• Tag Archives Dell

  • Digital Archaeology: Gateway M680XL

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Gateway, or Gateway 2000 as it was originally known, was my favorite producer of computers in the 1990s and early 2000s. I never bought a new laptop from them but I did get a couple of desktops over the years including a 486 model in 1993 and a Pentium II model in 1997. I would start building my own computers after that but Gateway also had nice Pentium III and Athlon based systems a little later on.

    I’m not sure when Gateway’s quality started to decline. I think it was probably around the Pentium IV era. I don’t know that they were necessarily unreliable or anything but they just seemed to be not as great of a value and they had a cheaper look and feel. I guess that was true of a lot of PC makers but it just felt like a bigger fall for Gateway. They no longer stood out from the crowd.

    As I recall, their laptops were pretty nice too, at least during the early days with the Solo line. This particular model, the Gateway 680XL was released in 2005 so it’s from quite a bit later than the Solo line. It doesn’t seem to be a bad machine. While it doesn’t really stand out from the crowd in terms of design or build quality, it at least seems to be a pretty good deal for the time and still something I would have considered had I been buying a higher end laptop at the time.

    The Gateway 680XL features the following:

    • Processor: Pentium M 770 @ 2.13 GHz
    • RAM: 2 GB DDR2
    • Video: ATI Mobility Radeon x700 (128 MB)
    • Screen: 17-inch 1680×1050
    • Hard Drive: HITACHI HTS541010G9AT00 Travelstar 5K100
    • Optical Drive: QSI 8x DVD+-RW SDW-082

    Plus the usual array of ports including 4 USB ports, firewire, VGA out, S-Video out, Ethernet, mic input, headphone, SD card and modem. Try finding that many ports on a modern laptop.

    You can see more detailed specs here.

    I would say that this laptop was a relatively high end unit. It wasn’t top of the line but it was close. It had a fast CPU, discreet graphics and a higher than average resolution screen and large screen size. The first laptop I owned was a slightly older Pentium M based Acer. Other than the slower CPU and smaller screen, it was actually quite similar. I think I would have been pretty happy with this one.

    The CPU is a 2.13 GHz Pentium M 770. This is one of the fastest Pentium M CPUs…the second fastest in fact. It generally matches the speed or comes close to the fastest Core Solo CPUs as well. It clocks in at 2.13 GHz with a 533 MHz bus and 2 MB L2 cache.

    This laptop also features a dedicated ATI Mobility Radeon x700 with 128 MB of RAM. It wasn’t the fastest dedicated solution available but again it was reasonably close. Having a dedicated video card put it miles ahead of most cheap laptops which tended to rely on chipsets that included video on the motherboard, usually from Intel. Many contemporary games probably would have been reasonably playable on this. In fact, the benchmark scores on this model indicate that it was within 10% of gaming laptops.

    At the time it was released, the biggest downside of this laptop was its price. It wasn’t overpriced for what you were getting but being a relatively high end laptop it had a relatively high end price. This laptop would have set you back in the neighbor good of $2100-$2700 depending on exactly when you bought it.

    In more modern usage, there are two drawbacks. First, having a 32-bit CPU is increasingly becoming a liability. Of course, 64-bit CPUs have been around a really long time at this point but 32-bit CPUs were still supported by modern operating systems until recently. Earlier versions of Windows 10 supported 32-bit CPUs for instance. However, later versions of Windows 10 dropped support for 32-bit CPUs and Windows 11 only supports 64-bit CPUs as well. In addition, most Linux distributions have dropped support for 32-bit CPUs. Debian still supports 32-bit CPUs but who knows for how much longer. This laptop is currently running an older version of Xubuntu. Given its potential for retro gaming, I might just install Windows XP on it.

    The other main drawback is limited RAM. This laptop probably shipped with 512MB-1GB and has since been upgraded to 2GB. However, I believe that this is the max amount of RAM that this laptop can handle. It’s definitely the maximum that is officially supported though it is possible that it might recognize 4GB. Even though there is at least one modern version of Linux still being released in a 32-bit version, you really want a full 4GB if possible. Software has gotten a lot more memory hungry over the years.

