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Compaq Presario 5050 doesn't recognize CF card

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Bentendo64

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 14, 2014
Messages
55
Location
Minnesota
I have a Compaq Presario 5050, Pentium II Celeron. It boots fine off of the hard drive I got with the machine to Windows 98. Since smaller IDE drives are and will be getting more scarce, I'm trying to use CF cards, which also allows me to quickly switch between installed drives.

Anyway, I have a number of 4GB Transcend CF cards that I have been using successfully in my Deskpro XE450. I have the same IDE-CF adapter in both machines (and have tried switching the one from the Deskpro), but the Presario doesn't recognize any CF card I put in, even when booting a NetBSD installer CD.

Things I have not yet tried, but hope to find some time to do soon:
1. Write image of hard drive to CF card. I need to get a bigger card for this, as the drive is 8GB, and the cards I have are all 4GB...
2. I recently learned that the BIOS setup utility on these old Compaqs were stored on the hard drive. I have not tried getting into this on the original drive. What key do I have to press at startup to do so? I have the system CD that came with this computer, will that potentially contain the BIOS setup utility? Also, is there a catalog of what each of the SP downloads on the old HP FTP site is for?

Thanks!
 
For 1 I don't know.
For 2 the BIOS Setup was located on a specific partition of the drive.You had to hold F10 as far as I remember. There were a utility back in the days from Compaq to rebuild it. It should be on the system CD you have.
 
Thanks guys.
I ran across a computer shop that's closing doors here soon, and picked up a Pentium ii that I might try to stuff into this system. I also ended up leaving with a Portable ii that has at least one exploded tantalum cap in the power supply. So lot's of fun PC projects.

The original hard drive still works, so I will try to get into the setup with that. I admit I haven't even had the time to mess around with this system!
 
As a quick update, I got into the BIOS menu, but no helpful settings there. It seems I can get into it even without the HD installed. Perhaps I'll try one of the BIOS updates on the Softpaq site. Thanks for the allfiles.txt!
I did not try the CD yet.
The slot will require some modification to get the PII in, since the Celeron doesn't have the plastic shroud on it. Would anyone recommend against simply pulling the clips that hold the Celeron in so I can fit the PII in?
 
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