Dell Dimension XPS R400

This is my Dell Dimension XPS R400 desktop computer. Very long name.

This one runs Windows 98 SE, and was also obtained from a lady on Facebook marketplace; However, this is the part where I give you some helpful advice if you're looking for an older computer like this...

The lady was selling off her mother's stuff, a lot of which had been furniture. One of these pieces of furniture that she had listed was a desk, untouched with nothing removed left as it was. On the desk was an obscured beige computer monitor, and at the very corner of the photo, a big beige box. I asked her about it and she agreed to sell both to me for like twenty bucks.

SO here is my advice: Look at desks and furniture listings and really scan the photos, because it might be someone trying to clear out their junk. A lot of times these people don't understand that their old crappy computers are sought after by a small niche of people!! So if you ask, you have a very good chance at getting a good deal since they were probably going to end up throwing them out anyway!

ANYWAY... Moving on. This computer was nothing like my Pavilion in the fact that it actually needed some work done when I brought it home.



Not only was the computer disgusting, but it had several things wrong with it that I will get into later. First I need to go over what it took to clean this thing up. It was really weird, because the house didn't smell or look like it had been smoked in, and neither did the computer. When I opened it up it was fairly clean inside, just a little dusty. But there was no way they didn't smoke, because both the monitor and the computer were COVERED in this yellow tar-like substance. Whatever it was, it was GROSS.



Thankfully the case wasn't that hard to clean, and I was able to pop the front and sides off and give them a good hosing down. There is definitely some yellowing in some areas but really nothing serious. It actually blends in pretty well if you use warm light bulbs. There is also a mark on the front that I couldn't get off with alcohol. I probably could've gotten it off with a magic eraser but I don't like using those on textured plastic. The monitor was equally as disgusting...



Much like the PC, it was covered in WHATEVER this yellow goop was that we'll just assume was cigarette juices and not cat pee or something else. It was so nasty because I would spray a buttload of glass cleaner onto an area and you could just watch this yellow sludge start to drip off. I had like 67 yellow stained paper towels piled up by the time I was finished. HOWEVER (I love saying however); It was so worth it, because this monitor is easily the best CRT monitor I've ever owned in my entire life.



Here it is plugged up to my HP Pavilion, as to not spoil what comes next. You can't really tell from photos but the picture is so SHARP... Even if I were to brush this thing against a whetstone for like an hour it couldn't get any sharper. The only issue it has is some minor ghosting but I've never seen an old monitor like this WITHOUT a smidge of ghosting. It is probably haunted by the previous owner...

Well the physical restoration went well, but how about the DIGITAL restoration?? It was a horrible mess.



FIRST OFF... Let me once again reiterate that I know NOTHING about computers. Okay. So when I first started the computer, I was very hopeful as it recognized the ram and CPU in the BIOS. Then my hope started to falter as it took around 8 minutes for it to leave the boot screen.

Once it had finally made it past that hurdle, I was greeted by... The Windows XP boot screen... It took 30 minutes to load into Windows XP, where I had several messages pop up saying that the computer was running a bootleg copy of Windows, and thousands of other pop up messages claiming that there were VIRUSES AND SHIT all in the computer. So needless to say this computer was most definitely owned by some old fogies.



Not really a huge issue though. I shoved a burned copy of Windows 98 SE in there, formatted the drives, and it was good.

Truthfully it wasn't that easy but that was mainly my fault because I had never installed Windows 98 before and had NO idea that you had to format and do all that other crap before installing. Not only that, but I had to reinstall it like 4 different times because there were a bunch of files missing from the download. This leads into the next issue with the computer...

Remember that first before and after picture at the top of the page? Yeah, after I successfully installed Windows, BOTH OF THE DISC DRIVES DIED. I thought it had been an issue with the hard drive, but no. They survived just long enough to install Windows, and then died... And for that I am proud.



Thankfully there was a dead Dell Optiplex at my job that I was able to harvest a working DVD drive from. Popped that into the computer and it was good as new. And better yet, a week or two afterwards I came across a LIKE NEW Lite-On 52x CD Drive at a thrift store that works GREAT. And most importantly, it is beige, and not black. Not that there is anything WRONG with that...



With the restoration out of the way... Lets get into what this computer is capable of...



This computer runs on a Pentium 2 400ghz Processor, 256MB of ram, and originally a ATI Rage Pro Turbo 8MB GPU that I chose to swap out with the Nvidia MX 420 64MB GPU that was originally in my HP Pavilion. Trying to get the drivers working on that nearly led to me to rip my eyeballs out of their sockets but I won't get into that. IT WORKS GREAT!!!

It also has a Turtle Beach Montego A3D sound card that sounds pretty good, though I wouldn't know what a good sound card sounded like even if it were to crawl into my ear and reroute all nerves related to hearing into it and took over that part of my brain and.... I am getting carried away again. Lets talk about what this puppy is capable of.



This computer runs all the Windows 95/98 games that I throw at it. Lesser demanding games like the Neverhood, Nicktoons Racing, Sonic CD, and Sonic R (DEFINITIVE VERSION BTW) run perfectly at their maximum settings.

More demanding games such as Half-Life 1 run at a respectable 20 FPS at 800x600 resolution, which is enough for me to enjoy gameplay. Though I don't think I'll be playing anything too demanding outside of Half-Life.

The only issue I've had since getting everything situated is that I CANNOT get the Sims 1 to run on this computer, though that is probably my fault since I've only tried with the Sims Complete Collection, which I've heard requires a pretty beefy CPU... But I what do I know??



I've really been enjoying this computer and all its capable of, and I'm thankful I didn't have to dump an absurd amount of money into fixing it. So if you're looking for a RESPECTABLE Windows 98 computer, follow the advice I gave you at the start of this article. Just make sure you're willing to put in the work to possibly clean or fix it...

Thank you for reading, and go save a crappy computer TODAY!