Could this prebuilt vintage PC actually be GOOD?!

[@MartinaD]

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

[@jamesstarks3573]

I noticed the same thing!

[@samholdsworth420]

Was looking for this comment

[@avamnepohui7260]

underrated comment

[@LabCat]

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

[@clark85]

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

[@olivierpericat9224]

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

[@olivierpericat9224]

(also available in the NEC computers of that era)

[@buildyourcomputer]

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

[@arladds]

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

[@olivierpericat9224]

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

[@BeefJerky4104]

Good information. Thanks.

[@f937r]

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

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

dude I got a Dell🤣🤣🤣

[@Jon-hx7pe]

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

[@danmar007]

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

[@ZeroHourProductions407]

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

[@9.peanut]

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

[@bullettube9863]

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

[@raven4k998]

exactly saves you from having to change discs a by a lot

[@greyATK]

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

[@raven4k998]

next time you get a Dell tell your friend Dude I got a Dell🤣🤣

[@MrDeelightful]

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

[@tarstarkusz]

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

[@star__sh]

@@tarstarkuszokay? its still built well

[@tarstarkusz]

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

[@star__sh]

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

[@tarstarkusz]

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

[@MrMoogle]

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

[@Toonrick12]

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

[@noemedmedia]

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

[@hang10wannabe]

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

[@harshbarj]

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

[@Skyspace187]

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

[@parastie]

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

[@raven4k998]

Dude I got a Dell😜😜 well of course it could because Celerons back then could easily match the Pentium's for gaming due to the Pentium's having l2 cache on a card but Intel figured it out and put L2 cache on the pentium3 chip fixing that issue mid way into the Pentium3's life cycle

[@BluewindsLegacy]

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

[@heyjero77]

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

[@6mtzhp55]

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

[@johnnycha]

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

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

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

[@johnnycha]

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

[@fatfurie]

@0:38 can confirm..i broke my neck in both 1997 at the age of 10.. and then again in 2006...ive adapted with neck strength training and hasnt happened again since.. my neck is ready for any technological advances

[@Andrew_G4CH]

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

[@davidbrown1573]

4:03 ~ Could have been using two floppies to use xcopy for PC games or amiga disks.

[@canonwright8397]

A and B drives were essential for copping files, games, and porn? Ok maybe not porn. But a PC with A and B drives were very cool.

[@Cyber_Horse_Studios87]

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

[@sean6077]

I remember building my first PC (after having used an old Gateway I bought back in 2000). It had the Sound Blaster Audigy I bought at a CompUSA. I also put in a 128Mb video card. Later, a friend gave me a 256Mb video card. I thought it was the shit at the time. I could play a lot of games with higher settings and it had great sound. I then discovered the world of gaming headphones, more RAM, bigger HDD, even bigger GPUs, and it just kept going from there. This was a nice look back at the beginnings of customization for consumer-grade PCs. Well done!

[@orinokonx01]

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

[@J.Wick.]

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

[@raycreveling1583]

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

[@FadingBulb57227]

10:48 funny enough, Dell still gets their peripherals from Logitech, I saw one wireless dell keyboard with the Logitech Unifying Logo on it, and I've disassembled a few modern broken keyboards to see the Logitech logo on the PCB

[@Rangerman9404]

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

[@kevinlsims7330]

Dell Sucks When It Comes To Their Compatibility! They Do Not Want You To Upgrade Which Causes Megatons Of E-Waste!!!

[@DanielleWhite]

I have wondered how much upgrading was done. I know that some people upgraded often, of course, but with the fast pace is tech changes it wasn't too hard to run into "it's cheaper to build new rather than upgrade."

[@jimjamz.]

