Deskpro 4000, PCI bridge not initalizing? \ VOGONS

Deskpro 4000, PCI bridge not initalizing?

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First post, by Ahrle

Posted on 2026-03-20, 12:31

Ahrle Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 57
Joined: 2023-04-09, 00:37

Recent purchase, Deskpro 4000. Sat 20 years:

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Came HDD-less, took a while to get her running with correct BIOS setup. Now that we are there, I can't for my life get the PCI slots working. CMOS battery is dead and soldered to begin with.

Tried a known good S3 Vision968 PCI, wouldn't POST. Then a VIA VT6202 USB card, with which it hanged in BIOS Setup while detecting PCI devices. 95B and 98SE would not detect the card, and driver installation only says "Unable to USB Device ID". I've tried all PCI slots in the system - ISA AWE64 on the riser however works flawlessly.

BIOS Setup gives the options "Activate VGA Palette Search" and "Activate External Bus Control". These are off by default, but upon editing everything is lost on the mandatory restart, I believe due to the dead CMOS battery.

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Furthermore, BIOS is unupgradable - it gets to "Please wait while ROMPAQ identifies the devices in your system..." then plays a melody and freezes.

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Anyone with experiences of these?

Current main: Inspiron 8100, Tualatin 1133, 512MB, GF2 Go, 1600x1200, dualboot 98/XP.

Reply 1 of 2, by Ydee

Posted on 2026-03-21, 08:01

Ydee Offline

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Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 781
Joined: 2021-01-17, 10:58

IIRC, on my Deskpro 2000 there was a diagnostic partition on HDD https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Operati … re/td-p/7749298 - but I dont know, if it is same on 4000 line.

Reply 2 of 2, by bofh.fromhell

Posted on 2026-03-21, 13:16

bofh.fromhell Offline

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Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 554
Joined: 2019-02-09, 16:11

If you have swapped or fiddled with the HDD you might need to restore the setup partition.
Maby you can figure it out from here where I had the same problem =) :

Compaq Deskpro 2000 Pentium Pro motherboard ID help!
https://web.archive.org/web/19961226054213/ht … me2/dp4000.html

Basically you need to figure out your machines configuration and get the correct setup and rompaq.

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