Question on proprietary Restrictions in older Computers

I remember being told back a few years, that some vendors, like
Compaq, Gateway, & even Dell, were sell systems that made interchange
of add-ons nearly impossible. For example, if you added a modem to a
Compaq, it had to be a Compaq modem. Is my memory correct?

Anyway, My friend has an old Dell P3 that will not boot up past the a
beginning message:

'Boot yields a flashing Alert! Previous attempts to booting this
system have failed at Checkpoint [Size].' Do you guys out there think
this is an uncorrectable hardware fault, or could it be objecting to a
spare W98 HDD he stuck in it?

Thanks

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 05:52:35 -0500, geezer wrote:

I remember being told back a few years, that some vendors, like
Compaq, Gateway, & even Dell, were sell systems that made interchange
of add-ons nearly impossible. For example, if you added a modem to a
Compaq, it had to be a Compaq modem. Is my memory correct?

Well, to check your memory I would recommend memtest86.com :-)
But this story sounds very familiar.

Anyway, My friend has an old Dell P3 that will not boot up past the a
beginning message:

'Boot yields a flashing Alert! Previous attempts to booting this
system have failed at Checkpoint [Size].' Do you guys out there think
this is an uncorrectable hardware fault,

No hardware fault is uncorrectable. Only most are just to
expensive to fix :-)

or could it be objecting to a spare W98 HDD he stuck in it?

What about a smart boot CD ?
Knoppix, PC-Tools, Bart PE, etc ?

By the way: transplanting a HDD with W98 on it is always a bad
idea, unless both PCs are realy identical.

--
Kind regards,
Gerard Bok

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 05:52:35 -0500, geezer
wrote:

I remember being told back a few years, that some vendors, like
Compaq, Gateway, & even Dell, were sell systems that made interchange
of add-ons nearly impossible. For example, if you added a modem to a
Compaq, it had to be a Compaq modem. Is my memory correct?

Yes and no. It's true there were a lot of proprietary parts
but not to the extent that you couldn't add or change
something like a (standardized PCI, ISA, AGP, etc) modem or
other card.

For the most part the proprietary parts limited case or
motherboard changes and power supplies. In particular the
most troublesome in this regard where the reduced
form-factor systems, especially those in slimline cases
though this certainly isn't the only common issue.


Anyway, My friend has an old Dell P3 that will not boot up past the a
beginning message:

'Boot yields a flashing Alert! Previous attempts to booting this
system have failed at Checkpoint [Size].' Do you guys out there think
this is an uncorrectable hardware fault, or could it be objecting to a
spare W98 HDD he stuck in it?

Did the problem start immediately after putting the drive in
it? Disconnect the drive and see what happens. Try
clearing CMOS. If might just be something as simple as not
configuring the bios (or moving the drive IDE channel
position) to set the OS boot drive.