VOGONS


First post, by EddieHimself

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Hello y'all. When I was about 7 years old in late 1998, my father decided to upgrade from our Olivetti 286 with white monochrome display that he had received for free from his friend a few months earlier, which he then ended up taking to the dump due to it being completely worthless at the time! The PC he replaced it with was a Compaq Deskpro EP 6333. The "6" referred to the 6.4-GB hard disk drive, whilst the "333" referred to the 333-MHz Intel Celeron microprocessor. It was a fairly pedestrian affair, with a fairly pedestrian 64 MB of RAM; some kind of video card, Creative PCI 128 sound card (which drove a 10-W speaker on the back of the case); CD-ROM and floppy drives; 28.8-k modem; and Windows 95. This, along with matching Compaq 15" CRT monitor, keyboard, and mouse, came in at a snip for just £1600 (about £2900 in today's money).
We gave it a couple of upgrades, including a Freecom 32A CD rewriter in an external USB enclosure, before once again upgrading in late 2002, pretty much exactly 4 years later. That old Compaq eventually made its way to me. I had a keen interest in building PCs at this point, so I decided to take it all apart. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work when I put it back together; the hard disk had failed. We got rid of the system in about 2005. I kept the monitor for a bit but ended up selling that for a whopping £10 when I was about 15. The worst thing is that I didn't put it in proper packaging, and it was killed during delivery.
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All that remains of that old system is the mouse and restore CD (which I have uploaded to Archive.org should anyone need it). Fast forward another 15 years, and an opportunity presented itself when I saw a very similar (but not quite identical) PC case to the original system on eBay, which I promptly bought. The case had some rust spots on it, which I patched up with a bit of rustproofing. The other thing is that the case had been converted from desktop to tower form factor. With these Deskpro EP cases, this could be achieved by simply rotating the bezel that sits in front of the 5.25" drive bays by 90° and putting the drives in that way as well. However, they hadn't changed the badge plate with the Compaq logo on it to the tower version, meaning that the text would be vertical in tower format. Since our Compaq was a desktop model, it was a simple matter of rotating the bezel and the included floppy drive bracket back to their original positions to be used as a desktop case.
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But wait, there's more! In their infinite wisdom, Compaq decided to use some proprietary form factor for their power supplies. When I saw the price of such power supplies, I decided on a better idea: a bracket. Now, remember when I said the case wasn't identical? This worked out in my favour. Basically, for the later Pentium III models with the Intel 810/810e chipset, they decided to open up the area where the PSU was, rather than only having holes for the IEC connector and fan. This meant that I could use a bracket to attach a standard ATX power supply to the case. I created the bracket in FreeCAD, which I then printed out as a drawing that I used as a template to make it out of plywood. Why plywood? Because I’m far too cheap to make it out of sheet metal.
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Last edited by EddieHimself on 2021-08-29, 17:08. Edited 3 times in total.

Reply 1 of 11, by EddieHimself

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It’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but it does the job. I also sourced a generic 10-W speaker with the right shape and size to fit in the back of the case. With the case sorted, the next matter was the rest of the system. In my other thread about a 486, I mentioned that the AT-style case came with a Pentium II system. Well, that originally came with a 400 MHz Pentium II. With that being a factory option for the EP series in late 1998, it meant that I could get the older 440BX Compaq OEM motherboard, which was found easily enough. One annoying problem however is that, with this being an early variant of ATX, Compaq decided to use some really weird layout for the backplate, where the USB sockets were actually right on the left, before the PS/2 connectors. I have not seen any other motherboard that does this.
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Well, it took a long time, but eventually I managed to attract the elusive backplate down, albeit at an eye-watering £30 from Germany, approximately £4 of which is having to pay VAT for a used part. Thanks, Brexit! Hopefully, I’ll be getting that soon so I can finally put my connectors in from the front without having to worry about being zapped.
The floppy disk drive was next on the agenda. With it being in this bezel, it meant I needed a Compaq OEM model to retain the actual disk door. I managed to find one for this model, but it was badly damaged by rust. I managed to patch things up on the board, but it was dead. Luckily, I managed to find a similar model from a Presario.
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This one was in much better condition and fully working. Only issue, the LED was the wrong colour! I replaced the green LED on the Presario disk drive with a new amber one, and it’s working great. Unfortunately, it is very much on the bright side compared to the other LEDs on the case now. It just goes to show how much more power-efficient LEDs from today are compared to 20 years ago. As with the 486 case’s power LED, I plan to get a resistor at some point to hopefully make it a bit dimmer. Another thing was that the screws were actually different, being M3 screws rather than the #6 screws used in the Deskpro (as you may be aware, Compaq used weird proprietary screws with both a hex and slot head), but that was a simple matter of swapping these rails that held the screw holes on.
As well as the Pentium II, I also used the 8-GB hard disk drive from the AT system. While not quite as loud as the original Compaq HDD, it is still very prominent when spinning and loading, which gives it a nice sense of authenticity. This is the main boot drive, with a 32-GB CompactFlash card giving me plenty of space for retro Windows 9x games.
Rather than going completely original with the cards, I decided to use sound and graphics cards that I had on hand, those being a Creative 3D Blaster Banshee PCI and AWE64 Gold respectively:
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There is a driver bug with the 3D Blaster that means V-sync can’t be enabled, even if it’s checked on the menu. This of course breaks a lot of games. Luckily, using a third-party Voodoo control program, I am able to override the V-sync option. I suspect this issue may be why this card cost me less than 3 figures.

