Help please!

spacedude89

Active Member
im fixing up and old Compaq destop 4000 to put linux on, and any hardware i put in wont work, i assume its because compaq put something in bios or motherboard that restricts hardware to their brand, is there a way to get around this, im trying to replace the cdrom and the hd....
 
Its not that the BIOS restricts it, because i used to have a Comaq and i installed an ATI video card, and ATI TV Card, Creative sound card, ect. I think the problem is that the drivers for that piece of hardware isnt compatable with your version of Linux. I dont know a whole lot about Linux, but the mfg of your hardware might have a special driver for Linux.
 
i installed an ati radeon 7000, it works great, but when i install a cd drive, the computer wont even see it, what i have is a knoppix livecd, and it wont boot if i dont have the compaq cd drive in it,
 
do you have another cd drive around? maybe you could try to use that, and if it doesnt work, then its probably the IDE controller, if it does, it was probably the cd drive.
 
ive tried 3 other cdroms that i know work, only the compaq one seems to work in the computer, same with the harddrives, iv tried 2 that i know work, only the compaq one will work in the computer.
 
when you say that only the compaq ones work in your computer, is that when your runniong windows or Linux?
 
it is still in the bios, there is no windows or linux on the computer, im using a linux that runs from the cd, when i run it in the compaq cdrom, it will load and run, when i run it in the other 3 cdroms, it doesnt work, and ive checked the jumpers, they are correct, i even switched them around to other settings for the heck of it, still they dont work, same with the hard drives.

right now i have linux installed to the compaq harddrive, it it a 2.2 gig hd so i have 40 mb of free space now, im going to try to see if i can get the cdrom to run with linux, since it isnt needed to run linux because its on the harddrive now.
 
im trying to replace the cdrom and the hd ...
replacing the cd/HDD shouldnt be a problem (other than if the system is super old and wont recognize the drive)

i installed an ati radeon 7000, it works great, but when i install a cd drive, the computer wont even see it, what i have is a knoppix livecd, and it wont boot if i dont have the compaq cd drive in it ,
so when you can get it to boot, whats the configuration.
 
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