Compaq BIOS

A mate has just bought a Compaq Deskpro (Pentium 2 300mhz) I think it was made in '98.

When it starts up, it displays a Compaq logo on a white background, and the "Set up" page is noithing like normal BIOS.

Is there any way of bypassing this feature totally and get it back to normal BIOS & boot process?

Cheers.
Dig.

 

Hey Dig;

In a word........NOPE!!
That's a Compaq for you!! I'm working on an older 233mmx Deskpro 2000 Compaq as I type this.

That IS the BIOS, from Compaq's point of view. Good Luck!!

F10=Setup......Correct??

Dale

 

Funnily enough he bought another last night, same as yours (233mmx) and yes, it is the same, F10=SET UP.

Thanks for the ubfo.

Dig.

 

OK, now there's another issue.

On the 233, the BIOS is accessible, on the 300 it isn't.

With the 233 a "F10=SETUP" & "F12=Network Boot" prompt comes up at the bottom right of the screen when the Compaq logo is displayed. On the 300 only the "F12=Network Boot" shows up, and hitting F10 does nothing.

Does anyone know why this is? is there a jumper on the board to enable access to the BIOS?

The reason for me wanting to access the BIOS is that when accessing the internet, on the 300 it's as quick as it should be, but with the 233 the dial tones are really slow, and when loading the webpage (eg. Google) any graphics, such as the Google logo load in eventually, but first they are displayed as blank rectangles with an icon in the top left corner which looks like the old windows 95 bitmap icon, as if the graphic is unavailable.

To answer any questions about hardware, here are the both pc's:

PC1 (Working correctly)
P2 300MMX, 160Mb PC100 DIMM (1x128, 1x32), 3.4Gb HDD, SIS 32Mb Graphics card, 56K PCI V.90 Modem mounted into ISA card onto mobo.

PC2 (Slow internet)
P2 233MMX, 128Mb PC100 DIMM (1x64, 2x32), 2.xGb HDD, Matrox 4Mb Graphics card, 56K PCI V.90 Modem mounted into ISA card onto mobo.

the only thing seperating the pair is the internet speed, so I want to compare the BIOS's, then start thinking in other areas, unless someone has suggestions on what might be the cause?

Cheers.
Dig.

 

Hey Dig;
Still having fun huh?!?!...... ;-)

IF the harddrive has been replaced or Fdisked, then the wonderfull Compaq diagnostic partition may not have been reinstalled.
This partition is created on the harddrive itself and allows you access to change the Bios settings.

You can download and build the floppies to access the settings without installing the partition. You need to download the .........

Computer Setup/VP and PC Diagnostics ... This "Should" allow you to access the settings.

**Make sure that you download the proper one for your machine**

Check here, not sure if it is the correct one though......

http://www5.compaq.com/support/files/desktops/us/locate/4_68.html

Good luck

Dale