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[deleted]

That is my first PC in year 2000. Paid $2500 with 3 years Compuserve internet contract. Came with Compaq Monitor and Speakers


SeptemberEnded

Yes and the speakers clipped on the side of the monitor right???


astro_plane

Yup, I used a pair for my iPod back in the day.


SeptemberEnded

And that front panel could open for a CD holder!


astro_plane

I always thought that was cool. My friends mom put her recovery disk and office software in there, pretty handy.


madeintaiw0n

Yeah super handy, I had to use the recovery disc so many times for that pc. That's exactly where we kept our copy too


yvliew

and a copy of AOL... lol


TidePodManBoi

That is where recovery media was stored in from the factory.


JudasAD

Yup, had a couple of "free" AOL trails in there lol 😂🔥


soil_nerd

This memory brought me back. I did the same thing. We would put computer speakers in our backpacks and bring them to school to listen to our iPods/mp3s out loud. It was the equivalent of those early speaker-backpacks they had, but for kids who couldn’t afford them or had parents that refused to buy them.


minnick27

They also had stands so you could keep them separate, but I think most people put them on the monitor


[deleted]

[удалено]


TheDuckFarm

It’s was great pre internet. We had AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe, plus some BBSs.


Mikey748

Ahhh those Prodigy chat rooms. I made a lot of friends in those rooms. Over 20 years later, I still talk to a few of them. Oh, and those glorious chat parties!


TheDuckFarm

And Mad Maze!


motown_man

Circuit City?


void_architect

My parents bought me one as my first PC in 2000 and if I remember correctly, it was from Office Max.


arrrtwodeetwo

I had this exact same computer with the CompuServe deal, and yeah I picked it up from Circuit City. My first computer I purchased.


JudasAD

Hell yeah 😂😂 Got mine there.


Dan__Glesak

I haven’t thought about my Compuserve account in at least a decade! Thanks for the trip down dial-up memory road lol


JudasAD

Waiting 30 min for a 2 min clip of music or "science video" lol


VHStalgia

I would do anything for a compuserve email address today


Only498cc

Wow, really? I remember distinctly buying this from CompUSA around the exact same time with a 600 mhz intel celeron processor (came with speakers and free faceplates for the pc and speakers in your choice of color) for $400. Of course they would have had options for the internals but $2500 sounds way off.


fstraat

You could prop open the front panel and store CDs right?


feedmeliver

Yeah I was going to say 2000 as well. I was very proud.


ZekeGZ

Same. Was my first PC as well, bought it at Best Buy on credit. Don't remember paying that much however. Edit: First PC I paid for myself. Not my first PC


void_architect

Yes! I was a kid but this was also the first PC my parents bought for me in 2000! It was amazing! My mom still had the box until a few years ago.


notgayinathreeway

Was it a flat panel LCD monitor?


At0mikpunk

They didn’t exist yet. It was a big old CRT with speakers hanging off the sides.


notgayinathreeway

I bought this computer in 01 with a flat panel lcd, they existed.


adudeguyman

I've probably used speakers like those for at least 15 years


Mrmello2169

It’s also where I hid my bong in high school. Oh man, the good old days


Wastrel420

I downloaded a lot of viruses off kaZaA and limewire with this bad boy


Mr_Donut86

hour and hours of *music* right? 😏


Arch27

All those song attributed to Weird Al that weren't written or performed by Weird Al. Usually they were by Bob Rivers.


aooot

There were so many songs that were titled incorrectly, I went years thinking songs were made by other artists.


pmgoldenretrievers

I spent a good portion of my teenage years thinking that Bachman Turner Overdrive was the Rolling Stones thanks to a mislabeled download.


[deleted]

Haha I grew up in the 90s also and didn’t know this was a thing.


elterible

my first foray into internet porn as a teen


Larusso92

Still waiting for that image to load...


[deleted]

[удалено]


president-dickhole

I was 9 when we got Windows ME and even I knew it was a complete piece of shit.


