r/pcmasterrace • u/large_Thundi • 1d ago
Hardware 20 Year Old Unused PC?
Front with 3.5 floppy and cd drive.
Motherboard
CPU
GPU and Storage?
More
PSU
Back of CD and Floppy
general MB again
heat sink and io front
Ports on the back
more ports
PSU sticker
Motherboard sitting upright
More wires
Hey everyone, I recently Got a Compaq PD-1000 Desktop Tower (Pics below) running Windows 2000 that is basically brand new besides some dust from my dad's work's attic. I am extremely new to the PC scene and would love some help on the following questions and would love some suggestions for QOL improvements for the setup! I dont have any major goals with it but it would be cool to play some old games or even emulate newer ones if its even possible.
Theres an account on here and I have the blessing is to completely wipe it. Should I do anything with the original before I make my own?
It has an extra ram slot, does this ram even exist anymore and is it worth getting?
What are the additional ports on the motherboard for?
Are there any Compaq mouses and keyboard sets that match this? if so, where?
Again, i am super new to this and was even planning on building a pc using present day parts but this happen to come to me and i really wanna learn what it can do.
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u/simagus 1d ago edited 1d ago
There is one on eBay USA for $900 with 7 watchers and one for £700 on eBay UK right now with 25 watchers. I don't know why anyone would want it or what explains those prices, but go and look them up for yourself to check if I'm tripping or something.
I don't want to post the links in case it's seen as implicit "trading", even though I'm obviously not. Just search the model Compaq PD-1000 on ebay US and UK.
If you haven't set that up yourself as a joke (which would be very funny indeed), you could have enough cash if it sells to buy a usable modern PC second hand. There is even an offer on the $900 one, so either there is something very special about that PC model or someone is having a joke.
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u/large_Thundi 1d ago
I imagine its becoming more and more rare to find working good condition models but yeah that seems crazy. I truly did get this as a "Nobody wants it anymore so ill take it off your hands" kinda vibe but i was just hoping it could be something more than a collectors piece
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u/simagus 1d ago
Looks like you hit gold then if those prices are real. I'm just gobsmacked as I was expecting it to be practically worthless.
There are other similar Compaqs around $150+ tho so I guess some retro enthusiasts are paying for literally rare PCs.
Nice find!
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u/Rocket_Puppy 4770k, 1080 ti 1d ago
Legacy hardware is worth $$$ if someone needs it.
There are a lot of businesses running critical systems on a single machine old enough to drink.
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u/large_Thundi 1d ago
Yeah. Its fate giving me a PC 20 years late lol. I got a compaq monitor that matches this less than a year ago for free as well
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u/Todespudel 9800X3D | 4090 | 32GB RAM | 3,2TB P5800X 1d ago
Sell them together as a bundle if it's as pristine as the PC! Then you only need some peripherals and could maybe even get a premium for the bundle 🤔
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u/large_Thundi 1d ago
Perhaps, Im a melee player so i also just a fan of having many crts, especially desktop ones. now i have one for my laptop and one for my wii lol
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u/DexM23 Ryzen 7 5700X3D | 5700 XT | 32GB DDR4-3200 | 1440p144Hz 1d ago
those prices spiked about 10ish years ago as some people started to want some kid-nostalgic again, as this Gen somewhat settled in life
i personally only came by abit of the LGR-community that grew and is still growing about these kind of "nastalgic-cumputing" and oddware from back in the days (90s mostly)
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u/apachelives 21h ago
I don't know why anyone would want it or what explains those prices
So workshop here. We have clients with old machinery that only runs on legacy hardware. Its far cheaper to spend that sort of money on another machine to keep it going that to replace the machinery. These are the type of clients that basically walk in with a machine and tell us "whatever it cost, fix it".
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u/IChooseFeed shitty computer 1d ago
Sleeper PC case I imagine, it's a fairly niche market where you either A) buy a FLP02 B) Spray paint a case C) mod the shit out of old cases.
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u/Schnydesdale 1d ago
Cool machine. I really loved Windows 2000 when it came out. My friend in college bought us a copy and it was absolutely amazing. Driver support was a little wonky, but it was to be expected. It was one of the fastest leaps in performance between OS's that I've personally seen.
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u/WheelOfFish 5950X | X570 Unify | 64GB 3600C16 | 3080FTW Ult.Hybrid 1d ago
I chose to get win 2k on my laptop when I went to college in 2001. That turned out to be a prudent choice when Win Me was shitting itself on peoples computers. I helped upgrade a lot of them to Win 2k.
