Compaq Portable III First look and Getting to Boot
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 พ.ค. 2022
- This is the final video in this little mini series on the hardware that I have Kasey to thank for. Checking out the Compaq Portable III! I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to get into it so I decided to do it as live stream which actually ended up helping in the end because I got some great pointers!
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There are some audio sync issues with this but they shouldn't be too bad. Every single cut had to be resynced with the audio separately because the different camera angles recorded dropped frames changing their framerates constantly. This took about 11hrs to edit to fix all that so I did what I could. I have two plans for the future to mitigate and then fix this so I hopefully don't have this problem again.
Mulling this subject over in my head more, I need to do some more tests on the floppy drive and the BIOS settings for it. Since the Gotek was able to boot a 1.2MB image before running the setup program that means it does default to a 1.2MB drive and it makes sense 360k images didn't work. The real drive *should* have been able to boot the 360k disk at that point but it's possible that the different physical head size could have caused an issue with the disk I made. So a proper 1.2MB boot disk might be the best option.
Or the drive is just broken.
OUCH! More work editing then scripting and filming. Bummer man. You saved it very well though, nice work.
You did the best that could be done; thank you.
Ouch! Also some of the close up camera shots seem to have a much lower framerate. It is nauseating to watch for me. :(
One thing you could also do is go back into the Compaq Setup, select the fixed disk as an "Other Type", instead of a Type number listed. From there, read off the Cylinders, Heads and Sectors per tracks values listed on the hard drive's sticker into their appropriate spots and viola! I just hope that new HDD is of the same era and isn't too big. I wonder if my 1GB Western Digital Caviar from 1994 will show up or be supported? 🤔
You were putting the disk in upside-down! It goes in with the label facing towards the back, not the front. *EDIT:* I've seen some Portable IIIs which work with the label facing the front and some with the label facing the back. You just have to try both ways and see which works!
Woah, that's really weird. I'll have to try that tomorrow because that would be hilarious to solve it like that!
@@TechTangents Also, the Portable III's CPU runs at 12 MHz. In a 286 system, the math co-processor normally runs at two-thirds of the main CPU speed, so you'd need at least an 8 MHz 287 chip. If you put in that 6 MHz 287 chip you showed, you would be overclocking it by 33%. The best choice is to get a 287XL chip, which is actually a 387 designed to fit into a 287 socket.
@@TechTangents *Correction:* Looking at other videos, I've seen some Portable IIIs which work with the label facing the front and some with the label facing the back. You just have to try both ways and see which works!
Mine you put in the disk facing forwards (label towards the screen) and make sure you press in the button on the drive.
@@nticompass I forgot about that too! On some of these slimline 5.25" floppy drives you have to push in the button after inserting the disk, to clamp the heads down. Then push it again to eject.
A shrink-wrapped software development company I worked for in the late 80s bought these in an 80386 model with something like 2 to 4MB of memory and internal harddisk and issued them to us developers. We also had color monitors to plug them into at our desk. It was a pretty slick computer to have and use at the time. I used some 386 VM program that enabled multi-tasking MS-DOS and it really amplified productivity in a big way.
I spent a full day doing high res scans of all the Owners manual pages and uploaded them to archive as a pdf about a year ago if you want to look through it.
I had found one of these Compaqs at a Goodwill about 15 years ago! They're such cool machines. Mine still had documents on it from its former life where it was used in a national park in Nevada at some sort of observation station in the late-80's/early-90's. It also had the upgraded HDD which meant that it originally cost $5.7k new! Not bad for a $10 Goodwill find :)
Ended up giving it away to a local collector here in Portland. Hope it's still running.
Got mine for £250 and used it for a while at different workplaces, but it was not that useful to me as I hoped. I suppose I could strip it and repurpose one day
Hey Shelby, one tip for the cable replacement job there: Unicomp sells Model M thick coiled cables (with SDL and PS2 plugs) that are absolutely fantastic! I got a few from them in the last couple of years to replace vintage keyboards' coiled cables (ended up replacing the SDL/PS2 ends for DIN and USB though) and I'm pretty confident they'll work for your Compaq. Those are as close to old-school high-quality keyboard cables you're gonna get today.
Is there a market for old KB Cables, I have about 50 used but good ones.
