Compaq diagnostic disks

[John D. Reeve]

Thanks Tom and Jim.  I tried pressing the magic keys and nothing happened, 
but did find the diagnostic disks online in a 360K version.  My next step 
will be to find an IBM compatible that actually has a 360K floppy drive, to 
make the darn things!  I've tried getting the Compaq to make them itself, 
but the 1.2 Mb drive pretty much refuses to do it.  Cheers, John

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Peters" <tpeters at mixcom.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" 
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 5:39 PM
Subject: Re: Compaq diagnostic disks


> At 05:03 PM 6/13/2006 -0500, you wrote:
>>Hello All.  I've recently acquired a Compaq Portable III (286, cool gas 
>>plasma display) and am having some problems with the hard drive.  After 
>>powering up, the system says to insert a diagnostic disk in drive A.  If I 
>>choose "Resume" by hitting the F1 key, it will boot PC-DOS just fine from 
>>the floppy drive (1.2 MB, 5.25") although it complains about the time and 
>>date not being set.  The system doesn't show a C drive, however, and FDISK 
>>also says there is no hard disk.  Here is my question - do I need these 
>>diagnostic disks to setup the hard drive on this system?  Or is the hard 
>>disk just dead?  Does anyone have a copy of the disks?  Thanks for any 
>>help.  John Reeve
>
> Usually, there is no onboard bios setup code-- you had to have the blasted 
> diag disk. The big mistake many people make is using a non-Compaq hard 
> disk tool to partition the hard disk. Compaq creates a small dedicated 
> partition on the hard disk and stores the setup disk there, and sometimes 
> the diagnostic.
>
> If the setup code is present, you can access it by watching the screen 
> after the POST. At one point, the cursor will jump to the upper right 
> corner of the screen, and sit there for about 2 seconds. If you hit the 
> magic key when the cursor is sitting there, you should get the 
> setup/diagnostics menu, if the Compaq Diagnostic partition is still 
> present.
>
> The magic key is, hmmm, I forget. I think it's F10. Might be F1. ESC? 
> Don't think it's DEL.
>
> If there's really no hard disk, then you'll have to download the disks 
> from the HPaq (Hp, formerly Compaq) web site and use another PC to build 
> the disks. They make you jump through numerous hoops-- download a zip 
> file, unzip it, sometimes to discover the zip file had multiple zip files 
> in it, run the program, which asks for a blank floppy...
>
> When looking for the software, use the PC model number, not "Portable 
> III". There's a model number like 5166-10 or something (well, that's for a 
> Pentium II) but you get the idea.
>
>
>
>
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