Prime Vinyl
New Member
Good Evening,
I picked up a Compaq Portable III recently.
Its in pretty standard spec with a 286 Processor, 640k Ram and some form of modem.
It appeared to be in good condition, all plastics intact with a slight bit of delimitation on the screen
When I got it, I did the unthinkable and just whacked it into the mains supply and rolled the dice. It got stuck in a very quick infinite boot loop.
So without delay I took it apart and realised the 40mb Connor drive smelt like it had un-alived itself. So I unplugged it and the floppy drive and managed to get to here
I then dug out an old DOS book disk. The computer didn't have the best time reading it and I was able to run QBasic
Which I then proceeded to code the best program in existence
10 "print "hello"
20 goto 10
Run
The computational power of the 286 blew my mind as the word Hello flashed down the screen.
It then locked up.
I reset the power switch and was greeted with:
000000 0400 201-Memory Error
This has me somewhat stumped. I have got a copy of a Compaq 286 Service Manual. I am led to believe that on some Compaq 286 Machines the first few KB of memory is actually soldered on board and not on a SIMM (which I have of course reseated)
The Capacitors look decent enough but I wonder if there is one nearby one of the internal memory chips which has gone bad.
Thanks in advance!
Alan
I picked up a Compaq Portable III recently.
Its in pretty standard spec with a 286 Processor, 640k Ram and some form of modem.
It appeared to be in good condition, all plastics intact with a slight bit of delimitation on the screen
When I got it, I did the unthinkable and just whacked it into the mains supply and rolled the dice. It got stuck in a very quick infinite boot loop.
So without delay I took it apart and realised the 40mb Connor drive smelt like it had un-alived itself. So I unplugged it and the floppy drive and managed to get to here
I then dug out an old DOS book disk. The computer didn't have the best time reading it and I was able to run QBasic
Which I then proceeded to code the best program in existence
10 "print "hello"
20 goto 10
Run
The computational power of the 286 blew my mind as the word Hello flashed down the screen.
It then locked up.
I reset the power switch and was greeted with:
000000 0400 201-Memory Error
This has me somewhat stumped. I have got a copy of a Compaq 286 Service Manual. I am led to believe that on some Compaq 286 Machines the first few KB of memory is actually soldered on board and not on a SIMM (which I have of course reseated)
The Capacitors look decent enough but I wonder if there is one nearby one of the internal memory chips which has gone bad.
Thanks in advance!
Alan
