Would appreciate a part 2, enjoy seeing you solve these problems 😀

@screwball992

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah I'm all for a Part 2.

Compaq was by far *not* the first IBM PC clone -- but as they say, history is written by the winners. Columbia Data Products introduced their first IBM PC clone in June 1982, five months before Compaq, and just like Compaq they also used a legal "clean room" ROM rather than an illegal copy of IBM's ROM like some other companies did. But Columbia stopped making PC hardware in 1987, while Compaq lasted until 2001 when they were bought out by HP. p.s. Bill Gates never said "640K ought to be enough for anyone", either -- especially since when he supposedly said it in 1981, the first version of the IBM PC's ROM was limited to a maximum of 544K of RAM, not 640K.

@franciscovarela7127

3 жыл бұрын

I owned a Columbia and wrote a lot of code on the thing. It was a good machine at the time.

@akhurash

3 жыл бұрын

Didn’t know that. Thanks for sharing.

@cprossu

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah, I wish people would stop propagating the idea that the compaq portable was the first IBM clone. MPC1600 owner here! To be fair Columbia Data Products got taken to court by IBM, and IBM won as Columbia had simply copied IBM's ROMs for use in their product (thus violating copyright). Compaq took notice and did their bios/roms by cleanroom so they would not see the same fate. The reason for clones existing at all is a worthwhile read! The MPC1600 was a superior machine every way around the original PC, and you didn't even have to waste an isa slot on your floppy controller as it was built into the motherboard. The motherboard on this thing is HUUUGE by the way! I should really do a video on this thing at some point.

@ASilentS

3 жыл бұрын

Actually the first IBM PC clone was the Cardiff Electric Giant.

@vwestlife

3 жыл бұрын

@@cprossu I think you're thinking of Corona Data Systems (later Cordata), who did illegally copy IBM's ROMs and got sued as a result (as did Eagle Computer). Columbia legally "clean room" reverse-engineered IBM's ROMs to develop their own workalike of it, just like Compaq did.

A joke from back in the day... Q: How can you spot a Compaq user? A: One arm is longer than the other!

@darkally1235

3 жыл бұрын

Yep, and that's why it was called a "luggable".

@AndyHullMcPenguin

3 жыл бұрын

@@darkally1235 It made a good seat on the train, when the carriage was full. How do I know? I lugged around a similarly sized Philips P2000C to various hospitals and other customers back in the day. (2x Z80 with optional 8088 co-processor card, ran CP/M or MS/Dos). It was way more serviceable than that Compaq ever was. A joy to work on. It was about the same size, and almost as heavy. Kept you fit though. www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/7130/Philips-P2000C/

@DevilsHandyman

3 жыл бұрын

The Kaypro 2 weight 13kg the same as the Compaq portable. This way you could get the same long arm but CP/M compatible!

@12:00 C42 on the front edge is blown up ! I spotted it immediately.

@freeman2399

3 жыл бұрын

Good eye!

@agurdel

3 жыл бұрын

Its a case of "Live commentary recording blindness". Its common on youtube.

@FireballXL55

3 жыл бұрын

Also C28 behind it.With the close up later I can see it was just scorched.

@cambridgemart2075

3 жыл бұрын

@@FireballXL55 I reckon that's just a skidmark.

@TheDefpom

3 жыл бұрын

@@agurdel Indeed, I have missed things during recording and only seen them later on too, it certainly is a thing.

13:43 Wow! That thing has SOVIET parts in it! That EL74LS74 chip was made in the USSR!!! EL was Soviet export marking of Western-compatible parts. But they are still recognisable because of font and crappy (usually) brown plastic. UPD: Oh, there is also EL7438 on the same board

@steverpcb

3 жыл бұрын

Back then there was a ban on selling computers and the components to Russia, even the ZX80 was banned in case Russia used them as missile guidance systems !

