Computer Help! What is this thing?

[coriolis]

Someone gave me this computer-like box. It's about half the size of a normal desktop computer and it's the old horizontal style - not a tower. On the front there's a CD drive, a floppy drive, and a power button. No name, no model, no nothing. The two drives fill about the entire front. On the back there's a power connection, 3 USB connections, a monitor connection, 3 sound jacks, and a network cable connection. No mouse jack, no keyborard jack, no serial, parallel, printer, or any other ports.

The label on the back says "Gateway Model FLEXATXSTC BRO ESSENTIAL 866" manufactured 12/13/00

The person who gave it to me said its some sort of external storage device. From the limited amount of information I could Google, it's actually some sort of PC. If it's really an 866 processor, that would make it my fastet computer!

Has anyonoe ever heard of anything like this? If yes, could you give me some more information?

[gtalum]

From what I can gather it's actually a small-form-factor, fully functional PC with a PIII 866 MHZ processor. You need to have a USB keyboard and mouse to use it, which is why there are no PS/2 mouse or keyboard connections. You can get a USB keyboard and mouse pretty cheap.

[coriolis]

Thanks for the reply, gtalum. I have a USB keyboard and fired it up. Sure enough it booted just fine(windows ME - ugh) and everything seems functional. I had to discover by trial and error all the keyboard shortcuts since I dont't have a USB mouse. It has a 10 gig hard drive, but only 32 MB RAM, which should be easily fixed from my "box of stuff." This will be a good addition to my stable of 3 older, obsolete, but yet functional machines. I am proud to say that I have never bought a new computer!

The same person also gave me a tower with a Pentium 120 with Windows 95. I don't think I'll use that - I have my standards. But I can strip it out for fans, memory sticks, power supply, drives, etc.

I think that I now have enough parts for a Frankenstein machine based on an old Gateway box with an AMD 500 processor that I previously stripped out. If I take the hard drive out of the P120 and put it in the Gateway box, I think that the gateway recovery disc will install ME on it.

This is fun!

[gtalum]

I love patching together and tinkering with old computers.

If you haven't tried it, you may want to look into running Linux on old machines. It runs much faster than Windows on old, slow technology. I could give you some pointers if you'd like. If you have some computing know-how, it's really not that hard to set things up with some of the new Linux distros.

[coriolis]

I'll do some research on Linix. I've never heard of anyone using it and then regretting it. Thanks again.

[gtalum]

Another benefit of Linux is that there is a LOT of free software out there that runs on it. Basically anything you can buy for Windows, there is an equivalent available free for Linux.