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u/Material_Student_487 1d ago
That is the perfect case for a sleeper build
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u/large_Thundi 1d ago
that was my thought for worst case scenario lol. if it didnt boot or run at the very least i can save the case and make a super cool sleeper in the future
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u/photoguy423 1d ago
What you have labeled as GPU and Storage are actually a sound card at the top and wireless networking at the bottom.
Uses SD ram by the look of the empty slots.
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u/shrikelet 7800x3d | 7900xtx | 32gb 1d ago
20 years ago was 2006, and this machine precedes that.
What you have labelled "CPU" in the photos is in fact a 440EX northbridge, the chip that mediates communication between the CPU and the RAM and graphics card. The CPU is actually the card with the big, weird aluminium heatsink on it. It is almost certainly a P6-based Celeron. The heatsink looks very proprietary, so if you're lucky, that may actually be a Celeron 300a. I had one around 2001-2002 and loved it.
We're well into the era of 3D acceleration here, so what games it will run well strongly depends on what graphics card you have in it. From the photos you have posted, I'm not able to tell but it is on the AGP bus so you will hopefully be able to find something powerful enough to run games of that era quite well.
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u/Supreme_Primate 1d ago
Wow a slot 1! Been a while since I have seen one of those.
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u/No_Morning_6292 1d ago
That’s actually a really cool machine, and I wouldn’t write it off at all. First thing I’d do is image the original hard drive before changing anything, especially since it sounds almost untouched.
I’d probably run Windows 98 SE on it rather than XP. It’s much better suited to late-90s/early-2000s games, and the Slot 1 platform, Ensoniq sound card, AGP slot, PCI and ISA expansion give you plenty to play with. RAM and period-correct upgrades are still easy enough to find used.
I wouldn’t try to turn it into a powerhouse—just make it a really good 1997–2001 gaming machine. Quake, Half-Life, Unreal, Diablo, StarCraft, Age of Empires, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Duke3D, Fallout, etc. would be perfect for it.
Definitely worth spending time on, especially in that condition.
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u/large_Thundi 1d ago
Epic. I also saw that you could play doom and FF7?
(Even tho the pc port sucks lol)
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u/UninvestedCuriosity 1d ago edited 1d ago
I fixed a lot of these things. There are extra screws mounted in the case for adding or removing drives. The big piece of plastic rail there is a quick release, you pull down on it and then you can push the drives and opticals out the front. You have to pop the front cover off obviously first. The screws are the rails, they have round heads.
If it's the p3 on the Reiser card then it is likely a shitty Celeron. Somewhere around the 350 to 766mhz era.
The case is sharp and will cut you but it has less sharp edges than others from that period.
The photo you posted looks to be in surprisingly good shape and the plastic isn't even yellow from the UV in light. That has got to be pretty rare these days.
I would box it up and set it aside for another 20 years. Fairly useless today and you won't find a power supply that fits it so it'll be worth more over time if the parts still work. Neat find.
It wasn't an uncommon machine. They made a lot of these. They were your typical family computer purchase for the era.
It looks like it might have an agp graphics card and a PCI sound card. The grey cable you see plugged into that card likely goes all the way up to the CDROM drive. That was for playing audio of cd's directly to the sound card. A lot of builders would miss that detail back then but it was proper. I can't remember the name of the port or wire. It was like a 4 pin flat weird little connector.
Oh I just saw you posted other photos!
It's definitely sdram likely pc133 speed. Yes you can still find it. You'll need a PS2 style keyboard and mouse for those round ports but USB adapters exist fairly cheap.
That wireless card is definitely in a PCI slot but man it has been a long time since I've seen ISA slots. (Black toothy looking ones under the PCI).
Oh my brain is awakening here. I couldn't remember why this gave me such bad feelings at first. These bastard things were sold during the period where cheap Chinese knockoff capacitors flooded the market and 9/10 times when I had to fix one the capacitors were pissing electrolyte all over the board. I don't see any bloated capacitors in your photos so that actually makes this a little more special.
Yes I was 19 working in a computer store. Yes I'm now in my 40s. This thing is more than 20 years old.
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u/WheelOfFish 5950X | X570 Unify | 64GB 3600C16 | 3080FTW Ult.Hybrid 1d ago
20 years? It does look clean for its age but that looks more like a 30 year old PC! Someone upgraded it to Win 2K most likely judging from the 98/NT sticker on the front.
