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Old November 24th 04, 06:19 AM
kony
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On Tue, 23 Nov 2004 20:36:41 -0500, Eddie Crismond
wrote:


Hi

A relative has been given a Compaq EN Series. The case is not
a vertical 'tower', but horizontal. The case is meant to be
placed right on top of a desk, with the monitor placed on top of it.

There is a sticker on the top-front-right hand side of the case that
reads:
Compaq END/P600/13d/4/128c US
Compaq serial NO. 6008 DH95 A134

This PC has the following specs:
i820 Chipset
600 Mhz Pentium III
(x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 1 GenuineIntel ~597 Mhz)
128 MB PC800 RDRAM (with blank installed for continuity)
Disk Drive: 13GB Maxtor 91366U4
IDE Controller: Intel 82801AA Bus Master IDE Controller
Video card: Matrox Millenium G400 - English
CD-ROM: Compaq CRD-8400D
Monitor: Samtron 77V
Sound: AC'97 Driver for Intel 82801AA Controller

Upgrade Questions

MEMORY
I would like to remove the 128MB PC800 RDRAM modual and the blank
modual, and add two 256MB PC800 moduals, to give a total of 512MB
of physical memory. Does this Compaq i820 chipset motherboard
require ECC memory, or can I turn ECC off in the BIOS, and install
non-ECC RDRAM? Is the motherboard picky, or can I install any
non-ECC RDRAM? Also, if I choose to go with PC600 RDRAM, will there
be significant drop in performance compared to PC800?

BIOS
I was told by the original owner that the BIOS in this PC is not stored
in a flash ROM but on the hard drive itself. I'm not sure about this
myself. I have read about hardware diagnostics, or something to that
effect being stored on the drive in some user group postings. If I do
a zero fill on the disk, is there an easy way to restore this piece of
software?

NEWER VIDEO CARD AND INCREASED OVERALL POWER REQUIREMENTS
I have an nVidia GeForce 2 32MB (Dell), and a GeForce 3 64MB (OEM)
laying around. I was thinking of swapping the Matrox out for one of
these cards. Will the PSU handle the extra load of the Geforce 3
without reboots or lock-ups?

OS AND APPLICATIONS
The eventual goal is to run Windows XP, while being stable, and snappy.
The current Windows 2000 Pro install from Compaq has developed
some bugs, displays errors a boot, and occasional blue screens
after running for a day. Also she would like to try The Sims! 2 which
needs more memory and a video card with transform and lighting.


Many thanks in advance for a reply to any of these questions. I have
tried a few searches in Google, Google Groups, and Compaq's site, and
have gotten spotty info.

Edward Crismond



I don't mean to be snobbish, but you're suggesting a ~ $50
game, a $30 video card, WinXP, and 512MB of RDRAM for an old
600MHz box...

That's over $300 worth of upgrade just to end up with a
600Mhz system that will be pretty slow at SIMS2 and just
adequate running WinXP at all, let alone more demanding
uses, plus the hard drive is going to be older and a
slowdown, else even more $$ poured into it. Sometimes the
result just isn't worth the cost. You'd have far higher
performance just buying a $55 nForce2 motherboard, an Athlon
XP2000, and 2 x 256MB PC3200 DIMMs. If the case won't
accept these parts you might need a different case too, but
the end result is a much faster system.