Compaq Presario 5441 First Look

[@americo_san]

New subscription! I can call myself a Compaq fanboy since the late 90s. People laughed at me, talking that Compaq was sh*t, expensive, difficult to repair, and so on, but I've managed to have and still maintain a Compaq Presario 5000, bought on May 12th, 2001. It's a sluggish Celeron with WinMe and lots of Compaq software, and I've used it heavily until 2007. Now, it's about to turn 20 years with me. Boy, what a joy it was turning this PC on for the first time! I had almost the same sensation last year. During the pandemic, I was tinkering with it when I found a Compaq Restore CD for a similar Presario (unfortunately not in my preferred language, but was great for the "first startup" sake). Thanks a lot for maintaining those Compaqs. I love them all! Cheers from São Paulo, Brazil!

[@RetroSpector78]

Glad to have you onboard. Also a big Compaq fan. These late nineties machines are really great. But also have lots of older stuff (286,386,486) compaq machines I still need to get to ... someday :)

[@americo_san]

@@RetroSpector78 I'll look forward to seeing them all! Cheers!

[@Dj.MODÆO]

On Black Friday of 1999, when I was a private in the army I bought my first computer. It was a Compaq 5460 in that same case with win98 SE and a dvd drive and a Zip drive at CompUsa for $350, a 32” Philips monitor for $100, extra RAM for $100, a better $50 sound card, and a Voodoo3 video card for $200. $850 total and I had a gaming rig worth at least $1600 that could handle anything. I had that thing for years even as I bought newer machines and although it’s long gone now, I still love and miss that damn thing to this day and thinking about it 26 years later is what brought me here

[@stonent]

We used to call those seagate rubber sleeves "drive speedos".

[@GuillermoFrontera]

I have a 10 GB version of the Seagate HDD on my retro PC with Win ME. Still works fine. It was from my father's PC.

[@roger.monitor]

Nice to see that I stored it right, clean inside. The second HD was installed by me, came from a friend. I recognized Walther his handwriting. Keep up the good work.

[@tweakpc]

The PSU is standard SFX, It uses the same connectors and specifications but is smaller, you can still buy it today

[@madmax2069]

I have an SFX in my current gaming SFF build

[@ollyalme]

Every single video on this channel takes me back to the good old days. Actually kind of bittersweet (I'd love to be 20 again), but mostly sweet :) Already looking forward to the next one.

[@tundraportal]

This PC was my childhood, 15:19, that wallpaper hit me with nostalgia

[@fhwolthuis]

Some models had a hatch at the front in stead of the "belly" that you mention, containing additional USB ports I believe. Great video!

[@abooogeek]

Yep, some had 2 USB and 1 game port in that belly. I sold one of these with a nice purple belly lid. I found it quite innovative for that time (it would take a couple of years to see front USB ports coming in regular PC clones cases).

[@VSigma725]

I had a model like that briefly, it also had a case that came apart completely differently (the case was a big metal sleeve that a frame with the drives and motherboard slid into) from this machine.

[@EweToobUsername]

I had a 5320 that had the same basic board, except that it only had a single ISA slot. The case was a sleeved-style case with USBs and a game port where the “belly” is, a regular ATX PSU in the same spot as this case’s SFX PSU, and a spot for an exhaust fan. I added a Nvidia RIva TNT video card, a 10/100 network card, a SoundBlaster 16 ISA, and a USB 2.0 card with a front port hub. It had upgrades to 448MB RAM, a CD-RW drive, a ZIP drive, its stock 4GB drive for Win98 and MS-DOS games, and a massive 30GB drive for Windows 2000 (because XP was too much of a resource hog). Good computer. Kinda wish I kept the case for a sleeper.

[@alanharkleroad4376]

My mom had a similar Presario with a DVD drive and a 6.4GB hard drive. That oval at the bottom was a door that you flipped up to access front panel USB ports. She got it at RadioShack.

[@esseferio]

That really brings up some fond memories: I started working at the Spanish Presario Customer Support in 2001 (but we were based in France). At that time, I think the 5000 towers were all the rage (although the vast majority of calls were for laptops, to be fair). Thanks for the trip down memory lane :)

[@tj71520]

She is a beauth. Such a Nice Looking vintage computer setup. I always had a thing for k6 and k6-2 CPUs

[@mslaterboy]

A glass of red and a Compaq Presario--you can't go wrong!

