Compaq Portable III What’s this?

[twconstantine]

Hi! I purchased a Compaq Portable III. It came with this back extension piece that looks like a tape drive. I’ve never seen this before. Any details?
It also has lines on the screen in the center. Any fix ideas?

Thanks!

 

[czunit]

Tape drive! More to the point you could snap on a module like that which contained an ISA bus slot for an extra device. My guess is there is an ISA tape controller in there and of course the drive.

Display is probably a loose/broken wire in the ribbon cable.

 

[VERAULT]

Yep, you found a holy grail. The elusive ISA bus extn for the Portable III. Worth its weight in gold. (but now that they have an XTIDE solution for the model III maybe worth its weight in silver at least.

 

[twconstantine]

Thank you for the responses! I don't have any need for a tape drive, but extra ISA slots would be handy.

 

[resman]

For the plasma display lines, there's probably not much you can do, but check this site out to see if you want to attempt a fix: https://retropaq.com/repairing-gas-plasma-displays/
I was so happy that my Portable 386/20 had a pristine display until just a few weeks ago when some vertical lines appeared. They go away after warming up for a few minutes, but the writing is on the wall.

 

[VERAULT]

For the plasma display lines, there's probably not much you can do, but check this site out to see if you want to attempt a fix: https://retropaq.com/repairing-gas-plasma-displays/
I was so happy that my Portable 386/20 had a pristine display until just a few weeks ago when some vertical lines appeared. They go away after warming up for a few minutes, but the writing is on the wall.

you think they are all doomed or maybe if they get regular use going forward it can extend that time? I know most of these have been powered down for decades. Maybe active use will keep them working (the ones with no lines I mean).

 

[twconstantine]

For the plasma display lines, there's probably not much you can do, but check this site out to see if you want to attempt a fix: https://retropaq.com/repairing-gas-plasma-displays/
I was so happy that my Portable 386/20 had a pristine display until just a few weeks ago when some vertical lines appeared. They go away after warming up for a few minutes, but the writing is on the wall.

Thank you! I'm still holding out for a 386, so I'll probably not mess with this one too much.

 

[resman]

I was able to recently procure a working 4 MB RAM expansion card (fixing the original that had a single bit error) so I plan on using it a great deal more. Fingers crossed the screen doesn't get worse. The RAM expansion and the plasma screen are the two weak spots in this machine, which is too bad. I upgraded my machine with a Disk on Module and have an ethernet card in the bus expansion pack making for a great WfW 3.11 experience. Such a cool and unique computer.

 

[twconstantine]

That’s awesome. I hope to get a memory expansion soon

 

[joeventura]

I'm getting ready to swap out the HD on one of my CPIIIs for a CF Flash card

 

[CompaqSniffer]

Hey, I saw you had some screen faults, I just wanted to let you know I'm working on a guide if you ever want to repair your screen. Yours doesn't look too bad, you may only need to replace 1 or two ICs to get rid of those vertical lines. I'm currently working on some screens right now for joeventura, they're really annoying to fix if they have a lot of faults, but yours seems like it may be easy, it probably just has a shorted IC.

It's a work in progress, but the guide also has videos from youtube channels I found that are very helpful, and were my main inspiration for attempting the repair:
Here is my post for the document
I'll have to warn you, that undertaking this project is very frustrating, approach the repair slowly and have patience, there was virtually no documentation for repairing these things that I could find, so I decided, why not share what I have found out about them through many frustrating hours of trying to fix them. So far I have managed to fix one, it has some text artifacts, but I'm going to look into why this weekend:



My personal screen has severe artifacting, and I've put it off for now, it most likely has a problem with the resistor packs under the ICs. The one pictured above is one of the two compaq screens Joeventura sent me, the other one has severed traces in the flex connector, some of which may be irreparable due to most likely a short frying the traces. the only ones I can solder to for bodge wiring are under the screen, and would require a dremel to gouge out the glass to access the traces.

 

[joeventura]

That tape drive is, as far as I know one of the rarest add ons for the CPQIII

 

[joeventura]

Hi! I purchased a Compaq Portable III. It came with this back extension piece that looks like a tape drive. I’ve never seen this before. Any details?
It also has lines on the screen in the center. Any fix ideas?

Thanks!

Is the software for the tape backup on the hard drive? If so can you share it?