My Dell Dimension XPS M200s is a P200 MMX, 64MB RAM and completely stock, with the original Matsushita CD-ROM, Matrox Millenium II 4MB, onboard SB16 and an AWE32 ISA daughterboard. Mine came with all of the options available at the time, including an internal Iomega Zip 100 drive and the 3Com 3C509 ISA NIC. The original HD is still in the case but disconnected and is replaced by a CompactFlash to IDE adapter. This allows me to swap between OSes within seconds. I have one for MS-DOS 6.22, Win95 and Debian 1.1 / 1.2. Your hard drive mounted upside down is actually in the secondary HD mount point. The primary is in the vertical gap depicted at 3:11, where the primary HD is mounted vertically. Given the system is a D266/D333, a more period appropriate benchmark would likely be Quake II.

[@OCDRex11]

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

[@ericf1018]

In 1995 Michael Dell operated its Canadian operations on Gordon Baker Rd, Markham. At this time, they provided company discounts to Ford Visteon, through which my father was able to receive a company discount on either a Dimension P100 or P90. We ended up getting the Dimension P90, a wonderful machine that introduced me to Windows 95, PCI bus, and DirectX gaming. The promotion also offered Sony Trinitron monitors, and I ended up obtaining a 17" GDM which was, by far, one of the best CRTs I ever owned !

[@KingoftheRoad-2023]

who cares if u live in Canuckistan

[@michaeljohnson1413]

Love the computer MIDI music from that era.

[@ice_fox]

My mom upgraded my 386 dos comp to a custom Pentium 133mhz made by a mom and pop shop called PC Corner in rural SC. It ran Win95 and introduced me to the best games ever. Blizzard, Sierra, Lucasarts, ID... So much fun customizing all the sounds with short Nirvana song clips we cut up in sound recorder. Learned coding writing IRC war scripts too. Good times. 😅

[@stevencarlson5422]

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

[@kokoleka808]

All I can say is the BIOS hasn't improved much over the past decades.

[@randomchannel9331]

If it ain't broke don't fix it lol

[@dormcat]

ESS sounded murky but had distinctive spatial feeling; SB128 was cleaner but rather "flat." BTW what about the power supply? Was it a standardized ATX or the notorious Dell proprietary PSU that plagued Dell's Pentium 1-2 era?

[@GarthGoldberg]

It's amazing in hindsight how expensive computers were back then.

[@boydpukalo8980]

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

[@digitalizeddeath]

I still have my old Dell. Got lucky and got ahold of a Dimension E520 topart out of course. It had the beefy Core 2 Quad Heatsink. I popped it and a Cedar Mill Pentium 4 Hyper Threaded CPU in my E310 with a PCI Geforce 8400GS. Perfect XP Machine. It has SATA PCIe and alot of modern comfort with IDE and PCI mixed in. Got lucky and added USB 3.0 to it. Long gone is the modem. Just Sound, Video and USB 3.0 with a 300 GB WD Velociraptor.

[@galland101]

The Dell Dimension XPS line from this era was pretty good, I would have to say. I had a Dimension XPS R400 from 1998 that I used for college that lasted for more than 6 years with various upgrades all the way from a 400 MHz Pentium II to a 1.4 GHz Tualatin Celeron with a Slocket adapter. GPUs went from the included NVIDIA Riva 128ZX to a 3dfx Voodoo3 to an NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX to an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro. It let me essentially bypass the Pentium 4 era of desktop PCs and move straight to the Pentium Ms and the Core Duos with newer laptops. Dell built these systems really well and the only thing you have to watch out for is the proprietary Dell ATX power supplies. If you ever have to replace the power supply on that PC with a regular one, it will fry the motherboard because while the connectors are the same, the pinouts are different.

[@jim-q1m]

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

[@JustinDavenport]

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

[@adventureoflinkmk2]

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

[@zachswy]

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

[@harrysmbdgs]

Something was out of phase with the ESS AudioDrive recording. Not sure if a jack wasn’t connected fully or if it’s the recording setup or the old hardware, but it definitely wasn’t right. You can tell a channel is out of phase because half the sound is missing or quiet and the stuff that’s there sounds like it’s coming from behind your ears.

[@5argetech56]

Ben Curtis was the one in those DELL commercials. Always liked them!