[@stonent]

I just picked up an HP Pavilion with a K6-2 550, and... SIS-530. It had an ASUS board but with a custom HP Bios. The board will take up to 768MB of RAM which is decent. However, no ESS Solo-1 audio. There is a spot for an audio chip on the board but it is not populated. This computer had a single PCI card that had a sound card and modem in one. One of the chips on the sound-card/modem has an ARM logo on it.

[@vwestlife]

The Presario 5304 is identical except it originally came with a Cyrix MII CPU instead of an AMD K6-2. It was truly a low-budget PC, costing less than US$300 (without monitor) when new!

[@RetroSpector78]

The had lots of different variations and model numbers it seems. Like the look and feel of them. Just screams end of the nineties

[@GendoPrime]

Fun fact, you can actually flash this board with the full GA-5SMM retail bios and unlock the options you are looking for. From my testing of the same system, the recovery CD on archive.org still works with the retail bios. The only issue I have encountered with this system range is Windows NT4 and 3.51 do not like the chipset, but windows 2000, XP and even Vista work just fine on it (though they do run quite slow)

[@jari2018]

have you tried 768 mb sdram at 100 speed -too powerful graficscard eat a lot cpu -and IE explorer with start 5.0 eats cpu also - how about using cacheman software and using a swapfile on a usb stick - I remember ,my amd 533 k6-2 just going into a drawl only launching the new Netscape 6.0 -and it didnt help with IE5 integrated into the os.

[@asanjuas]

Altf+F1 to show hidden bios options in award bios

[@tstahlfsu]

Pretty sure that 5441 was a RadioShack model, but we saw so many of them in repair in the early 2000's I can't exactly remember :-D

[@ThomasP187]

This is was my family's first PC. I learned so much from in it. I remember it had Windows 98.My family had that PC until 2006

[@cdbular]

Jewel of the crown for this compaq models were the JBL speakers ... they sounded great!

AWESOME I Love Compaqs 90/2000 era

[@66mhzbrain]

Nice vid, I love that case. I hate non standard power supplies, especially low wattage ones. A total pain to try and upgrade decade's later 😬

[@BayMacDre415]

You never made the followup video talking about the software on this old baby! I remember some sort of "castle building simulator" where you could walk around a 3D castle (of sorts) and also build your own world... I'm confident that it came on THIS computer, or potentially a Compaq Presario model 5356. Can you look into this for me? I believe it was a pre-loaded game which aimed to show off the graphics capabilities.

[@fintrollpgr]

384MB!? That is a enormous amount of ram for such a system. I had 64MB in my K6-2 300...

[@BilisNegra]

No doubt updated/replaced, say, maybe a couple of years later? It's even quite likely this machine was also sold with just 64MB stock, since all memory sticks, 128 MB each, look the same, indicating none of the original RAM was kept. I very much doubt the original user of this machine, not a high end one by any means, would have replaced all the RAM if the factory-installed stick had been128 MB already. Also, 64 MB was quite standard for a machine like this at the time.

[@lydialoud]

I had the 5441 as my first PC I had all to myself my dad got me in late 1999 when I was almost 12 years old (we got our first family PC in late 1997, a Packard Bell S605) and it lasted me a good three years and I later added a TV tuner card. In 2002 I got a laptop that was far more powerful and had a 3D card as PCs were getting so much faster then. My only regret is not adding a 3D card for much better gaming. Around 2001 the CD-ROM drive went bad and replaced it with a CD-RW drive

[@ponchobob]

I once owned a compaq presario 7110 (correct number) ?. It was a flat desktop computer with quad speed cd-rom, and a amd k4 486 processor with 80mhz. the compaq had a custom designed mainboard. there was a vertically plugged in extension card that provided some slots for the actual extension cards that where plugged in horizontally.. the computer came with windows 3.11, the presario plaza, sim city 2000 windows edition, lode runner II windows edition and compton's encyclopedia hosted by the voice of patrick stewart.

