• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Compaq II Diagnostic disk

U

USSEnterprise

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2006
Messages
252
Location
Jackson, New Jersey
Someone here gave me the link to a utility to create the diagnostic disks for a Compaq II. I tried to use it, with a 360k drive as my A: drive. I formatted what I know to be a good disk in cmd.exe. But everytime I try to run the program to write the disks, I get an error saying that it cannot find the target drive. Advice?
 
If it's not seeing the floppy correctly, it's probably because the battery has gone dead, and the machine has lost it's setup. You'll probably have to create the Diag/Setup disk on another computer before you can use it in the Compaq. The SoftPak file should self-extract, format the target disk and copy the diags to it. The disk created should be bootable in the Compaq, if it's the correct version for it.

--T
 
Terry Yager said:
If it's not seeing the floppy correctly, it's probably because the battery has gone dead, and the machine has lost it's setup. You'll probably have to create the Diag/Setup disk on another computer before you can use it in the Compaq. The SoftPak file should self-extract, format the target disk and copy the diags to it. The disk created should be bootable in the Compaq, if it's the correct version for it.

--T
Click to expand...
I can't find a battery in the thing. Completely stripped the mobo of all card and nothing. Additionally, I've noticed something. On my main PC, When I set by BIOS so that my A drive is seen as a 1.2MB drive, Windows and cmd sees it as 360k. When the BIOS is set to 360k, Windows sees it as 160k. The Compaq program doesn't see the drive in either case.
 
USSEnterprise said:
I can't find a battery in the thing. Completely stripped the mobo of all card and nothing. Additionally, I've noticed something. On my main PC, When I set by BIOS so that my A drive is seen as a 1.2MB drive, Windows and cmd sees it as 360k. When the BIOS is set to 360k, Windows sees it as 160k. The Compaq program doesn't see the drive in either case.
Click to expand...

How many, and what size drives are in the 'main' computer? Most recent computers will have a 3.25" 1.4 drive installed as the A: drive. If you have a second drive in it, then you'll have to use it a B: drive, and set your bios accordingly.
As for the battery, I don't recall enough to say where it's located, but does the mainboard have a Dallas Real-Time Clock (or similar) chip installed? Sometimes that's where the battery will be hiding.

--T
 
Last edited:
Is there any difference between the Compaq Portable DOS disks and the Portable III ? I recently bought a Portable II and am looking for disks.
 
I know it's an old topic but...
uss enterprise -
The link, (which i can't remember, and is on my currently duff PC) gives 2 programs to write images for the early pc diagnostics, one writes a [720K 3.5"] floppy, and one writes 2 [360k 5.25"] floppies.

and

panda 18-
any old dos, or diagnostics seems to work in either machine
 
This link http://oldcomputers.net/compaqiii.html has 2 zip downloads at the bottom of the page. Those are setup disks but the Compaq SP files are still available on the compaq ftp server. If you knew the SP number, you could download the file from there and see if it works better. All those SP disk create programs have always worked for me.
 
Thanks. I now have two Portable III's , a Mac Classic, An imac 500 DV and my favorite workhorse my Cube with 17" flatscreen display.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top