[@LoftechUK]

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

[@macktheinterloper]

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

[@joeMW284]

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

[@GruntUltra]

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

[@cooperhuntsman]

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

[@Markimark151]

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

[@kodedude]

Having multiple floppy drives at a time when using floppies frequently to get data back and forth between machines, is not uncommon at all. It also made reproducing disks much easier when you had two drives, and friends would often want copies of software that you had on disk. Floppies were used like thumb drives. I don't see why it was so surprising it had two drives.

[@littlegoobie]

There was a short time when prebuilt, high volume systems were nearly the same because hardware options were the same as custom built. They had the same choices for motherboards, expansion cards, ram/cpu etc. It wasn't until later that prebuilt systems used custom motherboards using custom daughter cards and risers, and everything was integrated. The final kick in the head was when it got installed into proprietary cases with proprietary psu's where replacement parts are impossible to source because they were not standard specs including some PSU' connector interfaces with the motherboard. total nightmare.

[@ritsukasa]

at our house we had an AMD 233 mhz with 32 MB RAM and played some great games(duke nukem 3d, motoracer, age of empires, twinsen odyssey, etc) This computer is a monster. We actually didn't do that much pc gaming because we had the super nintendo and soon a dreamcast.

[@tarstarkusz]

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

[@xsleep1]

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

[@chubbyadler3276]

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

[@ThatDude9761]

Passport from audiodrive actually sounds like it came from an rpg game. While the soundblaster actually sounds full, like every instrument is being listened.

[@ronlevon4294]

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

[@llynellyn]

The second floppy drive was probably added to take up the space when the ZIP drive got transferred to a new machine.

[@spazzypengin]

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

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

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

[@BilisNegra]

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

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

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

[@spazzypengin]

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

[@spazzypengin]

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

[@psilimit]

I had the 233 of this back in the day when i went off to college. I added a Matrox G400 to mine for some serious 2D graphics.

[@henrybarson2486]

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

[@allanalmeidapa]

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

[@domtomazo]

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

[@Cal316326]

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

[@AnimeGamer]

the way you spayed that stuff into the keyboard to clean, i'm not surprised lol back in the day they were a lot more sensitive, you should've removed the keys.

[@Apokathelosis]

He should have disassembly it and wash the plastics only.

[@kaeptn]

Your videos are such a joy to watch!

[@ScottyPlaysGames7098]

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

[@Infrared73]

Even though I worked with computers and was completely able to build my own (and had in the past) I started buying Dell's for personal use with the XPS 400. At work we were buying Dell's for the office and for servers. I was able to buy a personal Dell with a really good discount. Dell was doing pretty good and had a decent selection of premium upgrades available at actually good prices. At the time, since I was dealing with computers so much at work, I just wanted something that worked at home. I tended to keep my machines for 4+ years and went through 3 Dell computers before I decided to build my own again.

[@harshbarj]

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

[@ModernClassic]

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

[@Tarkov.]

Wow a DVD drive in 1997 must have cost them a LOT of money. EDIT: Haha, 2000, well that's still at least a couple benjamins, right.

[@AttilaTheHun333333]

7:38 ...are you sure that's a rivet? Looks like Torx to me.

[@willumthewoopah]

he also didn't wait for a keyboard to dry after cleaning it. he isn't the smartest nowadays it seems

[@cronto_999]

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

[@CoolDudeClem]

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

[@GeorgeDrumheller]

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

[@charleshines2142]

A lot of PCs had 2 floppy drives. The one I had had 2 simply because I had a 5.25 inch and 3.5 inch. That was in my opinion a good thing to have since not all software came on all of the same diskettes. Now these days no one produces those diskettes or sells new ones. Is there anyone who makes them at all? I remember a time when you would go to any store that sold anything computer related and they would have shelves full of floppies in packages of varying sizes from 10 up to 100 or more floppies in a box. Then came along flash drives and now we mostly download our software.

[@rekleif]

7:39 I would love to see an actual image of a rivet fastened CPU cooler... This image looks more like a eu hex screw than any rivet I've seen. I might be wrong though, but this looks more like bolts/screws that just need the right bit.. God bless and lots of love from Norway. And hurrah for me and my wife, we just passed 16 years of marriage on this very day. Hope you guys reading this last as long.....

