The FREE Never Obsolete PC from 2000! eMachines eTower 566ir
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Date: 2022-09-23
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Comments and reviews: 14
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My family's first computer was an eMachines eTower 466i with Windows 98SE. They bought it second hand with an IBM P50-1 (biult in Jan 1996) monitor and Auditek speakers, don't remember the keyboard and mouse. The store also gave them a free printer, which turned out to be not working and the repair was so expensive, that my parents just bought a brand new printer (both are Canon. I still have the PC, monitor, speakers and printer. The PC has been upgraded - bought with 64MB RAM and now has 512MB (2x256MB) PC133 RAM, HDD was 6, 4GB (don't remember anything but the size) and now is Seagate 40GB. Mine has the original CD-ROM drive, Intel insode and Win98 SE stickers as well as the Never Obsolete sticker. It's got ATi 3D rage Pro AGP 2x 4MB integrated graphics (I believe it has it's own RAM, also there are two PCI and two ISA slots - currently have ethernet card and USB 2. 0 card in the PCI slots, I had installed a nVidia GeForce FX5200 128MB PCI some time ago (with it I could run even GTA SA on this PC, but the PC sometimes would refuse to boot, or would restart randomly and after removing the FX5200 it has worked fine, I have no idea what the problem was. Have actually played SimCity 3000 Unlimited on this PC with the integrated GPU I think, but the games I played as a kid and still play on this Pc are Tanks and Tarzan, also Buggsbunny and Taz Time Busters, but it barely runs with the iGPU. It still has the original PSU as well and I do use it with the monitor and speakers my parents bought it with, dual-booting 98SE and XP Pro SP3. With XP I can even browse the Internet even today (used it two weeks ago actually, it's a better experience than on 98SE anyway. Was interesting to see the full package, I didn't even know it existed until this video.
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My family's first computer was an eMachines eTower 466i with Windows 98SE. They bought it second hand with an IBM P50-1 (biult in Jan 1996) monitor and Auditek speakers, don't remember the keyboard and mouse. The store also gave them a free printer, which turned out to be not working and the repair was so expensive, that my parents just bought a brand new printer (both are Canon. I still have the PC, monitor, speakers and printer. The PC has been upgraded - bought with 64MB RAM and now has 512MB (2x256MB) PC133 RAM, HDD was 6, 4GB (don't remember anything but the size) and now is Seagate 40GB. Mine has the original CD-ROM drive, Intel insode and Win98 SE stickers as well as the Never Obsolete sticker. It's got ATi 3D rage Pro AGP 2x 4MB integrated graphics (I believe it has it's own RAM, also there are two PCI and two ISA slots - currently have ethernet card and USB 2. 0 card in the PCI slots, I had installed a nVidia GeForce FX5200 128MB PCI some time ago (with it I could run even GTA SA on this PC, but the PC sometimes would refuse to boot, or would restart randomly and after removing the FX5200 it has worked fine, I have no idea what the problem was. Have actually played SimCity 3000 Unlimited on this PC with the integrated GPU I think, but the games I played as a kid and still play on this Pc are Tanks and Tarzan, also Buggsbunny and Taz Time Busters, but it barely runs with the iGPU. It still has the original PSU as well and I do use it with the monitor and speakers my parents bought it with, dual-booting 98SE and XP Pro SP3. With XP I can even browse the Internet even today (used it two weeks ago actually, it's a better experience than on 98SE anyway. Was interesting to see the full package, I didn't even know it existed until this video.
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Phoenix
My first PC was obtained in 2001 with a pentium 3 and 256 MB memory and a 30 GB hdd. Don't know what kind of memory. It probably came with an NVIDIA graphics but I don't know which (I found the box with nvidia's eye logo on it. It has a floppy and optical drive. Yep that's classic. Monitor Samsung 753DF.
However in my memories this runs like shit. Extremely laggy on desktop but ironically not laggy in early stage games. Well consider my games are non3d (taiwanese game such as Chinese paladin 1 or Hero's tale of martial arts) this might be just the case. Later games such as Romance Of Three Kingdoms 9 is playable but cost minutes to proceed a single turn, and GTAVC overburdens it. As with the desktop laggy I assume that HDD is not fast enough or may have bad sectors. Yeah that's why SSDs are introduced right?
It come with an external 56K modem which name I couldn't remember but its name contains 300 and runs protocol v90. Ironically I was not into internet until winter 2004, for using instant message. On that day dialup costs cny 1 per hour. In 2008 I could purchase 50 hours for cny 8.
Later I got a Compaq Presario 2800 with pentium 4 and run everything sweet. (It came with an internal modem) Sarcastic I didn't realize notebooks are inferior to desktops until in university.
