Old Compaq Presario AMD Sempron 3200+

[MikalE]

I got this computer given to me by my sister several years ago when she upgraded. It had XP Pro on it and I cleaned it up and used it as a WideView machine for my 727 flight simulator for a side window view.

I decided to dig it out of the spare room and see what was up with it. It booted fine, a little slow.

I then wanted to see how much OS it could handle with a single-core processor.

Windows 7 HP was very laggy and slow to respond to most menu opening, start menu, selections in pop up boxes etc. I couldn't change the monitor resolution and it was stuck at 800x600. THis wasn't working out too well. I also lost the audio drivers with no replacement to be found.

I loaded up Linux Mint and Zorin one at a time, but lost the Ethernet drivers and there were none to be found. I screwed around with this for two days before giving up on Linux for this machine.

I went through my .iso's and found a Vista HP to load up. Surprisingly, it runs very well. No lag, updates were fairly quick. Resolution problems, audio driver, and ethernet driver problems went away. I'm actually pretty impressed that this 14 year old machine is running this well with Vista.

So now, what do I do with a machine of this vintage?

I thought about using it 24/7 as my weather radar computer, or as a music system, or, ???

Any other ideas?

[axur-delmeria]

For something that old, I'm a bit wary of running it 24/7 without some maintenance, like lubricating the fan shaft and replacing the thermal paste.

For playing music, it's not energy efficient IMO. I'd rather buy a cheap, second-hand smartphone for that.

[RealBlackStuff]

Any laptop with AMD CPU should be avoided like the plague.
They run way too hot for comfort.

[MikalE]

This is a mini-tower desktop unit.

[axur-delmeria]

Is that an AM2 processor? If yes, you can probably upgrade it to an Athlon 64 X2 to get a little more ooomph.

[MikalE]

Yes, I read up on that. It is an AM2 socket otherwise known as 939. It will take the Athlon 64 processor. I might be on the lookout for one.

I think if I upgrade the processor I'll probably end up selling the machine. There is a family that is need of a school computer but don't have a lot of money.

I'm not going to just give it away, but I'm not going to charge them much either.

I also purchased a brand new refurbisher copy of Vista Ultimate last night on FLeabay for the amazing sum of $10.50 to load up on this machine.

Who knows? I may keep it myself.

[axur-delmeria]

Socket 939 and AM2 are different, and incompatible. The former uses DDR1, while the latter uses DDR2 RAM.
You can download and run CPU-Z to determine what memory type it uses, and the exact CPU model as well.

[MikalE]

You're right. They are not the same. It is an AM2 socket that is on the board.

[axur-delmeria]

It is an AM2 socket that is on the board.

Sweet. It's probably upgradable up to Brisbane (65nm) Athlon 64 X2. OTOH you can also check HP's website to see what processors similar Presario models had. You can also google its motherboard's model name and see if anything comes up.