Dell OptiPlex GS Pentium 133MHz
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- Опубліковано 28 чер 2024
- In this video we're taking a first look at the Dell OptiPlex GS Pentium 133MHz.
A rather boring PC at first glance, but I have a thing for these old brands (Compaq , Dell, IBM, ....).
Lets see what this computer is all about and if it has potential.
#retro #dell #intel - Наука та технологія
regarding the HDD Caddy - some have to be keylocked to pull the power through to the drive
Yes, more than likely the caddy shown in the video is just fine. In my experience most decent HDD caddy mounts will only apply power to the drive when they are locked. This is a safety mechanism to ensure that the drive cannot be removed while power is applied. I actually use them fairly frequently and I don't think I have ever had a problem that was caused by the caddy itself.
About that HDD enclosure, I had few that only powered the HDD when the key was on lock position; also had some that had the tray lever push a switch to power the HDD when it was fully inserted and also had one that had a regular switch. You may check the configuration on that specific model you have there. However, the HDD seemed to not be powered as the LED status was not lit up on boot.
Seeing a Pentium with only 16M RAM makes me think if I was not too extreme with my 486 wit 48M of RAM; however, those 48M were never enough for me as I ram Win95, it used the swap file almost all the timeand was sometimes kinda sluggish, even with a AMD 5x86@133 CPU. When I got my Pentium 166, it came with 32M and I added another 32M from my old 486 and then Win95 ran snappy and flawless, without using too much swap. Then I was able to play and finish Starcraft.
I concur. I used a lot of these in the past and most required the caddy locked in to supply power to the drive. This was to prevent the user from removing the drive while powered up.
Yes the caddy needs a key to turn on the power but they are still finicky. Back in the day we suddenly had a lots of pc's having problems finding the harddrive and not booting. Lots of figuring out later we noticed that the floor cleaners were using the pull levers to move the pc's so that they can clean the floor and the tolerances in those caddys just disconnected the drive...All pc's were fixed by just pushing the caddy a little. It was a hell in some morning to find a few hundred pc's not buuting up :)
If I remember correctly, you need the key of the external enclosure to lock the drive (physically) and it will power up the hard drive at this time ! :) Thanks for this nice video !
you remember it correctly, it's true
Yep, user error ;-)
I can confirm this, I have the same HDD bay. I just permanently bridged the lock connectors seeing as I didn't have a key.
@@Shmbler replace user and hit any keyboard
Came to say the same!
It was necessary, too. That release lever seemed to be irresistible to almost anyone coming within arm's reach of one...
Fun fact: The GS is the first OptiPlex to use that Dell case design, and the last is the GX200. Every OptiPlex system between those two has swappable motherboards, PCI/ISA risers, power supplies, and small form factor/low profile/desktop/mini tower cases; they're all interchangeable without modification. It was Dell's first truly unified business PC architecture, and Dell won more than a couple dozen awards for it.
I think there were also the GX300 and the GX400, with the latter having a case black in color instead of the usual beige/white. The GX400 was also one of the first if not the first Pentium IV machines made by Dell. The GX400 came out in late 2000 and was only offered in a minitower form factor. So the GX400 was technically the last Dell made in this style.
@@karl-erikkald8876 Those may look similar on the outside, but are completely different cases inside (closer to standard ATX), and you can't stick a GS board into a GX400 (and vice versa). They are not the same unified design I was referring to.
That being said, the GX300/400 systems are quite great, and just as reliable. I myself have had the privilege of using a dual 1GHz P3 GX300.
I did not know that. But awards for something the PC clone mfg. came up with the AT standard? Plus as you know you could walk into most computer shops and get a at power supply and later a atx psu. But if you had a dell. You would have to get it ordered.
Riser in GXPro is incompatible with any other model within the serie. It uses additional connectors by the main slot to get the power to expansion cards. I tried regular riser - it doesen't work in GXPro. Anyway the serie is very rigid and easy to maintain. The only pain is absence of AGP slot in P-II models and indisalible inegrated videocard when using PCI one, this leads to resources (IRQ) wasting.
@@borodaevkirill7371 There are always a few problems and exceptions in these types of systems. Sounds like the GXPro risers are the exception to the rule of general interchangeability.
Also, OptiPlex systems are more for general business computing, rather than graphics prowess. Dell's home/home office Dimension line, which was also sold to businesses, had AGP slots, and further graphics performance needs were covered by Dell's Precision line of workstations. Only private owners of second-hand OptiPlex systems would have a reason to stick a PCI graphics card into a system with integrated AGP graphics and no AGP slots, instead of using them as-is.