@mrnmrn1

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, I just came to the comment section to find out if anyone else catched it! And also a Romanian 7416 on that board, with the 'Beta' symbol on it. I've seen these USSR export EL74xx chips in Commodore Datasettes and 1541 drives as well! Weird! But I've never seen a Romanian one until now!

@r2daw158

3 жыл бұрын

@@steverpcb Yes but luckily Z80 CPU was copied in DDR, so the era of self-build computers (and other cool stuff) begin in the USSR too.

@r2daw158

3 жыл бұрын

@@mrnmrn1 Thank you for the information about the chip with "Beta" logo. I suspect it was from Eastern Europe but newer thought that it was from Romania. I am not sure was this FDD originally installed in this Compaq or it was installed by the owner. Searching Web I found this: www.ebay.com/itm/Siemens-Model-FDD111-5-Floppy-Disk-Drive-PN-S22742-A1115-C001/372854101030 You could see that the floppy drive and PCB is the same but this one has Siemens sticker and all Western IC in it. Perhaps, this FDD was designed by Siemens, WST was one of OEM maker and Siemens allowed them to sell overproduced devices by their own brand - so they bought the cheapest parts they could ever find? Just a theory...

@FirstLast-ds7xu

3 жыл бұрын

@@steverpcb In early 1980s they had PDP-11 copy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1801_series_CPU

19:56 I see one of those socketed ram chips has let the magic smoke out at some point. 2nd one down from the top right.

@williefleete

3 жыл бұрын

that was likely where the tag tant was. chip is probably fine

@peshozmiata

3 жыл бұрын

Did you completely miss the burned cap on the floppy controller? Lower left at 11:56

@marklaser131081

3 жыл бұрын

I see it.

@MeppyMan

3 жыл бұрын

Am guessing it just got hit by the tag-tant blowing nearby.

Dave, there was a blown Tam cap C42 on the floppy board just below the big brown Caps C23 & C24

@JLsoft

3 жыл бұрын

I'd figure he knows, since he points it out and talks about it at 22:45.

@winstonsmith478

3 жыл бұрын

@@JLsoft It was _incredibly obvious_ and he even zoomed in at an IC not far from it which had an obvious bit of debris, the top of the blown tantalum type cap he was just talking about moments before, just below it, so looking at the camera's LCD instead of directly at the PCB may have been why he missed the obvious.

@JLsoft

3 жыл бұрын

@@winstonsmith478 I'm so confused..what do you mean by 'why he missed the obvious'? Are you talking about Dave? ...Because _Dave_ is the one that focuses on that area, points out the problem, and talks about it in the first place for the first time ever...which is why I replied to a reply that was...pointing out the blown cap, as if they thought Dave didn't see it. Is there some earlier alternate version of this video that you both saw where 22:45 _doesn't_ have Dave talking about that specific blown cap, saying that it lines up with the sparks he saw, etc?

@docpaul

3 жыл бұрын

@@JLsoft first seen at 11:54 - Dave points to a bit of analoggy goodness and misses the blown tant C42.

@JLsoft

3 жыл бұрын

@@docpaul D'oh, okay...didn't realize there was 15 seconds of him showing the card before actually 'looking' at them :/

I’m pretty sure this is the system that the first season of Halt and Catch Fire was based on.

@alexn78666

3 жыл бұрын

Yup it certainly is. Great show for anyone interested in this era of computing, through the 90's.

I remember when I was planning my purchase of my first PC, I was agonizing over whether to get a 286 or wait until I could afford a 386. A teacher told me that there was no reason why I would ever need the computational power of a 386.

