Dell desktops

[quinterro]

More stuff from the office hall....

Two Dell Optiplex GX240 P4 1.7ghz low-profile desktop systems. No memory or hard disks in either one.

One has a printed label saying 'BAD IDE', the other one just says 'BAD'.

Both of them use SDRAM. Ugh.......

So far the one that said 'BAD IDE' appears to work without one booting from a DSL CD. I'm typing this up on it now using the Dillo web browser..

Now if only I had more than 128MB RAM in it....

 

[IPNixon]

Oooo, I love the low-profile optiplexen. We've got GX150s at our school, in both low and normal tower size thingys.

 

[Temetka]

P4's are good for general purpose computing. The small form factor is especially nice. Congrats. Hope you get the hardware sorted out.

 

[quinterro]

Just tried out Dell #2. The CD-ROM drive is bad and it's missing the PCI card cage. Other than that it can boot into DSL as well. Again I'm posting from it.

Both have low-profile ATI Rage128 AGP video cards. The primary IDE controller still needs to be tested on both of them. Unfortunately when the drives were pulled the rails went along with them.

Since I had all of these P4 parts I tried to see if the Shuttle case I picked up in the hall downstairs a few weeks ago worked. Sadly, it was DOA. At least there was a small power to scavenge from it.

 

[~llama]

Back in my day, someone posting about Dells in the "Conquests" forums would've been shot on sight

...but since we're talking about Dells, I've never had one that didn't die on me. Other people seem to have had great luck with them, but not me.

 

[quinterro]

Back in my day, someone posting about Dells in the "Conquests" forums would've been shot on sight
...but since we're talking about Dells, I've never had one that didn't die on me. Other people seem to have had great luck with them, but not me.

Given how scarce Macs are around here locally, PCs are all I end up with. [] ]'> The most common castoffs at the office building are Dells. We use them almost exclusively at work and so far none of them have died on us.

Between the two I will have one working system. The other one has issues with the primary IDE controller and won't boot from anything connected to it.

 

[quinterro]

Well, I thought I would have a working system out of the two. Once they are combined it beeps and nothing else.

Oh well....

 

[benjgvps]

That hallway has been nice to you lately.

 

[quinterro]

That hallway has been nice to you lately.

It's been rather dry lately. I think the last working computer I got from there was last summer.

I've been messing around with the Dells and so far I managed to get one working one out of the pair. Apparently when I started the wrong machine was used as a base,

 

[Cory5412]

We've got a bunch of OptiPlex GX270s around here [albeit the tower models] and they are great computers, with the exception of the annoying design of the flap that covers the usb ports. Most of them have been removed on the machines in our office.

The student lab in the same building now uses OptiPlex GX520 and OptiPlex 745 machines, which have a newer enclosure that has done away with the flap, which is nice.