Setting up a Windows XP computer in 2026 - Part 1 - The Hardware

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The history behind this article

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I grew up in an era that was, in my opinion, one of the greatest times to be a child. Born in 1993, I was blessed to have an amazing childhood during the increasing popularity (and feasibility) of having a personal computer at home. My first contact with a PC happened through my great-uncle, who was a mechanical designer in an industry that had recently adopted one of the first versions of AutoCAD^[1], which ran entirely in a console-like GUI.

This old gentleman had a computer in his living room with the classic DOS version of Prince of Persia^[2], which he let me play so I would have something to do while my parents had time to chat peacefully around the dinner table instead of chasing me through someone's home full of delicate objects. I was around 5 or 6 during that time, and my father would soon buy his first personal computer that would be placed in our apartment.

Our first home computer ran Windows 98^[3], had one of those IBM CRT monitors, and opened the door to a magical part of my childhood, especially since my father would bring games from his trips to the United States. Since he wanted us to have contact with the English language since the first years of our lives, he found that bringing me English-language games would help me learn and keep me entertained during the last part of the day.

From the first days playing and drawing at the Paint app, to learning how to navigate the internet, I immersed myself in the computer, trying to understand how the machine worked, and found more and more to learn each time. 

As time passed, my joy for gaming constantly increased. By the early 2000s, I immersed myself in more advanced games such as RollerCoaster Tycoon^[4] and The Sims^[5], evolving my curiosity together with the operating system updates that came year by year. Unfortunately, we don't have that early PC anymore (although I wish I could), and the farthest I could go on having a small piece of old tech was this old computer from 2010 that my grandfather kept until the days before passing away. Since my grandmother wanted to give away this machine, I was the first to stop her.

I removed the hard drive intact, preserving the years of data my grandfather left there. It contained countless documents from his work, apps and photos, and even his French .exe dictionary. As this is now carefully stored, the machine itself is now going to serve another, unexpected purpose: To accompany my son on his journey into the world of computing.

Components and Their Capabilities

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This machine was built by a partnership between SEMP^[6], a Brazilian technology company, and TOSHIBA, the Japanese multinational. These two companies joined forces in 1977 to expand the electronics market in Brazil and held their partnership for almost 40 years. Because of this, there are many computers and TVs from the 1990s and 2000s that are branded SEMP TOSHIBA and are widely available across the country. 

They did not develop any of the specific components. All the computer components were manufactured by either Chinese or Brazilian companies, assembled together, and then labeled with their joint brand. Because of this, it was somehow hard to find the specific drivers. Since the partnership is long gone, there was no SEMP TOSHIBA website from which I could download resources, which sent me searching for the multiple IDs printed on the components. 

The whole setup came branded as the model ES-1647 K-5564 3000 with the following details printed on the side:

Processor	Core i5-2310
Operational System	Windows 7 Home Basic 64 bit
Memory	4Gb DDR3
Hard Drive	500Gb
Optical Driver	DVD-RW
Video	Integrated
Network	Integrated
Accessories	Keyboard + Mouse + Speakers
Computer Case	ATX - Black and Silver
Other Peripherals	SD Card Reader
Additional Software	Office Starter + Norton Internet Security (1 year)

I extracted the specific details of the build using CPU-Z. The report is on the next article in the series.

  Motherboard and Power Supply Unit

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The motherboard used on this computer is a H61H2-M2(V1.0)^[7] from ECS and uses an LGA1150 Intel socket. The board has one PCI Express x16 Gen 3.0 slot and two PCI Express x1 Gen 2.0 slots, uses an AR8152-B 10/100 Fast Ethernet Controller, has four SATA II 3 Gb/s connectors and four USB 2.0 ports. The board has a specific PSU 4-pin ATX12V connector that feeds energy directly to the processor, together with the classic 20-pin PSU input.

The motherboard model used by SEMP TOSHIBA did not have its version printed anywhere, and the model name was also rewritten by the BIOS firmware when the computer was originally shipped assembled. Since this motherboard had two versions and the BIOS update could brick if the wrong one is selected, it was incredibly challenging to identify, and I ultimately took the risk of running the v1.0 BIOS update first. More on this on the next article, where I will cover the software aspects of the build.

The ports on the back are standard for a board manufactured in the early 2010s, and the board is reasonably well manufactured. After a few minutes inspecting it, the caps and the ICs looked remarkably good for a 16-year-old machine.

The day I arrived home and plugged the computer into the power outlet, then pressed the power button, there was no life. I suspected it could be something related to the PSU because the computer would sit idle (but connected) at my grandmother's house for a long time, being exposed to power outages and surges. My main hypothesis was confirmed: The PSU was burnt with a big mark on its internal shell. I am not enthusiastic about continuing to repair PSUs, mainly because anything connected to an outlet makes me nervous, so I bought a new one.