HP Portable Plus

From: Frank McConnell <fmc_at_reanimators.org>
Date: Tue May 26 09:10:07 1998

Doug Yowza <yowza_at_yowza.com> wrote:
> OK, I'm staring at my recently acquired HP Portable Plus with it's oddball
> power plug. The FAQ tells me it wants 6V, but the only thing I have that
> fits is an 8V supply from a 9114, which I'm sure will do the trick, but I
> don't see two things: a polarity key and a power switch. Does the Plus
> care about polarity? If not, how do I turn it on?

If you took a close look at your 9114 supply you might find that its
output is 8V*AC*. No polarity to worry about.

First, try to turn it on with the return key. Just press it once,
wait, try again (sometimes mine don't notice on the first press). If
all is well that will get you to a PAM screen, and from there you
can turn it off again with f8.

If you open the battery door (center rear) you will find a jumper and
a tiny switch. The switch is full-reset-zap-everything. The jumper
is what connects the battery to the rest of the system, and may be set
incorrectly if the unit is never-used or someone clueful stored it
with the knowledge that it wouldn't be used for a while. Of course I
can't remember which way is "correct" and my Pluses are being
difficult w/r/t door removal this morning.

Ah, there we go. The jumper fits over a three-pin header, and the pin
to the right (assuming you're facing the back, so the one on the
Ctrl-key side of the Plus) should be exposed for normal operation (the
other two should be connected with the jumper).

Shift-Stop is the two-fingered "reboot" salute. It's safer than the
switch in back. Note the "AAAAAA" or "BBBBBB" line that it spits out
during this exercise, that tells you what version of the base ROMs are
installed.

...

Hans Olminkhof asks what the Portable Plus is. Yes, it's the
successor to the 110 aka Portable. More RAM, bigger screen, faster
modem (1200 vs. 300 bps), "drawers" for RAM and ROM so more
customizability -- users could buy different sizes of RAM drawers and
buy additional applications in ROMs to install in the ROM drawer,
rather than having to load up precious RAM. Also I think there was
no built-in Terminal application, instead HP sold a ROM'd version
of WRQ's Reflection 1.

-Frank McConnell
Received on Tue May 26 1998 - 09:10:07 BST