Highscreen Kompakt serie III - finally alive

[Adventurer]

Bought this machine on Ebay for needs for connecting older drivers/using other floppy formats.
Specs:

286/16 - 1MB RAM
52MB HDD

Was listed as "Hard drive not working, both floppies read fine". Due to careless packaging it arrived in the following condition:

* Hard drive still not working, HDD controler failure on boot (would be a surprise, would not it?)
* 3.5 floppy drive dead, with only some faint signs of life, does not read/write anything
* 5.25 floppy drive dead, can not read/write/format
* Backup battery has been removed, but the signs of corrosion are still there.

* Unstable when switched on, sometimes loosing extended memory (384K)

Had no other choice, but to disassemble the machine completely in order to solve the problems...



Then:
* 3.25 inch floppy drive was replaced
* Hard drive - in fact, was alive, but the problem was damaged power supply to "quick disconnect" cradle, no bad sectors, 52MB.

* A few caps replaced on the motherboard, one had been previously blown up - just melted legs remained there.
* Backup battery - connected fully charged 3.6 V Ni-MH battery pack to external backup battery connector- should keep settings for some time
* Cleaned, reassembled, DOS 5.0/Windows 3.1 installed.

* Test run - Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis runs fine...

* Had some problems with serial ports, but sorted them out - I had made a mistake in cable polarity when connecting everything back

 

[KenEG]

Bought this machine on Ebay for needs for connecting older drivers/using other floppy formats.
Specs:

286/16 - 1MB RAM
52MB HDD

Was listed as "Hard drive not working, both floppies read fine". Due to careless packaging it arrived in the following condition:

* Hard drive still not working, HDD controler failure on boot (would be a surprise, would not it?)
* 3.5 floppy drive dead, with only some faint signs of life, does not read/write anything
* 5.25 floppy drive dead, can not read/write/format
* Backup battery has been removed, but the signs of corrosion are still there.
View attachment 35987
* Unstable when switched on, sometimes loosing extended memory (384K)

Had no other choice, but to disassemble the machine completely in order to solve the problems...
View attachment 35985
View attachment 35986

Then:
* 3.25 inch floppy drive was replaced
* Hard drive - in fact, was alive, but the problem was damaged power supply to "quick disconnect" cradle, no bad sectors, 52MB.
View attachment 35988
* A few caps replaced on the motherboard, one had been previously blown up - just melted legs remained there.
* Backup battery - connected fully charged 3.6 V Ni-MH battery pack to external backup battery connector- should keep settings for some time
* Cleaned, reassembled, DOS 5.0/Windows 3.1 installed.
View attachment 35989
* Test run - Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis runs fine...
View attachment 35990
* Had some problems with serial ports, but sorted them out - I had made a mistake in cable polarity when connecting everything back

Good job of troubleshooting and repair. Buying vintage computers on eBay is definitly a buyer beware experience, but where else are we going to find this stuff?

 

[Adventurer]

Good job of troubleshooting and repair. Buying vintage computers on eBay is definitly a buyer beware experience, but where else are we going to find this stuff?

Well, if only those sellers, who are poor at packaging, would write the following:

"Selling a piece of junk. Will be packed accordingly." - at least we would know which ones to avoid

Instead they write: "Selling an extremely rare and collectible computer". To be packed as junk later...

 

[dieymir]

I like a lot that case. Some time ago there was an empty one at sale but another guy was quicker

 

[Adventurer]

A little upgrade/downgrade. Replacing broken 1.2 MB FDD with NOS 360K IBM disk drive.


It is always a special feeling opening a vintage new old stock equipment...



Clean and shiny, no dust, no rust...




Running diagnostics after installing new drive. For this computer, diagnostics are built into ROM - nice!





Complete - but new drive is a bit higher, so I had to mount it a little deeper inside the case. Anyway, no compatibility issues now with any older computers with a 5.25 inch disk drive.