Compaq Laptop question

[cyoung at bbnplanet.com (Chuck Young)]

Thanks for the advice Anthony.

What I am trying to find out is 1) is there a CMOS setup independent of
compaq diagnostics 2) will altering the MBR affect access to the compaq
diagnostics and 3) can you simply remove the compaq diagnostic partition
and get on with your life?  I do not own a compaq laptop, but am advising
someone who does and I need to know about this partition/BIOS stuff so I
don't screw him up.

I'm looking for help from someone who has been there and done this.

I can overwrite the MBR with a DOS disk and an 'fdisk /mbr'.  I imagine
that this would not affect access to the compaq stuff and therefore lilo
would not be a problem either.  I guess I'll just have to do it and see
what happens.  Then I'll answer the question I asked in case anyone else
is curious.  We'll see.

Chuck Young
GTE Internetworking

On Fri, 21 May 1999, Anthony J. Gabrielson wrote:

> Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 08:46:07 -0400 (EDT)
> From: "Anthony J. Gabrielson" <agabriel at coe.neu.edu>
> To: Chuck Young <cyoung at bbnplanet.com>
> Cc: discuss at Blu.Org
> Subject: Re: Compaq Laptop question
> 
> Hello,
> 	After you completely redid the drive, did youput compaqs stuff
> back in there?  If your concerned about the mbr just try sys-commander
> this way - if it doesn't work, there is an easy uninstall.  That puts what
> was there originaly back.
> 
> Anthony
> 
> On Thu, 20 May 1999, Chuck Young wrote:
> 
> > I was working with a new guy last night who had a compaq with one of those
> > (annoying in my opinion) compaq partitions with diagnostics and maybe BIOS
> > stuff on it.  It was pretty fouled up, so I suggested he nuke the drive
> > with nfdisc by seagate and reinstall the compaq software from disks
> > available on the web, use DOS to partition off a windows partition and
> > then use linux to do the linux install.
> > 
> > After the second beer, the issue of whether lilo will overwrite the MBR in
> > such a way as to render the laptop's ability to access this compaq crap
> > came up.  I "believe" the mbr is up for grabs by whatever boot loader you
> > choose and it should not affect one's ability to boot into the compaq
> > partition or enter the BIOS.  "Believing" and knowing from experience are
> > two different issues.
> > 
> > Does anyone know for sure?  What's up with that partition anyway?  Can you
> > hit some keys during boot to access a standard BIOS setup? and another key
> > to do "diagnostics" or is it all one big bad hard drive BIOS thing?
> > 
> > Chuck Young
> > GTE Internetworking
> > 
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