[OB] Installing a CF in an Omnibook 425 or 430

[bjunk]

I remember several disk managers that would
let large disk drives be used in the ond DOS 
machines.  On track was probally the most common one.
I know I tried one of them on an old
DOS desktop at work many years ago,
but never liked the fact that a special 
driver was involved with my data.  
 
Never tried it on the Omnibook.  But I have always 
stayed away from them since it can be difficult to 
pop the drive in another computer and read the data.
 
I like being able to pop the CF out and then pop it 
iton another computer and use as is without bothering
with special drivers.
 
I have one of each of the Omnibook 300, 435, 430,
530, 600C and 600CT.  I usually do most of my fooling
around with either the 430 or the 600c/t.  I really like
the 430 in that I use it a lot to initialize CF cards for 
other computers.  I have a 128 MB CF in the A-drive with
FDISK, FORMAT, SYS, etc.  Then I can just put a new CF in
the C-drive, boot to the D, and use the tools on the A to 
intialize the CF.
 
The nice thing about DOS, WIN 3.1 and WIN 95 is that when
the CF card is finally set up with the OS on it, you can
just create a complete ZIP file of the whole card.  
Then it's real easy to just fdisk and format a new CF, unzip
the OS to it, and do a SYS to it, and you're up and running
with new card without installing an OS from scratch.
 
I have tried OS/2, but was never successful in getting it
to work.  Slackware Linux 7.1 does work on the 430 with 8 MB
of memory.  But the Mouse and Power management does not work,
so you have to reboot it into DOS before shutting it down.
 
Same thing with CPM/86.  BUt there are a couple of utilities 
that makes it fairly easy to reset the boot partition and
then do the reboot.
 
The power management DOES work on the ON 600CT in Slackware 7.1.
 
Bill
 
 
 
 

________________________________

From: omnibook-bounces at lists.elektro.com on behalf of hpl
Sent: Sat 12/15/2007 7:20 PM
To: HP Omnibook Notebook Computer list
Subject: Re: [OB] Installing a CF in an Omnibook 425 or 430




If I remember correctly software such as "Ontrack Disk Manager" could
be used to get around limits such as this one. Have you tried it?

Are you using a 430 ROM?


bjunk skrev:
> You can use large compact flash cards, but you can only
> format the first 1024 cylinders or about 520 MB.
> 
> I have used 5 GB pcmcia hard drives and 4 GB micro drives
> with no problems (only the first 540 MB).
> Y
> ou can even load DOS in the first 540 MB and
> then format the remaining as a Linux drive.  I've used Slackware
> 7.1.  There are a few quirks.  I wrote something up
> on it some time ago on how I did it.  I could dig it out
> for you if you're interested.
> 
> I have also formated a CF card with CPM/86 and DOS.  It actually
> works pretty good and you can switch back and forth between them
> by rebooting.
> 
> As cheap as 1 gb CF cards are, I'd just get a 1 GB card, and format the
> first 540 MB and go with it.
> 
> Bill
>