# Cleaning Out The Ham Shack



## N7OQ (Jun 10, 2006)

Well while looking for a bracket I need for my HF radio I decited to clean up the shack a little. While cleaning it I came across a old laptop I had for a real long time but have not used it in a real long time. I took it out of the case and opened it up and wondered how I ever though was a top of the line laptop







It has like a 10" maybe 8" black and white screen, the processor is a 486dx100 and guess what the Windows version is 3.11. The screen is black but the VGA output is color









It loads to dos and a lot of the programs are Dos. it has Xtgold on it I remember when I though this was a great file utility. It has no USB ports, or a network card doesn't even have a PCMCIA slot, but it does have a modem (dial up type) I don't know how big the Hard drive is but when it booted it showed the RAM as 640 base and something like 7150 extended memory. I thnk it is called a Compuadd computer. The Battery is shot and started to leak so I got rid of it, had to run on home power. It has a huge wall wart 24volts at 2.5 amps linear power supply. You could use this thing as a weapon









Had to clean out some cobwebs out of my head and try to remember Dos commends.







I really need to throw this thing away...but it is really hard to to throw something away that still works







Well sorta works, you have to go into BIOS every time you apply power after the power cord is removed and set the hard drive to type 24 because the BIOS battery is dead.


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## Bill H (Nov 25, 2006)

N7OQ said:


> I don't know how big the Hard drive is but when it booted it showed the RAM as 640 base and something like 7150 extended memory.


WOW.... Thats a whopping 8 MEG of RAM you have there.......

...... My computer is jealous now.......


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## redmonaz (Jul 24, 2006)

Some times its fun to get into the way back machine and see what you can remember.

We were upgrading some test equipment about 8 years ago. I think we were upgrading to windows 95 from 3.11. The guy doing it was a recent graduate and kept getting conflict errors, when I asked if I could help he snapped back he could do it. I gave him a few more hours before I asked if he had gone into dos to remove any directories. He said no, I don't think he new what dos was. When I got to the dos screen and a C: prompt he got a very worried look. (First time he had seen such a thing.) I used the only 4 or 5 commands I could remember to clean up the hard drive. He started asking what those were and how did I learn them? When I finished windows 95 worked with out a hitch. I remember walking away thinking, "Damn I'm old!" But it has been a fun ride!


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## Sluggo54 (Jun 15, 2005)

My TI-99/4 is carefully stashed - with a whopping 16k...

Sluggo


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## dougdogs (Jul 31, 2004)

I wouldn't throw it away. you can get something for it on E-Bay.

There are a lot of PLC programs and ustilities that just don't work on windows (95 or higher)

Lots of people (including NASA) work very hard at keeping old stuff running


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## biga (Apr 17, 2006)

I have been in the IT industry for 13 years now. I was a freshmen in college, and was lucky enough to start just before Windows 95 came out so I got to learn all the good DOS commands, and became an expert on Novell Netware (I even have a current CNE certification if anyone knows what that is anymore). I keep my DOS skills up just so I can mess with people. I will often have someone who "knows how to work on a computer" that only calls me when the have really messed something up, but they never seem to know how it got so messed up. These people usually like to watch over my shoulder and offer advice, so I just open a full screen DOS window and proceed to work on the problem in DOS until they get frustrated and walk away.









Then again, some things still work better in DOS than windows. Try copying some files in windows and then copy the same group of files in a full screen DOS window. You will be amazed at how much faster it is.

I also agree that you can sell it. I have a couple friends that program scanners and radios for firemen/policemen. They have to use old computers because the radios only connect to serial ports, and the software does not run well on NT/W2K/XP.


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## Calvin&Hobbes (May 24, 2006)

I love my TRS 80-II... it works flawlessly. I've been on line with all of you folks using it! My favorite game is "star blaster". The space ship was.... <*> and you manuvered it by the arrow keys.


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## N7OQ (Jun 10, 2006)

Calvin&Hobbes said:


> I love my TRS 80-II... it works flawlessly. I've been on line with all of you folks using it! My favorite game is "star blaster". The space ship was.... <*> and you manuvered it by the arrow keys.


Oh man that it to funny, My first computer was a TRS-80 model 1 level II, and I had no software but the guy I bought it from gave me some printouts of programs to run on it and star blaster was the first one I entered. It was about 20 pages of basic code. I had never programed a computer in my life so I started to type in in. took me a couple of weeks to get it all typed in and saved then it took me a month or more to get it to work. One little thing like a missed period or comma or a colon and a semi-colon makes a big difference. I learned a lot about basic in that 2 months.


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## dougdogs (Jul 31, 2004)

Calvin&Hobbes said:


> I love my TRS 80-II... it works flawlessly. I've been on line with all of you folks using it! My favorite game is "star blaster". The space ship was.... <*> and you manuvered it by the arrow keys.


that's not old, I have a functioning Sinclair ZX80 downstairs (with the 64K memory module add on!)


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## Sluggo54 (Jun 15, 2005)

N7OQ said:


> Oh man that it to funny, My first computer was a TRS-80 model 1 level II, and I had no software but the guy I bought it from gave me some printouts of programs to run on it and star blaster was the first one I entered. It was about 20 pages of basic code. I had never programed a computer in my life so I started to type in in. took me a couple of weeks to get it all typed in and saved then it took me a month or more to get it to work. One little thing like a missed period or comma or a colon and a semi-colon makes a big difference. I learned a lot about basic in that 2 months.


The main thing I learned about basic: It isn't.

Sluggo


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## CanadaCruizin (Jul 3, 2004)

My parents still have the Atari 400 dad bought in the early 80's.










It had the cassette program loader and I remember typing "CLOAD" to input games from the tape. If the volume was too high or low, I'd have to start over from the beginning. But you wouldn't know that until you tried to run the program, or received an error at the end of the tape. And the keyboard would "chirp" everytime a key was pressed. It has the "Frogger" game on cartridge. I have frogger on my cell phone. And I still can't get past the 2nd level. LOL


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## W4DRR (May 17, 2005)

CanadaCruizin said:


> My parents still have the Atari 400 dad bought in the early 80's.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I have the big brother to that, the 800, safely packed away. Last time I had it out, it still worked.
Nothin' like a 6502 running at a blazing 1.79MHz!

Bob


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