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It may not be worth it, but...

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by guruofdos

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here goes!

As many of you are well aware, Old Guru (or should that be middle-aged?!!) has a penchant for ressurecting old crap and recycling old computers.

I just happened to acquire a 'brand new' Compaq DeskPro (EN Series Model P550/10 desktop format) at an auction yesterday, with an option to buy another 20 or so for about ?10 ($17) apiece.

I say brand new....it's about 4 years old but it was still factory sealed and unused, as are the others. It's a proprietary Intel BX board running a PIII Slot 1 processor,10Gb hard disk, Intel 10/100 network and an AGP2x graphics board.

Well, for the money not a bad buy, and for what I need them for (a local community project 'internet cafe'), they'll make ideal web-surfers.

Anyway, the first one is on the bench right now and I'm having a bit of a fiddle (as one does) and wanted a bit of input from other 'tweakers' out there. Let me throw a few ideas in the ring...

First off, processor upgrade. There IS a PIII 1.4GHz SECC2 processor available which will run on the BX board (100MHz FSB) but in terms of 'bang for buck', it's too bloody expensive. A Celery 1.4 running at 100FSB will work perfectly well with the chipset (and intended use) at about a third of the cost but is a Socket 370 chip so will need a Slot1 to S370 adaptor (Powerleap.com for about ?30, or $48).

Compaq have always been a pain in the butt as far as support goes, and now they have been swallowed up by HP, it's got worse. They have that stupid (F10 to enter Setup) BIOS and one thing it isn't is 'standard'! Without original manuals to refer to, finding info and drivers is hard work.

So....a few thoughts....all comments welcome.

1) Ruling out a PIII 1.4 as a straight replacement chip (assuming the BIOS recognises it!), the Slot to 370 adaptor running a Celeron (Tualatin core PGA370) seems to be the most straightforward option. Of course, any old Celeron will work (Tualatin core and 100MHz FSB) so it doesn't need to be 1.4GHz...1.1 or 1.2 would be ok.

2) Lets assume I get an adaptor card to take a PGA 370 CPU...the Via C3 (Cyrix III) is supposed to be pin compatible with a Celeron and I'm sure I've seen Socket 370 boards that work with either processor, but there MAY or MAY NOT be certain BIOS settings that need changing, and this may not be possible on the Compaq. The C3 can be had for half the cost of the equivalent Celeron and needs less cooling. For general web-browsing, e-mail, etc., the performance difference is negligible. Has anyone out there 'tried' a C3/Cyrix III in a Slot1-S370 adaptor and did it work? Of course, I could find a C3 and try it myself, but I don't want to buy in any more kit if I can help it....it's a charity project!

3) The machine as it stands (or lays there with the lid off!) has 256Mb ram, 10Gb Hard disk, 40x CD and an 8Mb ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP2 card. The case is extremely robust and solid and it's beautifully engineered, with quick 'screwless' access to all components...a real joy to work on. The riser card has plenty of spare slots (not that I need to fit any other cards) and the keyboards have internet buttons on (Easy Access Keys, as Compaq call them).

Is there any point in me actually bothering to upgrade them on the one hand....for teaching old farts to use the Internet (connected to a DSL gateway machine/router/firewall via 100BaseTX) they're probably fine as they are (if it ain't broke, don't fix it). On the other hand, just for the hell of it...just how far can I push one of these monsters?!!! I tried 98, ME and XP on the beast (they come with NT4 Workstation or 98 preloaded and selectable on first boot), and 98 is certainly the fastest, but XP works very smoothly and is easier to get a volume licence for, and all hardware is installed natively in XP without needing any extra drivers.

What do you think peeps? Upgrade the CPU, use a slot adaptor, try a C3 or a Celeron, or just leave the darn things alone, hook 'em up to the server and let them be?

Comments...positive or negative warmly welcomed!

13 replies

by oz_media

Well Guru, we must live in different worlds because I find that the Compaq Supoprt here is second to none.

Mind you, I do not call the end user or retail suport lines just the Deskpro helpdesk.

You should be able to find ALL drivers on their here depending on the OS of course, http://tinyurl.com/2f8wa

I assume they aren't small form factor or else the model would have had the SFF prefix.
As for price, I JUST sold about ten of them for $185.00 ea. Canadian, REFURBED!

Good score!

by thechas

Hi Guru,

Either I missed it, or you did not state the existing CPU speed.

On average, I see no more than a 50% performance increase when I double CPU speed.
25% is much more common.

The increase in performance from increasing the CPU speed drops off rapidly after the CPU speed is greater than 5 times the bus speed.

So, my recommendation would be a 667 or 900 MHz PIII at most.

