Hello,
I have a Compaq Portable ||, the mode which has the 5 1/4 floppy drive and the 10 meg hard drive. I am looking for help similiar to a problem that I read earlier. I keep getting the "Run Setup" and "Time/Date Not Set" error. I opened the computer and was trying to find out where the CMOS battery was, since that's what alot of people are saying. I saw what seemed to be a AA battery. Is this the CMOS battery? If I replace this, should I be able to set the Time/Date? Or do I need the 3.2 discs? Also, I have the DOS 5 upgrade, but it apparently won't read them? Any help?

5.25 disk drives support different floppy disk either 360K or 720K or 1.2MB as well as single or double density so you need compatable media.

AFAIK to rest the BIOS configuration you require the setup diskettes

battery sorry do not know...

Yeah, those old boxes didn't have a CMOS as such - that probably is the system or 'real time clock' battery - while it doubtless needs replacing, as mentioned you likely require the setup disks

fwiw 5¼" drives were 360K or 1.2Mb - it's 720K & 1.44Mb that are 3½"

I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter

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Is the computer booting up to a dos prompt with the hard drive? If so, at the prompt you can type DATE or TIME and enter to set them. Once you do that the date and time will be maintained while the PC is running.

To retain the date and time when the PC is off it's likely you need to replace the battery, as already mentioned.

Many of the clocks on those older ones needed separate software to set and read the date and time. In that era there were many add-on cards that would keep the time and they all had their own software. Hopefully your compaq originally came with the time feature and if software is needed it's probably still available on their site.

But first replace the battery, set the time and date via the dos commands and then see if they're maintained while the computer is off. If so you don't need to hunt down any clock software.

i replaced the battery already, but I don't get a DOS prompt, I am still getting the 162 System Operations Not Set(Run Setup) and the 163 Date/Time Not Set

Oh, right - it's that old classic "Luggable" - for sure, those would be 360K drives, so they won't read high density diskettes

Actually have one of those, but it's not handy at the moment - I believe that's an 8 bit (8088) XT class, and I don't recall there being any setup disks

I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter

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well, is there a way to just reset the BIOS and maybe it will come online?

A previous thread gave this link to the setup and dos 3.1 disks for that model:

http://www.z80.de/alex/compaq/index...

It looks like a german page but the download links are english. The download file extensions are .dsk. I'm not sure about that but there is a link to a download for CopyQM which I think may be intended to be used to extract the .dsk downloads.

Also I'm sure the compaq SP file to create the setup disk is on their ftp site here:

ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softpaq/

If you open the 'allfiles.txt' file it may give a description of the SP files there.

Of course the problem you're going to have is you need a working 360K drive in another computer in order to create the setup disk.

WinImage should be able to open .DSK files

"... just reset the BIOS"

Those machines had nothing recognizable as a 'BIOS' - - different era

I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter

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... a 1.2Mb 5¼" can work - not the commonest of things either though. Might consider removing the "B:" drive from the Compaq and using it in a working machine - assuming it's in good condition, and you have the correct cable

I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter

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I read that you can reset the BIOS with the jumpers inside, I don't have a drive to get the 5 1/4 discs

Does anybody have the DOS 3.2 disks that they are willing to give me?

On a computer with a cmos-type bios setup you can jumper the appropriate pins on the motherboard to clear it. You don't have a cmos-type bios setup. You need to use the compaq setup disk.

As mentioned above you're going to need to use a computer with a working 5 1/4 drive to create the necessary disk(s). Or you need to find someone that has the disks and will let you use them.

You can download 3.1 from the link I gave above. It should be adequate unless you intend to run some software that needs 3.2. You could also check places like ebay for OS disks.

alright thanks, but if anyone still has the disks, let me know

if I provide the link for the disks, can somebody make the disks and send them to me?

I'd have to put together a computer with 5 1/4 drives and it would be a few weeks before I could do that. I've got some 3.3 disks but I'd still need the computer to copy them. If you haven't found another source you can send me a private message in a few weeks.

Sorry JBOY but 720K disks did exist:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy...

..though appreciate not relevent in this situation.

Well, that was 'fun'... we should do this more often

I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter

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You may be able to format a 5 1/4 disk to 720K but that was never an IBM standard.

And if we're going to be picky there are 1.2 meg, 3 1/2 drives--the 'mode 3 floppy support' you see on the bios setup page. It's the PC98 format:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy...