Inspecting a Compaq Presario from 2002
When you think of early 2000s desktop computing, any number of machines could come to mind. If you’re fancy you may have thought of an Apple iMac or a Sony Vaio, but most likely you thought of something like a Dell Dimension, a Gateway Performance, or a Compaq Presario. Well, a few months back I was able to save one such device from e-waste. This Presario 6000 series minitower appeared to be in decent-enough shape and I wanted to give it a quick inspection to see what I would need to do to restore it to it’s early-2000s glory!
The reddish-orange sticker on the side of the machine was kindly left in place giving us the actual model of the machine, as well as a quick look at what’s inside. As an aside, I’ve never understood why people kept the stickers on their computers back in the day, but as I’ve started collecting these things over the years I’ve really appreciated it. Sometimes they are useful — like in this case — but at the very least they can add authenticity to the restoration process.
This Presario is a 6330US. It’s got a 2 GHz Pentium 4, 256 MB of DDR RAM, a 60 GB IDE hard drive, a 10/100 ethernet card, CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives, and integrated video. It’s your run-of-the-mill consumer PC from the early Windows XP years, which means we should probably expect some plague-era capacitors inside.
It originally shipped with Windows XP Home Edition. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I actually have any machines running XP Home, so this will be a first. It also came with Microsoft Works, Microsoft Money, Quicken, and Norton Internet Security 2002 installed. Compaq was really going for that Small-Office, Home-Office clientele here and it shows.
The front of the computer is in really good condition for a 23-ish year old desktop that I found face down in a recycle bin. Starting from the top we have our 40x CD-RW drive, the 16x DVD-ROM drive, a 3.5 inch floppy drive, and two USB 2.0 ports tucked away in a small recess.
Sticker-wise we have the usual Windows XP and Intel Pentium 4 badges, as well as a sticker pointing to the information sticker on the side placed directly below the Compaq logo. There is also a Coloreal sticker next to the floppy drive. I wasn’t familiar with Coloreal, but it appears to be bit of optional software in Windows that would help with image color on Coloreal-capable monitors. One such monitor that might have even shipped with this tower is this 16” Compaq 7500 VGA CRT. I don’t have it, but it would be pretty sweet to pick up (along with the missing Presario scrolling mouse and Presario Internet keyboard) at some point.
In addition to the ports and stickers is a blue power button flanked on either side by indicator lights inside of a bubbly-looking chrome housing. Like the rest of this case, it’s very Y2K-futurist in its design, and I love that.
The top of the case has a Compaq-branded OEM Windows XP Home Edition product key sticker. Next to that is a plain sticker with the model and serial numbers. I’m assuming this would have been for quick reference if the previous owner ever needed to contact Compaq’s tech support team.
On the back we have pretty standard fare when it comes to I/O. Starting from the top we have our 2x PS/2 ports, 2x USB 2.0 ports, serial, parallel, and VGA ports, 2x more USB 2.0 ports, our 10/100 ethernet port and the three audio jacks. The PCI covers are all still intact, but there is one slot at the bottom that has been filled with a modem card so if I had to guess, this thing was probably used in a dial-up environment back in the day.
The integrated graphics are fine for most things, but I may want to eventually do some Windows XP gaming on this thing, so I dug out this old GTX-745 graphics card from 2013. It’s not the best thing in the world, but if it works with Windows XP, it will make for one heck of a time.
Cracking open the case revealed an absolute mess.
I mean, a really big mess. Just look at all of that dust!
And just as we suspected from the start, there are tons of leaky capacitors throughout the motherboard. It’s a good thing I checked before trying to power it on. However, this is a project that will need to wait until I have the time to really dedicate to it.
Overall, I really like this little machine. It really captures that early-2000s consumer feel and it could be a nice addition to my retro computer collection. I’m also fully aware that this is going to take a good bit of work to get the thing cleaned up and re-capped so it can be used. I have no idea if the hard disk or any of the other drives are still working, or if the thing will even boot. However, even if it doesn’t I’m sure I will still find a way to use that case.