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My first PC was obtained in 2001 with a pentium 3 and 256 MB memory and a 30 GB hdd. Don't know what kind of memory. It probably came with an NVIDIA graphics but I don't know which (I found the box with nvidia's eye logo on it. It has a floppy and optical drive. Yep that's classic. Monitor Samsung 753DF.
However in my memories this runs like shit. Extremely laggy on desktop but ironically not laggy in early stage games. Well consider my games are non3d (taiwanese game such as Chinese paladin 1 or Hero's tale of martial arts) this might be just the case. Later games such as Romance Of Three Kingdoms 9 is playable but cost minutes to proceed a single turn, and GTAVC overburdens it. As with the desktop laggy I assume that HDD is not fast enough or may have bad sectors. Yeah that's why SSDs are introduced right?
It come with an external 56K modem which name I couldn't remember but its name contains 300 and runs protocol v90. Ironically I was not into internet until winter 2004, for using instant message. On that day dialup costs cny 1 per hour. In 2008 I could purchase 50 hours for cny 8.
Later I got a Compaq Presario 2800 with pentium 4 and run everything sweet. (It came with an internal modem) Sarcastic I didn't realize notebooks are inferior to desktops until in university.
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Anony
I remember all of the rebate scams they had back then. It was almost impossible to buy something without a rebate offer of some kind attached to it, scam or not, and they were usually scams. I also remember Circuit City bait and switching me on offers that were in their print ads that came with the newspaper and am so very happy they went out of business and really wish Best Buy would have followed suit. I had an HP back then with a 533mhz celery stick and upgraded it a few times to 256mb. It too had only onboard graphics yet it ran Unreal 1 and UT with hardware acceleration and ran at a good speed. I still play Unreal and there are plenty of servers still up, though I've long since moved to Linux only, but luckily they work perfectly through WINE. The thing that really kills me about that computer was that it came with Star Office. I've got a copy of that on a disc, in a box, hopefully without bit-rot, somewhere. One correction for you, the sticker you had in view when you said it lists 19. 95 per month yet you said 19. 99. Only off by 4 cents.
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I remember all of the rebate scams they had back then. It was almost impossible to buy something without a rebate offer of some kind attached to it, scam or not, and they were usually scams. I also remember Circuit City bait and switching me on offers that were in their print ads that came with the newspaper and am so very happy they went out of business and really wish Best Buy would have followed suit. I had an HP back then with a 533mhz celery stick and upgraded it a few times to 256mb. It too had only onboard graphics yet it ran Unreal 1 and UT with hardware acceleration and ran at a good speed. I still play Unreal and there are plenty of servers still up, though I've long since moved to Linux only, but luckily they work perfectly through WINE. The thing that really kills me about that computer was that it came with Star Office. I've got a copy of that on a disc, in a box, hopefully without bit-rot, somewhere. One correction for you, the sticker you had in view when you said it lists 19. 95 per month yet you said 19. 99. Only off by 4 cents.
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Bruce
Pretty sure it's obsolete now. I've had a couple of these lol
My grandfather got a system through an isp called Senior Explorer with a similar marketing ploy. His was similar to this spec wise. I added more ram and a pci fx 5200 so he could run his rc flight sim trainer software
Also, that intel agp chipset is related to or based on the Intel i740 agp card. Some boards have 4 to 8mb on the motherboard near the chipset, with the bios allowing you to allocate further system ram for storage of textures. Yes. Texture data (maybe some other stuff too) went to system ram while the dedicated 4 or 8mb for the chip was purely for frame buffer. Often why it was limited to a max of 24bit color. This is exactly how the i740 agp was supposed to work, sending texture data to system ram across the agp bus. I'd be curious to see performance difference between a P4 sdram vs p4 rambus setup with i740 agp. The older original p4 socket
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Pretty sure it's obsolete now. I've had a couple of these lol
My grandfather got a system through an isp called Senior Explorer with a similar marketing ploy. His was similar to this spec wise. I added more ram and a pci fx 5200 so he could run his rc flight sim trainer software
Also, that intel agp chipset is related to or based on the Intel i740 agp card. Some boards have 4 to 8mb on the motherboard near the chipset, with the bios allowing you to allocate further system ram for storage of textures. Yes. Texture data (maybe some other stuff too) went to system ram while the dedicated 4 or 8mb for the chip was purely for frame buffer. Often why it was limited to a max of 24bit color. This is exactly how the i740 agp was supposed to work, sending texture data to system ram across the agp bus. I'd be curious to see performance difference between a P4 sdram vs p4 rambus setup with i740 agp. The older original p4 socket
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JourneyMN
My first childhood pc was a model of Emachines similar to this model. Gotta love that 56k modem, after a month it went out and took about a month from a local PC repair shop to repair it. Playing RuneScape classic and the loading please wait loading screen literally would take 5 MINUTES to load. Still played and really enjoyed it! I really wish I saved it, when we moved in 2010 I left it in an old farm house when we were forced to move. I distinctly remember we had everything out of the house expecting this pc in the bathroom closet. I said nah. It s so obsolete now I ll never use it again. Thinking about it now that would have been a nice time capsule on the hard drive and just the hardware in general.
