Final episode, the conclusion.

This was an interesting build for me, as I've done a few before, but these were different in that I have tackled those with an excitement. And this one... Well, you know, I'm not fond of it. And I really do dislike a lot about it. I am weird, I know, but I do not enjoy the CRT, plus the case is HUGE, it is necessary to sacrifice whole desk space in order to use it. The hardware is plain c**** yet somehow I was able to push through the whole ordeal and the end result is weirdly satisfactory. Which makes me wonder.

I guess those quirks of old hardware are both interesting and funny to discover, so it was nice to experience some of that first hand. It is also nice to rescue old PC from recycling center, even if I don't like it all that much.

As for Compaq, to be fair, they sometimes made some excellent gear, but this PC is not the case in my opinion. This one, probably, has been designed in such a way that they would strive to include as much big brands as possible, so then marketing could brag. There for it has chips with a good names, like S3, ESS, Pentium MMX, etc. yet, due to cutting so many corners the whole thing is sour. If I had such a PC back then, I would be looking forward to upgrade it to the next year model, which could likely be on purpose 😄 Or at any rate, I would not have kept it, and many people didn't.

Yet here it is, almost free and working well. It is able to play DOS games quite well! Even my little daughter took notice and thus I might take her example and play though some great classics. Even if I'm not to keep it, it is sure nice to sit back in a cosy corner and play it for a little while...

For those interested, here is a humble Video Tour available.

Came out nice. These things do what they do, ploddy ploddy. Try Myst on it or something early Pent, Terminal Velocity, don't get too optimistic with resolution. IDK if it takes up soooo much desk space, original IBM AT case and clones were real monsters. Even PC/XT footprint might be a tad wider, hard to tell by photo and eyeball. Compared to later SFF stuff it prolly looks huge though.

Heh, with the "Army" wrap I'm feeling a prod to get my gen-you-ine veteran system restored, it's a Micron done for a DoD USAF imaging project is all I know about it. Came with a 233MMX but not sure what it was originally specced with. Think it uses an Intel ATX board, "marl" is in my head for some reason, not sure that's right.

Like they say, if you want to increase the value of something, put some camouflage on it! Terminal Velocity does seem to suit it nicely, I'll try it out, thanks!

I guess I am a semi-modern man, I'm really not used to this IBM AT or PC/XT stuff, if compared to those then yeah, Compaq might not look so bad. I'm comparing it to more modern stuff indeed. Yet I still do not appreciate having to move a CRT monitor somewhere in case I need to open Desktop case. Al tough they do tent to save some space when CRT is involved, but they do waste it where it is important to have some, for e.g. the keyboard area can become quite limited which is uncomfortable.

totoro wrote on 2022-10-05, 21:56:

I am weird, I know, but I do not enjoy the CRT, plus the case is HUGE, it is necessary to sacrifice whole desk space in order to use it. The hardware is plain c**** yet somehow I was able to push through the whole ordeal and the end result is weirdly satisfactory. Which makes me wonder.

Of course, the dimensions of the classic desktop are a bit large, but then they produced two types of SFF: one with a classic CDROM drive of 5.25" and the other with a laptop CDROM, even smaller.
I have that, and with 17" CRT, it looks like this:

Oh yes! The SFF one does look quite a bit cuter, that 17" CRT almost dwarfs it making it look even tinier. As for myself I've never found SFF appealing since basically the same inconveniences of a huge desktop case remain plus SFF Power Supplies can be troublesome to replace and tend to be louder due to those small fans inside them. Anyway nice setup 😄

This was a great read and nice job on fixing up this Compaq! The camo vinyl wrap was a bold move but I really like how it turned out. The only downside is finding it again after it's been put in storage, now that it is camoflaged.

Hehe, thanks mate, I'm happy that this whole ordeal turned out entertaining! As for camouflage, this might be a positive for me, I kind of hope to never find it once I've put it away 😄

enjoyable to follow 😀 you were patient! that keyboard looks nearly as new now

Just remembered this bit of home computing history and a possible theme song for the build. Dude essentially wrote a graphics demo for the ZX81 which had barely any graphics, to play along with his 1983 release "Camouflage"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvmM1n3jryY

Cool tune! Somehow I had sentiment aligned more to the lyrics of this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFYxCIr-Byo

It would be kind of fitting it's debut as a regular (though somewhat big and certainly strange) marine in the army of boring office PC's, which was killed eventually and then it's here to make a flash for a little while, before it's long overdue perish into eternity... It has even managed to save me from an ambush of boring idleness and procrastination, haha!

