Need a Compaq Portable 3 Boot Disk

[Haemogoblin]

A few months back I got my hands on a Compaq portable, it seems in working order, albeit the keyboard cable is frayed, which I'm going to address at some point. Either with a new cable or some heat shrink.

Anyways, reason for the post is because I don't have the means to create the original boot disk that came with the Portable 3 and I was hoping someone might be able to come to my rescue.

 

[hagelaars]

A few months back I got my hands on a Compaq portable, it seems in working order, albeit the keyboard cable is frayed, which I'm going to address at some point. Either with a new cable or some heat shrink.

Anyways, reason for the post is because I don't have the means to create the original boot disk that came with the Portable 3 and I was hoping someone might be able to come to my rescue.

Hi,

You mean a boot disk for a Compaq Portable III / 386? I have a working disk and can make you a copy.
Does your CP III have a 3'5" disk drive or a 5'25"? These models can have both.

Let me know.

 

[hagelaars]

You can also make one yourself. Here you find the link to the 5'25 floppy image: Compaq Diagnostic

 

[Haemogoblin]

At the moment the machine has it's stock 5.25" drive installed. All I have is 3.5" floppy drives, so I'm not able to create the disk needed to get the ball rolling. My understanding is that you can just swap the internal floppy drive without first booting into the bios and telling it to look for 1.44mb floppy drive. And that if the bios for whatever reason gets wiped, it's back to hooking up a 5.25" drive to change it again, as that is the default setup.

I'm wanting to go the 3.5" floppy route because those are the disks I have in abundance kicking around the house, plus it will make transferring files between systems much easier.

If you can sort me out a disk, I'll happily cover the cost of the floppy + shipping, as it would be doing me a huge favor

 

[hagelaars]

At the moment the machine has it's stock 5.25" drive installed. All I have is 3.5" floppy drives, so I'm not able to create the disk needed to get the ball rolling. My understanding is that you can just swap the internal floppy drive without first booting into the bios and telling it to look for 1.44mb floppy drive. And that if the bios for whatever reason gets wiped, it's back to hooking up a 5.25" drive to change it again, as that is the default setup.

I'm wanting to go the 3.5" floppy route because those are the disks I have in abundance kicking around the house, plus it will make transferring files between systems much easier.

If you can sort me out a disk, I'll happily cover the cost of the floppy + shipping, as it would be doing me a huge favor

That's right. The computer has no real BIOS. You'll need the diagnostics disk to set it up. After boot up with the disk, you can set up the diskdrive to be 3,5" instead of 5,25". But indeed, for that reason you'll need the 5,25" floppy to set this up for one time. I will send you a PM to arrange this.

 

[Haemogoblin]

Still needing a boot disk if anyone can help

 

[Haemogoblin]

I’m still looking, thought hagelaars was going to come to the rescue but he’s since stopped responding to pm’s and I really need a boot disk to use this machine.

 

[ldkraemer]

Haemogoblin,
If you locate someone running Linux - Debian version 9, 10, or 11 with a 360K Floppy Drive
you can get them to write you a floppy.

The "Compaq Portable Diagnostic Disk 5,25 360kb.IMA file is a RAW (Sector Dump) Image of the floppy.
You can see the information on the floppy by installing and running DOSBox in Linux.

Execute DOSBox.
Type,
IMGMOUNT A file. img -t floppy.

I did this to have a look at the Floppy.
Within DOSBox:
IMGMOUNT A ~/Downloads/CPDD.RAW
then did a DIR, and type README.TXT, and README.CPQ

Attached are the screenshots:

To write the floppy from Linux:
1. Connect the 360K Floppy Drive to a Linux Box
2. VERIFY 360/360 Definition is in the /etc/mediaprm file (LiveCD will not have /etc/mediaprm)
3. Set the Drive Parameters
$ lsblk
$ setfdprm -p /dev/fd0 360/360
$ getfdprm /dev/fd0
$ lsblk
$ superformat --superverify /dev/fd0 360/360

$dd if=/path/to/file/CPDD.RAW bs=1 of=/dev/fd0 conv=notrunc

CPDD is the shortened "Compaq Portable Diagnostic Disk 5,25 360kb filename"

The Floppy should boot in your Compaq, assuming the download is valid.


