VOGONS


First post, by Rodoko

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So, the last year my friend found a Compaq Presario 4640 and asked me if I wanted but I told him "no thanks" since I had a K6-2 based one from 1999 (5184) but yesterday I went to walk with my friend and I told him that I wanted the machine so he gave it to me

Since the machine was so heavy we carried it from his home to mine and it arrived without any issues :3

After that my friend went back to his home and I did get the machine to my room with my force in my hands, then I prepared my bed (Yes I do all my computer work in my bed with a big piece of wood to prevent the tinniest bit of ESD of hitting the components) and I started the machine up, it did boot to Windows ME (Yuck!!!) but I did found some intresting stuff like a rip from a Rod Stewart CD and that was it and then I began to format the drive and then the problems started

Before starting to describe the upgrades I did, I wanna mention that this machine had EVERYTHING original, like it was never ever upgraded... until yesterday at the night x3 (Like my HP Vectra, remember it??) and the machine was built in late '97 (11/22/1997) early 1998 so I was impressed that nobody did upgrades thru the whole time when that machine was in service with his original owner

Last use was in 2004, so yeah

And now for the upgrades!! :3

First of all was to install 98SE on the Slowtum Smallfoot drive, it took me almost 3 times to do it since the installation would freeze at some point because it had less RAM than recommended

And to prove it that it had the original components, take a look at this Compaq ad for their refurbished computers

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Compaq's ad for their refurbished machines (Source: PC Mag, 11/3/1998)
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Here's how I got it

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Door is missing ;.;
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Original Pentium II 266 processor
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The first upgrade is that I switched the drives until I decided to stay with an HP CD Writer from the year 2001 made by Mitsumi since the Hitachi DVD drives (I have two of them) have issues reading discs sometimes and then it was turn for the RAM which I upgraded from the original 48 megs to a single PC-100 stick consisting of 128 megs (Since the motherboard has a 440LX chipset I was sure that it was going to accept it)

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Original PC-66 RAM consisting of a 32 and 16 meg modules
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Then today I swapped the Quantum Bigfoot drive for something more faster and bigger, a 6.4 GB Seagate drive and before that I replaced the dead CMOS battery

Since the case only accomodates Quantum drives I had to do a little paper jig uwu

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Due to the lack of a proper 5"1/4 adapter I had to do something using paper (?
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Continues in the second post

Last edited by Rodoko on 2019-01-06, 03:47. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 1 of 2, by Rodoko

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Continuation from the first post

So, the Seagate drive was a nice upgrade, so what I did is I used a PIII computer to run Acronis on it to copy the contents of the Quantum to the new one and then I installed NFS II (I love Rom Di Prisco's songs on it) to test if the paper jig that I made resisted the vibrations caused by it and it did!!

Aside from the paper, the drive is supported by just one screw which at the first time I considered it dangerous, so that's why I made the paper support

So, the machine ended looking like this

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Upgraded machine
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More pics

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HDD size comparison, my god, the Bigfoot of course is so big, according to Quantum is "the bigger the platter the more space we have but the slow the transfer access is going to be (?
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promosticker.jpg
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Still has the original promo sticker so, I made a closeup so you guys can read it :3
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K-pop lover :3 (Girl group: Twice)
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especificaciones.jpg
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Specs for those intrested
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The last two pics were taken on the machine itself

So, I hope that you enjoyed this double post as I enjoyed making it owo//

Reply 2 of 2, by Soap

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Rodoko wrote on 2019-01-05, 18:47:
Continuation from the first post […]
Show full quote

Continuation from the first post

So, the Seagate drive was a nice upgrade, so what I did is I used a PIII computer to run Acronis on it to copy the contents of the Quantum to the new one and then I installed NFS II (I love Rom Di Prisco's songs on it) to test if the paper jig that I made resisted the vibrations caused by it and it did!!

Aside from the paper, the drive is supported by just one screw which at the first time I considered it dangerous, so that's why I made the paper support

So, the machine ended looking like this

upgrades.jpg

More pics

quanseagate.jpg

promosticker.jpg

desktop.jpg

especificaciones.jpg

The last two pics were taken on the machine itself

So, I hope that you enjoyed this double post as I enjoyed making it owo//

Lovely thread and old so apologies if resurrecting but I recently dug the old family computer out, same model but for the life of me cannot find the restore CD. Don't suppose you have an ISO?

Cheers