It kinda looks like some one got bored with a soldering iron and jammed it into the hole. Is there any burnt traces or other damage to the rest of the board?

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-07-20, 12:18:

It kinda looks like some one got bored with a soldering iron and jammed it into the hole. Is there any burnt traces or other damage to the rest of the board?

Not on initial viewing. It seemed to me şike someone inserted a CPU wrong way around and burned the CPU which may have scorched the socket maybe?

It's possible. You can always do a continuity test for that circuit to see if it's still intact.

Bancho wrote on 2020-07-20, 11:04:

I purchased a Compaq Armada 7792DMT laptop the other week. It was listed as spare/not working but the picture showed it powered […]
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I purchased a Compaq Armada 7792DMT laptop the other week. It was listed as spare/not working but the picture showed it powered on to Windows 95 and it was very reasonable priced. The laptop arrived today and overall its a really nice example, although its going to be a project as not everything is right with it.

Specs, its a Pentium 266MMX (Tillamook), 64mb Ram (16,16,32), S3 Aurora64+ Graphics, ESS Sound, 5 Gig Hard Disk, FDD Drive, Windows 95. The issues with it are, It doesn't include the CD-ROM drive, The battery is present but completely shot. The FDD Fails to read disks.

I would like to get the FDD Working again so will try and inspect it and see why it doesn't read disks. Its will seek at boot and will start to spin when the disk is inserted but just won't read. I need to find the CD-ROM module. I think this is going to take a while but my search begins. Are batteries still available for these units? It's the original battery that's installed. Is it possible to rebuild these with new cells?

Does anyone know if there is a repository or where i could get the SoftPaqs for this laptop? I'd like to try and get the install fresh but using the compaq image. Any help and advice on this would be greatly appreciated. I don't have much experience when it comes to Laptops of this era. I think it will certainly make a nice retro laptop for some dos gaming.

Such a nice clean unit!

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-07-20, 12:31:

It's possible. You can always do a continuity test for that circuit to see if it's still intact.

I can do the trace continuity from the pin's solder pad, that's easy. My real issue is not knowing what kind of a disaster is inside the socket..

How easy are these sockets to open up? How does one go about it?

idk how exactly but I do know you can rather easily take the sliding top part off the socket

rotating the CPU counterclockwise would short this pin (TMS) to VCC ...so that seems a likely cause.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-07-20, 13:08:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-07-20, 12:31:

It's possible. You can always do a continuity test for that circuit to see if it's still intact.

I can do the trace continuity from the pin's solder pad, that's easy. My real issue is not knowing what kind of a disaster is inside the socket..

How easy are these sockets to open up? How does one go about it?

I would just go ahead and test it. Way back in the day, I accidentally put a CPU in a 486 board the wrong way and when I powered it up, it actually shot flames out from in-between the CPU and the socket.

Melted the socket to the CPU a bit. Once I was able to get it out, I feared the worst but decided to try putting the CPU in the socket the correct way. Much to my surprise it worked just fine.

I will give it a good thorough clean and do my best to get the scorch mark off the socket, then give it a try with the lamest 486 class CPU I have in my collection.. A DX2-50 or some such practically useless CPU I would think 😀

Bought this Compaq Prolinea 4/50S for 66€ including shipping. I don't know if I overpaid, but I have wanted a 486 or 386 desktop system with ISA slots for some time. It has integrated Tseng ET4000/W32i graphics, which I suppose is decent for DOS games. Hard drive is missing, hard drive mounting plate is missing, floppy drive doesn't work, but otherwise it seems to be ok. It is dirty, but after good cleaning, I'm sure it will look very nice 😀

CrFr wrote on 2020-07-20, 14:40:

Bought this Compaq Prolinea 4/50S for 66€ including shipping. I don't know if I overpaid, but I have wanted a 486 or 386 desktop system with ISA slots for some time. It has integrated Tseng ET4000/W32i graphics, which I suppose is decent for DOS games. Hard drive is missing, hard drive mounting plate is missing, floppy drive doesn't work, but otherwise it seems to be ok. It is dirty, but after good cleaning, I'm sure it will look very nice 😀

compaq.jpg

Nice catch! I don't think you overpaid... It's not a bargain either. Just anok price. These machines are generally quite popular.

