At 10:04 AM 1/1/98 -0800, you wrote:
>groberts_at_mitre.org (Glenn Roberts) wrote:
>> 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 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 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
>
Received on Thu Jan 01 1998 - 17:22:01 GMT
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