side of the road recently. Fully working with Windows 7. It was fitted with the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+, an Ati Radeon X1300 and 2GB of ram. Also included a free copy of Sims 3 in the DVD drive lol. I have a thing for Dells of this era, especially the small form factor "C" range. I've even converted a case to accept an ATX motherboard. 90% of the issues I have come across with Dell systems not working is memory related and they are fussy about the ram. Look forward to seeing what you decide to do with these systems.
I have the very first BTX model, the Dell Dimension 5000 from 2004 standing here. But you can only use Pentium 4 CPUs there, dual core is not possible. The case is still completely black. I gave the device a Soundblaster XFi, a SATA 2 controller and an OEM GeForce 750 Ti with a single fan. Runs great. And with a 512 GB SSD, it also has enough space for retro games. Choosing the graphics card was one of those things, you can't get normal 2-slot models in there because the sheet metal and cooler face upwards. So I needed a graphics card that only has a single slot plate and where the cooler doesn't protrude too far back to avoid colliding with the CPU cooler. And of course I had to pay attention to compatibility with Windows XP and the Dell power supply when making my choice. There were not so many more modern models in question.
Man, I wish I had the foresight to have saved some old computers from work. We through out pallets of old IBM XTs with the clicky IBM mechanical keyboards. That was 20 years ago though.
Ahh more Dells, speaking of which I just restored my old Dell Studio XPS 7100 from 2010. That thing was/is a beast and still holds up rather well to this day. That aside great video as always and I would love to find one of these for myself to restore.
I’ve always loved the BTX form factor. Netburst needed the extra cooling and it did an amazing job. The layout was a little strange though and cable management could be a challenge.
The Pentium 4 is quite literally the only reason for BTX's existence. The standard was entirely designed around the heat and power consumption issues of Pentium 4s and their power hungry chipsets. This was still in the midst of Intel's fever dream of getting Netburst to 10 GHz, and throwing literally everything at the wall to see if something would stick and help. Intel announced BTX with great fanfare, only for it to be quietly killed off just a few short years later when their Core 2 architecture came out and BTX suddenly had no purpose to continue to exist. I think Dell was the only serious contender of BTX adoption, mostly because they were heavily in bed with Intel. Dell was quite literally dependent on Intel for their survival during the larger part of the 2000s. Intel shoveled billions of dollars in "marketing development funds" through Dell's back door to keep the lights on. This is why Dell had so few AMD systems, Intel would cut their funding for every AMD model that Dell shipped. It wasn't until the later half of the 2000s did antitrust lawsuits start popping up all over against both Intel and Dell for their shenanigans. I'm personally glad that BTX never took off, it was an asinine design that threw everything out in the name of trying to keep the P4 from melting down. Just a few glaring design flaws: 1) Since the CPU was moved to the center front of the motherboard, it rendered useless about 2/3 of the front of the case with a huge heatsink, plastic ducting and a huge fan. This eliminates all options for more than just 2-3 internal drive bays, when similarly sized ATX cases could accommodate 4-8 internal drives in the same space. 2) Since the addon slots (PCI, AGP, PCIe, etc.) were now inverted, it means that dual slot video cards that were starting to become common were completely incompatible. If you tried to slot one in the average BTX case, the second slot space of the card would end up hitting the I/O area of the board. Even if there was room, many cards at the time used the second slot to exhaust air out the back of the case. You could make the case "well just use the slot below it!" Yeah, no. Hardly any BTX boards had more than one PCIe x16 slot. So you'd be limited to a single slot card, or *shudders* PCI video cards. Most ATX cases always had an extra slot above the top addon card slot, no idea why Intel decided to omit this in BTX. 3) RAM slots were shoved in the most inconvenient location at the top of the board. Since all of the I/O and power cables tended to be routed over the top of them, it was a maddening experience upgrading or swapping modules. Sometimes they ended up under the external 5.25" drive bay, so you had to physically remove the drive to get to them. 4) Few if no aftermarket coolers. If you wanted a faster P4 or Pentium D that consumed more power, you needed better than the garbage extruded aluminum block that came stock. Back in the day, they were usually called "office building" coolers, which were heatpipe coolers with a fin stack. These tended to be expensive because they were proprietary. They didn't start coming down in price until off-lease business machines started to flood the market and be scrapped for parts. tl'dr - BTX was a terrible standard that almost nobody used but Dell and Intel.
This is great, thanks for this read. It definitely summarizes all of the bits of comments from all over the channel related to BTX. Only recently I discovered that Dell was in with Intel so it makes sense. Thanks again for sharing this comprehensive reply - it's great!
@@GGigabiteM Oh wow. I had completely forgotten about the expandability issue with BTX. I guess it got Dell through the Netburst era until Conroe showed up. It did lead to some interesting looking case designs but it’s probably better that it never became mainstream. There were some larger BTX cases that accommodated dual slot/longer expansion cards better but you still ended up with a lot of wasted space because of the heatsink orientation.
@@precisionxt Dell used BTX right up until the end of the Core 2 era on some models, but it was a cost saving measure rather than a necessity. They already had all of the dies and tooling for their older Pentium 4 cases, so they just kept cranking them out with new motherboards. They went back to ATX for the Core i3/5/7 series up to the 4th gen, before switching over to their horrible proprietary nonsense again. All of their machines after the 4th gen use proprietary form factor motherboards, proprietary power supplies and other nonsense.
As weird and kinda bad as they were, i love these old BTX systems. They were impossible to kill and could keep some absolutely nuclear cpu's cool. I still remember having an Optiplex one of these in IT college with an Athlon 64 x2 that i shoved a standard PSU into (they fit and work despite being a little less tall) and ran an 8800 GT with. Had to break some fins off of the chipset heatsink to make it fit though! Later on i had anohter with an Intel Q6600. Thing was a beast for what it was.
Haha I love hearing these modification stories. It's funny I haven't come across any of these types of mods when getting these systems. Would be interesting to come a cross and see what people did... Similar to you. Yes - this system design definitely pumps out the heat keeping the CPU in check!
I worked for Dell a long time and retired from Dell. I remember working in Tech support and got a lot of question on no video. Come to find out they had a card and was not connecting the PC to the right plug. The problem was in part Dell's fault due to they put the blue VGA connector on the monitor and had the white DVI plug in the monitor box. At that time they did not put that cover over the MB VGA port. That and hooking the DVI to the monitor helped. Most of the customers was smart enough to put a square plug into a square hole but not much smarter. Doing those things made those skills useful.
Thanks for sharing this. It's always awesome to have real first hand experiences shared - especially from the teams who actually worked on them. Thanks again!!
One thing I have always done in Windows XP or 7 or whatever uses Aero is that I disable Aero & just go back to Windows Classic desktop. This just streamlines the speed & movements of the desktop & window pop ups for me. It also optimizes vertical alignment, where as Aero instead just adds more spacing in title bars, etc. Hard to explain, but I seem to fit more icons & text in Classic & also has less strain on the video card & CPU, so to speak, because the older the CPU generations you use, such as Pentium III's & Celerons, the more prominent that Aero might seem to chug along a bit slower. Thus, with faster CPU's, the desktop Classic makes the desktop fly a little zippier than Aero perhaps. It's really up to your eyes to see any differences.
