AAUGH!!! 😫

I had that installed for a while. Didn't much care for it. jspaint though, is an exact clone of the XP era windows variant. It works right in your browser on any computer. Even chromebooks! There's also .exc and .deb versions for windows and linux you can install and use offline. Installed on my setup without a hitch. Now if only I could get Linux to run Star Office 5.1...

Really surprised me it wouldn't run correctly, since it's an early Linux derivative. Like trying to run old windows 98 software on windows 11 I suppose. I had high hopes for LibreOffice, a successor of StarOffice, but one of the components of SO, StarImage was left out. Otherwise it's near identical. I've yet to find an alternative as good or as simple to use.

Okay, out with the old in with the... well, not so old. Scored a pretty sweet Dell Optiplex 990 MT from a thrift store on eBay. No hdd, but does have an optical drive, 8 GB ddr3 ram installed (expandable to 16 GB) along with an i5 2600 processor. Low spec by today's standards I suppose, but I plan to make this a legacy Windows XP machine so I can run my older software and games. Should workout nicely since the 990 was a transition model available with both Windows XP and Windows 7. Dell has excellent driver support as well. I'll also be installing Windows XP Integral. That's an unofficial community made version of XP with modern security protocols and drivers. It also bypasses the 4 GB ram restriction of the original XP variant.

I haven't tested this unit yet, but I figured for a mere $38 I'd either end up with a great bargain or reasonable priced spare parts! Even if it turns out to be neither though, at least the money will have gone to a good cause. So, let the adventure begin!

Quick update. Just finished running onboard diagnostics. Whoop! Whoop! 🎉 This bad boy passed with flying colors and booted right into Linux from a thumb drive without issue! Just need to install the hdd and OS and I should be back in business. All for $38!

Good for you Mr. Franz 👍
Don't you just love a good deal.

Sounds like a bargain, if it works as expected.

Yeah it tested out 100%. I wasn't really expecting that. Seller did say they were corporate computers that the company donated minus their hard drives when they decided to upgrade. Seller said some of them had never even been deployed or put into service. I think this must have been one of those. There's a little dust inside the case, but the power supply and fans are clean as a whistle. So I'm thinking that's just from sitting around in a storeroom.

Wow, that was a good score 👍👍👍

In the cheapskate realm, I'm a fully paid, card carrying party member. I can sniff out a good deal from miles away. When I saw that listing, it set my miserly senses all a quiver. 🤣

Just finished cleaning up what little dust there was, replacing the coin battery and renewing the thermal paste, which as I suspected was hard as a rock after sitting for all those years. I mean, look at this thing. You could bloody eat off it!

No Graphic card? Or you just removed it while cleaning?

No dedicated GPU, but what's built into the i5 processor is decent enough for now. Plenty of room to expand though, should I decide to upgrade in future.

Nice - I've bought a couple of similar base units myself which have served me well
It doesn't look like it'll be much of a struggle to swap out the PSU if it fails ... which can be an issue with the name brands
Check the stickers and look up the numbers, if there are any. I found working Windows serial numbers, for all of mine, either on the stickers or the Dell website.

Oh yeah, gobs of room in there. 4 screws and a clip, the PSU is out! All stickers are intact and more importantly, readable! Both Dell service tag code and windows licenses.

DAMN IT!!!! 🤬
Thought I'd cracked it. I got this bright idea to mount my old drive inside the new computer, then boot into Linux from a thumb drive and try to recover my files. All other attempts to recover them from Windows devices indicated the drive was raw and empty, which I know damn right well in not the case.

Anyway, I get everything ready and low and behold, there's all my lost files! Well.... all the file folders anyway. Attempts to recover anything inside them, mostly just returns input/output errors. So I was only able to recover but a small amount. Unfortunately ones I already have backups of... 🙄

Sounds like that drive is fried!
Wonder if there is any dedicated programs that can get the info from a fried drive like this? I know there are expensive service that can have a look, but you have to mail your hard drive to them.

Well there is a Linux utility that can pull information off a drive bit by bit and sort of remap it. That might be an option. Nothing on there worth paying a service to extract though. Chatgpt seems to think my earlier attempts to recover data using photorec and testdisk may have actually corrupted the file paths and now the system can't figure out where one files begins and another ends. If that's the case, it's possible that Linux utility could reestablish those paths. I might give that a try. It's all done in the terminal though, so might be a bit dodgy.

