Commodore C286-LT '90 Notebook

The attention of the habrac users presents a small story about the once very entertaining and unusual notebook Commodore C286-LT.

Under the cat a lot of photos and history of the life of the laptop :)
')


This model was produced in the period from the 90th year by Commodore International and up to the time of its bankruptcy in 94m. Mine was purchased in 91m in Geneva, Switzerland for 4000 Swiss francs (3000 USD at that rate).





The laptop is equipped with an Intel CS80C286-12 processor with 12.5MHz, 2Mb of RAM (an expansion option of up to 5Mb was available), a built-in drive for 3.5 "floppy disks, a 10" LCD display, which I will dwell on in more detail. It works all on OS MsDOS. All childhood was tormented by the envy of the owners of the 386x for having worked with Windows 3.1.

By the way, it’s unusual first of all that Microsoft’s operating system is on this laptop, and not for example Amiga.

What I want to tell you about the display: It has a VGA-resolution with 4 shades of gray, but has a yellow backlight, due to which the image is blue and yellow. Sometimes I felt that I was connected with this really happy person: everyone had a black and white image, but I could say it was color:) It has brightness and contrast settings on the side (in the photo). Taking this opportunity, I want to say hello to laptop makers - in my opinion such twists are much more usable than the idea of ​​using function keys to adjust the brightness on modern laptops.



In terms of size, the laptop is similar to my 15-inch asus laptop, it weighs about 4 kg. Power supply - another 1.5 kg.

To evaluate the external dimensions, I decided to compare it with the Asus eee900, at first I thought that it was not the most representative object, but then I realized that I was not mistaken: the screen is almost the same :)





An interesting case surface on this notebook: it is rough and sometimes gives the impression of some kind of nap material. Remotely resembles a very tough suede. The body is made of a metal alloy, most likely of aluminum. To the touch does not understand.

The cover is fixed with two latches on the sides. The hinges of the lid are not located on the edge of the case, but with some indentation (seen in the photo). Behind them is the battery.



With the battery removed



The battery held about a couple of hours. For that time it was a luxury.



The photo shows that its capacity is only 1700 mAh.

Under the battery is a BIOS battery manufactured by Mitsubishi.



On the back there are ports: VGA, COM, LPT. I had to use only COM.



Kliviatura removed quite easily, under it all is screened and nothing can be seen :)







To be honest, when I photographed this laptop, I was somewhat struck by the fact that the appearance of the components has not changed much over the past 20 years.

This view gives me a special pleasure:



With protective screens removed:



A 36Mb hard drive seems to be:



The most tasty: processor :)



"Miniature" power supply:



Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to revive him, so I couldn’t show the most interesting one. The laptop lay in the basement of the garage for more than 3 years, apparently the humidity or low temperature killed it. There will be time - I want to try to restore this miracle anyway.

On this laptop, I began to write my first programs on the turbo basic, I tried to pick C. I got it at the age of 6 years.

It was very annoying that there was no graphic editor, but I wanted to draw, so I used OrCAD for these purposes:) - such a difficult childhood.

Of the games, Keen 4, 5, 6 passed all (I was a big fan), I remember some races, tetris and a field of miracles :) I completely killed the system several times, deleting system files or something like that. In general, imbued with love for laptops in full.

Photos of July 5, 2009, the full album can be viewed here .