Trying to Bring Life Back Into It...It Lives..No Its Dies!

[rjbarker]

Hey all, so for mostly nostalgia reasons and to see if it was possible I dug out an ancient 10+ yr old Compaq Preserio 5457. Plugged it in and could here the PSU power up. power light on but nothing else, no CPU fan or HDD clicking.
So, took it all apart, cleaned a ton of dust, found some loose wires and managed to get life into it on my bench (just HD connected no GPU).
Put it all back together, connected it to my 25" Samsung (VGA), hooked up a mouse n keyboard, flashed it up...it posted and boot into Windows 98...slow mind you bit I was in!!
Then, I proceeded to change the rfesolution from 800 x 600 to (I think) 1024 x 768, that went fine until a couple of minutes later a pastel colored screen appeared with a couple of small pixelated figures scattered randomely throughout.
So, I Ctrl Alt Del and the System rebooted, again slow (very noisy old Maxtor HD), just as I was getting back into Windows everything completely froze, couldn't Ctrl Alt Del, Reset button on the Tower did nothing, the only choice I had was to unplug the power. Plugged it in and tried again with "no post" as no signal detected by the monitor.
I can hear the CPU fan spinning, power light is on but the HD doesn't go through the regular grunting and clinking that it normally did.

I just want to know if thier is something obvioous I can try other than another PSU. I did try taking out the olf nForce (I think) 32MB GPU and plugging into the onboard VGA connector...nothinbg.
I also tried an older 3DFX 16MB GPU but still no video signal being detected.

I mean if it is dead its dead...but I was interested in seing what was left on that Maxtor HD.

Can't provide much in the way of System Specs"
Compaq Preserio 5457 Desktop
AMD K6 2 Processor
3 sticks of varying generic RAM, I think 128 + 64 + 64 PC 133
old ancient looking Gigabyte Board
All ribbon type IDE cables

Thats about it...

[Dr_BenD_over]

My money's on the PSU, or the mobo, given it's vintage, check for leaky caps.

[sswilson]

Or a separated heatsink with crumbling stone-like dust between it and what it's supposed to be cooling........ (That was my first guess for the GPU going pixelated, but if it won't post that probably isn't it).

[enaberif]

just pull the hard drive and put it into another case.

[rjbarker]

just pull the hard drive and put it into another case.

Thanks.....I'm going to pull it apart again when I have time and try installing the HD into my wifes old 5 yr old machine, I 'm pretty sure her MOBO has more than one IDE socket on it, I'm somewhat reluctant to start farting around installing the HD into my present gaming Rig..
Curious Enab...my wifes old Rig (not sure of the specs at the moment) has a HD with Windows XP on it and is an IDe ribbon interface, could it be as simple as taking out her HD and installing mine and seeing if it would boot-up off of my old HD into Windows 98?...likely not that simple eh?
If not, I guess I could simply try to install the old HD into hers and see if it will recognize the Drive? Would the MOBO get confused having another HD installed with a different OS Windows 98?
Sh_t I couldn't believe I had that old Compaq running for about 15 minutes prior to crapping out....one of the Icons on my Desktop was Half Life (the first n original version) and Quake 1 & 2..

Thanks in advance

[3.0charlie]

Don't try to boot using the old drive. Hook it up as a secondary drive.

[DarKStar]

COMPAQ Presario - WoW That's some old stuff - I had a family member who had this series - I remember back then RAM cost close to $100/meg........ it was crazy!

[rjbarker]

COMPAQ Presario - WoW That's some old stuff - I had a family member who had this series - I remember back then RAM cost close to $100/meg........ it was crazy!

Ha thats not even my oldest piece of Hardware kicking around......I also still have my vintage Macintosh Performa all-in-one Circa 1994.....although I haven't tried booting it up in years that would make a great Mac commercial.....deadline to meet and my PC running Word dies....panick sets in........spot the old Mac laying in the corner of the garage covered in old boxes, Christmas decorations, couple of bicycles and a chainsaw....dig it out of the pile of crap...trip fall...drop it........blow off the dust....plug it in...power up to the happy little smiling Mac face....and start Word Processing!!

[Bobolopolis]

Nooooo!! I still have a Pentium 1 in my basement somewhere! I should try firing it up for a laugh. :)

Still, Compaq = old school!! Too bad they still don't make them like they used to.

[rjbarker]

Nooooo!! I still have a Pentium 1 in my basement somewhere! I should try firing it up for a laugh. :)

Still, Compaq = old school!! Too bad they still don't make them like they used to.

Ha...we should have a competition to see who can fire up the oldest pieces of crap...complete with pictures of the Desktop booted into Windows 3.1 or Windows 98.....or Macintosh OS 7