[@mbirth]

I also think these look like "Torx" screws rather than rivets.

[@floycewhite6991]

Unlike the P2 266 and earlier, the 333 and up are very overclockable. I got mine to run stably at 400, some people got 450. I also had a C300A, which performed far worse than the P2 333.

[@kevinf689]

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

[@joesaiditstrue]

i had a celeron 533a (coppermine, socket 370), it ran comfortably at 800mhz, and during the winter with my window open, i could get it to hit 833mhz. those celerons were beasts

[@WodahsEht]

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

[@dalecousins7373]

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

[@LelandHasGames]

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

[@wowitsshit9734]

£15 for ess audio drive or £100 for ct2030

[@camjkerman]

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

[@G-Mastah-Fash]

I'm always amazed at the level of tolerance I had towards excruciatingly low framerates back in the day.

[@gregarmstrong552]

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

[@RetroJack]

I used to have an ESS AudioDrive back in the day, but I don't remember it sounding so harsh. 😣

[@retrocompaq5212]

if its like my compaq from 1994, when i upgraded the cpu, i set the bus to 66mhz instead of 50, the model number in the bios changed from deskpro 575 to deskpro 5120

[@RobertKliethermes]

Dang, that Sound Blaster sounded so much better to my ears. Big difference between the two cards.

[@rogerrowsell5926]

When I was "Buy Sell Repair PC" in the late 90s and early 20s, I cleaned dirty k-boards in a dishwasher, blow and let dry. Most worked fine, and looked like new.

[@DaiAtlus79]

10:49 they also made that mouse for Compaq computers as well (i have a Compaq branded one i use with an older rubberdome IBM keyboard i use with a USB to PS2 adapter on my Pi3 for Dosbox stuff. Also i love the SB128 i have that same card in my Pentium II 450 build (with a MX200 32mb gpu, 384mb ram and its plugged into a CRT as well - Quake 2 is beautiful on it).

[@jdspencer60]

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

[@fridaycaliforniaa236]

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

[@ResilientME]

I grew up with one of these, still have it, never been upgraded. Unfortunately my dad got upsold on a workstation GPU so gaming performance took a hit(not that we knew any better or cared beyond the issues with transparent textures.) I tested it a few years ago and it managed 15FPS playing Duke3D though it is also the original OS install(bloated & with registry corruption errors) so that may not be representative. It ran a good life 1998-2003 with the occasional dip back in for retro Shandalar & homework uses when the new Dell was broken(as happened semiregularly)

[@jasonschubert6828]

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

[@Chriva]

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

[@lucasrem]

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

[@Chriva]

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

[@babaruskie]

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

[@MrAlan1828]

My Dimension XPS 400 64mb Ram Slot load pioneer CDROM, HP Lighscribe DVD writer , 1.2+1.44 floppy drive, LS120 + Zip 750 IDE. Sata PCI storage 2 x 128GB SSD. It does have the XG sound chip on board & Joystick port, later in 2024 I upgraded the expansions slot to a PicoGus ISA, 16MB Voodoo2 AGP, SLI Voodoo2 12mb PCI, Monster 3D 4mb Voodoo1 PCI, all working in Harmony with Dos6.2 , Win95\95 configurations. I used this mainly to write floppies to my collection os PC's especially NEC PC8801/PC9801 series and Apple 2c Atari etc

[@joby602]

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

[@gentuxable]

With prebuilt PCs often it was just that the PSU was too weak for serious expansion, they sometimes only have some 100 watts of power that can be easily topped out by some drives. Of course sometimes they also made proprietary card layouts or drive bays as well as gluing stuff down etc.

[@BaurmilConpham]

In the difference between the audio drives, The ESS gives me the vibe like you're listening to a soundtrack song from a videogame on youtube or another platform other than the game whereas the Sound Blaster sounds like you're listening to it in the environment of the videogame it's designed for

[@SimplengKristyano]

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