LGR - Compaq Presario 425 MS-DOS PC Overview

This is an overview of the Compaq Presario 425 from 1993, as well as 486 and Overdrive chipped machines in general. Also compares its speed to the 386 range of machines. During the early 90's the 486 ruled all. But when things started progressing so quickly, it wasn't enough and Overdrive CPUs and such addons became quite popular. Also following in the Macintosh's footsteps came all-in-one case designs for some PCs.
Footage of:
Windows 3.1
PFS WindowsWorks
Symantec Game Pack
Test Drive III The Passion
DOOM
Duke Nukem 3D
Wolfenstein 3D
This is a response to some requests for footage of some of my systems "in action" instead of just a review. But that would be boring I think - so lots of facts, commentary and history as well.
You can still read up on the official HP site about this particular machine:
h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/do...

[@James-fm4lk]

Hey LGR, would you ever do a "re-review" of this machine, especially since you still use it so often today?

[@Toonrick12]

I agree.

[@JeffreyOsb]

Oh man, watching this is such a trip back in time... your videos have changed so much over the past 6 years.

[@Tigrou7777]

Judging video quality, could have been made at the same time as Doom era

[@vhfgamer]

Six years later....

[@bummer6]

20 megabytes of ram.... Those were the days!

[@supermasterPIK]

and very expensive

[@SandsOfArrakis]

My first computer was a Cyrix 486 DX-2 80 MHz, and it came with 4 mb of RAM. After 2 months when Windows 95 was released I've upgraded the RAM to 8 mb. Which set me back 250 guilder (about 200 euro's). Insanely pricy :)

[@SquirrelMonkeyCom]

Your videos are awesome!

[@user-lr4ri7dg3d]

You too!

[@ignorethenameplis]

ok aron adiyan

[@MrSnapy1]

I used to stay after school to play their 486's I even bought a few games even tho I didn't own a pc at the time.I never looked at my Genesis or snes the same way after playing the 486's.

[@3key859]

... unlike my 386 which sounds like a rejected Boeing that made me smile

[@krashatoms1832]

LOL! My gma passed away a few years ago and they were going to throw it away. I was like you're not going to throw this 386 away lol. So many memories on that thing!

[@cruls5026]

Quite honestly the best reviewer of vintage hardware/software on the planet. LGR leaves no stone unturned and perfectly captures my own feelings of nostalgia during his reviews. Your collection is amazing, keep up the great work!

[@CyrusBufkin]

I love that cyclops in the PCB.

[@Fuzy2K]

I love how these older videos look like they were shot in the 90s. :)

[@jeremiefaucher-goulet3365]

Wow, never thought I'd stumble on one of your videos showcasing my childhood's computer! So many memories on that Compaq Presario 425.... I now have two of these :)

[@oj43085]

I like the way you explain things, and I really appreciate the passion you have to upload these videos of these old computers, I used to have a a 486dx computer. It was quite old, i remember to switch it on, there was a big red on off switch at the right and all the way at the back. I miss old PCs.. especially when the CD-ROM first made its appreance, that was the coolest thing ever for me. Completely in awe of it.

[@edwardscott2498]

It's so cool to see that this is still an active channel!

[@pip5528]

This was my very first LGR video back in early 2013, roughly March or April. It's good to go back to this.

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

I love watching this video. I have the same PC that I found in the rain over here in Sydney. Its such a great little package and I hope the electronics in it last another 20 years!

[@MarkHyde]

Watching this after your 2017 external parallel port CD ROM repair video - awesome review. :)

[@FaisalAlmalki223]

Compaq's answer to the Macintosh, Compaq is the greatest! RIP Compaq, i still miss you to this day.

[@PeteOliva]

I had this exact machine. It was a beast that lasted me all the way until the Gateway I upgraded to when XP came out. Nice video!

[@CaptainSouthbird]

CPU upgrades from this era were really interesting tech. While this one is just utilizing a speed-enhancing chip, CPU generation jumping was a lot more interesting to me. 8086-to-286. 486-to-Pentium. There was an upgrade board made by Intel, called the Inboard, that was designed to take their original PC up to a 386DX. It used some digital magic to continue to interface with most of the original motherboard, but took over CPU duties. This of course meant you were limited to 8-bit ISA and a great deal of other bottlenecks, but it was still pretty neat. I took it a step further by obtaining an in-place 386DX-to-486 with speed-doubling chip and, yes, my IBM XT 5160 board now boots up with Microsoft Diagnostics calling it a "486-XT." It's about the most confused little thing ever. The only real hang-up is the Inboard requires a proprietary memory expansion board I don't have, and even if I did, it would only get to 2MB or something. A shame, because I'd love to see it try to load something crazy like Duke 3D.

