Thanks for all your inputs.  This forum is great! I temporarily connected a 
CDROM drive to the secondary IDE connector and connected power using a Y 
cable. Then I booted from a Win 98 floppy and installed ME from the CDROM. 
Works great! These Compaq DeskPros have 192 MB RAM, 6 GB HDD.  Now I can 
install other programs from an external USB CDROM. or from the WEB.-----  
Original Message ----- 
From: "Russ Cox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2007 9:29 AM
Subject: [PCBUILD] No OS on Compaq


I have acquired several Compaq Deskpro computers that were used in a 
corporation. These are very compact computers w/ hard disk and floppy but no 
CDROM and no space for one and no OS. I think they would work just fine for 
limited use, internet and word processing etc. if I could figure out how to 
load an OS on them.  They have USB and ethernet ports, but they wouldn't be 
usable until drivers were loaded. There is a secondary IDE connector on the 
mother board, but I'd have to jury rig a power connection for an IDE CDROM 
since there's only one power cable from the power supply to the hard disk. 
The boot options are limited to floppy, hard disk and Compaq Ethernet 
controller. So if I could temporarily connect a CDROM, I could boot from a 
floppy, then load from the CDROM,
Any ideas of how I could boot the computer up and load an OS from a CD? What 
would I have to do to boot from the ethernet connection?

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