Software for Contura 410

My Son just bought an old Compaq notebook - Contura 410c. I need to get some help as it has no software loaded. Do I need both windows and DOS. What would work best on this clunker?
HE in 10 years old and would love to get it up and running!
P.S. -- It will boot but only to A prompt... There is one disk with it, but it is not a boot disk of any type.
Any help is appreciated!

 

I believe you can get Windows 95 on this old laptop. It doesn't seem to match the minimum requirements for 98.
Win95 minimum requirements
Win98 minimum requirements
You would not need to install Dos on it, unless you are planning to put Windows 3.x on it.

 

Here is a link for you

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/s...c01136119/c01136119.pdf?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

It seems to have come with windows 95
You could do a clean install of Windows 95
Windows 98 SE ( for the drivers) would be my pick
I believe this is a 75- 100 mhz computer
Remember that these laptops were expensive business machines built with general high end components of the time
I had another brand of laptop 100 mhz , 16 mb of ram
Ran Windows 98 se like a champ
You will catch most of the drivers. doubt that there is anything on the compaq site. As well the diagnostic system for drivers requires windows 2000/ xp last time i used it

You may have to hunt for video and sound drivers

fuller list of support - no drivers

http://search.hp.com/query.html?cha...tura+410c&submitsearch2.x=9&submitsearch2.y=7


You can try driverguide

www.driverguide.com

A diagnostic program aida32 should tell you or belarc
forget what they used for video but it seems to me that I always had to hunt it out for the video

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download181.html

also www.belarc.com

 

Hi Daver, I've posted with the same problem. This Contura 410C has floppy drive and PCMCIA card function only and I am trying to locate Win95 OS on floppies so that I can load the system as Arie suggested in his Post. I have Win 95 OS on CD but cannot install unless I can get hold of a parallel port external CD drive as Visionof suggested in his post. HP took over Compaq and because of the age of the Notebook they are of little help. I have been unable so far to get the HD recognized by my desktop PC using an adapter to connect to the IDE cable. If I can get this to work I will then be able to load Win 95 from the CD. It's a project thats ongoing and frustrating. Neil.

 

Daver and retiredlearner

Just a suggestion.
Browse this Google search - Old Laptops and Linux
It could provide a portal to get w95 on OR move UP and join the "other world" of running Linux.

 

Hi Daver, have a look at my post re Contura laptop. I found that I had a faulty interface connector to connect the 2.5 HDD via IDE cable to my PC for FDISK and to install Win95 or Win98SE. I will post if everything goes right and this may help with your resurrection. Neil.