Desktop 4000 and Bios

I am trying to add a new drive to a friends old desktop 4000. I tried
hitting F10 to get to the BIOS but nothing happened. I downloaded the
Softpaq as suggested in the FAQ posted by HH and tried to create a boot disk
but running the program gave me a blue screen and asked me to insert a disc
with a specific number. My friend bought the PC second-hand and there are no
Compaq discs. Where do I go from here please?
Why do Compaq make it so difficult to upgrade their machines????


--
Tony Williams

Tony Williams wrote:
I am trying to add a new drive to a friends old desktop 4000. I tried
hitting F10 to get to the BIOS but nothing happened. I downloaded the
Softpaq as suggested in the FAQ posted by HH and tried to create a boot disk
but running the program gave me a blue screen and asked me to insert a disc
with a specific number. My friend bought the PC second-hand and there are no
Compaq discs. Where do I go from here please?
Why do Compaq make it so difficult to upgrade their machines????


--
Tony Williams


No harder than many other brands. The Compaq Diagnostic partition lived
on your old drive--that is what boots when you hit F10 at boot. You
simply put the new drive it and boot from the diagnostic disk. One of
the options is to manage partitions. Tell it to create a diagnostic
partion on the hard drive. NOTE: The diagnostic partion MUST me the
first partition defined on the drive.

If this is too much trouble, then just boot from diskette and be done
with it. Most folks don't need to access this info very often.

PS: This response comes to you from a Compaq DeskPro 4000 running Red
Hat Linux 9.0 with full access to the Compaq Diagnostic partition:

[root@nick etc]# fdisk /dev/hda

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hda: 3239 MB, 3239792640 bytes
120 heads, 63 sectors/track, 837 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 7560 * 512 = 3870720 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 3 769 2899260 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 770 837 257040 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda3 1 2 7528+ 12 Compaq diagnostics

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Command (m for help):


--
Phil Gilmer
pgilmer@attglobalDOTnet
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