ASUS and HP XL768

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BILL_S

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Hey all... Been about a year since I last stopped by, but I tell everyone looking for help about you guys! ...oh, and DaniWeb for IT pros as well!

I got major amounts of help and I am kinda at it again, looking for old PC info that the manufacturer has abandoned.

I picked up an XL 768 HP the other day for $15 used. The floppy was gone and the OEM HDD (10 GB approx, Maxtor 5400 with WinME preinstall) had been smashed on the IDE circuit side with pins broken and missing. Since the rest of the drive looked intact, I removed a Maxtor IDE circuit and swapped them, from one 9GB to the 9~10 one in question, both seemingly the same spec... This allowed the drive to boot but never get to the ME flash screen. After some time trying the Pin jumpers and locations [cable, drive profile] I noted the inner top disc was scratched like a CD gets from a likely cause,.. the heads of the HDD on top and where not visable? This may mean the drive was hit upon while in motion prior to my tests? (I removed the top cover after many attempts with no success, The read head was clicking loudly as it scanned in and out in fast succession.

Anyway, this mobo is an ASUS as was the other Compaqs I have owned, yet reviews online list ASUS in various options as far as the mobo itself...like 3 DIM slots instead of two or different header options.

I have the HP set of hardware OEM so there is a Smart Modular modem/sound card, an Ethernet PCI card, a Nvidia TNT Vanta with 16MB video RAM and this appears to be 2x AGP slot on this board; the ASUS K7M, ver 1.04...but the driver I had from Nvidia is for a TNT card that is 4x. I wonder if the card actually goes beyond the AGP rating, which would be good in a move!

I also read the BIOS of the ASUS board alone can and should allow for some overclocking but obviously no big OEM like HP gives you nice options in the BIOS, so I wonder can anyone flash this with a more open BIOS revision and get it to work as an OEM with the overclock settings?
I find the 185watt PSU is actually good here, and there appears to be one or two USB headers for front slots, yet the only option on this Pavilion is what looks like a traditional serial slot marked for digital camera interface! Never seen that before but it has an actual mobo header!

Anyway, any one with experience on retrofitting or refurb on this model, or similar, I welcome some tips. The posts I Googled date back to 2001! I am interested in a Windows ME restore that could be used with this Hp and the Compaq 5123SR, which is a 5000 model Presario I picked up that also works, has an Athlon Socket A instead of a Slot 1 Athlon.
I ran that Compaq with a 2400+ AMD chip at 1500Mhz, BTW! Not bad from reports of other chip upgrades!
 
I can't get all the drivers needed with Windows 98 SE, and I am just trying to get a good home for some 10GB HDD Maxtors! The one that came with this was bashed and I could not save it. I did some Googling to find that the highest AMD Slot A package CPU at 1000Mhz will work, that's close to Tualatin process power, so the real lacking elements are cache size on the Socket A that followed vs this setup mobo and the AGP stuck at 2x. Not very good for any 3D gaming!
 
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