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My first childhood pc was a model of Emachines similar to this model. Gotta love that 56k modem, after a month it went out and took about a month from a local PC repair shop to repair it. Playing RuneScape classic and the loading please wait loading screen literally would take 5 MINUTES to load. Still played and really enjoyed it! I really wish I saved it, when we moved in 2010 I left it in an old farm house when we were forced to move. I distinctly remember we had everything out of the house expecting this pc in the bathroom closet. I said nah. It s so obsolete now I ll never use it again. Thinking about it now that would have been a nice time capsule on the hard drive and just the hardware in general.
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Commodorefan64
I ended up with one of these in mid 01 that one my aunts did not want, and I needed a PC at the time, so I stuck an Nvidia Riva TNT 2 16MB card in it, found a PCI sound blaster for it at the flea market, maxed out the RAM, fresh install of Win 98se, modded in a side case fan, used a 15in KDS monitor I got from the local Goodwill, and ran the hell out of it till early 03 when I could save up again for a better machine. lots of good memories with this machine.
Yes eMachine computers were not always the best, so I get why they get a bad rap, but if you got them for cheap/free, and put a little love into them they were alright to better than having nothing at all.
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I ended up with one of these in mid 01 that one my aunts did not want, and I needed a PC at the time, so I stuck an Nvidia Riva TNT 2 16MB card in it, found a PCI sound blaster for it at the flea market, maxed out the RAM, fresh install of Win 98se, modded in a side case fan, used a 15in KDS monitor I got from the local Goodwill, and ran the hell out of it till early 03 when I could save up again for a better machine. lots of good memories with this machine.
Yes eMachine computers were not always the best, so I get why they get a bad rap, but if you got them for cheap/free, and put a little love into them they were alright to better than having nothing at all.
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l337pwnage
I have no idea which model, but I got one like that for a family member. I don't remember any stickers and I got it, I think, from a catalog. I want to say I paid around 300 and I don't remember if that included the monitor. I do know the modem was bad out of the box, and everything I read stated that was normal, so I got them a good modem.
Also, whatever model it was, I know it was older than that one. I don't want to say it had that rounded CD rom, but, my failing memory wants to say it had it.
Again, I bought for them, worked on it on occasion, but never saw it beyond that.
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I have no idea which model, but I got one like that for a family member. I don't remember any stickers and I got it, I think, from a catalog. I want to say I paid around 300 and I don't remember if that included the monitor. I do know the modem was bad out of the box, and everything I read stated that was normal, so I got them a good modem.
Also, whatever model it was, I know it was older than that one. I don't want to say it had that rounded CD rom, but, my failing memory wants to say it had it.
Again, I bought for them, worked on it on occasion, but never saw it beyond that.
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John
I had a similar emachines that I got for free from Circuit City, if I recall correctly I took the tower out the door for nothing except signing up for I think 3 years of CompuServe. Went back the next day with my girlfriend and she did the same thing so she could have one as well. Mine must have been newer as it came with Windows ME, but boy I got a lot of milage out of that thing. put in a PCI graphics card, a nic, a tv tuner card, more ram and storage, it's was great for me at the time until I build my own Athlonxp 1700 machine with a ATI 8500!
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I had a similar emachines that I got for free from Circuit City, if I recall correctly I took the tower out the door for nothing except signing up for I think 3 years of CompuServe. Went back the next day with my girlfriend and she did the same thing so she could have one as well. Mine must have been newer as it came with Windows ME, but boy I got a lot of milage out of that thing. put in a PCI graphics card, a nic, a tv tuner card, more ram and storage, it's was great for me at the time until I build my own Athlonxp 1700 machine with a ATI 8500!
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Uncle
eMachines was THE garbage computer supplier of all time.
I worked for their support in 2k, and you had to pay money every time you talked to support for any reason.
The power supplies and modems were the main failure points of the system.
Then again, if you bought one of these, you deserved what you got.
(And business owners seemed to love buying these and whining about the down time after the inevitable breakdown.
I'm losing 20k a day by this being down!
And you had no problem spending less than 500 for this POS? )
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eMachines was THE garbage computer supplier of all time.
I worked for their support in 2k, and you had to pay money every time you talked to support for any reason.
