Compaq Armada 1700 - FULL Factory Recovery!! We did it!! 

You could've used an external monitor

The sounds isn't 'terrible', however where the speakers are located is odd - right where you rest your hands lol.

Yes!!!! Very thankful for all of the support.

Hopefully you can clone image your harddisk for safe keepings~ this entire thing is a hassle

@@EslamNawito I already uploaded a copy of the restore disc and an image of the hard disk to archive.

@@TheMarinemonkey I hereby dub thee "The Captain of the Armada" Quite fitting for a Marine Monkey to own a warship fleet 😋

I second this!!! The Marine Monkey is amazing!

Found out that if you use FN+T it works!

No problem! Nice to see it working 100% again!

Yes, thanks to the amazing viewers of the channel! The files have now been uploaded to archive which is great for future restorations :)

100%!!!!

Not really, these things just work. Fodder.

Thank you and agreed! It took a lot of determination and help from the community. Now it has been saved and the materials uploaded to archive.org!

Agreed!

@@TheRetroRecall What do you plan on doing with it?

Not too sure yet. I'll place it with the inventory and it may make another appearance in the future.

@@TheRetroRecall Sounds like a good plan.

I always try to make these systems go juts a little while longer. Lots more planned, stay tuned!

Awesome!!! Do you still have the machine?

@@TheRetroRecall Nah, I had a rough start in life. But I had it all before, Armada, zip drives, 8086, TRS80, 3dfx, etc. That stuff kept me alive.

Well I hope the retro community is providing great memories for you.

It is!

Yes you are correct! It's a nice laptop :)

You are welcome!

Thanks for sharing this!!! Yes I agree, just so nice to let the computer and restoration process just do its thing haha.

Great perspective and probably correct!

The Armada line was indeed the business class laptops from Compaq, as the Presario was for home use, and the Evo replaced the Armada. And to go full screen (scale up), it may be Fn key +F4 (as it is on my Armada E500).

It turns out it was FN/T on this model. Thanks to the viewers of the channel helping out on this one!!

You are more than welcome, and thank you to YOU for being a part of the journey! Merry Christmas to you and yours as well and a prosperous New Year!!

Thanks, and welcome aboard!!! Stay tuned :)

No problem!

You're welcome, glad you enjoyed!

Hahaha oh my. To be honest, I had no idea that MAC did this as well, let alone soldering the SSD!

@@TheRetroRecall to be specific, it's the T2 firmware that is on soldered on NAND. They started doing this after the A1708.

To be honest, a cost cutting measure in my opinion. Putting it on the hard disk VS a dedicated ROM chip would make the difference of pennies but in mass manufacturing, cost savings.

@@The_Rebel934 yes it is a fair point for sure. As you say it sure was hard for the average user to repair or troubleshoot these with ease to begin. It may actually be some kind of ecosystem method involved with it, as when they work they often did. When checking out computers like this it seems like they always went the multimedia path. With integrated speakers, extra powerful on board sound cards and stuff. But pretty much never gaming. I guess it was mostly meant for office applications where most users did not know squat about the internal components and how they worked

@@TheRetroRecall It could potentially be a cost cutting measure but as the Rebel here said it could also be to make it less user serviceable too keep income for repairs at a specialized workshop. In my experience it would seem to cost more to produce custom power supplies, audio cards and motherboards especially for this brand than using off the shelf AT/ATX power supplies etc. my thought on placing and reading a bios of a hard drive must surely involve a boot rom somewhere to initialize the motherboard and access the IDE controller to read and execute the bios itself. I don’t think you can do this without an actual basic bios on board. So I think they actually have two bios on this laptop. One to access controllers and floppy drives and motherboard. And this in turn go to grab the information on the drive. I don’t think this would actually save much money in the end other than making it harder to execute. I think I actually agree with the Rebel Compaq wanted to make their products a certain way to keep their customers coming back for both service and repairs rather than saving a dime on the design

I think you and Mr. Rebel (long time supporter of the channel!!) are correct. I misread your original comment.

Boa Noite! Thank you!!!

To you as well!

@@TheRetroRecall thanks

Hahah yes!

Not all of them it seems, I have a Deskpro from like 2000 that does have a regular bios. Wouldn't trust any computer that does have this nonsense though.

Untrue, that era BIOS are built in.

Yes, it was definitely a challenge. I can only imagine how hard it would be for others as well that are like this.

@@doctahjonez I know they switched to being more conventional but don't really remember when, it was free and not my daily driver computer so after a reasonable effort I moved on. The majority of my experience is with IBM/Lenovo products.

Thank you so much, I definitely will :)

We got it working! It's FN+T of all things. Nothing to show on the keyboard at all haha. Thanks for your help, much appreciated!!!

Appreciate the clarity!

I do plan on taking it apart to check on the coincell battery and to upgrade the ram. Stay tuned!

Thank you, glad you enjoyed!

Ok, if that works I'll be very pleased!! I'm going to try and report back, thank you!

You solved the mystery!!!!!!! Thank you so much, you are amazing!

