Having already read two extremely knowledgeable replies on this topic, I
sheepishly offer the following anecdote.
I've got two of them under my desk. I had a healthy exchange with
Compaq tech support that proved, ultimately, totally unfruitful for the
purpose in mind, "changing BIOS settings".
Compaq Deskpros come with a utility partition of a few megs ("30" rings
a bell, but don't quote me) that stores all the configuration info for
BIOS. I grabbed the floppy image and booted with it. It rebuilt the
utility partition for me that I had deleted in my pursuit of Penguina.
You do, indeed, hit F10 when there is a blinking cursor in the UR corner
of the screen to access CMOS. Beyond that, all I've been able to do is
browse around and see what was attached to the machine. I can't change
much of anything in CMOS in a Deskpro, just view it.
In comparison to the old P200 Magitronic I've got humming away here,
these Deskpros are practically chastity-belted. I can't change much
more than the order of disk searches during bootup. Everything else is
just there for display. I intended to use two of these slim, cute boxes
as headless Linux servers, but I can't disable the keyboard error during
boot. Despite a UPS, you really want your machines to recover from a
power outage easily in this town.
In Compaq's meager (and unintentional) defense, my Presario is much more
flexible in CMOS. The Deskpros are built to be cookie-cuttered,
absolutely identical from desk to desk. I've seen a 100-seat network
that was set up entirely with these things, and the support was a
breeze. They're great for that one job. I can't make them do a darn
thing else. Good luck.
-john
Dustin Puryear wrote:
<em>> Does anyone know how to get into the BIOS setup for Compaq Deskpro's?
(These
<em>> are Pentium 200's.) I have three I am trying to get working for personal
use
<em>> and damn if I can figure out which key will get me in. I noticed if I put
in a
<em>> new disk that it automatically reconfigures the machine (I think it does
at
<em>> least), but I would rather be able to fiddle. Plus, I'm having some
problems
<em>> booting off the new disk with Linux.
<em>>
<em>> Any help would be appreciated!
<em>>
<em>>
<em>> ---
<em>> Dustin Puryear
<em>> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<em>>
<em>>
<em>> ____________________________________________________________________
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<em>> ================================================
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