Last edited by EddieHimself on 2021-08-29, 17:13. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 2 of 11, by EddieHimself

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I installed Windows 98 on here; being a dummy, I didn’t realise that the Compaq restore CD, like all Windows 95 CDs, isn’t bootable. Perhaps I’ll try putting the OEM version of Windows 95 on here at some point, but I’m happy with what I’ve got installed right now and don’t really want to mess with it. That leaves the final thing in terms of the PC itself. The pictured 52X CD drive was actually faulty; I think the laser is on its way out as it randomly hangs on occasion. Now, remember I talked how we got a Freecom CD rewriter back in the day? I just so happened to find the same model (albeit just the CD drive itself, without the enclosure) being sold as untested for £5, with an E-IDE cable included. I got it, and it appears to be working great!
So that’s the PC itself, but that’s not the end of the story: there is also the matter of the keyboard and mouse. As mentioned, the original mouse has been sitting around in my room for the best part of 20 years. With the system originally having been situated next to the window in our south-facing upstairs living room, it had gone extremely yellow. Likewise, the replacement Compaq keyboard I bought had become rather jaundiced during its long spell at Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council.
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I took both of them apart so I could get them thoroughly cleaned and retrobrighted. The Compaq keyboard is quite interesting: it’s what would be referred to these days as “semi-mechanical,” that is, the keys are on plungers that push down individual membranes with carbon contacts. There is also a solid steel plate that weighs in at around 600 grams (or more than a pound if you are still that way inclined). This helps with the stability of the keyboard and keeping it in the same place, but I suspect it was more to give it a more expensive feel, so you didn’t feel like you’d missed out too much by not spending more on that IBM system. One of the mouse buttons had also stopped working, so I used the time it was apart to replace the two microswitches.
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As you can see, it looks a whole lot better now! So, that’s about it. I really, really wish I hadn’t gotten rid of that monitor, because that’s the thing I need to complete the setup and the chances of me ever finding one again are remote. I don’t feel there’s any point in regretting the things I’ve done though, because I don’t believe that anything is truly random. Thus, saying “I could have done things differently” becomes a falsehood. The fact that I didn’t do it differently means I couldn’t have, because I would always have made that decision given those exact circumstances and what I thought was best at the time. What’s done is done, and all we can do is try to learn from our mistakes.
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So, this is the completed system. The 10-W speaker I put in the case is just for show, as I had no interest in playing those AWE64 sounds through that crappy little thing! Instead, I’ve got my Yamaha 2.1 speaker setup, which sounds absolutely fantastic. The Windows 98 startup sound sounds like that THX scene at the movie theatre. Well, thanks for reading. I know this was a long one. It took me two hours to write this post. Well, that’s one way to spend a Sunday afternoon, I suppose.

Reply 3 of 11, by chinny22

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My first IT job was a office full of Compaq's but we only had 1 of these style cases and always thought the drivebay rotation thing was smart. The user only used his in desktop form as well so never tested how easy it was to convert.

plywood, meh. No one is going to see back of the case anyway and I'd much prefer the flexibility of a generic PSU.
Cases with FDD "Labia" as someone called it here were annoying because of that very reason. Although my Dell XPS T500 actually has a black FDD from a Compaq D510. as both require the face plate removed.
Lucky the only thing not covered by the case is the door and the black just makes the hole seem dark rather then standing out.

You didn't say what CPU you have? In any case I'd say Win98 while maybe not as period correct is better suited for a BX based system over 95.
Overall I like this rig

Reply 4 of 11, by Intel486dx33

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I like the AWE64. It produced okay sound and is supported in most DOS games.
I think it sounds better than the Sound Blaster 16.

I would use a different video card however. That Banshee is NOT very good.
Maybe and TNT or TNT2 or GeForce.

Reply 5 of 11, by EddieHimself

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chinny22 wrote on 2021-08-31, 10:16:
My first IT job was a office full of Compaq's but we only had 1 of these style cases and always thought the drivebay rotation th […]
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My first IT job was a office full of Compaq's but we only had 1 of these style cases and always thought the drivebay rotation thing was smart. The user only used his in desktop form as well so never tested how easy it was to convert.

plywood, meh. No one is going to see back of the case anyway and I'd much prefer the flexibility of a generic PSU.
Cases with FDD "Labia" as someone called it here were annoying because of that very reason. Although my Dell XPS T500 actually has a black FDD from a Compaq D510. as both require the face plate removed.
Lucky the only thing not covered by the case is the door and the black just makes the hole seem dark rather then standing out.

You didn't say what CPU you have? In any case I'd say Win98 while maybe not as period correct is better suited for a BX based system over 95.
Overall I like this rig

Thanks. Well, assuming you had thumbscrews on the back (as were included with the original PCs) and assuming you weren't replacing any of the drives, you could actually flip the drives round without any tools. If you look inside the case, you can see these two coloured levers, which are there to hold the drives in place. If you had it in tower configuration, you'd just use the green lever for all the drives (including the HDD(s)). In desktop configuration though, you use the yellow lever for the 5.25" drives. The front cover simply comes off by pulling a couple of tabs at the top (as indicated by the green arrows on the top), and then you hinge the front down and pull it away. Then, on the front fascia, 4 plastic press fittings hold the drive bay front and blanking plate holder on. It's even notched so you can only put it in two ways round 😀. Unfortunately, some of the bits of plastic have come off over the years, but it still all stays in place.

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I did say it was a Pentium II 400 MHz, although it was a bit unclear reading it back, sorry about that! Yeah, I suspect you are correct about that. I think the Pentium and MMX CPUs are probably best suited to Windows 95. It's just I do remember having that Compaq desktop background on the original PC, and I'd like to get touches like that again. I might be able to get it off the CD?

Reply 9 of 11, by Joakim

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Your cable routing is a much better than mine. My system has 4 different kinds of ribbon cables in it.

IDE, floppy and two different kinds of SCSI, where one is from a controller card in the other side of the computer to an old cd burner. Lol

It is a retro mess!