Dell Dimension XPS T___r Series

I’m a fan of the Dell Dimension and XPS series, especially of the late 1990s. We’ve looked at a few of these PCs in the past such as the Dimension XPS D and R series and the Dimension 4100. The Dimension series PC we’re going to take a look at in this article falls somewhere between those two in terms of when it was produced and its power.

The T___r series as seen here features the same slim tower case as the D series and the 4100 series I looked at in previous articles. My computer specifically is an XPS T700r, the number between the T and r designates the CPU speed so it can vary between PCs of this series from 600 to 850MHz.

The T___r series uses a tower case that is slightly thinner than most beige PC towers of the era. Several models of the Dell Dimension line use this tower case and I quite like it. It features dual 5.25 inch bays as well as dual 3.5 inch bays and then a special slot and cutout for a 3.5 inch floppy drive, typically of the 1.44MB variety.

The rear of the case is fairly typical with the PSU up top and a large case fan located underneath it. The built-in I/O is pretty sparse but has everything you need including dual PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse. Two USB 1.0 ports (assumed 1.0 or 1.1) and a single serial and parallel port. There are four LED lights below the parallel port to help troubleshoot problems if they should occur with the PC.

There are seven expansion slots for adding video, sound, etc but generally, the computer was pre-equipped when it was purchased. my PC came fully equipped though several of the blank expansion slot plates were missing.

Here is our Dell with the side panel removed. You can see there is an extra 3.5 inch bay under the floppy drive where I currently have the hard drive installed but the hard drive can also fit vertically in the spot underneath. The CPU on this PC is cooled via the case fan and uses a black plastic shroud to direct air from outside of the case to flow over the CPU. The OEM Dell motherboard uses the Intel 440BX chipset.

Motherboard with CPU shroud and expansion cards removed.

1 ) CPU – The T___r series all use the Coppermine Pentium III CPUs in the slot 1 form factor. My T700r predictably uses the 700MHz version of the CPU. The T___r series used Pentium III CPU speeds between 600MHz and 850Mhz. The CPU can be swapped with another slot 1 CPU and if the shroud is removed one could use a CPU with its own heatsink and fan attached. The 700MHz Pentium III is sufficient for most Win98 gaming needs although everything up to the Coppermine 1.1GHz slot 1 CPU should work though this may require the latest BIOS.

2) RAM – With three memory slots, this PC can accept up to 768MB of PC100 SDRAM which is overkill for a Windows 98 PC and adequate for an early Windows 2000 or XP type build. My PC came with two 128MB mismatched sticks of PC100 RAM for a total of 256MB of memory.

3) Expansion slots – The motherboard for the T___r series comes equipped with one x2 APG slot, five PCI slots, and a single 16-bit ISA slot. The ISA slot makes this machine a good candidate for DOS games as one can install an ISA sound card for better compatibility with DOS titles.

4) dual IDE connectors

5) Floppy connector

6) Proprietary power connector.

Like most of the Dell Dimension PCs from this time the T___r series uses a proprietary power connector that is split into two parts looking like a standard ATX and additional AUX connector.

7) Piezo speaker

8) CMOS battery

Expansion Cards

My PC came with the above modem and ethernet cards.

duel USB PCI card.

Sound Card

The sound card in my Dimension was a Turtle Beach Montego II, a sound card based on the A2D Vortex 2 chip. Despite its odd form factor this is a very nice card for Windows 98 and early XP gaming as it supports Aureal A3D and A3D 2 3d sound in games and was a major competitor to Creative’s EAX standard. The A3D chip worked reasonably well in DOS as well despite being a PCI card and is an overall good choice for gaming. The one downside is the awkward positioning of the wavetable header so not all midi daughterboards are going to fit comfortably.

Video

For the video card, we have an AGP TNT2 M64 which is a fairly typical lower end OEM video card. In power, this card falls somewhere between the original TNT and the TNT2. This card supports both DirectX 6 and Open GL as well as performs adequately under DOS. The TNT2 line is the last Nvidia card to retain compatibility with certain games such as Incoming as later cards will display graphical errors. Overall it is an okay pick for a late Windows 98 gaming build but a TNT2 will do everything this card does including graphical compatibility with games like Incoming but better.

I love the Dell Dimension series of the late 90s and very early 2000’s and this PC is no exception. The case has plenty of room for upgrades but the thinner form factor saves some room. The setup of this particular build screamed low-end business machine and capable but not high-end gamer build. If you have access to the cards this machine could very easily be turned into a Win9x powerhouse. The m64 could be easily swapped out with a true TNT2 or an early Geforce or Radeon card. The single 16-bit ISA slot also leaves room to turn this into an overpowered DOS build as well by swapping the Montigo II out for an ISA AWE32 or 64. The CPU can also be easily swapped for a more or less power one depending on your tastes.

Dell Dimension 4100

Anyone that has read my Dell Dimension XPS D and R series post knows that I have a large soft spot for the Dell Dimension series. Here were going to look at the 4100, one of the final PC’s in the Dimension series to sport the classic beige case style before moving on to the black/grey rounded P4 cases that currently litter thrift store electronics sections.

The 4100 seems to of been released sometimes in the very early 2000’s. Although I do not know for sure the exact factory configuration these shipped in mine is a good example of something period correct.