@nekomasteryoutube3232

3 жыл бұрын

Thing is, if you can afford it, sometimes its nice to have extra power incase you do end up needing it (especially for future proofing). While most people should be fine with 8-16GB for gaming, I do a lot of other things too that end up eating up RAM so thats why for my PC I built it with 64GB of RAM (which is nice because we're already starting to see games that want 16 or 32GB for the recommened specs)

@ThunderClawShocktrix

3 жыл бұрын

​@@nekomasteryoutube3232 8 hasn't been enough for gaming for a while 16 is now what any gaming PC should have with atleast 32 for streamers/ youtubers

11:35 Waxes lyrical about replacing tantalum caps. Next shot, point directly at blown tant. Then spends the next 10 minutes tearing computer apart looking for it. Classic Dave

@georgemaragos2378

3 жыл бұрын

Hi my guess is he saw it, but being on the floppy controller ( an accessory card ) the pc should still boot up but not have a working floppy. Sort of like say a 26/486 with a faulty isa sound card - they system will boot and run but not that sound card - unless that cap is now a direct short to ground

@JeffSmith03

3 жыл бұрын

@@georgemaragos2378 nah, he would have explained that if he saw it. He explains everything he sees even if it's not relevant

Used to work for Walt Russell, employee #7 at Compaq, he designed much of the case and peripherals for that machine. He left Compaq when it became essentially TI all over again...

@donaldashworth1224

3 жыл бұрын

LOL. I was Compaq employee #3879 in my twenties. We used to snake various portal parts out of the MFG complex and reassemble while pounding beers.

Wow, I have several of those antiques in your introduction. IBM tech manuals were amazing. Even sharing source code for a lot of the BIOS.

I'm 12 mins in and screaming at my phone about the blown tant on the floppy controller near all the analogue stuff. I hope he finds it.

@illustriouschin

3 жыл бұрын

This kind of audience engagement is what the algorithms crave.

@EEVblog

3 жыл бұрын

@@illustriouschin What if creators know this and do it deliberately? :-/

@victordss

3 жыл бұрын

@@EEVblog that's the kind of thinking of a psychopath youtuber hahahaa. Just kidding, love you man!

@mfx1

3 жыл бұрын

@@EEVblog You've done it in several videos and it's just F**king annoying.

@illustriouschin

3 жыл бұрын

@@mfx1 You're free to make your own EE teardown and repair videos.

Compaq Portables always reminded me of sewing machines in the cases that were often used for them.

Like Your enthusiasm, Dave, for saving piece of history! :) Waiting for part two..

Really looking forward to the repair!!

While working at Compaq (when only campus 1 and 2 existed) we had a version of this for the military with a "Loren" label. If I remember correctly the main difference was a -5 VDC at the serial port for reference. I have no idea why.

I hired on as Service Manager in 1979 to Store #85 of Computerland, which was a chain of retail stores all over the U.S. - this one was in Sacramento CA. I worked for the local franchise which grew to 5 stores in northern California till 1987. I went to many service training seminars over the years including at IBM for the original PC. That one was held at one of their labs and was a week-long, deadly serious affair. When Compaq came on the scene I attended their equivalent multi-day training in Houston TX., and it was much more light-hearted - I think they were even then trying to point a finger in IBM's stuffed-shirt image. That was held at the top of one of their 3 corporate tower buildings which were later acquired by HP as part of the real estate in their acquisition; ironically years later as an HP employee I visited that site again. The Compaq was quite an elegant machine and as you have discovered, it was designed to be modular and easily serviced. If I recall, the power supply can be removed without having to remove anything else; the video display was removed by first removing the AC line/switch block and then using a long screwdriver through that opening to reach the screw that is on the side. A funny but true story; the way they taught us how to open the case was to place one of your hands flat on the top center of the case and press hard; this would cause it to bow out a bit at the rear end; then hit it hard with the other hand as a karate chop, all while shouting "Hi-Yee"! That would cause the top section to pop right off and then you could access the innards; same thing with the bottom panel. We actually had to practice this maneuver with the sound effects in unison in class till everyone successfully got their computer cases opened. Later on, when I was working in the store and had to open up a Compaq "luggable" as they were called, I often followed this practice as well, to the great entertainment of store staff. It got slightly more funny when I actually performed the procedure in front of a customer (having judged in advance whether that customer would mind too much). I still have one of these luggables; have not powered it on in 20 years and I'm sure it needs to be re-capped, but it's complete with the co-processor, an enhanced set of cards (AST multiiport serial/parallel) and a 20gb hard drive, which required its own separate controller. I last used it as a "portable serial protocol analyzer; using the serial port with specialized software to monitor the data stream and/or inject bytes as necessary to debug serial peripheral issues. As I recall, the video should display just fine on the build-in screen even with that Composite/CGA card installed; at power-up you should see the memory counting up and then a BIOS message first, then the boot prompt. Switching between the built-in monochrome versus external color was a function key combo. I've got all the manuals for it stashed somewhere in the garage including the service manuals.

