Old PCs - advice

[James-H]

I've recently tried to fire up a number of old PCs I have at home with a view to firing up some of my old mid-late 90s and early 00s games going again - and the results haven't been too bad as all the PCs fire up to some degree! Below are some further details...

Desktop P133 from circa 1996 running Windows 95 - seems to work fine for the most part but cannot read CDs.
Desktop P233 from circa 1998 running Windows 98 - powers up but no output to monitor.
Desktop PC from around 2001 running (I think) Windows ME - powers up but no output to monitor and CD drive won't open.
Desktop PC from around 2003-2004 running Windows XP - Windows XP appears to need reinstalling.

I'm wondering whether it's likely to be worth attempting to fix any of the above or whether I'm better off disposing of them, especially given that most retro computer repairers appear to focus on 80s computers and consoles, and getting hold of a DOS emulator for DOS games and also acquiring a refurbished Windows XP machine on the basis that this should be able to run Windows 95/ 98/ ME games as well as those designed for Windows XP and may well cost less than a repair service. I appreciate that the detail above is very limited, but any thoughts would be much appreciated...!

 

[cee-S-dee]

Hi James-H

The two pentium machines are worth salvaging. The 133 could be as simple as just getting a replacement IDE CD Drive from somewhere. The 233mmx could be anything (Bad BIOS, Faulty RAM, Faulty VGA card) but I wouldn't Junk it. The 2001 could be worth saving, depending on the the spec.

If the 233 has a cd drive, maybe swap that into the P133 and you have one working machine.

 

[Haze]

You should be able to make at least one good working pc out of that lot