On 14-May-99, Lawrence Walker wrote: Not quite busy enough, though. I seem to have stalled after the GRiD finds. Is this the same machine? The one I need info on is the LT-286, which is the laptop model. It uses an external brick power supply when near a power outlet. I'm looking for the CMOS battery, which would have to be smaller than that. The main battery pack for the LT-286 is probably about the size of 5 C-cells. At any rate, it's not that critical. The accountant is looking for a more powerful laptop, and has offered to give me his dead Epson once he does. :) I found the LT-286 setup disk on the Epson site. Their support stuff is better organized than AST's site, which I had to fish around in to find GRiD setup stuff. Anyway, thanks for pointing me to the Epson site. I keep forgetting to check the corporate sites because I never expect to find anything useful for old machines. In fact, I tend not to think of any of my machines having parent companies that are still in business. :) BTW, have you heard from Roger Sinasohn (sp?) at all lately, concerning the GRiDPads? I noticed that you were on the list, too. -- Doug Spence ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/

On 14 May 99 at 18:03, Hans Franke wrote: I found a bunch of stuff on the Compaq site including a diagnostic program, specs, and POST codes. Can't find the URL right now but it's there if you dig around. Portable II and III stuff. Can't remember if there was also Plus info. ciao lwalker(a)interlog.com Let us know of your upcoming computer events for our Events Page. t3c(a)xoommail.com Collectors List and info http://members.xoom.com/T3C

Just anything - seems to be a neat 286 machine - a bit heavy but neat - especialy the 'display lift' :) I have seen a second one today (with b&w LCD (mine has an orage plasma), but the guy still asked for 150 Mark. Way to much (he also offered a set of 4 TRS-80 cassetes at - take a seat: 50 Mark !!!). I have completly no docs on the Compaqs (beside the info Brian did support). Gruss H. P.S.: and speaking of today, new members of my junk yard are: a Commodore PC-1 (DM 10), a VZ-200 (DM 45) (used, but in original box), two ATARI video games (DM 18) (one 2400 original boxed), an Olivetti CTV 250 Typewriter/Textprocessor (back in the 80s, Olivetti had the most impressive design, not just grey boxes - I still would love to get hands on one of these small BASIC able 'handheld' systems as they where in unse in a lot of Cambio (Money Change) shops - top notch design and a cute interior) and two more unusual TV games - one seems to be a licenced Magnavox clone). -- Stimm gegen SPAM: http://www.politik-digital.de/spam/de/ Vote against SPAM: http://www.politik-digital.de/spam/en/ Votez contre le SPAM: http://www.politik-digital.de/spam/fr/ Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

Hans, At 05:17 PM 5/15/99 +1, you wrote: OK Here goes: The P III is a 8/12 Mhz 286 portable with 640K or RAM standard and a 20 or 40 Mb hard drive standard. There are lots of options for it including a pod that hooks on the back and connects through the little sliding door there. The Pod has one 8 bit and one 16 bit ISA slots in it. The pod door is a bastard to get open and the pod is a bastard to get off once you install it. You could also get a 40 Mb tape drive that would mount inside the pod. There is also an optional MODEM that can be installed inside the main case. There are also two optional memory expander boards that can be installed. Each hold up to six standard SIMMs. The SIMMs can be either 256K or 1Mb types so you can have a total of 6.6Mb of RAM in the PIII. One type of expander board makes the memory appear as extended memory and the other makes it appear as expanded memory. Although the literature only lists 20 and 40 Mb hard drives as being available, Compaq's spare parts list shows several other models including a 150 Mb one. There is a regular hard drive table in the BIOS and it lists about 46 types of hard drives (they use regualr IDE drives) including some that are larger than that supported by DOS. The manual warns that you have to use other OSs than DOS to support these types. I have put larger drives in several of them with no trouble what so ever. There is a utilty avaiable from Compaq to allow access to the CMOS setup but AMIDIAG and some of the other utilities will also access it. I think you can also access it by pressing the F10 key when the system first starts up. The screen on the P III has VGA resolution not CGA. I've never seen a LCD screen on a P III. I think that one has to be someone else's model. If you take the back cover off of the P III, there are charts inside that explain all the jumper settings. The P III can run at 8 Mhz or 12 MHz or at 12 and drop to 8 automaticly when it accesses the drives. There is room in them for both a 3.5 and a 5.25" floppy drives. You could get 720K, 1.44Mb, 1.2Mb or 360K drives in them from Compaq. There were two different versions of the P IIIs. The later one had an enhanced keyboard but I don't remember exactly what the difference was. Joe

At 12:55 AM 5/16/99 -0700, you wrote: ROFL!!! Joe

DOn't know, but the fancy part isn't the board - itÄs the hook on case to house the boards. Without, a solution wouldn't be portable an more. Maybe ther's a difference between the plasma and the LCD screen ? Gruss H. -- Stimm gegen SPAM: http://www.politik-digital.de/spam/de/ Vote against SPAM: http://www.politik-digital.de/spam/en/ Votez contre le SPAM: http://www.politik-digital.de/spam/fr/ Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK

http://www.compaq.com/support/techpubs/qrg/portIII.html http://www.compaq.com/support/portables/out_of_production/index.html http://www.compaq.com/productinfo/notebooks/old_portables.html These urls are to Compaq, obviously, who, in a similar manner as IBM, have continued to provide information on their older computers. Althought not as complete as the IBM site, Compaq offers some downloads of a PDF file (you have to hold shift while clicking it to bring up the download menu, they don't tell you that) with all the jumper settings. I was chagrined to discover the Portable III was not Y2K compatible ... at least not without some fiddling, but they tell you how to do that also. If you have an old unit from a major manufacturer, try their website. Do a search in different areas as sometimes a whole site search turns up nothing but a Y2K search will turn up lots of info, etc. Happy hunting! Brian -- http://members.xoom.com/T3C/ http://suite101.com/welcome.cfm/antique_computers http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Horizon/9107/