Compaq did use to do that: They put the BIOS on a hidden partition, and
the actual ROM [BIOS] in the machine loaded the "real" BIOS into RAM
from that hidden partition. It was elegant but impractical: If
anything happened to that partition, you could end up with a boat anchor
(aka "brick"), because the machine did not function without the full
BIOS (the one loaded from the hard drive).

I'm pretty sure that is not what is going on here. First, because in
this case the partition is to BIG for that (1.46 GB? The machine will
run with only 256MB of RAM), and, also, I THINK that the machine will
work if I take out the factory hard drive, install a brand new, blank
hard drive and install Windows (XP or Vista) from scratch using retail
media.

Again, my interest here is not at all practical, it's theoretical: I
want a clear, concise yet complete and accurate answer as to what this
partition is and how to use it for whatever purpose it fulfills.
Removing it isn't the issue, I know many ways to do that, but I have
little interest in doing so at this time.

One other question, what does EISA stand for? Back in the 1980's it
stood for "Extended Industry Standard Architecture", an architecture of
a new system bus designed by Compaq and Zenith and a few others to
compete with the "Micro-channel" architecture from IBM. It never was
commercially successful and it died more than 20 years ago. So why is
this partition called an EISA partition?


C.Joseph Drayton wrote:

>
> Hi Barry,
>
> As I recall Compaq and a few other manufacturers about 8 years ago would
> hide extensions to the BIOS on an EISA partition.
>
> As I recall the laptop was a Presario 1800xl???. It was strange and the
> only reason I figured out what they were doing was because the machine
> had some additional hard disk functions (mainly for testing) and when I
> wiped the partition (by accident of course . . . <LOL>) some of the BIOS
> functions wouldn't function.
>
> I put the re-image disk in and ran it. No joy, I still couldn't get the
> BIOS functions to work. I contacted Compaq, and they sent me a CD I ran
> the CD, and the partition re-appeared and my BIOS functions suddenly
> worked again.
>
> Unfortuantely for years now both hardware and software manufacturers
> have been placing things on our hard disk with not even mentioning them.
> They claim to do this so that they can automate processes that the
> end-user might find difficult. In doing so, it allows them to have far
> more control over our systems then I would prefer.
>