{"id":1425,"date":"2024-07-21T20:58:38","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T01:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/?p=1425"},"modified":"2024-07-21T20:58:38","modified_gmt":"2024-07-22T01:58:38","slug":"my-tech-journey-part-four-the-compaq-presario-5000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/my-tech-journey-part-four-the-compaq-presario-5000\/","title":{"rendered":"My Tech Journey, Part Four: The Compaq Presario 5000"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We are now at part four of my tech journey series. The first<\/a> three<\/a> posts<\/a> have brought me through college, and into my first job working at the Minnesota House of Representatives<\/a>. With my first “adult” job, and not-so-flush with a government salary, I decided to buy a new computer, and settled on a Compaq Presario 5000<\/a>. Before reading on for more, an aside: since my last post, my current desktop decided to die so I just built a new one! It’s almost as if my computer decided to extend this series, but that post is far in the future for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Compaq Presario I purchased was custom-ordered, and the color I selected was a lovely green. I even have a picture of it, making this the first picture I have of a computer in this series:<\/p>\n\n\n

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The actual computer from 2004<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It came with a standard bulky CRT, two speakers that hooked onto the sides of said CRT, and a fancy subwoofer as you can see above. The front of the case doubled as a CD holder, and since it came with a CD reader AND burner, you could duplicate CDs in a snap!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one I ordered had an AMD processor; I’m not sure if it was cheaper or what, but it was the first AMD I had ever bought. It also had 512 MB of memory if I remember correctly, and of course Windows XP. It served me well for many years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Into the broadband age<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When I got the computer, I was still on dialup. Since I could no longer use the U of M’s service, I had to find my own, and found service from an apparently now-defunct company: USFamily.net<\/a>. Their selling point was that unlike many dialup services at the time, they never had a busy signal. Instead, if you were using too much of the service relative to others at busy times, you’d be kicked off to free up a line. It wasn’t until a few years later that I finally moved away from dialup and got broadband as in the picture above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was also the computer that I used when I first signed up for SETI@Home<\/a>, the distributed computing project looking for aliens:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The old-fashioned interface<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It took about 80 hours of crunching to finish one work unit back then. Sadly, that project too has been shut down, although I still work on distributed computing via BOINC<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upgrades<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Eventually I decided that it would be fun to have better graphics on my computer in case I ever wanted to play anything (such as SimCity 4<\/a>). I was still very new to computer tech at the time, and the state of the art has moved beyond ISA slots that I was familiar with. There was this funny brown slot on my motherboard, and I was curious what it was, so I started searching around. This led me to PCMech.com, and there I learned that what I had was an AGP port<\/a> perfect for a video card. I also became an active member of that forum for almost a decade, but it appears that site also went dead a few years ago. All those posts are gone like tears in rain…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did get a video card and a DVD burner at some point, and it became a workhorse of a computer: I bought VB6 and learned some rudimentary programming on it for work, and even figured out how to solder together an S-video to Composite adapter with a random capacitor to send the output to a TV. This computer is the last one to my knowledge to be affected by an actual virus from who knows where, but I had a backup and was able to restore no problem. I also eventually swapped the bulky CRT for my first LCD screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, all tech becomes obsolete. After several years of hanging around PCMech, I decided that no longer would I buy a desktop from a retailer again, but instead would be building my PCs in the future. I hung onto that Compaq for a while, but my next PC was in fact my first home-build, and that will be the subject of my next post. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the fourth post in this series, I talk about the computer I bought after college, the Compaq Presario 5000, and how I went in a different direction afterwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech-2","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t