Re: Cpq Presario 906

Am 21.05.09 20.16 schrieb mike:
TWolfi wrote:
Am 20.05.09 08.08 schrieb GG WILLIKERS:
Wolfi wrote:
Am 20.05.09 01.19 schrieb ~misfit~:
Somewhere on teh intarwebs Wolfi wrote:
Am 19.05.09 17.08 schrieb BillW50:
In news:s8BQl.63027$i24.27611@xxxxxxxxxxxx,
Wolfi typed on Tue, 19 May 2009 11:30:14 -0500:
Am 19.05.09 06.02 schrieb BillW50:
In news:9suQl.92492$3k7.26974@xxxxxxxxxxxx,
Wolfi typed on Tue, 19 May 2009 03:53:23 -0500:
Am 28.04.09 07.48 schrieb BillW50:
In news:bZvJl.56984$g%5.22327@xxxxxxxxxxxx,
Wolfi typed on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:53:27 -0500:
I recently acquired a used Cpq Presario 906US 470047-897
laptop,
which comes w/o the internal FDD.

Since it offers to boot from floppy in the BIOS (V. 0F.0B) and
also has the 26-pin flexprint floppy connector on the mobo, I
now got a matching palm rest with FDD (P/N: 285539-001),
because I want to install some s/w, requiring to be installed
from a FDD.

However during POST or later by any OS the FDD is not
recognized
at all.

Does anybody know why and how to fix it?
Buying a $15 USB FDD should do the trick. Best of all, it will
work on any computer that supports USB booting.

Now the crappy stuff goes on and on :-( I HATE brand name
products!

In the meantime I got an external Dell UF0002 USB FDD, which is
properly detected during POST and the BIOS briefly scans the
floppy in it BUT is too stupid to actually boot from it!

It just discards the disc in the FDD and moves on to the next
device specified in its boot sequence and boots from there.

Once an OS is up and running, I can read and access the floppy
just fine.

Now I'm just as screwed as before with the internal FDD :-(


BTW, as of yet, HP still hasn't managed to tell me about the
current rating on the PS/2 combi port.
So how was this floppy disk created? Did you make a bootable
floppy
with the DOS SYS command? Or did you create it by creating a
Windows 9x/ME Startup disk? Sounds like everything is working
correctly from the external floppy, except the MBR on the floppy
either doesn't exist or is corrupt.
That's what one would unsuspectingly assume easily, if it wouldn't
be for the fact, that both (created from 2 completely different
known to be good image files) floppies I tried it with, boot up
just fine on my 2 desktop machines with built-in FDD.

Only conclusion I can come up with: HP/Compaq were screwing again
somewhere else , not only with the prevention of detecting the
internal floppy.
Wow! The internal FFD is one thing and they could have left out some
connections and possibly support chips out to prevent it from
working. But the same thing with the USB FDD, this would have
nothing to do with that.

One reason why a BIOS would access a floppy and an external one
is to
flash the BIOS. And it would be looking for a given filename in the
root directory. And if it is found, starts the flash process. So it
sounds like it is looking for it. Or at least checking to see if
there is a FDD there.

Nothing but the idea that they had disabled booting from the FDD
from
within the BIOS makes any sense. <sigh>
And just that would appear to be unlikely, since the BIOS (which is
the latest version available for this series) actually does offer the
option to boot from floppy.
This just the more since:
1.) the FDD controller is integrated into the chipset anyway and as I
already reported in an earlier message, the connector to plug-in the
FDD is there.
2.) in the BIOS update instructions HP writes something like "if your
model doesn't come with a build-in FDD, then use an external USB one
instead"

So again, it's supposed to work, but just doesn't.

Whenever I had to deal with a big brand name computer ever, it always
bit me in the *** somehow. They always screw you over at one
point or
another.
With all the no-names I dealt with or built myself out of components,
I never had to deal with stupid, artificially crippled BS like here
or in those other cases.

This is just another reminder and lesson in avoiding them like the
plague.
So does it have, and have you tried, an option to boot from USB
device?
There isn't really much you can do in the BIOS. Its available options
are very, very limited.
There only is "USB Legacy" or something like that, which is activated,
so that my wireless USB radio mouse an KB are working during boot-up
and
then there is the boot sequence order, where I put FDD at the top of
the
list.
And that's it. Compaq didn't give one much freedom here at all.

The only good thing so far is, that at least the upgrade from the
default weakly Mobile Athlon XP-M 1500+ (1.3GHz) to an XP-M 2600+
(2GHz)
worked :-)
Did you disable the other boot devices in the list, in order to force
the read on the floppy?

You can't. Only choice is changing the order. As I already said, the
BIOS options are VERY limited.

There's a thing called the plop boot manager.
http://www.plop.at/en/home.html

It can boot from a floppy or CD..and maybe usb with the latest
version...dunno
I used it on an old system that required me to edit the bios settings
every time I wanted to change the boot device. Never tried it with
a usb floppy tho...YMMV.
Worth a look.

I've found that most programs that can boot from a floppy can also
be made to boot from a CD.

Well, I still have a couple of old ones from the DOS/Win3.x era on
multiple floppies and so far, I haven't found a way, how to redirect the
installer to look for the subsequent ones anywhere else BUT drive A:.
Most installers even refuse to check/accept B: as an additional valid
FDD for those additionally requested floppies.

The downside is that if you need to write
something, you can't to the CD and most any program that can fit
on a bootable floppy doesn't understand NTFS.

That's just another, additional problem area.

Just for fun, I tried two USB floppies on my 906. They were
both recognized by xp, but neither got a drive letter, so couldn't read
'em. Strange.

Well, in Ubuntu Jaunty from the Live-CD I had no problem accessing the
drive, also my OS/2 didn't have any issues with it.
Gotten curious, just for the heck of it, I also briefly installed the XP
that came with it and added SP2 to it: it took a few seconds after the
desktop was up and running until the USB FDD was detected and the media
in it scanned, but it got a drive letter just fine and also no problem
accessing its contents.

And during all this boot-up and down, forward and backward ;-) I had
another look into the BIOS and - silly me - actually discovered yet
another boot relevant setting in Security -> Device Security, which I
had completely missed out on before, right underneath all those password
options.
There Floppy-Boot was disabled. After changing that, booting from
USB-Floppy now finally works :-) Yippee!

Unfortunately however, this didn't have any impact on the internal FDD,
that one is still not being detected at all :-(

But at least, with respect to booting from the USB-FDD, everything is
fine now.

So sorry for the additional confusion and here in the USB corner,
HP/Compaq actually turned out to be innocent, but still is not off the
hook with the internal floppy drive.
.