Nearly on topic-ish. Digital HiNote VP laptop

From: Scott Stevens <sastevens_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Sat Apr 24 08:39:58 2004

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004 15:23:59 -0400
"John Allain" <allain_at_panix.com> wrote:

> > because the CMOS battery (non-standard dammit)
>
> All I can say is that replacing one battery with one of another shape
> (both are two leads) is one of the easiest retrogrades somebody
> could do. If you can't find the specs of the old battery then post a
> picture...
>
> Now, try getting 4 wires of an unknown PSU matched up...
>
> John A.
>
>
I just shunted around the whole issue of replacing the battery or the proprietary AD adapter on an old Compaq 386sx laptop I had that I wanted to bring up for use. I figured out which of the four leads on the non-standard AC adapter jack were for +12 and ground, took the whole thing open, and routed in a common connector from the side, mounting it on a face of the plastic case where there was room for it. It has a new hole in the case and wires routed oddly through the case, but it's a common 386sx machine that now is useful for DOS and Minix. There are a lot of old laptops marooned in this state (no AC adapter, battery dead) for which this is a viable way of salvaging them.
Received on Sat Apr 24 2004 - 08:39:58 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:36:30 BST