Dainiaus webaz – elektronika ir ne tik !

Another PC for my retro PC collection, the first and only laptop sized computer. Picture from Internet:

The specs are not impressive today, but back in the days, when it was shiny and new – they were pretty decent, running Pentium Celeron at 800 MHz. Have to say, that it’s not the oldest possible laptop, but I took it because it matches required the time frame of laptops – it’s able to run Doom . Checked the PC and it appeared to be working fine, just need to have some minor work done. First of all purchased some plastics on eBay as the housing was old and cracked in some places (especially around display hinges). While replacing the plastics cleaned it thoroughly from the dust of ages, put some new thermal grease on CPU and assembled it all back. For the next tasks I thought it would be nice to have Floppy disk drive and DVD ROM drive. Original floppy drive was missing, but luckily with the plastics from eBay I got also some more parts – keyboard, floppy drive and hinges. Well, keyboard is damaged and missing some keys, floppy drive is not working, but hinges are good – all this was said by the seller, so it’s OK. Even the faulty floppy is useful – it provided information what exactly part number I need and in couple of days I purchased the floppy on the same eBay:

To be honest there were more sellers with same drives, but I took the most expensive, because in the picture the drive seemed to be like new and the seller wrote in the add that drive is 100% working. Some time passed and the drive reached me . What a joy, at last I will be able to assemble the PC and make some tests with it. The CD to DVD drive replacement could be done later, because it does not require disassembly of the housing (for that I so much like retro hardware). Assembled everything, by the way, by super thorough and cautious with hinges covers, their fixation parts are super fragile, I broke the original fixators, but replaced covers with second set I got with the plastics. But if you don’t disassemble the PC if you don’t really really need that. Ok, the bolts are in places, keyboard in place, plastics mounted – lets turn it on for floppy test, first some data transfer from the PC to laptop:

What a disappointment, drive just makes this clicking sound and nothing more… After some time Windows asks for a Floppy… So many hopes just flew out of chimney and those were not cheap, 33,76 € to be exact. The faulty floppy drive I got, for future reference, if I would need to look for another drive:

As for now – wrote the seller, maybe it’s not the drive from the add (that drive had blue heads cover, seen in the original picture). Now let’s wait for decision.

The seller said that she (yes, it appeared to be a woman) has an electronics laboratory and agreed to take back the FDD for checking. After some chatting, we agreed that I will send 3 drives to be checked and confirmed they are OK or repaired if not. I’ve send it on 2022.10.20, later will put a scan of the Post office receipt. Now its 2023.02.23, but I sill have no good news about those FDDs, in some time I will add all the chatter that we made in WhatsApp, now, while hope is still alive, don’t want to disclose too much of personal information . But I also have a good news – today purchased another FDD on eBay, so lets wait till I receive it, maybe finally that laptop will be assembled. To be honest, I am a bit nervous seeing it on my table so long…

To be continued…

Posted in: Retro PC HW by Dainius /