prob w/ compaq deskpro 2000mmx

[ghettoside]

anyone know what to do with a deskpro (other than take a sledgehammer to it) that has lost the floppy drive and can't re-enable floppy drive in setup?
been fighting it for over 10 hours, can't find solution at hp support. put floppy in other comp and it works. tried 2 other floppys, no go. is there any way to get into cmos on a compaq? all I can get is the compaq setup/diagnositcs that's on a partition on the hd, and it's been useless to me. at boot up, floppy drive light comes on, motor turns, but just can't seem to enable the device.
I'm open to wild guesses on this one.

[ghettoside]

i tried different cables, checked no pins broke, etc.
looked for dos drivers for floppy (I don't even know if there is such a thing, couldn't find any, and isn't the fl drv just supposed to be in bios, or enabled/disabled in cmos?)
without a floppy drive, I don't know how I could flash the bios.
any ideas?

[YeOldeStonecat]

Wow I remember those. Man, wish I had a dime for every one of those 2000's I've worked on or setup. What a workhorse those were.

F-10 for setup is all you get. If for some reason you blew away that 24 meg setup partition on the HD, you can download a floppy disk from their support site. But that won't help you since she's dead.

Letsee...you've tried other ribbon cables, and you've gotten the floppy drive itself to work on another machine. Only thing left I can think of is still try yet another floppy drive on this one even though you've shown this drive it good.

Have you reset the CMOS on the mobo? There's jumpers on there...near the CPU. Will reset them to default.

Lastly...the floppy drive controller on the motherboard could simply have failed...it's shot. Even though the Deskpro line has 3 year warranty....that old machine is quite expired.

[ghettoside]

appreciate the response. had a feeling it wouldn't be good news though.
I don't know if a file might be missing from that 24Mb part, am going to put the HD in another comp and see if i can access that part. maybe can reinstall the utilities in another machine.
tried 2 other floppy's in there.
already did reset cmos, didn't help. it did find the enet card and installed it (like I even care by now)
I gotta bad, bad feeling that controller is shot. I wonder if there's a pci card for ide that has floppy contrl. gonna go look.
thanks for the input.

[ghettoside]

put the hd in other comp; fdisk reports 1 non dos partition 24Mb; 1 primary dos 1.2 gig; 1 extended w/ 1 logical drive 1.8.
went into safe mode, only see D: and E:. there's a compaq folder w/ only a few of the files from the 3 disk set.
my question is how to proceed, should I delete the extended and primary, then format, then will I be able to install the compaq utilities to that non-dos that I can't access, or do i wipe the entire drive (have mbr remover and other utility to wipe drive) but then how do i make the non-dos partition, or will the compaq utilities create that 24 Mb part? I can't figure out how to access that 24Mb part in dos either.

[YeOldeStonecat]

The Compaq setup utility can put that 24 meg partition back. (Geeze...I can't believe I remember that and got it right...I was guessing at 24 megs....been a long time since I've worked on them).

You run that before you FDISK and partition/format...else FDISK will wipe it out again.

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/deskpro/us/locate/3_69.html

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/deskpro/us/download/263.html

In case you haven't worked with Compaq's Softpaqs before...it's an EXE you copy to some folder, such as C:\Download\Compaq\Setup

Once downloaded (on a good computer), double click the exe and it will self extract the files if it's a driver bundle, or..in the setup case, it will ask for a blank formatted floppy disk to copy the files to...and make a bootable disk.

[ghettoside]

thanks for the swift reply!
I've never worked on anything like this before. I did do some old prolineas several years ago, but I remember there being a regular cmos and no unique partition like this deskpro.
thanks for the links too, I looked at so much info last night & haven't slept (obsessing on this thing) that I wouldn't have looked without your prompting.
I just hope it doesn't want me to put in a bootdisk when I stick that drive back in there, hoping it can run from the HD once all the files are there.
I forgot to mention, I was getting a config option for floppy B, but only for 5.25 in. no opt for A, no device period.
thanks again!

:D :D :D :D

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally posted by ghettoside
I forgot to mention, I was getting a config option for floppy B, but only for 5.25 in. no opt for A, no device period.
thanks again!


Hrrrmmm....lemme go poke around our service dept and see if we might have a 2000 series kicking around to peek at. I've worked on hundreds and hundreds of them...but been a long time, dem 'r old.

[YeOldeStonecat]

OK, found two of em. One is a 6233mmx...the first Pentium II ....and another is a 5166mmx...same mobo as you, just a 166 CPU.

You say you did find the CMOS clear jumper...next to the memory? Did you get obvious hints that it worked? (IE memory change/date change/HD detected, etc)

And it has one of the floppy cables that has a twist in 7 of the cables? Not a regular floppy cable that is totally flat like many are, or an IDE HD cable.

The floppy controller on the mobo..the red/pink end of the floppy ribbon is facing the back of the mobo. And on the floppy itself...pink/red usually faces the power plug.

[ghettoside]

yes to all.
when I cleared the cmos, first it would do memory error, then F1, then memory updated, then Hd detected, F1 again...
cable's got the twist, red is correct way.
called my source and told me to throw it out, come get another, just got back with it, fired it up and it works. gonna start on it after I take my dog for a walk. this one has 3.2 Gig HD like the first one, and I'm wondering if there's some reason why they're both partitioned the same, the drives are split in half.
I really appreciate your taking the time to poke around. its been a good learning experience, but next time I see one I think I'm gonna run...

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally posted by ghettoside
this one has 3.2 Gig HD like the first one, and I'm wondering if there's some reason why they're both partitioned the same, the drives are split in half.
I really appreciate your taking the time to poke around. its been a good learning experience, but next time I see one I think I'm gonna run...

No reason to run...the Deskpro's are very nice machines. The workhorse of the business world. Believe it or not, Compaq Deskpro's are the highest selling business machines out there. (called Evo's now...still very nice. My current fave is the 510sff) Compaq earned a bad rep with the Presario...and deservingly so. But their business machines (workstations and servers) are great IMHO. And I started out working where I am now hating Compaqs...cuz all I saw were the Presarios.

Anyways, partitioning...just the way they did it back in the Win95a and Win95b days....because of the FAT16 2048mb limitation.

One unfortunate thing...the 'puters in those days...Quantum Bigfoot drives were popular (later known as Tsunami drives...still those huge 5 1/4" drives). Advice...always always replace those...because they had a brutally high failure rate...an official firmware problem were it could go into powersave mode anytime of the day and never come out.

[ghettoside]

thanks for the background info, I'll keep that in mind next time I see one. 'preciate the advice too. My source is always trying to sell me those 5.25's, but I never buy them because I thought they were old and probably worn out.
I always turn off power save when i do a comp. one time I did a fresh install of win 98 and was running defrag (before i started using ME defrag in 98). forgot to turn off powersave. comp shut down during defrag and wound up with some bad clusters.
:D