Fun with Compaq Presario 6000 found in trash.

[Machine Messiah]

I hauled a Compaq Presario 6000 out of a dumpster a couple of weeks ago.
Previous owner, in their haste or aggravation, neglegted to unscrew the
vga connection, they simply broke it off. Half the pins were still on
the monitor cord, the rest in the mother board. Damn, I thought I got
impatient with those things.
Open the case:
No agp slot.
250 watt PSU
1 512 mb stick of ram.
Onboard Audio
Onboard Ethernet
Plug the machine in, turn it on and the mobo posts w/o problem.

I ordered a Saphire Radeon 64 MB pci card and 1 256mb stick pc2100 ram.
Stick that in the machine, turn it on. Press F2 and change the video
from "onboard" to "PCI", after that Windows Xp starts in safe mode.
Previous owner failed to delete any of his old files.
Machine has a 120 gig hd and a 2.5 gig P4 Northwood, 400 FSB.
It's amazing how may pc's we find in the trash where I work, that the
only thing wrong is a Windows problem. People don't seem to realize the
OS is separate from the hardware. Got my self a nice little machine for
a $60 investment.
1 question:
I'd like to replace the power supply and add a second hd. Is it hard to
find a PSU that will fit in this case? I have 2 now that won't work, the
screws don't line up.

 

[Jan Alter]

If you keep looking in the trash an additional PS should be easy to salvage
from another Compaq.

Kidding aside, nice find.

I would check online to see if you can find a possible replacement for your
Compaq PS. Doing a Google search turned up more than a dozen companies
specializing in Compaq parts.
Seems like you have some nice parts to build a decent system with that
CPU, RAM, hdd, and graphics card. Perhaps a new case with a decent PS, new
mb of your choice, might be a preferable move. Just a suggestion.

 

[Machine Messiah]

If you keep looking in the trash an additional PS should be easy to salvage
from another Compaq.

Kidding aside, nice find.

lol
For once I beat the guys at work to a half decent machine.
Last year one of them found a 3gig P4 machine. They changed 1 setting in
the cmos to "auto" and it started just fine.

I would check online to see if you can find a possible replacement for your
Compaq PS. Doing a Google search turned up more than a dozen companies
specializing in Compaq parts.
Seems like you have some nice parts to build a decent system with that
CPU, RAM, hdd, and graphics card. Perhaps a new case with a decent PS, new
mb of your choice, might be a preferable move. Just a suggestion.

The heat sink won't budge. May need dynamite. I wanted to swap the cpu
into my current machine which has a 2.2 gig P4.
I'm going to connect the Compaq to my current machine with a kvm switch
when I get a better power supply into it.

 

[w_tom]

Generally a 250 watt supply in a Compaq is equivalent to a
300 or 350 supply from many third party power supply
manufacturers. Plus the Compaq supply has essential functions
so often missing in many third party supplies.

 

[philo]

I ordered a Saphire Radeon 64 MB pci card and 1 256mb stick pc2100 ram.
Stick that in the machine, turn it on. Press F2 and change the video
from "onboard" to "PCI", after that Windows Xp starts in safe mode.
Previous owner failed to delete any of his old files.
Machine has a 120 gig hd and a 2.5 gig P4 Northwood, 400 FSB.
It's amazing how may pc's we find in the trash where I work, that the
only thing wrong is a Windows problem. People don't seem to realize the
OS is separate from the hardware. Got my self a nice little machine for
a $60 investment.
1 question:
I'd like to replace the power supply and add a second hd. Is it hard to
find a PSU that will fit in this case? I have 2 now that won't work, the
screws don't line up.

Over the past few years I have literally rescued 100 or so machines
from the trash. Most within about a mile radius of my house. Although
most of them need some work to get going again...it's usually minimal.
I bet my average investment is only about $3 a machine. Most of them
I just give away.
The only one I spent any money on really was a *new* p-IV that someone
had started building...then threw out! At first I thoght it might have just
been
a fairly new machine that someone stripped down...but at home I saw
that the slots for the cards had never even been pushed out! The thing
was abosolutely spotless.
The only catch was that it needed RDRAM which is expensive
and prob. why it was tossed. It would have cost a fortune to buy new ram...
but i got 768 megs worth on ebay for maybe $80 or so.
any other parts it needed i already had...so basically i got a new p-IV
for about $80!!!!

i live near a university so i think most of the stuff is from college
students

 

[kony]

I hauled a Compaq Presario 6000 out of a dumpster a couple of weeks ago.
Previous owner, in their haste or aggravation, neglegted to unscrew the
vga connection, they simply broke it off. Half the pins were still on
the monitor cord, the rest in the mother board. Damn, I thought I got
impatient with those things.
Open the case:
No agp slot.
250 watt PSU
1 512 mb stick of ram.
Onboard Audio
Onboard Ethernet
Plug the machine in, turn it on and the mobo posts w/o problem.

I ordered a Saphire Radeon 64 MB pci card and 1 256mb stick pc2100 ram.
Stick that in the machine, turn it on. Press F2 and change the video
from "onboard" to "PCI", after that Windows Xp starts in safe mode.
Previous owner failed to delete any of his old files.
Machine has a 120 gig hd and a 2.5 gig P4 Northwood, 400 FSB.
It's amazing how may pc's we find in the trash where I work, that the
only thing wrong is a Windows problem. People don't seem to realize the
OS is separate from the hardware. Got my self a nice little machine for
a $60 investment.
1 question:
I'd like to replace the power supply and add a second hd. Is it hard to
find a PSU that will fit in this case? I have 2 now that won't work, the
screws don't line up.

Is it mATX or taller than a standard ATX PSU? If it's
taller then the following might apply:

Some Presarios of that era used proprietary power supplies.
I happen to have the shell/label from one in front of me at
the moment. It had a 92mm fan in the rear, is about 155mm
long x 130mm wide, 98mm tall. This particular unit had Part
# 243890-001 , replace with Spare # 244166-001
Model PS-7231-6CF They used a few PSU interchangeably so
all of the above numbers may not match up but the dimensions
are a dead giveaway, as are the voltages on the motherboard
connector pins and an additional "3.3V Aux" supply rail.

It is not electrically compatible with a standard ATX PSU,
and the motherboard from same system will not run from a
standard ATX PSU.

This particular Compaq PSU was better than the average 300W
name-brand units and if it's same as yours you should
probably try to reuse it.

 

[Machine Messiah]

Over the past few years I have literally rescued 100 or so machines
from the trash. Most within about a mile radius of my house. Although
most of them need some work to get going again...it's usually minimal.
I bet my average investment is only about $3 a machine. Most of them
I just give away.
The only one I spent any money on really was a *new* p-IV that someone
had started building...then threw out! At first I thoght it might have just
been
a fairly new machine that someone stripped down...but at home I saw
that the slots for the cards had never even been pushed out! The thing
was abosolutely spotless.
The only catch was that it needed RDRAM which is expensive
and prob. why it was tossed. It would have cost a fortune to buy new ram...
but i got 768 megs worth on ebay for maybe $80 or so.
any other parts it needed i already had...so basically i got a new p-IV
for about $80!!!!

i live near a university so i think most of the stuff is from college
students

We have a lot of students here too.

 

[philo]

We have a lot of students here too.

btw: i generally pickup virtually all machines that are sitting at the
curbside...but once i just let one sit there.
it turned out to be a compaq "sewing machine" model that actually
has some collector's value.

unbelievably...i found another on a few months later
and it worked. IIRC it would only boot up with a dos2 boot disk...
no other version of dos would work.

the IBM XT's would boot with any version of dos 1 - 6