Compaq Portable Plus \ VOGONS

Compaq Portable Plus

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First post, by Niezgodka

Posted on 2018-04-12, 21:46

Niezgodka Offline

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Joined: 2014-03-06, 02:34

So few years ago I bought that Compaq Portable at the yard sale. I kept it in garage, and yesterday I fired it up. Surprisingly - works like charms.
I don't know much about it, but seems to have HDD and floppy drive.
Questions:
What software would you recommend for it? It is a mono graphics, 8088. What file manager, what dos would be suitable? Any games? What software it originally came with?
Is there a way to expand its RAM? I think it might be 128kb only.
Can I record 360KB floppies on my 1.2MB drive? Will it work?

Reply 1 of 2, by eisapc

Posted on 2018-04-13, 12:30

eisapc Offline

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Location: Germany

According to the manual the motherboard RAM can be upgraded to 640 Kb. Even by adding DIL chips or by replacing them with higher capacity. There are of course memory expansion boards around, you could use as well. While 1.2 MB drives can read the 360 KB disks just fine, the tracks they write are too narrow to be read by the 360 K drives. Even if it may work the use of a DD-drive is highly recommended to write on these disks.
For the software a Compaq branded DOS 3.2 was availiable, but allmost any version of DOS will work. Norton or Volkov- Commander as a file manager, some others prefer XTree.

Reply 2 of 2, by Niezgodka

Posted on 2018-06-18, 00:52

Niezgodka Offline

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Joined: 2014-03-06, 02:34

First I need to figure out how to open that thing. I was able to remove top large lids, but I don't know how to remove the rest of plastic.
Anybody knows how to do that?

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