Laser Turbo XT 2 slowly waking up \ VOGONS

Laser Turbo XT 2 slowly waking up

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First post, by CrashGalore

Posted on 2026-05-20, 20:07

CrashGalore Offline

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Joined: 2026-04-11, 17:34

A few weeks ago I picked up a new project. Just for those in between other projects. I paid a few eurobucks, nothing crazy, because it was dead. And dead it was...

PSU broken, MFA Disk broken, 2 barely functioning Floppy Drives, a bunch of broken memory ic's, exploded battery and a broken I/O card because of that. It has been a strugle.

But progress, and I wanted to share.... finally. Recapped and also replaced the psu. Cleaned up the floppy drives, replaced most of the memory. Plugged in another I/O card, Diskdrives don't get recognized by the original, even with a new battery. also been strugling with the manual and its errors.

She is starting to breath again. I am so happy. Hence this share.

Reply 1 of 5, by BitWrangler

Posted on 2026-05-21, 00:48

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Aw yiss.. now for one of my somewhat tangentially related references "Vtech kicked in yo!" 🤣

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 2 of 5, by Horun

Posted on 2026-05-21, 02:20

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Good work !

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 3 of 5, by CrashGalore

Posted on 2026-05-21, 06:19

CrashGalore Offline

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BitWrangler wrote on 2026-05-21, 00:48:

Aw yiss.. now for one of my somewhat tangentially related references "Vtech kicked in yo!" 🤣

It's true, what I thought was a fun side project, almost became a big sore in the...

Reply 4 of 5, by CrashGalore

Posted on 2026-05-21, 06:34

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Joined: 2026-04-11, 17:34

"You gotta love sthe sight of traces in the morning..."

Reply 5 of 5, by CrashGalore

Posted on 2026-06-02, 17:09

CrashGalore Offline

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Update:
Yesterday the parts arrived for a HIDman AXP keyboard converter. Finally I should be able to have some input. This is comming together.

Is it original? No, far from it...
Is it period correct? Please refer to the answer above...
Does it have a big red switch? Oh yeah!!, a small one also, for that matter!!
Is it working? H*ll yeah!!!
Is it purrfect? Nope
Is it finished? Probably never...
Is it budget build? Yes? No? Probably...

Need:
RTC + Battery. Aftermarket DIY. Since the original IO card is dead. Despite diagnose / repair attempts. The Zilog Z0765A08PSC doesn't receive a clock signal.

Greed:
8087-1 fpu cpu. Just to fill that empty socket.

OCD trigger:
The hideous tricolor front due to the TEAC 1,44 floppy drive, must ..do ..something ..about that.. soon

Specs:
8086-1 Intel 10 MHZ
640K conventional + parity
1024K expanded + parity
VTECH MDA/CGA Graphics adapter (512K?)
3com Etherlink 8 bit NIC
XT IDE IO Card + Universal BIOS
PT1227W I/O card
Maxtor IDE spinning disk, to many GB's20K D
Chinon 5 1/4 DS/DD fdisk drive
TEAC 3,5 inch 1,44 fdisk drive, the original Chinon 7 Disk drive seems to be working erratic. I think that might be because I use HD 1,44mb disks, formatted as 720K. The 1,44 drive is reading and writing the 720K formatted 1,44disks flawless.

HIDman AXP XT/PS2 keyboard converter
MS-DOS 6.22 Dutch

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