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Compaq SFF en desk-pro with Floppy and CD drives, with windows 98, run in dos mod. (help)

Yes, that page from the manual is what was needed. Now all the OP has to do is find the cable and follow the diagram of pinouts to make sure it is plugged in properly.

But why is the cable missing? Why was the CD disconnnected? Was there a problem with the CD and someone disconnected it?

Simply replacing the cable may not lead to a working CD-ROM.

Seaken
 
@twolazy and @tradde , why do you say it could not be SCSI because it's a consumer product?

I now see clearly that this is a special case of IDE. But my question is how you know that SCSI is not used in a consumer product? Or is it just that it is a consumer "Compaq"?

Seaken
 
seaken said:
@twolazy and @tradde , why do you say it could not be SCSI because it's a consumer product?

Seaken
Click to expand...

For the simple reason that SCSI was largely irrelevant in PCs used in the home. All people wanted would be a hard drive and an optical drive, which a simple IDE controller (often integrated on the mainboard along with serial, parallel, sound and video controllers) could handle with ease. Why would any manufacturer wish to complicate things (and increase costs) by adding a SCSI interface which would probably never be used? Plus, there's no doubt that support calls would skyrocket if people plugged their printer into an external DB25 SCSI port and blew something up ... :)

That's not to say that SCSI was *never* used in consumer products, just very rarely - and probably not from any manufacturer that was throwing parts together to allow people to play with AOL at the lowest possible price.

M.
 
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A deskpro really isn't a computer marketed at the home, and some of them definitely came with SCSI, such as the Deskpro 6000 with Pentium II. We had an entire computer lab of those at one of my previous places of employment. Those were not SFF though and all of the evidence we are seeing for this one shows that's it's just IDE.
 
Would small business be considered "consumer" in these cases? I'm just curious on how the community can be so sure that SCSI would not be used. I'm not doubting that this is an IDE connector. I'm just trying to learn, as I come across a lot of old stuff I am not familiar with. I would like to know what the logic is where we can definitively eliminate SCSI from this or any other device just by looking at the CD-ROM interface, with no supporting documentation. COULD it have been SCSI? Or it that impossible, because it is a consumer level device?

Not trying to pick a fight. I'm genuinely curious as to how we can make that deduction.

Seaken
 
This appears to be the CD-ROM on eBay.

s-l1600.jpg
 
seaken said:
Would small business be considered "consumer" in these cases? I'm just curious on how the community can be so sure that SCSI would not be used. I'm not doubting that this is an IDE connector. I'm just trying to learn, as I come across a lot of old stuff I am not familiar with. I would like to know what the logic is where we can definitively eliminate SCSI from this or any other device just by looking at the CD-ROM interface, with no supporting documentation. COULD it have been SCSI? Or it that impossible, because it is a consumer level device?

Not trying to pick a fight. I'm genuinely curious as to how we can make that deduction.

Seaken
Click to expand...
I used to sell and install these machines into hospitals as well as local businesses. I have a ton of experience on Compaqs from 94-2003 (When HP officially took over). Only machines that had SCSI were Prolinea's (business market) at that time, unless user configured to have it, for say a DAT tape drive as example. This era of Compaq, the cheapness set in, due to pressure from brands like Packard Bell and eMachines.
 
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