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ReFurbishing Compaq Portable III and problems encountered so far.

R

RizThomas

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 2, 2012
Messages
198
Location
Surrey,BC,Canada
Hello again ,

I started on another thread where I asked about Using MSDOS instead of staying with the Compaq DOS3.31. I tried some of the suggestions but ended using a floppy boot disk for now. My boot disk includes attaching a Microsolutions BackPack so I am able to use my DOS Utilites/Program collections from CD.
Well, I found some other problems so far.
1. The keyboard cable are cracking badly.
- I solved this by replacing the cable and wired new 5pin DIN plug. I also cleaned the keyboard keys, contacts, etc so it is now OK. BTW, the cable is a coiled extender for AT keyboard.

2. Currently, the 20MB HDD does not write or read consistently so I tried to reformat it (Failed).
- I tried running Checkit on the HDD but once it reach track 321..it comes up with Error: Controller Failed.
- I also tried to low-level format it with SpeedStor 6 and it also failed (Controller failed) as well...seems consistent at around Track 321...

I haven't disassembled the whole PC yet so I don't have a visual inspection of the inside. My next move is to open and hope to see something that will be the 'fix'.

Does anyone have experienced this problem before? Thanks...
 
RizThomas said:
2. Currently, the 20MB HDD does not write or read consistently so I tried to reformat it (Failed).
- I tried running Checkit on the HDD but once it reach track 321..it comes up with Error: Controller Failed.
- I also tried to low-level format it with SpeedStor 6 and it also failed (Controller failed) as well...seems consistent at around Track 321...
Click to expand...
This sounds like the drive geometry could be incorrect in the CMOS setup. It's worth a check.
 
Just for reference, the "drive controller" in the Portable III isn't on a seperate card, since it uses an IDE interface. That being said, open it up and find the hard drive's make/model. And as said above, compare the settings in the CMOS to what the drive is.
 
I am opening the box now and try to get some info on the drive...hopefully there is still hope on the drive.
Stone: if i may ask..are you implying never to LLF an IDE drive?...
And thanks for the replies
 
Since the III is an IDE machine, you can really just toss any old IDE drive in it, with something like ANYDRIVE or OnTrack you can use drives that the BIOS wont natively support, Anydrive will allow any IDE HD up to 520mb, Ontrack will allow ANY size IDE drive, I am using ontrack with a 40GB drive in my Portable III (currently only using 20GB of it, didn't want THAT many partitions) and a 20GB drive in my Portable II.

If you are trying to stay period correct, then I can see wanting to get that drive going, for me I just want my machines to be reliable, so I usually stick newer HDs in all of them so I don't have to worry about them booting up when I go to use them.
 
Thank you All for the excellent advise. GOOD NEWS.. I was able to bring back the Portable III to a workable state (reliable just like RWallmow says) except for one minor hiccup.
Here are what happened as of this writing...
1. Just like everyone says, the old Conner CP321 20mb is dead. Maybe it was already on its way out because I did the FDISK/Format routine which did not work. This made me do the LLF which probably nailed the coffin.
2. I found a WD HDD which I prepared first on a 386sx pc. It found that the WD is a type 38. Prepared the unit with a MS-DOS 6.20 then installed it on the Compaq.
3. Meanwhile I gave the whole Compaq Portable III some good cleaning, blew the dust out, cleaned the contacts, repaired the keyboard cable . This was some experience trying to find out how to disassemble the casings, etc.
4. When I did a first boot, the unit says all the CMOS setup is gone. It was asking for the Diagnostics disk, asked for F1 to resume. So, I continued to boot it and used GSETUP to set the parameters ( type 38 for the HDD, floppy drive, etc).
Minor Hiccup: The unit when booting beeps and says some Options were not set (??) asking for the Diagnostic disk. I need to write a copy of the Diagnostics disk to a 1.2MB floppy since the archive available want to have a 720k disk. Hopefully this will fix this problem. Good thing, 'F1' resumes the boot process all the way.
FOR NOW...this is the state..basically a working unit.

Thanks RWallmow for mentioning the 2 software. I will hunt for them and try to use them later. This experience made me brush up on my DOS...heck I even forgot now how to prepare a HDD using DOS.

One last thing...has anyone tried CF-IDE on these old machines like the Compaq Portable III?

Thank you all!!!
 
RizThomas said:
...One last thing...has anyone tried CF-IDE on these old machines like the Compaq Portable III?...
Click to expand...

I never tried CF cards in either of my portables, but I would think it should work, however I am not sure what parameters you would need to feed the BIOS in relation to C/H/S, maybe any would work since C/H/S is purely emulated/faked in a CF card. You would be in the same boat however trying to get anything larger than 520mb working, you would need something like ontrack OR something like the XT-IDE BIOS ROM (which does NOT require an XT-IDE card, it can be installed in any open ROM socket, like boot ROM socket of a NIC).
 
I have a Sandisk 4GB in mine but it's only formatted to about 500mb. I chose type 38 (about 300mb) in the BIOS. I haven't come close to that yet so I don't know if it will be a problem or not. I haven't really done much testing since I'm still working with other areas on the system like networking, cpu upgrade/overclocking and software setup. (And I just found a busted capacitor on the motherboard yesterday...)

Also, I noticed that there are two ROM sockets that are empty right above the BIOS chips on the 386 motherboard. Anyone have any ideas if you can socket an XT-IDE or other ROM BIOS in these slots?

If your CMOS battery is dead like mine was, I replaced mine with this: http://www.batteryspace.com/li-ionr...cells2pcslr203236v40mah20dx32mm014wheach.aspx
Make sure you get the one with the solder tabs. It's only been in for a few days but seems to be working fine.

I have two of these (one working and one for parts). The 'working' one showed up with a bad hard drive. It turns out that the spindle won't start by itself 80%+ of the time. I opened up the case and spun it manually and it worked(with the case off!). Unfortunately it was completely blank but I was able to write files and read them back before I put it away.
 
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