Dell XPS 720

I first spotted one of these beasties at CES in 2007. It was the media center/TV tuner with Cable Card that was on my must see list. Here's the picture of the card equipped All In Wonder in a black XPS710.

OK, so it does exist. But what is it about the computer that it was in. What is this gorgeous machine? The $5,000 plus plus cost was way to much for me at that time.

I'd already re-built a couple of old PCs for nostalgia - there's a Packard Bell 286 for DOS and a Pentium 3 in a tall Antec case loaded with Windows 98. Thinking about a Windows XP gamer that I'd build or buy if the right deal comes along.

One day Craigslist offered up an XPS720 for $80. Ad said that it worked and was in good condition. I'll bite.

Met the seller in Salinas youngster who was studying IT. He shows me the XPS, and it does appear to be in very good condition. Now, I had just started learning the workings of this machine, so I know how to pop the side cover off, and to power it on. I'm already infatuated with it - whether it's used as-is for a retro gamer or gets gutted to become a restomod. Here's what I got from the seller

It's got no video card
Everything's there (well, except the video card)
Might be an OS on it.
When you power it up, it beeps for no video card.

Push the button, loud fans wind up and there is a faint sound of beeps coming from the machine. No Video huh? (next time learn the front panel boot up codes, dummy)

• Lights 3 & 4  or 1 & 3 indicate memory faults.
• Lights 2 & 4 indicate a graphics card fault.

Still, I wanted it if it worked or not, Paid the seller, again worth it to me for restore or mod. Heft it's 60 lb lump to the car.

Back at home I get a closer look. Looks like it's been hastily stripped then filled with extra parts to make it run. There's 3 slot covers missing, as if it's graphics card and one other expansion card will pulled. All slot latches are there and work ok. Side cover's latching hooks are all in place. The optical drive is connected to one of the boards 6 SATA ports. There's a 80 gb IDE drive in one HDD sled. One HDD bay sled missing, probably what the hastily removed boot drive. External 3.5" bays have blanking covers. Very little dust inside or grime outside.

Dell support gives little information about it's past. Original Configuration is not there. Original build date: 9/12/2007. Never had any Dell service.

I put in an appropriate video card from the near era - a GTX670 I refused to ever chuck out or sell for $30. It cost to much back when it was new and I'll die with it before letting it go for so few bucks.

Attach the externals and power up. Loud fans and beeps. Check the connections all looks good. Reseat the GTX. try again. Beeps.

Then I remembered the numbers on the front panel. Came to a memory problem that lead me to think that the motherboard was dead. Awww! I look to see what memory was installed and found a stick of the 1GB was not in the socket all the way. Also did not have a latching clip on the socket. More pit stop downgrades before selling it? Reseated memory. Power up. Success! With Dell boot screen.

Then the low CMOS battery warning. Then the notice that several drives were not found. Then nothing. Oh, the fans settled down.

That one hard drive in one of the 4 HDD bays was connected with IDE. Checked BIOS, it was recognized. While in there the setup had a page for every drive. There were 3 SATA drives active, I disabled all but the optical. Reboot and the warnings about missing drives was fixed. The IDE drive had nothing on it. Wiped like Hillary's server.

I put a 1 TB SATA drive in a sled, a Dell Windows XP recovery CD in the optical and let it boot. Windows XP Pro on the Dell CD installed OK. Needed to transfer drivers on a thumb drive for Chipset, Ethernet and Audio. USB worked with the default drivers already installed so that was easy. Got us a 100% working DellZilla. Got it on the Internet. IE does not want to connect (duh). Oh search my brain for the steps to get XP online. Stumble around in internet connections, network connections etc. Pinged something. It worked. For a wild chance I started Windows Update. It chugged for ever but was not timing out and finally stopped with 147 updates. Let them go and then had 30 or so updates to the updates. Let them install and got the update to the updated updates down to 6. Then did the hardware updates and cleared out all the yellow checkmarks in device manager.

Walmart supplied a battery, it's a CR2025. Not the normal CR2032  battery usually found on old motherboards I had lying around. Low battery warning fixed.

