*Edited*Floppy drive connections?

[VitaminR]

I recently acquired two old Compaq Armada 1540 Laptops and was wondering if anyone knew how to get into the BIOS in these. I am relatively knew to the technical side of computers so this is the only way I know how to get the computer to look at the CD-ROM drive when it boots up so I can install Windows.

If anyone has any other suggestions, those would be appreciated as well, thanks.

*EDIT* Ok, I found out that I need a boot disk in order to do this, so a new problem came up. On my computer, my floppy drive will not read disks. The light does not come on at all. So, my question is, do floppy drives need to be plugged into anything other than the motherboard?
Thanks for any help.

 

[WW]

don't compaq's use the F10 key to access their bios/diagnostics? during bootup (from hard drive or floppy), does the cursor flash in the upper right hand corner of the screen for a couple of seconds? that's when you press F10 to access bios.

for the floppy, check the device manager to see if it's been disabled, or has an exclamation point error. Or if you do get into the bios with F10, check to see if the floppy is enabled.

 

[VitaminR]

Well, the floppy drive I was talking about was on this computer I'm using, not the laptop. I opened it up and saw that the floppy drive is only connected to the motherboard. The device manager says nothing is wrong with it. I'll have to go into the BIOS to make sure I didn't disable it.

Yes, F10 is the button, but I looked around and couldn't find a way to assign the drives different numbers. Thank you for your help.

 

[WW]

ok...yep check the bios to enable the floppy. Make sure the floppy disk is good (seems like they go bad quicker than bananas sometimes! )

otherwise, a new floppy drive is like $10 and very easy to replace.

or just have a buddy make a bootdisk for you (with cd rom support)


http://www.bootdisk.com/

good luck.

 

[Spuffin]

floppy drive should have a power connector going to it as well as the floppy cable.