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Experienced Member
Howdy!
I recently picked up this extremely clean Packard Bell PB286LP portable/laptop from eBay. It was listed as working, but with faults. I have a weakness for bulky old pre-386 portables, so I rolled the dice on it.
The seller did a great job packaging the laptop, so it arrived unscathed (always an issue with ebay sellers with this kinda stuff).
Initial testing showed that the backlight only flickered for a split second, and the PC speaker was emitting a steady beep, with the screen displaying a "101 stuck key error"
I began cracking the laptop open to investigate. I started by reseating all of the ribbon cables and daughterboards. To my surprise this fixed both issues!
Someone had configured a BIOS password... and the RTC battery STILL WORKS. Unfortunately, I removed and replaced the RTC battery to clear the password, but I am still amazed it has been keeping the CMOS live for 26 years.
Anyway, here are some pics of the system after the repair. The 20MB Conner HDD still runs perfectly!
I recently picked up this extremely clean Packard Bell PB286LP portable/laptop from eBay. It was listed as working, but with faults. I have a weakness for bulky old pre-386 portables, so I rolled the dice on it.
The seller did a great job packaging the laptop, so it arrived unscathed (always an issue with ebay sellers with this kinda stuff).
Initial testing showed that the backlight only flickered for a split second, and the PC speaker was emitting a steady beep, with the screen displaying a "101 stuck key error"
I began cracking the laptop open to investigate. I started by reseating all of the ribbon cables and daughterboards. To my surprise this fixed both issues!
Someone had configured a BIOS password... and the RTC battery STILL WORKS. Unfortunately, I removed and replaced the RTC battery to clear the password, but I am still amazed it has been keeping the CMOS live for 26 years.
Anyway, here are some pics of the system after the repair. The 20MB Conner HDD still runs perfectly!