Floppy drive may just be dirt as well I guess. Clean it and you're probably all set.
For a hard drive a CF card would do perfectly, cost close to nothing and is reliable.

And do yourself a favour: see if you can set the base clock from 25 to 33MHz... The CPU will most probably just be a dx2-66 which is purposely clocked down by intel to fill a market gap 😀

Bancho wrote on 2020-07-20, 11:04:

I purchased a Compaq Armada 7792DMT laptop the other week. It was listed as spare/not working but the picture showed it powered […]
Show full quote

I purchased a Compaq Armada 7792DMT laptop the other week. It was listed as spare/not working but the picture showed it powered on to Windows 95 and it was very reasonable priced. The laptop arrived today and overall its a really nice example, although its going to be a project as not everything is right with it.

Specs, its a Pentium 266MMX (Tillamook), 64mb Ram (16,16,32), S3 Aurora64+ Graphics, ESS Sound, 5 Gig Hard Disk, FDD Drive, Windows 95. The issues with it are, It doesn't include the CD-ROM drive, The battery is present but completely shot. The FDD Fails to read disks.

I would like to get the FDD Working again so will try and inspect it and see why it doesn't read disks. Its will seek at boot and will start to spin when the disk is inserted but just won't read. I need to find the CD-ROM module. I think this is going to take a while but my search begins. Are batteries still available for these units? It's the original battery that's installed. Is it possible to rebuild these with new cells?

Does anyone know if there is a repository or where i could get the SoftPaqs for this laptop? I'd like to try and get the install fresh but using the compaq image. Any help and advice on this would be greatly appreciated. I don't have much experience when it comes to Laptops of this era. I think it will certainly make a nice retro laptop for some dos gaming.

That is a beauty! Hopefully you can find a cd drive for it. And the softpaqs!

Filled a gap in my soundcard collection...

If you consider albatross parts "gaps" in your collection you must have a fun time being a collector 🤣

kolderman wrote on 2020-07-20, 19:24:

If you consider albatross parts "gaps" in your collection you must have a fun time being a collector 🤣

What are albatross parts?

Got this graphic card in a 7 euro lot together with some isa sound cards. Not really sure what this supposed to be. 😅

HD4650, relatively unspectacular ^^

mpe wrote on 2020-07-20, 19:10:

Filled a gap in my soundcard collection... https://dependency-injection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/DSC_7794-scaled.jpeg […]
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Filled a gap in my soundcard collection...

You son of a... I'm so jealous, that's not even funny!

kolderman wrote on 2020-07-20, 19:24:

If you consider albatross parts "gaps" in your collection you must have a fun time being a collector 🤣

You think the CT-1330A is hard to get... try collecting the old Gallant and Zoltrix ISA cards. I'm still missing a few. To top it off, the model numbers are different for what is the same card between brands so it makes it super confusing... that and the fact that there aren't even that many pictures of the cards.. much less of them showing the correct brand.

kitten.may.cry wrote on 2020-07-20, 20:51:

mpe wrote on 2020-07-20, 19:10:

Filled a gap in my soundcard collection... https://dependency-injection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/DSC_7794-scaled.jpeg […]
Show full quote

Filled a gap in my soundcard collection...

You son of a... I'm so jealous, that's not even funny!

It is a very nice looking example of that card. On mine the black stickers are fairly worn looking.

devius wrote on 2020-07-20, 20:32:

kolderman wrote on 2020-07-20, 19:24:

If you consider albatross parts "gaps" in your collection you must have a fun time being a collector 🤣

What are albatross parts?

Things that rarely come up for sale. Like Adlib Golds or...