[@bitslasher89]

Hi Clint. Just stumbled upon one of these awesome machines (A Pentium model!) and learning a bit about it here on KZbin. I actually was reminded of these special Compaqs by a more recent video of yours that included this PC (can't remember what it was about). I was shocked to see this video of you from so long ago! One day someone could make a movie about your life, from the prospective of this tiny computer, that saw it all unfold. Seeing that PC staring at me through the camera, from behind you, from so long ago, somehow reminded me of the ship's computer from Wall-E. Anyway, not sure why I felt compelled to write this silly blurb, or if you even will ever read it, but just wanted to say what all those other folks tell you in the notes with the retro tech they mail you.... "keep up the good work" :)

[@BlooditeDrakan]

That was a great insight to such an old computer! I remember we had something seriously primitive in comparison to this and loved, then sometime down the track bought a computer with the Quake demo on it. Good times... It's easy to forget how different and fun those old machines were. Thanks for the reminder dude.

[@marianodrago]

never in my life I thought I would be hearing someone measuring FPSs on Wolf 3D!!! Excellent video man!

[@KaySaschnitt]

Again, nice Video, Mate! Brought back some Memories. I can remember, when I went to to school at the age of 10 those 486 PCs were THE SH*T! I never had one myself, only my friends. My first PC had an 686 then, as far as I remember. Other than that, you have a good and very clear voice. I'm from Germany and can understand everything very well. Keep up the good work, always lookin' forward to your next Video! ;)

[@Titot182]

Christ! I stumbled across your channel and saw your Sim City 2000 video and I had flashbacks to 7 year old me on my family's Compaq Presario. That 486SX and having to go to DOS and type in memmaker to be able to remotely get close to installing games. If only my 9 year old daughter knew how gaming was back in the 90s!

[@AzumiRM]

I love your channel! My first system was a 386 but soon after getting that I changed to a 486dx-4 100.

[@larryhenry631]

Enjoying watching your old Iron with my coffee this morning...I have started collecting as well I have an AMD-Athlon, and an Intel P4 system. Both run Linux.

[@silpheedTandy]

+1 for the mention of how good it feels to clip toenails.

Oh, god, the nostalgia! I'm 12 again! I had a 486 DX4 100MHz, 8 Mb RAM, a sweet 1Gb HDD and a friggin' TRIDENT 9680 videocard. Most powerful rig in the hood, baby! and yes, I had the exact same issue with Test Drive 3 which is a shame because I loved that game...

[@PROSTO4Tabal]

dude, have you uploaded 10 years old video 10 years ago? that's awesome

[@mogar]

OMG nostalgia attack!! I remember running doom, doom2, duke3d, wolfenstein3d, and simcity 2k on our old 486. On the sneak of course. My parents always thought games could "break" a pc, so I had to sneak install all of my games and only play them late at night after everyone was asleep. Thanks for the vid. Reminds me of weekend nights with my friends playing duke3d with the sound all the way down trying not to wake up my parents. Awesome.

[@SE578]

Have something similar. They made Pentium styled versions of that, mine is a Presario 5536, and I gotta admit, they're pretty cool. Honestly found the board quite fluent to get at things myself. Only the expansion cards would sometimes be a pain in the arse. Was happy when that extra 2mb video expansion gave me 16-colours at 800x600! XD Love your videos man, very informative and intriguing! Keep em' coming!

[@finzgar420]

I'm glad this came up.

[@bullseyestrat]

Reminds me of the Compaq all in one I picked up from high school when they were throwing them out. I remember hotrodding by replacing the broken cd drive with a good 8x one and taking out the 400 something mb hdd with an IBM 1.2gb drive. Then messed with it by installing dos 6.22, tried windows 98 but no luck (later learned that the 486sx has no math coprocessor ha), and later the newest version of 95. Such a nice unique computer. Nice video man!

[@coldlogic1]

wow 3 of my favs, ive got a 386 mobo kicking around i want to get up and running one day soon. im suprised that crt is still working! btw awsome chip on that 486 I'll be looking for one.

[@RetroTinkerer]

How cool is it that I just got this video on my recommendations!

[@BauTekIndustries]

Have you ever considered doing a quick special on board art? I bet you have a few machines there aside from this one that have some unique silk screening put there by the engineering team.

[@LGR]

BauTek Industries That's a good idea!

[@_chipchip]

I love these old presario units! Always on the lookout for them on e-bay.