Wow! After all the journey, the Tech Tangents Lab ™ is flourishing! Streaming, a final cut of the adventure, 3D printing in the background... This is a geek paradise! 💪😉
this was one of the first computers I ever worked on and it sparked a life long hobby
Hi Shelby. I think Adrian Black has fired up one of these in the past and might have some helpful disk images for you
I still have my Portable III tucked away back in the shed with original floppies and I think 40MB internal HD. They were fun little portable machines but that orange display will strain your eyes after a while.
25:53 that shutter effect on the plasma screen when moving the camera was AWESOME!
I own a Portable 386, which looks and feels exactly the same externally. The expansion port connects to a two-slot ISA add-on compartment. No extra ports are added as a result. I upgraded my floppy to a 3.5 inch 1.44 MB. My keyboard cable is also disintegrating...
Those computers were VERY expensive back then. My Portable 386 (6MB RAM, 387, expansion, 20MB HDD) sold for $14K in 1988! These machines are very awkward for many reasons. The config floppies requirement is one of them.
Even when laptops were starting to come out, these luggables still had their value, if you needed expansion cards.
I miss having boxes of old drives. Especially the “Physically” Fat drives of just a couple Mb. On the other side of the spectrum, talking about physical size, my favorite drives of all time have to be Quantum Bigfoot drives. Those things just look good on the wall. Wish I still had one.
Any who! Bringing back some memories here. Thanks.
Had a similar generic lunch box computer like this at work in the 90's. It was built for us by a local PC builder. Was a nice machine in its day.
My first IBM ish computer was the second sewing machine sized Compaq from around 1983-84, so I love that much smaller style of Compaq, used one as a portable Netware (I think it was Netware 386) server back in the day) Also as a DOS based packet sniffer.
Thanks for your video. Back in day I used a Compaq Portable III at a software company that did factory automation software. These were the simply best portable PCs available at the time -- very rugged, and definitely there was NOTHING CHEAP about them or their build quality. On the contrary, Portable IIIs were very expensive, and widely used by management consultants, investment bankers, network engineers, and others who needed the best portable PC available and could justify the high cost. I have three Portable IIIs, have restored them, and use one almost daily. There is an excellent review in an old issue of BYTE magazine, and documentation available online, including a service manual. If you had bothered to research this computer first, you would have found that once the BIOS settings are lost, a Portable III 286 needs to booted with a 5.25-inch 1.2 MB DOS 3.31 diskette (3.5-inch floppy for the 386 version). The configuration utility was on a floppy, as was the standard practice in the PC industry. Every Portable III I've seen now suffers from dry rot on the keyboard cable, and they often have lines on the plasma screen indicating poor connections. The Conner hard drives are bullet-proof but the floppy drives often don't work. Your unit seems to have a good screen, and the keyboard cable still works, but it needs to be replaced and the handle is obviously in rough shape. It also has a missing folding keyboard foot, another common issue. It doesn't have a daughter board, memory expansion card, or optional modem. These computers were too expensive to just sit on someone's desk, so the cases usually need detailing after being banged up from all that travel. Since they were so well built, the Compaq Portables really lasted and were often used for years longer than you think. CONTACT ME IF YOU NEED PARTS for your Portable III; I have power supplies, hard drives, handles, displays, even an expansion chassis. Looking for an original Compaq Portable III carrying case in good shape.
30:02 "We're going to put the caviar on over here"
- Me, half asleep, having left TH-cam on autoplay: "Oh cool, I guess Shelby is doing a fine dining stream"
We (well, the company I worked for at the time) bought a couple of these when they first came out. I loved the screen and they were way cooler than our PC/AT's We ended up running PL/1 on them. We took a simulator we were running on the mainframe and put it on this. Each run of the program would save us $5,000, buying the PC twice a day...
I love your floating camera setup! Makes me want to get into livestreaming hardware stuff just so I can invent a floating camera setup lol
Pretty new to the channel, but I want to say your setup makes me feel like I'm back in my old local shop.
So glad this became a series. Great content, Shelby!
I just let out a quite loud "OOOH" when I saw that IMSAI.
You better repair, restore and explore THE HECK outta that one !! :D
I love your shorter (not over 4 hours!) content, much more consumable!
This computer was just full of surprises to get working.
Unfortunately, I got rid of mine about tens years ago, but my step Dad's unit was a very different version of the CP3. The asset tag was from DigiTech.