[@LellePrinter82]

The PSU has the SFX format which u still can buy. Also a socket 370 and socket A cpu cooler fits perfectly on Socket 7 as they have the same type of mounting. Just a hint. ;-) Back in the day I used a Socket 370 (PIII cpu cooler) on my 233mhz Intel machine and it worked perfectly fine. Just in case if u someday need to replace the cpu cooler.

[@neonnoir9692]

I have a newer version of this - got it in 1999 at Circuit City when I was little. Still have it for restoration, sadly the original monitor got wet. The belly has a sliding plastic door for USB oorts on mine. Also had a swinging door on the front. The JBL Pro speakers it came with were amazing, still a big JBL fan today because of them. I remember being terrified the first time I opened it to add more ram. 533 mhz.

[@brendonelton]

The K6-2 was an aggressive processor at the time, Windows 95 / Windows 98 didn't take up to much resources, as long as you had an ample amount of ram, a few little tweaks to the operating system, a 7200 RPM HDD, they ran quite impressively.

[@Mini-z1994]

For sure, didn't quite keep up with Intels next powerhouse, the pentium II though. kzbin.info/www/bejne/sJCnnZSKadOcapI philscomputerlab covering a few pentium II processors vs the amd k6-2 500 mhz.

[@abooogeek]

@@Mini-z1994 But they were damn affordable CPUs. Intel Pentium II were good, but God-awful expensive. However, if you had the budget and the luck to get one of these Celeron 300A, we were talking there :D....

[@MightylooWishtick]

Very nice computer. Been a pleasure watching this.

[@dykodesigns]

The big belly pc case does it’s name justice, it’s “Compaqt”. The round curves on the outside where not my thing in those days (prefer a sleek design), but I’m quite impressed with internal design of the case. It’s really clever with the motherboard tray and the flip out PSU. It’s neat and service friendly by the looks of it. Quite a bit better designed then a lot of generic cases from the time. Some cases in those days had sharp edges..... A certain fruity computer brand who used to get this right can now learn something from this😁. More glue mr. Ive?

[@Slevin-Kelevra]

I would flash the bios to get full features running. Populate the onboard video memory slots, then max out everything with a fresh power supply.

[@dan_mer]

A Presario 5441 with Windows NT was on my desk in graduate school in 1998 or maybe 1999, not sure, though it had half the horse power of this model. It was very good for hiding behind so the professor couldn't see me doing bad things.

[@Rouxenator]

I remember those Seagate drives with the rubber SeaShield! AMD CPUs love to stick to the cooler, even in my new Ryzen builds they do that.

[@MrLukealbanese]

I use Zippo lighter gasoline for cleaning old sticky stuff. Always works. No smoking though!!

[@Edman_79]

That looks like an SFX format power supply. Shouldn't be too difficult to replace it.

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

I don't think SFX was a thing when the Presario came out, it looks more like the same form factor that was used in other small systems like the Hot Wheels PC.

[@Edman_79]

@@amirpourghoureiyan1637 I had a Hot Wheels case here and the SFX PSU was ok for it. It just usually lacks the extruded fan case, but that's not an issue. I actually think that SFX formfactor might have been born here :D

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

@@Edman_79 Perhaps, there were so many standards that happened after ATX's introduction that it's likely that it might've originated from similar products, a proto-SFX perhaps :)

[@Edman_79]

@@amirpourghoureiyan1637 I've seriously got no idea but that sounds pretty plausible to me :D

[@bob0507]

@06:00 450 Mhz?

[@carltonleboss]

Mighty fine PC you got there.

[@ginkelvanmichiel]

I don’t know if you still have this pc, but I do and it came with two restore CD’s and a boot floppy. I use it with an scsi scanner, and it works great.

[@BilisNegra]

7:02 Looks like none of the RAM is OEM original, since not only it's maxed out but all sticks look identical. 384 MB is quite a lot for a late '90s budget machine.

[@huleeyaxerssius7]

Always good to see one of these presarios about, and they do stand out from the rest like they do, nice looking as well. Have a couple of presarios myself, not desktop/tower machines, but a couple of presario 1400's. Which evidently had taken styling cues from the clamshell iBooks of the time, have a look at them & you'd see what i mean, are good looking ones too. Though the colored bezel things you can swap easily, not much of a fan of them being rubberized on the outside, as they can go sticky like they have on one of my 1400's. So i changed those black bezels to the blue ones on my other 1400, that i don't use as much (with it being a celeron, the other being an 800 MHz Pentium III) that of course is a bit better. Graphics chip being just 8MB, but for the games & whatnot i run on it with 192MB of ram & millennium edition on it (from some quickrestore images i found online), it's a good machine.