[@BoolXor]

I Like your Informational Style of Reviewing.

[@baconfister]

Mad points for the Wish You Were Here poster on the wall!

[@the1log]

Wow, you seem like a great chap. This stuff sure takes me back.

[@leoviper]

Great video man.

[@lonestarrider1023]

your channel makes me wish I was born in the 80's. I missed the heyday of PC's.

[@SouthwesternEagle]

MASTASMASH I lived the heyday of the early '90s MS-DOS gaming scene, and I was born in 1990. I played DOOM at age 3 on my dad's workstation. :) It used DOS.

[@soylentgreenb]

You also missed a lot of crap. It was amazing that clock speeds were improving 60% per year and new genres were being invented. 1998 to 2000 feels like it lasted a decade because in your memory so much stuff happened in those two (or any other two) random years in the 90's that in retrospect it feels like ought to have taken that long with the pace technology improves right now. You also missed many of the good games because you had no idea they existed. You got interesting new concepts for games that used flight simulator keyboard controls instead of simple point-and-click tasks. You got some real cryptic shit, had to patch any bugs. Computers were really expensive and got really obsolete very quickly so you weren't playing many games as they were intended to be. The creativity of game developers was not due to something that was in the water or whatever; it was that studios were still tiny. You; one person; could just put something in a game; you didn't have to run it by anyone, you didn't have to explain the joke to 12 different people from texture artists, animators, riggers, low poly modellers, high poly modellers, voice artists etc. It's like indie games are today. It's 90's shit, 10% good stuff, but 90% of the good stuff is not the genres you like leaving you 1% that's gold. As opposed to AAA which is 75% basically functional and 20% tolerable, leaving you with 15% mediocre stuff; polished turds, vs diamonds hidden in a pile of gravel.

[@Bruno-TheMayors]

Wolf3d ran really well on my Amd386 40mhz. But i had a cirrus logic SVGA graphics card. The VGA that came with it ran everything poorly. So even then the video card did matter. But yeah, the overdrive was awesome. AMD released a DX4 clocked at 120Mhz, and that became my upgrade after the 386. :-) Thanx for your great videos. We would have been good friends back in the day.

[@RaulBillieJean]

very cool review

[@GodOfKnockers]

I had a Compaq Presario 520 CDTV Desktop PC, back in the early to late 1990's. It was the very first PC I ever played 1st person shooters on.

[@VengefulNonsense]

3:23 Whats with the cyclopes drawn on this motherboard?

[@gamershadow1]

They would put little images on the motherboard as an easter egg.

[@VengefulNonsense]

gamershadow1 Thanks for the reply

[@SpyAlelo]

I work at HPE in Houston, where the Compaq labs used to be. We still silkscreen drawings that represent the codename of the system when it was a prototype. In this case, the codename for this system was Cyclops.

[@VengefulNonsense]

SpyAlelo Thanks for the info! Very interesting!

[@MichaelAStanhope]

I had this same exact machine. Presario 425. Loved it. I had a touch screen on it that was cool. I had the Overdrive DX4/100 in it and the 20mb RAM plus a SCSI card and Sound Card so I could use a CD ROM on it. I ran Win98 SE on that thing for years! Great machine for its time, if you upgraded the processor. If you could have shoved more RAM in it you could have ran 2000 on it with ease. That DX4 chip was about as fast as a 75mhz Pentium!

Nice review, I remembered those machines... Missed your intro music on this vid though :)

[@shorty1k]

Man I love your reviews, you're the only one who gives two craps about the old computers and hardware I remember so fondly! Where do you store all your stuff?

[@bokunogentoo4420]

neat, I remember playing with that game pack when I was five, it's interesting to finally find it again all these years later

[@Lacktardo]

Nice vid. I remember having my 486 back then. Good times.

[@HighTreason610]

Oh my god, it looks like it's made of awesome. I still haven't got hold of one of those OverDrive chips yet, though my Am486-100 is quite fast, so that overdrive must be bloody epic.

[@mackenzieallen]

Time isn't linear! My future self (2021) told me to immediately watch this video from 2010 from my 2020 account and decided to watch right away! Woodland WA is where

[@DragonUltraMaster]

Really awesome video :P Intresting aswell ^^

[@HouseClarkzonian]

Dear god yes, I love the sound of that mouse, Nostalgia!

[@anidnmeno]

I got this exact machine for Christmas when i was 12. I loved that thing :3

[@truebassB]

This looks surprisingly amazing,i bet it would have been an amazing system to get through with in the 90's.

