Subj : HP fun and games
To   : ROY J. TELLASON
From : MARTIN ATKINS
Date : Wed May 18 2005 09:18 pm

-=> ROY J. TELLASON wrote to ALL <=-

RJT> So I got this kinda nice HP machine,  and I'm trying to see where I can
RJT> go with it...

RJT> It's only got 64M of ram in it,  a 10G HD,  and when you power it up
RJT> there's the option to run some diagnostics,  which are apparently
RJT> installed on the HD in a small separate partition.

You say apparently. If it has it's own partition you should be able to see
it. I could be called from the MBR but more than likely it is a kernel 
call by the HP installation disk. 

RJT> I want to put more ram in there,  lose the 98 install,  and put a
RJT> somewhat smaller HD in it to use the box as a workstation.  I'd like to
RJT> be able to keep those diagnostics if I can.

I think if you loss the win98 install you will loss the tools. 

RJT> At first I thought it'd be easy enough to copy that smallish partition
RJT> over to another drive,  but I'm not sure about how I'd get it to _boot_
RJT> into that the way it does now.

What about you junk as much of the win98 as is practically possible and
see how small you can get it. Then use something like "fips" to 
shrink the partition. That will give you something which is easily
movable with XXCOPY. XXCOPY the entire setup over to another disk
and make it bootable with "fdisk /mbr". If the xcopied disk boots
with the tools then the tools are not being called from the MBR.    

This means it's save to move it off the 10gig as you have it on
the other disk.

RJT> So last night I start poking around on HP's web site,  and I found the
RJT> stuff for that model machine ("Brio BA210").  I thought I was on to
RJT> something when I saw "OS Independent" but that link pointed to a 2M+
RJT> ".exe" file. Which file, when I try to run it on this box,  says
RJT> "Cannot be run in DOS mode".  WTF?  So I looked some more,  and the
RJT> next logical choice seems to be getting the software for "DOS".  Only
RJT> thing is,  that's a 159MB ISO file!  No way am I gonna download that
RJT> without being sure that it's what I'd need to make this work...

Im not sure about all this but it looks like you have a vendor installation
so it may be specific to the machine it was installed on. What ever these
tools are i don't see what a proper instalation of 98 won't be able to do 
if you have the hardware drivers.

Anyway if they tickle your fancy you can always build around the shrunken
partition with a boot loader. It is not an ideal solution but you can always
use the tools by booting to the vendor install. On the upside it does give
you more time to see if the tools can be separated from the system.

RJT> Any of you guys have suggestions as to how I might make this work?

I've used xxcopy on a WIN/ME and it went without a hickup. If you can
transport the opperating/partition around you can clone it to a slave
and have the boot loader select it if you need to probe hardware.

Best i can do. ;)
 
L8r. :)
 
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