But it's a - may the PC gods forgive for saying this - Compaq! The neighbor said she got a Dell and she was gonna give this one to Goodwill.  She wanted my help in clearing out any sensitive info she might've had on her 'puter, so I gladly reformatted it, and offered to take it off her hands as she was just looking to get rid of it anyway.

First of all, where can I get some specs for this thing?  Either I'm a complete klutz with Google, it's top secret or it's so old that anywhere it was listed has crumbled away into the vortex of a cyber-antimatter.

Secondly, I'm not sure what I could do with it.  Perhaps do some overclocking?  Ideas?  I was thinking of perhaps using it for the internet, and keeping all my good gaming stuff offline away from all those nasty untermensch more kind people refer to as "spammers and hackers".

Set it up with a network card and run instruments on it.

best,

................john

The same thing happened to me recently. A friend got a "dead" pc from work, gave it to me to see if i could do anything with it, ie salvage spares. Turned out to be a blown PSU, whacked an old one in it, bingo.....
It had all the companies accounts, stock, payroll, CV's (resumees) I was a little surprised at this as you can imagine. I reformatted the HDD at my friends request, now i use it as a backup PC, in case anything goes wrong with my current one. It's internet ready, and when i can find the time i'm gonna have a mess around with various linux OS's.
Always handy to have 1 or more old PC's hanging around!
Rob.

i've got a watch coming thats got 128 mb storage in it.

Yes, it's a 5461, according to the case.

I was going to suggest the network card and using as instruments thing as a segway to say: I've always called them "Compuke".

Quote:


That's what I use...very easy and detailed 8)

Most likely this is what you have, assuming nothing was changed after the original purchase.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&docname=c00191338&produc...

Should be a K6-2 500. A 'good' upgrade for that computer would be a K6-2+, a K6-III or a K6-III+, in that order. Even though it is a compaq, you should still be able to set a multiplier of 5.5X, giving you 550 MHz (max possible without overclocking FSB). To do that, there are probably jumpers or dipswitches on the motherboard for that. I've done the same thing to a similar Compaq once myself. Don't tell him he probably can't, because he probably can, even though it is Compaq.

The difference? The K6-2+ is a mobile version (lower voltage, cooler running) with a little bit of onboard cache (the K6-2 has none). The K6-III has more onboard cache, and is a desktop model. The K6-III+ is a mobile version with same cache as K6-III, but at a lower voltage. I have helped overclock one of these to beyon 600 MHz from it's original 400.

I'm running a rare special K6-2+ in my notebook computer (stock voltage is 1.65, normal is 2.2), it works great for word processing, basic internet browsing and runs BOINC when I'm not using it. Also I have the Garmin topo software installed, so I can connect my GPS to it on road trips and the such.