[@casualretrocollector]

I just noticed the little drawing next to the original cpu. How cute!

[@ghostbirdofprey]

Just to clarify, the overdrive chip doesn't improve the existing processor it is literally a better chip that disables the soldered chip and runs in it's place instead.

[@Le_Rennais]

i really like his reviews ^^.

[@debiani3866]

What is that Cyclops logo I see at 3:40 next to the i486 sx? I have a few motherboards with that logo on there as well.

[@FakeTheAntivirus]

That is a very interesting computer in my opinion. A revisit would be awesome maybe

[@UncleAwesomeRetro]

I think I had that compaq machine. It was my first computer, besides the c64 that my brother and I got together, but I was to young to handle that c64. I only had the stock cpu, but I upgraded it to 20mb of ram I bought used out of teletext :) I got a cd-rom but it hang on the outside, there was no room in the case for it. And I had a separate psu to power it up. My older brother helped me with this stuff. Back then I made a lot of mistakes, because I was messing around in the bios, and control panel and other places. And that's how I learned. Now, give kids a computer, it's so easy to use they load games up right away and don't see the enjoyment of experimenting. Well, some kids. Just figuring out for myself how to make ms-dos shortcuts in windows was great fun + lots of other things.

[@SnipE_mS]

Dang you got this in high school? I’m pretty sure we’re about the same age (I’m 34 as of 2022) and I remember my HS had at least windows XP machines by that point. The thought that some still has MS-DOS, 486-based machines circa 2002-2005 blows my mind just a little

[@GR8TM4N]

My second PC was a 486DX/4 - 120 ( first one was a 386DX-40 ) and I remember there were small programs like "moslow" to address issues with speed in older games like test drive 3

[@PixelatedVlogs]

watching your vids in 240p reminds me of watching vcrs in the 90s ^_^

[@Code1D10T]

You know, I've been watching your videos for a while, and I just now realize from this video that you have an X-Arcade tank stick!

[@maximal10]

Remonds me of the first PC computer my family had, the Compaq Presario 850CDS always thought that was a beast (steel case cd-ROM/3.5"/5.25" and a whopping 320 meg hard disk...this brings back soo many memories (of course Compaq had their "Tabworks" loaded in...that got swiftly booted out by win 95 plus full RAM expansion)

[@danwalker77]

Nice history lesson - the fast 486s were definitely the start of the multi-media - smooth graphics revolution!

[@Maxxarcade]

Wow, that looks very similar to my Presario CDTV 520. I didn't know they had older systems in that style.

[@offensivejerk]

Loved test drive iii. The first racing sandbox game I ever played. So many cool subtle features

[@Owlpunk]

Aaah, the mighty DX4. I remember that, when my Dad finally bought one in '95, I was simply blown away by what I consider to be the Holy Trinity of Origin Games: Strike Commander, Wing Commander 3 and System Shock. Doom and Ultima Underworld I could kinda-sorta run more or less playably on our old 386 DX25, but these three? Not a chance. The DX4 could even quite comfortably run Duke Nukem 3D, at least in VGA.

[@elanus81]

I still have one of these, the 433 model with a DX4 and a SB AWE64, I would like to put the original software in it, any chance to get it from anywhere?, great channel.

[@HyperFoxIII]

8:23 That sound gives me bad memories of playing that game. Used to have nightmares

[@leeharvey3550]

Lol i remember those from school, the entire IT suite was decked out in those all in ones, seemed so cool and powerful at the time.

[@ericdunbar6230]

I've watched this video before and I just now noticed the Cyclops with the pointy ears on the mother board starring at the SX chip. What's up with that?

[@Code1D10T]

I've always wondered if that 486 has a VLB slot? I remember running Doom on a 486 DX 66MHz and it ran pretty slowly due to only having an ISA video card.

[@blenheimears]

It doesn't have a physical slot, but the onboard video chip is connected through the equivalent of VLB.

[@talaminia]

I had an AST dx2-66 with built in 14" SVGA. very similar design but it had a cdrom as well.

[@lawrenceb4954]

I remember taking my old 486dx4 pc and tossing the maxed out ram in it (came with 8mb), years after it was relevant... Damned thing ran windows 95 (came with 3.1) like it was on steroids. Tons of memory's with that system. Really wish I still had it.

[@LPSeeM]

Bunch of those machines served in National Library in Warsaw as catalog viewers. About 5 years ago they were replaced by newer ones. I miss them a lot. User interface was about this: press A to search by author, T to search by title, etc... and it looked like typical Win311, or Amiga 3.x application. After finding a book you had to write it's title and catalog numbers into paper and take this to the librarians. It was 100% awesome.