[@paulb4uk]

The first pc i built was an amd k6 2 450mhz from what i remmber i clocked it at 500 mhz and had a voodoo 3 3000 or 2000 and the cretive 128 sound card .

[@mxthunder2]

Ive been dying to locate a 5360, the first PC i purchased with my own money back in 1999. I gave it to a girlfriend to use in college with a voodoo 3 in it, and never got it back. It had the purple bubble in the front.

[@mikespikeey4625]

think you miss read the chip not 45mhz k6 2 450

[@ryzenman6460]

Looks like my first pc

[@Obie327]

Upgrades are limited with this Compaq. I had the Intel 550 mhz model a year later. My system didn't like using any discreet cards or would lock up. Upgrade the ram and maybe the CPU? Maybe the AMD version will let you use discreet GPU? These models are pretty unique to look at.

[@dnakatomiuk]

I had the 5410 in the UK but searching for it didn't bring anything up so it may have been a 5410.xx most likely. My dad bought me it for my 16th birthday as I was leaving secondary school paid £799 for it it has a AMD K6-III 350mhz, 32mb PC100 SD RAM, 4gb HDD cd ROM. Onboard sound and graphics with no AGP slot at all to upgrade too just 5x PCI slots

[@danibluray]

My gosh, I had this one, but my model was AMD K6-II 475MHz sold in Argentina. Interesting that the budget computer in your country it costed around 1700 US$ in mine, late 1998. Where can I get that Restore CD? is it possible to play around with it in a VM? Nostalgic stuff while watching those wallpapers / Compaq software from those times.

[@B24Fox]

What became of the CF to IDE adapter on the AMD-486DX4-100???? (I'm thinking of getting an identical one, but i heard some people had issues with that adapter model & Win95). Also, can you please post images (.IMA) of the two diskettes for the 3Com network card??? Great set of videos btw !! :D

[@projectfanboy]

Have you tried Lighter Fuel to get the gunk off CPU's? you owuld need to Iso it afterwards but its fantastic at getting gunk off stuff.

[@cybergarri]

The PSU have the same form factor and brand than the mac g4 quicksilver but the mac one have exotic voltages for the monitor

[@CheshireNoir]

That power supply is a standard power supply, just not an ATX one. It's an SFX PSU. They're readily available, if rarer than the more common ATX.

[@gttarus1]

I have a similar model the 5242 with a built in ls120 superdrive from compaq.

[@atariforever2002]

Acetone my friend. Makes short work of that cpu thermal nastiness. Just keep it away from plastics. 😉

[@mrspuff6901]

did the monitor work out of the box? did the volume knob work? or did you have to install some drivers?

[@jabobo99]

I would stick a Voodoo 2 card in there for some 3D gaming.

[@raffern]

Dip switches!

[@JorgeCarvalho_web_dev]

Hi Sir! Very nice video! Did you try to get the BIOS from Gigabyte and flash that BIOS with the original one?

[@thepirategamerboy12]

Not sure if this version of Award BIOS is affected, but this is something I'd like to point out just in case you ever want to try it sometime. If you want to use an HDD larger than 32gb on affected older Award BIOSes, there's a DOS-based tool out there that lets you patch your BIOS to support drives up to 120gb or so. Just dump it via UNIFLASH, patch it with the tool I linked, and then flash it back to the motherboard and it should work. mega.nz/file/r5kVSYQD#AiKt0-IV3B7JzEqiwHQXnja6u2L67qKmGNbrDapD0Cs

[@blooder81]

i have the 7954 with athlon 750mhz thunderbird slot A

[@diyknutti8220]

Where do you find recovery disks for these computers. Any where i can download? Hav a 2260 desktop k6-200mhz. Needs recovery software with proper drivers. Cant get joyport to work properly with current driver.

[@nickwallette6201]

You can check archive.org. Their software library is full of stuff like this. It’s all user contributed, so you might have to be creative with search terms. Also there are some “collections” that you might have to dig through for specific models.