    So while it is still possible to use this machine in a modern environment, it probably works best as a retro machine. It was originally designed for Windows XP and would work pretty well as a Windows XP portable gaming machine.

    It’s not quite yet too old to run BOINC projects though options are somewhat limited. Fewer and fewer projects support 32-bit CPUs. Of my normal projects, this machine has only received work from Einstein@Home and World Community Grid. You can see how it is doing at Free-DC or BoincStats.


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  • Digital Archaeology: Dell Vostro 1500

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The Vostro line fit into a kind of weird marketing segment within Dell. They already had the Inspiron line for home users, the Latitude line for business, the Precision line for workstation class machines and XPS for gaming. So where does Vostro fit in? I think it was supposed to be a sort of budget business line. I’ve heard the claim that Vostros are basically just Inspirons with different aesthetics.

    This particular model is the Vostro 1500. It’s main features are a Core 2 Duo T7250 CPU @ 2 GHz, 2 GB RAM and GeForce 8400M GS video controller. Other specs include:

    • CPU: Core 2 Duo T7250 @ 2.00 GHz
    • RAM: 2 GB DDR2-667/PC2-5300
    • Video: GeForce 8400M GS
    • Screen: 1280×800

    For more detailed hardware info, check out the output of HardInfo here.

    The CPU, while not the very fastest Core 2 Duo available, was on the higher end of the scale, at least among Merom processors. There were a LOT of Core 2 Duo models with subtle and not so subtle differences over the years.

    The spec sheet above must refer to a slightly older configuration as it has a slower processor. There were also versions wit slightly faster CPUs.

    The GPU, while low end, is at least a dedicated solution. It even had its own dedicated memory though Linux reports three different amounts in HardInfo. I THINK it is 128MB. The max this GPU model could have was 256MB though it isn’t something you can expand. You are stuck with whatever it came with. It was probably capable of playing most games available at the time of its release though you would often have to reduce resolution and/or details to get reasonable frame rates.

    This laptop currently has 2GB of RAM installed and supposedly it is expandable to 4GB. Some Core 2 Duo laptops can go up to 8GB but those might be slightly later models. 4GB is generally what I consider to be the low end limit of what is useable in a modern environment. You CAN get by with less. For instance, I’m typing this on the very same Vostro 1500 running a recent version of Xubuntu and it only has 2GB. It’s also running BOINC with two tasks running in the background, HardInfo is up in the background and I have several terminal sessions open and am having no issues with slow down or swapping. However, most people want to browse the web and modern web browsers, particularly since the advent of tabbed browsing, are real memory hogs. I could open a web browser with a tab or two and get by but much more than that would be really painful.

    This laptop shipped with Windows XP. I always hated the idea of running a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit machine and also hate it when 64-bit machines support 4GB or less of memory since one of the biggest advantages of 64-bit CPUs was support for more RAM. Running Windows 10 with only 2GB is technically possible but not practical. Even 4GB is too little in my opinion though you can get by with 4GB and an SSD. Windows 7 is probably the best fit for this machine as far as a Microsoft OS but that’s not necessarily going to be useful in a modern environment. Linux is a better choice for that. On the other hand, if you want to run XP era games, then this laptop would probably work pretty well for that.

    The only real physical resemblance this Vostro has to the Inspiron line is the row of blue backlit buttons on the front used for media (DVD) control. Otherwise, the Vostro has a much nicer (in my opinion) understated, all black design. Internally, it’s probably using much the same hardware as the Inspiron models it was contemporary with.

    Like all the hardware I run, this one is crunching away at various BOINC tasks. As old as this laptop is, it can still run most (non-GPU) projects. You can see how it is doing on my favorite projects like Einstein@home, MilkyWay@home, Universe@home, Rosetta@home, World Community Grid and Asteroids@home or see how it is doing overall at FreeDC.


