[Five]

okay here's the update in case somebody finds this in a google search or something...

the 120GB IDE drive came from an Armada 1700 with a dead screen... I pulled it out, popped it in the 3500 and lo and behold one restart later I'm up and running with no re-format

this drive doesn't have the compaq non-dos partition which means I can't access the bios by hitting f10 on startup, can't hibernate & some of the security features in the bios aren't available. However, I created a compaq 'setup for portables' boot disc then successfully transferred that to a bootable cdr using nero write boot cd mode with that floppy in the 'a' drive. the compilation shows up as blank but I burned it and the cdr works great, gives me 99% access to the bios which still gets written to a CMOS chip like a normal computer. I tried making a bootable install cdr for the older compaq diagnostics prog but no luck for some reason Oh well, this badboy is humming otherwise, and its got enough torque to play tomb raider 1-3 & do some 4-track simultaneous 24bit/44.1kHz recording too. And of course email and all that shit. Very happy. When I get bored I'll dig out the old 3.5GB laptop drive I don't need and see if I can make the special compaq partition on it before I go screwing with my 120.

pretty much everything for the 3500 is the same as the 1700/1750 except maybe the video drivers, lots of awesome info over here:
http://wireball.com/cms/armada_1750_repair