Not so sure about the PCMCIA slots, but maybe you could swap out the hard drive with a IDE CompactFlash adapter & CompactFlash card? I've considered doing this with my old AST Ascentia laptop.

There are CD-ROM drives with PCMCIA/Cardbus controllers. I bought one with PCMCIA (Freecom) after I bricked the internal CD-ROM of my notebook. A floppy with drivers for DOS was included.

You need to install card and socket service drivers in DOS. HP should have a Systemsoft Cardsoft package for DOS available on their site. The hard drive is a standard 2.5" IDE drive in a caddy, just pop it open and replace it with a CF adapter. A Multibay CD-ROM drive was available and installs in the same bay as the floppy drive.

I can't find anything in the HP page

http://h20566.www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/te … sp4ts.oid=97164

I guess I could use an IDE to CF adapter, but everytime I want to use the CF card in another computer I will have to remove and open the caddy, it will be easier to just remove the PCMCIA card from one computer to the other : )

I have a Compaq LTE Elite which is the predecessor of yours. I have the same issue with CD-ROMs and at best I've surmised that it might be possible with a docking station. The Elite model does not have any BIOS options to boot from a CD-ROM so it is not possible with a PCMCIA or parallel drive.

I found a few docking stations but they were more expensive than the PC 😀

And I didn't want the computer to boot from the PCMCIA slot, it was good enough for me if I could get a CF in a PCMCIA card appear as a drive to the computer.

And there is a CDROM drive (from TEAC I think) that is supposed to be used with this model, in the floppy drive slot, but the ones I found are also to expensive.

Just in case it helps turn up more search results, this is the info from a 6x CDROM from an LTE5380. It looks the same as your 5280, so I'm guessing the drives are the same. I know all the 53xx models are, but I'm not familiar with the 52xx.

picking out all the stickers that have some sort of number on them, they read as follows:
"Compaq Computer Corp. J7045"
"Replace with compaq spare 6x cd-rom drive 242113-001" - small number in corner says "0508T304"

The manufacturer label is from Matsushita.
"Model No. UJDCD6740"
... "Made in Japan JDGS0019ZA"
Another sticker has a bunch of warning icons and the number "0508T215"

It is possible to boot from the CD-ROM after installing one of those drive extender utilities on a hard drive. I don't remember what one I used, but it did add the option. But at the BIOS level, booting from CD isn't supported.

From memory, I think there were a couple different versions of the docking station. The one I have just uses the same drives/cards as the laptop itself. It does add a joystick port though. If it used desktop components it would be more useful. I think I recall there being a version that does that.

All the parts from the LTE 5000 series interchange. The 6X CD-ROM will work in any of the other models. There are two docking stations, one with and one without an ISA slot. They both have built in 10BaseT Ethernet, a joystick/MIDI port, two extra Multibays and two additional PCMCIA slots.