Compaq Portable Plus PSU (?) Problem

[kyodai]

Just try to be careful - a computer or PSU can be replaced, however, a human can not be replaced.

On a side note - Compaq sure did have some issues with quality back in the days, just let me quote from other Compaq portable owners:

I had plugged it in outside and it went BANG, let out a cloud of smoke and didn’t do much else.

About a minute later, smoke started to waft out of the
power supply vent area.

Powered up an old Compaq Portable II and was greeted with a cloud of smoke

They both went bang and let out a not-inconsiderable amount of smoke.

The Portable went bang like a firecracker and let out a lot of smoke upon initial power-up, like the 386.

On another side note - i have the later Portable III and it's actually working fine.

 

[raoulduke]

Thanks.

Long weekend; I think I'll have time to try the lightbulb test.

 

[raoulduke]

Bump. I'm going to try to fix or scrap it [the idea of fixing the machine] this this week. I was going to test some ISA cards in a 386 board using the Compaq's floppy crd, but it looks like the 386 is dead.

 

[raoulduke]

Didn't get to it... I've been trying to find a replacement floppy drive so I can take the Compaq's drive out of another machine; that's taken a while but I'll try to do the lightbulb test this weekend. I also recently saw 2 Portable Pluses with failed PSU's on eBay, so this may [increasingly?] be a known issue.

 

[mike52787]

my portable plus's psu has shit the bed too. Mine for a different reason than yours though, mine goes into protect mode every time its turned on, according to Phillip A on the forums it is a capacitor issue. Hopefully we can both get these machines running. they are such cool pieces of history.