First episode, the Case.

Let's see what we have to work with. The case is a little bit weird, but mostly in a good way. It has some stupid HP/Compaq like engineering choices as well. Anyway, this is a Micro ATX case and it can accommodate decently sized Micro ATX boards, while on the outside remaining as small as any AT PC Tower. It also shares some common stuff with an AT PC. There is a sliding PC cover, there is a removable backplate for the motherboard (just like it is common in AT PC's). Yet, it uses an SFF PSU and here is the silly thing, it does have enough room to host a proper ATX Power Supply, but someone forgot to cut a hole for it! Typical HP 😄

Another thing I do not appreciate is the hole for floppy drive, which is molded into a face plate... Why, just why??? Now I'll want to have a working floppy drive, which will limit my choice of motherboards for it...

Then to add some insult to the injury, they squeezed the most meager of SFF Power Supplies they could find. This useless thingy here:

At first glace it looks pretty normal, but it's the specs that are quite funny!

As you can see it's rated for up to 50W on 5Volt rail, and that basic system it was paired with were drawing well over 60, more like 66W or so. It was only able to deliver that while abusing 3.3Volt rail! Nuts! I wonder what kind of experience would it be to load it with some PCI and ISA cards, 🤣! What is even more funny, it's 12Volt rail is only capable to provide power to exactly one hard drive and one cd-rom drive, now this is either funny or well optimized!

Anyway, I happened to have another, modern, SFF Power Supply, which is also nothing fancy, but it can deliver decent umph! I had to replace a blown capacitor and improvise with a replacement fan as original went bad and I was unable to buy replacement featuring correct dimensions. For now I just went with standard 8cm the fitment is not great but it does the job for now.

And it seem to work alright! It can deliver more than twice as much power on a 5Volt, plus the 12Volt rail is decent too. And it fits well into this case!

Originally I was thinking about cutting hole for a proper ATX Power Supply, but then it would be just a normal Micro ATX case and I kind of want to preserve at least some of the HP insanity 😄

Second episode, the system.

So there I was pondering what to actually build into this case? After some thought, I went with LGA775 retrofit. I kind of wanted to have a decent Windows XP PC. Also I wanted to have a working Floppy drive! I kind of like to use those sometimes, they are fun! And with LGA775 is easy to find a Micro ATX motherboard with a Floppy controller. Yet, to my knowledge, there is no good reason why floppy interface is not available on recent PC's, most newer Chipsets could still support it, it's just that it's deemed useless by the mainstream...

Anyway, as usual, I went through my stuff and gathered some parts for the initial build. I'll most likely will improve it in near future, especially the motherboard. I went with Intel 945 Chipset as this is the only LGA775 motherboard I could find laying around at the moment. Really, I would love to find one with an G41 Chipset or at least G31.

I have filled it with a Core 2 Duo E8500 (Would love to replace it with some Xeon later) and two 512MB DDR2 sticks from Corsair, also found a decent heat-sink. Like I've said, it'll do for now.

There are also a few nice bits, a NEC IDE DVD-RW drive.

Creative X-Fi PCI sound card (Also found Audigy 2) should be nice for some sweet EAX.

As for graphics, I think, a GeForce GT440 should fit nicely. It was acquired in a weirdly fashion. Some random gentlemen came into my shop and said he was sick of his PC and presented an ultimatum, either I buy it from him for some very small price or he will just put it into a dumpster! Well, that's kind of silly so I've took it. And upon inspection, it was quite decent system with first gen i3, with decent Power Supply, with gt440 in it etc... Only problem, it was full of dust! Some of the fans could not even spin! It's was crazy loud and unstable, no wonder that person lost his mind 😄 Some cleaning was all it needed. Oh well.

A random Wi-Fi card, for the heck of it, why not?

Lastly, a tried and true Samsung 850 Evo.

Final episode, the build.

All that is left do to now is just put it all together and see how it goes. And it sure was a smooth and pleasant sailing. I really enjoyed putting this little cutie of a PC together, the case is very sturdy and substantial, yet small and very well sorted out. It's nice to have a removable back-plate on which it is possible to mount motherboard and even to test before assembly, very convenient!

Since there are not so many wires, it is fairly straightforward to route them properly. And while the case is well thought out, this was an easy job. Actually I much prefer this classic style of PC building, it's like 10mins and done. All is tidy, all is easily accessible, all the needed wires are at hand. While with the modern builds, especially with LGBT Led nonsense and all these useless fan's, plus for some reason unknown to man, the PSU *must* be located in the bottom (making it effectively a vacuum cleaner), which also makes it mandatory to have very long wires dangling everywhere. It's just a cluster***k, always. Don't get me wrong, I like some aspects of modern computing, but PC cases just went horribly wrong in the last few years. Which is why retro computing is even more appealing to me. Anyway, I might have to find a slightly longer cable for the floppy drive tough.

