• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Info on a 486 generic laptop I found...

Ok it's a while since this was posted, but I just found the thread. I have one of these notebooks in full and excellent working order. Power and Battery, if it's still wanted and there are any issues I can assist with.

+1 for me. I have the 386 version also. No power or battery, but I wired my own. It works fine, with Win 3.11 and Norton Desktop :)
 
Fma 3500

Fma 3500

Howdy, A year late, but I just saw your old computer pictures. The computer power supplys number is a model PSA-202. Looking at the round power end the Left most pin is the positive 20 vdc in. The right lower pin is the negitive pin and the upper right pin is the voltage feedback pin, which is not needed if nothing is wrong with the computer.
If you are interested in selling the computer please email me at jmlloydd@yahoo.com.

John
 
I do still have it nestled safely on my 'old computer stuff' shelf here in the store. I'd part with it to a good home though!
 
Hi, i've one of these laptop AMD 386DX, and I need your help, I want to restore since it's the oldest laptop I have. The story behind it is it was given to me by a co worker who said it was his first laptop, he think he got it arond 93' or se and that it was expensive back then. He tried to get it fixed in 2000, at the time only the battery and floppy were bad, but a note on the laptop stated "Still boot to HD on 06/10/2000 ... Power supply failure ... random crashs at POST".

I fix the keyboard (bad contact) on the "esc" key, the FDD is hopeless, bad belt, i can access the bios if the hard drive isn't connected otherwise it will freeze randomly ath the BIOS screen. Tested with other HD without success, the original HD works on another machine. There almost no coresion (i replaced the niCad CMOS battery) ... what to do next ??

Bad IDE controller ?

Thanks for the help, and sorry for my bad english, i'm french

Also the machine has 4 SIPP and detected 3072kb of memory, is this possible with four sticks ?

Using the original PSU, the laptop boot but sometime it won't display the BIOS screen, i've attached an ATX psu to the +12V, Gnd of the battery terminal
 
Four years later and it's still on my vintage PC display shelf! haha

4 SIPP and 3mb RAM sounds right. Each stick is 512k and there's 1mb onboard.
 
Four years later and it's still on my vintage PC display shelf! haha

4 SIPP and 3mb RAM sounds right. Each stick is 512k and there's 1mb onboard.

Ok, so if memory is not the issue ? That still come to bad IDE controller / or cable.

Can I put a IDE to CF adapter since the IDE controller doesn't support LBA or ATA, i think it work in PIO ?

I can set C/H/S manualy in the bios, but I think i'll be stuck to a max capacity of 504 Mb due to BIOS limitation.

-------

My idea is that when the external PSU fail, it might have kill the IDE controller chip or when the hard drive spin it loads the psu (internal voltage regulator) that could not maintain 12 & 5V under load.... that's why i think it's hangs on BIOS screen or doesn't start at all ... But with a ATX psu i have the same symptom, if the IDE controller chip is damaged, can i swap the chip, what chip control the IDE channel ? Don't think it was part of the chipset back then :)

Otherwise, i may need a motherboard !
 
You said "almost no corrosion" and that makes me wonder if the old battery leaked on the motherboard?
 
Ok, so if memory is not the issue ? That still come to bad IDE controller / or cable.

Can I put a IDE to CF adapter since the IDE controller doesn't support LBA or ATA, i think it work in PIO ?

I can set C/H/S manualy in the bios, but I think i'll be stuck to a max capacity of 504 Mb due to BIOS limitation.

-------

My idea is that when the external PSU fail, it might have kill the IDE controller chip or when the hard drive spin it loads the psu (internal voltage regulator) that could not maintain 12 & 5V under load.... that's why i think it's hangs on BIOS screen or doesn't start at all ... But with a ATX psu i have the same symptom, if the IDE controller chip is damaged, can i swap the chip, what chip control the IDE channel ? Don't think it was part of the chipset back then :)

Otherwise, i may need a motherboard !

Use a DDO like Ontrack Disk manager to use larger drives. That's how i had to use my 20GB HDD on my 486 laptop.

If you happen to use a Quantum/Maxtor, Fujitsu, Samsung, Western Digital, Seagate/Conner or IBM/Hitachi HDD's, this should help: http://members.shaw.ca/rinocanada/hdutils.htm

You may want to try using a laptop HDD with a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter and see what happens.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for your reply !

