Compaq Portable III fails POST?

[jim stephens]

Cameron Kaiser wrote:

>>How do you know the keyboard is "incompletely connected"?
>>I assume that those "few threads" are actually capable of
>>carrying current?
>>    
>>
>
>No, I mean, the cable is frayed and wires are open, visible and in most places
>partially or totally cut. As in, the cable is barely physically intact.
>
>  
>
I just unpacked one that had been stored in a reasonable warehouse 
environment,
this week, and when I pulled off the keyboard, the insulation sheathing 
totally disintegrated.

I think they tried some sort of plastic to make the cable retain the 
curl, and it was not
very good.

I have not tested the keyboard, the later suggestion of trying another 
standard at is a
good one.

This is pretty much an AT with a 30 or so entry HD table, instead of 
just the AT's
15 entry table in the disk extension.

As such, you need an AT setup disk to set the cmos if it is dead.  It should
boot and run either the compaq one, or the standard AT one.  If you dont
need > 15 in the drive type, the standard AT will work.  A lot of these
had drive type 2, which IIRC is a 20mb.

Another thing that concerns me is that you need to say whether you
see floppy activity, either constant (bad ps) or none at all after
you boot up.  You should see a floppy seek if you have a floppy
installed, just like an ordinary AT would do.
<snip>

>I have it connected to AC, so unless it needs the battery to boot (*mumble*
>fricking Mac Portable*mumble*), it shouldn't be that ...
>
>  
>
yes, it needs to have cmos setup program booted from floppy if (since 
the battery will be) is dead.

>Please let me know what you find. The form factor is fascinating, so I
>would love to get it running again.
>
>  
>
They are nice 286 or 386 machines, consume much less than preserving the 
equivalent AT
pile.

Jim