@@TheRetroRecall ... And just to clarify, XP did not have Aero, it had Luna. Aero started in Vista & if you might recall, the Aero on Vista was very CPU-intensive on the PC's that first came out with Vista, because it also used transparencies, that cost some CPU cycles. And critics noticed that & became one of the negative news bits of that day about Vista. It has been stated that Windows Classic (formerly called Windows Standard during the Windows 9X & XP days) is less CPU/GPU-intensive, which is why I said I try to switch to that as much as possible. Plus it just looks more efficient & default font sizes are not so big. Luna was also criticized for making XP look like a toy, i.e. Fisher-Price, probably because of the bright blue colors & bigger bar fonts.
i was able to sell a 5150 for about $50, but it had a DVD RW, Pentium D, 4gb ram, and a 1gb 6570 Radeon along with Wifi, a 500gb HDD and Windows 10. was quite the HTPC for what it was :)
Two more Dells Great Find. balanced technology extended, BTX Intel killed it in 2006. Some of those AMD systems are Fussy about the type of Memory that use. the Sempron's memory controller only supports up to DDR2-667 memory, so that's what they MIGHT mean by not being compatible. Thanks for the Video
Ahh yeah BTX. I remember that. Back in the early 00's I was putting my first PC together and accidentally bought a mBTX mobo for my P4 and thought I bought a motherboard from the mirror dimension because it was backwards and wouldn't go in my ATX case correctly. :P Would have tried to use it but the prices of the btx specific heatsink and case meant that it wasn't worth it so I just bought another mobo to replace it instead. The interesting thing about BTX that I noticed was that the IO ports on my graphics card wouldn't have been upside down when mounted in a tower like they typically are for ATX stuff. It's a shame BTX didn't take off. Might have tried to use that at some point. :P Curious on how modern graphics cards would have handled that. They would have their fans facing up instead of down. Maybe the bearings would have wore out faster in this form factor. Although dual slot+ width cards would have needed to be put in the second or third (or 4th if it was a 4000 series Nvidia card. :P ) slot instead of hte first slot because the bracket and heatsink would be pointed up towards the CPU instead of down towards the other slots. It could have been a benefit though if they made BTX video cards that had a single slot bracket but a thick heatsink. Would have been nice. The heatsinks on these newer cards wouldn't be covering up other slots. The only issue would be clearance with the CPU heatsink.
Awesome comment - you have my mind going in different directions for sure. I like this form factor due to the graphics card heat sink pointing up - giving it more air flow as heat rises. That said, I never thought about the dual slot cards, etc.
@@TheRetroRecall Yeah if BTX took off, modern gaming focus BTX boards might have increased space between the CPU mount and the top PCI-E slot to allow larger heatsinks on the graphics cards and I would bet they would have made them only use a single slot bracket since the heatsink wouldn't obstruct any other PCI-E slots Would have been nice. :D
BTX is an excellent standard, and it's unfortunate that it didn't become competitive. It's not just good for CPU cooling, look at the positioning of the GPU cooler relative to the airflow path, it's right in line with the CPU and case exhaust. Imagine a tower cooler sticking up to fill that space. People get all up in arms when anyone dares to make something which doesn't fit the ATX standard, for the life of me I don't know why. We're now in an absurd situation where we have mechanically-identical power connectors within which there are 5-8 different standards which the units could be compliant with. We still don't have 12vo because tech "influencers" told everyone it would make their PC more expensive.
Yes. I will be honest I tended to stay away from BTX back in the day, however now I find it quite interesting. It did what it was designed to do, but never continued. Ah well, we can live through these old systems haha.
A very versatile pc if you are into retro tech/games. I tested one with a win11 sata ssd to see what it would do (works but cpu usage is very high) + also win98. most of the hardware is still natively supported depending on the video card used.
Big thing to note for the 5150's restoration: XP Media Center's Media Center is very temperamental with graphics cards, and if it detects graphics it doesn't like, it'll throw an error and go into basic software rendering mode, which disables all of the animations and otherwise hampers the experience.
For the first machine, the SCSI drive may indeed be a virtual drive run via software. Daemon Tools does it that way, and that lets me mount disc images. For media center, I wonder if the previous owner had ripped a bunch of DVDs and used a software movie player with that virtual drive to load the discs. I bet you will find virtual disc software on that system. Great seeing more BTX. These things were kind of rare to see in person, in part because the radical flipped approach didn't seem to have any actual benefit.
i had a emachine t3304 back in 2005 with that or a similiar sempron cpu in it , sad thing was it died in 2 years but my horrible celeron D t2894 emachine i was using in conjunction with it still works to this day lol , haven't used the board in years but it posted last i threw it on a testbench ive upgraded the system in it i currently have a haswell e3 1265L v3 in the old case fortunately those old emachines were not propreitary in the connectors they used was able to switch everything out in case while using the original power front panel header and usb front ports
Had one of these as the dimension 900 (or close to the 900 number). It was pretty high spec for the time and an exceptional form factor. This brings back plenty of memories!
Nice! I used to have a Dell XPS 410 which was quite the machine in the late 2000s. My friend ordered a brand new Dell Dimension E521 which served him well from 2007 up until last year. Imo, Dell is the PC symbol of the 2000s.
my xps 420 is a black version of this with a core2quad Q6600 and i took that shroud off due to the heat sink getting gunked up as the dust just funnels straight to it. there is a fan underneath the shroud and the shroud isn't hard to remove. the fan is right up against the heat sinkif i remember correctly
I have one of these cases I use for my main rig. I modified it by drilling holes in the case so it would fit a micro-atx board, cut out some of the back case so it would fit, and also I moved the power supply to the bottom. It's not required, I just wanted to do it just to see if it was possible one day. By the way, the case fan still works to this day since it was manufactured in 2007.
@@TheRetroRecall The front fan works, but It's not enough cooling for the whole motherboard so I added a rear fan to what's left of the back case, and it worked just fine then.
One of my first builds was an Intel D955x BTX, LGA 775 with a Pentium D. I still boot it up occasionally just to hear the BTX tunnel-like heat sink roar like a jet air plane. The Pentium D gets so hot even at idle the fans runs 100%. It had to be the noisiest machine I have ever built.
I still have and use at least weekly, my Dimension E521 that I bought in 2007, with AMD Athlon 64 x2 5600+, later upgraded to 10Gb of RAM and a 1Tb hard drive. I haven't bothered to upgrade to an SSD as I mainly use my various Thinkpads now, but I have the E521 hooked up to a bigger monitor and have it as back up. It's still fine for routine home duties. I put Linux Mint on it in 2007 and have stayed with Linux since then. One of the best upgrades I did a few years ago was sticking a second hand half height graphics card in (I forget which one, I'll see if I can check tomorrow, but it's a pretty low end one) and that means I get 720p RUclips and any websites no problem. It does also run cool, always in the low 30's c.
That's awesome. I live hearing when these old systems are still in use and going strong. Linux definitely opened the door for these systems to go past their expirations!