Perhaps that hard drive caddy is not faulty. Some of them have a switch in the keylock, so when it's closed the drive receives power, and when it's opened the drive remains powered off. Yours has the keylock in the opened position (otherwise you couldn't remove the drive), it would be curious to see if by closing it the drive would finally turn on.
I've faced that issue myself. The keys to lock/unlock are important, even if you don't care about anybody stealing the drive.
The Gs range was the low-end office desktops at the time. Fully integrated as you see, and a very simple tool-less design. They're really quick to service, and not much goes wrong with them. I worked at Dell's tech support in the 90s, I've seen these a lot.
The big brother to this model is the OptiPlex GXi, which adds built-in NIC and sound on the motherboard, and comes with 2MB VRAM as standard. It had some bigger case options as well, including a cool mini-tower, but usually came in the same case as your Gs.
That hard drive caddy is a user addition, they weren't sold with those. That bay is either for a CD-ROM or an extra hard drive. The internal hard drive was always mounted where you put your replacement drive. Likewise, that Diamond modem isn't a standard part, that was added by the previous owner. Dell used USRobotics modems exclusively at the time, at least here in Europe.
Cool video, fun to see that old box again. :)
Actually, you can use almost any floppy in those Dell machines. The release bar is designed for multiple ones. You just have to pull the face plate off.
I use LS120 in similar system (GX1), but disk ejection is always by emergency method :) (mecanical force, not power driven as intended)
The lock of the hard drive caddy could act as a power switch so if someone would try to remove the HDD while the PC is running it would at least spin down before it gets yanked out. ;)
My old Vobis 486 had that feature. The HDD didn't get power until the caddy was locked properly.
I've had many of these removable bays and everyone I had needed to be locked to get power.
I clearly remember working on this specific Dell model back in the early/mid 90'. I was a midrange system developer using Microsoft Visual Basic and Microsoft Access and even developing web pages using Microsoft FrontPage. This brings back many good memories but also a few software frustrations amongst the mutch hated TokenRing network (super slow)
Token Ring 16 or 4? 4 Was brutal with those large square connectors and if you let the token out it would fall on the ground and you would have to find it.
Loved the Optiplex G series PCs back in the late 90's and 2000's. They were always very reliable for us. We'd set up classrooms full of them, install Nvidia 3d cards, and play Unreal Tournament for team building. Used to manage a large IT shop, and they were always favorites. Paired with nice Sony Trinitrons (had hundreds of them) and Dell's rebadged speakers with Subs.
Had an Optiplex with Windows XP. it died from expanded capacitors, from what I could tell. I won't get another one ever again.
@@MidnightMechanic I guess that was from the capacitor plague era?
Sounds like my IT shop when we did the same.
I have recently been working on a bunch of similar machines from Dell, all in the same case style. Pretty nice computers for retro purposes in a very practical form factor. One great thing is that many of them had integrated network cards, more or less a 3Com 905b and not to bad integrated audio. The early ones even has Soundblaster 16 Vibra and OPL3 on the motherboard.
And always remember to not connect an atx power supply to a Dell from this era, the connector fits but the pinout is different.
love how these all slot together with minimal tools... they were great to work on back in the day
Nice system review, I really thought that these desktop systems were newer, now thanks to you and your channel I know better!
I will add these to my searches and not limit myself to HP Vectras.
I used to sell these for Dell to Public. The Optiplex was well designed and had a long lifecycle as compared with the Dimension which was newer chipsets but not so standardized.
That big unpopulated area looks more like a place for optional network adapter (judging by NICRST jumper and fooprint for Ethernet magnetics). The smaller unpopulated chip might be for audio though.
EDIT: Yeah, and on another shot (10:04) there is a footprint for RJ45 too. And I don't think there would be any integrated audio (not enough passives around).
I had the exact same HDD in my old Pentium 120Mhz from 2001. Brings back a lot of memory's
Best channel ever!!! Love the content i try my self doing a youtube channel RB Retro Bunker buts its hard work 😓 i am impressed that you manage to send out so manny great videos.
the hard drive caddy has to be locked to power up the drive
Wait what
I remember I had a couple of these at work when they were new. Good little test boxes!
