Hello, Picked up a Pressario 7478 cheap, at the local CompUSA sidewalk sale Sunday. Question is this: what will happen if I wipe the disk to do my own partitioning and OS installs? When I hit F10 to get to the BIOS, it is a Compaq BIOS setup....not an Award or Phoenix, etc. The drive is setup of course, with Compaq's system saver on D:. Is this doable? Will I see a real BIOS if I wipe the disk? If this is a dumb question, forgive me...just a little nervous. I want to dual boot it with Win98 and Suse7.1. I have the full retail Win98, so I don't care about the system saver stuff. Thanks much. -- TRBishop tb64710@alltel.net RLU #12043 SuSE 7.1 PRO
Hi, Pressing F10 causes the Compaq BIOS to boot a NON DOS partition positioned in my experience as the first partition on the Hard Disc. If you delete the partition, you lose the ability to re-configure your BIOS. The Compaq partiton, last time I looked was a clobbered DOS / WIN3.1 concoction, probably Win95 now or mayne Compaq have now done their own thing and blown M$ out. You should be able to download images of the install discs to reinstate this partition, I would download these before you trash your disc although your PC will still boot, you just won't be able to make any changes to the BIOS. Have a look at the Compaq web site the support section is pretty well organised and you should be able to locate the disc images to download. They are usually refered to as SoftPaqs and given a reference number. The Softpaqs are ususally self-extracting DOS apps so again do this in Windows before trashing your disk. If you do trash your disk, install the diagnostic partion first from the Softpaqs then I would install Windows first followed by Linux, and let YAST2 sort out you partitioning assuming you have left enough free space after installing Windows. Also YAST should configure LILO giving you the dual-boot option you need, Yast is really quite clever. David Bottrill
-----Original Message----- From: TRBishop [mailto:tb64710@alltel.net] Sent: 02 May 2001 23:12 To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: [SLE] Need a hardware guru(compaq) OT
Hello, Picked up a Pressario 7478 cheap, at the local CompUSA sidewalk sale Sunday. Question is this: what will happen if I wipe the disk to do my own partitioning and OS installs? When I hit F10 to get to the BIOS, it is a Compaq BIOS setup....not an Award or Phoenix, etc. The drive is setup of course, with Compaq's system saver on D:. Is this doable? Will I see a real BIOS if I wipe the disk? If this is a dumb question, forgive me...just a little nervous. I want to dual boot it with Win98 and Suse7.1. I have the full retail Win98, so I don't care about the system saver stuff. Thanks much. -- TRBishop tb64710@alltel.net RLU #12043 SuSE 7.1 PRO
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On Wed, 02 May 2001, David wrote:
Pressing F10 causes the Compaq BIOS to boot a NON DOS partition positioned in my experience as the first partition on the Hard Disc. If you delete the partition, you lose the ability to re-configure your BIOS. The Compaq partiton, last time I looked was a clobbered DOS / WIN3.1 concoction, probably Win95 now or mayne Compaq have now done their own thing and blown M$ out. You should be able to download images of the install discs to reinstate this partition, I would download these before you trash your disc
Why in the world do they want to do this? I don't see at all how such a proprietary setup makes their computers any "better." Does anyone know why they do this? Why can't they just have a normal setup? Remind me never to buy a Compaq! *************************************************** Powered by SuSE Linux 7.0 Professional KMail 1.0.29.2 Bryan S. Tyson bryantyson@earthlink.net ***************************************************
"Bryan S. Tyson" wrote:
On Wed, 02 May 2001, David wrote:
Pressing F10 causes the Compaq BIOS to boot a NON DOS partition positioned in my experience as the first partition on the Hard Disc. If you delete the partition, you lose the ability to re-configure your BIOS. The Compaq partiton, last time I looked was a clobbered DOS / WIN3.1 concoction, probably Win95 now or mayne Compaq have now done their own thing and blown M$ out. You should be able to download images of the install discs to reinstate this partition, I would download these before you trash your disc
Why in the world do they want to do this? I don't see at all how such a proprietary setup makes their computers any "better." Does anyone know why they do this? Why can't they just have a normal setup? Remind me never to buy a Compaq!