It's kind of neat to see some of the things I was playing with way back when. Thank you.

Anyone else pointing at their monitor saying 'Dave look at the ram chip with the blown hole in it!' lol (u44) 20:23

I have a 5150 which originally had Datalight ROM-DOS on it. It was a diskless machine which came from the Air Force Base here in Wichita when they were still doing pilot training here. It was used with an interactive cable TV system known as MicroTICCIT.

Great video... really liked watching your thought process and troubleshooting methods... of course its the commentary that really makes it enjoyable... thank you... and yes, more repair videos... btw, I love the compaq computers most of the early ones were quality made and well thought out (except for the speaker in power supply module)...

In 1983 I was using the Portable. My parent's worked at Compaq and they were allowed to bring one home every night.

This was my first PC. The hard drive was on a ISA expansion card. Yes is was a long expansion card with a HDD screwed to it. the front section of the card had the controller. I believe it was called "Plus Hardcard 20" for 20mb's. I received it in the early 90's, it was in a large shed owned by my friends parents, they used it at their business but was since retired. They gave it to me for helping clean out the shed. I do recall luging that thing to my friends house that was several blocks away. It was heavy, and I had to stop after every block for a rest. Luckily it was so sturdy I could use it to sit on while I rested. haha

I remember using a genuine IBM portable back then, 1989-ish, too. I don't recall it being very portable at all. I set it up to monitor activity on a "telecomutting" system I ran when I worked for IBM.

I recall using one of these in our university ham radio club. I was listening to the Hurricane Net and typing the coordinates of Hurricane Gilbert into some program which let you track the progress of the storm. How things have changed!

Can't wait for part 2!

That was great! Looking forward to part 2 and the PSU diagnostic work.

Repair video is also fun to see, especially repair these retro-machine.

Go for it Dave!

That case is deceivingly tough. I used my dad's through college and even checked it on a plane once. It got banged around a lot and never broke.

Amazing thanks Dave, i love the 8-bit era home machines so these IBMs are like mega machines to me. Cool as.

The Compaq part on the CGA controller is probably the character set ROM.

When I was 12-13 years old, my dad was allowed to bring one of these home from work for the weekend or evening. I used it to learn how to program in BASIC. Everything was accessed on the 5.25 floppy

Sherlock Jones. Love these mystery fault finding videos!

Excellent. Thanks!

The 5160 PC XT has a revised mainboard with more expansion slots; it actually set the standard for slot spacing in PCs to this day. It also has a larger PSU for better hard disk support.

i wias just given one of these yesterday in absolutely amazing condition . aside from its psu :) did the exact same thing as yours did previous owner turned it on and pop . other then that it is perfect :) cant wait to get inside and clean it up and repair it

I became an IBM and Compaq certified technician in 1984. Brings back lots of memories, not all rosy.

PhotonicInduction: "Ohhhh I popped it"

@CrazyLogic

3 жыл бұрын

some people will never understand this ref - almost a cult reference at this point on the internet.

@davidelliott8016

3 жыл бұрын

@@CrazyLogic I get it :) wish he would still make videos, he was Dave's evil twin

@XMguy

3 жыл бұрын

Til it Pops!

I had one of these! Had to buy it used in 1987 but man I loved it. Had a Hercules board in it.

I used to repair those when they were first introduced to the UK. A fellow engineer used to call them "Barely Luggable's". When I attend the first training course they had us repairing customer returns.