Always loved the shape of these Dells with the gently curved top. I like the design of the badge and the raised circle around the buttons. Very nice. 😊
This vintage is big-time nostalgic for me. I had a pc Jr and a pacbell 486, but the pentium generation is when I got really into computers.
i love the form factor and ease of taking it apart...those heat sinks are huge....still like it!
I don't know why, but I have always loved that generation of optiplex. Maybe because I grew up using a 386 with windows 3.1 while these at my school with pentium 2 and 3 and windows 98. But for mid-late 90s design I think it is great
Thanks for this video! Really enjoyed it!
My first computer growing up was a Dell OptiPlex GXa, which used the same case design, just with two 5 1/4" bays. It had a Pentium II 266 MHz, 64 MB RAM, and a 2 GB hard drive, running Windows 98. We then got an OptiPlex GX1, with a Pentium II 400, 160 MB RAM, and a 6 GB hard drive, to run Windows XP (I know, crazy). That was the first PC where I did a CPU upgrade! I upgraded it to a Pentium III 550.
It is fascinating to see one of these again. When I was in elementary school (in the early 90s) my school bought a bunch of new Macintosh LCII’s and one LC575 (used for reference materials in the library) so a lot of my experience outside of home was with Macs (we had a 486DX 25MHz at home) When I went to middle school (in the mid 90s) the students used mostly older Macs (many different versions of the old black and white all in one form factor), but all the staff used these Dell Optiplex. They looked different than the rectangular PCs that were common at the time.
I have got a similar looking machine ,but based on Pentium 3 500MHz processor. My machine was also little bigger ,and it take much space ,and i must to sell :( This case reminds mi reversed bread bin :) Awesome channel ,and i watch for quite long, keep going :)) Cheers :)
My middle school bought this kind of dell but it had the pentium 2 266 in all of them. They bought like 12 million bucks worth of them. They were banging around town up til 5 or 10 years ago.
I forgot ours did come with a cd drive in the 5.25 bay... great video as always
That CPU cooler looks awesome.
I had a pentium 2 in this slim case.
I remember hard drive sound like a jet engine.
That hardware & Win95 can still do probably 70% of what people need from a pc.
I saw your post on Reddit about this!
I have one of those! But mine is the GX Pro version with the 200 mhz Pentium Pro in it. Its a great little machine!
Haven't looked into upgrading the CPU and see what the motherboard is capable of. Might do that in a future video.
This era of Dell PCs was really robust and dependable. Fast forward to 2004 and their Optiplex and Dimension lines were nothing but standard, run-of-the-mill low quality mATX garbage. I worked at a PC repair shop in 2005 and whenever I caught one of those later models that was just out of warranty, I would recommend to the customer to allow me to gut their system and install something better. This was because Dell's QC went down the drain in favor of profits. I would keep this mid-90s gem, RetroSpecter!
Memories from my old workplace. Had loads of this Optiplex GS with either P133 or P166MMX and 3com 3c509b. Take the hdd out of the removable hdd and install in internally on the metal plate in the front-left of the case.
Very Nice Machine Thanks for the Video
never owned a dell computer and i think for good reason, great video dude!
I had that same computer back in the day. I think I had 128MB or 512 (cant remember) but it was enough that I had installed Windows XP on it, which ran pretty well for what it was. Internet wasn't as "heavy" when I had the system as it is today so yeah that system did very well. Bought it at a local computer shop. And those floppy drives can actually accept different drives as another user here mentioned. I had a DVD-RW drive in mine instead of hard drive in the bay. Mine must have been a different model because I had a built in 3com network card and a sound card all on the motherboard
I remember the Pentium II version of these at my local library and it's taken me back a couple of decades, or slightly over. By Pentium II version I mean that yes, the case looked exactly the same.
A while ago I picked up an Optiplex GX1, which is the Pentium II version of this machine. Unfortunately I haven't had a much of chance to play around with it since I got it, as I had to quickly tidy up my soon afterwards and it ended up getting moved to my storage space.
I like these computers and got myself a GXa from eBay, I have the tower version with a 250mhz slot 1 Pentium 2 CPU. Mine also came with free insects.
The harddisk caddy will power the drive as soon as you lock the keylock. You can short the switch if you don't have the key by bypass the lock. Simple fix it by solder the cables at the lock together. I am very sure that solves the problem.
This is the first time I have ever actually seen a hard drive in one of those removable bays.
I still have one of those. It has Pentium 133 running at 100 MHz and 96 MB of RAM.
