SFF Compaq iPaq Desktop...

[silicond17]

I just bought a Compaq iPaq Legacy mini-desktop off of eBay (don't have it yet) with a 15" Compaq CRT. It's got a Celeron 500mhz/64MB SDR/8.5GB/integrated graphics. I'm going to upgrade it with a Celeron 900mhz and put in 128MB SDR and add an external 52x CD-ROM.

Anyone have any thoughts/opinions/ideas on what the hell to do with this machine as far as modding/upgrading goes???

[ajack]

Do you have any pictures of it?

[silicond17]

Originally Posted by j4ck

Do you have any pictures of it?

Edit: Oh yeah, and the board in this system appears to be a standard microATX without the PCI/AGP expansions slots.

[Sc0rian]

ha well cool dude!

[Bindibadgi]

Originally Posted by silicond17

I just bought a Compaq iPaq Legacy mini-desktop off of eBay (don't have it yet) with a 15" Compaq CRT. It's got a Celeron 500mhz/64MB SDR/8.5GB/integrated graphics. I'm going to upgrade it with a Celeron 900mhz and put in 128MB SDR and add an external 52x CD-ROM.

Anyone have any thoughts/opinions/ideas on what the hell to do with this machine as far as modding/upgrading goes???

Depending on the mobo you could get away with up to 512meg stick of SD usually. And the slimline CD drive will be upgradable to DVD or whatever quite easily from mini-itx stores. As for harddisk, you might be restricted to 120gig cause i doubt youll find a 48bit harddisk bios for large disks.

What mobo is it? Is that green light on the side of the bottom pic deliberate?

EDIT: I'm guessing from your sig "intel graphics" that its i815 based, you *may* be able to get a tulian cpu in it depending on the chipset revision and what exactly the chipset is. Go to intel.com and d/l the chipset ID util to tell you exactly. It looks pretty new so itll have the very basic intel xtreme gfx. My dad has a mATX i815e board with a 1gig cele tuli in it, we used the onboard gfx before i bought a 9200 for him. Unfortunatly the onboard gfx are pretty bloody poor
If it is i815 based then youll only get 512meg SD in it tops, but am probably likely to find a 48bit HD bios.

[Clockworks999]

IIRC some of these iPaq desktops were built as Windows terminals. They had no hard disks, and had the OS stored on Flash RAM.
I could be wrong, but is yours a "proper" PC?

Edit:
Ignore me. I just re-read your post, and it says 8.5gb HDD

Cheers

[johnwilliams474]

looks like it might make a good htpc with a few ajustments

[silicond17]

Well, I wont know much about it until I get it and then dissect it. The Dells at school have slimline CD-ROM drives, so I may just have to "borrow" one.

Not sure about that green line but it looks kinda cool. I may be able to cut a window, but it looks like a CD-ROM drive would block the view of the moboard etc.

I'll let you guys know when it arrives at my door...

[pranks7er]

how much did ya get it for

[silicond17]

With a Compaq 15" CRT and a keyboard/mouse combo, I got it for $150 shipped. These machines are seriously cheap and hopefully effective. Don't know why more people don't have one...

[Shepps]

Looks pretty decent for the price Get some more hdd storage in it, and u'll have your self a pretty sweet server thingie (file server or something?)
THats what i'd do with it anyway

[silicond17]

I get it this Friday. Can't wait to tear into this sexy little machine. I'm thinking I can easily cut a window on the left side where the micro CD drive is because I'll be using a USB external enclosure with a 52x CD-ROM.

Oh yeah, and I think I'm going to load Windows Advanced Server 2003 on it.

[silicond17]

I just got the system in, hooked it up, everything works. And it's bad ass. One fan in the whole system and it has a Seagate 5400RPM HDD which you can't even hear at all. This is a quiet little system, but I can't seem to get into it. I pulled it apart enough to put the extra SDR in it, but I can't get to the moboard yet to pull the CPU and upgrade it. It's running a Celeron 500mhz (66mhz fsb), so an upgrade to my Celeron 900mhz should really help. Anyone have any ideas on how to get this apart other than beating and banging like I'm trying atm?

Edit: Looks like an Intel 810 chipset from what I can see. Still haven't gotten to the CPU yet, but it looks like the moron that put this PC together has the damn HS on top of it crooked as fack.

Edit #2: After much beating, prying, banging, and all out abuse on the system, it turns out that the side just slides off. Anyway, I pulled the 500mhz Celeron and it looks much different than my newer 900mhz Celeron chip. The 500 that was originally in there is black with a much larger core and much thicker PCB. Anyone know what kind of chip this is? Is it some sort of mobile chip?

Edit #3: Plugged in the CPU, put a good lapping of Arctic Silver on the core, and put the HS back on. The system booted flawlessly, but the BIOS screen says something about an unrecognized stepping, but you just hit F1 and it boots Windows. I probably need to flash the BIOS to make sure everything is working OK. But it zips through Windows 2000 Pro and it shows it as 900mhz/100mhz fsb. I'm going to try updating the BIOS and installing Windows Server 2003 tomorrow. And it's also wierd how the integrated Intel 810 graphics don't share any of the system memory. How does it work?

[furio]

hey, I just ordered one of these aswell. Do you know what size fan it has? and what is the fastest cpu it can take, and did you get the unrecognized stepping problem sorted out?

Cheers.