CF cards on PCMCIA Slots on your 90s Compaq 

I recently bought a Compact Flash to IDE adapter for a Compaq Contura 1100 (which I hope to use for spare parts to a Armada 420CX or 430CX someday), but it wasn't flat enough (made worse by tape across soldered adapter pins underneath). I was hoping to replace the hard drive entirely this way, but this video gives me an idea at least how to get data from the original hard drive, specifically the Windows OS set-up (the previous owner suspected the drive was dead, but I think the only problem was with a dead CSTN screen, which I haven't diagnosed properly yet) I also hope to get linux running on it, the 386 should be sufficient for this, although I can't find information about linux on this generation of Conturas or Armadas online.

Thank you for attempting to address the exact same problem I’m facing - I’m trying to use a CF card on a Contura Aero 4/33c. I found it useful to read through the transcript (thanks, RU-vid) to understand the various parts of your video :) I’ve downloaded and installed Compaq softpaq SP1645.EXE which adds a program to Windows 3.1 that recognises/mounts cards. The problem I have is that a CF card has to be initialised with the ATAINIT program (as instructed), after which it works on the Compaq - it appears as a second hard drive. But it cannot be read on another PC. Likewise, if the card is FAT-formatted on another PC (FAT not FAT32 of course), then it cannot be read on the Compaq. Therefore, this does not allow me to transfer files from elsewhere to the Compaq - and so, is no use to me. Any ideas?