OmniBook 300 and 425 Compact Flash Help

[Samana76]

Hello Everyone,

I recently purchased both an OmniBook 300 complete with original V.1.0 ROM card and 40MB PCMCIA hard drive and an OmniBook 425 with V1.2 ROM card and 10MB PCMCIA Flash memory. I have been trying to get a PCMCIA to Compact Flash card or a PCMCIA to SD card working as a hard drive in here machines so that I can easily transfer programs and files from my main PC, but have not been able to do so. I have tried to partition the card in Windows 10, Windows 98 and DOS 5.0, in a size all the way down to 40MB (one single partition - set to active), and have tried formatting in FAT 32 and FAT 16. Nothing has worked. If I put the card in drive A: or drive B: the computer says I need a driver for Windows 3.1 to recognize it. When I install the card as drive C: and reboot, the computer recognizes the card and asks to format and copy the necessary software to load Windows, but will give me an error saying it cannot format the card.

I have read that a CF card is not possible to be used on the 300 with the original ROM card, but I thought it should be possible on the 425 (or 300 with the updated ROM card). Is it possible to use a Compact Flash card (or SD card) as the hard drive? If so how can I get this to work? Just as a note the CF card is a 32GB card and the SD is 64GB. These are the only ones I have available. In any case by partitioning them to a smaller size it shouldn’t really matter, should it?

Thank you anyone who can help me with this.

Cheers,
Igor

[striegel]

I do not own any of the OmniBook models myself, but a number of correspondents on the HPLX mailing list do, so this is second-hand.

Greg D. reported in 2014 that he was able to format a 128 MB CF card in a Linux system as two 64 MB partitions set to type 6 (FAT16). Following that, the OmniBook 300 was able to FDISK and format the drives using fdisk a: and format a: /s.

Alan

[Samana76]

Hello Alan,

Thank you for your reply. I made an interesting discovery this morning - I installed the 10MB PCMCIA flash disk that came with the OmniBook 425 into my Toshiba Libretto 110CT running Windows 98SE. It recognized the card as a SanDisk ATA FlashDisk. When I checked the partition with FDISK it appears to be FAT12. I find that surprising since the OmniBook runs DOS 5.0, which recognizes FAT16.

This evening I will try inserting the 40MB PCMCIA hard disk from the 300 into the Libretto and see what partition type that is formatted in.

I will write about my findings here.

Cheers,
Igor

[legooolas]

(04-03-2019 05:50 PM)Samana76 Wrote:  It recognized the card as a SanDisk ATA FlashDisk. When I checked the partition with FDISK it appears to be FAT12. I find that surprising since the OmniBook runs DOS 5.0, which recognizes FAT16.

FAT12 is also used on CF cards for the HP 200LX palmtops, so it's quite plausible that it's using the same code as the Omnibooks were made at around the same time (but not by the same group within HP?).

[gadgetaccess]

(04-03-2019 04:32 AM)Samana76 Wrote:  I recently purchased both an OmniBook 300 complete with original V.1.0 ROM card and 40MB PCMCIA hard drive and an OmniBook 425 with V1.2 ROM card and 10MB PCMCIA Flash memory.

Hi Igor - Would it be possible to get a copy of your v1.2 ROM card, please?? I have an Omnibook 300 (with 1.0 ABA Rom card) and hear that I can grab the updated drivers from the 1.2 and get larger CF cards working (by updating the drivers on the C: drive)

Thoughts?
Thanks All
Andy