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Post by supersonicdave on Aug 14, 2013 7:34:15 GMT
Dell Inspiron e1505
I got rid of the WinXP MCE operating system which was holding it back and installed an old upgrade copy of WinXP home I had laying around. After a day spent tracking down the drivers its good to go and not bad at all for a freebie someone gave me. I keep it on my bedside and look at email and groups with it.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2013 15:40:22 GMT
Sounds good dave, W home XP was a good system.
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Post by judymcl on Aug 15, 2013 0:21:13 GMT
I had a 1505. I actually got W7 to run on it too. Loved that thing... it was a tank! Just kept going and going and going... I eventually sold it and I believe it's still going today.
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Post by johnnybee on Nov 3, 2013 1:35:26 GMT
Oddly enough I've been gifted two Dells recently, Dave; one's an Inspiron FST and the other one's a half-height GX260 desktop; both use P4 / Skt478 and DDR1 memory, but the Inspiron uses an Intel board and the other uses a Foxconn unit. The thing that gets me about the HH rig is the way everything fits together; someone must have spent half their life working out the mechanical contrivances that hold everything in place without using a single screw - and this of course makes the case extremely heavy. The fact that the steel casings are clad in HI polyprop mouldings doesn't exactly help, but again, that's something shared by the more conventional Inspiron layout. Another oddity with the GX is a rather strange frame-like contraption that locates a PCI daughterboard into PCI#0 on the mainboard; the point of this (I guess) is that you can then use full height PCI cards in the daughterboard instead of being confined to half-height items on the mainboard itself. Both of them are reasonable performers for their day - given that the GX is newer than the Inspiron by a couple of years - being roughly on a par with their 462 Athlon equivalents; as received the GX only had 256Mb of RAM and the other had 512, but now both have 768Mb after my cleanout and refurb, and run far better for it. Neither of them have a GFX card installed, relying on the 'board chipset for VGA output, and this is where the difference between than becomes quite obvious; the earlier board only has 32Mb of shared RAM whereas the Foxconn item has 64Mb - so with anything less than 512Mb of system RAM the Intel board struggles to keep up. Both units have AGP slots onboard so adding an expansion card would improve matters considerably - sadly I'm fresh out of AGP GFX cards so that's the way they're staying; even on eBay, old AGP's are fetching some silly money these days so I couldn't justify the expense. Now as regards OS, I did a bit of research before installing as I was aware that I might have problems getting drivers for the older Intel board - and this was indeed the case; however the later item had chipset drivers available for Win Vista - so that's the way it went. The older rig got XP, and the later one got Win 7. So far, so good; all running sweetly, so the next thing to do is to find suitable people to give them to; one old girl up the road is getting one, that's for sure, but I'm still undecided about the other! Off to bed now peeps - I'm cream crackered!
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Post by Filly on Nov 3, 2013 10:14:55 GMT
I hope you don't refer to me as an old girl young JohnnyBee
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Post by johnnybee on Nov 3, 2013 23:35:10 GMT
Ann, now would I? LOL! Okay, I might be the baby of the group, but as I've just gone 65 I'm not exactly what you'd call a spring chicken meself! The 'old girl' I referred to is Ivy, who used to serve behind the bar at our local pub - she's had a bit of a rough life for a few years now. She looked after her husband Albert for several years with his MS, until he finally passed on last year from a stroke; behind all that she had lost her son Jack a few years back in a car crash, and had a big fall out with her daughter that led to Jayne sodding off to New Hampshire with her bloke. Albie's death brought them back to talking terms, which is obviously a good thing; however Ivy had problems getting about and keeping on top of a 4-bed house on her own - she has rheumatoid arthiritis - so she relocated to a one-bed ground floor flat on her 82nd birthday. She's pretty OK with PC's, having learned the basics while Albie was alive; however she's having problems affording phone calls to the US on her pension, so she asked me to look out for a cheap PC for her so she can use Skype instead. Job done, I reckon!!
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Post by Filly on Nov 4, 2013 8:06:10 GMT
Your a good Samaritan Johhnybee
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2013 8:43:31 GMT
Yes well done JB sounds like a good days work.
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Post by johnnybee on Nov 4, 2013 23:36:38 GMT
Thanks, folks - I do my best! Just been round to her flat, which is one of the new ones right by the entrance to Elmdon Park; I was a bit concerned that there wouldn't be much room for a desktop and printer setup, but I needn't have worried - the old darling had the whole thing organised down to a "T", even down to an anti-surge power block screwed to the side panel of a proper workstation! The flats all have CAT5 sockets and cable connections installed, so I've got pretty much everything she needs to get online; however although the system will work well enough with the 17" CRT monitor I've given her, it would be so much better with a 19 or 20 inch TFT unit, as her sight isn't the best. I guess I'll just have to keep my eyes and ears open for freebies on Gumtree and Facebook - you never know what stuff people throw out these days!
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Post by Filly on Nov 5, 2013 15:03:55 GMT
Gave a large screen to the dump not so long ago, if only I had known eh!
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