[LUNI] Compaq without a hard drive

[Mike Scott]

The first thing you need to do is get into the BIOS setup and make sure
the drive is configured and the controler is enabled.  The problem is,
Compaq puts their BIOS setup program on the hard drive in a small DOS
partition at the beginning.  I guess you can't fit all that GUI goodness
into Flash.  IMO if you are intimidated by the primitive BIOS setup
screens, you don't have any business traipsing around in it. :-)

If you go to their web site, you should be able to download a utility to
re-create this utility on floppy discs (assuming you can boot from
floppy).  I believe it requires 2-3 1.44M floppy discs (the first being
bootable) and offers the option to install it onto the hard drive to be
invoked via F10 (that is, of course after you have the drive
configured).
If I remember correctly, you need to install this before you create any
other partitions on the drive.

Also, see how they like the drive jumpered.  IIRC it should be jumpered
to use cable select (CS) and placed on the connector designated as the
primary drive on the 40 pin IDE cable.  You might have to experiment
with this to get the BIOS to recognize a master drive on the primary
controller.

Hope this helps.

- Mike Scott