Compaq 4110, internal

P120
Originally 16mg ram, I think a technician who came out to do a repair kindly dropped the second stick in so now 32mb
1.5GB hdd, I think

I think the only modifications I might make are to add a voodoo 2, or 3 if I can find a PCI card, and maybe a fan at the front (though the air would blow perpendicular to the fins on the CPU heat sink)

Very nice! Beautiful machine! I have an upright/tower version (4704) of the same basic design. Is this your actual old family PC, or is this one of the ones that sold recently-ish on ebay?

The hard drive might not be working. There are SSD replacements for IDE drives you can get on Amazon (I can link if you want). The important thing is that it's booting as far as telling you that the disc isn't working, that's great news. I'm not sure if I'm seeing the hard drive in your pics, does it have a hard drive? In any case, I bet if you install one of those SSD replacements and use the restore discs, you should be good to go. There's just one little problem: you might need a boot floppy disk. On my machine, if I wanted to restore it, I'd have to use a floppy disk to start the machine plus the CD in the drive, as far as I'm aware. Luckily, the floppy disk images are on the internet archive. I have a copy I can upload here if you want.

Really great machine! Post pics when it's up and running. Also, you can get the speaker for it for dirt cheap on Ebay.

Also, I use lysol or chlorox wipes on mine (except the glass on the monitor), those work great for cleaning in my experience.

Very cool,
I've also still got the families very first PC. A 486/DX2 66. I've only got the PC itself and keyboard though, everythng else has been lost to time.
I couldn't bring myself to upgrade the CPU, etc. I figure it's all part of the nostalgia now.

I kept spinning rust for c:\ as the sound of turning it on all these years didn't sound right with anything else but did use CF card as a 2nd HDD which is where all my games are installed.

I did install a network card and attached an external MIDI module though

midicollector wrote on 2023-08-27, 23:33:

The hard drive might not be working. There are SSD replacements for IDE drives you can get on Amazon (I can link if you want).

Assuming the 16x errors mean the OP has not replaced the CMOS battery yet, that would be the place to go first followed by fixing up the configuration in the BIOS. The Non-system disk error (from a hard drive vs. a forgotten floppy disk in the drive) could be as simple as incompatible geometry or normal vs. LARGE vs. LBA, etc.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2023-08-28, 02:22:

Assuming the 16x errors mean the OP has not replaced the CMOS battery yet, that would be the place to go first followed by fixing up the configuration in the BIOS.

It is more than likely that this machine doesn't have regular BIOS. It has NVRAM that stores the setup information, but to actually configure it, there needs to be a setup partition on the HDD which is needs to be installed with a specific Compaq Setup/diagnostic diskette.

It is one of the most annoying engineering decisions in the history of PC systems, but pretty much all Compaqs had it starting from 1994-95 and onwards.

That's correct, this is one of those compaqs with the special partition thing. I don't know the exact details of it or how it works since I've never needed to look into it, but I can confirm this is a model that does that.

Thanks everyone, hopefully I've got a fresh battery I can try tonight, otherwise I'll need to wait a bit to get a new CMOS battery.

I remember there were awkward aspects to this PC hence when I upgraded 3 or so years later I built a K6 system instead of trying to change the compaq. I've still got the K6, board, and case, so maybe that can be a future project.

I really hope that at least one of the Compaq restore floppies is still good. One of the CDs at least look good, not scratched, just needs a clean.

So, order of business; CMOS battery, then try my luck with the restoration media.

The HDD is in situ. It whirrs and clicks away, but beyond that I have no idea. I could pop it in a dock and see if whatever is on it is readable. I can't remember if I used it as a secondary drive in my second build, but I don't think I did. I think the K6 machine had its own 10GB-ish drive

I like that form factor. It is a little bit smarter than my prolinea where the floppy takes one of the 5.25 slots. That bulge above the 5.25 slots is so 90s! Magic of computing!

strange_loop wrote on 2023-08-28, 09:29:

I really hope that at least one of the Compaq restore floppies is still good. One of the CDs at least look good, not scratched, just needs a clean.

One thing more: You can pretty easily find downloadable setup diskettes just by googling them with your machine type. The biggest possible hurdle is that these SoftPaqs, as Compaq called these software/driver packages, are exe files, which extract when you run them. However, you can't extract these old win9x era executables on a modern system. Easiest thing is to extract them on a working vintage computer and make the floppy there. If you don't have one, it might be doable on a dosbox or at least on a VM.

So, if your old floppies don't work, you should be able to make a replacement floppy. Or ask someone else to make it for you.

Joakim wrote on 2023-08-28, 09:40:

I like that form factor. It is a little bit smarter than my prolinea where the floppy takes one of the 5.25 slots. That bulge above the 5.25 slots is so 90s! Magic of computing!

Absolutely, and the moon-shaped light for the sleep button on the top of the bulge. Man, it invokes some intense fuzzy nostalgia for me!

