I read the subject here : Installing CompacFlash on Compaq Armada
The guy in the video seems to be able to do it with a boot floppy disk, but each time I try with a MS DOS boot floppy disk it says starting MS-DOS, cursor blinking and it stay stuck here, nothing happen… it did the same with the setup floppy disk, when it’s with a CF card the system’s floppy (MS DOS) doesn’t start, while it starts normally with real ide disk…

I had similar issue with a Compaq Contura, I hadn't been able to use a CF card. Cloned or not.
Same time, though, it worked with a Compaq Armada (1:1 sector copy to CF).
Using another drive geometry didn't work, though. Not even with the Compaq Setup/Diagnostic diskettes.

Jo22 wrote on 2025-05-11, 06:18:

I had similar issue with a Compaq Contura, I hadn't been able to use a CF card. Cloned or not.
Same time, though, it worked with a Compaq Armada (1:1 sector copy to CF).
Using another drive geometry didn't work, though. Not even with the Compaq Setup/Diagnostic diskettes.

If the bootsector code starts, a DDO might be able to work around the problem. That would put the int13 handler into lba mode with 32bit access, and away from any buggy bios code this armada uses.

It might be worthwhile to try having the hard disk image on a bootable cdrom (and using the ddo to start that cdrom), along with a dos disk imaging tool like ghost.

That way you can set up the ddo, boot the ddo, use the ddo to boot the cdrom (with the key sequence), then use the dos based imaging tool to write the hdd image from the cdrom to the ddo controlled disk.

Assuming dos/9x

I would:
1) fdisk +format /s on the new drive while booted from the old one
2) Boot to command prompt on new drive
3) Assuming that works, look up the xcopy command to copy everything exactly including attributes from the old to new.
4) Test again. It should boot.

Some CF cards just don't work as bootable devices. The card I have for a digital camera did not work as a bootable device in my Gateway and my Compaq, but the Transcend industrial CF cards seem work work fine.

In the past, I've got MS-DOS 6.22 to boot on almost anything so far.
I've erased track 0 and onwards on most CF cards before, though, to clean track 0 and MBR/PBR information (using S0kill and CCleaner).
The cheapest Hama no-name cards had worked, Transcend, too.

PS: thanks for the tipps.
About the Contura, maybe was a BIOS issue back then?
I could imagine the CF card was following too new ATA specs, maybe.

Thank’s for the tips. It worked actually with a smaller CF card, but the very weird thing is that I already tested with this card and at first it didn’t worked…

If it can help someone this is what I did :
1) use a system setup floppy disk, which didn’t work at all at first and then, worked…
2) I tested with grub4dos, the menu showed but nothing after
3) I tried to reinstall the wall thing with normal procedure from 90’s : win98 floppy disk and win98 cd-rom. The first part of installation worked but when reboot, it was stuck to a blinking cursor…
4) I cloned again the original disk to an other CF card with 4GB and there was an error at the end of the linux clone dd command (not enough space) but, I putted this CF in the armada just in case and… it worked ! And it seems to work very well, I hope the dd clone error while not make futur errors…

I’m pretty sure I already tested with this CF before it worked (but maybe not if I am a complete idiot ?) but it worked with this one with the clone and also with an ms-dos 6.22 install

Note : something interesting I discovered is that the connector of the compaq armada sb disk is completly the same as a CF card ! I tried gently to put my CF card directly in without IDE adaptor, it doesn’t fit but as I can see it’s only due to the plastic around the connector which make this not possible. But by cutting the plastic at the border of the CF it would probably work ? I don’t have the intention to do that at all but it’s just by curiosity. Maybe someone will say it’s completly not possible (probably) 😅 but this connector is really 100% the same regardless of the border (gutter?) plastic. At least, the female connector on the proprietary adaptor is the same as the female connector of CF.

Depending what is at the end of the original disk will drive future errors.

What Armada is this?

Irq5 wrote on 2025-05-12, 00:05:

Depending what is at the end of the original disk will drive future errors.

What Armada is this?

It’s a compaq armada sb 2920D