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Austin Laptop

CWK

New Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2007
Messages
4
Some years ago I bought a semi-working Austin laptop just to fool around with.
I thought that perhaps there would be some sort of docs. on the web but I thought wrong.I did find some brief info on the company however I'm looking
for info on a P90 MRIP model and it seems to have fallen into the cracks.
I kind of like it and was wondering if anyone has any information about this
IBM clone.Any guidance would be great.
Thanks,
Bill
Oh.BTW I was also wondering if anyone knows about Racal-Vadic modems.
I have a VA212LC that I'd like to use when I get some time.
 
Hi Mike,
I'm guessing 1995/96.The processor is a P90 and it has 8m ram.I had a look
inside to see if I could expand the memory (and just to peek around)however
the only slot I noticed did not look at all like a memory slot-not that I would really know on an older laptop.
Oh BTW what I did find out was Austin Computers were based out of Austin TX.
and folded somewhere in the late 1990's.
Bill
 
Austin laptop

Austin laptop

I have an old Austin Laptop as well, Model No. MR1P. Not much on them, but I thought it would be fun to have a piece of history. This one turns on, but that's about it. I guess the HD is bad or something. Battery isn't any good, but i do have a power supply for it. I'm going to try and get a new HD for it and load an old copy of Windows 95, see if that works. The current HD is 565MB, can yu believe it, my flash drive has more! Love it, sturdy as a rock, guess they were making them TOO good. Let me know how you're coming with your and if you find any more info out about them.
 
If the battery is dead, you might have lost the CMOS contents and, therefore, the parameters for the hard drive.

You might want to figure out how to get into Setup and, after finding the C/H/S figures for the hard drive and plug them in.

Getting into the CMOS often depends on what BIOS the machine is running.
 
"Older" notebooks used to have a LOT of proprietary ram (atleast when I took apart several models of Zenith, Toshiba, NEC, and Digital ranging from 486-586 processors) none of the RAM was compatable physically between the units.

Some had it nicely accessable from the bottom of the case, however I did find a few that put the RAM under the keyboard.

Yeah Austin Computers was here in town for a while and did get big but I think they just ran out of money with all the other big players in the market. The state was buying from them for a while before we started to get requirements from legeslation and other "head" agencies that were trying to force us to buy Dell.

Unfortunatly I don't know where you'd find the manuals since the company has been gone for a fairly long time. Maybe the wayback machine? or searching for IPC (Austin Computer Systems changed it's name or merged with them after a while) might yield some hits.
 
I have an old Austin Laptop as well, Model No. MR1P. Not much on them, but I thought it would be fun to have a piece of history. This one turns on, but that's about it. I guess the HD is bad or something. Battery isn't any good, but i do have a power supply for it. I'm going to try and get a new HD for it and load an old copy of Windows 95, see if that works. The current HD is 565MB, can yu believe it, my flash drive has more! Love it, sturdy as a rock, guess they were making them TOO good. Let me know how you're coming with your and if you find any more info out about them.

you should be able to stick any ol' 2.5" slimline EIDE drive in that thing, which you can still buy new in stores like best buy. i picked up an 60 GB western digital scorpio a few months ago for one of my older laptops (gateway solo 2500, 300 mhz pentium 2) and it worked right out of the box no problem. hurry up though, because they are starting to drop their EIDE laptop drive stocks at most stores in favor of SATA.

wasn't too expensive, about $70. yes i know i'm nuts for dumping $70 into a pentium 2.

then a month later i picked up a nice shiny HP nc6400 dual core and now have no real use for the gateway. :)

i think i've turned it on like twice in the past 2 months.
 
I have an old Austin Laptop as well, Model No. MR1P. Not much on them, but I thought it would be fun to have a piece of history. This one turns on, but that's about it. I guess the HD is bad or something. Battery isn't any good, but i do have a power supply for it. I'm going to try and get a new HD for it and load an old copy of Windows 95, see if that works. The current HD is 565MB, can yu believe it, my flash drive has more! Love it, sturdy as a rock, guess they were making them TOO good. Let me know how you're coming with your and if you find any more info out about them.

Funny,my HD died as well.The battery can be rebuilt but thats a little pricey.
I went to Driveguys.com and picked up a 4gig Hitachi drive but I don't remember what I paid(it could'nt have been too much).I agree that they are pretty solid
and look to be well built but I think I'm out of luck as far as memory upgrades go.I currently run Dos and I really dont know if it will handle any kind of windows be it MS or X but I may try X when I get some time.If I find out anything I'll be sure to post.
Thanks Gang,
Bill
 
I just came across an ancient Austin laptop, from the copyright date on the bios im guessing its a '92. my issue is that the cmos battery is dead. I disassembled it and couldn't find anything that looked anything like the cmos batteries that i know, does anyone know where it is and if/how i could replace it?

It shouldn't be a big issue, but the computer cant remember the boot sequence or find the had drive unless i use the bios setup to tell it. then as soon as i save the settings i save them and exit bios, then, since the direct power was interrupted the bios is reset again.

Any advice? either how to replace the cmos battery(and where it is) or on a way to get out of the horrible loop that im stuck in.

thanks in advance

~Cosmo
 
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Seems to me the mods have been fine with it. Just an honest person who didn't know that a Pentium 1 isn't vintage. When dealing with a Pentium 1 I try to lightly mention it. The moderators tend to be more lenient with the noobs when dealing with a Pentium 1. Now if they were talking about Pentium IIs, there would be some serious problems...

--Ryan
 
Any advice? either how to replace the cmos battery(and where it is) or on a way to get out of the horrible loop that im stuck in.

thanks in advance

~Cosmo

Try looking for a black rectangle the size of a 24 pin chip with the name DALLAS on it. It might also be an actual 24 pin chip with MCM146xx or something like that.
 
How is a Pentium from the mid-1990s possibly on-topic here?

The reason i posted here is because it is also an Austin laptop. I'm sorry that i don't know what the cutoff line for "vintage" is but i thought 1992 was old enough that it would fit.

If there is another webpage, or another forum that you could direct me to i'd be happy to ask there instead. I just though that since it was an "ancient" (from my point of view) computer, in a thread already about the same brand of laptop, it would be the right place to ask.

~Cosmo
 
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Oh we don't want to scare you off. Well I dunno about EvanK, but for the most part we love to have new contributors to the forums. We tend to draw the cutoff line at Pentium 1. I personally think Pentium 1 should be allowed, but the cutoff at Pentium 2. But I guess the names just fit better with the cutoff at Pentium 1, so the class difference is better seperated. Instead of looking for a new forum, you could just post a topic on your problem in the off-topic section. You could also do that as well as posting somewhere else, although I know of no forums dedicated to the Pentium 1 or 2 lines.

Good luck!

--Ryan
 
Druid6900 thank you for your knowledge, unfortunately i couldn't find it.

I couldn't find a chip with either "dallas" or "MCM146xx". The only thing that seemed like it could be the battery is located next to the processor pins that stick through to the other side of the card says

CSI
CAT28F010N
-15
MS09329B

It looks like it should be removable, but for the life i me i cant get it out and i don't want to force it out.

Ill upload a few pictures of the MoBo if you'd like to point me directly to it.

To Yzzerdd: Thanks for the info, ill make sure to ask in the right place now that i know the guidelines.
 
I found another geek at work and had him help me with it, we found the CMOS battery and a new one is on onder.
 
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