compaq presario 5000 is better than you would think

[ratdude747]

a few years back, one of my teachers gave me her old compaq presario 5000. it needed a new cd burner and floppy drive, but it +monitors and speakers were free
since then, i discovered that an AMD athlon xp up to 1.8ghz will run in it. i thoght that the thing was only good for a PIII clas processor, but i never guessed it would take a P4 class one

the other thing i like about it is that all the caps on the board were rubycons. No crap, primo only. Never had any issues with it it since.

So far I have gotten it this far:

1.6 AMD athlon XP (palamimo core), 786mb SDRAM, 160 GB WD hard drive, USB 2.0 card w/internal header (pins), internal card reader, DVD RW, CD RW, 2.5 gb backup HD, 10/100 ethernet (could be upgraded to 10/100/1000, but i have no need to at this time), Happauge TV tuner card, runs Ubuntu, Kubuntu, any other types of linux, Windows XP really well (Kubuntu currently)

if you're looking for a good buy on a computer to run linux or XP (or vista if you're daring enough), look for one of these on ebay, etc. Just make sure it is socket A (not 370) and be careful of the CD drives if they are stock (the drives they used broke easily)

by the way, they also feature 4x AGP if you want to upgrade the video.

[kikkoman]

Re: compaq presario 5000 is better than you would think

dude... what did you do to your teacher so that she gave you her computer?

[ratdude747]

Re: compaq presario 5000 is better than you would think

she was moving and had no room for it- oddly, she called it a dinosaur (it was about 3 years old then- i was in 7th grade- im 16 now)

it came with xp pro, but she didnt know it was bad if u used the upgrade discc on more than one computer at the same time

so i had to put it back on win ME until i switched to linux, love it after i got rid of ME

[370forlife]

Re: compaq presario 5000 is better than you would think

dude... what did you do to your teacher so that she gave you her computer?

He he he, know what you were thinking.

We use to have a compaq presario 5000, but it was a socket 370, and they had crap caps. 700mhz celeron with 64mb of ram. Thing was a peice. But, you could set the fsb with jumpers on the motherboard, so I overclocked it from 700/66 to 1060/100, simply by setting the jumper from 66 to 100mhz. It also went to 133mhz, which when I did that it went to 1.41ghz, but at that time i upgraded the ram to 512mb of pc133, and also put a geforce 6600, it was one of my first computers, we upgraded before that. I upgraded the cpu cooler obviously to keep that 700mhz cool at 1.4ghz (somehow it was reasonably stable.) Still was very hot. I eventually put it back down to 1ghz. Then one day the caps blew. That dissapointed me, then I had to downgrade to a 667mhz p3 slot 1.

[ratdude747]

Re: compaq presario 5000 is better than you would think

my mom also had a presario 5000 socket 370 (2 5000s in one house was weird). it had good caps, but the sound died one day. it also had no agp. and only 2 memory sockets. but it did have a PIII 1000mhz coppermine. my mom hated it. it was out if commision by the time i got the second one- which was 100 times better.

besides- socket 370 only works for PIII era stuffn but Socket A boardsw/133 go all the way to 1.8 athlon xp t-bred core (nice). and mine had 3 mem slots, not 2 like the old one. instead of 4 pci's like the old one, it had 3 Pci's and a 4x AGP. and the sound still sounds as good as the day it was made. cant say much 4 the drives though. Quantum fireball 40gb's sucked- the hd's outta both of them r dead now, as r the cd roms. th floppy drives r ok- the one in the new one was filled with so much dust when i got it i haf to replace it.

what i really liked was the CD storage compartment. that comes in handy so i can retain the windows drivers (if i ever sold it). also having screwless sliders on the cd and floppy drives is cool 2 (no screws to lose)

upgrading everything exept for the mb and ethernet card helps 2 (even a better cpu fan and ps)

dont like the micro-pci form factor (i like lots of slots), but for use as a TV and multimedia machine, it works well

[370forlife]

Re: compaq presario 5000 is better than you would think

Thats one thing i don't like about my Tpower, it has 2 pci slots, but its a full ATX board.

As for socket A, up to the 2600+ uses the 133mhz fsb.

[ratdude747]

Re: compaq presario 5000 is better than you would think

that's funny

i read only 1.8 (not overclocked

i personally dont overclock that much

I try to make my stuff last

only 2 slots? that blows