1. The brightness knob was actually flat.
2. The keyboard's cable tucked into the bottom of the keyboard, and plugged into the side.
3. The bottom were the display slid was flush, not sticking out like all the pictures I've seen.
4. The back only had DB25 serial, and LPT, and power, with a clicky switch.
5. It didn't have any status LEDs.
6. The drive bays were right next to each other, and his was upgraded to a 3.5 floppy, and no hard drive.
I had his since like 1998 when he threw it out. He started a computer company called Bug Doctor in 1990, and was in business for like fifteen years.
Awesome series, and wow... you got an Imsai 8080. Wargames is my favourite movie, so that has always been my dream machine but they are completely unobtainable here in the UK, I look forward to that video!
In the same vein of weird Compaq setup disc/BIOS stuff, I have a Compaq Armada laptop from 1997/98 that has the BIOS in its own partition on the hard drive instead of its own rom. Since it didnt come with a drive when I got it, I had to track down the diagnostic disk and BIOS partition images and do a whole rigamaroll of externally creating the partition on a drive and putting the BIOS image on it the using the diagnostic disk to actually boot it properly to configure the BIOS for a persistent boot.
I've loving this efficient version of the twitch. Love it!
My father had one of these Compaq Portables back in the late 80, early 90s, with a 386 onboard. It had the same plasma screen, but pretty sure there was a 3.5" disk drive and a proper hard disk in it. He used it for maintanance and analysis of heating/ac systems in big facilities and for fiddling around in his workshop.
Ayy an IMSIA!!! I restored my IMSIA 8080 a while back and I love it. Actually learned a bit of 8080 assembly on it in both the C/PM assembler and the tape driven assembler.
Hey, I loved this one. My aunt had a Compaq Portable III back in the '90s. It was a tad cumbersome to use, lots of neck-bending to see the display, but now it's a pretty interesting example of a laptop's predecessor, and the display itself is a thing of beauty.
My dad has one of these when I was a kid, remember playing Oswald and Frogger on it.. ^^
Great save on the footage man!
Very nice W30 spotted on the floor in the background
That setup key on the Sharp is pretty cool! Wish more computers, then and now, had such a thing.
My first computer...same problem:system-set.Replaced the battery and run PC Doctor Diag disk to set the time and HDD/floppy type.I think-back in 1998/99,I chose HDD type 'other' and manually enter H/C/S parameters of the HDD-u will find those numbers on HDD label.It worked.After that, I overclock the system from 16MHz to 20Mhz.Not necessary for a DOS computer but fun. I love that orange screen.Thank you very much :)
this computer is an ancestor of modern day laptop
Excellent Video 😃
Oh! I have one of these! Should be a very interesting video!
In college, I used to use this type of computer to do billing during rock concerts using Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS. Also lugged an epson printer into the ticket office as well to print out the invoices to give to the promoter and City. This was around 1988-1989?
Oh and there is a big cream plastic 'backpack' that goes on the back expansion slot which has a full size ISA slot in it for expansion. I've got about 5-10 of them too! not that hard to get hold of. The video card that sits in the bottom, which is a seperate board looks similar but from my experience is not swappable between the portable III and portable 386. I can't try this ever again because I blame switching them by mistake for blowing one of my plasma screens.
@Sandy Cheeks would you be open to letting go of one of those backpack expansions as I’d like one for mine and I can’t locate them in the UK
That brought back some memories, my dad had one from work (or possibly it's successor 386) and I remember playing some dos games on it as a kid. Later he got a Compaq portable 486c that had a color screen which was also an awesome machine. Due to it's form factor I teased my dad sometimes saying he was taking a sowing machine with him to work :)
The 486c is a much rarer beast - I've got one stashed somewhere. It's not as pretty but certainly weirder looking.
That Conner drive can't seek because the heads are stuck in the park position. This is a fault that is very common for the early Conner drives. And it's relatively easy to fix.
Got one of these in the garage, it has a VGA card on the expansion bay. Need to look at it now after watching your video.
Sweet, a CompuPro 8/16! I've been working on trying to get one of those up and running for a little while now.
I wish I would have seen this sooner! Many Compaq systems from this era used the 'diagnostic disk' instead of setup routines in bios because the hardware bios is extremely limited. Their bios was loaded almost entirely from floppy or the maintenance partition on the hard disk.
Although it may seem like they cheaped out, they actually did it to make the bios easily software upgradable!