24:50 , i can tell that these Dell BATX systems are vary picky about the ram and when you mess with the ram configuration, when this sort of thing happens, you remove the cmos battery and unplug the system for a few minutes then reinstall the ram first then the cmos battery then plug it in. i know this from using a Dell e521 for a long time before i upgraded to i7-920 dell studio xps 435t/9000 , my E521 has the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+. i think it can take any CPU up to 89W.
got one of these recently that is having some really weird issues. the power light shows up as solid amber which means that there could be a motherboard or power supply issue. swapped the psu and cpu(cpu was a pentium D. changed for a celeron D) and ram. when I press it, the pc turns on with the amber light and fans running at full speed. after restarting it, it either starts normally or does the same thing again. just to make things even more strange, when it does start up normally, most of the time it fails to pass its self testing sequence and may starting beeping a code relating to ram or show some other diagnostic code via the LEDs. really dont wanna chuck this into the e waste landfill but options seem to be quite limited (caps are bulged which could be the source)
I have a few other devices that have very weird intermittent issues and have bad caps. Fortunately my Digikey order just came in today! Let the recapping begin.
@@TheRetroRecall In those days games often have to be installed and played with CD/DVD inserted in drive. Instead you could use Daemon tools, made image of that CD and than choose the right file stored on HDD. It was faster, you didnt have to change medias and you could download / share these images.
That first system was interesting to me because of it’s Pentium D cpu. I’ve never used a PC with a Pentium D in it, and I’ve heard that they ran really hot, but that cooler seemed to be keeping it pretty cool.
I had two machines in that form factor at my desk from 2005 to 2009. One of them had a Pentium D in it (it may have been a 5150) and the other had a Core 2 Duo in it. We didn't upgrade either of them to Vista. Why two computers? They were on networks of different classifications.
I actually built one of these out for someone for Christmas. I got a dual-core...celeron? I think? to run in it, although the bios constantly bitched about it (I explained to them to just hit F1 on startup, that it was fine), I put a 120gb boot drive in, and like a gt 8600 1gb card (or maybe it was 512mb?), a couple more gigs of RAM, and a USB 3.0 card so they could at least move data off of thumb drives quickly. Plus it came with either a 300gb or 500gb platter drive in, so they got that stuffed full of ROMs and a copy of MAME and some other emulators, and a pair of cheap USB gamepads. With the exception of the SSD and the gamepads it was all crap I had lying around.. Their dad was able to pick up a flat screen monitor at a used PC shop for next to nothing, so those kids had a pretty good Christmas. I hope.
@@TheRetroRecall I was sure I'd got a pig in a poke when I hit that problem with the celeron but they told me it was no big deal. Turn machine on, tap F1, 20 seconds later they were in Win7 and playing up to...I wanna say I got Dolphin working so they could play up to GameCube games (just for example), but it's been a good 7, 8 years ago now, I don't fully recall. I know I got NES, SNES, N64, etc. and their mom knew they'd be over the moon to be able to play all the Mario games. AHEM FULLY LEGAL OF COURSE BECAUSE THEY HAD ALL THE CARTS AND DISKS FOR THE ORIGINALS.
That XSXIFE and ALXRFYG is usually from virtual drive emulator, back then, it usually used for loading ISO image from many software and to some extent, pirated application or games (since some older app or game usually required the disc to be present and the virtual drive software provide solution to not always change the physical disc, and as for AMD Sempon, it's AMD answer back then to Intel Celeron, now it has been replaced by AMD Axx series and AMD Athlon series processor (which both is based on Zen technology used by AMD Ryzen family) which always has integrated AMD Radeon GPU which run better the Intel HD from the current Intel Pentium N series
Hahaha yes. The other issue I have noticed is that the caps don't go bad right away. Just enough to cause issues and you have to hunt to find the culprit haha.
Is it possible to take out all the parts and replace them with modern ones such as an MSI Z690 Pro-A, a Ak620 Deepcool, and a GTX 1080 Gigabyte gaming g1?
@@TheRetroRecall Interesting. I have a Dell Dimension 510 in BTX form factor and really want more life for it. I thought of taking out all of the parts and putting my new parts in the case, or using the whole thing as a server of some sort.
Valiant effort would be required haha, but worth it if you have the time. May be just as easy to get an older ATX case that everything will line up in.
i have a dell optiplex 780 not (yet) working, and i was thinking can i use a btx case to transfer the motherboard to? the case is very tight, cannot make big changes like upgrading the power supply etc.
My understanding (as I have never physically done this myself) is that in order to move an ATX MB to a BTX case, some modifications are required. I have heard others do this... however for myself, I would just get an ATX Case. Now - if the 780 is BTX, everything should line up.
Interesting to see the same case with two different processors and two different o/s---obviously Dell wanted these systems to be as versatile as possible
These BTX Dells use mostly standard ATX power supplies. The only difference is they are slightly taller so the screw holes don’t line up totally. You can install a standard ATX supply in them though. I’ve done that with my Optiplex 360 before you get it to run a quad core.
Ughhh btx, oems answers to industries problems. I have nothing but bad and disappointing memories from that failed excuse of a standard. Was meant to alleviate the problem introduced by intels p4 netburst heater, introduced incompatibilities to pc cases, cpu coolers, ram sticks, graphics cards and psus... By 06/07, btx was known as a failure, core solo, core 2 duo and core 2 quad were more efficient and less hot, cooling solutions had adepted to 125 watt tdp. Years later, around 2014, I stumbled upon some hp server tower in btx factor, it was new and I remember I asked the guy who purchased it for his company why it had to be such an outcast of a system. His answer was, because his IT guys told him to get that one. 😂
Just as you always say "not sure if usb 1 or 2" and go for only a split second to the USB section in device manager I wanted to chime in: In case of USB 2.0 all ports are 2.0 speed if your computer has an "Enhanced Host Controller" in device manager like this machine but still front ports are often not as good as back ports because the cables that connect them to the motherboard are often unshielded and of low quality and so storage devices should be either plugged in at the back or use a good shielded external cable from the back panel and into the hub that is in your monitor. USB 3.0 on the other hand needs more pins so it needs special ports in addition to an eXtended Host Controller.
@Karataus it is great to watch as those were the glorious days for me, I had to set up HP machines at the time and it was so much more personal back then. Your videos give me good vibes and my comments are hopefully helpful for viewers doing similar things with old systems.
Probably isn't the case here, but if you're emulating a Sega CD on your PC and playing the physical games, your emulator will typically require a scsi CD emulator. That could be what you have run into.
Hahaha I think there are pros and cons for sure, however one pro is that video card heat sinks. Face upwards which naturally dissipates heat VS the ATX form factor. I personally like the design.
18:50 Maybe get rid of the Pentium D (which is a cpu with 2 Pentium 4 Cores) and replace with some Pentium Dual Coe or Core 2 Duo. RUclips is giving me old videos... maybe you did that already. Just Pentium D belong to the museum... like Indiana Jones used to say.
its cool but i prefer retro pcs from the windows 95/98 instead I do have a tape deck that fits in a pc 5.25 drive bay its cool actually. @@TheRetroRecall
@@TheRetroRecall From retro gaming to modern general use there are so many uses for mid/late 2000s hardware still. It’s a shame people throw these out thinking they are obsolete.
