Anybody own any x486 Compaq laptops, li

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   I have an old Compaq laptop - Contura 430 CX. I wonder,  is  it possible to install a new, or just non-compaq HD to it... I've downloaded a startup disk from the Compaq site - and there I can only chose from some "hd types". Maybe there is a way to bypass all this, once I was told, that there is a program, that let old motherboards detect newer HD's... 

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khalip16 Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 19 January 2006 Location: Russian Federation Online Status: Offline Posts: 1	Quote Reply Topic: Anybody own any x486 Compaq laptops, li Posted: 31 January 2006 at 5:19am
	I have an old Compaq laptop - Contura 430 CX. I wonder, is it possible to install a new, or just non-compaq HD to it... I've downloaded a startup disk from the Compaq site - and there I can only chose from some "hd types". Maybe there is a way to bypass all this, once I was told, that there is a program, that let old motherboards detect newer HD's...

pfgiz Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 31 May 2005 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 13	Quote Reply Posted: 20 February 2006 at 12:56pm
	Just try installing it... The BIOS in my Thinkpad 701 can't detect anything over 800Mb, but I've installed a 3.2Gb in there. Bios saw it as a 170Mb drive but the OS saw all 3.2Gb and it worked ok. Worth a try at least.... I've owned a number of LTE Elites but the bigest drive they had was a 500Mb I think, can't remember.... Hope that helped.. Peter.
	g=c800:5

Zmatt Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Senior Member Joined: 14 April 2005 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 199	Quote Reply Posted: 22 February 2006 at 11:41am
	theoretically th e32bit processor and 64bit bus that 486's use should be able to use it all, it the BIOS thats the problem
	Q:What part of Windows did Bill Gates write? A:The Blue Screen

GaryC Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 25 January 2006 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 23	Quote Reply Posted: 24 March 2006 at 1:46pm
	The program you are looking for is called OnTrack. OnTtrack modifies the boot track to load a driver for the hard drive that bypassed the bios hard drive routines. This driver allows access to larger harddrives. Linux also bypasses the bios hard drive routines when it it boots, and can use larger dirves than the bios supports.