Review Compaq SLT / 286 Notebook Retro from the 80s
Surely many people have some favorite old things. Someone is simply obsessed with them, and holds entire museums of ancient technology. And besides, it often sounds like they used to do better, the sun was brighter and the grass was greener. You can talk about the quality of old technology for years. However, this introduction, for fans of old iron, I offer this review of the laptop.
In 1988, Compaq launched its first personal laptop with a VGA card on board. Characteristics of the machine:
Funny money. For the same ridiculous $ 599, a 2400 baud modem could be installed in the laptop, though without MNP. It was also possible to increase the memory, up to 12 mb, by installing three additional modules of 4 mb and putting the hard drive at 40 mb (and then at 80). You could also buy a docking station, which fit 2 ISA cards. The operating time from one charge was 3 hours. (If interested, the 1988 article can be read on the New York Times )
This handsome man fell into my hands at the beginning of 2001, and fell into a dead state, with a dead hard drive and almost no read floppodov. Without a native PSU and battery, with a dead modem and hard drive and, as it seemed at that time, a dead BIOS (I learned about the fact that Kompak loved to use the Floppy Setup Diskette after a couple of months). An 80 MB hard drive was found with difficulty, a 5 ”25 diskette was dug out (from which it was rewritten to a suitable 3” 5 configurator). Then in 2006, another SLT / 286 with a broken matrix was bought on a hammer. By rearranging the iron from two machines, one was assembled, but it was fully operational, only the battery was missing. So its configuration:
This laptop has an original keyboard - it is removable, and with a full PS / 2 connector. For a while, a cheap Chinese noname was operated in its place - everything worked perfectly. Alas, time leaves its mark, and the plastic of the keyboard in places changed its color.
Inside, the laptop is amazing - the whole structure is assembled on an aluminum chassis. All blocks are shielded from each other.
If you remove the installed blocks, and unscrew the screen, you can get to the motherboard.
One strange detail is visible here - a wire and a piece of electrical tape. People who came across old equipment with the Dallas on board probably already guessed what it was and where it was going. For those who don’t know what Dallas is, it’s NVRAM (CMOS) + RTC (Clock) + a battery that powers all this with the power off, all of this is flooded with a compound. Just the battery in this module also dies in 10-15 years (the manufacturer’s warranty is 12 years old), respectively, the laptop settings and the clock are reset every time the power is turned off, but for desktop boards this is nothing, set it quickly by going to the BIOS and working, and on the clock in general you can score. But branding + laptops played their trick - CMOS settings, when the battery is low, are reset even with a cold restart (not to mention a power outage). And on compact computers (up to Pentium-III), to enter CMOS it was necessary to boot from a special diskette (then their number reached as many as three and the configurator worked under Win 3.1), and after the configuration was completed the same cold restart took place. Vicious circle. The correction of this mistake can be seen in the photo: the dallas neatly sawed the compound at the location of the battery terminals, and the wire to the new connector is soldered to the legs of the NVRAM / RTC.
A very specific floppod is installed in the laptop - with a 20-pin connector. Other hardware also does not shine standard, everything has Compaq-s connectors, except for the hard drive. A more or less new (95year) Samsung is installed in the basket, alas, I had to put it upside down - the native screw has peculiar fastenings and placement of conclusions. In the background flaunts a 2400bps modem - hayes compatible.
About the response time of the matrix, we can say that it lies within 0.1-0.5 s. Affects its complete passivity. The game in Wolf3D looks funny at the same time - the processor brakes are smoothed by the matrix brakes.
Unfortunately, it's now difficult to get a native battery for the compac. But there is an inelegant solution:
Here is such a self-made battery that can charge in the same laptop. It creeps into the battery compartment and works. Now disassembled due to uselessness, for complete combat readiness it is enough to put 10 identical NiMh batteries into battle!
On the laptop is MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.0, which works quietly in standard mode.
What can I do on this laptop? You can use it to read electronic waste paper, you can torment old Windows. You can try to delve into, otherwise it can not be put on ELKS. By the way, the presence of COM allows you to use the machine as a terminal. For barbarians - you can fight them off the crowd, the benefit of the built-in carry handle allows.
Parts of this laptop will soon be 20 years old (and the matrix is 21 years old), and the performance is completely preserved. What can I say, the thing is done soundly.
History.