ME did add useful features, like system restore and internet connection sharing. These features made ME extremely useful for me. Never used Vista. System Restore is still useful. Had a software uninstaller completely wreck my Windows 11 system, in a way I have not encountered in years. None of the recovery options worked. But it had a good system restore save point and it worked flawlessly. It's a feature I should not need but I am glad it is there, and glad ME is where it was first released.
Fine fettling projects!👍👍 Recently I obtained an HP Compaq 8000 Elite USDT., I have fettled several of those, but this one is faulty, the only OS., which would install was Windows 7, so it would be okay for a retro offline pc., I tried to install Windows 10 but that did not work, Windows XP got so far and then shut down because it found a fault, I tried several Linux OS., but they caused the pc., to kernel panic and after some online research I discovered that the problem is most likely a failed or failing capacitor or perhaps more than one, so that pc., has now become a parts machine. This link shows the type of pc.. ruclips.net/video/MgxRhUxFr0c/видео.html
Nice!! Is that your channel by chance? Yeah it sounds like a cap for sure. I mean, I'm surrpsied that 7 is not causing any issues for you.. Unless there are driver concerns. That said I hate when caps are partially going... So hard to troubleshoot unless you desolder and test them!
@@TheRetroRecallHello, I don't have a YT., channel and I have never made a video, the link is just to let you see the type of pc., that I mentioned. I was also surprised that Windows 7 installed, that pc., must be a later model 8000, because it shipped with Windows 7 pro installed and yes, the product key label is still on it which is useful, the earlier models had Vista installed. That pc., was cheap and the parts from it are worth more than what I paid for the whole pc..
@@TheRetroRecall An update on my faulty PC., I had an old 7200 rpm., hard drive which had an old version of Windows 10 installed on it, so I fitted it and the PC., booted, since then I have installed Windows 10 on a used spare 256 gig., SSD., and the PC., is now fully updated and is currently working well. I have tried to install Linux OS., again, but the PC., still goes into a kernel panic and I have gone through every part of the bios and it's all okay, so it's got to be failing capacitors. This has been the most awkward PC., which I have ever fettled, but at least it's currently working and Windows 10 still has over 2 years of support left.
Hello, I also have a dell dimension e520 which still works very well after 10 years. and I use it daily. Once upon a time quality computers were manufactured. now you buy it new and after 2 months the motherboard already fails. so I am more and more satisfied with the old PCs.I am from Romania, I follow your channel with great pleasure, I wish you much health and happiness in life.
Hi there. First off, thank you and I'm glad to have you aboard! Secondly, I agree. There was a time when systems were made like a tank whereas today they are throw away machines.
Systems are more reliable today, the mid 00's was the era of bad caps
I guess it's a mix of experiences that everyone had during this time. I for one did not have cap issues with any of my systems from this era - I guess I consider myself lucky haha.
Lovely bit of nostalgia, I had the 5150 growing up but with the Pentium 4 HT 630 and it was a beast. Since then ive given it a pentium D 945 ,4gb of ram and replaced the radeon card with a gt 610 and it does a great job at running windows 7 as well as any early 2000s games.
Nice!!
I've run through a number of these Dell BTX systems, though mostly staying with Optiplex because I assumed they were more rugged than Dimensions (for home use). Though in all honesty they were the exact same stuff inside. I always liked how easy they are to work on, short of gaining access to ram slots. All tool free and easy to upgrade. My newest one, that I doubt I'll part with is an XPS-420. I just love the look of the case. I've upgraded it with a Q9650, 8 gigs of DDR2-800, a 500 gig SSD and a GTX-560Ti, AC wifi and BT and it runs everything I throw at it on Win 10 Pro. I don't game, so that's not really a concern, though it'll play a lot of older games. My daily is an 11th gen i7, but I still use the XPS a lot and I love how quiet it is, well, and the looks. Good review of these old systems, and kudos for keeping them alive.
Thanks and thank you for sharing!!
Nitpicky point here: the BIOS defaults to 2003 but Dell didn't start using AMD CPUs until 2006. Dell was the last of the major brands to exclusively use Intel CPUs and Intel gave Dell incentives to stay that way.
Thanks for the call out - it's how we learn!
I'm still pissed about it tbh. My first computer was an inspiron 1501 and the turion in it made it pretty awesome.
I remember that with the Connolly's comedy generation of Dimension PCs.
And Intel got into hot scandal later because later it was found that Intel purposely will sell their processor to the computer manufacturer company on much higher price or will make it difficult to the company if the company is found to also built computer using AMD processor (AMD back then and still now Intel's biggest rival), so much so that Intel got a huge fine for it
I remember as a teenager getting one of these on the cheap from a business upgrading to core 2 duo machines when they were still relatively new. I was so confused the first time i opened it up and everything was backwards. Was a fun little system until I got an amd64 x2 4800+ to replace it and ended up using it until a bit after the release of windows 8.
Nice - thanks for sharing! Definitely a little confused with everything flipped around haha.
I remember btx. Such potential
Agreed, however I guess it proved more troublesome and / or not required with later CPUs.
😃 yay! more E waste PCs to checkout!
Absolutely!
Love a great weekend drop from The Retro Recall! Always great content! Thanks for this, looking forward to what’s next!!
Back from vacation! More to come!!
@@TheRetroRecall hope you had a wonderful vacation!
I did!
I picked up a E521 from the side of the road recently. Fully working with Windows 7. It was fitted with the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+, an Ati Radeon X1300 and 2GB of ram. Also included a free copy of Sims 3 in the DVD drive lol. I have a thing for Dells of this era, especially the small form factor "C" range. I've even converted a case to accept an ATX motherboard. 90% of the issues I have come across with Dell systems not working is memory related and they are fussy about the ram. Look forward to seeing what you decide to do with these systems.
This is awesome, thanks for sharing!
I have the very first BTX model, the Dell Dimension 5000 from 2004 standing here. But you can only use Pentium 4 CPUs there, dual core is not possible. The case is still completely black. I gave the device a Soundblaster XFi, a SATA 2 controller and an OEM GeForce 750 Ti with a single fan. Runs great. And with a 512 GB SSD, it also has enough space for retro games. Choosing the graphics card was one of those things, you can't get normal 2-slot models in there because the sheet metal and cooler face upwards. So I needed a graphics card that only has a single slot plate and where the cooler doesn't protrude too far back to avoid colliding with the CPU cooler. And of course I had to pay attention to compatibility with Windows XP and the Dell power supply when making my choice. There were not so many more modern models in question.
That's awesome and gives me some ideas haha.
Impressive Dell dimension PCs pulled from e-waste, I'm proud of you!👍👍☺️
Thanks!!
Man, I wish I had the foresight to have saved some old computers from work. We through out pallets of old IBM XTs with the clicky IBM mechanical keyboards. That was 20 years ago though.
I want to cry reading your post. Unfortunately that used to be common practice back when these systems were updated.
Ahh more Dells, speaking of which I just restored my old Dell Studio XPS 7100 from 2010. That thing was/is a beast and still holds up rather well to this day.
