I stumbled in to another retro kick and dug out some old bits, and bought some more, to build an early '90s PC (actually bought enough to build 2 or 3, depending on what works and what doesn't!), hoping to have everything for this bank holiday weekend, but unfortunately only a processor came in time (Pentium 166).
I went to see my parents this morning and told my dad what I was up to, when I told him my plans had been scuppered he told me he still had his first laptop, a Compaq LTE Lite 4/33C, with broken hinges and a torn ribbon cable, the result of a fight between my younger brother and myself. The cost of repair was more than we could afford at the time, although it had a docking station so could still be used with a monitor and external keyboard and mouse.
I took it home, plugged in a monitor and after a few power cycles it came on, tested the memory, all 8mb, then said there was no system disk, I know it worked (apart from the screen) when it was put away, so assume the HDD has died, I dug through some old floppy disks and found a boot disk, but the floppy drive appears to be dead also, the disk doesn't seem to spin, the drive clicks when it first tries to read the disk then goes silent, the light flashes for a while then comes up with the same no system disk message.
I've opened it up, the HDD seems to be a standard (albeit old and chunky) 2.5" IDE, the floppy drive on the other hand isn't, it doesn't have a standard floppy cable connector, just a push in ribbon cable (don't know the terminology!). While I was in there I repaired the ribbon cable for the screen, tomorrow I'll have a crack at the hinges. I also opened the docking station to see if I could fit an external floppy drive, but it only takes 5.25" floppy drives.
TLDR:
I have a USB to IDE adapter, with 3.5" and 2.5" IDE connectors, and a 44 pin IDE to CF adapter, is there any way I could install DOS/Windows 3.1(1) to a CF card using my Windows 10 PC, then put it in the laptop? The plan I had for getting started on my old PC build was use a USB floppy drive (bought, awaiting delivery) to write disks from my Win 10 PC, or use disk images with a floppy emulator that I have from playing Amigas, neither will work in this case. Ideally I'd like to get the floppy drive working or find a replacement, but I doubt either will be easy!
I went to see my parents this morning and told my dad what I was up to, when I told him my plans had been scuppered he told me he still had his first laptop, a Compaq LTE Lite 4/33C, with broken hinges and a torn ribbon cable, the result of a fight between my younger brother and myself. The cost of repair was more than we could afford at the time, although it had a docking station so could still be used with a monitor and external keyboard and mouse.
I took it home, plugged in a monitor and after a few power cycles it came on, tested the memory, all 8mb, then said there was no system disk, I know it worked (apart from the screen) when it was put away, so assume the HDD has died, I dug through some old floppy disks and found a boot disk, but the floppy drive appears to be dead also, the disk doesn't seem to spin, the drive clicks when it first tries to read the disk then goes silent, the light flashes for a while then comes up with the same no system disk message.
I've opened it up, the HDD seems to be a standard (albeit old and chunky) 2.5" IDE, the floppy drive on the other hand isn't, it doesn't have a standard floppy cable connector, just a push in ribbon cable (don't know the terminology!). While I was in there I repaired the ribbon cable for the screen, tomorrow I'll have a crack at the hinges. I also opened the docking station to see if I could fit an external floppy drive, but it only takes 5.25" floppy drives.
TLDR:
I have a USB to IDE adapter, with 3.5" and 2.5" IDE connectors, and a 44 pin IDE to CF adapter, is there any way I could install DOS/Windows 3.1(1) to a CF card using my Windows 10 PC, then put it in the laptop? The plan I had for getting started on my old PC build was use a USB floppy drive (bought, awaiting delivery) to write disks from my Win 10 PC, or use disk images with a floppy emulator that I have from playing Amigas, neither will work in this case. Ideally I'd like to get the floppy drive working or find a replacement, but I doubt either will be easy!
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