Post by Admin on Nov 1, 2022 14:21:25 GMT 10
~ @ ~
This is the second computer that my friend has brought to me a couple of months back. It showed the same symptom as the IBM-8172 when power was applied: loud warning beeps, and no screen display.
The GX-260 had only one 512 MB RAM module installed, which was faulty. I had no spare DDR RAM for replacement, therefore had to temporarily borrow the good 512 MB module from the IBM-8172 to test the Dell.
There was a 74 GB IDE hard disk in the Dell machine, but no operating system. I used a Dell XP Professional SP3 DVD to install the OS . It worked, but no audio. Thinking that this may be the same problem I had with the Dell Inspiron 530, I then tried installing Vista Business OS to see if the audio controller would work. Unfortunately the DVD drive in this Dell-GX260 could not read the Dell Vista OS DVD disk. Replacing the DVD drive with another taken from a different computer solved this problem.
Vista OS was installed and activated with KMS-pico, but there was still no audio . The sound card was identified as: Intel 82801-DB(M) ICH4 - AC'97 audio controller . I had downloaded the appropriate software driver, but it did not help. The sound hardware must be faulty on this machine.
This machine is quite old (Pentium-4 single core/single thread 2G-Hz CPU), but it runs well. The fan is very quiet. Overall there is a nice feel about this Dell GX-260, solid, quiet, and smooth. To me the main drawback is it offers no USB-booting option. This really restricts the attempts to experiment with different OS's. Software installation has to be done via the DVD drive only.
- Sept 2022: Installed a 512 MB RAM module bought from eBay ($10). Replaced the CMOS-Ram battery.
- Oct 2022: Installed an additional 256 MB RAM module (taken from the old HP-d530 machine).
- Installed LxPup-15.06 (frugal) to co-exist with Vista (on the same sda1 partition). LxPup-15 runs very well on this machine, despite the slow CPU speed. Mozilla Firefox browser loaded up fairly quickly and worked smoothly.
- Created a new 30G ext4 partition (sda2) on the IDE hard disk to install Linux-Mint 13 (from an old CD). Worked ok, but this OS was so old, can no longer get any online update.
This is the second computer that my friend has brought to me a couple of months back. It showed the same symptom as the IBM-8172 when power was applied: loud warning beeps, and no screen display.
The GX-260 had only one 512 MB RAM module installed, which was faulty. I had no spare DDR RAM for replacement, therefore had to temporarily borrow the good 512 MB module from the IBM-8172 to test the Dell.
There was a 74 GB IDE hard disk in the Dell machine, but no operating system. I used a Dell XP Professional SP3 DVD to install the OS . It worked, but no audio. Thinking that this may be the same problem I had with the Dell Inspiron 530, I then tried installing Vista Business OS to see if the audio controller would work. Unfortunately the DVD drive in this Dell-GX260 could not read the Dell Vista OS DVD disk. Replacing the DVD drive with another taken from a different computer solved this problem.
Vista OS was installed and activated with KMS-pico, but there was still no audio . The sound card was identified as: Intel 82801-DB(M) ICH4 - AC'97 audio controller . I had downloaded the appropriate software driver, but it did not help. The sound hardware must be faulty on this machine.
This machine is quite old (Pentium-4 single core/single thread 2G-Hz CPU), but it runs well. The fan is very quiet. Overall there is a nice feel about this Dell GX-260, solid, quiet, and smooth. To me the main drawback is it offers no USB-booting option. This really restricts the attempts to experiment with different OS's. Software installation has to be done via the DVD drive only.
- Sept 2022: Installed a 512 MB RAM module bought from eBay ($10). Replaced the CMOS-Ram battery.
- Oct 2022: Installed an additional 256 MB RAM module (taken from the old HP-d530 machine).
- Installed LxPup-15.06 (frugal) to co-exist with Vista (on the same sda1 partition). LxPup-15 runs very well on this machine, despite the slow CPU speed. Mozilla Firefox browser loaded up fairly quickly and worked smoothly.
- Created a new 30G ext4 partition (sda2) on the IDE hard disk to install Linux-Mint 13 (from an old CD). Worked ok, but this OS was so old, can no longer get any online update.
