You might find this helpful: "How to Install a Second IDE Hard Drive on ProLinea PCI Systems, Deskpro PCI Systems...."
http://web.archive.org/web/19991002021229/htt … ories/8302.html
some support info:
http://web.archive.org/web/19961226054838/htt … /prol5120e.html

other info: http://web.archive.org/web/19990508113831/htt … /ProLineaE.html
http://cwcyrix.duckdns.org/ftp-archives/ftp.c … s/PCI_Prolinea/
http://cwcyrix.duckdns.org/ftp-archives/ftp.c … ops/Prolinea_E/

Some of the support says you could have 8Mb on board with 4 SIMM slots, however the 575 on this page shows 6 SIMMS:
http://matthieu.benoit.free.fr/Compaq_Prolinea575.htm

Thanks for the response, and nice info. Some of it I had not found before!

The ide controller seems a little odd. In my case, the cd rom does not show up at all, set to primary slave, but when I run the Compaq test it said it is ok. Maybe this is normal behaviour.

An update, I added an other ide cable and put the CDROM on the second ide channel. For some reason the inbuilt test program hanged when testing the CDROM no matter what jumper or where on the cable I set the CDROM to. I disregarded the test result and continued to install the CDROM drivers and it was fine.

I can now try to add an other HDD if I like to but ATM in sticking with this Western digital:

Yesterday I grew tired of windows 3.11 so I formatted the drive and put windows 95 b on it. The PCI 3com nic works fine now (had some issue in Windows 3.11). It is very nice to be able to do some file sharing. Transferring files through floppy is fine (if you don't need to use multiple floppies).

Here is a picture of the motherboard btw:

Have the same Proline, originally 575 but I upgraded CPU to 166MHz MMX (works slightly overvolted but with good cooler no problem).
Machine has Compaq's own chipset and supports maximum of 192MB RAM (and can cache it all).

I also own a 575. They're a bit stubborn with the BIOS installed on a HD partition. I'm having a fight with it, it says that a setup password is set, but not configured correctly. So I think I am going to place another HD and try to set it up from scratch...

PD2JK wrote on 2022-02-06, 14:36:

I also own a 575. They're a bit stubborn with the BIOS installed on a HD partition. I'm having a fight with it, it says that a setup password is set, but not configured correctly. So I think I am going to place another HD and try to set it up from scratch...

Maybe try this jumper, it said something with password activation.

Worth a shot at least.

I still find the ide controller and bios strange. If I have nothing on the secondary channel it sais it's deactivated. When I added the CDROM it was activated automatically, but it does not show the CDROM in the bios, it can however be seen when you go back to the first Compaq menu and list devices.

When I tried tried to add a 16 GB SD card to the secondary channel I realized it didn't work and I removed it (it was too large). Then the computer would refuse to boot until I first also removed the cd rom from the secondary channel. At that point the computer wanted to boot from the Western digital HDD on the primary channel. At this point I could add the CDROM again.

Oh, and cutemouse does not work. Might be a Compaq thing, as my Compaq Armada 1750 is the same.

This machine has me scratching my head.. 😁

Alright, recreating the diagnostic disks and deleting the recovery partition did the trick. 😀

I included SP4711.exe for future use and for anybody who might need it.

Nice. Lets create a list of drivers. Do you guys install any special drivers in Windows 95 or 98?

Not that it matter that much. For me this is a DOS build with windows 95 for utility mostly.

Windows 98 at least has all the drivers for it. Not sure if there are specific drivers anywhere for Compaq Triflex chipset but it seems to work just fine with 98 ones.

Yeah maybe windows game good support to Compaq motherboards and if they existed when both windows 95 and 98 arrived they are supported. Maybe there are some updated graphics drivers?

I was wondering what bios versions you are using. As I understand it the bios is really stored on the motherboard, it is only the GUI that is on disk. I was wondering if there is a way to mod it for larger hard drives.

