Compaq Portable II - Restoration Problem, Help requested

I received 2 copies of each diskette that Tom created for he and I. My Compaq Portable III booted both the setup disks successfully. (also no write protects were killed in the testing) The images are created from Soft Paq's that I archived before ftp.compaq.com had them removed, and are not copies, but rather generated from those utilities. If anyone needs more information on those let me know. I have both the 720k and 360k versions. Tom was careful to use blank diskettes in a high density drive, etc. to create the 360k ones I tried. below is a link to the splash screen from the setup disk http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=206530&l=73238a90bc&id=179563… The bootup process includes a few second delay, then a long seek, then about 10 seconds of short seeks / chatter, then another long seek. Tom is hearing none of this, so it is sounding like something very early and very fundamental. Hope this unleashes some other ideas for him. Jim Geoffrey Reed wrote: