New (Old?) Project

mardi 9 août 2016

Hello all!

Just to start this off, I've had a Dell Dimension 4500 around for the past 3 or so years (maybe longer?). I hardly ever did anything with it as it is an old computer that my grandfather got around '02 - '03.

I had pulled out the CD-ROM drive, and put in a DVD-ROM drive I've had kicking around since 9th grade. From there, I would install my OS of choice at the time, and then I'd pull out the drive, and replace it with a hard drive. I had four HDDs in there, all of which I had laying around from old computers I use to own, including the stock 80GB one. I even upgraded the RAM to 1GB with some RAM modules I had.

For awhile, I had it set up to play with Arch (which was really fun). After I got bored of that, I decided to install a copy of Windows Server 2008 that I got through the college I was going to, and turned it into a file server / web server. Yes, it was a legal copy of Windows Server that Microsoft gave away to IT students.

Again, after I got bored of that, I decided to install Lubuntu 14.04 onto it and just turn it into a home file / print server. It worked well like that for a few months, up until I my ex and I divorced. After that, the computer just sat in a closet hardly ever being used. I pulled it out once just to see if I could turn it into a temporary wifi range extender in conjunction with a second router, and it was kinda cool.

Now that my life has improved (moved to a new apartment, and got my life back together), I decided to pick up a monitor from a local Goodwill for $24.99, new speakers from Wal-Mart for $11.88, and install Lubuntu 16.04 LTS. The goal was to revive the machine, and try to make it at least somewhat usable in 2016.

At first, it was a pain as the stock ATI Rage 128 Ultra card that was in it couldn't support the resolution that my monitor wanted to work with. So, I had to find a work around just to get my monitor to display an image. After that, I noticed that the card couldn't handle video almost at all, and the entire machine ran sluggishly. So, I went onto eBay and started hunting down a replacement card for cheap.

I managed to find a used PNY AGP card, which uses the Nvidia GeForce 5200 FX GPU for $18.99 and free shipping. Since the chip is legacy, and Nvidia no longer supports it, I'm forced to use the open source drivers. But, after installing it, I noticed a huge improvement in performance, video playback, and was able to use the optimal resolution for my monitor.

While on eBay, I also decided to hunt down a replacement processor. After some research, I was able to find a compatible Pentium 4 3.06 GHz processor to replace the stock 2 GHz P4 that is in it (so old that it doesn't even have hyper threading). This set me back about $13.00, and I'm still waiting on it to arrive from China (hoping it's not a fake, lol).

Overall, here's the TL;DR overview of the current hardware I have in the case:

Stock motherboard, fan, Creative SB sound card, PSU, and 2 GHz Pentium 4 processor
PNY Nvidia GeForce 5200 FX 256MB AGP GPU
1GB DDR RAM
DVD-ROM Drive (identified by the system as an HL-DT-STDVD-ROM GDR8162B)
80GB HDD for the OS (hosting both Lubuntu 16.04 LTS and Windows 7 Ultimate)
40GB HDD for /home
40GB HDD for Windows 7 installed applications

My next intended replacements are the PSU, and possibly an SSD for the boot drive (if I can find one that will work at a decent price).

The end goal of my project is to make the machine work relatively well in 2016 without breaking the bank, thus avoiding the need to junk it. It's a budget revival/rebuild.

Currently, I'm spending more time using this old Dell than I do my 2015 System76 Lemur. So far, so good.

I'll update this post as I go along.

Please excuse the mess you see in the pictures. My desk is always the designation for clutter.