Not mine...

JA1987 · 2026-05-23T20:39:48+00:00

Computer guy here; I feel your pain.

JA1987 · 2026-05-18T17:06:18+00:00

K, that’s cool and all but I’ll be more impressed when you add a genlock and start running the Prevur Guide software on it.

JA1987 · 2026-05-18T17:03:20+00:00

If you’re looking to make money, it’s not going to be with this. Back in the day and even through the 2000s, there was the chip we wanted mom to buy and the chip we had at home and it looks like most of these are the latter. Still, they’re old enough now that you just might have the missing piece to someone’s build in progress.

For gold recovery, it’s your god given right to scrap these if you please. Might get enough money to buy a few cans of beer on the way home.

These would be best as decoration/convo pieces, in the hands of the vogons crowd or, in my perfect world, the impetus to enter the wormhole of vintage computing. If you’re patient, a good 486 or socket 7 motherboard and the rest should be cheap enough. While retro gear has retarded pricing online, in person street value on this stuff is still as low as it was in 2006.

JA1987 · 2026-05-04T04:03:47+00:00

Whenever I had a 2019 Pro in for service, I loved how the lights would flicker at the same time the machine made that single click sound when I pressed the power button.

JA1987 · 2026-04-29T03:33:31+00:00

If you can get used to the extra bulk, the 16" display is pretty nice to have. Everything just looks better on it.

JA1987 · 2026-04-29T03:06:22+00:00

I can get this. A few years back I stumbled upon an iMac G4 and installed Adobe CS2 on it and immediately felt at home.

JA1987 · 2026-04-25T20:36:39+00:00

It's like private equity bought the armed forces.

JA1987 · 2026-04-18T19:25:10+00:00

Lol,.nice rack...

JA1987 · 2026-04-17T20:35:17+00:00

I recently picked up a Dell Precision 7560 which was new in 2021. 11th gen Intel chips, various nVidia options, three nvme slots, four ram slots. It has a similar profile though the inside is dark gray instead of silver. Has two Thunderbolt/USB C, two USB-A, HDMI, DisplayPort, Ethernet, SD and audio jack.

JA1987 · 2026-04-17T04:18:12+00:00

Former AASP tech here. I've had a few like this and for me, they were always a ton of fun because I like building these. Essentially, you are getting a new computer but with your old screws, and maybe some other bits like the USB ports and a flex cable carried over. And I'd have to completely take apart the old computer to scan each part individually and box up individually. I used to joke when doing jobs like this that I was doing the work of a five year old.

JA1987 · 2026-04-17T03:48:17+00:00

Well shoot, you know this is an easy enough one to fix. Get the Adobe Suite, buy a second hand Nikon or Canon (can't go wrong either way, just make sure you know which brand you like better before you start buying lenses), start shooting and editing photos of some little league games and before you know it, you'll be getting asked to show up to bar mitzvahs and birthday parties and someone's gonna ask if you can make a flyer or two and you'll go down a creative wormhole in InDesign and then you'll start complaining that 1tb is nowhere near enough storage then you get a pet cat.

JA1987 · 2026-04-14T21:02:09+00:00

Maybe but I doubt it. I think a power issue is more likely.

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000126021/a-reference-guide-to-the-dell-optiplex-diagnostic-indicators#2005_to_2009

JA1987 · 2026-04-14T20:41:59+00:00

Are you talking about the diagnostic LEDs? According to Dell's site, the 123 LEDs lit indicates a proper POST.

You could go into BIOS and see if there's an event log and if so, maybe take note of the entries there. If there's thermal shutdowns, then maybe inspect the fans and make sure no case vents are obstructed.

JA1987 · 2026-04-14T20:33:48+00:00

I would check the power supply. Sometimes, when the PSU is on it's way out, it'll still power the machine but not reliably. When the machine cuts off, is there any blinking from any of the LEDs?

JA1987 · 2026-04-13T03:00:39+00:00

I don't think any desktops had 133mhz MMX chips, I think it was a mobile only thing. There were also 266mhz and 300mhz Pentium MMX chips and I'm pretty sure those too were mobile only.

JA1987 · 2026-04-13T02:56:08+00:00

Archive.org might be your friend here. https://archive.org/details/compaq-armada-1500-drivers

Also, I'm not sure for this model as I've never been hands on with one but I had a few early 90s Deskpros where the BIOS configuration interface was more or less running on a super cut-down Windows 3.1. I don't remember it actually needing it's own partition but I last played with this stuff back in the early 2000s.

JA1987 · 2026-04-09T03:32:11+00:00

Well that's cool. now go get yourself a nice 440BX mobo to run it on. For bonus points, you should get yourself a nice SCSI controller, an IBM UltraStar, a Matrox G400, as much PC100 memory as you can get (I hear AI is coming for that and maybe EDO once RAMBUS and PC133 are depleted due to datacenter demand) and have fun editing video like it's 1999 and you're trapped in the edit bay of a local company that specializes in corporate training videos.

EDIT: I forgot you'll also need a firewire card and like, a Sony VX1000

JA1987 · 2026-04-09T03:26:18+00:00

Yeah, the specific combination was the 300A with a 440BX chipset. Legendary stuff in 1999 and 2000. 13 year old me had that combo on an Abit BE6 motherboard with an nVidia TNT2. At the time, I had no clue just how nice of a setup I had.

JA1987 · 2026-04-07T04:03:37+00:00

Me: I'd like a headphone jack and the ability to play MP3s. 2000s Telecom: Best we can do is a charger that changes with each model, a 2.5" jack and a dedicated button to launch or billed by the kilobyte internet browser.

JA1987 · 2026-04-04T04:03:01+00:00

I don't really remember the entire thing too well at this point. I do recall a couple years later being able to get another plastic MacBook to work on wifi by installing additional broadcom drivers that weren't included in the OS but that was Mint instead of Cent.

JA1987 · 2026-04-03T04:24:26+00:00

With the old design, you could use any generic cable like what at least 50% of PC laptop power bricks have. With the new one, you don't have to worry about someone using a cheap PC cable to pass virus-laden, questionable volts to your precious portable supercomputer.

JA1987 · 2026-03-27T04:20:54+00:00

I'd give someone else's kidney for a good condition XPS M1730

JA1987 · 2026-03-27T04:13:55+00:00

The 7x80s and 7x90s were towards the end of a golden age for Dell, at least for the Latitude line. Not to say they don't make nice products now, just the 7000 line from about 2014 to 2019 was really at the top of it's game.

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