Larry

 

[Haemogoblin]

The reason I’m posting here, is because I don’t know anyone with a 360kb floppy drive and was hoping someone could help. But it’s thus far proven fruitless Not an encouraging start to restoring this machine.

 

[ldkraemer]

Haemogoblin,
There are likely HAM Radio Clubs, Amateur Radio clubs, or Computer Clubs that have a DOS computer that
has a 360K floppy that can write your floppy.

Larry

 

[mikerofone]

Hey Haemogoblin,

I tried making a copy of my setup disk for you, but it turns out that it absolutely insists on using a 360kb floppy, and I for the life of me cannot get a 1.2MB drive to format a 1.2MB disk as 360k. I know that this isn't recommended anyways, but the drive in your Portable is 1.2MB too, so it should be fine.

However, if you can open the machine and temporarily connect a 3.5inch floppy drive, you can write a 720k 3.5inch setup floppy in one of your machines: https://archive.org/details/CompaqPortableDiagnosticDisk
You might need to swap the floppy cable for one that has the 34-pin plug instead of the edge connector, so you can actually connect the up the 3.5inch drive. Whether that one needs to have some pins twisted or not I do not know - if you use a cable that allows connecting two drives, try both if one doesn't work. I vaguely remember using the cable from a machine that only allowed one drive, and this one might not have had the twisted section that is normally used to connect drive A:.

I feel like I went this route initially, before I found a true 360k floppy (some old Logitech driver disk) and created one that works for the real drive, so I'm fairly confident. But there's a chance I'm full of s*** and misremember, so no promises. It certainly is faster than waiting for someone to mail you a floppy.
Would I be able to write one, it'd have been between ~5-15£ since I live in Switzerland... a bit steep for a single floppy, but still cheaper than the 35€ someone on eBay is asking for, jeez.

Good luck!
Cheers
mikerofone

 

[Haemogoblin]

Thanks for the response, sorry for the delay in replying. A very kind chap on here is sending me the disks needed to boot the computer up. So the next step will be to secure myself a slim line 5.25" 1.44mb floppy drive.

 

[Haemogoblin]

Hey Haemogoblin,

I tried making a copy of my setup disk for you, but it turns out that it absolutely insists on using a 360kb floppy, and I for the life of me cannot get a 1.2MB drive to format a 1.2MB disk as 360k. I know that this isn't recommended anyways, but the drive in your Portable is 1.2MB too, so it should be fine.

However, if you can open the machine and temporarily connect a 3.5inch floppy drive, you can write a 720k 3.5inch setup floppy in one of your machines: https://archive.org/details/CompaqPortableDiagnosticDisk
You might need to swap the floppy cable for one that has the 34-pin plug instead of the edge connector, so you can actually connect the up the 3.5inch drive. Whether that one needs to have some pins twisted or not I do not know - if you use a cable that allows connecting two drives, try both if one doesn't work. I vaguely remember using the cable from a machine that only allowed one drive, and this one might not have had the twisted section that is normally used to connect drive A:.

I feel like I went this route initially, before I found a true 360k floppy (some old Logitech driver disk) and created one that works for the real drive, so I'm fairly confident. But there's a chance I'm full of s*** and misremember, so no promises. It certainly is faster than waiting for someone to mail you a floppy.
Would I be able to write one, it'd have been between ~5-15£ since I live in Switzerland... a bit steep for a single floppy, but still cheaper than the 35€ someone on eBay is asking for, jeez.

Good luck!
Cheers
mikerofone

This is interesting, I didn't think the portable would even look at a 3.5" floppy drive until the bios was altered. I have plenty of drives hanging around and i'll most likely have a floppy cable some place, maybe steal it from another system.

I do have the disks in the post, coming to me from the states. So there is that.

I'm wondering if i might be able to use one of my older DOS machines to write the disk, as I have an Amstrad Portable here which has i believe 2x 720kb floppy drives.