I found this old laptop today at the gipsy market and cant seem to find any info about it. Its an 16MB FPM 133MHz pentium machine.
The battery leaked, but thats not the biggest problem, I dont have that weird ass power adapter for it (24V 2A).
The model is an MicroSpot MCD-4000 , or on the bottom an PMD-5700. TFTK-12.1" screen.
It has an ESS AudioDrive ES1688F , SRS? , CDROM , NEC Floppy, CardBus , PS/2 x2 , VGA out, Parallel, Serial , Game port, infrared and some expansion port.
Chipset inside is SIS 5101 , 5102 and 5103 with 4xHM514265CJ7.
On the other side there is Chips F65550 , 2x ACC Micro 32K32-7 , UT61M256JC-12 , VG-486 A001 BH5433X-07XX and an SMC FDC37C665IR.
Two ram slots 2x8MB and an beeper.
Audio card part has an empty space for an SAA7110.
Pretty interesting, seems really modular to take apart, must have been some sort of a field work machine, although it has no battery.
Mine is a 386 Laptop/printer. Yup, you can fit paper inside and print stuff with it X)
This looks like a sweet machine though, I wish I had a pentium laptop with a TFT screen, but all I have are CSTN crap. The only one that has a TFT screen has it's screen broken :'(
Oh I see that your CPU is socketed ! You can actually replace it with another one that would be faster (if the cooling of that PC is sufficient and that the power circuit can go low enough, you might be able to fit a K6 of some sort inside of this !)
Looks like the Nickel Cadmium (NiCd) battery, or as I call it, the barrel of DOOM needs to get removed immediately since it looks like it spewed acid on the sides, and might be some on the board, but, you might be lucky if there isn't any acid on the board.
Remove the battery carefully and recycle it properly. Good thing all of my computers use either the Lithium batteries (3V [coin sized/laptop] to 3.6V [iMac G3]) or AA batteries (3V [Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus] to 4.5V [IBM WheelWriter 10 Series II])
Just a quick thought here, I think some of the hardware design including the docking port in the back looks a lot like Compaq stuff of the time. Is it possible there has been a licensing of some sort? Or perhaps this was just common practice, say if there was almost like a standard platform for docking stations and chargers?
"an occasional fart in their general direction would provide more than enough cooling" —PCBONEZ
Just a quick thought here, I think some of the hardware design including the docking port in the back looks a lot like Compaq stuff of the time. Is it possible there has been a licensing of some sort? Or perhaps this was just common practice, say if there was almost like a standard platform for docking stations and chargers?
Cool find there, the docking station port (on the far left near the DC in jack) looks like the one on the Dell Latitude CP that I used to have, seeing a Game/MIDI port on any laptop is very rare indeed, I've never seen a laptop with one.
I wonder how well Windows 3.1x and DOS would run on there. 😊
bjwil1991 wrote:
Remove the battery carefully and recycle it properly. Good thing all of my computers use either the Lithium batteries (3V [coin sized/laptop] to 3.6V [iMac G3]) or AA batteries (3V [Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus] to 4.5V [IBM WheelWriter 10 Series II])
I know this is off-topic but should I be concerned about leakage when it comes to the Half-AA 3.6V lithium batteries used on those older Macintosh computers? I'd hate for my PowerMac G4 to be ruined by PRAM battery corrosion since its original battery (dated 06-1999) is still working and I find it odd for such an old battery to still work. 😕
KCompRoom2000 wrote:Cool find there, the docking station port (on the far left near the DC in jack) looks like the one on the Dell Latitude CP that […] Show full quote
Cool find there, the docking station port (on the far left near the DC in jack) looks like the one on the Dell Latitude CP that I used to have, seeing a Game/MIDI port on any laptop is very rare indeed, I've never seen a laptop with one.
I wonder how well Windows 3.1x and DOS would run on there. 😊
bjwil1991 wrote:
Remove the battery carefully and recycle it properly. Good thing all of my computers use either the Lithium batteries (3V [coin sized/laptop] to 3.6V [iMac G3]) or AA batteries (3V [Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus] to 4.5V [IBM WheelWriter 10 Series II])
I know this is off-topic but should I be concerned about leakage when it comes to the Half-AA 3.6V lithium batteries used on those older Macintosh computers? I'd hate for my PowerMac G4 to be ruined by PRAM battery corrosion since its original battery (dated 06-1999) is still working and I find it odd for such an old battery to still work. 😕
Lithium batteries will leak if they take a series amount of neglect, or if the item is in storage for a long time. Luckily, the old one didn't leak since it was the original. I had a 486 desktop that had the original battery in it, in storage since the late 1990's up until late 2011, and the battery ruined the holder, and I didn't see if there was a way to hook up an external battery (and there was), and in the Summer of 2012, the BIOS chip died mysteriously after a series of brownouts, and the 80GB HDD I had in it also took a dump on me. My current 486, a Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus, had a soldered on lithium battery, which luckily, didn't leak at all, so I removed it and installed a 2x AA battery holder to be used as the external battery since the system refused to boot, even after saving the settings in the BIOS with a dead battery.
