You really can't replace the A drive in a computer like this with a 3.5" floppy drive. It would be useful to have a 3.5" B drive, but the Compaq setup disk will only work with the 5.25" disks and you really need to be able to boot the machine from the setup disk from time to time. You really need to get a 5.25" floppy drive installed on a newer computer that you can use to prepare disks for the old Compaq. You would then be able to use disk images like this DOS 6.22 5.25" boot disk from here: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

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I think the 720K setup disks will work for that model and they'd work in a 1.44. Those compaqs had the thinner floppy drives and a standard one won't fit in the slot. I don't think there's room a a second floppy drive. (I used to have one of those portables around here but I guess I scrapped it.) Maybe for purposes of installing dos and basic software a 1.44 could be temporarily hooked up. But if you're going to stick with 1.2 drives you can't just copy a 1.44 dos install disk to 1.2 since they won't hold as much. So with dos 6.xx (which I think only came on 1.44) you'd probably have to sys the hard drive and then copy the dos directory--a few files at a time--from an existing installation. I'd have to check but I think I might still have dos 4 and 5 on 1.2 and 3.3 on 720 disks.

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I remember messing with the old Compaq 286 Deskpro computers, which I believe are very much like this model. The problem was that if you lost power on the CMOS, then the computer would go back to default settings, which would be a 360kb A drive. Of course, it wasn't a problem with a 1.2Mb drive setup on A, because those drives would read the 360kb setup disk just fine. But, you had to run the setup disk to change the A drive back to a 3.5" floppy drive. So, if you had set up a 1.44Mb 3.5" floppy as the A drive and lost CMOS, then the only way to restore it was to open the box and swap out to a 5.25" drive on the A connector and boot the computer. Of course, as long as you keep a good CMOS battery, this won't be a problem. But, the Deskpro's seemed to run down the CMOS batteries pretty quick if the computer was turned off for any length of time. Also, I remember they needed a funky 7.2V CMOS battery as well. I actually made a DOS 6.22 installation disk set on 5.25" 1.2Mb floppies once. It actually wasn't too difficult. I remember that I found that there were useless files on all three of the 3.5" DOS 6.22 floppies which could be just left off. These files were commands and programs which nobody ever uses any more, stuff like anti-virus software (for 15 year old viruses), hard drive compression, etc. They worked just like the 3.5" floppy set, just boot the computer on disk 1 and follow the prompts. Of course, the setup program would complain about these missing files, but it would continue setting up all the files that were there.

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Hi Steve - are you able to access the hard disk at all - on which should be files including the o/s? If not, it is possible the cmos battery has failed such that the bios has reset. If the pc has been off for a long time the battery can run down. Leaving the pc on for a few hours will re-charge the battery. If the battery is good the charge will be retained, if not, the battery will need replacing. Presumably once you have a usable set-up disc you can reset the bios and away you go. Good Luck - Keep us posted.

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"Leaving the pc on for a few hours will re-charge the battery. Not likely on this model. The battery is a (dreaded) Dallas 12887. It would need replacing and as I recall on my (now since deceased Port-III) machine, it's soldered onto the mainboard. Without the proper soldering equipment and techniques, you can render a system useless. It could be "reworked" similar to the 1287 here: http://www.mcamafia.de/mcapage0/dsr... Another thing about the 3.5" FDD for this model---it's one of the proprietary 26-pin Citizen drives as far as I remember, so finding a replacement would have to be from another similar machine or an oddball NEC (which also used them). Here is a page (Google cache) with info (Tech-Service Manual) and possibly working setup and diagnostic disks: http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache...

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Steve - am surprised not to have received by now a reply to either my email or private message. I sent both to you using the computing.net facilities. Did you recieve them? Good Luck - Keep us posted.

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