Anything done in the terminal I get Claude or Chatgpt to guide me. I don't have a clue!

That's what I'm afraid of. The last time I followed Chatgpt's direction, I ended up having to reconfigure my desktop. Still not quite right.

Thats the chance you take, but generally they do good.
Especially these latest models.

Ah, day 2 in the adventures of installing a custom OS. This is an unofficial version of Windows XP called, Integral. The developers have literally tweaked the hell out of it to bring it up to date, while maintaining the simplicity of the original. Installing it however, is a little tricky.

Problem I ran into, Integral's been modified to run with modern settings. I on the other hand am installing it on a machine originally available with XP and so configured. So, in order to install this version, I had to change a lot of the default bios settings to current standards.

Dell though, makes this incredibly simple. This is my first experience with Dell and their bios interface. None of my other devices have anywhere near this level of control over settings. My first attempt to install Integral seemed to go fairly smooth. No hiccups or blue screens encountered. However, when the system re-booted to finish installation, it couldn't find the hdd the OS was installed on! WTF???? 🧐

Against my better judgement I consulted ChatGpt and it was able to point me in the right direction. After a bit of fiddling with settings, I was ready to start over. This time install went through without a hitch and by midnight, I started at 7PM, the system was up and running. Mind you, A full Linux installation would have only taken 15 to 20 minutes. That said however, this version of Windows XP is bloody awesome!

Every ounce of bloat gone. Every unnecessary program, history. Whole OS is now less than a gig with media player and browsers installed! Boots in mere seconds and shuts down just as fast. Did run into an issue with the OS not being able to find my speakers, but thanks to Dell and their excellent support system, I was able to download the correct drivers to get them up and running. They actually sound a lot better than they did on the HP desktop this computer replaces.

I was curious just how up to date security was on this system so I ran a scan with Legacy Update. It returned 2 critical updates needed. So I downloaded them, but on reboot to finalize installation, the system halts and I get this message.

"The security protocols you're attempting to install are inferior to the ones already in place. Do you wish to proceed?"

I said "NO" of course and installation was aborted. Legacy can only install the last security updates available for the official version of XP. Apparently, the Integral version goes well beyond that. Still tweaking things a bit, but I'm really liking this OS so far. 😊

Brilliant, glad the new computer is working well for you :D

Thanks. Amazing how much this version of XP resembles Linux. Behaves a little like it too.

Yes, I remember XP was a great version of Windows, but can't remember the details. I have my linux looking and behaving like a Mac.

I am going to start the build of a whole new program for my linux machine tomorrow, and if it works should help me speed up my work big time. I might be able to sell my Mac studio too and save a few quid if it works. But we'll see....

Yeah, there's a couple Linux distros you'd be hard pressed to tell from XP without using them. I wasn't after the look so much as I was the function though. If it wasn't for a couple programs I need to run that are too glitchy on anything else. I'd have just thrown Linus on it and had done with it. This setup though, seems to be the best of both worlds. Fingers crossed. 🤞

Now this is kind of funny. Satisfied with the setup so far, I decided to move the new computer off the bench, put it where it belongs and attach my peripherals. Alright despite Integral having a ton of Cannon drivers preinstalled, the one for my particular printer is absent. Found the one I needed right on Cannon's website though, so got that all sorted.

Next was my WinTV Tuner/DVR. One of the few folders I was able to recover from the old drive was the one containing the install software and drivers for it. So I figured that'd be a quick 2 minute job. Well not so much. Once I installed the software and drivers, it asks for the original install CD to finalize installation. Well this thing is like 10 or 15 years old. No idea where that CD is.

So I go out to their website to see how to proceed without it. Oh, there was very good instructions on how to do just that. Says no CD needed to install. Just enter the product key located on the install disk. 🙄

Well they do offer to sell you a new disk if you lost your old one... for $10! Forget that nonsense. I just went out to the Internet Archive to see if someone had uploaded and ISO of their CD. Sure enough someone had, but not my exact model. Downloaded it anyway, burned it to a CD and gave it try. Worked! Not only that, but the software on it was for a later edition. So I got a free upgrade. 😁