reverse-engineering power

Doug and everyone... 3.2V? That's seems not right for that ttl cmos family. Should be ~5V +/-5% Keep cranking that power source up bit by bit slowly and monitor the voltage rise or no change? Nearly ALL battery portables use a power supply/charger/power management module and is supposed to be VERY toleranent of WIDE changes in current and voltage ranges between min (battery minium voltage at near discharge end) and max voltage that happens during charging process. These modules vary in all sizes and some notebooks has it all on same board with everything else. Tiniest I have seen so far is in compaq LTE 386s/20 (about 1" x .75" by 2") and largest one I have so far seen is in Epson NB SL/25 notebook. Your pototype looked nearly complete to go into a notebook at get go. So that's means it should have a functioning PSU module part. And nearly all PSU modules use switching technologies. 3.3V based portables started to appear after Intel and AMD introduced their 3.3v chips and chipsets became common after '91 or so. That real appearance takes place about a year after this and totally converted over to all 3.3V logic well after dx4 portables became common. I have a sharp eye for someting amiss. Did you have any few small chips that is stuck with some kind of sticker at all even in socket? This is typical for bios And can you find a CPU somewhere? I think this is 386sx class notebook maybe based on amd or SLC type. Did you have that 32pin SOJ socket empty? That is might be the socket for that bios oh, what a big bummer! And you do have a heard drive made by Areal, long since dead HD maker. Jason D. email: jpero(a)cgo.wave.ca Pero, Jason D.