The power supplies and modems were the main failure points of the system.
Then again, if you bought one of these, you deserved what you got.
(And business owners seemed to love buying these and whining about the down time after the inevitable breakdown.
I'm losing 20k a day by this being down!
And you had no problem spending less than 500 for this POS? )
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Cole
Worthless late 90s to early 2000s PCs are my favorite things to find. I still have my original computer. A 1997 HP pavilion 8176. I have the original tower and keyboard. I have replaced some of the side panels on the case from a donor. I also threw the monitor out years ago. It was originally a 14in but I lucked up and found a bigger era correct hp monitor that the original speakers slide onto. Its worthless but I love it. I surfed the net for the 1st time on it at age 12, did school projects later on using it. Played NFS etc. Good memories.
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Worthless late 90s to early 2000s PCs are my favorite things to find. I still have my original computer. A 1997 HP pavilion 8176. I have the original tower and keyboard. I have replaced some of the side panels on the case from a donor. I also threw the monitor out years ago. It was originally a 14in but I lucked up and found a bigger era correct hp monitor that the original speakers slide onto. Its worthless but I love it. I surfed the net for the 1st time on it at age 12, did school projects later on using it. Played NFS etc. Good memories.
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Tom
I actually had one of the later models of this that came with Windows ME (ugh. Although I did end up wiping it & loading 98SE anyways, mainly due to ME having atrocious compatibility & support at the time. Dropped in a Sound Blaster card & Voodoo 5 5500 PCI card, it actually played games relatively well at the time. Honestly can't remember what happened to it, I think I pulled the hard drive & donated the rest to a local tech place.
E: 8: 18 maybe I forgot to pull the hard drive, that file looks familiar
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I actually had one of the later models of this that came with Windows ME (ugh. Although I did end up wiping it & loading 98SE anyways, mainly due to ME having atrocious compatibility & support at the time. Dropped in a Sound Blaster card & Voodoo 5 5500 PCI card, it actually played games relatively well at the time. Honestly can't remember what happened to it, I think I pulled the hard drive & donated the rest to a local tech place.
E: 8: 18 maybe I forgot to pull the hard drive, that file looks familiar
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Matt
Boy does that thing bring back memories! When I was 18 (1998) I bought my own computer. It was an eMachines that looked exactly like that with a 333mhz pentium. If I bought the budget pc I could also afford the hp cd burner I wanted. Today I own an IT/networking company, and I need to thank eMachines for allowing me to hone my troubleshooting skills. that thing had more random issues and failures than anything I've worked on since! It was a great learning tool. but a horrible computer.
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Boy does that thing bring back memories! When I was 18 (1998) I bought my own computer. It was an eMachines that looked exactly like that with a 333mhz pentium. If I bought the budget pc I could also afford the hp cd burner I wanted. Today I own an IT/networking company, and I need to thank eMachines for allowing me to hone my troubleshooting skills. that thing had more random issues and failures than anything I've worked on since! It was a great learning tool. but a horrible computer.
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Dennis
so many good and bad memories, dad and mom bought one for 350. 00. got us kids a 633 IDS with ME on it, came with keyboard, monitor mouse, and powered speakers. had a crystal wave pci sound card no internal sound, and cirrus logic on board graphics, had 256mb ram. the thing we hated about it, windows me kept crashing so dad took it in a dozen times to get fixed, then got fed up with it and got a compaq deskpro with windows 2000, which i still have and playing games to this day on it
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so many good and bad memories, dad and mom bought one for 350. 00. got us kids a 633 IDS with ME on it, came with keyboard, monitor mouse, and powered speakers. had a crystal wave pci sound card no internal sound, and cirrus logic on board graphics, had 256mb ram. the thing we hated about it, windows me kept crashing so dad took it in a dozen times to get fixed, then got fed up with it and got a compaq deskpro with windows 2000, which i still have and playing games to this day on it
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Kevin
eMachines was something even my family knew to stay away from. Instead, they all ended up with those see-thru green HP machines because Hey, HP might have made terrible computers, but they made a dang good printer.
Also in a world where everything was wired, I much rather prefer the unpowered speakers with no subwoofer. It was just a cleaner setup. And you could steal them, put them in your bookbag & bring them on the bus and everyone could listen to your non-skip discman.
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eMachines was something even my family knew to stay away from. Instead, they all ended up with those see-thru green HP machines because Hey, HP might have made terrible computers, but they made a dang good printer.
Also in a world where everything was wired, I much rather prefer the unpowered speakers with no subwoofer. It was just a cleaner setup. And you could steal them, put them in your bookbag & bring them on the bus and everyone could listen to your non-skip discman.
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