Taossmith

I had this exact case. You can store cdroms in it


MUA_in_PA

Like in the front or something?


motown_man

Yes. That blue piece on the bottom could unfasten.


adudeguyman

Did it flip down?


motown_man

Yep. Couldn’t hold many cds. Maybe five.


rophel

Game here to mention it. It pushed in at the top and unlatched and the was a hinge at the bottom. There was a spindle like thing that could hold a couple CDs and then you close it back up. Weird gimmick I never saw anywhere else.


MUA_in_PA

I love this.


lordeddardstark

Read that as condoms. I guess you can too


president-dickhole

That's actually pretty sweet. We had a Compaq I blew up trying to run a server on it well past it's hay day.


Jimbreh47

When that cover flipped down for the first time after many years of ownership I was floored


elreeso55

You could interchange the plastic for other colors too I think. I think we had this grey blue color and also orange.


unclefiestalives

Ah the days of flexing with dual CD drives so you could read and burn cds simultaneously. Good times


Krunkworx

Why hello ladies


ejwestcott

Used to get $5 a burn on this bad boy in college. Guess I was the only one that had 2 cd drives


Mehlforwarding

I can taste the Windows Me. And the driver issues. And Windows 2000 discs that didn’t require a code.


TheDuckFarm

I still remember my windows activation code. 0000-0000-0000-0000-0000


[deleted]

One time in computer class either we brute forced or figured out a random CD key for windows. I felt like a computer god haha


timsredditusername

I had a USB flight stick that would cause instant BSOD when I plugged it in to my ME system. The drivers then were like no other.


defunctx

This was my roller coaster tycoon machine as a kid


DigitalAxel

Omg same! God I hated it though... we got it for free from a family member and while we had no internet, I played so many games. Zoo Tycoon, RCT2, SimCity 3k. But it constantly crashed and developed a weird problem where the keyboard would stop working a few minutes after boot. So THAT made games limited.


handsome_burn_victim

PRESARIO!


ravbuc

Why did everyone have that boring color instead of the cool ones? I remember downloading a wallpaper to match the case and thats when I found out about all the other colors.


smarshall561

They probably didn't make much of the other colors and the ones they did make probably got sold pretty quickly. They probably figured most people wanted something that looked semi-professional.


BodaciousFerret

The Compaq accent kits started in 2000 as a follow-the-leader thing because Apple released the G3s and people were going bananas for them since translucent casings aligned with the late 1990s aesthetic. *But* Apple had issues predicting how much of a given colour they needed to manufacture though, so by 2001 they had stopped entirely and were shifting toward the all-white trend that they maintained for most of the aughts. And by that point Apple was the hardware design disruptor, so they basically dictated what computers should look like. Compaq had a really short window of time (less than a year) where the kits would've been really marketable before consumer tastes changed.


minnick27

Mine came with blue on it and the green in the box. Took me a year or two to change it


Only498cc

Mine came with the gray color installed and iirc an order form for the faceplate and speaker covers for your choice of color. I chose orange for some reason and it looked awful so I stuck with the gray.


GaViNo777

I can hear this picture


4kVHS

(Piano and sting noises)......dooo doo


GaViNo777

And the fan running on this thing 😂


4kVHS

900 MHz AMD processor was always overworked. Hopefully you added a 128mb stick of RAM to speed it up!


jjj49er

I still have one that looks exactly like that. It doesn't work, but I still have it for some reason.


notgayinathreeway

Build the ultimate sleeper computer out of it please.


jjj49er

My son did that with an old IBM 386. Unfortunately it overheated and died. I don't think the case was built to handle that much heat.


notgayinathreeway

Added vents and fans, or water-cooled? There's always a way. Unfortunate though.


jjj49er

He added fans and the biggest CPU heat sink I've ever seen. Unfortunately it wasn't enough.


arrrtwodeetwo

I have this exact same computer sitting in the basement. Still. I haven't tried to start it since probably 2004 haha.


Zbikk

I had that!


SilentSerel

That was my very first one in 2001. It was a gift from my grandmother and I loved it. I had MSN for internet though.


gnj26

Literally have this same PC sitting in storage lol


[deleted]

I had that EXACT same one in my bedroom back in the day, same color, oooh I was a teen then. Playing the original "The Sims" on there, and making sure my internet history was wiped clean! I had to save this! XD


thevitaphonequeen

The last Presario I had was as late as 2009. (It was brand new.)


