Yeah, Bill, Compaq did not do a stellar job of helping people identify the
various DeskPro EN systems. The only suggestion I can make is to look for a
transparent decal somewhere on the front or side of the chassis.

In addition to the obvious differences like small form factor versus normal
desktop case, there are variations in motherboard and power supply just to mess
up us all.

For the mute system, you might examine the motherboard and find the audio chip.
From the markings on the audio chip, you can figure out which drivers to
install. I have a feeling that the ADI SoundMax driver installer is not the
most sophisticated in the world, and you may have a mismatch between drivers and
audio chip.

If you have a market for these DeskPros, they are solidly made and reliable
systems, far and away the best designed Compaq desktops of their era. The
Presarios from the same decade are definitely pieces of junk. Unfortunately,
the market for P3 systems in my neighborhood has all but dried up. I last sold
a P3 DeskPro SFF system to someone with little budget and even less space maybe
9 or 10 months ago. Since then, P3 systems have been arriving here as either
trade-ins or simply removals... Ben Myers

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 04:51:20 GMT, "William R. Walsh"
m wrote:

Hello all...

I recently came into the second of two Compaq Deskpro EN systems. This one
is a Pentium III 866. I almost came home with a whole pallet of them...as
the sellers were tired of looking at them and asked me to make an offer on
the whole pallet.

I didn't, even though I could conceivably use that many.

Anyway...system runs great, but the onboard sound doesn't work at all. I've
got the drivers loaded for the onboard SoundMAX audio and everything looks
good there. Audio is enabled in the BIOS and the internal speaker works
fine. I just can't get any output from any source. Neither the internal
speaker nor a set of known working external speakers will produce any sound.
Since the other Deskpro EN (same box, same board, Celeron 600MHz CPU)
produced sound immediately after loading the drivers, I can only suppose
that the sound circuitry in the PIII box is broken somehow.

For now I've installed an old Soundblaster PCI card...that does produce
sound but I'd really prefer to play the sounds through the system's internal
speaker...it would be two less pieces of clutter to have kicking around.

Oh, and while on the subject...is there any way to specifically identify
these systems so that a person doesn't have to wade through countless
Deskpro EN models on the HP/Compaq website? I sure can't find any specific
model # on either system, and the only sticker on the exterior apart from
the Windows COA is an overview of the system hardware.

William