@NickNorton

3 жыл бұрын

But at the time, they were Luggable. It's only now do we see it as Barely Luggable.

Going to bet the power supply fault is a shorted electrolytic capacitor that provides the POK signal. Generally the power supply had a RC circuit that gave the POK, and had a simple comparator in there that was connected to the power supply controller power, and then compared the unregulated input to the chip with the reference, So that when the input was below around 8V from the 12v power rail, the comparator would pull the POK low to hold the processor in reset. LM311 with the output connecting direct to the pin and ground, and a pull up to 5V, with a capacitor to provide a turn on delay before the reset was released. Reset switch also just shorted out this capacitor to provide the same thing.

@georgemaragos2378

3 жыл бұрын

Hi - some machines are funny the 12 and 5v specs are sometimes just done on the feeds of the power supply before the board , while others specifically overvoltage the power supply as they are designed to have a final or stable 12 / 5v on all components on the mother board after the power drains by mother board , video card, floppy card , hard drive Regards George

Those unpopulated rom-slots could also be for ROM BASIC.

@21:24 I didn't know that DMA controllers were in charge of refreshing DRAM! Ahhh what would've been of the 8088 if it only had a direct-memory-access controller, and not a DRAM controller. hahahaha

I want one of these so bad. Or any "luggable" computer really. Great video mate, I'm excited for part two.

At work, I had full access to the IBM Technical References manuals (both hardware & DOS). The company had a pair of genuine IBM PC/XTs (XT= hard drive, ALL 10MB !!!). For internal use, we made a few "one off" plug in cards, so needed those manuals for reference. When it was time to upgrade to the AT (286), we got a clone. Added IOmega Bernoulli boxes (~8in 5MB kinda floppies, kinda hard drives), with removable media.

Looking forward to a part 2

I still have my 8088 made by Hyundai! It was an IBM compatible with a hercules/cga graphics adapter and a monochrome monitor. Amazing times back then! :)

@douro20

3 жыл бұрын

Hyundai was one of those companies which really increased the confidence of consumers in the quality of Korean products.

Ahh Greenbushes tantalum mine. Used to live down the road from there about 10 years ago. Nice visit from the old lookout(Down the road in Australia = 50 kilometres)

used to field service these. Covers could be tough to get off sometimes. Remember cutting my fingertips on one once getting the lip of the covers open. There was also a Compaq special cranked socket tool for removing a near inaccessible bolt that held the psu in place.

Had on of these and two of the IBM 5455 luggables. Much preferred the IBMs.

My Compaq Portable is my profile picture! I am in the process of rebuilding the keyboard. All the pads are shot. My great-grandfather bought it back in the mid 80's and when he passed, I got it.

Would love to see you do a full repair on this iconic computer. (on this channel, please).

Thats amazing!

Awesome sauce

an authentic relic is amazing :)

About that time I had another clone of the Compaq. It was called the Panasonic Sr. Partner. It's advantage was an included thermal dot-matrix printer. They called these Luggables!

I remember that machine (or one like it). I hooked up an 8" drive with CPM. so many years ago now.

kids like me born in 2000 will never appreciate the awesomeness of the old computer systems especially how analogue they are

I've got a Compaq Deskpro in my attic. We got it around 1984

I had a Tandy 1100 laptop back in the day, very lightweight. It had DOS-on-a-chip along with their Deskmate user interface. I ran Tandy's word processor and Lotus 1-2-3 on it.

Sifting through all your videos waiting for you to reference the specific piece of information I want to learn is apparently more efficient than using Google.

That was my first IBM-clone PC. I built an Altar 8800 kit first and still have it. Then I bough a KIM-1 which was a single-board computer with a hex keyboard so you could load the had-assembled code in one byte at a time. Every programmer should be required to write code by hand to get a good grasp of what the computer is really doing down deep. We called it coding down to bare metal.