As for the corosion, of cours the NiCAd battery has started to leak but it wasn't bad and was contain to a certain area on the motherboard, I've cleaned it with isopropilic alchool and kill the acid with vineger, now there no trace of any corosion on the board.

For the HDD, i know i could use a drive overlay (DDO), but i don't think I could get a 20Gb drive, the bios won't let me set the C/H/S correctly for it (I mean, it won't find the true capacity). The other reason being that I don't think the mobo support ATA-3 (LBA) it's more like PIO mode. (maybe it's wrong, i'm not sure on this)

Thanks
 
Thanks for your replys !

As for the corosion, obviously, the NiCad battery had leaked, but I clean everything with isopropilic alcohol and stop the acid using vinegar. Now there's no trace of corosion whatsorever on the board.

As for the HDD, I know I could use a DDO, but as for the 20 Gb HDD, I don't think the bios could calculate the true capacity (C/H/S). Also I don't think the bios support DMA and LBA, instead I think it uses PIO mode (but I can be WRONG here)

Thank
 
I hate to be THAT guy that necromances threads, but this is the only real talk of this laptop's existence that I found in my googling.

I got my hands on a FMA3500, 486/DX 33MHz 4MB RAM and a 234MB hard drive.

It's in pristine condition (albeit yellowed) and I even have the screw-on battery back at the back. Missing the power supply tho, and I came across this thread to start researching how I might bring it back to life.
 
found this https://eurocom.com/ec/release(230)ec

"pasting article incase link dies"

The new EUROCOM 3500 is a lightweight (6 lbs), compact size 33 MHz 486 DX based Super-notebook computer which can run on battery or AC power and be operated nearly anywhere.

The system can be used as a high end PC, engineering workstation and/or portable network server. The EUROCOM 3500 Super-notebook fully supports UNIX, MS DOS and OS/2 operating systems. As a portable network server the EUROCOM 3500 fully supports most network operating systems including BANYAN VINES and NOVEL NETWARE.

The EUROCOM 3500 Super-notebook features 33 MHz 486 DX Intel or AMD Processors; 2220 m-byte hard drive with an access speed of 17 ms; internal 1.44 m-byte, 3.5-inch floppy disk drive; 8 m-bytes of RAM and 8 k-bytes of internal CPU cache memory. The internal 8 m-bytes RAM fully supports LIM 4.0 EMS and can be expanded onboard up to 16 m-bytes using industry standard memory modules.
The system comes with an 82/84-key AT-compatible keyboard with an integrated numeric keypad functions and multi-function keys.

The unit includes a high-contrast VGA compatible film compensated triple supertwist backlit LCD Display. The 9 inch display offers 32 levels of grey scale with 640x480 resolution. A maximum of 80 characters by 25 lines can be displayed, and the screen can be tilted to any angle from 0 to 140 degrees.

Standard interfaces include two RS-232 ports, a printer port, an external VGA monitor port, an external 101/102-key keyboard port, an external numeric key-pad port and an expansion docking station port.

One of the most remarkable features of EUROCOM 3500 Super-Notebook is its ability to support virtually any high resolution video adapter via external (optional) docking station. Once a high resolution video card is installed inside EUROCOM’s docking station the standard internal video is automatically disabled.

The docking station adds two internal 16 bit I/O slots to the EUROCOM Super-Notebook compter giving it the same high performance and expandability of dull desktop systems. The docking station has two serial ports one parallel port and one external 101/102-key keyboard port.

With its ability to utilize Super-VGA video display cards in the docking station the EUROCOM 3500 Super-Notebook can be used for high quality graphic display presentations or used as a CAD/CAM/CAE workstation.

The EUROCOM 3500 Super-Notebook comes standard with a removable and detachable battery pack that can be connected to the back of the system unit with two rollers. The battery pack provides power for up to 2.5 hours of operation under normal usage.

The AC-to-DC adapter supplied with the system provides power to the system and simultaneously recharges battery. Recharge time is approximately two hours.

The EURPCOM 3500 Super-Notebook is 11” W x 8.5” D x 2” H and weighs less than 6 pounds without battery pack, or less than 7.5 pounds with batter pack.

A version of EUROCOM 3500 Super-Notebook with a 220 m-bytes hard drive and 8 m-bytes of RAM is listed at $4500 and is currently shipping.

No other portable in the world packs so much performance into such a small package, for such a small price.
 