IBM also did something similar with their PS/2 line of systems, both for upgradeability, and to support their MCA architecture...
i love the compaq persario mini multimedia desktop pc
I had to use On Track and a 408mb hdd in my Portable II. I was lucky to get one of the early 87 models that supported hd 3.5: floppies. 5.25" were still 360k
I have the compaq portable with VGA. Going to have to bring it out again some time.
I have one of those Compaq portables, the 286 version, and it works. I wish I had the memory expansion for it though.
I have seen that thing on Demoparties in the late 90s. The owner was seemingly very proud of it.
Ooo. I had one of these back in the day. I ran it as a portable Novell server. I also caught an ‘allegedly’ malicious user with it.
Usually, a smaller geometry setting will work with a larger drive. Take that as you will
this looks quite not bad!
31:50 Brian the Electrician is helpful!
Somebody needs to make a modern M-ITX case just like that.
You can still download the diagnostics disk from hp's website... If that's not mindblowing, I don't know what it is. It's as if you could download software for the IBM PC Convertible from Lenovo!
love ya bro.....
Thanks for the videos as always Shelby, do you think the plasma might be inspired by the PLATO system?
Looks like TT is getting into S100 bus stuff!
Compaq played that external BIOS setup program game for awhile. Later on the BIOS setup was in a hidden partition available during start up. That was when I dealt with them in 1999!
Compaq did that for years, I remember having a 133Mhz Compaq with the same issue.
i picked up a compaq lte laptop, the diagnostic disk issue has driven me insane. interesting to see this portable running from a gotek, that could be an interesting solution. i've had nothing but issues trying to get the diagnostic as well as any dos boot disks in 1.44 or 720k. though i still have my apprehension taking the thing apart, great video.
Formatting doesn't touch the MBR. If you want to wipe Ontrack from a drive, try FDISK /MBR
^^ This.
Not having a built-in BIOS config utility was a pretty weird choice considering the target market for this machine. They were targeting the business market, so putting up the price by the $5 it would cost to have larger BIOS ROMs would probably not have hurt sales all that much.
Great video! Thoughts:
- Don't know much about plasmas - wondering if the video corruption could be a connection/cabling issue rather than screen damage?
- You forgot to install the 80287!
- Might be worth getting a CGA graphics program running to test the external video port.
- Does it forget BIOS settings across power cycles without a replacement battery, or is the battery just for time?
The lack of onboard setup utility is one thing I really really don't like about older Compaq computers. I know the original IBM PC didn't have one either, but Compaq carried this ridiculous trend forward for FAR too long. I have a Compaq *Pentium* that requires an on-disk utility to configure it. It REALLY sucks, because I wanted it to be a Windows NT system running entirely from SCSI, and I basically _have to_ have an IDE disk installed* to avoid errors, and be able to set the clock when the battery is low. Stupid.
(* Oh, and there's only one dedicated hard drive bay, because of course there is, and all the bays use proprietary rails, because of course they do, and it didn't come with any extras, because of course it didn't. There actually isn't much that I _do_ like about old Compaq computers. Or newer ones, for that matter. I would give the entire brand a pass completely, if it weren't for the historical significance.)
I think my grandpa has one of these in pristine condition today. It won't boot... Kind of as expected but it's still pretty cool. Wait a minute you're telling me THAT'S WHAT COULD BE WRONG!? OH BROTHER THIS THING'S NEVER STARTING UP AGAIN
The diagnostic utility was on disk instead of flash RAM because the appropriate flash RAM *hadn't been invented yet.*
I use to have this model of Compaq I use to run GeoWorks Pro on it that I had on a Conner Hard drive. I eventually want to get another one again even if it is bad and if need be make it in to a Luggable Sleeper.
Thanks for the Ctrl+Alt+< hint (Shift is not required). I have two Compaq 286SLTs and I never got them to output VGA. Now they do. It doesn't even appear to be in the manual or I must've overlooked it.
After HP bought Compaq they used the Compaq name for their mainstream business machines. I'd often find them when I was going to school next to the Dell Optiplexes. I don't know if "HP Compaq" is still a thing or if HP just killed that off and made lower end EliteDesk machines. It's hard to tell from a 5 second search.
They used the Compaq name up to HP Compaq Pro 6300 and HP Compaq Elite 8300. In 2014 they dropped the Compaq name for HP ProDesk 600 and HP EliteDesk 800
4:30 Some NEC PowerMate PC's did the same, had to boot the bios off a floppy
Another tower side chat intro?
