VOGONS


First post, by HaldrynHotel

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Hi, recently got one of those "literally who" clone laptops of late '96, in this case a aftermarket upgraded Am486 DX4100-S OpenBook 180C by Kiwi Computer, Inc laptop on eBay reasonably priced (~$56).

I cracked it up and removed two barrel batteries that showed badly leaking, but thankfully didn't damaged it and it was isolated from the rest of the board, the floppy drive partially works, it can boot from floppy and load small programs, but when the floppy wants to reads futher is just gets stuck trying to read, and it's the only way to data in and out of that computer, it has an PCMCIA card can use but since i'm running exclusively the classic DOS 6.22/Win3.11 combo, my options are limited.

Trying to replace this floppy drive, the part model and serial was covered with a piece of sheet metal glued together so i had to pry my way out to remove it, so the info i found is:

This floppy drive is a:
TEAC FD-05HG 4461-U
P/N: 19307546
S/N: Q526365

k4hCEqX.jpg

Doing my research about those laptop floppy drives used by white label OEMs and rebranded by other companies, seems likely are mostly compatible to each other like your ordinary floppy drives in desktop computers, so before i do another trip to eBay to buy drives, there's different TEAC FD-05HG models, and i'm not sure if i can use a different model beyond 4461-U, eBay has plenty of different TEAC FD-05HG drives. Do you think i can swap other types beyond the 4461-U as long they belong to the FD-05HG line?, thanks.

P.D: It's next to imposible to find information about Kiwi Computer, Inc. Only i know it was founded in Santa Clara, California, and some old articles from CNet announcing their next Pentium MMX laptop that would cost $3,999.