The 4100 uses the same case as some of the older models in the Dimension line such as the XPS R450 I looked at in the earlier article mentioned above. I do like these case designs and I think they give a unique look. There are two 5 1/4 bays at the top for things like CD drives and two 3 1/2 bays below those plus another 3 1/2 bay for a floppy or zip drive below that. I also like how these Dimension series cases are thinner then average PC towers of the time so they tend to be able to fit into smaller nooks.

The rear ports from the motherboard are very basic with no built in video or audio which is typical of some of the Dimension series. This was because they generally were sold with higher quality add on video and sound cards rather then built in A/V. Mot serious PC enthusiasts now and then preferred expansion card video and sound as opposed to built in options which you were stuck with and were generally of lower quality to save on costs.

Built in we have the basic two PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse as well as one serial and one parallel port and two USB ports. The number of ports is adequate for the times but I feel it gives the back a rather sparse look.

removing the side cover is very simple and only involves removing one thumb screw and pinching the latches with a pull back.

Here we have a view of the motherboard fully populated with expansion cards from when I first brought it home. Notice the nice space for a vertical hard drive near the front of the case where a typical PC speaker or fan may go.  I like this and it’s a nice use of space allowing for more open bays if you want to add more hard drives, ect… The drive that came with my 4100 is a 40gb drive and I believe this was likely the original drive that came stock with this PC.

Here we have a view of the motherboard without any expansion cards as well as having that fan shroud removed which diverted air flow from the case fan down over the CPU for cooling. Like the rest of the machine this motherboard looks relatively sparse and is very similar to the motherboard used in the older D and R series just with no ISA, one less RAM slot and a socket 370 CPU rather then the older slot 1 CPU type. The lack of an ISA connector does hurt this machine in terms of using it as a DOS rig as older DOS era games tend to get along much nicer with ISA sound cards. The AGP port supports 2x and x4 AGP cards.

1) CPU – The CPU that originally was installed in this machine was 1.1ghz Pentium III Celeron. The Celeron line was seen as more of a budget friendly entry level CPU and was basically a cut down “Coppermine” Pentium III . The 1.1ghz model ran on a 100mhz front side bus as opposed to 133mhz for many “full” Pentium III’s and also only had half the L2 cache on-chip (128kb vs 256kb). Thankfully the motherboard is capable of supporting all but the later Tualatin Pentium III’s so replacing the Celeron with a standard “Coppermine” Pentium III is a simple CPU swap. I swapped mine out with a slightly slower clock rate but higher performing 1ghz Pentium III. All I had to do was swap CPU’s and the computer knew without having to make any adjustments. Even with the 100mhz slower clock rate on the Pentium III chip I received noticeable performance gains due to the higher 133mhz FSB and double on-chip L2 cache. I also used a later Pentium III 1ghz chip which incorporated an integrated heat spreader. There is no performance difference with these chips but I prefer the heat spreader as it seems to make the CPU’s a little more durable during installation.

Bechmarks

1.1ghz Celeron

3DMark 2000 – 3513

3DMark 2001SE – 1874

1ghz Pentium III

3DMark 2000 – 4321

3DMark 2001SE – 2023

There is also no fan cooler directly mounted on the heatsink as in this design the case fan is used with a plastic shroud that diverts the air flow down and onto the CPU. Above image is with shroud removed.

2) RAM – Total memory officially supported is 512mb of PC133 SDRAM. I currently have one 512MB PC133 stick of RAM installed in the image below but I had no trouble at all installing a second 512mb PC133 stick and running things completely fine under Windows 2000 Pro.

3) The 4100 motherboard continues to use the Dell proprietary PSU connector as you can see directly behind the RAM slot. Adapters can be found cheaply on eBay though for well under $10 so you can use any AT  PSU. Also behind the RAM are two IDE connectors (fairly sure they are ATA-100) and one floppy connector.

Lastly I want to talk about expansion cards. I believe the sound and video cards That I found installed in this PC are the stock cards that this machine was sold at retail though configurations may have varied.

The machine I bought came with several connectivity cards installed such as a modem, ethernet and wireless adapter. Unfortunately I had heavy stability issues initially with this machine until I removed these cards. This was likely caused by driver conflicts but since I didn’t plan on using these cards anyways they were just eating space.

Video – The video card was a Geforce 2MX.

This was Nvidia’s entry level budget card for the Geforce 2 line and was cut down feature and performance wise from the standard GF2 cards. That said it is still a capable card and offered good performance for the price point offering hardware T&L as well as dual monitor capability.

Sound – lastly we have the sound card installed.

This is a Creative CT5807 and is a very basic budget card. It lacks a joystick port which to be honest were phasing out at the time in favor of USB gamepads but is just very sparse in features. for output it simply offers line out/in and mic. it gets the job done but not to exciting.

Its fairly obvious that between the Celeron CPU, Geforce 2MX and budget sound card that whomever built or ordered this PC back in the day was doing it on a budget. Despite this the great thing about the Dimension series is that they were very easy to upgrade. I was able to boost performance very easily with a CPU swap to a full fledged PIII and swapping out the video and sound cards would be a breeze. Even though I’m not a fan of OEM builds from the mid 90’s up the Dimension series has always appealed to me. I love the look of the case and relative ease to get inside. I would certainly recommend the 4100 series as one of the final “beige box” Dimensions for a retro gamer. The lack of ISA slots hurt DOS games but with the right upgrades it still makes a great rig for late DOS, win 98 and early XP gaming.