Emachines was a computer brand that hit the market back in 1998. They were marketed as budget-friendly computers that could be easily used by the family for things like email, homework, and light gaming. They generally used lower-cost budget components and had a motherboard that, although capable, usually had fewer options and expandability to higher end offerings.
The emachine line did come with a branded mouse, monitor, and keyboard, but unfortunately, I only have the keyboard.
The keyboard features a number of special buttons to open up predetermined webpages. The overall quality is okay, but the keys feel a bit “squishy”.
The computer we will be taking a look at in this article is the Etower 600is from the year 2000. My particular machine is mostly stock, with very little upgrading done when I received it. Mine also seems to have the original CD-ROM drive, which, from what I’ve seen, is usually dead or has been replaced.
Let’s start by taking a look at the front of the case. These machines are somewhat infamous for their marketing stickers blazoned across the front panels. The most hilarious is the “never obsolete” sticker that is fairly common. Mine unfortunately only has a large sticker for a $75 rebate.
The case is a mini tower with only two 5.25-inch bays and a bay with a molded-in plate for a 1.44MB floppy drive. Mine actually has the original working CD-ROM drive, which seems to be fairly rare to find on these machines these days. The top of the case is slightly rounded, making stacking anything on top a precarious proposition. Below the floppy drive is a long horizontal HDD activity light, and under that a rather stiff power button with the power LED in its center.
I do really like the small door on the bottom of the case that opens to reveal a frontal USB 1.1 port and a joystick port.
Taking a look at the back of the case.
On the rear, we have dual PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse, as well as one more USB 1.1 port. Below that, we have a single parallel and a single serial port, followed by a VGA port for the built-in video. Lastly, we have three audio jacks for line out, line in, and mic. At the very bottom of the case are four slots for expansion cards, though this particular motherboard only has three.
The Etower 600is came with Windows ME installed, but there’s nothing stopping you from installing an OS of your choice, such as Windows 98.
ok, let’s take a look inside
The power supply on this model, and from what I can gather, many Emachines have a mini PSU. It’s standard ATX, but the form factor is small. When these fail, that means replacing them with a standard PSU may be difficult due to the difficulty of mounting it properly.
My 600is fortunately, also came with its original and working 10GB TriGen hard drive.
The motherboard is a TriGem Anaheim-2. My board features three PCI slots, though I’ve read of variations with fewer PCI slots. There is space for an AMR slot above the top PCI slot.
1) CPU – Being a budget PC, the Etower 600is uses an Intel Celeron Processor as opposed to the more capable and expensive Pentium III in the motherboard’s Socket PGA370. The Celeron had half the L2 cache of the Pentium III and ran on a 66MHz front side bus as opposed to the 100MHz front side bus more common with the Pentium III. Theoreticlly an earlier Pentium III running on the 66MHZ FSB should work, but I was unable to test. The Intel 810 chipset and the PGA370 socket “should” allow for 100MHz FSB, but when I tried swapping the 600MHz Celeron out for either a 800MHZ Celeron or an 800MHZ Pentium III, the PC would not POST. If that’s the case, then the 766MHz Celeron running on a 66MHz FSB is the top CPU for this motherboard.
Despite being cut down, the Celeron in my tests performed pretty well for playing most games from around the year 2000, though you may need to reduce your graphical settings if you want better framerates. For older titles before 2000, most games shouldn’t be an issue.
2) Chipset – The 600is motherboard uses the Intel 810L “Whitney” chipset. This chipset does support 66MHz and 100MHz front side bus speeds, but I was unable to run any CPU at 100MHz on my 600is.
Video – The Intel 810 chipset has built-in video in the form of the integrated 2D/3D Intel 752i. This GPU is an evolution of the earlier Intel 740i GPU, which was available as a discrete video card. Despite being an integrated video, I found it to be fairly capable, and after testing a number of games from around the year 2000, I saw no graphical glitches or oddities, though performance wasn’t as good as you may get by upgrading to something like a PCI 3DFX Voodoo 3 or Nvidia TNT2. Be sure to install the latest video drivers if you want OpenGL support from the integrated video. Please note that there appears to be no way to disable the integrated video, so upgrading your video card may be a challenge. I experenced lock ups and conflicts and was not able to successfully install a discrete video card. I also confirmed with anouther emachine user with a similar model that they were unable to upgrade the video or even add a Voodoo 2 3D accelerator card to complement the integrated video.
3) RAM – The 600is motherboard has two slots for adding memory. Originally, the PC came with 32MB of installed RAM. Many spec sheets indicate that 256MB is the maximum amount of memory that can be installed via two 128MB SDRAM sticks, though I had no trouble maxing my memory up to 512MB via two 256MB RAM modules.
4) Sound – Sound is provided by a built-in CS4281 chip from Crystal. I didn’t find any issues with it in my limited testing, and it sounded okay, though upgrading to a Sound Blaster Live! would probably give better sound as well as EAX support.
5) I/O – dual IDE connectors for supporting up to four IDE devices, as well as a single floppy connector and a piezo speaker.
I did attempt to upgrade this machine, and to be honest, it was a bit of a nightmare. There appears to be no way to disable the integrated video, which seemed to give me a lot of issues when trying to upgrade the video card to a PCI Radeon 7000 and then a PCI Nvidia FX 5200. This resulted in a lot of headaches, such as OS lock-ups or no video at all. In the end, I gave up, though you may have more luck with an earlier PCI card, such as a TNT2 or Voodoo 3.
The Etower 600is is a budget PC, and you should expect budget performance. Despite that, I didn’t have an overall bad time with the PC in its mostly stock form, and it seemed to handle games from around its 2000 release adequately. The lack of ISA slots probably doesn’t make this machine the best build for a DOS PC, but as a Win9x PC, I think it does well.
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