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Trouble making Compaq setup disks for Compaq portable from Softpaq files.

VERAULT

VERAULT

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Jan 30, 2012
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Location
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So its been years since I did this and I cant find my original floppies. I agreed to make some compaq setup floppies for another member since I needed some for myself anyway.

I searched far and wide but all the old links were dead (did HP take down thier FTP?) The only viable downloads I found for the compaq setup softpaq's were here towards the middle of the page: http://oldcomputers.net/compaqiii.html

SP0316.exe and SP0308.exe From what I remember 316 is 360KB 5.26" and 308 is 720KB 3.5"

Anyway I unzipped the files to the hard drive (XTIDE) of my 5160. My 5160 has a univeral (from the late 80's) floppy controller which supports low and high density 3.5" and 5.25" floppy drives.

I ran the executable and I would get to the screen which allows you to choose the full set of 2 or individual disks. Then it would give the same error over and over stating I didnt have a compatible drive in the machine.

I pulled the Universal floppy controller and used the oldschool low density ibm controller with full height 360kb drive (all known good). same error.
I pulled out my early 5150 machine I am working on, on another thread. Same error.

I copied the files over to my compaq portable 1 which has a working 30mb MFM HDD,... SAME ERROR!

What am I doing wrong? Is the file corrupted? Its been many years since I have made these disks from the softpaq so maybe I am not remembering a step.

IMG_20220901_114819.jpg
 
I could be wrong, but I think it’s reading something from the BIOS to determine if a low density drive is installed. Since XT class usually have only low density whatever it checks for fails. Just a hunch. I could be wrong. I had the same problem and I think I got it to work on my 5170.
 
Well I know I made the same disks on my 5160 years go. But now 3 different computers including a compaq portable all have the same problem. Seems to me maybe the file is corrupt.

Anyone with a compaq portable or 5150/5160 willing to take a crack at this file? SP0316.exe
 
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Here you go.
 

Attachments

  • compaq_diag.zip
    791.9 KB · Views: 12
I use winimage or hxcfloppyemulator to generate images. I use a greaseweazle to write the images to disk. As said above, DCF or old versions of winimage are also good for writing disks on old machines.
 
Ok Thanks Plasma. I wrote the disks out and tried them both. They both work... but when I run the SETUP program on my compaq portable 1 I get the following error:

SETUP not applicable for this type machine. Press Enter to Exit.

IMG_20220912_184724.jpg

Anyone have an idea why? This is meant for the Portable 1 correct?
 
Unfortunately I don't have any Compaq portables so I can't verify. I just used the SP0316 link. According to the readme it should work if you have at least 256K.
 
No “cmos” on a portable 1, it’s all dip switches. Does either inspect or diagnostics have the low level format utility? That’s the only thing I would think would require setup of some sort.
 
Trixter said:
The Portable is an 8088-based system and has no CMOS. It doesn't have/need a setup program because there are no battery-backed CMOS values to maintain.

I think what you grabbed was for the Portable II, which was a 286-based system.
Click to expand...
So I will need different disks for the Portable I?


Does anyone have a line on the correct disk images for the original Compaq portable?
 
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