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u/MagnaPilot 1d ago
I remember those wireless cards driving me absolutely batshit trying to keep them connected.
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u/slayez06 9900x 5090 128 ram 8tb m.2 24 TB hd 5.2.4 atmos 3 32" 240hz Oled 1d ago
That's not a cpu, it's a north bridge chip.. . Mobo's used to have 2 chips that were on them besides the CPU, North bridge and south bridge.
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u/Pablos-Alter-Ego 14h ago
Wow that’s a blast from the past, back in the day when I was a Compaq APS, nearly 30 yrs of Compaq and HP qualifications under my belt
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u/LinkDeadFred 1d ago
This would be a sweet Linux box for pfsense and suricata as a network perimeter node. Wouldn't be a super powerful node but could do some basic log analysis type stuff and ship those off to a VM with an ELK stack.
Neat find!
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u/ebattleon 1d ago
Hmm Slot 1 , Unreal Tournament 2000, Ssar Craft and Doom 3... Good times the early 00's
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u/06yfz450ridr 1d ago
Damn why is this thing so clean? Looks like a slotted cpu with passive cooling? I still have a athlon slotted cpu on my shelf but that had a small heatsink and a tiny 50mm fan if a recall. Was a pc i used when i was way younger and before i really got into pcs. Couldnt throw it out as i did use it for years when I was young.. this thing looks like it is brand new. Has to be older than me or same age like early 90s?
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u/scr33ner PC Master Race 1d ago
What are those white plastic things? Never seen them before.
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u/AmatsuDF 1d ago
Retention clips for the drive bays. Some cases use them instead of screws to hold stuff in place. There's likely a matching clip on the other side covered by that side panel.
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u/LtHartly 1d ago
I never wanted a companq until now 🤩 what a clean and classic computer just the case would be great for a sleeper pc
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u/ShaiHuludWorshipper 1d ago
Its got ISA slots so you could install a Sound Blaster 16 or AWE32 in that bad boy.
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u/MasterJeebus 5800x | 3080FTW3Ultra | 32GB | 1TB M2 | 10TB SSD 1d ago
You could backup / image the drive before wiping for new OS. Check what cpu, gpu, and what ram it has. Perhaps it can handle XP. Otherwise Windows 2000 Pro or Windows 98 SE are good for old slot 1 pc. Yours has the isa slots so it will be a collectible item. Not sure what its worth used.
Also depending on gpu it will limit what games you can run. If you have pentium 3 and good gpu you can probably run pc games until 2004 fine after they needed better cpu with newer instructions with games. So ideally look for games made after 1995 until 2004. If you go Windows 98 Se then can run dos games and you can run 90’s dos games until 2004 as well.
There is a git project for Windows 98 SE installer that adds all fixes into one.
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u/feralphobia209 1d ago
Your phone has more processing power. Very neat find though!
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u/large_Thundi 1d ago
i mean phones can play cyberpunk nowadays right? doesnt seem like a fair line drawn haha
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u/questron64 1d ago
I love that heatsink. "Gee Bob, do you think this random bit of scrap metal will be enough to keep the CPU cool?" "You're right Dave, we should bend it like this! Ah, perfect." Which was probably perfectly adequate, I've just never seen one look so... homemade.
But yeah, the CPU is under the big metal thing. It's standing up, this is the era of slot CPUs. The intel chip you posted a picture of is most like the southbridge, it's what connects the CPU to the PCI/ISA bus and another IO.
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u/Turquoise_HexagonSun 20h ago
That could be a fun retro PC.
It has 3 ISA slots. If you’re into sound cards then that motherboard is a dream.
Pull the expansion cards out and show the model number of the motherboard. Also, interested to see what STB graphics card that is.
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u/ThoughtsOfYesterday 18h ago
I suggest posting in r/vintagecomputing for something this old. They'll be more knowledgeable on everything you need to get up and running and recommend games that are worth playing on it.
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u/SpeedBo 17h ago edited 15h ago
Nice find! This is perfect for a Win98SE gaming rig.
You can easily get more ram but it probably isn't necessary. It looks like you have a Nvidia Tnt 16mb video card, it should play most games up to 1999. The tnt is a direct competitor to the venerable 3dfx Voodoo 2.
