Can’t Open Case of Compaq Presario S5020AN
July 10th, 2018
AMD AthlonXP 2400+ (2.0ghz)
256MB DDR RAM
40GB Hard drive
CD-R/W drive
Floppy drive (absolutely essential these days [!])
Windows XP Home
I’m using it right now to write this message. I’m pretty happy with it but I bought it with the intention of taking the RAM from my old computer and adding that in and also adding the old computer’s 80GB HDD with my software and downloaded stuff in as the primary, formatting the 40GB to act as another partition. MY MAIN QUESTION:
I can’t seem to get it open (the Compaq). I undid all the screws and tried pulling (only opens on one side). SECONDARY QUESTIONS:
Any suggestions on what could go wrong?
How to fix these.
post some pics if you can
do you see any buttons or levers near the back ?
seen some that open like a door (on a pivot or hinge)
Thats a pretty good deal. Well you definitely need to post pics for us to see how it could be opened. Because when googling your stuff it shows others that may not be it. Like i found bunch where you clearly see you slide door and it opens.
Hey guys. Sorry, I forgot I posted this. I finally opened the case but inside there were already 2 sticks of RAM (2x 256MB) but the OS only picks up 480MB. Any ideas about that?
I also had another hiccup – there was one slot free but the HDD from my other machine won’t go in because there’s some metal thing there. I can’t remove the current HDD and replace that either because there’s some sort of green harness down the side. It looks like removing it could damage the side panels of the bays so I’m not gonna try. The current HDD slides out about half way before it’s restricted by the harness.
I’ll take some pictures this weekend and post them on. Merry Xmas.
It’s always good to see fellow NZers on .
You’ll find some motherboards simply don’t support much RAM. Sadly, you can’t get around that problem unless you decide to buy another mother board.. And different MOBOs have different types of RAM.. It’s a tricky process. Good luck. Merry Christmas to you too! (Damn it’s hot in NZ!)
If you have an on-board video card it may be using some of that ram.
2 sticks of RAM (2x 256MB) but the OS only picks up 480MB. Any ideas about that?
The “missing” RAM is used by on-board video and therefore, not available to the OS.
i’m planning to add the pics of the harness & stuff later today. thanks for the quick reply on the ‘missing’ ram. i have one more question – will this be able to run Half Life 2 Deathmatch from Steam (legal). The specs are in the starter post except for these corrections:
480MB of DDR RAM (as opposed to 256MB)
32MB integrated graphics, no OpenGL support sadly
5.54GB free hard drive space (with at least another 8GB easily cleared if needed)
lol you got a steal mate.
You can’t run HL2 on it, the graphics isn’t up for the job. O Athlon XP, you can have some fun with it such as overclocking the multiplier by connecting traces of L1 and L2 bridges using a 2HB pencil. Seriously this computer, upgrading isn’t a go, memory is expensive , maybe DDR333.
Video card, AGP and expensive too.
DDR 400 might work, but $65 street price for 1Gb just ain’t worth it, I’m assuming $9 are scams.
Video card, a ATI 3650 AGP might fit at $91.10
Check pricespy.
I don’t really care about the HDD now because I made my own torrent tracker on my local network (uTorrent built-in) so i just move files around with that (~20mb/s faster than other methods for me). I just keep active stuff on this comp’s HDD. I don’t want to build this up anyways. I don’t care about how it is because my good computer should be back in a couple of weeks as soon as my dad gets to work. The DP35DP motherboard is discontinued and Intel haven’t really made anything we deem appropriate so we’re looking at an nForce. So yeah
I finally got around to taking some pics of the harness thing:
This is the whole harness. It’s a pain in the ass but it looks like removing it might break it or do something irreparable to the case or sth.
That’s the hard drive sticking out of the harness / drive bays.
