Compaq Portable 386 - Done

Final pictures are here.

2 of the common problems for this computer were the keyboard cable disintegration and floppy drive failure.

The insulation around the keyboard cable literally disintegrated.  Moving the cable makes pieces fall off.  There's no way that I know of to replace the insulation, so the cable needed to be replaced.

The keyboard connector is standard.  But the problem is that a standard keyboard plug is too wide to fit into the hole.  I had to look around for a cable with a "thin" connector so that it would fit.  I ended up getting a keyboard extension cable and cutting off the plug end.  It was then a matter of pinning out the cables (old and replacement) to see what wires go where.  Overall, about 30 minutes of work to replace the cable.

The 1/3 height 5.25" didn't work.  I decided it wasn't worthwhile to fix it and went straight to the Gotek.  This made getting boot media much easier.

The device I bought was something someone created on eBay.  It combines a Gotek (already set up with FlashFloppy) with a CF-IDE adapter in one half-height 5.25" 3D printed tray.  It fit where the hard drive used to be.  I only had to make a slight case modification for the CF card.

The hard drive set up was interesting.  I have to choose a hard drive type that the Compaq supports.  If I chose the 110 MB one (which Compaq had a real hard drive for), everything worked.  But if I chose a larger one (like the 320 MB), I get a 1790 drive 0 error - but after hitting F1 gets me into DOS.

One more interesting thing.  You can't "not select" a floppy in the Gotek.  So you have to have the USB drive out to boot from the hard drive.  Otherwise it tries to boot from the floppy chosen in the Gotek.  I did have an idea to make a switch and wire it into the Gotek power, but the only thing I need the Gotek for is loading diskette images, so I didn't see the value.  And it causes no problems to insert the USB drive after you've booted up.

Compaq Portable 386 - 2

CMOS battery replaced.  Now just letting it charge.

Keyboard reassembled (mostly).  I'm still sourcing a cable replacement.  The one that I got had a plug that was too thick and wouldn't fit in the hole correctly.

I was able to pick up some setup disks from a reliable source, but none would read.  I think the 5.25" drive is bad (no surprise).

Someone on eBay 3D printed a 5.25" half-height case and put a CF-to-IDE and OpenFlops into it (with rotary switch and OLED).  So waiting on parts to be able to hook that all up.

But things are moving.  I was able to use the OpenFlops to boot a setup disk image and configure the CMOS - but the battery wasn't set up correctly so it didn't save.

Compaq Portable 386

I picked up a Compaq Portable 386.

Triage done.

It's in pretty good shape.  CMOS battery is done (no surprise).  That means I need the setup disks before I can do anything.  So those are on order.

Surprisingly, the company that makes the CMOS battery is still in business and the battery was in wide use.  So getting a replacement was very easy.  That's on order.

I pulled the floppy drive to clean it, but inside the case is very clean.  So I just think I need to put in the 5.25" cleaning disk before I try out the setup disks will be good enough.

The hard drive is IDE.  So I hooked it up to my Rosewill IDE to USB setup.  No go.  The drive spins, but the heads don't seek.  No surprise there either.  That was getting replaced by a CF card anyway.

The main thing that I'm tackling is the keyboard.  While the keyboard itself is nice, the cable is disintegrating.  This is a known problem.  I have a cable on order that I'll have to pinout and solder in its place.  But I can use the keyboard from the failed lunchbox portable as a backup.

C-64 troubles solved

One of my C-64s developed an issue with the keyboard.  The "E" key stopped working.

So I set it aside to be repaired and pulled out the "backup" C-64.  Boot up and...  Out of memory error - and I didn't load anything.  Diagnostics showed 6510 or RAM issue.  *sigh*

The "E" key issue went away when I swapped the plungers for the "E" and "R" keys.  But that issue will probably come back.  So when I had it open, I changed the Caps Lock key to be a plug that I can disconnect.

The replacement 6510 and RAM arrived for the "backup" C-64.

Now, I've been inside of C-64s before, but this one surprised me by having the 6510 and **some** of the RAM socketed.  That means that this system had issues before.

I tried the easy stuff first.  I replaced the 6510.  No change.  So it's a RAM issue.

I pulled the socketed RAM and one of the chips was highly oxidized.  So I replaced that chip with one of the new ones.  Everything works.  The Dead Test cartridge showed everything passed.

I think that this C-64 had been bought first, had a problem and was repaired.  Later, the guy got a new one and stored the old one in a more humid area, which caused that RAM chip (near to the edge of the case) to go bad over time.

So I'm back to 2 functioning C-64s.

Lunch box portable - R.I.P.

The power supply blew.  This time there was smoke and it no longer works.

I'd like to fix it, but I think it's a lost cause - but mostly I don't want to experiment with high voltage stuff.

I examined the power supply closer trying to see if I can find the smoked component (no luck on that).  There's actually 2 power supplies there.

One is the standard PC power supply providing power to the motherboard and peripherals.  The other is just to supply power to the gas plasma display.  There was an extra power switch on the back of the PC that specifically controlled the display power supply.

I tried to source a replacement, but no luck so far.

It's not in the trash, but it is in storage for now.  I might find the parts useful for something in the future.  Or I may luck out and find a power supply.