Old compaqs have the bios stored on the HDD* and if you remove it you need a boot disk. Possibly the HDD is bad? Try the boot disk.

*This is probably a simplification

Not this one. LTE 286 needs new CMOS battery, it is coin battery and it needs a configuration disk to set up the hard ware contained within.

I know, as I had one long ago. If you can't access the hard drive, it wil be probably dead. The bad news of ever is hard drive is non-standard dimension same with high density IDE connector. BUT good news is, the pinout is identical to IDE pinout. I fixed another LTE 286 long ago, with dead hard drive using 2.5" IDE hard drive, does work.

Now you can make flex connector by copying this but redesigned for standard IDE 44 pin. PCBWAY I think does make flex circuits.

Cheers,

It's right, I think. I had an SLT/286 and other Compaq PCs and the setup was on a hidden-partition on the HDD.

Alternatively, there also was the possibility to use a 720KB setup diskette.
The diskette could be used directly and be used to re-install that hidden-partition.

I think that disk image was once available in a ZIP/EXE file via Compaq BBS, Compaq Forum at CompuServe and Compaq's FTP.

Edit: Later versions of Compaq's setup utilities shipped on multiple floppies, maybe.
They looked like Windows 3.1 pretty much.
The earlier versions from the 80s had predated Windows 3, of course.

There is a 1.44MB diagnostics floppy to try solving the issue.

Joakim wrote on 2024-02-04, 15:34:

Old compaqs have the bios stored on the HDD* and if you remove it you need a boot disk. Possibly the HDD is bad? Try the boot disk.

*This is probably a simplification

From Compaq LTE/286's Technical Reference Guide:
"The BIOS for the COMPAQ LTE/286 and LTE Personal Computers resides in a pair of ROMs installed on the system board. Even-numbered addresses are mapped to one ROM, odd-numbered addresses to the other."
Boot disk does not remedy the issue. The floppy drive is spinning non-stop on boot-up. The cursor is blinking and no backlight.

It also says in that document that clearing CMOS (by disconnecting battery), requires the you run the setup floppy to set the CMOS configuration up again.

It was a hardware issue. After replacing electrolytic capacitors and fixing traces, the boot is as expected:

ComputerFAQ wrote on 2024-02-05, 05:43:

From Compaq LTE/286's Technical Reference Guide: "The BIOS for the COMPAQ LTE/286 and LTE Personal Computers resides in a pair o […]
Show full quote

Joakim wrote on 2024-02-04, 15:34:

Old compaqs have the bios stored on the HDD* and if you remove it you need a boot disk. Possibly the HDD is bad? Try the boot disk.

*This is probably a simplification

From Compaq LTE/286's Technical Reference Guide:
"The BIOS for the COMPAQ LTE/286 and LTE Personal Computers resides in a pair of ROMs installed on the system board. Even-numbered addresses are mapped to one ROM, odd-numbered addresses to the other."
Boot disk does not remedy the issue. The floppy drive is spinning non-stop on boot-up. The cursor is blinking and no backlight.

BIOS!=Setup

The original IBM/AT had a BIOS, but no Setup (aka" CMOS Setup Utility", what a name! 😅).
Setup was being shipped on a 5,25" diskette.

The BIOS in PC does checks/configure sthe hardware on power uo (POST) and contains the software routines that DOS and applications use.

The Setup is a helper program to change the parameters stored in the CMOS RAM in the Real Time Clock chip.

The BIOS reads it during POST, but it can't edit the parameters.
That's what the Setup Utility is good for.

In older PCs, it's can be stored as a separate program in memory.
Like the BIOS, it's located a little bit below 1MB.
CheckIt can help to see where it is, exactly.

Edit: The IBM BIOS of the IBM AT was being very limited.
There are numerous compatible replacement BIOSes.
Back in the 80s, people borrowed them and installed them in their ATs.
That's maybe why the Setup diskette no longer is being remembered.

Edit: Here's an overview: https://minuszerodegrees.net/bios/bios.htm

I answered my question by replacing capacitors. As posted, the issue was hardware related.