Compaq Deskpro2000 Intel Pentium 233 MMX

Do these computers have a true bios in them? According to Compaq F10 is supposed to get you in but after many attempts still no bios trap. The system was purchased used bare bones, no hard drive, no memory. I threw in a 32 meg DIMM and 1 gig hard drive and it was detected and booted up right away into win98SE. Error at boot was time/date not set F1 to boot. So I hit F1 and it boots. Setting the correct time and date in windows fixed the time/date error. The HDD was a pull from a Dell P120 machine. Does this sound right to you guys?

I used to work with Deskpro's a lot and I can tell you for a fact that they do not have a true bios, what the have is a small and unditectible hard drive partion that stores this info. The software can be downloaded form comCRAP(compaq).

I hope this helps

If the info is stored on a partition of the harddrive, how did it know what harddrive was in it and boot right away? The hard drive I put in it was out of a Dell which has a bios.

[quote]Originally posted by Silverman:
<strong>Do these computers have a true bios in them? According to Compaq F10 is supposed to get you in but after many attempts still no bios trap. The system was purchased used bare bones, no hard drive, no memory. I threw in a 32 meg DIMM and 1 gig hard drive and it was detected and booted up right away into win98SE. Error at boot was time/date not set F1 to boot. So I hit F1 and it boots. Setting the correct time and date in windows fixed the time/date error. The HDD was a pull from a Dell P120 machine. Does this sound right to you guys?</strong><hr></blockquote>

You can do that. There is a bios chip locally on the machine that stores the time and basic information. The problem is you cannot change system parameters with out bootable floppies that will want to build a diagnostics partition on your HDD.

To confirm, most old Compaqs like this had a very basic BIOS that could not be easily flashed or upgraded, and a partition on the hard drive that contained most of the usual Setup information and as activated by hitting F10. You used to be able to download the F10 Setup utility from Compaq, don't know if you still can or not.

This was what made it so hard to install large hard drives in these machines; the Setup information needed to be changed before you installed the drive, but the Setup information was ON the drive... Catch-22...

In case you haven't already done so, go here for <a href="http://www.compaq.com/support/files/desktops/us/" target="_blank">software for Compaq's desktops</a>. Select your model number and follow the bouncing ball.

Thankyou for the explanation. It works with the modem and sound card I installed just fine so for now I will leave it as is. If I explain what was just said to the customer I'll have to spend the rest of the day beating him with a stick.