"Dead?" HP OmniBook 425 ?

[psergiu]

Hi,
I have acquired a HP OmniBook 425 sold as-is. Previous owner also got-it as-is and never tried to power-it up.
It's missing the ROM card ( no cards in slots A,B,C or D )
It has the RAM (little door in front)
It has the battery
I tried to power-it on using a center-negative 12 V power supply and it shows no signs of life al all. No LED, no beep, no click.
I tried to power-it on with 4xAA batteries - same thing, no signs of life

Can anyone with a OmniBook 300/425/430 tell me if that's the expected behavior when the ROM card is missing ?

I don't want to go chase a ROM card if the machine has other issues and it would not work anyways.

Thanks a lot !

[Dave Britten]

I can confirm that my 300 consistently acts totally non-responsive if I remove the ROM card from slot D and pop in batteries. That isn't conclusive proof, obviously, but it does suggest that your 425 could be okay.

[psergiu]

Thanks a lot !

Now onto the difficult task on getting a ROM card for it. Anyone has a ROM image dump and instructions on how to write that on a linear flash card ? And which flash cards are compatible ?

[Dave Britten]

(08-30-2022 11:12 PM)psergiu Wrote:  Thanks a lot !

Now onto the difficult task on getting a ROM card for it. Anyone has a ROM image dump and instructions on how to write that on a linear flash card ? And which flash cards are compatible ?

There's a ROM dump here, but I don't recall all the details for writing these to a linear flash card. It CAN be done, though - this is actually what I'm running in my 300. I faintly recall having to use a DOS program on a Windows 95 laptop with a PCMCIA slot.

http://omnibooks.info/archive/ob425/Software/ROM_image/

[psergiu]

(08-31-2022 11:46 AM)Dave Britten Wrote:  There's a ROM dump here, but I don't recall all the details for writing these to a linear flash card. It CAN be done, though - this is actually what I'm running in my 300. I faintly recall having to use a DOS program on a Windows 95 laptop with a PCMCIA slot.

http://omnibooks.info/archive/ob425/Software/ROM_image/

Thanks, I downloaded everything from there.
Can you please tell me the model/type of your linear flash card ?

[Dave Britten]

(09-14-2022 02:31 PM)psergiu Wrote:  

(08-31-2022 11:46 AM)Dave Britten Wrote:  There's a ROM dump here, but I don't recall all the details for writing these to a linear flash card. It CAN be done, though - this is actually what I'm running in my 300. I faintly recall having to use a DOS program on a Windows 95 laptop with a PCMCIA slot.

http://omnibooks.info/archive/ob425/Software/ROM_image/

Thanks, I downloaded everything from there.
Can you please tell me the model/type of your linear flash card ?

The label is gone, so I don't know the exact model, but I think it's an Intel card that was pulled from a Cisco router or something like that.

[rprosperi]

(09-14-2022 02:31 PM)psergiu Wrote:  Can you please tell me the model/type of your linear flash card ?

I have a 4MB PCMCIA Intel flash card used in the past with HP Palmtops (so almost certainly will work with the OmniBook) which was donated for HHC, but it didn't make it into the box I brought for the Prize Table. Please contact me via email if you're interested.

[kahlil88]

I have an OmniBook 300 that suddenly died mid-boot and stopped working. No signs of life whatsoever, fired right up after pulling the RAM module! Not sure if it's the RAM itself or maybe some bad caps causing the slot to fail. In any case, might be worth a shot.