Compaq luggable, what next?

[Randy Dawson]

Hi Mike,

These guys probably don't update or even pay attention to their web page;  I'm not surprised the other machine is not listed.
Its a walk-in retail store.
Mike Carter is the head honcho, you can email him from the site links if you want it, or I can go get it for you.

My adoration for this machine comes from its origin - I knew Rod Canion and sold him and 'Gateway Technologies' a Data I/O Model 29 EPROM programmer.

I was the Data I/O rep in Houston at the time, when they were leaving TI and forming Compaq.  No doubts they used it to read the IBM PC ROMS and write their own BIOS.

Everybody is aware of the cleanroom story, the guys who read the ROM were not permitted to write the compatable BIOS, but only write the specification for it, to pass on to other S/W engineers.  

Another story I recall is that some IBM applications were dependent on a search for the the text string "Copyright IBM" in the ROM, so Compaq had "None of this code is copyright IBM" in their ROM.

Spoofing the applications....

Today I am cutting out little circles of the key capacitive plates, and double sided tape backing.  Hope to get the keyboard foam rot problem fixed on this machine.

Randy



> Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2010 14:06:08 -0500
> From: mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com
> To: 
> Subject: Re: Compaq luggable, what next?
> 
> 
> For $25 it's a steal.  I liked the Surplusgizmos site, but I couldn't 
> find the other machine. ;-0
> 
> As for what to do ...
> 
> - The XT-IDE card (details can be found over at the Vintage Computer 
> Forum) allows you to put a modern IDE drive in the machine, which 
> probably cuts down on power consumption and improves your reliability.
> 
> 
> - A good Ethernet card from the era (3COM 3C503, NE1000, or other well 
> known 8 bit cards) will get you 'online' in a limited way.  I have 
> written DHCP, Telnet, FTP, and IRC clients that run on machines of that 
> vintage.  Also available are netcat, PING, and SNTP (Simple Network Time 
> Protocol).  Details over at http://www.brutman.com/mTCP .  I wouldn't 
> invest too much time into a DOS based web browser - if they run they are 
> horribly disappointing.
> 
> 
> Mike
>