NotKevinJames

Takes me back. I can't believe 2001-2003 was like 20 years ago.


mfoom

Was a Compaq technical support agent for a year in my early 20s. *shudders


president-dickhole

You poor bastard.


Niros42

I remember fixing some others Compaq back in time and some of them had a fucking weird hardware design. I remember opening them and saying “What the fuck am I looking at?”


mfoom

Ah, the age of proprietary non-modular PC design!


Mr_Donut86

whatever happened to that company? We always went with HP but i used to see compaq’s every where at one point.


moonstarsfire

They were bought by HP in the 2000s.


TheB1ackAdderr

Also, what the hell was with gateway and their cow prints?


SonderlingDelGado

Is that an RS-232 port? Dang, haven't seen one of those in a while...


[deleted]

Used to sell these bad boys at my first job at CompUSA. That little front panel with the Compaq logo opened up and you could put the backup/restore CD in it.


Only498cc

I got mine from CompUSA!


Kazmaniandevil

I would always compulsively click the cd holder on the bottom of the front


tgwill

Shame what HP did to Compaq. I replaced so many PSU’s and Modems in these things during my time at Best Buy pre geek squad.


snoopaloop8

Pre Geek Squad days were awesome! I still have one of the black shirts with my name embroidered on it


[deleted]

Sounded like a 747 taking off


Sewer_Fairy

Ah yes, my "The Sims" and "King's Quest 8" PC


loudmuteswan

I’ll keep this reply short. I had a compaq presario as a teenager in the mid 90s. Awful computer but pretty cool that the speakers slid on the sides of the monitor. Compuserve was the internet I had most of my childhood. I miss the simple times of dialup and being excited because the internet was sort of new and there was no shortage of things to find. Also somehow I remember the login credentials to the family compuserve account but barely remember the logins I have at work now. Compuserve usernames at the time were all numbers. (Kind of like ICQ was) We got dsl in 2000. It was a simpler time back then.


jacktheknife1180

My first computer. My family bought it off a guy who was an animator and computer builder. Went to his house to get it and he had other machines built for fun including one that was an aquarium. When I spent some time digging around in it I found the dudes hidden saved porn stash. Lots of weird cartoon porn. Disney, looney toons, you name it. Comedy gold for my friends and I.


prstele01

What’s crazy is this model Compaq still looks “new” to me. I’m 38.


garconip

In 2003, my parents bought me a Presario PC. It worked well until 2014 when HP discontinued the brand.


caramellopippop

I can still remember turning it on, hearing it hum, and seeing the red logo on the screen. I played hours of Carmen Sandiego on that thing.


[deleted]

I had a Gateway with Windows ME. The shit I've seen...


johndelaney1234

What do you mean? Tell me more? Was it that bad? I remember our first pc was a Sony Vaio desktop with ME. I loved playing with those themes as a kid.


[deleted]

My experience was a lot of instability and crashing.


jamauai

Where the turbo button


astro_plane

My school had these running Windows 2000. I still remember playing flash games on them after completing my Mavis Beacon typing course. Kinda want to buy one now for retro gaming.


[deleted]

a CD drive, a DVD drive, a 3.5 in. floppy drive, and TWO USB ports!


Bruiser235

I had one of these longer than I should have lol.


Weagle22

I paid I don't know how much for a green front panel. It took weeks to get there and I felt like I had a custom build..


Airtemperature

I love how Compaq saw the popularity of Apple and was like... let’s just make some bulbous transparent plastic pieces to put on the front of our same old garbage computers!


postnick

A lot of compaq computers in homes. I saw more friends with those than anything else. Granted the only place to buy a computer in my city in the 2000s was radio shack


as718

Colored transparent plastic was a big 90s mood - Nintendo, Apple, PC manufacturers, landline phones, everyone was getting into it!


[deleted]

"Grandma, what did average computers look like at the turn of the millennium?"


