old PC urgently needed

sammyjo90

Hey Guys,
I am in desperate need to find a DELL OPTIPLEX GX260
Model DHM
Tower version.ASAP
Would any one be of any help with this?

Xterminator

jeez thats old. is there a particular part you need that you can only get from above model ?

sammyjo90

Ha tell me about it, I need the entire thing, or possibly just a hard disk..
Company have been using it to run an instrument with it and its died. Looking to replace it and put the software back onto it.

Just been told we might have one now from a place in London..so hopefully that works!

FanadMan

You said possibly just a hard disk - why not just replace the hdd and see does it work before trying to source the whole machine?

sammyjo90

trying to cover all bases really, we don't have time to get a HDD and find out that doesn't work. then try and source a PC.
Said I'd try here just in case

bonzodog2

I have a gx280 but its a SFF not a tower. 1.8GHz i think, no optical drive. I'm in Youghal if its any use.

CramCycle

I have a GX 270 that I can free up in a week, will look around for a 280.

sammyjo90

Cheers guys, im no I.T person so i have no idea if they would work or not! Ill let my peeps know at work and come back to you next week!

mordeith

sammyjo90 wrote: »

Cheers guys, im no I.T person so i have no idea if they would work or not! Ill let my peeps know at work and come back to you next week!

Is it just the software that needs to go compatible?

ED E

Tenner says 10Hrs of Spinrite and a new drive would get you going.

bonzodog2

Disconnect the hard drive and see will it boot to BIOS

ressem

Is there any sign of life and lights / noise? for a 2002 PC, the most common fails I think would be be the hard drive, failed power supply, failed fans, motherboard battery run out and losing motherboard settings, failed video card / monitor.

It uses an old style IDE PATA drive, not a modern SATA, so they are less common, your normal shop is unlikely to stock one.

There are low cost SATA to PATA drive adapters available, to use a small SATA drive in place of the existing PATA drive.
https://www.memoryc.ie/12039-neon-sata-to-pata-ide-hard-drive-interface-adapter.html

Or usb to pata adapter if management won't pay for someone to recover data.
https://www.startech.com/ie/HDD/Adapters/USB-3-to-SATA-or-IDE-Hard-Drive-Adapter-Converter~USB3SSATAIDE

niallb

ED E wrote: »

Tenner says 10Hrs of Spinrite and a new drive would get you going.

Or changing the capacitors on the power supply. We had 9 out of 14 gx240's go down to that many years ago.

A little more detail on what's going on would help. You could probably swap it out for something quite a bit more modern if you just need to make sure you have parallel or serial ports. If you need to put in a proprietary ISA card you'd need to more careful choosing.

Skerries

yeah the GX260 were notoriously bad for the power supplies failing and the GX270 had the bulging capacitors issue