Can't wait for the IMSAI video!!!
360 RPM was the default for PC-98. Maybe it was modded to do field work on some industrial system based on it like a CNC.
So when you slide the drive cage out make sure you don't pinch the power wire when you put it back in or you will short and damage the onboard ram, don't ask me how I know..
Could you also upload such a curated stream when you look into the connor drive. I also have such a Portable (albeit the 386 version) and the connor drive will not spin up.
I used to have one of these many years ago and there are actually some dips which is in there, some of which if I recall change the video output settings between 4 colour, 2 colour and CGI , also if it has a hard drive in and you remove it and the carriage be incredibly careful as the carriage is so sharp it will cut the Ribbon cable and short hard disk controller frying it whilst it is repairable with some soldering it’s probably quite hard to find a controller chip not that I’ve tried recently (I owned mine in the 90s and very sadly got rid of it)
Of course I wrote this before I watched the entirety of the video 🤦♂️
I forgot I have a Compac portable 1. I bought it years ago and I didn't really know what I was doing lol.
I've always hated Compaq for their bioses in the 486 and Pentium era, really sad to see that before it was even worse.
Run a webserver on it! Like the guy with a 200lx recently
there are coiled cables for electric sectional doors that have 5 wires and all the coiled cables for telephone receivers have 4 wires- maybe they can be used without having to coil up something yourself
sorry did not get to see stream...i sleep during the day....
One firm I worked with had something similar to that Compaq 1 but dont think it was a Compaq, what would have been contemporary with that at the time ?
I've got a portable Toshiba in pieces in a box, i should put it back together before i completely forget how. It's a Gas Plasma 286, a dead hard drive and a 720k 3.5" floppy, so i don't know what i should even do with it.
Surreal watching this after watching it live. If sync issues are bad in the future, maybe use it your advantage and record voiceover separately and match it to the best footage you record when live 🤷🏻♂️
I have a few solutions I'm working on. I set it to record audio to each camera video now which will hopefully have the audio at least be in sync with the different weird video timings. And hopefully a rebuild of the streaming computer will fix the frame dropping and everything will just record normally.
It was kind of weird to edit an almost normal video out of a stream for me as well. I wish the bitrate was higher on the video because it felt lacking in some places, but I think it came out okay.
@@TechTangents it’s a great stopgap between high production videos and will hopeful point a few more people to the stream as they now know what to expect.
Yeah a dedicated streaming pc will solve so many problems, source recording through a GPU would allow decent bitrate recordings without compromising the stream.
You need to get a new printer ribbon for that printer at the end. Or at least try sending Double Strike print codes so the output is darker. 👍
i dont know why but i was expecting the retrobird song at the end
has it ever happened for us the audience to witness that a vintage system containing a Connor HDD was operational no problem?
Audience to not only this but all vintage PC channels.
I'm struggling to get the display to work on mine. I get the red led on the main board but nothing else. I've heard though that a dead bios battery can stop it booting so might dig it out again.
I haven't watched the other videos so I don't know either 😂
If it’s anything like the SLT286 I have, the bios defaults to DD for the floppy drives and will only boot 720k disks (360 for 5.25)
Maybe OnTrack is part of a firmware chip on the PCB?
where can i find a hard drive for the Compaq portable 1. and can it be upgraded to more than 640k of ram. and if i could get a light pen card.
I didn’t look too closely at the video but it seems weird to me that there was no option to key in hard drive parameters manually. I had a machine that would allow me to select between drive types and one of them was "custom" where I could key in the drive parameters directly. The correct parameters can usually be found on the label on these really old HDDs.
PS: I don’t know if that was a common thing back then or if you were just expected to choose one of the types that was close enough because this hardware is significantly older than me. I was just messing with an old machine I found in the basement and figured it out by looking at what the BIOS setup was asking me and what information I could get from the labels on the parts.
The external monitor can be selected with a key combination, I can't remember what.
Man, am I ever glad I didn't buy one of those (almost did). I would have given it the 6' drop test.
Ontrack doesn't get wiped without doing fdisk /mbr IIRC.
Does anybody know the voltage output from the red molex connector from the power supply?? Been looking for the values and couldn't find them anywhere. Is the only data i need to repair one of these portable 3 with power supply issues
I guess we'll never know who Casey is.