It does have the usual Compaq strangeness of giving no indication of how to call up the CMOS settings on boot - but that might also be a WinMe "feature". I'm sure it's buried in the CD-ROM documentation somewhere.

I've finally cracked the case of my mom's 5WV280 system mentioned earlier (here or on ezboard). It's an Athlon 900/128/30/nVidia VANTA LT TNT2 8 MB video/CD/CD-RW/10-100 NIC/56k modem/Logitech QuickCam/etc. for $629 refurbished from Compaq.

It seems to use a Compaq "UWAVE" motherboard. It's got at least a partial VIA chipset (VT82C686A). There's another part of the chipset which is under a heatsink. The Athlon 900 has a giant fan/heatsink (TaiSol). There are lots of electrolytic capacitors around the Athlon, so they seem to have taken voltage regulation seriously. The board is around 9.5" square and seems to be fairly ATX standard layout. I don't have enough experience to know how standard it really is though...

The system has 1 free PCI slot (1 taken by the NIC, 1 taken by the modem) - 4 slots total (3 PCI, 1 AGP). It's got 3 RAM DIMM sockets, one taken by a DIMM with Infineon chips. It's got 1-3.5" internal HD bay free and 1-3.5" external bay free.

The power supply is 250 W.

It seems like a reasonable system, but I can't see the brand of parts used for the CD, CD-RW, HD without disassembling it more....

I noticed on Compaq's web page that the 7110US system (discussed at the start of this thread) is supposed to be available for $1299 (without monitor and speakers) at Compaq retailers. Man, they're not making it easy for me to resist....

Thanks for all the comments.

Cheers,
Scott.