At 07:16 PM 11/10/98 -0800, you wrote:
>It is slightly more collectible than a PCJr. Even EPAY isn't likely to
>get up to your $25K asking price :-)
>
>It's a little too heavy for the soft handle that they used, and the
>length of travel of the keyboard latches was WAY too little, causing a
>lot of keyboards to get knocked loose on airport escalators, etc.
>But it was a reasonable early compatible, and helped define the term
>"luggable". Not the first.
>
>There was also a "Portable 286" with an almost identical case, and a
>"Portable II" with a similar but slightly smaller case. Then they
>started making "lunchbox"es. I'll be parting with a few of each in the next
>wave.
>
There was also a Portable III. I have five of them!! They're a little
larger than a lunch box and have a 12 MHz 286 CPU and a fold out gas plasma
screen. They have a place for a MODEM on an ISA card in the bottom of the
case. And a place for a memory expansion card that held up to six SIMMs.
The SIMMS that were available were 256K or 1 meg so you could have up to 6
Megs & 640K of memory. There was an option to add a box on the back that
contained an 8 bit and a 16 bit ISA slots. Mine have the box with the ISA
card slots and I use them for portable instrument controllers.
>A little known fact is that the internal monitor was EGA capable. Compaq
>normally shipped them with a CGA card (recognizable by the extra
>connector in the middle of the board.) But they also sold an EGA card
>(with that same mid-board connector), and there was an add-on daughter
>board for the ATI "Ega Wonder"? to provide Compaq capability.
>
>Compaq was one of the first to use IDE drives - watch out for some
>minor incompatibilities.
I've added bigger IDE drives to mine with no trouble. The P III has a
good drive table with about 50 different drive types included. Only 20 and
40 Mb drives were available from compaq.
Joe
>
>--
>Fred Cisin cisin_at_xenosoft.com
>XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
>2210 Sixth St. (510) 644-9366
>Berkeley, CA 94710-2219
>
>On Mon, 9 Nov 1998, Russ Blakeman wrote:
>
>> I have recently obtained a machine that when carried resembles a sewing
>> machine in a carry case, marked Compaq Portable. It has a built in CRT
>> and is evidentally an 8088 or 8086 machine judging by the 8 bit slots.
>>
>> Anyone have any info on it, and is there any collectability to these?
>> I'm in the process of cleaning and repairing it but I will inevitably
>> NOT keep it for myself due to space limits and am putting out feelers on
>> the list first for possible buyers/traders. I don't expect a lot out of
>> it, mostly what I have in it ($25) unless I have to put a lot of parts
>> or work into it, which I doubt since it appears to be semi-working at
>> the moment.
>>
>> I'll probably put it on ePay around the 20th once I get it functional
>> and get no apparent responses.
>>
>> Any info or prospects appreciated.
>
>
Received on Thu Nov 12 1998 - 17:23:32 GMT