Fixing/archiving an old windows xp Emachine (way too many roms!)

[Succy Beverage]

Got something real interesting here this time around, two 2006  e-machine pc's that still running like its 2008. (model w3503) WITH proper crt monitors!!!

I managed to pick these two up for about 25 bucks along with a bunch of cd-roms and discs to go with it (literal shelf full) and right now it's matter of what the hell I do next with them.

The current case is this: thankfully one of the pc's do work and it's a treat to see what's on it, it was probably just used for 'gaming' and man the kid before REALLY liked halo.

here's a video that shows what it's like pretty succinctly:

https://youtube.com/shorts/vfcdFCQwM3M?feature=share

(yeah I got these a few months back, but life/college gets in the way of things y'know?)

The other pc doesn't seem to work too well at all, the machine does turn on but it can't seem to properly boot, maybe a failed ram stick or hard-drive? hard to tell and I'm a bit afraid to look into it.

I don't really know what to do with this beautiful piece of history! there are so many old games that came with it that I'm having a joy getting them run but man where do I start with... everything!?

Oh right, the myriad of issues that come up which i need to fix :

-Maybe it's because of the age or the fact that it's just an e-machine, but alot of games with videos or attachments similar (y'know like little films thrown into the intro or something real ps1 type shit) stutter horribly and make many of the point-and-click games nigh unusable, 3d works well though...

-the whole pc runs pretty loud, which doesn't make sense since the other non-working pc is very much dust-free (surprisingly,given it's age) so this one should also be relatively clean, maybe some re-furbishing is due?

-considering the files for the save files, a few several games on this pc I don't actually have par the cd-roms (must've been part of another lot or were simply lost to time), which is a shame since that means I can't play halo on a machine that clearly played quite a bit of it.

-of course, connecting this thing up to the internet is a death sentance, so that means any data has to be taken or given through some classic thumb-sticks/portable drives... or should we do something else instead? I'm not an expert at this and I'd rather not destroy this computer

Here's some pictures of the thing, It really is a treat to see what exactly I can do next with it.
Ideally, I'm going to get all of these roms installed and thrown onto a drive for safekeeping, maybe I should also upgrade the pc with time-accurate parts! (to which, what the hell does it take?).

pic 1(the machine in all it's halo-pilled glory):


pic 2&3 (literal boxes and stacks worth of a myriad of different cd-roms and programs, mostly games though):



https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1277387528726642863/1441867683929788476/20251122_130539.jpg?ex=69235b6c&is=692209ec&hm=c66ba07fb4b6a18f9aefa2b1e1da804b2b4f9abd5865c4d8a95731991774ce3e&=&format=webp&width=992&height=744

It also has croc!

Please tell if anyone knows anything on what to do!

[Melooon]

That's a fun find    The matching monitor is really cool! Also omg you have have of those aqua mice 

So I would do the following with these (or any retro computer I get)

• Open it up!
• Dust it out with a vacuum and a clean soft paintbrush - (make sure you touch metal regularly to avoid static)
• If the fans are load, peal off the hub sticker, put some oil in and tape the sticker back down.
• Remove the CPU heat-sink and replace the thermal compound (This is reaalalyy important for computers made after 2000)
• Its a good idea to check for any rusty or bulging capacitors - though they can be a big job to fix.
• Replace the CMOS battery.
• Put in a cheap SATA SSD (with an IDE to SSD adapter if needed - prob not needed if its late-00s)
• Re-Install a fresh copy of Windows and all drivers etc (Legacy Update, Archive.org are helpful tools here!)

You can always swap some parts from the broken system to see if they work better ^^

The important thing to remember is that whatever you do with it, you wont get it perfect, you might even break things or do things badly - Oddballs like us might see it as a wonderful priceless artifact, HOWEVER to 99% of the population, this thing is literally rubbish and they would chuck it out   So whatever you do with it, even if things go wrong, chances are its already more and better than what 99% of people would do - so don't be too precious.

[Succy Beverage]

holy shit melon actually replied to this wtf play it cool play it cool play it cool play it coo

Small update on the two pc's (good bad good bad news)!

I pretty much spent most of the day figuring out what to do with the two pc's; mostly with the broken one so I could get my money's worth or something, consensus: It's broken, but it still could be something really cool.

After a few tests I figured that something very intently is wrong with how it interacts with the boot drive (well, since it's the only drive I guess it's just the drive then but anyways), I actually managed to get the hard-drive running on the other machine and there was really nothing wrong with it!

What was really weird was that the other drive had what was either A.a newer version of windows XP or B. just a different color/theme (I may be dumb. ). What was also odd was the matter of the drive not being to make music due to some weird lil program just screwing something up. An old deleted email to grandma talked about it too!

I should also say that these pc's are a goldmine of old family photos and times, of course I'm not showing them and really I should get these pictures back to the original family. But it's really funny/charming seeing a couple country-kids dressed up for photo shoots with their horses.

In any case, the 2nd pc is a bust, but that doesn't mean I can't pimp it out with time-accurate parts, which are thankfully relatively cheap (30-40 dollars for a 750ti isn't bad). I'm probably going to need a motherboard, gpu, cpu, and ram. And then a new powersupply once this one blows up, but we'll get there when we get there. Shouldn't be more than a couple hundred dollars.



In the meantime I'm trying to get all the data off the roms and seeing if I can make run just a bit smoother, I already jammed the ram stick from the broken pc into this one to make it run just a bit better (a whopping 880mbs!).

The old keyboard I had also unfortunately kicked the bucket either today or 3 months ago, since half the keys weren't properly working, cie-la-vie I guess, and for now I'm using a cheap modern keyboard from another pc since out of everything I have, keyboards are where I'm lacking.

But in any case this thing will be fun to show to friends and to figure out where to go next, And to Melon who may read this: I'll make sure to do those things you brought up to do! I really regret leaving my thermal paste at college (F K).