😭😭😭😭

Thank you and yes, another viewer commented the FN T function, it worked, so thanks to you as well! I just tested it and soooo much better. I'll reach out if there's anything I'm looking for. As an aside, anything you have would be great if you could archive them on archive.org. There's so many people out there trying to restore these old systems and they don't have the resources available and it's because of amazing people like yourself that makes it possible. :)

@@TheRetroRecall The files are sadly no use to you, if you don’t know what you are looking for, as they only carry a number not a label or description. However i managed to copy up until SP40000 from the FTP before they (HP) removed it. Still no use as there is no catalogue with descriptions.

Ok. Thanks for this clarity. I will look into this and let you know. Thanks again for your help!!! I love this community.

Lol!

I think SDRAM, it can take another 128mb module. Thanks, much appreciated! It took quite a bit of help from. The channels' valued supporters:)

@@TheRetroRecall Yes, it's a good example of cooperation!👍👍 I checked online and it uses PC 100 SDRAM and I have also checked my stock of laptop ram., but none of it is compatible.

No problem at all. I think I have some :)

Yes thank you!

Nice!!! It's a great machine.

Hahha yes. It is something that just blows my mind.

To be fair, the first IBM PC didn't have a BIOS setup on board either. You had to boot a floppy if I remember correctly and all PCs are supposed to be clones of the IBM PC, so on the hard drive is actually a bit better than having to search for that floppy. Having to run a DOS program to change BIOS settings wasn't uncommon either.

I guess it all depends on the model and how it was configured by Compaq. I was happy to get the original software and documentation with the generic code for it to work again - restoring this PC back to the original setup.

Hahha yes!!!!

Or in this case, just a hard disk.

I'll check it out!

Hey there! I use a free application called 'anyburn' that you can use to 'image' your software. Once you have that you can then upload them to archive.org. Thanks for your willingness to do this! I hope someone sees this comment and can help you out! We have a great Retro community forming here.

It's pretty awesome!

I did not :). Trying to keep it as original as I could

Yikes, it sounds frustrating. At least you have the recovery software. Keep at it, you will get it going!

The recovery software is on the damaged hdd it's a nightmare there isn't any recovery cds for this model that I can find. I kind of regret picking the pc up from the curb of a neighbor 😅 it had no ram or video card. So I bought 512 ram about 30usd and a diamond viper 700 tnt2 card to play unreal tournament plan to network this pc with my 2005 emac and 3 server systems in my closet eventually for the good old net play.

Hahaha sorry I misunderstood. I'll keep an eye out for you for the software as I know how frustrating it can be. Once you have the recovery software, you should be able to replace the drive and the software will do the rest (including fixing the boot issue, and being able to access the system setup options). Again, stay with it... In the end it will be a great machine!

It is a overall good looking system only the metal case is a bit ugly but once software is solved I plan to sticker bomb the metal and clear coat the stickers think it will be unique once done then I'll continue with my other pc projects I got 5 old pc I'm working on and 3 semi modern core 2 duo's. The only computer computer I need to aququire after that will be a decent 486dx and I'll be pretty satisfied since I grew up on 386s and 486s I miss my ast desktop system.

When I worked in gaming for igt there was a big push to increase profits. The way they wanted to do it was by selling services to increase profits by 30% I believe that is why pc manufacturers went out of their way to make pcs this way. I called hp customer service in the past and they charged quite a bit for troubleshooting especially if you weren't under warranty and they definitely wanted to sell you more of their products to keep you returning a good example is those illusive restoration cds I think they ran about 30 to 50usd but 20yrs later it's truly a pain to get drivers and such. But that's the cost of wanted to not be dependent on the internet every time I boot a pc windows 10 started to take it so far with being connected just miss playing games without everyone knowing in online.

We have figured it out... It was FN + T

You Can Get Good Scaling On Full Screen MS-Dos? Becuase Lot Of Laptop specific IBM Mid-90 Laptop Have Bad Scaling If You Turned Full Screen On MS-DOS@@TheRetroRecall

We did get it working in the end :). Much better than what we had before that's for sure.

owned a armada 7800 and this worked

Figured it out!! FN / T of all things haha.

if u ever come across a 7800, let me know. miss that system@@TheRetroRecall

Sounds good!!

As I do with most of the systems I get on the channel, I try to restore / preserve them back to the original. If you saw in the first video I did on this machine, I just installed Windows 98 and most of it worked but had a few issues. This restore fixed those issues quite easily. Also, in this case the BIOS setup was on the hard disk and the disk stopped working which eliminated access to the computer setup and diagnostics. And finally, why wouldn't I? I'm hoping others who have this machine that want to do the restoration can now easily obtain the resources to do so. Not everyone has the same view :)

@@TheRetroRecall I was able to clone my drive before the Hitachi Deathstar clicked itself out of existence. I have a pile of spares with the images, only thing I had to do was install some softpaqs. Great machines, watch the plastic release clips tho.

Thanks! I used the program called AnyBurn for writing the ISO. :)

@@TheRetroRecall thanks a lot dude. I used different programs like MagicIso, IMG burn. I also bought 1-4x cds. Anyway, it worked with Anyburn so i appreciate it and have a mice day.

You too!