1 Jan
1998
1 Jan
'98
12:22 p.m.
At 10:04 AM 1/1/98 -0800, you wrote:
groberts(a)mitre.org (Glenn Roberts) wrote:
I used to have one. I THINK the center contact was +. This is this
opposite of most coaxial connectors. I'm sure the charger was 12VDC. It
should be easy to open the battery pack and see what the polarity is.
Voltage isn't critical with NiCads as long as the charge rate is kept down
to C/10 rate or less. I know of HPs that charge a three cell NICad pack (
3.6 V) at 16 volts with no problems.
i have recently been given an old Zenith laptop
model ZFL-181-92. batteries
discharged or dead. no power supply. i would like information if anyone
can help me on what type of power supply to use. the label on the bottom
of the systems says: DC 12 V, Plug-in power supply Model 150-272.
Sorry, I don't know the power-supply polarity, but maybe this will give
you another thing to look for.
I am thinking that HP badge-engineered this model of Zenith as the
Vectra Portable CS. The place I worked at the time bought two or
three of them to replace a couple of HP 110s that were three or four
years old and becoming a data-interchange hassle (different stiffy
format, had to get the 9114A and hook it up, Lotus 1A on the 110
vs. 2.x on the desktops (HP Vectra and Vectra ES), those sorts of
things). My admittedly dim memories of those fit with the pop-up dual
720KB stiffy drive, and I think there was also a bar graph LCD "fuel
gauge" to tell you how much oomph was left in the battery.
As I recall it was very IBM-compatible, but then just about anything
was compared to the 110s.
Zenith prided itself on being totally IBM compatable. They used to have
a team that did nothing but resolve incompatability problems. I remember
reading how they found one SW package that looked for the letters I B M in
the BIOS and wouldn't run it they weren't there. They even found a fix for
that.
-Frank McConnell