Picked up the same laptop a few months ago with the isa add-on. Soon figured out couldn't get the laptop to use an external display. Did some digging on CirrusLogic drivers for the chip set and found these files for windows 3.11. put files in root of drive and run CRT.exe in dos. should swap to external display. run PANEL.exe to revert back
 

Attachments

  • 486 laptop driver.zip
    117.5 KB · Views: 3
I had that exact laptop computer - if you look in my "Alabama Years" and possibly another one of my photo galleries you'll see the one I had. I had it from 2003-2005.

These were made by NanTan out of Taiwan - pretty much any laptop with "FMA" at the beginning of the model number is a NanTan built device from the 386-Pentium period. The 3300 and 3500 were similar machines. There was also a 3500C that came in a darker gray like an NEC or Powerbook and had a DTSN color screen and seemed to have a reguar barrel-jack power supply connection on the opposite side. Another fun fact on the 3500 is that it has a toggle switch on one side to turn - I can't remember if it was the PS/2 or Serial port off. The one I had was a regular 3500 in white.

One of the nice things on these laptops is they work with regular desktop CPU, RAM, Hard Disks, and Floppy Drives technically making them easier to find parts for than some ThinkPads and NEC Versa.

The battery pack screws onto the back of it and so does the Docking Station (I found a 3300 with a Docking Station on OfferUp but they were asking $150 for it). My old 3500 I had back in 03' I rigged up with a HP Printer power supply to run it with - run into the original screw in battery casing with the actual cells removed. Was a fun little machine - very Game-Boy-Ish when gaming on it.

I'm working on a systems entry for NanTan model laptops to demystify what they all made. Most people on E-bay just go by the name stamped on the case which includes Liberty, Duracom, Prostar, Eurocom, Sager, and a bunch of others. I've also had 2 FMAx9200 models which were the color 486 DX models with ESS688 audio and a 10.4" screen, and a integrated trackball in the modern location. There's a ton of these and the mystery intrigues me.
 
Just found out the keyboards are using Alps ultra low profile switches. Keyboard seems to have a builtin ps2 controller. Might try to wire up an adapter later
 
4x 4MB FPM 70ns RAM non-parity Memory is used, unsure if 16mb is true ram cap. motherboard also supports 486dx2.
 

Attachments

  • photo62249.jpg
    photo62249.jpg
    122.5 KB · Views: 6
Last edited:
4x 4MB FPM 70ns RAM non-parity Memory is used, unsure if 16mb is true ram cap. motherboard also supports 486dx2.

Considering that SIPS are electronically compatible with 30 pin SIMMS and 30 pin SIMMs max out at 4MB, I'd say that would be why there would be a physical memory cap of that size. That BIOS I know can handle up to 32MB at least because I had a ZEOS Motherboard in a generic case with the same BIOS and it had 8 30 pin SIMM slots and I maxxed it out at one point.

I can also say it will/should run a DX2 because I had one of these exact NanTan Notebook 3500 models and I put a DX2 in that machine at one point (as I wanted the 33 in another Desktop I had at the time) for a brief time.

Funny thing is I'm thinking about picking the color version up in the not too distant future, after I sell some of my other vintage computer stuff off that I'm not using as much. After almost 3 years of messing with Laptops I'm kind of finding them my new niche.
 
Considering that SIPS are electronically compatible with 30 pin SIMMS and 30 pin SIMMs max out at 4MB
They didn't max out at 4 MB. 8 MB and 16 MB did exist as well. Examples: https://ram-co-shop.de/16-MB-Simm-30...-ns-16MB-Modul, https://www.electromyne.de/RAMs---Me...16000AJ-6.html

They were just very uncommon, as you already needed 4 of them for one bank in a 486 and hence the switch to 32-bit PS/2 modules was made before the higher-capacity ones gained larger spread.
 
hello i find FMA 3300 and i dont have power supply i find this power supply similiar but dont have same port can this power supply be used? and where i can find power supply for laptop maybe new one and i can change port?
 

Attachments

  • viber_image_2022-03-13_10-33-26-157.jpg
    viber_image_2022-03-13_10-33-26-157.jpg
    178.8 KB · Views: 11
  • viber_image_2022-03-13_10-34-01-881.jpg
    viber_image_2022-03-13_10-34-01-881.jpg
    101.8 KB · Views: 11
  • viber_image_2022-03-13_10-34-02-036.jpg
    viber_image_2022-03-13_10-34-02-036.jpg
    184.3 KB · Views: 11
Back
Top