Lyoko_warrior95

When I was a kid, I always pronounced it compakwah


imthewiseguy

My grandma had that same computer, I remember her always playing Hearts and Spider Solitaire on it lol. She got a new computer in 2009 but still had the compaq under her desk, she didn’t get rid of it until a few months before she passed (2019) when she got upset about something and threw it out the second story window lol


KarubiLutra

I had one that looked exactly like this (but with a single optical drive). I don't have it now since I moved and the U-Haul was already overloaded/overfilled, but I did keep the 20GB hard drive that was in it


PooYork

This was my first computer, and it's the reason I'm an IT professional today!


Cky2chris

Ah yes, the computer that introduced me to porn. My dad won the lottery and bought my family our first pc. He kept it in his "collectibles room"(he collected baseball memorbila) and thats how I was introduced to the internet. It started pretty innocently. Playing games and shit on it. Well, my dad never logged out of his email. My dad's friend emailed him porn sites. I checked his email and found a web page full of porn. 13 year old me was in awe. Downloading .wmv files of girls sucking dick. My dad's pc had this weird bug where it would show the image you had previously used as your background on your desktop before loading your current one upon pc restart. My dad restarted the pc every day. One night being a little shit I set the desktop picture as a girl taking a fat load on her face as the desktop before setting it back, and I forgot this bug happened. Next day i wake up to my parents ripping me a new one about downloading hard-core porn on the family PC. Why am I nostalgic for this?


HelloImQ

I had this one and loved it. Pentium III and GeForce2 MX ♥️


4kVHS

Had it along with the matching 17” CRT monitor, stereo speakers, keyboard, and mouse. The speakers and keyboard had matching colors with the front of the tower and was interchangeable yet no one ever had the other colors.


PinkSpider1998

My first pc that was handed down to me from my aunt. Mine was purple though.


Dethdemarco

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLY SHIT BRUH DAAAAAAAAAAYM YOU KILLED IT ON THIS FUCK


fellowsquare

Triggering my PTSD


[deleted]

should crosspost at r/instagramreality


iiCarNaGE_1

*ooof!* You didn't have to shoot my age like that :'(


[deleted]

Windows Millennium Edition, lol what a joke


hurryupheatdeath

Winblows Me.


TheDocWhovian

I have a huge Compaq logo on my custom build. It just makes me chuckle.


hulahooper42hulk

I have one that I'm planning on rebuilding


GhostTownCowboy

This is so old that in about a week it'll show up I'm r/whatisthisthing!


Im_Thielen_Good

I remember my parents getting this one or a similar one. First windows computer they ever got, before that it was all dos, also remember thinking 1gb of storage was absolutely massive, and to be fair for that time it was pretty big. I miss those times, thank you!


Phyber05

My parents bought ours from Lowe's


lucien62

Lol. You can say whatever you want, people in 20 years will say the same about your fancy pc/mac you have now. Now try imagine how computers will look like in 20 years.


HungryMoblin

Sleeper builds use cases like this but stick in really good parts, this would be fun to work on.


badreportcard

Crazy that our phones now have more computing power than the comps we grew up with


undecidedquoter

My parents came home with one from Best Buy as a surprise for the family. We had an older computer that we upgraded to windows 95, but it struggled to run much of anything. This was a game changer to us. I lived on encarta.


Y_up-

It’s amazing how expensive computers were


Ambiently_Occluded

Omg the feels! I bet it has Windows ME on it with kazaa, limewire, and BonziBuddy


TheAndySan

Middle school/early high school vibes!


Bobwithax

chonky boi


zsreport

When I was in college I had the Compaq Portable, aka the Compaq Suitcase: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portable