I have a quite frustrating time trying to get this machine to accept an SD card has a hard drive. Maybe it is my SD to ide adaptor that is the culprit. It is not possible to set it to slave (maybe you can do som kind of pin mod). I have tried to set it to different sizes in bios but I had no luck installing the bios partition to it.

Yesterday I attempted to clone my HDD to th SD card it is somewhat working when inset the size in bios (via floppy bios boot disk) to somewhere around 2 gig but I can't boot from the bios partition or windows 95. Windows 95 actually is somewhere close to booting but it said something about is not able to boot windows 95 rather than the normal no bootable media drive. Also the bios F10 menu does not work from the SD card.

What is also frustrating is that the bios halts every time and wants to set the SD card to somewhere about 8gig, but when I try that size it is not recognized at all outside of bios.

It would be nice to have just s little more space than 850 mb but this seems to be such a hassle I might as well buy a 2 gig HDD or something.

Have you tried a Compact Flash card yet? I have a 2GB one in a Compaq laptop from that era and it works great, setup partition and all.

BTW, I believe the "e" in the model number is the "cheap" version while non-e is the "good" version of the Prolinea. The 5100e for example doesn't have cache, only has 4 SIMM slots and can only do 50 and 60Mhz FSB.

devius wrote on 2022-02-25, 22:01:

Have you tried a Compact Flash card yet? I have a 2GB one in a Compaq laptop from that era and it works great, setup partition and all.

BTW, I believe the "e" in the model number is the "cheap" version while non-e is the "good" version of the Prolinea. The 5100e for example doesn't have cache, only has 4 SIMM slots and can only do 50 and 60Mhz FSB.

Not tried CF, I never used it tbh most because I don't have any other computers with CF. I might buy a couple of smaller SD cards when they are still available, but it is frustrating when you feel you are "almost there" and give up. 😀

Almost like I would like to try a bios mod but it is probably non standard and the chip is soldered. Nah.

What you say about the e models makes sense. Most of the these cheap models probably had less expansion ports as well.

I went ahead and bought a half size SSD (SATA)
of 4 gb and tried to connect it via an sata2ide adaptor. I tried everything to get it working but no luck with the internal ide controller...

I believe this bios is bugged and can't handle anything more that ca 2gb. Tried manual settings but no luck (could not see partitions). I tried letting the bios decide the size and it thinks it is ca 50mb but also at that point the computer does not see any partitions.

Theoretically it can be a compatibility issue with the sata2ide converter I guess. When I put it in an other machine via the same converter I do see the partition I made in the prolinea though.

Finally I ended up putting a ide controller card in the only PCI slot and it works without any problems.

Not sure atm if I want to use this solution but I might as well do some hdd speed tests no that I'm at it. :-p

That is one fine desktop. Shame Compaq isn't around any more - I could do without HP.

Idea about the slot situation: If you'd need that PCI for something else than the NIC, there is at least one 3COM ether express for ISA with 100 mbps.
Now, I don't remember the bandwidth of ISA and it's probably a moot point and those cards were only ever built to integrate legacy machines in 100base only infrastructure.

Writing this on a Proliant ML330 - the case, that is 😉

Mm yeah I have 4 Compaq computers now. I have had very little problems. I have a feeling they were built to last.

Maybe I did not write about it here, but I replaced the PCI 3com (that seemed very stable) with a very similar 3com Isa card. driver situation was a bit confusing because of all the similar model names but it worked out ok. It is only 10 base but I don't really mind that much. It is probably faster than usb 1 at least.

I’ve had very good luck adding promise sata II tx4 cards to systems like these. Probably solve your hard drive issues. I’ve used it with windows 98 and ME also.

I had this computer project on pause, mostly because I realize that the processor is a little to fast for my taste. When I get around to it I'd like to try to downclock it and perhaps deactivate l2 if at all possible.

Oh and I ended up installing a PCI ide controller card, but I'd like to have the PCI slot for something else so I bought (two) Isa controllers instead but I have not even opened the package.

Cache can be disabled via configuration using compaq diagnostic and setting disk.

Cheers, Jason