Next, I seriously doubt that the BIOS is designed to run any CPU that is faster than Intel originally offered in the slot 1 package.
The BIOS will more than likely choke on anything faster than 1 GHz, and likely won't recognize the C3 series at all.
Unless, you can manually set the CPU speed in BIOS.

So again, I would stick with the standard slot 1 CPUs.

A caution on the Rage Pro graphics:
ATI's latest drivers only support DirectX 8.
For XP, ATI recommends using the default driver on the XP CD.
My point here, be cautious with Windows Updates and the version of IE you use.
I would stick with DirectX 8 and stop at IE 5.5 SP2 if for no other reason than to not invite problems.

Unless you expect the users to get into high end gaming or CADD work, there is no "real" reason to perform any upgrades.

Chas

by guruofdos

The 'sample' I have is a PIII 550. The other 20 are a mix of 400, 450 and 500MHz machines.

It works well enough at 550MHz with XP, and the ATI card is fine under XP native drivers. There won't be any gaming going on, apart from the odd java games on a few web sites. Like I said, it's part of a community project to provide access to internet and email as well as basic computer training for the more 'mature' citizen so apart from a bit of Word, Hotmail, and generally surfing the web, they're not really going to be pushed too hard. But, I will have a couple left over and I just wondered if there was any merit in pushing the PIII a bit harder to get a bit more 'oomph' for personal use.

Of course, the BX board is limited by the chipset to ATA66, and the AGP slot can only run at 2x, so I wouldn't want to play games on it, but a Gig or so of 'number crunching' ability would make it a useful 'workhorse' for a bit of basic digital camera work, basic CAD and a few apps for the 'brighter' students who want to do a bit more than send an email to their Grandchildren!

Why do people climb mountains? Because they are there!

by jardinier

Whatever happened to the Guru I used to know who runs AOL 3 on Win 3.1 and revels in getting the most out of the least? Remember your recent comment about Word 1.1?

Leave 'em as they are. Plenty fast enough for general use.

I have as my workhorse computer a Compaq with P 400, 256 MB RAM and 4.3 GB SCSI HDD. The BIOS is so complicated I am scared to enter it.

While Compaq have gone down the drain since purchased by HP, the best computer I ever owned was a Compaq Presario desktop, purchased new in 1997. I have long since sold it, but it is still running perfectly.

by oz_media

I have found that the drivers offered by Compaq for the Rage Pro are the only way to go. I attempted to use newer ATI drivers on various occasions but had nothing but problems when not using the Caompaq drivers.

The main issue with Compaq and IBM's that I have run into is people using coponent manufacturer's drivers with them instead of the PC builders drivers. In many cases Compaq has the drivers customized by ATI if not themselves to compliment their own BIOS and hardware configuration.

Rule of thumb I have found with OEM's, LEAVE them OEM's and they will work fine, drivers are VERY simple to find and update if needed.

Granted there is probably no longer a warranty available as they only offer 3 Yrs P&L on the Deskpros, but I would still recommend even to the most supreme IT Guru, stick with their drivers and you will reduce your service calls and compaitibility problems.

Just speaking from personal experience as I have worked with a LOT of these Deskpro EN's EXD's and EVO's but I am not making a blanket statement of course.

OM

by mcs-1

I would leave them as is. I would think these machines are great for running a cafe style setup used for "for teaching old farts to use the Internet". You sound like you know your systems, so I won't preach ... but you propbably have enough experience to know "if it works ....". Also, think of the money involved ... just to make IE load 5 seconds faster. Not worth the bother in my opinion.

by guruofdos

Well the average age of the users will be late 50's to mid-70's or so, so speed isn't really an issue....why run 2.5Ghz+ when you can only type 4 wpm and your mouse hand is arthritic?!!

I shall probably leave them alone, but upgrade the standard 128Mb PC100 ram to 256Mb (I also acquired sixty or so sticks of brand new genuine Compaq PC100 64MB DIMMS (for $1.50 apiece in the same auction!) and as they are matching, I'll shove of these in the two spare DIMM sockets.

Running XP on various boxes, I found doubling the rame makes far more of a performance boost than upgrading the CPU...certainly 128Mb to 256Mb is a worthy hike in performance and at $3.00 a system it's a cheap upgrade.

But I'm a nerd, so I'm going to play with one anyways just to see how far I can actually push one. The Slotket adaptor is arriving tomorrow and I have a handful of assorted Tualatin Celerons (various speeds) to play with and a C3 cpu sculling around somewhere so I shall load SiSoft Sandra, tweak a few settings, try some different 'engines' and just see what happens....I can think of worse ways to waste an afternoon.