Noticed that the memory looked familiar to ones I already had so I tried to fit them inside the laptop but they differ and don´t have enough space to fit.
But in the end the hardest part was getting an adequate adapter and figuring out the pinout (Which is pretty straightforward, two coils right after input pins gave it all away), so I managed to find an 24V 3.7A adapter (Laptop requires 24V 2A) and cut it up to solder some Desktop PC LED/Switch cables onto it. As always the usual - Operation before aesthetics.
Since the battery you're replacing is a rechargeable, you need a diode if you replace it with a non-rechargeable battery.
I just read that article on backup batteries, and I'm surprised it mentioned using a capacitor in place of the battery backup, and I have no idea if it'll be a good idea to install that in my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus since the battery uses 3V, although the capacitors do say they don't over/under charge, I'm skeptical when it comes to that. However, the first Xbox from v1.0 to 1.5 required the removal of the CMOS capacitor since it'll leak, and the V1.6b had the better quality capacitor, and luckily, I have the v1.6b Xbox.
I have a few 5.5V 1F super capacitors , I should try using those. All my HP Vectra motherboards and system use this type of CMOS backup. Its a much better idea in my opinion, always wondered why others did not apply that idea.
I have a few 5.5V 1F super capacitors , I should try using those. All my HP Vectra motherboards and system use this type of CMOS backup. Its a much better idea in my opinion, always wondered why others did not apply that idea.
Interesting. I should do that for my Packard Bell 486 to see what'll happen when I have it in storage and powered off, and I'll keep the batteries inside the system just in case.
An update for those in need of additional information and resources about this laptop.
I have replaced the dead drum battery with an new drum battery, only it is 80mAh instead of 60mAh, cost me around $3.00 , works as it should right from the start.
BIOS does not have an Y2K bug as it keeps time properly for the current year.
I have updated the system memory with some IBM made RAM I found lying around and ran a System Speed Test run, nothing special nor extraordinary, these are the results:
CPU is in V86 mode: No
Processor : Intel Pentium(r) 133 MHz
CPUID (TFMS) : 052C Codename: P54C (0.35um)
Feature : 000001BFh MMX(tm):No, IA SSE:No, IA SSE2:No
Frequency via TSC : 132.72 MHz
CPU speed index : 98.46
Total memory size : 32 MB
Memory speed index: 109.90
PCI Video : Chips & Technologies F65550 HiQV32 GUI Accelerator
VESA OEM String : CHIPS 65550 Super VGA
VESA video memory : 2048 KB (10099 KB/s)
Hard drive 0 : 1024C 256H 0S 0 MB
Mainboard chipset : SiS 85C501
BIOS vendor : American Megatrends, Inc. (07/15/95)
OS version : MS-DOS 7.10
Super Scape 3D Bench 2 : 68.5 FPS
The board accepts both FPM and EDO RAM. I believe it would accept up to 64MB of memory but the slots are obscured by design so only half length memory modules can fit.
I have took the time to make an image of the DC connectors pinout as well:
Pins 1 and 2 on the image (first row on the left when looking at it from the front of the connector) are DC power + polarity, and they are connected to two separate coils, one for each pin, pin 3 is connected directly to ground and pin 4 is from all I could find only connected to an single SMD capacitor and that's it (Maybe its going somewhere else as well since its a multi layer board, but I didn't bother much as it works any way with only pins 1, 2 and 3 in the game).
I have made my home made power connector by using an 24V 3.6A adapter from some medical equipment (I think) and two cables from classic PC front panel connectors, since pins in this power connector are the same girth as jumper pins.
Its an American Megatrends Inc. BIOS version 7.2.3 from 02/04/1997.
BIOS imposes an Hard Disk size limit of 8GB (8455MB?) so larger disks are not fully usable. Still haven't obtained an smaller disk and tested Windows on it, gonna happen soon I believe.
