Dell Dimension XPS D333

Retro6 · 12 Feb 2019 at 14:42

So I probably paid to much for this computer about 40 pound in total for an untested what could be junk but hey where can I get an old computer from now days... its always a risk you sometimes have to take usually when something is listed as untested because sometimes it means its knackered and the person selling it may already know.

So when I got this vintage computer I left it for a day so that it can cool down to room temperature before powering it up, I wasn't going to take any chances. I popped the top off and all looks clean inside, its missing its hard drive and the floppy drive had been unplugged so I just plugged it back it and turned it on... I was expecting it not to work but it posts and I can get into the BIOS to set the boot sequence and check things like the time and date which had already been set. I couldn't see the floppy showing in the BIOS so I assumed the Floppy drive was dead.

I changed the floppy drive and while I was at it I put in a CF drive for the hard drive its only a 2GB tho but good enough for testing things. So I was happy and started thinking I have got myself a nice retro computer... well not for long... The problems started... I soon realized there is a problem with the motherboard not detecting the floppy drive and I can not get a CD Drive to work on this computer neither. I went over the BIOS checking things over and over and also changing the floppy cable and floppy drives and changing CD drives. Well that's the end of that I guess. Very disappointing after seeing the machine start up... but was it?

It turns out the IDE to CF had been causing the problem when I disconnected that the floppy drive worked and showed in the BIOS and the CD drive now works.

I was starting to think that this is the last time I'm going to pay any sort of money for an old computer. So now I'll have to get a hard drive for it and hopefully fingers crossed things should go smoothly.

Duke · 12 Feb 2019 at 15:46

A friend of mine at secondary school had this model or one similar to it, going by the Google image search, its the old beige style case? What is the spec? OS?

Retro6 · 12 Feb 2019 at 16:32

Duke said:
A friend of mine at secondary school had this model or one similar to it, going by the Google image search, its the old beige style case? What is the spec? OS?

The specs are 333MHz Intel Pentium II MMX processor. It has 64MB SD RAM installed and has a Diamond PRO video card which looks decent. Onboard audio.

I remember these being pretty solid back in the day. It has no OS on it right now because its missing a hard drive so I'll be getting a hard drive for it at some point and I'll be installing Windows 95 on it as I need a dedicated Windows 95 machine and this is perfect. I'll also be changing out the CD Drive for a beige DVD Drive to see how well DVD's play. I also have an original Windows 95 unused CD with USB support to install on it.

Monkeh · 12 Feb 2019 at 22:55

I have 2 of a similar age, a D233 and D300 iirc and one thing to bare in mind is although the motherboards look like standard Intel ATX boards and have the same power connectors these use propriety pin outs, so putting a regular ATX PSU into will normally kill something on the board. Pretty sure the support site still gave info and manuals from them if you put the service tags in but its been a year or so since I last checked and I don't have my numbers on hand to try myself.

Retro6 · 13 Feb 2019 at 21:31

I found a 8GB CF card today while having a rummaged in some of my boxes from the attic so I'm going to have another bash at seeing if I can get the CF to IDE adapter going on it. I'm going to try many different configurations this time. last time when I tried it, the floppy and CD drive would not work.

This computer seems to be in perfect working order in terms of its power supply and motherboard although its best not to speak to soon until I get Windows installed on to it.

Its a bit of a hit and miss finding a working IDE hard drive when buying off ebay sometimes the local games shop have IDE hard drives going for peanuts.

I just remembered I have an iMac G3 somewhere in the attic and I know that has a working hard drive its just a matter of getting to it so if the CF to IDE fails I'll have to pull everything out of the attic and pull the hard drive out of that iMac.

Retro6 · 14 Feb 2019 at 09:29

Nope I tried it again this morning and got no joy. Whenever I connect the CF adapter it disables the floppy and CD drive I tried it in many different configurations and I tried different CF adapters, all bring the same results.

I have an option... I have a 32GB SSD SATA drive but I will need to order SATA to IDE adapter but I'm guessing that will give me the same results as well. I will order one and see.

Option 2. Make a huge mess getting everything out of the attic to get to the old iMac and take out the hard drive.

Duke · 14 Feb 2019 at 09:37

The SATA to IDE controllers I've used in the past have generally worked fine but the throughput is very low - should be fine for this age system though.

Retro6 · 14 Feb 2019 at 09:59

Duke said:
The SATA to IDE controllers I've used in the past have generally worked fine but the throughput is very low - should be fine for this age system though.

I just decided to use the hard drive out of my IBM instead as it was much easier but now I have the same problem again I don't have access to the floppy drive? or CD drive so its either the motherboard is shot or there is a jumper configuration on the board somewhere. Whenever there is a hard drive present whether that be the CF or standard hard drive, the floppy and CD drive doesn't work.

Everything shows in the BIOS

Duke · 14 Feb 2019 at 10:32

I would understand issues with the CD drive if there is a jumper or master/slave not set correctly but no idea why the floppy drive would be affected by those devices.. odd.

Retro6 · 14 Feb 2019 at 10:52

Duke said:
I would understand issues with the CD drive if there is a jumper or master/slave not set correctly but no idea why the floppy drive would be affected by those devices.. odd.

Nah it isn't the jumper.