That aside great video as always and I would love to find one of these for myself to restore.
Nice restoration, great to hear. Thanks again :)
I’ve always loved the BTX form factor. Netburst needed the extra cooling and it did an amazing job. The layout was a little strange though and cable management could be a challenge.
Agreed!
The Pentium 4 is quite literally the only reason for BTX's existence. The standard was entirely designed around the heat and power consumption issues of Pentium 4s and their power hungry chipsets. This was still in the midst of Intel's fever dream of getting Netburst to 10 GHz, and throwing literally everything at the wall to see if something would stick and help. Intel announced BTX with great fanfare, only for it to be quietly killed off just a few short years later when their Core 2 architecture came out and BTX suddenly had no purpose to continue to exist.
I think Dell was the only serious contender of BTX adoption, mostly because they were heavily in bed with Intel. Dell was quite literally dependent on Intel for their survival during the larger part of the 2000s. Intel shoveled billions of dollars in "marketing development funds" through Dell's back door to keep the lights on. This is why Dell had so few AMD systems, Intel would cut their funding for every AMD model that Dell shipped. It wasn't until the later half of the 2000s did antitrust lawsuits start popping up all over against both Intel and Dell for their shenanigans.
I'm personally glad that BTX never took off, it was an asinine design that threw everything out in the name of trying to keep the P4 from melting down. Just a few glaring design flaws:
1) Since the CPU was moved to the center front of the motherboard, it rendered useless about 2/3 of the front of the case with a huge heatsink, plastic ducting and a huge fan. This eliminates all options for more than just 2-3 internal drive bays, when similarly sized ATX cases could accommodate 4-8 internal drives in the same space.
2) Since the addon slots (PCI, AGP, PCIe, etc.) were now inverted, it means that dual slot video cards that were starting to become common were completely incompatible. If you tried to slot one in the average BTX case, the second slot space of the card would end up hitting the I/O area of the board. Even if there was room, many cards at the time used the second slot to exhaust air out the back of the case.
You could make the case "well just use the slot below it!" Yeah, no. Hardly any BTX boards had more than one PCIe x16 slot. So you'd be limited to a single slot card, or *shudders* PCI video cards. Most ATX cases always had an extra slot above the top addon card slot, no idea why Intel decided to omit this in BTX.
3) RAM slots were shoved in the most inconvenient location at the top of the board. Since all of the I/O and power cables tended to be routed over the top of them, it was a maddening experience upgrading or swapping modules. Sometimes they ended up under the external 5.25" drive bay, so you had to physically remove the drive to get to them.
4) Few if no aftermarket coolers. If you wanted a faster P4 or Pentium D that consumed more power, you needed better than the garbage extruded aluminum block that came stock. Back in the day, they were usually called "office building" coolers, which were heatpipe coolers with a fin stack. These tended to be expensive because they were proprietary. They didn't start coming down in price until off-lease business machines started to flood the market and be scrapped for parts.
tl'dr - BTX was a terrible standard that almost nobody used but Dell and Intel.
This is great, thanks for this read. It definitely summarizes all of the bits of comments from all over the channel related to BTX. Only recently I discovered that Dell was in with Intel so it makes sense. Thanks again for sharing this comprehensive reply - it's great!
@@GGigabiteM Oh wow. I had completely forgotten about the expandability issue with BTX. I guess it got Dell through the Netburst era until Conroe showed up. It did lead to some interesting looking case designs but it’s probably better that it never became mainstream. There were some larger BTX cases that accommodated dual slot/longer expansion cards better but you still ended up with a lot of wasted space because of the heatsink orientation.
@@precisionxt Dell used BTX right up until the end of the Core 2 era on some models, but it was a cost saving measure rather than a necessity.
They already had all of the dies and tooling for their older Pentium 4 cases, so they just kept cranking them out with new motherboards.
They went back to ATX for the Core i3/5/7 series up to the 4th gen, before switching over to their horrible proprietary nonsense again. All of their machines after the 4th gen use proprietary form factor motherboards, proprietary power supplies and other nonsense.
As weird and kinda bad as they were, i love these old BTX systems. They were impossible to kill and could keep some absolutely nuclear cpu's cool.
I still remember having an Optiplex one of these in IT college with an Athlon 64 x2 that i shoved a standard PSU into (they fit and work despite being a little less tall) and ran an 8800 GT with. Had to break some fins off of the chipset heatsink to make it fit though!
Later on i had anohter with an Intel Q6600. Thing was a beast for what it was.
Haha I love hearing these modification stories. It's funny I haven't come across any of these types of mods when getting these systems. Would be interesting to come a cross and see what people did... Similar to you. Yes - this system design definitely pumps out the heat keeping the CPU in check!
I worked for Dell a long time and retired from Dell. I remember working in Tech support and got a lot of question on no video. Come to find out they had a card and was not connecting the PC to the right plug. The problem was in part Dell's fault due to they put the blue VGA connector on the monitor and had the white DVI plug in the monitor box. At that time they did not put that cover over the MB VGA port. That and hooking the DVI to the monitor helped. Most of the customers was smart enough to put a square plug into a square hole but not much smarter. Doing those things made those skills useful.
Thanks for sharing this. It's always awesome to have real first hand experiences shared - especially from the teams who actually worked on them. Thanks again!!
One thing I have always done in Windows XP or 7 or whatever uses Aero is that I disable Aero & just go back to Windows Classic desktop. This just streamlines the speed & movements of the desktop & window pop ups for me. It also optimizes vertical alignment, where as Aero instead just adds more spacing in title bars, etc. Hard to explain, but I seem to fit more icons & text in Classic & also has less strain on the video card & CPU, so to speak, because the older the CPU generations you use, such as Pentium III's & Celerons, the more prominent that Aero might seem to chug along a bit slower. Thus, with faster CPU's, the desktop Classic makes the desktop fly a little zippier than Aero perhaps. It's really up to your eyes to see any differences.
Never really thought about this before (outside of general performance) , good to know!
@@TheRetroRecall ... And just to clarify, XP did not have Aero, it had Luna. Aero started in Vista & if you might recall, the Aero on Vista was very CPU-intensive on the PC's that first came out with Vista, because it also used transparencies, that cost some CPU cycles. And critics noticed that & became one of the negative news bits of that day about Vista. It has been stated that Windows Classic (formerly called Windows Standard during the Windows 9X & XP days) is less CPU/GPU-intensive, which is why I said I try to switch to that as much as possible. Plus it just looks more efficient & default font sizes are not so big. Luna was also criticized for making XP look like a toy, i.e. Fisher-Price, probably because of the bright blue colors & bigger bar fonts.
i was able to sell a 5150 for about $50, but it had a DVD RW, Pentium D, 4gb ram, and a 1gb 6570 Radeon along with Wifi, a 500gb HDD and Windows 10. was quite the HTPC for what it was :)
Nice! I did a full restoration on a 5150 in another video, if you check the all things Dell playlist, it shouldn't be hard to find :)
Two more Dells Great Find. balanced technology extended, BTX Intel killed it in 2006. Some of those AMD systems are Fussy about the type of Memory that use. the Sempron's memory controller only supports up to DDR2-667 memory, so that's what they MIGHT mean by not being compatible. Thanks for the Video
No, thank YOU for watching!!! Also, thanks for the info on the compatible ram, very helpful!