Yah that one is awesome, much better, catching your boredom bullets etc.

edit: heh, I might have grabbed the opening riff for a windows sound if it were me.

Good one! I might just do it mate 😄 It might be even cooler if I could somehow make an FM Synth version of it...

Good job.
I like these old Deskpros too.
Got some 2000, 4000 and 6000 as well as three of the SFF.
The 4000 allready has AGP grapfics but with a proprietary slot cover, while the 6000 is the PPro edition of the Deskpro.
I was able to grab the graphics memory upgrade as well as the 100 MBit Network upgrade piggyback boards for all my machines off ebay while they were still availiable for cheap.
The SFF was availiable without optical drive as well and with CPUs up to P3. Used one as a Linux server for several years.
Quality of these Deskpros is much better then the following Deskpro EN which are prone to bulging caps.

Fully understand what you mean about "weirdly satisfactory" sums up these brand name PC's well, or earlier PC's I guess with things like HDD limits, lack of AGP, etc.
I get a real kick pushing PC's to the limits but still working within the supported hardware.
I guess it's the challenge rather then simply getting a generic motherboard, which will accept a decent graphics card, etc, etc, etc. wheres the challenge in that?
Don't get me wrong I've probably got equal numbers of both types of builds and thinking about it I do most my gaming on the generic builds but most my tinkering on the OEM's

Oh and Desktop cases have another advantage, you can stack them! I've only 3 desktop style PC's (all 486's) which are all sitting on top of each other, not so great for easy access, very useful when you may have a slight PC collecting problem.

eisapc wrote on 2022-10-27, 05:27:

I was able to grab the graphics memory upgrade as well as the 100 MBit Network upgrade piggyback boards for all my machines off ebay while they were still availiable for cheap.
The SFF was availiable without optical drive as well and with CPUs up to P3. Used one as a Linux server for several years.
Quality of these Deskpros is much better then the following Deskpro EN which are prone to bulging caps.

Thank you for a head up! Nice catch on the upgrades! And yes, while there are quite some evidence of cost cutting going on here, but the machine also has a level of quality to it, I have to admit.

chinny22 wrote on 2022-10-27, 09:07:

Fully understand what you mean about "weirdly satisfactory" sums up these brand name PC's well, or earlier PC's I guess with thi […]
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Fully understand what you mean about "weirdly satisfactory" sums up these brand name PC's well, or earlier PC's I guess with things like HDD limits, lack of AGP, etc.
I get a real kick pushing PC's to the limits but still working within the supported hardware.
I guess it's the challenge rather then simply getting a generic motherboard, which will accept a decent graphics card, etc, etc, etc. wheres the challenge in that?
Don't get me wrong I've probably got equal numbers of both types of builds and thinking about it I do most my gaming on the generic builds but most my tinkering on the OEM's

Oh and Desktop cases have another advantage, you can stack them! I've only 3 desktop style PC's (all 486's) which are all sitting on top of each other, not so great for easy access, very useful when you may have a slight PC collecting problem.

Well said mate, yes the ability to stack can be a nice thing, especially for storage. I got to say, it does start to grow on me. Even if it's bulky, it's also not typical anymore. And the ability to just press the button and enjoy MS-DOS is priceless. I kind of like this old OS way more than Windows 9x stuff. I mean, yeah, it's not as refined, not as graphical, but so resilient! I can just press button and in the second or two just do my stuff and not worry about things crashing or if I'll have to re-install the thing again randomly, or, in the newer Windows, updating in the background, sniffing stuff about me, etc, etc. It's almost like an appliance now. Anyway, back to the machine it self, I'll still try to sell it and I have already moved to a DEC Venturis PC, that does the same thing, but in a towerly fashion 😄

I am very much happy to announce that Compaq has found a new home where I am sure it would be very much appreciated. It was fun to restore it, but I cannot say that I miss the thing 😀