Bill,

If you can send me a good photo of either the system chassis or the motherboard
(preferably both), I can help identify it.

Questions: This is a Socket 370 CPU? Is the power supply connector 20 pins or
24 pins? Built-in video and also an AGP slot?

I ***think*** I know which system(s) you have there. Yes, they are very nicely
made. I have a few partial ones stacked in my warehouse... Ben

email:


On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:57:48 GMT, "William R. Walsh"
m wrote:

Hi!

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.

Hmmm...well, I guess I'll be wondering for a while then! I didn't find any
such label on the system. Perhaps it was lost to the sands of time, maybe it
was never there.

This is a good sized case... it has two 5.25" bays which are externally
accessible (one with a CD-RW drive), one 3.5" bay for the floppy and space
for two hard drives internally. (And...Compaq came up with a truly ingenious
way of mounting the internal hard drives. It took me a little bit to figure
out what they had in mind, but I got it. The extra screws that are in the
bottom of the case are a nice touch as well.)

For the mute system, you might examine the motherboard and find the
audio chip.

I did. IIRC it's an AD1885. I also found a Philips audio amp for the
internal speaker. The amp is definitely alive--I could run my fingers across
it or put a signal on the inputs with a set of test probes and hear it come
out of the speaker.

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.

I haven't tried to find a market, but I probably could still get one going
if I wanted to. There actually is something of a decent market for
relatively new secondhand computers. These Compaqs will still hold their own
for most work.

I like the design of the case. The motherboard looks to be one of the last
true Compaq designs, and I'd swear there are the initials of the designers
printed along the edge of the board....something Compaq used to do quite
often and sometimes a little more elaborately. Interestingly, I noticed no
less than three "power status" LEDs on the board--one that's on all the
time, one that's on when the system is off (standby power only) and a final
one that comes on only when the power button is pushed. Excessive, but
possibly useful. (It is also possible to wind up the power supply fan speed
with the SpeedFan utility--something that's definitely *not* common even
today!)

William