Laptop Compaq LTE 5000, part two - about the shortcomings and their treatment
Laptop Compaq LTE 5000, part one - acquaintance
Of course, a laptop that is more than 20 years old physically cannot be in perfect condition. Especially if they used it.
Here, besides the general shabbyness, there were four flaws:
')
It was necessary to understand.
The bios battery was the most annoying - the computer forgot the settings, wept when turned on, and so on.
Difficulty - this is not the usual tablet 2032, but a NiCd battery of 4.8V, 50mah. Non-standard, by itself - this is Compaq. Native battery is rare and expensive. One of the owners of this laptop said that he had bought it for 28 euros. But I just bought a few cans of suitable sizes for Ali (1 / 3AAA, sort of like) and collected a new battery from them (yes, where the use of a soldering iron is meant - this I do not myself, but I delegate to my friend with straight arms).
Old battery and banks to build a new one.
At first they tried to do everything beautifully, with heat shrinkage. But it turned out to be painfully thick and the new “battery” in the laptop did not climb.
Therefore I had to undress. At the side, a thermal relay is attached, when overheating it opens.
At work.
I will not say that I really need a working battery, I did not plan to carry this laptop. And at home it is quite possible to turn on the UPS.
But for the love of art I decided to pick it up and see what was inside.
Battery in case:
Inside it turned out 10 elements of 4 / 3AA format - NiMH, 1.2V, 2500mah. They are on sale, but the toad was strangling to invest so much money in an old laptop. I also didn’t want to transfer to lithium, the face values ​​do not match, and the charging controller would have to be changed.
Therefore, the idea arose to remake the battery with AA batteries, since they are also today at 2500mah. For the price, this is not much cheaper than buying 4 / 3AA, but it is much easier from the point of view of the availability of the batteries themselves. I bought on Ali a couple of containers on AA batteries, stuck them instead of old elements.
And it all worked as it should. True, I did not try to insert batteries there, but the laptop turns on from the finger batteries - if without a hard drive and if the batteries are fresh. On cheap batteries from fix-points, a laptop stretched for ten minutes in bios. Normal AA-batteries somehow later pick up. We still have to deal with those that I have. In general, this is more all of interest was started, than because of real need.
By the way, an interesting feature of batteries is a sliding cover so that when installed in the drive bay there is no hole left.
The laptop has a universal compartment in which you can put a 3.5 "drive, a CD drive or a second battery.
Most often, these laptops come with a drive, a CD-ROM is much less common and worth considerable money against the background of the average price of such laptops.
But I turned up on Avito incomplete (without power supply, battery and hard drive) even more tacky Compaq LTE, but with a CD-drive in the kit for fifteen hundred rubles. It was about two times cheaper than all the options I found. I decided to take on parts. True, this time I had to go to St. Petersburg. But there I am also regularly, albeit less often than in Moscow. Therefore it turned out behind the laptop to look along the way.
The laptop itself was in much worse condition than mine - dirtier, there is no power supply, the CMOS battery is fixed with scotch tape, only the case remains from the battery, the letters on the keyboard are generally drawn with a marker.
And in the hard drive bay there lived such art. A pair of wires were torn off, but it probably worked once.
But the drive is working. The truth has not yet achieved hot swapping, if you pull out the drive / drive during operation, then the Windows start to slow down and sticking back does not help. And he reads disks through time. I didn’t check it on stamping, though - from CDs, I accidentally saved only old CD-Rs with games - some reads normally, some stutters, reading no further than the list of files. Although this behavior is understandable for the six-speed six-speed drive of the mid-nineties, they have always had trouble with the CD-R.
Still, while I was looking for a native drive, I took an external PCMCIA for 100 rubles. Inside the box was a 24-speed Toshibov drive. I think that if you wish, you can replace it with a DVD. But so far there is no such desire.
If you look from the point of view of functionality, but not authenticity, then this option is better than a native drive - it reads disks with which it cannot cope, supports hot plugging. So he will not remain without work. The speed is quite enough to launch games directly from the disk, the screen saver is lost quite smoothly.
Yes, drive models, if anyone is interested:
Periodically, when turned on, several vertical bars appear on the screen. At first, it was thought that something was wrong with the cable, but no dependence on the inclination of the lid and generally on the movement of the cable going to the matrix was observed. Therefore, I decided that this was a matrix glitch and thought to rearrange the matrix from the second laptop. But when turned on, it somehow strangely shows a double image, so I didn’t really want to understand whose glitch is the matrix or the motherboard. Plus, over time, I noticed that if the first laptop is pressed on the screen, then the strips pass. Therefore, the second laptop is still on the shelf for every fireman. He paid for himself only with a working CD-ROM.