I have the CD drive set to slave in the BIOS the jumper on CD drive is set to slave, the CD drive is also set to first boot device and the "CD Drive works without a hard drive present".

I can't find a way to set the floppy as the first boot device the BIOS only shows CD drive and hard drive, network boot or removable devices. The floppy drive will work without a hard drive present same as the CD drive.

When the hard drive is present I have issues "the hard drive isn't the problem" whether it be the CF drive or the standard hard drive the same problem occurs.

First boot device CD Rom
Second boot device Hard drive

I've tried using different IDE cables and drives but I'm still faced with the same results.

If there is no way to trouble shoot this problem I will have to ditch the motherboard, it seems like I'm never going to get my retro Windows 95/98 machine this is the second old computer now and money down the drain so if I can't this going I give up on it and I'll go with a P4 board and try do a retro build with that.

Retro6 · 14 Feb 2019 at 10:54

Retro6 said:
Nah it isn't the jumper.

I have the CD drive set to slave in the BIOS the jumper on CD drive is set to slave, the CD drive is also set to first boot device and the "CD Drive works without a hard drive present".

I can't find a way to set the floppy as the first boot device the BIOS only shows CD drive and hard drive, network boot or removable devices. The floppy drive will work without a hard drive present same as the CD drive.

When the hard drive is present I have issues "the hard drive isn't the problem" whether it be the CF drive or the standard hard drive the same problem occurs.

First boot device CD Rom
Second boot device Hard drive

I've tried using different IDE cables and drives but I'm still faced with the same results.

If there is no way to trouble shoot this problem I will have to ditch the motherboard, it seems like I'm never going to get my retro Windows 95/98 machine this is the second old computer now and money down the drain so if I can't this going I give up on it and I'll go with a P4 board and try do a retro build with that.

It could be something simple or could be a knackard motherboard.

Retro6 · 15 Feb 2019 at 00:21

I've got things working correctly now but the CF card died after an MS-DOS install, to be fair it was a bit iffy to start with. I've still got the 2GB CF card so that will have to do for now until I can get another 8GB. I may need a longer IDE cable as well. I've installed the CD ROM Device Driver for MS-DOS 6.22 I'll stick Windows 95 on that tomorrow.

All's I have to do next is put the computer back together and hope and pray that no errors happen on the Windows 95 installation.

This computer was one hell of a headache but I got there in the end.

Retro6 · 15 Feb 2019 at 12:33

I decided to put Windows 98SE on it for now and I'm using an old IDE hard drive Windows 98SE is currently installing so hopefully figures crossed it doesn't fail.

The BIOS is horrible on this machine I also found that this machine does not like DVD drives so I had to go with a CD drive.

Update... Of course I get the dreaded Error...

windows protection error. you need to restart your computer
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\VMM32.VXD: MISSING/unable to load.

I'll have to try another win98se CD and start again.

This is absolutely insane :mad:

one more try and that is it.

It seems like its impossible to have Windows 98 or anything at this point.

Retro6 · 15 Feb 2019 at 17:13

Well Windows 98SE was a no go but I got Windows 95 to install but no drivers, no audio no video and a whole load of other drivers missing. I guess this is as good as its going get. No gaming on this one until I find drivers which is going to be fun.

Anybody know where I can find chipset drivers for a Dell Dimension XPS D333?

Duke · 15 Feb 2019 at 18:55

Wouldn't it just be the Intel INF ones? There must be some archive version for that age of board online somewhere I would have thought.

Retro6 · 15 Feb 2019 at 19:33

Duke said:
Wouldn't it just be the Intel INF ones? There must be some archive version for that age of board online somewhere I would have thought.

I'll have a look for them... I have an update on the situation and I'm left scratching my head here, I went ahead and swapped the hard drive over to the 40GB one that I had partly installed Windows 98SE on earlier when I got that error message and miraculously it went on to installing and detecting hardware so I inserted the win98 setup CD and everything continued as it should the system restarted and... oh boy the setup completed and I heard the Windows 98 startup sound and all drivers have installed apart from the video display which is understandable considering its using a video card and doesn't have onboard video. I'm so happy now

after all that time its took me a whole day. I've just installed the USB for flash drives and I'm going to install the service packs where there is a display driver which might get me more than 16 colors.

Duke · 15 Feb 2019 at 21:32

Thats good to hear :cool:

Retro6 · 16 Feb 2019 at 10:20

I installed the service packs but they messed everything up and made the system unusable. I will have to do a fresh reinstall of Windows 98SE. I know I will get problems again but once I'm done which could be some time as there are problems with boot sequence again after I thought was working fine.

Next I will need a Diamond Fire 1K PRO driver for the video card.

Retro6 · 16 Feb 2019 at 12:02

I've installed Windows 98SE again which went smoothly and I've installed the USB driver for flash drives, this time I'm keeping well away from the unofficial service packs.

I've found the driver for the video card "hopefully its the correct one and if it is hopefully I wont get chucked out with an error" its the only thing left to do now.

Retro6 · 16 Feb 2019 at 13:06

Success video driver installed and I played an old game which ran perfect.

Here she is...

I did change the floppy drive as I had a nice clean new looking one, the original floppy drive looked a bit scruffy and I changed the CD ROM as the old one was a bit noisy.