[@breestandard1318]

WD40 gets those thermal pads off pretty easy, then clean up with ISO.

[@johneisen6341]

My parents bought us this pc back in Christmas 1997

[@HrLBolle]

I don't know if someone has thought of the following question: Could a modern sfx power supply be used to revitalize the in system psu?

[@oroville12345]

Omfg my first pc...

[@TheLOD2010]

The PSU standard is known as SFX today.

[@maxtornogood]

I always wonder what happened to RetroSpector78, he did good vids but vanished without a trace!

[@HuntersMoon78]

The CPU was 450MHz not 45MHz EDIT: You corrected the CPU speed later on in the video.

[@Kundalini12]

That's an sfx power supply isn't it?

[@JenniferinIllinois]

Looking at my system with 15 USB ports and remembering there was a day when 2 was more than enough. Hehehe...

[@MarkTheMorose]

Oddly, most of the videos on KZbin about 'SIS 530' are in Spanish, so this chipset must have been 'popular' in Spanish-speaking parts of the world, South America I would guess.

[@Baoran]

5:55 45Mhz, really?

[@joetheman74]

Every Super Socket 7 I've ever had was ATX. I believe your thinking regular Socket 7. Super Socket 7 was an upgraded platform by AMD after Intel wen to slot processors. Maybe there were some AT versions but I have had several and they were all ATX. When Intel went slot I went AMD and never looked back. I have not had an Intel CPU since the 90's. Remember kids. It was AMD not intel that invented the 64 bit architecture that we still use today. Slap a K6-III 550 in it with an ATI X800 series card and you'll have a bad ass system.

[@jari2018]

i belive its a usefull mainboard since isa and supports amd 450 ( i guess up to 550) - a lot of very good soundcards has isa -a lot of later pci soundcards sucked big time

[@angrydove4067]

The computer has a belly! LOL

[@RetroTechIIfx]

These late Compaq's weren't really true Compaq systems, they are the result of unfortunate corporate decay. Prior to the late 90's Compaq did all their board engineering in-house, as well as chipset engineering. They came up with cool things like the Triflex architecture. By the late 90's the custom work was only done in the server division, and as we see in this Presario it's basically all generic off the shelf parts with just a flashed BIOS. They went through a few top level C-suite management changes that kept cutting cost, instead of focusing on what made Compaq a great PC vendor. Trying to chase Packard Bell and E-Machines into a hole. Hence the hasty merger into HP to try and bump the profit margins up through scale. Instead HP and Compaq dragged each other down. Despite being a cheap box, these faux-Compaq systems still have their merits. They represent a moment of computing history where things started to get really cheap and accessible, but at a cost. The case is very solid, and the power supply hinge is a thoughtful design element. Modern bottom barrel boxes are basically built of tin foil.

[@patrickcollins118]

that was my first computer

[@coolelectronics1759]

hahaha I got this same machine on freecycle last year and put it in my arcade machine for a while until I came across another free i7 pc that just needed the rams cleaned and a new batery and sold the compaq loaded with a bunch of old dos games I swear there was one that had a flap on the belly for USB and a game port of some kind

[@jennybartel801]

ITS NOT A 45 MHZ THIS IS A 450 MHZ JUST THOUGHT ID UPDATE THIS FOR YOU

[@ltlk937]

The SIS 530 was HORRIBLE.. It was just so bad. I had an IBM Aptiva with that same chip, with the ram built in (8 mb). It supposedly supported DVD acceleration as well as AGP 3d graphics acceleration and the like. Which it kind of did, but it was just so bad. Even DVD's stuttered.. When i installed my VOODOO 2 in the machine, and the Hollywood video dvd decoder card everything got silky smooth.

[@mihumono]

get some acetone :)

[@krisgarrein9632]

Hoi. Ik stuurde je een mail, zou je me kunnen contacteren. Heb een Presario 5150 voor je

[@leeshepherd6512]

45mhz. Surely 450mhz.

[@henson2k]

pre-Ryzan AMD LOL

[@lycanananas_sq5fox]

please mute slack. because when i watch your videos at work time. i do not know if someone wants something from me. and i always check my slack ;)

[@scalamasterelectros3204]

This is the dumest pc in human history

[@LewisR09]

18 seconds ago!

[@𪛗]

good for you!