Screen stripes of the first laptop:
The screen of the second laptop. Not only does the picture double over, it also “floats” at the same time.
I did not like the hard drive. It seems as if the worker was quite and did not make any suspicious sounds, but it was too loud for him; even a fan was not heard against him. Therefore, I used the standard option to replace IDE-drives on older computers - an adapter and a CF card. I was not going to keep hundreds and thousands of games on the laptop, because the 2 gigabyte card was enough. As a result, the old disk also died while writing the article - it is determined, but no more. So the replacement on the memory card happened on time.
It feels like using a memory card that seems a little slower - in some cases it makes pauses that were not on the HDD. But, in general, I will not say that it is unpleasant to use. Of course, you can plug in a normal SSD here - for old laptops, I now use mSATA via an adapter - but why? Although I would not recommend putting something newer on the memory card. I tried to put XP on the SD-shku - so-so in speed. Yes, and NT-disk drive work more hard, especially when they do not have enough RAM - the memory card will wear out quickly. But for dos and 9x will come down.
In principle, you can still rearrange the processor from the second laptop - there Pentium 133 versus 120 in the first one. But I'm still lazy. In addition, in terms of retro games, they tend not to accelerate, but to slow down the system.
I'll try to add a USB controller somehow. Perhaps, somehow I will add a network card, but in general I don’t really need a network on this laptop. To go online with 98 is not too comfortable, especially with such an ancient iron - I even felt bad at p3-1.6. And you can upload some files here simply by removing the memory card and sticking it into the “big brother”. Weifai - I do not know whether it is worth even thinking in this direction. The adapters themselves should be, but I strongly doubt that WPA2 support in Windows98.
I ordered a splitter on PS / 2 - they say that the port of such laptops supported such a thing, it was possible to immediately insert a mouse and keyboard into it.
With what else I would like to play - the converter IrDA-RJ-45. I know that such were in nature, even seen on ebay. But for unreasonable money.
Service manual for the Compaq LTE 5000 series notebooks.
300 pages, 7 megabytes .
Models, parts, disassembly, assembly, docking station ...
For now. The next part will be about the OS used and the launch of the old games. The part itself, however, will be somewhat later. But for six months I will try not to delay. In terms of games, I, of course, have my own list of favorites, but if it’s interesting to someone that I’ll launch something specific, write.
Of course, a laptop that is more than 20 years old physically cannot be in perfect condition. Especially if they used it.
Here, besides the general shabbyness, there were four flaws:
')
- Dead BIOS battery.
- Dead laptop battery.
- No cd drive.
- Periodically slanting screen. It manifests itself two times later on the third, because when buying, I did not notice.
It was necessary to understand.
CMOS battery
The bios battery was the most annoying - the computer forgot the settings, wept when turned on, and so on.
Difficulty - this is not the usual tablet 2032, but a NiCd battery of 4.8V, 50mah. Non-standard, by itself - this is Compaq. Native battery is rare and expensive. One of the owners of this laptop said that he had bought it for 28 euros. But I just bought a few cans of suitable sizes for Ali (1 / 3AAA, sort of like) and collected a new battery from them (yes, where the use of a soldering iron is meant - this I do not myself, but I delegate to my friend with straight arms).
Old battery and banks to build a new one.
At first they tried to do everything beautifully, with heat shrinkage. But it turned out to be painfully thick and the new “battery” in the laptop did not climb.
Therefore I had to undress. At the side, a thermal relay is attached, when overheating it opens.
At work.
Laptop battery
I will not say that I really need a working battery, I did not plan to carry this laptop. And at home it is quite possible to turn on the UPS.
But for the love of art I decided to pick it up and see what was inside.
Battery in case:
Inside it turned out 10 elements of 4 / 3AA format - NiMH, 1.2V, 2500mah. They are on sale, but the toad was strangling to invest so much money in an old laptop. I also didn’t want to transfer to lithium, the face values ​​do not match, and the charging controller would have to be changed.
Therefore, the idea arose to remake the battery with AA batteries, since they are also today at 2500mah. For the price, this is not much cheaper than buying 4 / 3AA, but it is much easier from the point of view of the availability of the batteries themselves. I bought on Ali a couple of containers on AA batteries, stuck them instead of old elements.
And it all worked as it should. True, I did not try to insert batteries there, but the laptop turns on from the finger batteries - if without a hard drive and if the batteries are fresh. On cheap batteries from fix-points, a laptop stretched for ten minutes in bios. Normal AA-batteries somehow later pick up. We still have to deal with those that I have. In general, this is more all of interest was started, than because of real need.
By the way, an interesting feature of batteries is a sliding cover so that when installed in the drive bay there is no hole left.
Cd drive
The laptop has a universal compartment in which you can put a 3.5 "drive, a CD drive or a second battery.