Ahh yeah BTX. I remember that. Back in the early 00's I was putting my first PC together and accidentally bought a mBTX mobo for my P4 and thought I bought a motherboard from the mirror dimension because it was backwards and wouldn't go in my ATX case correctly. :P
Would have tried to use it but the prices of the btx specific heatsink and case meant that it wasn't worth it so I just bought another mobo to replace it instead.
The interesting thing about BTX that I noticed was that the IO ports on my graphics card wouldn't have been upside down when mounted in a tower like they typically are for ATX stuff. It's a shame BTX didn't take off. Might have tried to use that at some point. :P
Curious on how modern graphics cards would have handled that. They would have their fans facing up instead of down. Maybe the bearings would have wore out faster in this form factor. Although dual slot+ width cards would have needed to be put in the second or third (or 4th if it was a 4000 series Nvidia card. :P ) slot instead of hte first slot because the bracket and heatsink would be pointed up towards the CPU instead of down towards the other slots. It could have been a benefit though if they made BTX video cards that had a single slot bracket but a thick heatsink. Would have been nice. The heatsinks on these newer cards wouldn't be covering up other slots. The only issue would be clearance with the CPU heatsink.
Awesome comment - you have my mind going in different directions for sure. I like this form factor due to the graphics card heat sink pointing up - giving it more air flow as heat rises. That said, I never thought about the dual slot cards, etc.
@@TheRetroRecall Yeah if BTX took off, modern gaming focus BTX boards might have increased space between the CPU mount and the top PCI-E slot to allow larger heatsinks on the graphics cards and I would bet they would have made them only use a single slot bracket since the heatsink wouldn't obstruct any other PCI-E slots
Would have been nice. :D
Haha we can dream :)
BTX is an excellent standard, and it's unfortunate that it didn't become competitive. It's not just good for CPU cooling, look at the positioning of the GPU cooler relative to the airflow path, it's right in line with the CPU and case exhaust. Imagine a tower cooler sticking up to fill that space.
People get all up in arms when anyone dares to make something which doesn't fit the ATX standard, for the life of me I don't know why. We're now in an absurd situation where we have mechanically-identical power connectors within which there are 5-8 different standards which the units could be compliant with. We still don't have 12vo because tech "influencers" told everyone it would make their PC more expensive.
Yes. I will be honest I tended to stay away from BTX back in the day, however now I find it quite interesting. It did what it was designed to do, but never continued. Ah well, we can live through these old systems haha.
A very versatile pc if you are into retro tech/games. I tested one with a win11 sata ssd to see what it would do (works but cpu usage is very high) + also win98. most of the hardware is still natively supported depending on the video card used.
Nice! Interesting you got windows 11 running... Definitely a cool experiment.
Big thing to note for the 5150's restoration: XP Media Center's Media Center is very temperamental with graphics cards, and if it detects graphics it doesn't like, it'll throw an error and go into basic software rendering mode, which disables all of the animations and otherwise hampers the experience.
Thanks for this info, much appreciated!!
Nice content as always! Thankx a lot for sharing with us
No problem at all! Comments like this is exactly what keeps me going :)
For the first machine, the SCSI drive may indeed be a virtual drive run via software. Daemon Tools does it that way, and that lets me mount disc images. For media center, I wonder if the previous owner had ripped a bunch of DVDs and used a software movie player with that virtual drive to load the discs. I bet you will find virtual disc software on that system. Great seeing more BTX. These things were kind of rare to see in person, in part because the radical flipped approach didn't seem to have any actual benefit.
Thanks - makes total sense, I'll have to take a look.
i had a emachine t3304 back in 2005 with that or a similiar sempron cpu in it , sad thing was it died in 2 years but my horrible celeron D t2894 emachine i was using in conjunction with it still works to this day lol , haven't used the board in years but it posted last i threw it on a testbench ive upgraded the system in it i currently have a haswell e3 1265L v3 in the old case fortunately those old emachines were not propreitary in the connectors they used was able to switch everything out in case while using the original power front panel header and usb front ports
Thanks for sharing.
**Shudders** Celeron D...
Had one of these as the dimension 900 (or close to the 900 number). It was pretty high spec for the time and an exceptional form factor. This brings back plenty of memories!
That's awesome, that's what this is all about!
Nice! I used to have a Dell XPS 410 which was quite the machine in the late 2000s. My friend ordered a brand new Dell Dimension E521 which served him well from 2007 up until last year. Imo, Dell is the PC symbol of the 2000s.
Yes, Dell was definitely notorious - both good and bad lol. I personally liked this era of computing!
@@TheRetroRecall 100%! The 2000s was the decade of technology renaissance.
100%!
Great video, I used to have a Dell btx machine at work with a core2duo cpu. It was a Dell Dimension 9200 and were very similar to your Dell machines.
Awesome! Definitely an interesting design.
Great👍
Thanks!!
@@TheRetroRecall thanks too
my xps 420 is a black version of this with a core2quad Q6600 and i took that shroud off due to the heat sink getting gunked up as the dust just funnels straight to it. there is a fan underneath the shroud and the shroud isn't hard to remove. the fan is right up against the heat sinkif i remember correctly
For sure. It definitely acts like a vacuum!
I have one of these cases I use for my main rig. I modified it by drilling holes in the case so it would fit a micro-atx board, cut out some of the back case so it would fit, and also I moved the power supply to the bottom. It's not required, I just wanted to do it just to see if it was possible one day. By the way, the case fan still works to this day since it was manufactured in 2007.
Talk about major surgery lol. I've heard of that happening to accommodate other builds. Was the cooling still good after the mods?
@@TheRetroRecall The front fan works, but It's not enough cooling for the whole motherboard so I added a rear fan to what's left of the back case, and it worked just fine then.
One of my first builds was an Intel D955x BTX, LGA 775 with a Pentium D. I still boot it up occasionally just to hear the BTX tunnel-like heat sink roar like a jet air plane. The Pentium D gets so hot even at idle the fans runs 100%. It had to be the noisiest machine I have ever built.
100%. These units definitely run hot, but those fans take care of business.
Never owned one of those but always liked them for some reason lol
The are neat for sure.
That SCSI is a virtual drive. Probably Daemon Tools.
Thanks!!
I still have and use at least weekly, my Dimension E521 that I bought in 2007, with AMD Athlon 64 x2 5600+, later upgraded to 10Gb of RAM and a 1Tb hard drive. I haven't bothered to upgrade to an SSD as I mainly use my various Thinkpads now, but I have the E521 hooked up to a bigger monitor and have it as back up. It's still fine for routine home duties. I put Linux Mint on it in 2007 and have stayed with Linux since then. One of the best upgrades I did a few years ago was sticking a second hand half height graphics card in (I forget which one, I'll see if I can check tomorrow, but it's a pretty low end one) and that means I get 720p RUclips and any websites no problem. It does also run cool, always in the low 30's c.
That's awesome. I live hearing when these old systems are still in use and going strong. Linux definitely opened the door for these systems to go past their expirations!