Interestingly, I overclocked the PIII from 550 to 600 and it runs just fine (switch block on the mobo to set multiplier from 5.5x to 6x...the PIII in here is obviously not multiplier locked - woo hoo!)...even with just the passive heatsink and chassis fan. If this one stays up for a week overclocked, I might just leave it at that!

by jamesrl

....in the results of your CPU frankenstein - I was lookin at that upgrade some time ago, and never executed. Of course I have a 700 Mhz, so its not as big a performance boost. I'd also up my RAM from 328 to 512.

I've already upgraded to a GeForce 2 MMX video card - so it won't be the bottle neck.

I do play games - but don't have to have the latest and greatest ones to enjoy them. I switched from MS Office to Open Office and found it runs faster.

You can tell I buy alot of stuff at a place that sells refurbs, pulls and oem white box stuff.

I know there comes a point, as there does with cars, that its better to bite the bullit and get a new one. But I am not there yet.

James

by guruofdos

Still here mate! Do you a good deal on a couple of lovely Pentium 120's...850Mb Hard disks, 16Mb SIMM memory (70nS)...one lady owner from new, low mileage...lovely bodywork (and the computer's cases aren't too shabby either!).

Yes, I regularly 'downgrade' software to maximse 'effective performance', but every now and again, something passes through my hands which just invites a little tweaking. Getting 'most for least' in my book also includes squeezing as much 'bang' as possible for as little 'buck' as possible.

Presarios fell (and still fall) into 2 categories - The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. When I worked in retail as a tech, we sold and supported IBM, Packard Bell and Compaq machines and I've seen some damn ugly examples!! I had to work on several Presarios which were so proprietary that there were only about three parts that could be replaced with parts from other suppliers. As for the F10 to enter BIOS, with the 'BIOS' being a bootstrap to a hidden partition on the hard disk....yeuck!!!

Change the graphics card...lose all the functionality of the volume control knob on the Compaq monitor. Change the modem from 28.8 to 56k...can't do a system restore. Oh yes....ugly was an understatement!

Just for gag value, I contacted an on-line support tecnician a few weeks back...I 'needed' drivers for a modem in a Compaq Presario 7250.

"Oh yes...you need blah blah blah 56k PCI such and such".

"Like hell do I! Its a 14.4 ISA modem."

"No....that machine doesn't even have ISA slots!"

"Sorry pal....it has three of them and 2PCI on the riser card"

"Riser card? What riser card?"

"The one with the ISA and PCI slots..."

"Hmmm....can I get back to you on that one?!!"

Turns out he was looking at info on a Presario 7250, not a Presario 7250!!

Hang on....7250...7250...?

The current 7250 is a big black tower with DVD and heaven only knows how much RAM and CPU. MY Presario is a P75, 8Mb Ram, said 14.4 modem (which being ISA has a 'hardware' Com Port and as such works with a standard serial port driver and Generic 14.4 modem under Win95), 4x CD ROM and a 540Mb hard disk, manufactured in 1993.

Yeah! I recycle old 'puters. Compaq/HP are now recycling old model numbers, assuming that no-one could possibly have an 11 year old Presario that they are STILL using on a daily basis!!!

by guruofdos

Still here mate! Do you a good deal on a couple of lovely Pentium 120's...850Mb Hard disks, 16Mb SIMM memory (70nS)...one lady owner from new, low mileage...lovely bodywork (and the computer's cases aren't too shabby either!).

Yes, I regularly 'downgrade' software to maximse 'effective performance', but every now and again, something passes through my hands which just invites a little tweaking. Getting 'most for least' in my book also includes squeezing as much 'bang' as possible for as little 'buck' as possible.

Presarios fell (and still fall) into 2 categories - The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. When I worked in retail as a tech, we sold and supported IBM, Packard Bell and Compaq machines and I've seen some damn ugly examples!! I had to work on several Presarios which were so proprietary that there were only about three parts that could be replaced with parts from other suppliers. As for the F10 to enter BIOS, with the 'BIOS' being a bootstrap to a hidden partition on the hard disk....yeuck!!!

Change the graphics card...lose all the functionality of the volume control knob on the Compaq monitor. Change the modem from 28.8 to 56k...can't do a system restore. Oh yes....ugly was an understatement!

Just for gag value, I contacted an on-line support tecnician a few weeks back...I 'needed' drivers for a modem in a Compaq Presario 7250.

"Oh yes...you need blah blah blah 56k PCI such and such".

"Like hell do I! Its a 14.4 ISA modem."

"No....that machine doesn't even have ISA slots!"

"Sorry pal....it has three of them and 2PCI on the riser card"

"Riser card? What riser card?"

