Compaq Prolinea

Performa

Member
A while ago, club member @PS2it swapped some machines, and I received this Compaq Prolinea that's in fantastic condition. Compaq had a short window in which they tried to "style" their computers to stand out over the competition, and the results are kinda nice I think.



Under the hood, the machine is clean and fairly basic- by this point most computers had all their "basics" integrated into the motherboard, with the biggest oddball feature about it being the riser card that features a combination of ISA and PCI slots. The only card installed here is a modem card, as that's the only thing the motherboard doesn't have built in.



Another thing to note is the hard drive- on the right side, on it's side, right up against the metal of the case. It's not super noisy, but it's pretty obvious there wasn't any consideration for sound when this was designed.
 

Performa

Member
Now for the problem. Once powered on, the machine counts up it's RAM, then reports "FF 301 Keyboard Error" and goes no farther. The machine has two PS2 ports, but despite trying both with a wide range of known working PS2 keyboards here in the shop, including the one that is for this system, I've yet to get it past this point. As it doesn't seem to "recognize" any keyboard I plug in, I'm not able to jump into a BIOS or setup screen either.

It's a curious problem, and one I'd think there's a fairly easy solution to that I'm just overlooking. I'll report back when and if I find it. I'll readily admit that this is a bit "newer" than the machines I'm usually working on, so I'm not entirely sure where to start looking for problems just yet.

If anyone here has any ideas, I'd be keen to hear them; many thanks in advance!
 

PS2it

Well-known member
That's odd, does the keyboard go through the self test on start? All of the LEDs should light up.
 

PS2it

Well-known member
Not sure that the controller would be at fault, but you never know! I’ve seen some strange things happen!
 
Top