No, nothing. I tried copying the entire contents of the Windows 98 install CD, but it didn't boot. I then tried copying the entire contents of a few Win98 bootdisk to the partition but that also didn't work.

The offer of a walkthrough to get everything installed through VirtualBox is something I'd be interested in.

Hi again!

So I have an 8gb CF card in the machine now, per your suggestion. Through lots of trial and error I was able to finally get the new CF card to boot to C:\ by using some combination of EZ-Drive and I think, OnTrack 9 - though it was such a process I can't remember 100%. I have a pile of floppy disks in front of me...

So whatever I did, I can get to C:. Initially the only file on C: was command.com, so I copied the entire contents of DOS 6.22 over to C: and now have a C: with the entire DOS 6.22 there.

I also have the original 1.2gb IDE HDD which boots to Windows 98, no problem. I cannot to get Win98 to install on the CF card, is my latest problem. I went so far as to extract a WIN98 installation ISO to a folder on the CF card, re-insert it into the Compaq and then try to run setup.exe from the DOS prompt but it just froze. Also tried to do this with a Win95 Installation ISO but running setup.exe brought me immediately back to C: prompt.

I can't seem to get the external optical drive (Acer 8824-MM-200) to work, either. It doesn't want to work on the Compaq via PCMCIA (though it shows up in the list in device manager/PCMCIA card - and it's too old, apparently, to work on my main W10 rig (shows up in W10's device manager as USB optical storage device but there's a little caution sign showing).

My thought was to use the Compaq with the original HDD in it, copy all the data from there over to a CD, then bring the CD over to the W10 pc along with the CF card and essentially clone the HDD.

So those appear to be my choices. Install Win98 directly from the CF card, somehow. Get the CD-ROM to work and clone the HDD to the CF via CD. Or...somehow install Win98 to the CF card using the Win10 PC as someone offered to help me with, but then never came back.

Can someone give me some advice, please?

Not sure why Win98 installer won't work for you right now. Maybe it's a corrupt image, or there's something wrong with the drive overlay. I've never used overlay so I can't speak to that.

I was going to suggest trying to set up the HDD entirely in DosBOX, but this person suggests VMWare instead:

https://modelrail.otenko.com/electronics/crea … t-a-boot-device

Where it says "transfer system files to make it entirely bootable", you have to type sys [drive letter]: in the prompt.

Edit: oh, right, you have a working floppy drive. Tried just making that plain old Win98 boot disk again? That's still the easiest by far. Partition, format, SYS c:, then copy contents of Win98 image to your HDD and boot up again with the floppy and run setup from your HDD.

I have had some good luck using the Ontrack Disk Manager to overcome BIOS size limitations, just used it the other day to put a 30GB HDD into a Toshiba Satellite 2505CDS. Though honestly I didn't check to see if it would accept a larger drive, just went with the assumption it wouldn't. Great little tool.

I've had success with a 4GB CF card in these machines, anything higher would result in boot issues as you have experienced. Boot with a Win98 floppy then repartition and format the CF disk, reboot with the Win98 boot disk and issue a SYS C: command. Remove the CF disk and using another PC with a card reader attached, copy the Win98 install folder to the CF card. Place CF card back into laptop, boot up and install Win98 from the folder on the CF card. DO NOT PARTITION OR FORMAT THE CF CARD OUTSIDE OF THE LAPTOP! I used to use this method with VirtualBox to setup and install MSDOS onto the CF cards. I found that this was the cause of booting issues with some systems, not sure exactly why but maybe the way the BIOS detected the card and mapped the disk.

Also, some of the newer CF cards do not cooperate too well as a disk drives with older hardware. You may have to resort to
finding a used 4GB or 8GB industrial CF card which are not detected as removable drives and perform much better than the type used in cameras and ipods.

See above post by Detritus about using a BIOS overlay manager. Although not something I would use, as just adds another layer of complication and possible issues, esp. when that system was not designed to use 8GB CF cards.

Cloning the original disk will not work as the drive geometry is not the same and will still result with a non booting system.
The MBR is the tricky part here as you can access the CF disk but not install Win98. The BIOS needs detect the CF and access the MBR in order to boot correctly.