michaelb@wshb.csms.com ( WSHB Operations Eng) (08/03/90)
OK everybody. I'm still trying to get this old Compaq Deskpro/16 working. I have determined that the hard disk that is in it only looks like an IDE drive but isn't really. (Apparently they have changed this now.) Any way, when I power up the machine with the drive installed it spins up, tries to recal, the drive shuts down and stops spinning, the drive select light starts flashing, and the machine asks you to press F1. Classic symptom of the setup being wrong. Boot the machine into DOS (yuk), run setup from the Compaq setup disk, set the drive type to the type printed on the label from Compaq, try to reboot and exactly the same thing happens. Try to go to fdisk to partition the disk and nothing. As far as I know you can't redo the lowlevel format on these things so I'm stuck. (Maybe something else is wrong and I'm not getting it.) I want to take this stupid Compaq hard-drive, floppy drive, serial port, parallel port, kitchen sink, everything-in-one nightmare board out, put in a regular high speed serial port card, a floppy control card, a parallel port card, and an IDE paddle board. Has anyone tried this radical a change from Compaq hardware? Would I do better to use a regular MFM hard drive controller? Is anyone willing to give me enough money for this thing to buy myself a REAL clone? Frustratedly yours, Michael -- Michael Batchelor--Systems/Operations Engineer #compliments and complaints WSHB - An International Broadcast Station of # letterbox@csms.com The Christian Science Monitor Syndicate, Inc. #technical questions and reports michaelb@wshb.csms.com +1 803 625 4880 # letterbox-tech@csms.com