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Compaq Presario al-lin-ones

It's super cool to see all of the other Compaq all-in-one PC fans here! I'm adding my own reply to this old thread as yet another person seeking the original Compaq QuickRestore CD and Floppy disc images for the Compaq CDS 500 series PC. I purchased one of these beautiful machines (CDS 524) with the original box last year, but unfortunately there was no software included in the box! I'm lucky enough to have the original hard drive fully in tact and functioning with Windows 95 on it.

Has anyone here had luck finding a copy of the original CDS series recovery CD and Floppy? I actually found one on eBay not too long ago, but it was quickly swept away before I had a chance to buy it.
 
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Just an quick update on my CDS524.

On board memory had gone bad and now it wont boot any proper 32 bit OS such as OS/2, NT or *nix which is quite annoying. It ran Mandrake 6.1 for a long time. Also the battery is due for replacement. It runs Dos ok though so can do things like IRC, FTP etc using the mtcp suite of tools. Its now networked using twisted as I've got a few other systems set up on that now with my main system using wireless. A curious thing is it wont run with one stick of 72 pin simm. Needs two because that doesn't need access to the on board ram. Each stick has to be in a particular order too or it wont boot for some unknown reason.

I'm quite temped to break it down as I do have a Pentium system in the same form factor. Time will tell...
 
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It's super cool to see all of the other Compaq all-in-one PC fans here! I'm adding my own reply to this old thread as yet another person seeking the original Compaq QuickRestore CD and Floppy disc images for the Compaq CDS 500 series PC. I purchased one of these beautiful machines (CDS 524) with the original box last year, but unfortunately there was no software included in the box! I'm lucky enough to have the original hard drive fully in tact and functioning with Windows 95 on it.

Has anyone here had luck finding a copy of the original CDS series recovery CD and Floppy? I actually found one on eBay not too long ago, but it was quickly swept away before I had a chance to buy it.

I think I have a copy of the SoftPaq stuff for making various 400/500 series floppies, but I don't have any original physical media. They're all Compaq labeled QNNNNNN where the Ns are seemingly arbitrary numbers, though, so it might take me a while to find what you need if you need something (will have to open them in DOSBox one by one). If I find the time I should make a list of relevant SoftPaq numbers and what they have in them!

Just an quick update on my CDS524.

On board memory had gone bad and now it wont boot any proper 32 bit OS such as OS/2, NT or *nix which is quite annoying. It ran Mandrake 6.1 for a long time. Also the battery is due for replacement. It runs Dos ok though so can do things like IRC, FTP etc using the mtcp suite of tools. Its now networked using twisted as I've got a few other systems set up on that now with my main system using wireless. A curious thing is it wont run with one stick of 72 pin simm. Needs two because that doesn't need access to the on board ram. Each stick has to be in a particular order too or it wont boot for some unknown reason.

I'm quite temped to break it down as I do have a Pentium system in the same form factor. Time will tell...

What do you mean "break it down"? Hopefully you just mean use the cards/etc. elsewhere and not actually destroy the machine? You can certainly replace the RAM chips on the board with some soldering skill - I've never done that level of soldering work myself (yet) but it's certainly not hopeless.

The thing with the stick order probably means one of the sticks has some bad memory, if the one with the problem is in the first slot it will hit the bad part sooner and maybe not boot. If it's in the other order, you'd only see issues with crashing/glitching software that ends up using that specific part of memory. Run MEMTEST and see if it finds any problems if you haven't.

Updates on my Compaq boxen: My flagship 425 had a HDD issue with the 750GB drive I had in there, seems anything above 120GB starts to have issues even with overlay software, might be something fixable by using multiple partitions or a different filesystem, but that happened a few years back so I'd have to re-experiment (I need to take notes when I do these things..). Anyway it's still my main vintage box after having a new drive put in and the software tweaked and played with incessantly. The spare 400 series boxes are in the same state they were in, stored away. Since I posted here I attained a 5528 (identical case to the CDS 524) that needs some aesthetic restoration, and will soon be getting a 4402 this Saturday. I don't recall if I had the 3020 at the time when I last posted in this thread, but I have that as well in basically new shape. I'm considering making an area of my site dedicated to these machines with useful (and useless) software and documentation easily available for any vintage Compaq AIO.
 
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Sorry to join such an old thread, but I am a quiet fanatic for the Compaq Presario all-in-one design, particularly the 425 and 433 machines. The former was the very first computer I grew up using. I guess I've come to the right place and I'll definitely share any software if I'm able to find it.

Anyone willing to sell me a Presario 425? Motivated buyer here. I might even do a road trip to pick up. :)

I'm getting worried that shipping these bad boys is virtually impossible nowadays. So far I've now bought two and had them shipped - both online sellers disregarded my suggestions for layers of styrofoam, double-boxing, etc. - they told me it would be well-packaged and then simply handed the naked PC over to UPS or FedEx, who idiotically threw it in a too-large exterior box filled with one layer of bubble wrap or packing peanuts. End result: I could tell from a mile away that the dents on the exterior box were mortal wounds. Both times the cases were smashed to pieces, but on the plus side I was able to salvage some of the boards for spares.
 

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