John Draugr
March 16th, 2007, 09:06 AM
Hi everyone.
I was hoping someone here might be able to help me resolve this issue. I recently recieved a Compaq Portable II and quickly began making some modifications. I added a 10Mb ISA NIC, I have a 2Mb RAM board on its way, I made a custom cradle to hold a 2.5" 1Gb Hard Drive that I had laying around. I used a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter for the IDE cable. Finally, and this is where my problem/questions come in. I bought a SIIG CI-5000 SA Multi-IO Controller EIDE with LBA and a 1.2 and 1.44 Compaq Portable III floppy drives.
Ok, so here is the issue. I removed the original Parallel/Serial/Floppy controller from the Portable and placed the SIIG CI-5000 in. The SIIG card has it's own BIOS that allows me to correctly configure and use the 1Gb Hard Drive as a 1Gb Drive. It removes the 528 Mb limit that was a problem with the old systems. Anyhow, When I got my two floppies installed the 1.2 works fine, but the 1.44 doesn't. I checked the setup and it sees both drives as a 1.2 5.25 floppy. This is the Compaq BIOS and not the SIIG cards bios. I did my research and see that I'd need a Compaq BIOS ROM N3 revision in order for 1.44 floppies to work. This is my problem. What I wanted to ask is this:
1. Does anyone have or know a work around for this issue?
2. Should I still be having this problem if the SIIG BIOS which does handle 1.44 drives, is the BIOS being used? The Compaq BIOS is the one denying the 1.44 drive, but perhaps there is a way to configure the drive in the SIIG Bios and that would override the Compaq BIOS?
3. Does anyone know where I can get the BIOS ROM N3 revision or does anyone have it and can make a copy with an EPROM burner?
Sorry for the long post. I truly appreciate any help from anyone with knowledge of this issue.
Thanks
John
I was hoping someone here might be able to help me resolve this issue. I recently recieved a Compaq Portable II and quickly began making some modifications. I added a 10Mb ISA NIC, I have a 2Mb RAM board on its way, I made a custom cradle to hold a 2.5" 1Gb Hard Drive that I had laying around. I used a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter for the IDE cable. Finally, and this is where my problem/questions come in. I bought a SIIG CI-5000 SA Multi-IO Controller EIDE with LBA and a 1.2 and 1.44 Compaq Portable III floppy drives.
Ok, so here is the issue. I removed the original Parallel/Serial/Floppy controller from the Portable and placed the SIIG CI-5000 in. The SIIG card has it's own BIOS that allows me to correctly configure and use the 1Gb Hard Drive as a 1Gb Drive. It removes the 528 Mb limit that was a problem with the old systems. Anyhow, When I got my two floppies installed the 1.2 works fine, but the 1.44 doesn't. I checked the setup and it sees both drives as a 1.2 5.25 floppy. This is the Compaq BIOS and not the SIIG cards bios. I did my research and see that I'd need a Compaq BIOS ROM N3 revision in order for 1.44 floppies to work. This is my problem. What I wanted to ask is this:
1. Does anyone have or know a work around for this issue?
2. Should I still be having this problem if the SIIG BIOS which does handle 1.44 drives, is the BIOS being used? The Compaq BIOS is the one denying the 1.44 drive, but perhaps there is a way to configure the drive in the SIIG Bios and that would override the Compaq BIOS?
3. Does anyone know where I can get the BIOS ROM N3 revision or does anyone have it and can make a copy with an EPROM burner?
Sorry for the long post. I truly appreciate any help from anyone with knowledge of this issue.
Thanks
John