I owned one of these for a few years in the 90s - it had been heavily modified by previous owner. Although this was originally an 808x machine, mine had a daughterboard in one of the ISA slots with a '286, and the really goofy part, a ribbon cable running from that board that plugged right into the original CPU socket. Talk about an interesting "bodge". Sold it to a buddy just because it was so huge, but I do wish it was still in my vintage hardware collection. I had originally found it at a new/used parts store where I was buying my very first Ethernet card. That didn't even come with a boot ROM but was nearly US$200 back in the early 90s.

This PC was my very first PC. Purchased it at a used computer store not really knowing what I was getting into! :D

I"ve had a couple of these Compaq sewing machines, one with 486 mothercard, crazy. External CGA output turned on by magic key sequence on keyboard. And i added o 40MB Hd, taking out one of the floppies..

I like how this portable computer is basically the size of a 4U rackmountable server lol. But back then this was revolutionary. Now we have the thin wars where everyone tries to make portable devices thinner and thinner, even if it means sacrificing usability.

I had a Corona "portable" that looked similar to this. Good memories....

Still have my IBM PC tech manual. Used it to design a couple of PC slot cards in the day.

@jabhomemonitoring

3 жыл бұрын

I never had a manual, but instead used my trusty TTL book, to get the pinouts of the logic chips, to then determine an ISA slot pinout. Called my board JAB. "Jerry's Acquisition Board". Lol. Those were the days! : )

@davidparrish1133

3 жыл бұрын

@@jabhomemonitoring Still have my Don Lancaster TTL and CMOS Cookbooks, and two of my designs were biomedical data collection and cement plant control. Fun times.

According to the show "Triumph of the Nerds" CPM could have been the OS of choice. But the owners of Digital Research (not sure of name) turned down IBM's confidentiality agreement. So IBM turned to the programing languages supplier, Microsoft.

the Compaq Luggable! I grew up playing Rogue on DOS1.0a on one of those.

Oh hell that brings back bad memories of lugging one of those to customer sites. It ran a network sniffer we used in troubleshooting.

@donaldashworth1224

3 жыл бұрын

Same

I owned one of these and eventually gave it to my dad. I think I recall installing a 30 MB hard drive in it that came on an expansion card. Compaq claimed it would survive a fall from desk height. I never tested that.

When that came out I was still in high school, and they had just gotten a whole room full of Apple ][ machines. First room in the school that had barred windows, and a door with a second security gate, plus there was always a teacher in there when it was open.

I had one and my brother worked for them in Toronto.

Second column from right, second row, of the ram below u37 @20:36 looks like it's lost its magic smoke. Looks nicely cratered.

@EEVblog

3 жыл бұрын

Nicely spotted, but it was just some crud or something, it's gone now, so maybe when I used the air duster or I was reseating the chips.

@rtechlab6254

3 жыл бұрын

@@EEVblog automatic suspicion of old ram on my part. :)

Great video with excellent troubleshooting and circuit tracing. Looking forward to the second one, I have one of these Compaq portables in my basement. The computer starts up and has a floppy and a hard drive. The issue on these (spoiler?) is that the aluminum pads on the keyboard deteriorate making the keyboard non-functional. It would be interesting to see the state of this one.

I've taken one of these apart. The CRT can be powered off a molex connector. I had it hooked up to a Pentium machine effortlessly. I remember watching Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" and wanting to build a bare bones terminal, like they had in the movie, and this was perfect source of parts. If I knew these computers were going to become such rare (and expensive) collector items, I wouldn't have thrown the rest of the machine out, which was in perfect working order. I wanted to make the original videocard shorter, so I sawed it in half along the division line right in the middle. Sadly I then discovered that it was a multi-layer board and I was never able to re-link the middle layer properly. After that I discarded the CRT as well. Regret it to this day.

"take you mind back to 1983 early 1983, what where you doing?" ah yes i was quite busy not existing

It's been a long time since I was treated to "Essence of Allen Bradley." Lovely aroma.

i had one of them ... super good ... the succedor 286 had started with BIOS on HDD and then the whole problems begun ...

