Re: The 286 Laptop Restoration Thread

Posted on 2024-01-04, 17:48

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh, thank you so much and, of course, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I was quite busy with a bit bigger machine (particle accelerator, which doesnt want to work too) but never forgot about the laptop's PSU. Now I spent couple hours looking for some patterns in how does it start. Well, I still …

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Re: The 286 Laptop Restoration Thread

Posted on 2023-12-15, 11:13

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks a lot for your support! By "clicking sound" I mean normal sound of working inductors, especially they are switching on. They arent completely silent :) I will re-check the sequence you suggested, but as far as I remember, PWM do not appear at all on pin34 of IC13. My scope is Tektronix …

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Re: The 286 Laptop Restoration Thread

Posted on 2023-12-11, 07:22

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks a lot! I am reading through your notes and diagrams for last 2 weeks :) Well, "just on the table" the PSU behaves a bit erratically. It does not start and does not even try to start 18W buck-boost when I press the button. I attached LEDs to 5VA, 5VB and 18V rails - well, right after switch on …

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Re: The 286 Laptop Restoration Thread

Posted on 2023-12-10, 15:14

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Okay, guys... next one :) I also got the T1600 with non-working PSU. "Troubleshooting manual" describes the procedure of PSU diagnostics as the batteries should not be connected. However, on the 1st page of this thread it is clearly indicated that they should. So the question is: do I have to repair …

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Re: 286 USIT Athena PC

Posted on 2023-07-26, 16:42

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Mine is still equipped with CF-IDE and runs well while using one CF but fails (usually boots to NC and then hangs, or hangs during boot) with another one. Perhaps, you should try couple more cards?

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Re: 1991 Laptop: Veridata Execulite 386S

Posted on 2023-07-05, 14:16

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sure, it was a good idea to put some kind of standard module and thus open the way for upgrade. However, the machine itself only supports 4 Mb. And it's just overkill to put 72-pin when you have 16-bit data bus 😀

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Re: 1991 Laptop: Veridata Execulite 386S

Posted on 2023-07-04, 19:40

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hmm, some pages from abovementioned PC Mag

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1991 Laptop: Veridata Execulite 386S

Posted on 2023-07-04, 19:35

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Life is strange... Instead of working on USIT Athena I just acquired one more "patient". It's the perfect example of second generation laptops, which shaped this class of machines almost to a modern form, at least as far as we speak about form-factor. Well, actually these were first really " …

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Re: 286 USIT Athena PC

Posted on 2023-07-04, 19:13

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

WOW! Congratulations, Bro! And thank you so much for the photos of HDD rack!

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Re: 286 USIT Athena PC

Posted on 2023-04-19, 16:57

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I do have 4MB RAM in it, I haven’t got EMS to work, except for with EMM286, if you do find out to get it natively to work , please let me know! Bad news... I expected this relatively modernboard to support EMS 4.0. At least, it is said to support up to 8Mb (perhaps, just 4Mb, Iam not sure). Right …

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Re: 286 USIT Athena PC

Posted on 2023-04-18, 07:03

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I think, nice idea would be to insert 4Mb (4x1Mb) RAM, engage EMS and DesQView, running simultaneously dBase and ChiWriter, for example. But now I am too busy with radiation biology :( I got a Tandon 286/n (not mine eBay listing by the way) and it has the same mainboard as your USIT Athena PC! …

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Re: 286 USIT Athena PC

Posted on 2023-02-16, 18:34

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

it can nicely run an old Mig-29 flight simulator that I used to play as kid. -> It' this one, if you like to check it out: https://mobygames.com/game/dos/mig-29-fulcrum_ No-no, this should be an "office PC" with text processor and database, no gaming! :) Edit: Speaking of performance.. Did you have …

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Re: 286 USIT Athena PC

Posted on 2023-02-10, 11:15

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Thank you for the job done! Really interesting 'e' and some other characters which I didn't notice at first. Shoud I really put this logo on avatar? 😀 BTW, I was surprised how smooth does Wolf3D run on this machine... I knew its a realmode game but thought it is mainly for 386

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Re: 286 USIT Athena PC

Posted on 2023-02-08, 17:31

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Oh, I finally got images of BIOSes! And a fun message from NSSI tool 😀 download/file.php?mode=view&id=156895

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Re: 286 USIT Athena PC

Posted on 2023-01-31, 06:56

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Yes, looks like it is a "proprietary" USIT font. Should I make images of BIOS ROMs? Yes please. If you can dump both the system BIOS and VGA BIOS it'd be great (could be in either). Thanks! Sorry, I was a bit busy :( Can you advice any convenient tool to get the image? I am not very happy with …

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Re: 286 USIT Athena PC

Posted on 2023-01-15, 10:36

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Yes, looks like it is a "proprietary" USIT font. Should I make images of BIOS ROMs? I found an address (postal) where USIT was located in 1990. Now there is a company which sells equipment for liquid chromatography (what a coincidence - I am a biologist and work with such equimpent!). They know …

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Re: 286 USIT Athena PC

Posted on 2023-01-14, 18:02

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I'm not saying that it's right / that I'm right, it could be well the case that it is wrong /that I'm wrong. Since I'm from Europe and never been there at the time, all I can do is to draw conclusions from what I hear/read. Well, I am not arguing or trying to say you are wrong :) Just telling some …

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Re: 286 USIT Athena PC

Posted on 2023-01-12, 15:40

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

This seems to have a unique looking text mode charset, at least on bootup. Any chance of dumping the VGA and BIOS ROMs, so I could add the font to this or this ? :) This might be due to 1997 TFT display, which is not capable of stretching image when it is not 1024x768 (native for display). I will …

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Re: 286 USIT Athena PC

Posted on 2023-01-07, 10:19

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Here's a bunch of VESA 1.x drivers, if you like to experiment. https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=743810#p743810 You can also use drivers/TSRs meant for Western Digital WD90C00. There are PVGA drivers for Windows 2.03, too. Magnetic Scrolls games support Paradise/WD SVGA, too. Wow, thanks! I …

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Re: 286 USIT Athena PC

Posted on 2023-01-07, 07:17

by

by perezx

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Investigation continues... "I" in USIT acronym stays for "Integrated": U.S. Integrated Technologies. A small lesson for entrepreneurs: dont assume your brand will stay well-known for years... Just 30 years after nobody knows about "USIT corporation" :( A page from 1990 PC Magazine says, it was cool …

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