"The one with the ISA and PCI slots..."

"Hmmm....can I get back to you on that one?!!"

Turns out he was looking at info on a Presario 7250, not a Presario 7250!!

Hang on....7250...7250...?

The current 7250 is a big black tower with DVD and heaven only knows how much RAM and CPU. MY Presario is a P75, 8Mb Ram, said 14.4 modem (which being ISA has a 'hardware' Com Port and as such works with a standard serial port driver and Generic 14.4 modem under Win95), 4x CD ROM and a 540Mb hard disk, manufactured in 1993.

Yeah! I recycle old 'puters. Compaq/HP are now recycling old model numbers, assuming that no-one could possibly have an 11 year old Presario that they are STILL using on a daily basis!!!

by guruofdos

Got the Slotket adaptor today, and suddenly remembered that the boss has a 1.3GHz Celeron Tualitin in HIS PC, so when he went to lunch, I , er, sort of...'borrowed it'.

Well, on the Deskpro, there are switches on the mobo to select any CPU from 333MHz to 650MHz in PII or PIII flavours. How the hell that's supposed to work, as PII and PIII are both multiplier locked, as are Celerons, I don't know, especially as it's a BX board, but I guess it's 66/100 bus speed and perhaps a voltage tweak or three.

Anyway, I fitted the Slotket (Powerleap iP3-PL-T/2 or whatever) and stuffed the 1.3 Celeron in. Left the switches as they are (P550 is 5.5 x 100), fitted a spare drive connector to the Slotket for power (on board regulators and jumpers to tweak Vcore), lit the touchpaper and stood well back.

Guess what..... I got me a 1.3GHz Deskpro (13x 100MHz) and it flies!!! The BIOS (updated to latest version) rolls a 7 everytime it boots and displays a processor error, but pressing F1 to continue boot and ignore the error cures that. As XP doesn't have uptime issues like 98 did, I won't be booting that often, and one keypress is a minor price to pay for more than doubling the speed. XP correctly reports the processor as a 1.3GHz when its running, so no worries there.

Well, bossman has no cpu for his board now (you can't get an adaptor to fit a slot 1 into a Socket370!), but I doubt he'll even notice that his computer now sports a K6-II 450 and Socket A board seeing as his 2.1Gb hard disk (yes, I robbed the 40GB drive the day he bought the machine - "Yes Boss, I'll copy all your old data to the new drive...") only runs in ATA Mode 4!

by oz_media

Does anyone use the Intel Application Accelerators for their chipsets?

I installed on yesterday on my IBM Thinkpad with the 830M chipset and it shuts down in abotu 2 seconds, no joke, click shutdown and it just SHUTS down!

Pretty cool really, I have seen a SLIGHT increase in application speeds but mainly start-up and shutdown speeds are WAY better(which is always welcome).

So they have these "patches/tweaks" for ALL Intel chipsets and most OS's, does anyone else use them, has tried them ???

by guruofdos

WooHoo2....or should that be Voodoo2!!

A guy in the office has been slowly assembling a gaming machine for his teenage son. He recently upgraded his own computer with a Radeon card and put his old Voodoo2 in his kid's machine to supplement the mangy old 8Mb S3VirgeDX which I found in a pile of old 'pulls'. His lad has a small income from a paper round, and so Dad had been buying (begging, borrowing and stealing!) parts here and there, and son has been paying him back a chunk at a time. When another 'debt' is cleared, Dad buys the next 'installment' and son pays him back on the drip. Plus of course, both of them have had odds and ends from me over the months for both computers.

Well, today was young Ashley's sixteenth birthday, so Dad shelled out for a rather sexy 256Mb all-singing, all-dancing f.r.o. graphics card for the lad for a present. Needless to say, there was a Voodoo2 going begging....

...and where did it end up???

You got it!!! In the DeskPro with the Celeron and Slocket Adaptor.

Anyway, I also found a site selling VIA Nehemiah core 1.2GHz C3's (CyrixIII but with a real FPU!!!) which are pin-for-pin drop in replacements for P3/Celeron Tualatin Socket 370 chips.

These chips will run virtually cold with just a passive heatsink even when overclocked so no problem with the passive sink and case fan in the Deskpro, and with a power rating of less than 5 watts (one tenth of the power requirement of a K7/PIII cpu), the 200w psu in the Compaq should just be ticking over.

With a SCSI 64x20x64x16 DVD+/-RW (not available retail yet...UK Q3, US possibly Q1/2005...I have one on beta test from the design labs in Holland!) and a pair of 7200rpm Maxtor 120Gb/8Mb hdd's (?20 each from the auction today!), have I got a fun 'budget machine', or what!!!

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