24:50 , i can tell that these Dell BATX systems are vary picky about the ram and when you mess with the ram configuration, when this sort of thing happens, you remove the cmos battery and unplug the system for a few minutes then reinstall the ram first then the cmos battery then plug it in.
i know this from using a Dell e521 for a long time before i upgraded to i7-920 dell studio xps 435t/9000 , my E521 has the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+.
i think it can take any CPU up to 89W.
This is great info, thanks!
nice it all came stright on
Thanks for watching!
got one of these recently that is having some really weird issues. the power light shows up as solid amber which means that there could be a motherboard or power supply issue. swapped the psu and cpu(cpu was a pentium D. changed for a celeron D) and ram. when I press it, the pc turns on with the amber light and fans running at full speed. after restarting it, it either starts normally or does the same thing again. just to make things even more strange, when it does start up normally, most of the time it fails to pass its self testing sequence and may starting beeping a code relating to ram or show some other diagnostic code via the LEDs. really dont wanna chuck this into the e waste landfill but options seem to be quite limited (caps are bulged which could be the source)
I have a few other devices that have very weird intermittent issues and have bad caps. Fortunately my Digikey order just came in today! Let the recapping begin.
Fujitsu SFF desktops still use BTX standard. I have one with i5-6500.
Really??? Interesting!
That SCSI controller and SCSI CD/DVD drive is virtual drive created by Daemon tools or similar virtual drive program.
Thanks - what would be the purpose in this particular setup / configuration?
@@TheRetroRecall In those days games often have to be installed and played with CD/DVD inserted in drive. Instead you could use Daemon tools, made image of that CD and than choose the right file stored on HDD. It was faster, you didnt have to change medias and you could download / share these images.
Much appreciated!!
Still using my XPS 410 as my daily driver since 2006. =p
It's crazy how long these can last if slightly upgraded.
TY Bud... I STILL have mine with WIN Vista... yes. lol
No problem and that's awesome!
That first system was interesting to me because of it’s Pentium D cpu. I’ve never used a PC with a Pentium D in it, and I’ve heard that they ran really hot, but that cooler seemed to be keeping it pretty cool.
They run really hot (2*P4s) but yes, that cooling system works well.
I had two machines in that form factor at my desk from 2005 to 2009. One of them had a Pentium D in it (it may have been a 5150) and the other had a Core 2 Duo in it. We didn't upgrade either of them to Vista. Why two computers? They were on networks of different classifications.
Nice.. makes sense. Take a look at the 5150 restoration video!
I actually built one of these out for someone for Christmas. I got a dual-core...celeron? I think? to run in it, although the bios constantly bitched about it (I explained to them to just hit F1 on startup, that it was fine), I put a 120gb boot drive in, and like a gt 8600 1gb card (or maybe it was 512mb?), a couple more gigs of RAM, and a USB 3.0 card so they could at least move data off of thumb drives quickly. Plus it came with either a 300gb or 500gb platter drive in, so they got that stuffed full of ROMs and a copy of MAME and some other emulators, and a pair of cheap USB gamepads. With the exception of the SSD and the gamepads it was all crap I had lying around.. Their dad was able to pick up a flat screen monitor at a used PC shop for next to nothing, so those kids had a pretty good Christmas. I hope.
Sounds like a fun build to be honest!
@@TheRetroRecall I was sure I'd got a pig in a poke when I hit that problem with the celeron but they told me it was no big deal. Turn machine on, tap F1, 20 seconds later they were in Win7 and playing up to...I wanna say I got Dolphin working so they could play up to GameCube games (just for example), but it's been a good 7, 8 years ago now, I don't fully recall. I know I got NES, SNES, N64, etc. and their mom knew they'd be over the moon to be able to play all the Mario games.
AHEM FULLY LEGAL OF COURSE BECAUSE THEY HAD ALL THE CARTS AND DISKS FOR THE ORIGINALS.
Of course!!! ;)
That XSXIFE and ALXRFYG is usually from virtual drive emulator, back then, it usually used for loading ISO image from many software and to some extent, pirated application or games (since some older app or game usually required the disc to be present and the virtual drive software provide solution to not always change the physical disc, and as for AMD Sempon, it's AMD answer back then to Intel Celeron, now it has been replaced by AMD Axx series and AMD Athlon series processor (which both is based on Zen technology used by AMD Ryzen family) which always has integrated AMD Radeon GPU which run better the Intel HD from the current Intel Pentium N series
Thanks for this - you actually answered so many questions for me in one comment!!
@@TheRetroRecall no problem
I once got a used BTX machine from a friend when my PC died. That thing confused the hell out of me. Just why?
Haha love this reaction lol
I remember some of these BTX's having bad caps near the CPU
I've heard that as well, mainly due to the heat from the CPU. I will look for that when I do restorations on them. Thanks for the callout!
i remember this too, dell thought it was a great idea to place capacitors right behind the CPU heatsink in some models
Hahaha yes. The other issue I have noticed is that the caps don't go bad right away. Just enough to cause issues and you have to hunt to find the culprit haha.
What a shame this form factor didn’t catch on. It looks far cooler than our current ATX one, and would surely benefit Intel’s current CPUs
Very much so!
I kinda want a BTX system now
Haha! Time to hunt one down :)
Is it possible to take out all the parts and replace them with modern ones such as an MSI Z690 Pro-A, a Ak620 Deepcool, and a GTX 1080 Gigabyte gaming g1?
The BTX form factor (reversed) would make it challenging however I do know some people have nodded the cases to accept the ATX form Factor.
@@TheRetroRecall Interesting. I have a Dell Dimension 510 in BTX form factor and really want more life for it. I thought of taking out all of the parts and putting my new parts in the case, or using the whole thing as a server of some sort.
Valiant effort would be required haha, but worth it if you have the time. May be just as easy to get an older ATX case that everything will line up in.
Ran 98SE with a sempron for a while..did well
I'm not too familiar with this line of CPUs, however my understanding is that they were more entry level.. Similar to a Celeron?
@@TheRetroRecallSempron was one of AMD's budget cpus so yeh possibly could be compared to Celeron..they replaced the Duron
Good to know, thank you!
i have a dell optiplex 780 not (yet) working, and i was thinking can i use a btx case to transfer the motherboard to? the case is very tight, cannot make big changes like upgrading the power supply etc.
My understanding (as I have never physically done this myself) is that in order to move an ATX MB to a BTX case, some modifications are required. I have heard others do this... however for myself, I would just get an ATX Case. Now - if the 780 is BTX, everything should line up.
thanks for the tip, i think i will do dimension changes etc
Interesting to see the same case with two different processors and two different o/s---obviously Dell wanted these systems to be as versatile as possible
Great point - I actually never thought about that.
Dell has had a tendency to use proprietary hardware so I'd hope those power supplies don't go bad!
I hope so too! Luckily, I can repair them and or replace with spares :)
These BTX Dells use mostly standard ATX power supplies. The only difference is they are slightly taller so the screw holes don’t line up totally. You can install a standard ATX supply in them though. I’ve done that with my Optiplex 360 before you get it to run a quad core.
Great to know, thanks for this comment!