I used to have one of those HDD caddy's they have a keylock on them that acts as a power switch. If it isn't locked it won't power on, if you don't have the key the caddy is basically useless.
Can always jumper the lock and bypass it that way. Never thought about the lock being the culprit.
not sure anymore but with those caddy's do you need to turn the key on the front side to enable the driver?
remember these Delll's had something simulair back in the day.
I previously bought some new old stock caddies since I liked the idea, now curious as to how reliable they *actually* are. Also have that same Caviar 11000 that as far as I last checked seems to be just fine without any bad sectors, bit of a sudden death for yours though!
My father used to have exactly those in his dentistry firm. I once took one of them home and tried to play some games on it... But 133mhz was just too less :D
I salvaged a similar model Optiplex around 20 years ago Pentium 200 64mb ram Win98se Bad drives & Only 2 available expansion slots. I replaced the drives put in a network card & a Sound &56k modio card that worked fine in 98 but 2k could'nt see the shared audio on the same card. I had to use a standard floppy so I could not get the case closed.98 ran well but 2k which I needed to use at the time ran slow with only 64mb ram. The Aol & Office software I had to run at the time made it worse. At least no modem sound or any other when using 2k.
They re-used that case all the way up to the GX110 which was a 1Ghz Pentium III.
3:35 dead spider 🕷
finally your video😃
interesting specimen, pentium 2 models were my first computers i thrown out ay work 10 years ago after working on them 20 years ago as a student
back and overal case was the same but pentium 2 models had ati rage graphics with expandable memory card and they already had dell splash screen in the bios
i loved/hated those pc's
I have a few of those caddys that wont power up the drive unless the key is in the locked position
you need to add 16 MB of RAM, 1 MB of video memory, SDROM and you will get what you need for retro games. this will be almost my first computer in terms of configuration, only I had an AMD K5 133 MHz
Thanks
You are very welcome. Thanks for the kind donation.
please tell me through which wire you connected the monitor and into which connector.? to a video card?
If you want to try to use your modem, you can always call up my VAX here in Ghent?
I have the same desktop, it even has the exact some HDD hot swap bay. The contents of the HDD in mine told me about the origin of the machine: it was a PC from KU Leuven that was lent to students. Maybe yours also came from there, you never know.
Back when Dell made quality beige boxes :)
The beige box is the most boring computer possibly, the fact you can make a video of of it seems incredible to me. Especially these cheap mass produced ones. Certainly even for you there must be much more interesting examples of x86 hardware out there?
Nice machine for retro gaming.
Does anyone have any idea what that white plastic hinge thing is near the front of the machine is for. It is the one near where he moved the hard drive to. I have an Optiplex GX110 it has one of these except black and I've always wondered what it is for.
Dell were and still are quality PCs/Notebooks.
Strike that F1 key to continue!!
I don't know if you noticed but when you connected the dead caviar disk, the system name shown in the post screen had a question mark at the end instead of an L. could this explain some kind of issue on the system caused by that dead disk?
I love it as well but I wish he read comments and suggestions and replied to them : (
It looks like this computer has no soundcard. I don’t see any specific one installed and it doesn’t appear to have any integrated audio as the audio jacks on the back of the machine are absent.
i have a dell optiplex gx110 that looks just like this except it has a cd rom drive and is a p3 system with windows 98 se
3:35 I swear there is a spider
Looks like you've been out in the sun :D
I do try to get out of my basement once in a while and catch some sun yes :)
@@RetroSpector78 hehe :P
wondering if the hard drive caddy is fixable.
Shouldn't you turn that lock to get the power to the caddy? If you don't have the key just connect the wires directly.
😎
The beep come from the voicecoil?
This is not ATX. The power supply is proprietary. Don't try to connect ATX power supply, you would probably detsroy the mainboard.
I have the same computer on my desk except it has 64mb EDO RAM. Really sucks having no sound. Mine says it's a gs+.
What is the purpose of this black plastik frame on the ISA modem card?
I think, you need the key to lock and activate the hdd.
Can it run Crysis?
Made In Europe?.....lol....made in Ireland because I helped make thousands of these things for Dell in the 90's!
In typical Dell fashion, unexpandable and proprietary.
I pray Jesus christ takes care of that soon
May you please make a odysee account and link the account to your channel! Please!
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That CPU cooler must be one of the coolest ones I’ve ever seen 😍
I was ready for the money shot of that (also) gorgeous ceramic Pentium CPU, but alas 🫤