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  • Digital Archaeology: Dell Inspiron 9400

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The Inspiron line has long been Dell’s main consumer laptop models. The Inspiron 9400 was released in the 2005 time frame. It is for all practical purposes identical to the Inspiron E1705 and in fact the manuals were shared. They just had different default configuration options and were targeted at different markets. It is also substantially the same as the M90 and XPS models of the same time period, again, with different default configuration options.

    The Inspiron 9400 supported an incredibly large range of hardware options. There were multiple motherboards used. One supported add-in video cards such as the FX2500M, GeForce Go 7800 and 7900GTX among others while the second motherboard option only supported Intel’s integrated graphics. Display options included a 17″ Wide Screen WXGA+ (1440×900) panel or a 17″ Ultrasharp Wide Screen WUXGA (1920×1200) panel. The processor could be anything from a single core 32-bit Core Solo T1300 running at 1.66 GHz all the way up to 64-bit Core 2 Duo T7600 running at 2.33 GHz.

    My particular Inspiron 9400 is among the lower end models. Specs include:

    • CPU: Core Duo T2080 @ 1.73 GHz
    • Chipset: Intel 945
    • Graphics: Mobility Radeon X1400
    • Memory: 2GB DDR2-533 (2x512MB)
    • Display: 17″ WXGA+ (1440×900)
    • Hard Drive: ST9129822AS 120GB 5400RPM Serial-ATA/150 8MB buffer
    • Optical Drive: TSSTcorp TS-L632D DVD+-RW
    • Ethernet: Broadcom BCM4401-80 100Base-TX
    • Wi-Fi: Broadcom BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN

    Plus tons of expansion slots and ports including 4 USB 2.0 ports, an ExpressCard 54mm slot, FireWire, 5-in-1 Flash Reader, headphone and microphone connections, 1 DVI-D, 1 VGA, and 1 S-Video Out.

    As far as upgrade possibilities, a Core 2 Duo T7600 could be added and up to 4GB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM is supported. This laptop has what is probably the best graphics option, at least in retrospect. The ATI X1400 is faster than the Intel option and more reliable than the nVidia options which had heat and solder issues (though they werer certainly faster). Unfortunately, it has the lower resolution screen option otherwise it would be a better candidate for upgrade.

    This laptop was made with Windows XP and Vista in mind. It is also capable of running Windows 7 and even Windows 10 (though some more RAM would be needed). However, operating systems supporting 32-bit CPUs are gettig pretty hard to find these days. Windows 10 dropped support in 2020. I’m currently running a 32-bit version of Debian which is the only mainstream Linux distribution I am aware of that still does new 32-bit releases. The Insprion 9400 is capable of being upgraded to 64-bit CPUs as mentioned above, however it is still limited to about 4 GB of RAM due to limitations of the chipset.

    Like pretty much any computer I ever own, this one is running BOINC whenever it is turned on. The only projects it seems to get work for out of my normal selection is einstein@home and milkyway@home. I think that is because most projects no longer support 32-bit CPUs. You can see how it is doing overall via Free-DC or BOINCstats.

    Overall, this seems to be a pretty solid laptop with a great deal of expansion possibility for its time. The build quality is decent and the keyboard feels pretty good. However, it isn’t as nice in that regard as later Latitudes and Precisions. Despite pushing the CPU at 100% all the time with BOINC, it runs cool and quiet. The large size no doubt helps some with that, plus it has a relatively low end CPU at the moment that is probably on the cooler end. If I had been in the market for a laptop at the time this one was being sold, it probably would have been a top contender (though with a Core 2 Duo CPU and the higher resolution screen).

    Despite having some fairly significant upgrade potential, I doubt I will be upgrading this one. I would rather start with the model with the higher resolution screen if I were going to bother. Having said that, there’s a good chance I have a Core 2 Duo that would work and some extra memory so who knows. It at least has what I consider to be the best GPU option overall.

    Check out the complete specs of this laptop here.


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