That "SCSI CDrom device" my guess is someone installed daemon tools or Alcohol 120 on this PC at one point
100%. I found that out through the comments. I just love the retro community! Thanks!
Sometimes, ram issues like this could be because the cpu has or had bent pins and caused the memory controller to be bad. Try a non bent pin cpu.
I'll take a look for sure thanks for this!
I'd love to see you do a dell dimensions 9100 if you can
I'll see what I can do :)
Ughhh btx, oems answers to industries problems.
I have nothing but bad and disappointing memories from that failed excuse of a standard. Was meant to alleviate the problem introduced by intels p4 netburst heater, introduced incompatibilities to pc cases, cpu coolers, ram sticks, graphics cards and psus... By 06/07, btx was known as a failure, core solo, core 2 duo and core 2 quad were more efficient and less hot, cooling solutions had adepted to 125 watt tdp.
Years later, around 2014, I stumbled upon some hp server tower in btx factor, it was new and I remember I asked the guy who purchased it for his company why it had to be such an outcast of a system. His answer was, because his IT guys told him to get that one. 😂
Hahahaha!! Thabks for sharing this, it was an awesome read.
Just as you always say "not sure if usb 1 or 2" and go for only a split second to the USB section in device manager I wanted to chime in: In case of USB 2.0 all ports are 2.0 speed if your computer has an "Enhanced Host Controller" in device manager like this machine but still front ports are often not as good as back ports because the cables that connect them to the motherboard are often unshielded and of low quality and so storage devices should be either plugged in at the back or use a good shielded external cable from the back panel and into the hub that is in your monitor. USB 3.0 on the other hand needs more pins so it needs special ports in addition to an eXtended Host Controller.
This is amazing! Thank you!!!
@@TheRetroRecall thank you for all the videos!
No problem! I'm not perfect - just having fun!!
@Karataus it is great to watch as those were the glorious days for me, I had to set up HP machines at the time and it was so much more personal back then. Your videos give me good vibes and my comments are hopefully helpful for viewers doing similar things with old systems.
Totally!! They are welcome, please keep on commenting!!
the AMD one is surely bizzare
Short lived time period from I'm gathering.
Is he the machining guy? Or just similar voice.
I guess I'll take that as a compliment? :)
Probably isn't the case here, but if you're emulating a Sega CD on your PC and playing the physical games, your emulator will typically require a scsi CD emulator. That could be what you have run into.
Thanks!
Not a bad pick up from e-waste
Thanks!
@@TheRetroRecallthose BTX setups don't get much love nowadays 😅
Hahaha I think there are pros and cons for sure, however one pro is that video card heat sinks. Face upwards which naturally dissipates heat VS the ATX form factor. I personally like the design.
@@TheRetroRecall they are unique. Normally I'd say turn one into a sleeper with newer hardware but on these cases that might require getting a saw. 😂
Haha!!!!! Oh come on, a Dremel would do just fine lol!!!
Would you love to update the BIOS on the Working Dell in this video? True or False
That's an open ended question... In my experience it can go really well or really bad.
I have never seen a btx motherboard
Reversed layout. Design was spec'd for cooling.
i had one of these with a p4 3ghz and a nvidia 7900gt! i loved it! it was the time of BF2
Nice!!! It isn't bad for sure. The BTX design is definitely interesting.
those pentium Ds are space heaters
Keeps the house warm in the winter haha!
BTX seemed like it was just “backwards” to me.
Haha! Pardon the pun? :)
The mem sticks you had in hand on last pc looked like ECC and that will not work in this pc. Its not a server.
I would have to double check what I had used, but if that's the case - you are correct.
18:50 Maybe get rid of the Pentium D (which is a cpu with 2 Pentium 4 Cores) and replace with some Pentium Dual Coe or Core 2 Duo. RUclips is giving me old videos... maybe you did that already. Just Pentium D belong to the museum... like Indiana Jones used to say.
Haha! Go explore, lots of videos to choose from and enjoy :)
I had one of these i called it a dellasaurus
Hahahaha totally stealing that!
I never liked btx systems I had a gateway of some sort that was btx
Definitely different! It's funny that everytime I open one of these up I get confused as I am so used to ATX.
i have one of these and would like to get rid of it
Ah, Where's your sense of adventure!! Haha.
its cool but i prefer retro pcs from the windows 95/98 instead I do have a tape deck that fits in a pc 5.25 drive bay its cool actually. @@TheRetroRecall
Rip the key with Keyfinder, reinstall
Great idea.
These aren't even e-waste to me. These are decently specced windows 11 web browsing/general use machines with a few cheap upgrades.
Exactly... I like your outlook! Too many of these machines have been and are being tossed.
@@TheRetroRecall From retro gaming to modern general use there are so many uses for mid/late 2000s hardware still. It’s a shame people throw these out thinking they are obsolete.
100% such a waste.
Vista was delayed, ME was rushed.
ME was completely unnecessary and garbage tbh.
I personally liked ME. With Vista there was nothing but issues for me.. But that was my experience.
ME did add useful features, like system restore and internet connection sharing. These features made ME extremely useful for me. Never used Vista. System Restore is still useful. Had a software uninstaller completely wreck my Windows 11 system, in a way I have not encountered in years. None of the recovery options worked. But it had a good system restore save point and it worked flawlessly. It's a feature I should not need but I am glad it is there, and glad ME is where it was first released.
Fine fettling projects!👍👍 Recently I obtained an HP Compaq 8000 Elite USDT., I have fettled several of those, but this one is faulty, the only OS., which would install was Windows 7, so it would be okay for a retro offline pc., I tried to install Windows 10 but that did not work, Windows XP got so far and then shut down because it found a fault, I tried several Linux OS., but they caused the pc., to kernel panic and after some online research I discovered that the problem is most likely a failed or failing capacitor or perhaps more than one, so that pc., has now become a parts machine. This link shows the type of pc.. ruclips.net/video/MgxRhUxFr0c/видео.html
Nice!! Is that your channel by chance? Yeah it sounds like a cap for sure. I mean, I'm surrpsied that 7 is not causing any issues for you.. Unless there are driver concerns. That said I hate when caps are partially going... So hard to troubleshoot unless you desolder and test them!
@@TheRetroRecallHello, I don't have a YT., channel and I have never made a video, the link is just to let you see the type of pc., that I mentioned. I was also surprised that Windows 7 installed, that pc., must be a later model 8000, because it shipped with Windows 7 pro installed and yes, the product key label is still on it which is useful, the earlier models had Vista installed. That pc., was cheap and the parts from it are worth more than what I paid for the whole pc..
Nice!!
@@TheRetroRecall An update on my faulty PC., I had an old 7200 rpm., hard drive which had an old version of Windows 10 installed on it, so I fitted it and the PC., booted, since then I have installed Windows 10 on a used spare 256 gig., SSD., and the PC., is now fully updated and is currently working well. I have tried to install Linux OS., again, but the PC., still goes into a kernel panic and I have gone through every part of the bios and it's all okay, so it's got to be failing capacitors. This has been the most awkward PC., which I have ever fettled, but at least it's currently working and Windows 10 still has over 2 years of support left.