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?