In 1988, Compaq launched its first personal laptop with a VGA card on board. Characteristics of the machine:
- 8 "5 inch black and white screen with 256 shades of gray
- 80С286 processor at a frequency of 12 MHz
- 20 mb hard drive
- 1.44mb flop
- 640 kilobytes of memory which is then enough for everyone
- 1 VGA, 1 COM, 1 LPT, 1 External Floppy / Streamer ports
- the price is only $ 5399.
Funny money. For the same ridiculous $ 599, a 2400 baud modem could be installed in the laptop, though without MNP. It was also possible to increase the memory, up to 12 mb, by installing three additional modules of 4 mb and putting the hard drive at 40 mb (and then at 80). You could also buy a docking station, which fit 2 ISA cards. The operating time from one charge was 3 hours. (If interested, the 1988 article can be read on the New York Times )
This handsome man fell into my hands at the beginning of 2001, and fell into a dead state, with a dead hard drive and almost no read floppodov. Without a native PSU and battery, with a dead modem and hard drive and, as it seemed at that time, a dead BIOS (I learned about the fact that Kompak loved to use the Floppy Setup Diskette after a couple of months). An 80 MB hard drive was found with difficulty, a 5 ”25 diskette was dug out (from which it was rewritten to a suitable 3” 5 configurator). Then in 2006, another SLT / 286 with a broken matrix was bought on a hammer. By rearranging the iron from two machines, one was assembled, but it was fully operational, only the battery was missing. So its configuration:
- 80C286 12MHz, 80C287 8MHz
- 4 MB memory
- 520Mb hard drive (the maximum that its BIOS sees)
- 1 ”44 floppod
- 2400 baud modem
- Native PSU
- Non-native battery.
Iron.
This laptop has an original keyboard - it is removable, and with a full PS / 2 connector. For a while, a cheap Chinese noname was operated in its place - everything worked perfectly. Alas, time leaves its mark, and the plastic of the keyboard in places changed its color.
Inside, the laptop is amazing - the whole structure is assembled on an aluminum chassis. All blocks are shielded from each other.
If you remove the installed blocks, and unscrew the screen, you can get to the motherboard.
One strange detail is visible here - a wire and a piece of electrical tape. People who came across old equipment with the Dallas on board probably already guessed what it was and where it was going. For those who don’t know what Dallas is, it’s NVRAM (CMOS) + RTC (Clock) + a battery that powers all this with the power off, all of this is flooded with a compound. Just the battery in this module also dies in 10-15 years (the manufacturer’s warranty is 12 years old), respectively, the laptop settings and the clock are reset every time the power is turned off, but for desktop boards this is nothing, set it quickly by going to the BIOS and working, and on the clock in general you can score. But branding + laptops played their trick - CMOS settings, when the battery is low, are reset even with a cold restart (not to mention a power outage). And on compact computers (up to Pentium-III), to enter CMOS it was necessary to boot from a special diskette (then their number reached as many as three and the configurator worked under Win 3.1), and after the configuration was completed the same cold restart took place. Vicious circle. The correction of this mistake can be seen in the photo: the dallas neatly sawed the compound at the location of the battery terminals, and the wire to the new connector is soldered to the legs of the NVRAM / RTC.
A very specific floppod is installed in the laptop - with a 20-pin connector. Other hardware also does not shine standard, everything has Compaq-s connectors, except for the hard drive. A more or less new (95year) Samsung is installed in the basket, alas, I had to put it upside down - the native screw has peculiar fastenings and placement of conclusions. In the background flaunts a 2400bps modem - hayes compatible.
About the response time of the matrix, we can say that it lies within 0.1-0.5 s. Affects its complete passivity. The game in Wolf3D looks funny at the same time - the processor brakes are smoothed by the matrix brakes.
Unfortunately, it's now difficult to get a native battery for the compac. But there is an inelegant solution:
Here is such a self-made battery that can charge in the same laptop. It creeps into the battery compartment and works. Now disassembled due to uselessness, for complete combat readiness it is enough to put 10 identical NiMh batteries into battle!
Soft part.
On the laptop is MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.0, which works quietly in standard mode.
What can I do on this laptop? You can use it to read electronic waste paper, you can torment old Windows. You can try to delve into, otherwise it can not be put on ELKS. By the way, the presence of COM allows you to use the machine as a terminal. For barbarians - you can fight them off the crowd, the benefit of the built-in carry handle allows.
Parts of this laptop will soon be 20 years old (and the matrix is 21 years old), and the performance is completely preserved. What can I say, the thing is done soundly.