14 Jan
2002
14 Jan
'02
1:17 a.m.
Hi,
While not quite yet a classic, one of my more favorite
series of laptops
is the Compaq LTE 5000. It supported a total of 4 pcmcia cards when it was
used with a docking station. These were truly unique machines IMHO, and
set the standards for removable cdrom and floppy drives in future laptop
systems. I don't know of any other manufacturer at the time who offered a
machine with similar features.
Yeah - the LTE 5000 series is nice - I have a 5100 (now out of use -
anyone in the UK want it with a docking station for a sensible offer - it
cost me about 250 pounds, prolly worth <100 now) and a 5250 which is quite
nice :&)
The multi-bay feature was a big selling point for
these laptops. You could
remove the floppy or cdrom drive from the laptop's multi-bay, and put in a
second battery for extended road trips. The docking stations had two more
multi-bays, so when docked, a total of 3 were available.
Yes :&) FDD, CDROM and batteries, although most of my batteries are dying
now :&/ Replacements cost a fortune.
The MPEG capture/playback module is still a unique
feature of the 5000
series. It was a rectangular box with connectors on the rear that plugged
into the laptop's expansion connector. It would also fit into a special
opening on the docking stations.
Never did get one of these, maybe I will someday :&)
I haven't yet seen another docking station that
offers a MIDI/joystick
port. The docking station also had an ISA slot, and one of the two models
had built-in speakers for audio playback. The amplifier circuit for the
built-in speakers was prone to picking up noise from the data bus,
however.
Both of my docking stations have sound/midi/joystick IIRC, both the slim
docking station (no ISA expansion) and the bigger one (ISA expansion and
better speakers)
Even with all the extras, this laptop line still had
some serious
limitations which kept it from becoming as popular as it could have been.
It only offered 16 bit pcmcia card support instead of the 32 bit cardbus
that was available on other laptops at the time. Only 1MB of video ram was
available, with no way to expand it. The BIOS of these machine is also
quite buggy. Compaq never did fix the BIOS bugs, and I doubt they ever
will, since the product line is abandoned now.
I've not noticed any problems from BIOS bugs, but there are a few things
that annoyed me :&) Mostly problems resulting from plastic getting
slightly brittle and the little clips that hold doors shut loosing their
plastic spring. Also the sound on my 5100 is dead, but I doubt that's
compaq's fault :&)
-- Matt
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Web Page:
http://knm.org.uk/
http://pkl.net/~matt/