Most often, these laptops come with a drive, a CD-ROM is much less common and worth considerable money against the background of the average price of such laptops.
But I turned up on Avito incomplete (without power supply, battery and hard drive) even more tacky Compaq LTE, but with a CD-drive in the kit for fifteen hundred rubles. It was about two times cheaper than all the options I found. I decided to take on parts. True, this time I had to go to St. Petersburg. But there I am also regularly, albeit less often than in Moscow. Therefore it turned out behind the laptop to look along the way.
The laptop itself was in much worse condition than mine - dirtier, there is no power supply, the CMOS battery is fixed with scotch tape, only the case remains from the battery, the letters on the keyboard are generally drawn with a marker.
And in the hard drive bay there lived such art. A pair of wires were torn off, but it probably worked once.
But the drive is working. The truth has not yet achieved hot swapping, if you pull out the drive / drive during operation, then the Windows start to slow down and sticking back does not help. And he reads disks through time. I didn’t check it on stamping, though - from CDs, I accidentally saved only old CD-Rs with games - some reads normally, some stutters, reading no further than the list of files. Although this behavior is understandable for the six-speed six-speed drive of the mid-nineties, they have always had trouble with the CD-R.
Still, while I was looking for a native drive, I took an external PCMCIA for 100 rubles. Inside the box was a 24-speed Toshibov drive. I think that if you wish, you can replace it with a DVD. But so far there is no such desire.
If you look from the point of view of functionality, but not authenticity, then this option is better than a native drive - it reads disks with which it cannot cope, supports hot plugging. So he will not remain without work. The speed is quite enough to launch games directly from the disk, the screen saver is lost quite smoothly.
Yes, drive models, if anyone is interested:
Screen
Periodically, when turned on, several vertical bars appear on the screen. At first, it was thought that something was wrong with the cable, but no dependence on the inclination of the lid and generally on the movement of the cable going to the matrix was observed. Therefore, I decided that this was a matrix glitch and thought to rearrange the matrix from the second laptop. But when turned on, it somehow strangely shows a double image, so I didn’t really want to understand whose glitch is the matrix or the motherboard. Plus, over time, I noticed that if the first laptop is pressed on the screen, then the strips pass. Therefore, the second laptop is still on the shelf for every fireman. He paid for himself only with a working CD-ROM.
Screen stripes of the first laptop:
The screen of the second laptop. Not only does the picture double over, it also “floats” at the same time.
"Upgrade"
I did not like the hard drive. It seems as if the worker was quite and did not make any suspicious sounds, but it was too loud for him; even a fan was not heard against him. Therefore, I used the standard option to replace IDE-drives on older computers - an adapter and a CF card. I was not going to keep hundreds and thousands of games on the laptop, because the 2 gigabyte card was enough. As a result, the old disk also died while writing the article - it is determined, but no more. So the replacement on the memory card happened on time.
It feels like using a memory card that seems a little slower - in some cases it makes pauses that were not on the HDD. But, in general, I will not say that it is unpleasant to use. Of course, you can plug in a normal SSD here - for old laptops, I now use mSATA via an adapter - but why? Although I would not recommend putting something newer on the memory card. I tried to put XP on the SD-shku - so-so in speed. Yes, and NT-disk drive work more hard, especially when they do not have enough RAM - the memory card will wear out quickly. But for dos and 9x will come down.
In principle, you can still rearrange the processor from the second laptop - there Pentium 133 versus 120 in the first one. But I'm still lazy. In addition, in terms of retro games, they tend not to accelerate, but to slow down the system.
I'll try to add a USB controller somehow. Perhaps, somehow I will add a network card, but in general I don’t really need a network on this laptop. To go online with 98 is not too comfortable, especially with such an ancient iron - I even felt bad at p3-1.6. And you can upload some files here simply by removing the memory card and sticking it into the “big brother”. Weifai - I do not know whether it is worth even thinking in this direction. The adapters themselves should be, but I strongly doubt that WPA2 support in Windows98.
I ordered a splitter on PS / 2 - they say that the port of such laptops supported such a thing, it was possible to immediately insert a mouse and keyboard into it.
With what else I would like to play - the converter IrDA-RJ-45. I know that such were in nature, even seen on ebay. But for unreasonable money.
Small bonus
Service manual for the Compaq LTE 5000 series notebooks.
300 pages, 7 megabytes .
Models, parts, disassembly, assembly, docking station ...
For now. The next part will be about the OS used and the launch of the old games. The part itself, however, will be somewhat later. But for six months I will try not to delay. In terms of games, I, of course, have my own list of favorites, but if it’s interesting to someone that I’ll launch something specific, write.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/442320/
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