You do not need to worry anymore. In these days they learned *that* lesson. This "service partition" is a pain in the butt. It appeared in some 486's, the I models still had a ROM based setup, the following XE models hat this click and sh*t setup. It was fetured on some pentium series as well. Juergen -- =========================================== __ _ Juergen Braukmann juergen.braukmann@gmx.de| -o)/ / (_)__ __ ____ __ Tel: 0201-743648 dk4jb@db0qs.#nrw.deu.eu | /\\ /__/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / ===========================================_\_v __/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\
Þann laugardagur 05 maí 2001 07:45 skrifaðir þú:
"Bryan S. Tyson" wrote:
On Wed, 02 May 2001, David wrote:
Pressing F10 causes the Compaq BIOS to boot a NON DOS partition positioned in my experience as the first partition on the Hard Disc. If you delete the partition, you lose the ability to re-configure your BIOS. The Compaq partiton, last time I looked was a clobbered DOS / WIN3.1 concoction, probably Win95 now or mayne Compaq have now done their own thing and blown M$ out. You should be able to download images of the install discs to reinstate this partition, I would download these before you trash your disc
Why in the world do they want to do this? I don't see at all how such a proprietary setup makes their computers any "better." Does anyone know why they do this? Why can't they just have a normal setup? Remind me never to buy a Compaq!
You do not need to worry anymore. In these days they learned *that* lesson. This "service partition" is a pain in the butt. It appeared in some 486's, the I models still had a ROM based setup, the following XE models hat this click and sh*t setup. It was fetured on some pentium series as well.
Juergen
They are still featured on Compaq servers. Just a few months ago one of our customers bought a Compaq server, installed Linux and lost the partition in the process. Veery amusing ( NOT! ). -tosi
I've made several installs of Linux on compaqs, including a recent install of SuSE 7.1. It'll work - the BIOS is in a ROM chip on the mainboard, not on the hard drive. Go for it. At 05:12 PM 5/2/2001 -0500, you wrote:
Hello, Picked up a Pressario 7478 cheap, at the local CompUSA sidewalk sale Sunday. Question is this: what will happen if I wipe the disk to do my own partitioning and OS installs? When I hit F10 to get to the BIOS, it is a Compaq BIOS setup....not an Award or Phoenix, etc. The drive is setup of course, with Compaq's system saver on D:. Is this doable? Will I see a real BIOS if I wipe the disk? If this is a dumb question, forgive me...just a little nervous. I want to dual boot it with Win98 and Suse7.1. I have the full retail Win98, so I don't care about the system saver stuff. Thanks much. -- TRBishop tb64710@alltel.net RLU #12043 SuSE 7.1 PRO
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---------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Wilson System Administrator Cedar Creek Software http://www.cedarcreeksoftware.com Central Texas IT http://www.centraltexasit.com
I stand corrected, I've only ever seen the BIOS setup in ROM on the odd compaq (Re-badged) laptops. Most Compaqs I've seen have had the BIOS setup progs on Disc, maybe at last Compaq have seen the light, if Award and Phoenix can do it the sure Compaq don't need Windows and a few VB apps to do what a can be done in a few 100 lines of assembler. David Bottrill
-----Original Message----- From: Jonathan Wilson [mailto:wilson@claborn.net] Sent: 02 May 2001 23:43 To: suse-linux-e@lists.suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] Need a hardware guru(compaq) OT
I've made several installs of Linux on compaqs, including a recent install of SuSE 7.1. It'll work - the BIOS is in a ROM chip on the mainboard, not on the hard drive. Go for it.
At 05:12 PM 5/2/2001 -0500, you wrote:
Hello, Picked up a Pressario 7478 cheap, at the local CompUSA sidewalk sale Sunday. Question is this: what will happen if I wipe the disk to do my own partitioning and OS installs? When I hit F10 to get to the BIOS, it is a Compaq BIOS setup....not an Award or Phoenix, etc. The drive is setup of course, with Compaq's system saver on D:. Is this doable? Will I see a real BIOS if I wipe the disk? If this is a dumb question, forgive me...just a little nervous. I want to dual boot it with Win98 and Suse7.1. I have the full retail Win98, so I don't care about the system saver stuff. Thanks much. -- TRBishop tb64710@alltel.net RLU #12043 SuSE 7.1 PRO
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---------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Wilson System Administrator
Cedar Creek Software http://www.cedarcreeksoftware.com Central Texas IT http://www.centraltexasit.com
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On all the compaq's i have seen the bios has been on the hard drive. Im dealing an old 486 that someone dredged up from a garage sale that then brought me to try an get win95 on it for them. The bios partition is gone from the hardrive on this beast. Im out of luck unless i can find the iamage on there site. I would make sure where the bios stuff is kept on the machine before I did anything to it. jack At 05:42 PM 5/2/2001 -0500, Jonathan Wilson wrote:
I've made several installs of Linux on compaqs, including a recent install of SuSE 7.1. It'll work - the BIOS is in a ROM chip on the mainboard, not on the hard drive. Go for it.