Nice Video and I still have the same compaq to restore here. Greetings from CPUGALAXY

My second work pc! First being the original IBM... damn I feel old.

@rmccombs66

3 жыл бұрын

I was 17 in 1983 and I feel old.

21:11 burn mark on the mainboard pcb by the pin 1 of the blue chip...

I'm trying to imagine myself standing all day at a repair bench next to Dave listening to him as he diagnoses and repairs stuff lol

7:20 - whatever happened to "don't turn it on - take it apart!" ?

Dave, once you get the system going and the VDU working, you may have to press Ctrl-Alt "" on the keyboard to toggle the graphics mode to/from 80x25. That should get you composite output from the graphics card.

What was i doing back in 1983, busy not exsisting.

@-argih

3 жыл бұрын

I think my parents were in middle school

@SproutyPottedPlant

3 жыл бұрын

I just about existed then, puking and pissing around the place 🤮

@dykodesigns

3 жыл бұрын

@@SproutyPottedPlant I exist since the latter half of ‘83. Born in august of that year. My “firmware” was in it’s early stages of development. Wish I was around a few years earlier to experience the computers from back in they day when they where new.

I wrote QBasic on these things - hot stuff at the time and had a snazzy Compaq graphic.

The parity was at the top, says so on the silk screen!

12:04 I'm staring at the blown up cap and then you say, "well, there we go" and start zooming right to the blown cap so I was sure you found it... then you zoom instead right above it and just say "SMC" and still haven't found it XD

Hi and great video, I really enjoyed it, the IBM compatible systems we used to see a lot of back in the early 80's as well as the IBM systems were the Sperry XT and Sperry AT units, those were great little machines but they were marketed as desktop systems so not portable, not sure if Sperry ever made a portable unit but if they did I never saw one..... boy those were the days.

My first ever PC was a Compaq! A Compaq Presario C700, 1GB of RAM, 80GB Hitachi HHD (which still to this day works! But it's slow), an Intel Pentium 1.4GHz dual-core (well, 1.5 core I'd say, the other core was is locked at 800MHz), and shiped with Windows Vista. Yeah it was slow! the Intel GMA graphics could barely keep up. But I used it regularly up to 2011 and occasionally as a backup PC since. I've since upgraded the RAM to 2GB, then later stuck an SSD in it, then later stuck an Intel Core 2 Duo I got on eBay for cheap! It's now almost as fast as a chromebook and runs a Ubuntu derivative with KDE with the compositor effects disabled.

Part 2 please !!

I've still got one of those somewhere. :) We called them "Luggables", because "portable" was a bit too generous. XD

@georgemaragos2378

3 жыл бұрын

Moveable / Transportable - i had private usage on the much smaller Compaq SLT 286 when that was new, i used to take it to university in my final year that i completed part time. It was not as heavy as that unit but your hand and wrist knew it between the car park and the class room, often changing hands - then one day i was given the proper shoulder strap for the compaq bag Also pre lan party i was the only one who could play null modem games and not have to go to the car in 4 attempts ( pc / screen / 2 milk crates with keyboard / mouse / joystick / mull modem cable / power and video cables ) And say every 3 months some one out of our group would say " I cant come hard drive / monitor / pc is damaged from being transported and bouncing in the car - the few time i did transport my XT / AT / 386 , the monitor was in the front seat with the seat belt and the case on the rear seat ( tower laying flat ) and seat belt on Regards George

I had a Compaq Portable III, not sure if I still have it. I possibly do, at PODS. I've also got some kinda IBM portable that looks a bit like it

Every time I see the keyboard through the case, part of my brain thinks “gee the texture mapping guy’s gonna get a talking to about that one”

i remember helping my dad carry in a paper bump from this thing. he was asked to go thought the code for the people he worked for. he stored the dump on the stairs much to my mother annoyance.

Got one of them in the loft!