I'm starting to think some subtle period upgrades would be nice, still hopefully a glide card, and maybe a creative optical drive with 3.5mm and that lovely teal "Creative" text (I'm not convinced the current drive is working, but we'll see if it spins up once booting from the floppy is achieved and it moves on to the restore CD).

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2023-08-28, 09:45:

strange_loop wrote on 2023-08-28, 09:29:

I really hope that at least one of the Compaq restore floppies is still good. One of the CDs at least look good, not scratched, just needs a clean.

One thing more: You can pretty easily find downloadable setup diskettes just by googling them with your machine type. The biggest possible hurdle is that these SoftPaqs, as Compaq called these software/driver packages, are exe files, which extract when you run them. However, you can't extract these old win9x era executables on a modern system. Easiest thing is to extract them on a working vintage computer and make the floppy there. If you don't have one, it might be doable on a dosbox or at least on a VM.

So, if your old floppies don't work, you should be able to make a replacement floppy. Or ask someone else to make it for you.

Thank you, that's really helpful to know. I've got the win 98 pIII working, now, so maybe I could use that as an intermediate step if needed. Still need to get a nice fresh install on that at some point, but I won't mess with it just now incase I need it for the Compaq.

Does this machine have built in L2 cache? What sound card are you going with? How are going to handle file transfering?

I think my prolinea is very similar to this, it's 120 MHz P1. The motherboard has a frustrating limitation, and it's that it is very limited to the size of the hard drive it will accept. I have the original (I think) HDD but it's like 800 mb and too noisy for my taste. I actually put a 2 GB SSD in it for lolz but I will exchange it for an SD solution.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2023-08-28, 02:22:

midicollector wrote on 2023-08-27, 23:33:

The hard drive might not be working. There are SSD replacements for IDE drives you can get on Amazon (I can link if you want).

Assuming the 16x errors mean the OP has not replaced the CMOS battery yet, that would be the place to go first followed by fixing up the configuration in the BIOS. The Non-system disk error (from a hard drive vs. a forgotten floppy disk in the drive) could be as simple as incompatible geometry or normal vs. LARGE vs. LBA, etc.

I went to change the battery, but, I'm not sure how it's attached. At first I though it was just slotted between the contacts here but either it's somehow fixed in place at factory or it's leaked or corroded a bit chemically welding it in place. I'm quite worried about how much force to safely use!

strange_loop wrote on 2023-08-28, 15:44:

I went to change the battery, but, I'm not sure how it's attached. At first I though it was just slotted between the contacts here but either it's somehow fixed in place at factory or it's leaked or corroded a bit chemically welding it in place. I'm quite worried about how much force to safely use!

That is a rechargeable coin battery with fixed solder feet. You can't remove the coin cell from the feet, you need to desolder it to remove it. They are a standard thing and you can get replacements, but you can't replace it with a non charging battery at least without isolating the charging circuit first. One option would be to desolder original battery, install a coin cell holder and then rechargeable coin battery.

That battery may still be working, but you may need to configure the system after it has charged somewhat as the settings have been lost. I have even older Compaqs with similar batteries and those still work just fine and hold charge at least for months, so I haven't even bothered to replace them. That of course doesn't mean that yours is, but I think you should try to configure the system and see if it holds configuration.

The battery in my Compaq from the same era is also still working, although that doesn't necessarily mean your is as well.

I have a backup motherboard with the same kind of battery connection that I removed the battery from, they are indeed soldered in there. I was able to twist it until it broke free, but I really, really don't recommend that method at all. I had to apply a lot of force, and can confirm it would be very easy to damage the motherboard or its traces. I'd highly recommend using a soldering iron instead. Use needle nose plyers to hold the battery, then put the soldering iron in the connection and see if you can gently pull the battery free from the connection on the side with the iron. Do that for each side, and be careful and gentle with it. I would also highly recommend getting a coin cell holder and rechargeable coin battery, that's my long term plan with both of my motherboards.

The manual for my motherboard also mentions a secondary battery connection, so there might be an alternative way to hook up a battery after removing the first one, but personally I'd probably just put in the coin cell holder and not bother trying to figure out the secondary battery connection thing.

I think I used some brute force to remove mine as well. I believe i just used a couple or Dupont wires and connected it to th secondary battery slot. I probably just taped the battery to the connectors. Not my proudest achievement.

Well, working on 3 fronts - not much progress, yet.

CMOS battery:
After leaving the machine on for some time, my multimeter shows 0 voltage across the battery. Tested on other batteries, the meter seems accurate, so it looks like the CMOS battery is not holding any charge. Looks like I'll have to remove.

HDD: Stuck in a dock, spins up fine and recognised by partition magic. Of course, I can't really do anything with it on a Windows 11 machine, can't see what's on it. Unsure whether to format it in FAT32 or leave for now incase it still has the OS etc on it.

Boot floppy: I've not figured out yet how to mount the image in dosbox, getting close but not quite getting the last steps right. Actually, I'm trying to mount to a CD then transfer that to a working Windows 98 machine *then* transfer to floppy. Probably an easier way. . .

You can use a usb floppy drive in windows 10 at least. (Not sure about 11 as I don't have it.)