Reply #2: Not 5 year old Compaqs

[charlie]

I've got a pair of old beaters (4 and 5) I've installed almost every version of Windows and dozens of Linux distros on, and swapped out hard drives several times, without suffering BIOS lockout.

I second the Athlon as well, it'll be zippier with its larger L1 and L2 caches and faster bus. The only downside is that Athlons of that vintage tend to run reeeally toasty (just had a 1.1gig go up in smoke a few weeks ago, after years of keeping me appreciably warmer during winters)