At 05:12 PM 5/2/2001 -0500, you wrote:
Hello, Picked up a Pressario 7478 cheap, at the local CompUSA sidewalk sale Sunday. Question is this: what will happen if I wipe the disk to do my own partitioning and OS installs? When I hit F10 to get to the BIOS, it is a Compaq BIOS setup....not an Award or Phoenix, etc. The drive is setup of course, with Compaq's system saver on D:. Is this doable? Will I see a real BIOS if I wipe the disk? If this is a dumb question, forgive me...just a little nervous. I want to dual boot it with Win98 and Suse7.1. I have the full retail Win98, so I don't care about the system saver stuff. Thanks much. -- TRBishop tb64710@alltel.net RLU #12043 SuSE 7.1 PRO
-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq and the archives at http://lists.suse.com
---------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Wilson System Administrator
Cedar Creek Software http://www.cedarcreeksoftware.com Central Texas IT http://www.centraltexasit.com
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Jack Malone jack@malone.tyler.com http://www.ballistic.com/~jemalone Luke 4:18-19 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." (NIV)
Ok, I might be totally wrong, but I do know this: I've installed both mandrake and SuSE on a presarios as the only OS(I just told YaST2 to use the whole disk) and it works fine, no Qs asked. At 05:53 PM 5/2/2001 -0500, you wrote:
On all the compaq's i have seen the bios has been on the hard drive. Im dealing an old 486 that someone dredged up from a garage sale that then brought me to try an get win95 on it for them. The bios partition is gone from the hardrive on this beast. Im out of luck unless i can find the iamage on there site. I would make sure where the bios stuff is kept on the machine before I did anything to it.
jack
At 05:42 PM 5/2/2001 -0500, Jonathan Wilson wrote:
I've made several installs of Linux on compaqs, including a recent install of SuSE 7.1. It'll work - the BIOS is in a ROM chip on the mainboard, not on the hard drive. Go for it.
At 05:12 PM 5/2/2001 -0500, you wrote:
Hello, Picked up a Pressario 7478 cheap, at the local CompUSA sidewalk sale Sunday. Question is this: what will happen if I wipe the disk to do my own partitioning and OS installs? When I hit F10 to get to the BIOS, it is a Compaq BIOS setup....not an Award or Phoenix, etc. The drive is setup of course, with Compaq's system saver on D:. Is this doable? Will I see a real BIOS if I wipe the disk? If this is a dumb question, forgive me...just a little nervous. I want to dual boot it with Win98 and Suse7.1. I have the full retail Win98, so I don't care about the system saver stuff. Thanks much. -- TRBishop tb64710@alltel.net RLU #12043 SuSE 7.1 PRO
-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq and the archives at http://lists.suse.com
---------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Wilson System Administrator
Cedar Creek Software http://www.cedarcreeksoftware.com Central Texas IT http://www.centraltexasit.com
-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq and the archives at http://lists.suse.com
Jack Malone jack@malone.tyler.com http://www.ballistic.com/~jemalone
Luke 4:18-19 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." (NIV)
-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq and the archives at http://lists.suse.com
---------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Wilson System Administrator Cedar Creek Software http://www.cedarcreeksoftware.com Central Texas IT http://www.centraltexasit.com
In <01050217120500.14942@linuxbox>, on 05/02/01
at 05:12 PM, TRBishop
[Hello, [Picked up a Pressario 7478 cheap, at the local CompUSA sidewalk sale [Sunday. Question is this: what will happen if I wipe the disk to do my [own partitioning and OS installs? When I hit F10 to get to the BIOS, [it is a Compaq BIOS setup....not an Award or Phoenix, etc. The drive [is setup of course, with Compaq's system saver on D:. Is this doable? [Will I see a real BIOS if I wipe the disk? If this is a dumb question, [forgive me...just a little nervous. I want to dual boot it with Win98 [and Suse7.1. I have the full retail Win98, so I don't care about the [system saver stuff. Thanks much. --
That is the real BIOS for most every Compaq desktop (most laptops will have an on-board chip that will run something similar). Please check out the Compaq website and download the system setup utility for this model machine. Have a couple of blank formatted disks handy; the file(s) you download will extract to a set of disks that will allow you either run the setup from diskette or setup the system setup partition (which is accessible via the F10 shortcut at boot). The installed option should be setup on a clean disk as it likes to setup at the beginning of the disk space. There is some advantage to using the diskette option but you need ot keep track of the setup utility disks. I would "blow it all away" and start clean no matter which way you want the setup utility to work. The Compaq site should also proved any additional hardware details you may need; check the SuSE site for compatibility. There should not be any problems, but I am not familiar with that particular model having more experience with the Deskpro models. You may have more issues with Win98, but it should be OK. -- ----------------------------------------------------------- wfullam@bellsouth.net http://personal.atl.bellsouth.net/~wfullam -----------------------------------------------------------
participants (8)
-
Bryan S. Tyson -
David Bottrill -
Jack Malone -
Juergen Braukmann -
Tor Sigurdsson -
TRBishop -
wfullam＠bellsouth.net -
wilson＠claborn.net