Hi, all

Well, I got my Compaq Presario 433. I've been thinking about waiting for a CDS 52* machine (those have integrated sound, speakers and CD-ROM), but this one is really cheap and readily available and IMHO looks much better. It came with no CPU or RAM, so I had to get a 486dx2 and I want to use some 72 pin SIMM modules I got after my Pentium I build.

I really think it's a beautiful machine. Good news: all the electronic parts work. I've installed the CPU, set the jumpers, and tried to boot. Even the battery is intact, it showed me the correct date. Bad news: there is some damage to the plastic, but I'll work on that later. The biggest issue is that the HDD is dead. So I'm gonna use a Quantum Fireball 2,5 GB HDD I had from my Pentium 1 build. But before I install DOS on it, I need to get the original software.

1) I remember that Presarios had a kind of a service partition on a disk that had their graphical BIOS. And that thing should be installed before making a primary partition. There should be a Setup and a Diagnostics disk image for a floppy. And I even remember seeing those files along with some Compaq utilities (like a CPU slowdown tool) on someone's personal FTP. But I lost the link. I'm googling the hell out of it right now, but maybe someone has those files?

EDIT: Solved. It's here http://78.46.141.148/driver/compaq_presario_cds520/bios

2) The motherboard has 4 megs of RAM installed. I have these modules:

So, 4 modules of single-sided 8 MB EDO RAM and 4 modules of double-sided 4 MB RAM of two different kinds (I mean, they must have a different vendor). Only EDO modules have anything meaningful written on them:

Whenever I try any of them with Compaq, it goes into a boot loop. Meaning, when it checks the RAM size at some point after 12-14 megs it just reboots. The maximum allowed RAM size for this machine is 20 megs (counting the integrated 4 megs). What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!