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11-28-2016, 12:31 PM
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#1
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LQ Newbie
Registered: Nov 2016
Posts: 5
Rep: 
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No BIOS on ancient laptop.
I have a Compaq Armada 1750 with no visible BIOS menu.It currently has windows 2000 professional. I'm going to be giving this to my son. I want to install maybe mint or something else. It only has a 10g hard drive and I think 128 of memory. My phone is faster than it lol. I was hoping I can run it off the USB instead of the hard drive. I'm not sure where to start with no bios menu. He has the little Kano raspberry pi but he's kind of out grown it.
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11-28-2016, 12:35 PM
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#2
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LQ Guru
Registered: Feb 2004
Location: SE Tennessee, USA
Distribution: Gentoo, LFS
Posts: 11,091
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There must be some way to get to a BIOS ("pre-boot") menu on the box. Maybe do a Google (or DuckDuckGo) search to see if you can find a PDF copy of the owner's manual.
You shouldn't need to run it off of a USB drive, and you'll need to check and see if it can in fact be booted from USB.
Rest assured that you most-certainly can run Linux on such a "puny" (sic) machine. Heck, I ran Linux for almost two decades on a laptop that came with Windows-95! ("Old Dobbin" today lives on, only in a disk drive...) When I installed a suitably-stripped-down [Gentoo ...] Linux distro on it, the machine was positively speedy. 
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11-28-2016, 12:43 PM
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#3
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LQ Newbie
Registered: Nov 2016
Posts: 5
Original Poster
Rep: 
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I can only get into a "advanced options menu" after pushing f8 and I can get into hardware profile/ configuration recovery menu
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11-28-2016, 12:48 PM
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#4
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LQ Veteran
Registered: Jan 2011
Location: Abingdon, VA
Distribution: Catalina
Posts: 9,374
Rep: 
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F12 I believe for Compaq
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11-28-2016, 12:56 PM
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#5
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LQ Newbie
Registered: Nov 2016
Posts: 5
Original Poster
Rep: 
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Nope I've been trying to get into the BIOS for months now. Tried EVERYTHING I can think of. F10 F12 F8 gets me that advanced menu, hitting space bar gets to that configuration recovery menu. Every forum I've read says something about the BIOS is partitioned or something. I just wanted to know how to install linux remove windows and all without the bios.
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11-28-2016, 01:02 PM
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#6
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Moderator
Registered: Aug 2002
Posts: 26,517
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In what way has your son outgrown a Raspberry Pi? The Pi should be faster than a Pentium II.
If I remember correctly a P2 can not boot from USB and it only has a 1.0 which will be very slow. As stated it can not run mint or anything with a modern desktop.
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11-28-2016, 01:09 PM
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#7
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LQ Newbie
Registered: Nov 2016
Posts: 5
Original Poster
Rep: 
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My son really wants a laptop and he really wants linux. His pi is kano which is very kid friendly, it doesn't have a flash player and this isn't an option to get one for kano. I've been trying to get one on it and there isn't a flash player that will work for it. Am I able to download linux and install it and then remove windows?
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11-28-2016, 01:31 PM
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#8
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Senior Member
Registered: Aug 2009
Distribution: Rocky Linux
Posts: 4,804
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Remove the disk drive from the laptop and let it try to boot. That should bet you into the BIOS. Once there, you should find an option like "Fast boot" or "Ultra fast boot" that you can disable. That should allow enough time to press <Del>, <Esc>, or whatever key gets you into the BIOS setup from power-on.
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11-28-2016, 02:08 PM
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#9
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LQ Newbie
Registered: Nov 2016
Posts: 5
Original Poster
Rep: 
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Removing that did nothing tried booting it and pressing the f keys and esc
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11-28-2016, 04:49 PM
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#11
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Senior Member
Registered: Feb 2009
Posts: 4,667
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kwitcherbytchn
My son really wants a laptop and he really wants linux. His pi is kano which is very kid friendly, it doesn't have a flash player and this isn't an option to get one for kano. I've been trying to get one on it and there isn't a flash player that will work for it. Am I able to download linux and install it and then remove windows?
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Be sure to read the minimum hardware requirements for Flash Player:
Code:
Linux
2.33GHz or faster x86-compatible processor, or Intel Atom 1.6GHz or faster processor for netbooks
32- and 64-bit: Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® (RHEL) 5.6 or later, openSUSE® 11.3 or later, or Ubuntu 10.04 or later
Latest versions of Firefox or Google Chrome
512MB of RAM; 128MB of graphics memory
Source: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashp...ech-specs.html
In my opinion, your Compaq Armada is not the right hardware for the task. 
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11-28-2016, 04:52 PM
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#12
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Moderator
Registered: Mar 2008
Posts: 22,273
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Maybe no 640K memory free? http://forum.dvdtalk.com/tech-talk/1...50-laptop.html
If you get this far then you are past bios. "a "advanced options menu" after pushing f8 an"
Last edited by jefro; 11-28-2016 at 04:54 PM.
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11-28-2016, 04:58 PM
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#13
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LQ Veteran
Registered: Feb 2015
Location: USA
Distribution: Lubuntu 14.04, 22.04, Windows 8.1 and 10
Posts: 6,282
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kwitcherbytchn
Every forum I've read says something about the BIOS is partitioned or something.
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Hi...
From what I see here, that's correct. You might be able to go here and choose the correct model (and model number) of your laptop and see if the BIOS program is offered for it. For example, if I choose the first entry on that list (the "Compaq Armada 1750 nb 6300/T/4000/D/0/1,") I get a page that asks me for the driver language and operating system used, I get another list that offers to BIOS files, one of which says "System ROMPaq."
Regards...
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11-28-2016, 05:03 PM
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#14
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LQ Veteran
Registered: Mar 2008
Location: Waaaaay out West Texas
Distribution: antiX 23, MX 23
Posts: 7,279
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You can get by not using flash player by using smtube instead.
But a current Firefox, Seamonkey, Opera, and any other java , flash heavy browser. Forget about it.
Dillo and Links 2 browsers and maybe old qtweb browsers or netsurf , maybee? Might work OK.
It is how I roll on Pentium 3 , low ram gear. I sold my Pentium 2 gear after I installed Linux on them. School kids wanted buy the kool credentials of having a linux laptop.
http://yatsite.blogspot.com/search?q=fixing+old+gear
Quote:
I put 2 128mb sticks of ram in it to bring it up to 256mb.
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Last edited by rokytnji; 11-28-2016 at 05:06 PM.
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11-28-2016, 09:55 PM
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#15
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LQ Guru
Registered: Sep 2013
Location: Somewhere in my head.
Distribution: Slackware (15 current), Slack15, Ubuntu studio, MX Linux, FreeBSD 13.1, WIn10
Posts: 10,342
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http://h20628.www2.hp.com/km-ext/kmc...01120750-1.pdf
something on BIOS in that one.
this one
http://forum.dvdtalk.com/tech-talk/1...50-laptop.html
says
Quote:
Of course you could always check their website, but one trick I do when I don't
know is hold down something like the spacekey right after turning it on.
The BIOS thinks there's an error and gives me a message to press "whatever"
to get into the BIOS to fix it.
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searched Google with these keywords.
compaq armada 1750 bios access
you may want to try that and look for more on that subject
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