It is time for a final wrap. Just for this occasion, I went to the Depo store in search of some interesting vinyl wraps. Lately I've been browsing my old photos and found some very embarrassing stuff, but also quite original. You see, long time ago, I had this Compaq Armada laptop, which was properly cool and actually once of the greatest laptops, which has suffered some very low quality wrapping with... Jeans! Yes, jeans. You see, in my carrier I have seen many computers made of or decorated with plastic, metal, magnesium, aluminum, leather, etc, but I have never ever seen a computer finish using jeans. So, this happened 😊

I really wish that I could say "this is not mine" 😄 But I still would like to do a jeans finish on PC. Properly. There was no jeans like wraps at the Depo store, however. But I've found some velvet. Close enough for now! And so it is, wrapped in blue velvet, booting Windows 98 for it's last time. Isn't it cute?

While I have already expressed my love for the business range of OEM computers where I con forgive the non standard parts for overall reliability and build quality, I usually cant stand the budget home range stuff from exact some companies as you just get the worst of both worlds, often for more then a generic build from a local computer shop that used to exist in every town, so I'm not sad to see this one gutted.

XP is my most used "management" PC old enough to run software or create driver disks or whatever for older rigs while modern enough to play nice with newer OS's.

Someone here called the FDD cover a labia which I have now stolen. As always a stupid idea (it doesn't make the drive look any better) but at least it looks to be the style where a standard drive just sits behind the case (which makes it even more pointless in a way)

Love those old 1990’s HP computers.
The 90’s was the height of the HP company when they dominated the computer market and other markets too.
It was HP’s Glory days when they became the world leader in computer sales.
They had campuses all over Silicon Valley and California.

They were a Class act in Silicon Valley. They ran an honest, ethical tight ship.
One of the best companies to work for in Silicon Valley. They set the standard for computer companies in
California.

HP Vectra and Pavilion PC’s. HP Netservers and HP 9000 computers. HP Printers and Monitors.

chinny22 wrote on 2022-10-14, 13:52:

... often for more then a generic build from a local computer shop that used to exist in every town ...

I actually work in such a shop and yes, ussualy it's better chance to obtain better value from buying here than going economy OEM route. Yet, there are exceptions, as always. It can depend a lot on communication and sales person desire to get rid of things, 😄

chinny22 wrote on 2022-10-14, 13:52:

XP is my most used "management" PC old enough to run software or create driver disks or whatever for older rigs while modern enough to play nice with newer OS's.

Totally agree! It's also invaluable for me, since many questionable tools tend to prefer XP or at least work really well and trouble-free there. Also, it's a great little OS that still isn't too pushy about what and when should I install or how to use things... Always keep at least one XP PC around!

chinny22 wrote on 2022-10-14, 13:52:

As always a stupid idea (it doesn't make the drive look any better) but at least it looks to be the style where a standard drive just sits behind the case (which makes it even more pointless in a way)

Actually, in this case, the style does not support standard drive, or at least not easily 👎 So yeah, floppy drive is original, hope it shall live long and happy life 😃

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2022-10-14, 16:34:

Love those old 1990’s HP computers. The 90’s was the height of the HP company when they dominated the computer market and other […]
Show full quote

Love those old 1990’s HP computers.
The 90’s was the height of the HP company when they dominated the computer market and other markets too.
It was HP’s Glory days when they became the world leader in computer sales.
They had campuses all over Silicon Valley and California.

Yes as a company, they are pretty good one to do business with. And probably that is how they get to sell a lot of stuff. But personally, I am yet to find an HP PC which I would truly like. Somehow, they tend to build most things right, but others very wrong. And I'm not a fan of their styling, for some reason very seldom HP stuff appear as beautiful or at least stylish to me.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2022-10-14, 16:34:

They were a Class act in Silicon Valley. They ran an honest, ethical tight ship. One of the best companies to work for in Silico […]
Show full quote

They were a Class act in Silicon Valley. They ran an honest, ethical tight ship.
One of the best companies to work for in Silicon Valley. They set the standard for computer companies in
California.

HP Vectra and Pavilion PC’s. HP Netservers and HP 9000 computers. HP Printers and Monitors.

Cool to know! And thanks for those HP Wallpapers, might come in handy!