Help for old PI computer

[mujahid7ia]

hi
I recently found parts for an old Pentium I PC (mobo has separate expansion board with PCI and what i think are ISA slots; passive heatsink on the PI and i think it has external cache.. next to the P9 Connector) and put them together and have run into various problems... solved some but some are really weird.

Right now, with NO drives whatsoever attached, no HDD, oprtical, or FDD, I get a Non-System Disk or Invalid... Press any key to restart, and i press any key and it doesnt do anything...

When i enable the full POST, it says RAM size invalid (the ram is 32MB) when the ram is in either slot. wehn i disable POST, i get to the disk message.

It's an old Compaq Presario mobo.

[housepig]

Right now, with NO drives whatsoever attached, no HDD, oprtical, or FDD, I get a Non-System Disk or Invalid... Press any key to restart, and i press any key and it doesnt do anything...

what do you expect it to do with no drives? it boots, goes through the BIOS functions, then starts looking for an OS and can't find anything...

I found two discs really handy recently while I was putting together a spare-parts pc - Knoppix 3.3 and The Ultimate Boot CD.

hook up a cd-rom to the mobo, put in the Knoppix disc and boot - it should run live off the cd, allowing you to test the system hardware before loading an OS and installing a hard drive.

the UBCD has a ton of tools & utilities for formatting discs, running diagnostics, disk wiping, dos commands... just tons of useful stuff, in a bootable, graphically-selectable disk.

[mujahid7ia]

I do have spare knoppix and slax disks, but no CDROM to use with it

i'll try a floppy with msdos.

[fmctm1sw]

Will the BIOS on something that old allow you to boot from a CD?

[mujahid7ia]

Will the BIOS on something that old allow you to boot from a CD?

I'm not sure about that... there's not even a boot device option in this Compaq OEM BIOS!!

I booted to DOS from a floppy, now I just need a CDROM drive to put 98SE which is probably the best OS to use that will run well on this thing (233 P1) right?

[The village idiot]

Windows 2000 and NT4 should run fine on that box. Yes really try 2000, you might be surprised. Nothing is going to be real fast. You could also track down a copy BeOS and load that.

[mujahid7ia]

Windows 2000 and NT4 should run fine on that box. Yes really try 2000, you might be surprised. Nothing is going to be real fast. You could also track down a copy BeOS and load that.

OK

I'm probably just going to use this for some very light browsing and some very old games for my little brother...

Win2K, I'll try it but won't that be slower than 98SE? I know it won't be 'real fast' but probably faster, right?

Thanks

EDIT: spelling mistakes

[mujahid7ia]

OK i was planning to install Win2k to avoid networking difficulties but i couldn't find it, so I installed 98SE and I am having network problems...

I am trying to access network shares on my XP and 2K PCs, but there's no network Neighborhood (maybe cuz I only installed a WLAN USB adapter, not an NIC, I'll install a PCI NIC today) and typing in the \\compname doesn't work either. I know the workgroup settings etc are correct.

I have internet access and can access the router and services like VNC on the XP and 2k comps, but not network shares...

What gives?

[mujahid7ia]

OK new problem popped up, PSU turns on for a few seconds then fan stops moving and PSU dies.

Is it dead or is the massive amount of dust I can see stopping the fan? It's a COMPAQ OEM 165 watt PSU.

[BobV]

for well under $100, you can get a mobo/cpu combo that will be 10 time more friendly and 4 time as powerful as long

[mujahid7ia]

Yeah I know, but this computer will be very lightly used, and I'd rather just use it w/o spending any money. It's not even in a case, just a PSU and mobo and drives lying on the floor.

Also, I won't be too broken up if it doesn't work.