My grandpa had a hard drive poo out on one of the really lousy compaq, and it would only take an oem windows compaq refused to ship to him.
So he used ubuntu for four months, then bought a shitty e-machine for the next business year.
He liked it, but he missed some windows only software.
As for obsolete machines, I always wanted an eOne, but apple sued over it, and apparently they were shitboxes.
Congrats on reviving your zombie!
God though, compaqs were always tempremental shits.