This particular artifact was brought to me in the hope that I could make it operational once more. Even though at the time it was barely old enough to be considered “retro”, much less something worthy of archaeological consideration, there is something satisfying about reviving an old piece of hardware. In this particular case, the problem ended up being a dead LCD. Whatever other problems Dell’s may have, availability of service manuals and parts is not one of them. The screen was easy to obtain on eBay for not very much money and the manuals are available for free online from Dell. The repair was not very difficult and after the screen was replaced, it worked like a charm.
The Dell C600 has the following basic stats:
- Chipset: Intel 440BX
- CPU: Intel PIII Mobile
- RAM: PC100 SDRAM (two user accessible SODIMM sockets
- Graphics: ATI Mobility M3 (8 MB)
- Network: 3Com 10/100 LAN
- Modem: 56K V.90 Mini-PCI
When I first obtained it, it had a 750 MHz processor, either 128 or 256 MB of RAM and Windows 2000 installed. Never content to leave these things as they are I immediately set off to see how far I could upgrade it. It turned out that there a couple of basic but fairly significant upgrades that could be done. First, the RAM was upgradeable to 512 MB so I immediately sought out the necessary RAM and did the replacement. The RAM was easily accessible so this was a 5 minute job.
Secondly, the CPU was upgradeable to 1 GHz. This was a fairly significant speed bump so I went ahead and performed this upgrade also. Changing out the CPU is a little harder since you have to do some fairly significant disassembly in order to get to the CPU. However, as mentioned earlier, Dell technical manuals are readily available and it isn’t a very difficult job as long as you know in what order to take things apart and put them back together again.
The hard drive is only 20 GB and it could probably be upgraded to something larger and maybe even a little faster but I haven’t found it necessary for my purposes. Maybe if and when I decide to install Linux.
Neither upgrade presented a problem and the only extra step I had to do was to make sure that the BIOS was upgraded to the latest and greatest before installing the new CPU. This machine was already pretty old when I did the upgrades (about ten years ago) so the parts were cheap and they made for a significant speed increase. It has had a couple of different Windows versions on it but is currently running Windows XP. Post upgrade, here is what CPU-Z says about this machine:
So what do I use it for? Briefly, it served as a hard drive emulator for a Commodore 64 and still may go back to performing that duty eventually. I also used it for a while as a spare laptop to surf the net and do other basic internet stuff with (I added a Wireless-G card to one of the cardbus slots for this purpose). This was before web browsing became virtually impossible with such a low spec machine. Currently, I use it for IP phone service via Magic Jack since it is inconvenient to plug the Magic Jack device directly into my router and the Wi-Fi adapter I was using for it was a piece of junk that never worked right. Also, as with all old machines I come across that it is technically feasible on, I decided to see what it could do on BOINC, crunching seti@home and einstein@home work units in this case. I’m sure it helps to bring in a Gridcoin or two on occasion :). Check out its progress here.
Retro??? That's one of them new fangled ones! I went to work for a guy running his cemeteries and told him I needed a computer. He had a computer graveyard (or museum depending on your point of view) and I selected the "newest" looking one he had. I plugged it in and was amazed! It had some pre-DOS OS that I had never seen before. You needed a password to get in and nobody could remember one, so I was lost!
The only pre-DOS machine I have is a Commodore 64 and technically that's not really "pre" DOS, it's just not DOS. I guess CP/M was probably the most common pre-DOS operating system (or there was TRS-DOS for TRS-80s and Apple DOS for Apple IIs...both of these would have been pre MS-DOS anyway). I wouldn't know off-hand how to get around any password though... Did you try 'coffin'? :)
No...I used my own. I had an old IBM Thinkpad and decided on that rather than wading through the graveyard looking for something that worked. Commodore 64's I think were pretty good in their day. I don't remember if it was you or not, but I told someone about my neighbor in college (early 90's) who was getting his Masters in Comp Sci. He wrote a program for the USPS that scanned zip-codes. His program (his Masters Thesis) was compact and took into consideration differences in handwriting, unlike the existing program. He did it on a Commodore 64.
Yeah, I think you mentioned the USPS thing on another post. I mostly used my Commodore 64 for games though I did learn how to program on it (in BASIC) and used it to write a school paper or two. They might have laughed at me if I tried to use it for a Masters Thesis by the time I was in college though...
I wrote mine on one just like this...a 286. It had the Arnold Palmer Course Design kit so I could design my own golf courses. It was fine for me lol!
This is identical to the one I took to college:
Though I spent many more hours playing Doom and calling BBSes than doing actual work on it. It was also the first machine I connected to the Internet with.
Great post! I will make more post like this when I come back to my hometown. I have got basement full of old technology :D
Yeah, I have a room full myself. Not sure what is up next for me. Maybe the Pentium IV I found in a dumpster a while back...