Headed off to eBay for a few upgrades. A floppy drive and the OEM ribbon cable. The 3.5" card reader. Another HDD sled. Soundcard and it's front panel cable. As long as it's running OK, this will be a restoration retro gamer PC.

Clean up was minimal. Removed the card slot fan, took apart and washed. Peeled off the ugly Dell part number tag. Same for the CPU cooler. Removed and replaced thermal grease. The chrome X P S logo on the CPU fan still had it's protective clear plastic that let me peel it off.

On board SATA has 6 connectors. The blue one is for the boot drive I am told. I filled the HDD bays with 2 more 1TB and 1 500GB drive. DVD Drive is on a SATA. Leaves me with one SATA port and 2 IDE ports. No plans for them yet.

Memory is still unsettled. I found 2 2GB sticks and installed them on 2 & 4. 1 & 3 have the original 1GB sticks. No luck with 6GB, beeping memory errors again. Take one 2GB out, it boots. Replace one 2GB with the other, it boots. Take out 1 GB's replace with 2s. No Boot. Leave it with 4 GB for now. Not installing 64 bit XP anyway. Research it a bit and think about taking a chance on eBay offers of 4 2GBs aimed at XPS720 searches?

Ebay drive sled arrived. Filled all the HDD bays,

Installed Doom3 and boy does it runs smooth as heavy cream.

Mad that my Postal2 CD will not read. Drive would not read a burned DVD of all the drivers and bloat ware from Dell.com.

Installed the card reader. Had to homebrew a cable for it. There is a USB header that is there for the card reader, it uses the normal USB header pinout. The connector on the card reader is not standard. I found a hookup cable in the valuable junk parts collection that plugged into the motherboard and soldered the other end color to color. Works.

Replaced the card reader. Dumb me bought one on eBay that was just a card reader Teac CA 200. If you want Bluetooth you need the CAB 200. Advice: Buy one with a cable this time. Stories on Dell user websites talk about the scarcity of the correct cable to get both card reader and Bluetooth to function. My second card reader purchase was from a different computer but the cord was a USD header compatible one. Only problem is that it's grey. Then we talk software. All the drivers I find are for Vista and will tell you that when trying to run the installer .exe. Next, Bluetooth does not show up in Device Mangler. Like it's not even there. Found this set of instructions:

power off the computer. Hold down the Bluetooth button and power up the computer while pushing that button. I let go of it to sign in and had the Found New Hardware box on the screen. To install a driver pick the options to browse to a specific folder, pick that Vista drivers folder that was downloaded from Dell and unzipped. Drill down to the W32 folder and let it search. Drivers will install and you  have built in Bluetooth.

Got the OEM Creative Xfi sound card in the mail. Main reason to install the external card was to get a game port. Still rocking an old MS Sidewinder. Set aside for it needs the front panel cable that's needed and still on an order.

Ran the flat ribbon cable for the floppy drive, awaiting the arrival of the drive also on order.

Floppy drive and front panel jumper for external sound card arrived, all installed fine. Nearly complete, only need the audio block off plate.

Installed Simcity 2000 for Windows. A little fussing with compatibility settings in the shortcut go it to play.

Tried to copy the original Postal2 CD but got errors. Either the bad disc or am I running into anti copy things. Then I tried using an external DVD drive, again got the dirty disc message. Decided to see how far it would go with the errors and it installed 100% with no errors. A few minutes of playing and no crashes.

Consider the restoration completed. Might polish the case. I sometimes see it called stainless steel but it's not that. It's thick aluminum painted like a car with clear coat.

UPGRADES

Replaced the System hard drive with a Samsung Evo SATA SSD. It will go in a front bay so I'll put this 2.5 inch to 5.25 inch tray to use. The 4 other SATA drives will be for data or whatever. Mess with a RAID configuration maybe.

This is a Unitek Y-3032 USB SATA dock that clones drives. I have used it a few times to copy system drives in a drive swap and it's worked every time.

 

Spent about $25 on 4 RAM modules. DDR2-667MHz PC2-5300 240-Pin DIMM Unbuffered NON-ECC 1.8v for all you RAM fans. All matching, now have 8GB on board, the maximum for the machine.

Thinking about changing the OS to Windows XP Media Center. Don't know if it will install over the XP Pro or not.