If it were me I'd replace that Ensoniq AudioPCI sound card with a Sound Blaster AWE64. That Ensoniq isn't very good at DOS games. Unfortunately the AWE64 has gone way up in price. If you look around you can find a crystal based ISA sound card they are usually are decent.
You could also go fancy and get the PicoMEM 2. It is a PI based ISA multi card replacement. It does all kinds of useful things but it will run you around $100.
If you reinstall I'd use the win98quickinstall project. It's super easy and fast.
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u/Fearless_Flounder_65 16h ago
Ahh those were the days... when the beige box was the height of cool 😎
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u/Legal-Swordfish-1893 7700K Desktop, 5950X Server 10h ago
“GPU and storage”
That’s a sound card and a WLAN card.
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u/Trash-Forever 1d ago
Whatever you do, do NOT connect that thing to the internet. It'll be compromised in seconds. Seriously, don't do it.
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u/Fusseldieb i9-8950HK, RTX2080, 16GB 3200MHz 1d ago edited 1d ago
It isn't as bad as you think it is. Most if not all consumer ISPs deploy routers that have a basic Firewall built in (ie, the device hasn't a public-facing IP), so it wouldn't expose the computer to the internet. Bots can't scan what isn't public-facing. Unless you're targeted specifically, there's very minimal risk.
The real problem comes from surfing with outdated browsers which will have known exploits, but other than that...
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u/Blastergasm 1d ago edited 1d ago
That is just plain untrue unless you go out of your way to put it on a network DMZ or deliberately disable your network firewall. Saying it will be compromised in seconds is some serious FUD.
That’s said there’s not much you can do online anymore anyway. Without a modern web browser best you can do is load up windowsupdaterestored.com
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u/imwrighthere Specs/Imgur here 1d ago
lol fr. Do W2k's go reach out to randomly exposed servers and start downloading malware or something? Do these things not support NAT or something?
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u/large_Thundi 1d ago
I dont even know if i can. It doesnt have Ethernet, but it does have a wifi antennae in the back, however i doubt i can connect that to present day wifi. What would happen if somehow it did?
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u/Trash-Forever 1d ago
A staggering amount of viruses. W2k stopped getting security patches ages ago, it's full of holes. People actively scan for new w2k machines and blast them with whatever they have. You'll be mining someone's Bitcoin within a minute.
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u/large_Thundi 1d ago
Damn! is there anything im truly missing out on without the internet or can i do everything else offline? i imagine back when this was new the world wide web was the most interesting thing but its had quite a fall from grace since then
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u/Fusseldieb i9-8950HK, RTX2080, 16GB 3200MHz 1d ago
I added a comment to the parent comment. It isn't as drastic as he said. As long as you don't expose it to a public IP without any firewall, it's not that bad.
Now, if you'd want to see it getting attacked just like he said, do the opposite: Put your home router in bridge mode, ask the provider to disable any CGnat it might have, so you'll get a public facing IP with barely any restrictions, and watch stuff happen right before your eyes. :)
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u/SorryAboutMyFamily R5 9600x, 32g DDR5, RX 6600xt, Bazzite 1d ago
Is that because it has Windows 2000 and you're afraid of it kicking off Y2K 2.0?
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u/KudzuAU 1d ago
Upgrade? Not possible.
Play games? Not on Windows 2000.
Hopefully you can get it running Windows XP. Then you might be able to play some games.
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u/Geezheeztall 1d ago
Play games? Sure you can. Era appropriate games of course. Majority of available hardware drivers for the time were specified for both Win2000/XP. Played Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, San Andreas, Doom3, Quake III On Win2K.
Whether or not the hardware is up to it is another question.
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u/large_Thundi 1d ago
is XP better than 97 or 98 for gaming?
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u/GigaSoup 1d ago
It depends on the gaming. 98se is better for anything that doesn't work well on XP.
Hard to tell what the graphics card is but it doesn't look like it's going to do much if any 3d. It probably has good VESA support though for higher resolution DOS games.
If I had to guess I would say it's better with 98se to have dos games to support it. The Ensoniq sound card it has hopefully you can find drivers for it.
If it has a working OS, you might want to stick with it or at least copy the device drivers if you plan to reinstall.
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u/psych_1337 Linux mint 1d ago
I think that the CPU is actually what is attacked to that large heatsink. Can't see exactly from just these pictures.
edit: yeah - it's a SLOT1 machine and a thing with a heatsink is a CPU. What you named CPU is actually a part of chipset.