compcrap deskpro 2000

Is their a way into the bios on this old piece of crap. I continually press f10 on reboot and it does nothing! I would like to put a new pci vid card in this machine as it plays dos games in win98 like a champ. It's so easy that way.To do that I need to disable the on board VC in the bios!. I have 4 32mb ram edo 72 pin sims on the way from ebay which should make win98 run a little better. It currently has 49+ mb? I think the bios counts the 1 mb video chip cuz it actuall has 48 mbs--2 16 mb chips and 2 8mb chips. :mult:
Wing command heart of the tiger runs smooth----- as does startrek NG a final unity.
When I had my Gateway 486X2 66mhz-- I envied this machine with a pentium 133mhz! Who ever heard of 49 mbs of ram back then!
The wiedest thing about this computer is the sound card. Its made by creative and its seen in windows as soundblaster 16 or awe. It has a very wierd game port. I've never seen anything like it, it almost is as big as a parallel port, but thiner. It's a problem cuz I'd like to play WingCommander with a joy stick! There are no usb poirts on this old F"
Any advice would be apprciated! :)

Well right off I would say it could be F2 or something else. Compaq did use some weird keys for the bios.
I usually mash a bunch of keys in hopes of getting a keyboard error which then asks me to press maybe F1 to enter setup.
Its not successfull manay times but it has worked.
Another thing. When you change the memory its likely gonna bawk and ask you to go to the bios to reconfigure and save th enew memory. That may be another way into there.
As for the joystick problem. You can likely add a PCI to USB card if you have a spare PCI slot

Compaq had an idiot idea (one of many) to put the bios on the HDD in a seperate partition. You may want to run FDISK from a boot disk and see if it's there.

Well I have one open pci/isa slot. If I put the vid card ati rage chip with 8mb mem in it , then I have no more open slots. The sound card is a huge thing on a pci/isa slot. Maybe I could put a slightly more modern sound card in this beast. I still wouldn't have usb, but if I have the above work, its not important. :rolleyes:

Shamus, when I installed win on this old F' I was flashed a warning that said something to the effect that thier was a disk catching utility or a compressed drive operating, and it advised me to run my disk catching utility. Well I ignored that and things went fine on the install. fdisk saw no other partition and formatted the disk.
I downloaded a compaq utility that made a disk that's diagnostic, It hangs when it trys to diagnose the HDD. That I think is because of----fat32 disk instead of fat16. There is a choice to go to setup from this diagnostic disk, but if I try to go there it asks for the setup disk!? Did Compcrap put their bios on a disk? If so I'm probably screwed. :)

I know you can download both disks from HP.com for that. They did have the diagnostic partition on the hard drive. You can boot up to the floppy for entering the bios. If at sometime you wipe the hard drive and reinstall, put the partition on first and then install the OS. Hope that helps.

Follow kennels advice and you should be good to go. :)

Kennel is on the right track.

Sit in the lotus position staring at a blank wall. Repeat your mantra, "Compaq ROM Paq, Compaq ROM Paq, Compaq ROM Paq, Compaq ROM Paq, ......"

It is most fun when you have to service an older mission critical server.

You turn to the owner of the server and say, "Where do you keep the ROM Paq disks?"

"Whuh? Disks? Ones that came with the server? Musta tossed em with the boxes. Were they important?"

Well folks, I was afraid I was screwed, like houseisland indicates.
The 128 mb of mem went in nicely. The bios was triggered to ask me to save the new memory. I doubt that it will be so kind with a new video card! We shall see. It's not here yet. I bet the original setup disk wouldn't work anywaqy on fat32?! :rolleyes:
I did download what I thought might be the softpaq, but it still asks for a disk I don't have. :flames:

You may be abloe to remove part of the memory and trigger another entry into the bios giving you the opportunity to change things

That's a good idea. I'll let you know when the card comes, :)

Compaq used to use ctl + S, or alt or alt shift ctl S or something like that in the old days. And you had to do it at the right time, and it had a real small window of opportunity to get the keys pressed.

I'm at work right now Deadeye, but I'll try some different combinations when I get home tonite. Thanks, seems like I kind of remeber thawt too now that you mention it. :)

Which model DeskPro 2000 are we talking about? Looks like there are about 14 to choose from. http://h20180.www2.hp.com/apps/Looku...y=deskpro+2000

Also, you can find some General Reference manuals for the DeskPro 2000 Series here:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...SeriesId=96252

Maintenance & Service Guide for DeskPro 2000 here in .pdf format: (2.74MB)
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/su...278785-002.pdf

Technical Reference Guide for DeskPro 2000 with MMX Technology here: (1.1MB)
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/su...M_416b0797.pdf

Compaq often used 3rd party motherboards in their workstation boxes. Sometime they were not even rebranded. It is a long shot, but if it is a 3rd party board and if you can identify it and find the "orignal" non-Compaq bios for it, you might be able to do a hotswap bios flash. I have liberated at least three boards from Compaq silliness in this manner.

donj Mine is the 5133. At least from looking at all the models, I think that model has the P133 chip as mine does.

And DonJ, all the literature you posted seems to be for the mmx models which postdate my machine. They are somewhat helpful, but they really apply to newer machines. :sad:

For help in ID'ing your model, read up here on "How Do I Find My Model Number?"
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/g...=product&cc=us

Win98 Software & Drivers for the 5133 here:
http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/fi...cate/4_63.html

Notice the link under Firmware for F10 Setup & Diags.

OK DonJ, I loaded the f10 setup firmware. Howerver it doesn't see the disk. The diagnostics stop with the HDD and it won't let me load the diagnostics partition. My thought is to reformat in fat16. I think it was made for that and not fat32. Could that be the problem? I hope not to have to reformat, but it looks to me that that is what I need to do? :sad:

Ok, I did it. I put another 2,5 gb HDD in the machine and loaded dos then win 95 and the setup program now works. Problem now is that the ethernet card doesn't seem to ave windows 95 drivers. I may post more on that later if I can't find them. In any case what serves as a bios set up now works :grin: Thanks everyone!