Excuse me for butting in (but...)
I just purchased a T5200/100 from ebay yesterday. I've been wanting one since seeing "Medicine Man" (before that I've been wanting a gas-plasma Compaq Portable III since 1992... but it's only EGA)
The screen seems intact, and in pix provided by the seller, it displays the dead cmos error message, but also the settings screen. I gather the seller knows even less than I do, as he suggested that it needed a new battery since it wouldn't run without being plugged in to power.
Forgive my ignorance, but I have several (many!) questions; I really do want to get this machine working and actually use it.
I don't have an eprom burner, but I do want to make it able to boot from any drive; 100mb is just too small, even if the current drive was brand new.
Could someone recommend an inexpensive (cheap!) burner that would do the job of burning the modified Award bios? Or is there some other way to get a boot rom onto a chip?
my first thought is to use an ISA network adapter with a boot rom and try to boot from that; I've always been fascinated by that empty socket on my network cards, so it would be doubly cool to be able to boot using a rom in that socket. Again, I'd have to somehow be able to burn it, first. And yes, I want a network card in my T5200. But if I'm going to burn a rom anyway, shouldn't I just go ahead and fix the BIOS? I know nothing about burning eproms, but I am interested in learning, if the learning is not too expensive. I already paid too much for the T5200 (not more than it's worth to me, just more than I can afford, 🤣) .
I have two 6gb drives formatted (3 FAT partitions) identically with DOS 6.22 / WFW 3.11 on them; one is in my K6-300 system (overkill, I know) which I have on my network, the other I would love to be able to put into the T5200. I've read comments about using the rom from a Promise EIDE FloppyMax controller in a network card in order to use a bootable hard drive. Would this work?
I also want to put a sound card into the T5200. I've read messages about needing the 16 bit slot for a soundblaster... but I have an 8 bit soundblaster. I was planning on putting it in the 8 bit slot. Would there be a problem with this?
Other comments/questions. If one were to connect a CF drive, could one not cut a slot in the rear metal cover where the internal modem would go, and mount it there? One could simply reach behind the machine, then.
What is the pinout of the proprietary (modem) slot on the T5200? Would it be possible to build an adapter that would allow an ISA slot to communicate through it? That would allow a 3rd ISA card, although a 3rd card couldn't have its backplate, and any plugs (serial, parallel, vga) would have to be routed out the aforementioned modem cover. But it might be useful for an XTIDE or floppy controller?
Speaking of floppies... what about connecting an LS-120 Superdisk drive to it? An internal LS-120 would hold about 120mb per disk, and connects via IDE. It supports floppy disks as well as its proprietary disks (I did a search on ebay, and a few are available). Or, possibly, a parallel port LS-120, which also would support floppies? The latter would allow for an internal drive plus the 120mb external storage, as well as the ability to use floppies.
If I could get a CF card reader or a network card working, I'm not particularly worried about a functional floppy drive, for myself.
Lastly... I wanted the T5200 for its gas-plasma display, it's expansion ports and its look. I've read about replacing the screen on a T3200SXC with a more modern 10.4" display... would it maybe possible to stick a baby AT, or microATX, or one of the raspberry pi x86 competitors, in the T5200 shell, and connect it to the gas plasma display? A riser card could possibly be used to give the baby AT ISA slots that would then expose their backplates out the side of the laptop. The microATX and the x86 sbc wouldn't really need expansion slots; they'd have USB and possibly SD ports, as well as built-in sound and maybe graphics support. The floppy could be replaced with a USB emulator, or its bay could just be covered with a blank plate. The SBC might even allow for an internal battery.
This last part is just me letting my imagination run. What I really am interested in, first and foremost, is getting it to boot from a hard drive or equivalent.