[@FinalBaton]

This looks like a good DOOM machine with the upgrades. I'm looking for a PC myself, so it looks like the 486dx4 is a good microprocessor to go for. My main use is playing DOOM, Heretic, Hexxen, and maybe some older games (but nothing super old and clock-sensitive), like say : Commander Keen at the earliest. Would this be a good choice for my needs?

[@larryhansennet]

Oh yay! I'm processing words! I love it!

[@IsaacTorres]

This was my family's first real computer. This is the machine that sparked my love for tech and now I am 33 years old and a nerd.

[@Siska0Robert]

Oh, man! I had the exact same model when I was in high school. It was only 90Mhz and 12MB ram, but it was awesome. Duke Nukem 3D ran fine, but Quake was too much.. Also, I had to hack the potentiometer to the pc speaker, because that thing was too loud for my late night gaming. Thanks for the memory trip!

[@johnathin0061892]

Is that Panthro from Thundercats printed on the motherboard next to the processor?

[@MegaManNeo]

What a great little machine, especially with the Overdrive installed. All I had was the DX2 itself inside my computer back then but it was more than enough if we didn't try to install Windows95 on it. For whatever reason tho, Westwood's Monopoly didn't work either. As for TMNT, you have a computer with both types of disk drives right there, is the floppy copy protected or what stops you from transferring the files over to a blank 3,5" floppy disk?

[@skysorcerer]

Did I just came across your old videos?

[@chootastic]

Point of interest... whats with the little doodles on the motherboard. Theres the weird Cyclopse on this one, mine (a prolinea 486) had a sketch of Wylie Cyote... is there something in this?

[@andybell7572]

MY 486 I got for the pricely sum of $20. Then I found an ISA sound card. Then a 5.25" drive. My wife hates me I swear..

[@LOLZpersonok]

Would you happen to know where I could find one of these?

[@rastapopolus7001]

The second computer we had at home was a compaq presario all in one, but not this model. One of my greatest frustrations in life is never finding out what our model was. I remember it had a CD drive and came with windows 95 but that's it...

[@eviljoebob]

I'm looking into getting a computer to play dos games from the early/mid 1990's, doom, duke nukem,etc but I don't want to get an all in one to lessen shipping costs. Do you know of any machines you would reccomend? Thanks

[@macgyverpsychogamer]

Hey Clint! Still have the Compaq? Its working?

[@montefisto]

Hey, what's with that cyclops demon looking monster to the left of the intel 486 chip at 3:21? What's the story behind that?

[@DouglasRRenoVideoGameReviews]

How well does this machine work after all these years (6 from the intro of this video)? I might actually seek one out. I like the look and usability of that machine.

[@hargcore]

Good info

[@Michael500ca]

I got the 486 DX 100MHz Overdrive in 1999 to beef up my...486 and that made a huge difference.

[@rootbeer666]

Is there a TURBO button to slow it down for TD3?

[@Trusteft]

Back in 1994 I got my very first "PC" after many years owning various Amiga and Atari ST computers. It was a 486DX2 @ 66 and it was fine, though I did "have" to upgrade it within a year or so. The whole mid to late 90s was ridiculous. There wasn't a year that I did not upgrade/got a new PC, except a couple of years where I was in the navy. Still, I do remember having the same problem with too fast system when I tried to play Test Drive 3, i think it was on my original PC and not anything later on, but I could be wrong. I remember there were a couple of slowdown programs that worked, though it made me feel a bit dirty for slowing down on purpose my PC. It may sounds weird, but I do not miss those gaming days on the PC. Mostly because it was too much hassle to make everything work (QEMM to the rescue many times) and it felt that half the time the system wasn't fast enough and the other half it was a pain to make it run fine. While there were emulators even at least as back as the 80s (I had a DOS emulator on my ST computers) for some reason i don't think i ever thought back then that we would have a day where all of these games would fit in a USB stick and run through emulation on systems which are probably thousands times faster. I do wish I had a PC I used to study on back in the 80s, a Multitech PC (MS-DOS 2 or 3 or 4, anyway circa 1985), which not only looked good but it has a very sexy keyboard.

[@BadcatGGEZ]

hey lgr im planing on building a ms dos pc out of a lot of spare parts i have lying around the house and what kind of cpu and ram and cards and stuff should i use to build a ms-dos pc

[@grawity]

'Pick-up Sticks' was the first game I remember playing on a computer, on a PS/2 Model 50 if I remember correctly. I didn't know it came as part of a game pack, it was installed on its own here.