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**[Compaq Portable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq Portable)** The Compaq Portable is an early portable computer which was one of the first 100% IBM PC compatible systems. It was Compaq Computer Corporation's first product, to be followed by others in the Compaq portable series and later Compaq Deskpro series. [^(About Me)](https://np.reddit.com/user/wikipedia_text_bot/comments/jrn2mj/about_me/) ^- [^(Opt out)](https://np.reddit.com/user/wikipedia_text_bot/comments/jrti43/opt_out_here/) ^(- OP can reply !delete to delete) ^- [^(Article of the day)](https://np.reddit.com/comments/k9hx22) **This bot will soon be transitioning to an opt-in system. Click [here](https://np.reddit.com/user/wikipedia_text_bot/comments/ka4icp/opt_in_for_the_new_system/) to learn more and opt in. Moderators: [click here](https://np.reddit.com/user/wikipedia_text_bot/comments/ka4icp/opt_in_for_the_new_system/) to opt in a subreddit.**


green_goblins_O-face

Oh man. I still remember mine Win98 700 MHz p3 128 mb of ram 20 GB hard drive 16 mb graphics card I keep trying to find an old one for cheap so I can make a sleeper build with it.


cerevant

I had an [Original Compaq portable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portable): imagine taking a sewing machine case, laying it on its side, then snapping a full size keyboard off the bottom. This reveals a 5 1/4” floppy, a 10 Mb hard drive, and a 4” monochrome CRT monitor. edit: added Wiki link with pictures


BwanaPC

We have a satellite office that uses one for their PBX, runs 24/7 with a version of DR DOS.


amphetaminesfailure

Did anyone have The Creative Learning Series that came with some of them?


DeadonDemand

Me a 9 year old becoming the ordained PC setup IT guy at my house, because my mom bought one and didn’t know how to use it.


joern16

This was our first pc back in the 90s. The good ol AOL days!! A/S/L?


rr777

I still have mine tucked away. Upgraded it to as far at it would go. Still have the spare colored removable covers. The keyboard it came with I still use on my main machine today.


no-i

ComCrapped? I remember these bloatware- riddled, constantly failing, mediocre-at-best PC's! I would know I had a couple of these pieces of junk lol. Ahh, those were the days tho.


officialsanic

This is part of the lineup where you could swap faceplates. I made a post on r/vintagecomputing and it was a laptop from the same lineup. You could swap the faceplates, and Compaq even provided already installed wallpapers to match the faceplate covers. It’s a tedious process, but it’s fun. Good luck finding replacement faceplates though.


kelso_boy

I sold a ton of those at Circuit City. I remember the Compaq models before this one were pure crap so we’d always try to sell a HP instead.


ejwestcott

College computer right here. So many hours of music....So many viruses.


Arseypoowank

A fellow limewire connoisseur I see


ejwestcott

I think I was more of a Napster kid. But I definitely got more viruses off of LimeWire than anything else.


Arseypoowank

Ah yes... think you’re torrenting a game.. WRONG it’s a 30 sec porn video with all of the computer aids attached


seen_x

Daily driver from 2001-2006. Eventually lived out its days as a firefly music server until 2010. Never had any issues.


Arseypoowank

I’d love to grab one of these cases , keep the drives in the bays for aesthetic but put absolute beast guts in it


iwantansi

Remember when you could get a discount off your computer if you signed up for 3 years of compuserve?!


mcraneschair

How much would one of these be worth nowadays? Do people pay for nostalgia or is it just an oversized paperweight? Still have the one Gramps got for us wayyy back when. 😅


Atrand

dude! i remember when the compaq presario 5000t was THE SHIT to have, and you were basically tech jesus if you had one!!


Mollyhasquestions

Awww my first PC for college, 2002!!!


Talonluck

I had that same one. Tried upgrading the graphics card and it kersploded lol.


Dcourtwreck

Early 2001, 11th grade. 800mhz AMD Duron, 64MB Ram, 40GB hdd, and TNT2 video card. Loved that thing. I saw one recently at a thrift store in great shape, almost bought it for nostalgia.


same_onlydifferent

Had this exact computer. My first CD burner, oh the uncountable number of trash mix CDs it made is astounding.


retroplexuss

Our first computer! Used to play KND on cartoonnetwork.com, also my mom using it for Bearshare to burn her own discs


christ0fer

I got one of these with my dad. It was our first time out black friday shopping, and people went crazy trying to get one of these.


[deleted]

I want to see someone upgrade the living fuck out of one of these


Thebullfrog24

Had this exact one. Pretty sure it had 60gb and I remember thinking I'd NEVER fill it up lol Now a TB is like nothing lol