Modernizing the Compaq Portable III from 1987

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In this [belated] #DOScember 2023 video we take a look at one of my favorite retro computers, the Compaq Portable III! This is a lengthy overview so I hope you enjoy!
🎵 Purchase STARFORCE - Omniversal Oscillations: starforce.bandcamp.com/album/...
🔨 Links to useful things I found for this project:
• Medley DOS Menu System: reimagery.com/fsfd/menu.htm#s...
• Old Silicon restoration blog: www.oldsilicon.com/compaq-por...
• Battery pack replacement project: github.com/skiselev/compaq-po...
• jhhoward's MicroWeb for 8088+ DOS Computers: github.com/jhhoward/MicroWeb
• jhhoward's CGA mod for Wolfenstein 3D: github.com/jhhoward/Wolfenste...
• Silvertron's Bits and Bytes video on restoring the keyboard cable: • Keyboard refurbishing ...
• retrospace Compaq Portable 386 Software Showcase: • Compaq Portable 386 So...
⏱ Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
3:22 A little history
7:02 Compaq Portable III Overview
13:05 Obligatory Music Montage
14:16 Off to a great start (Plasma Problems)
16:21 Repairs, restoration, and modifications
24:10 Boot menu
26:27 Operating Systems (Windows/286)
28:11 Operating Systems (GOES Ensemble 2.0)
33:18 Speaker demo
36:03 Sound Blaster games
42:40 Operating Systems (Windows 3.1)
47:27 Other "Quirks and Features" of the CP3
49:48 Using an external display
52:45 DOS web browsing
56:11 Outtro
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Intro Animation By Ken Gruca Jr - Inquire at kjgruca@gmail.com

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Опубликовано:

24 июл 2024

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Комментарии : 97

@PixelPipes 3 месяца назад

So some of you that watched til the end might have seen a sad farewell message mourning the death of the machine. Well you'll be happy (or indifferent) to know that after some new caps, she lives again! 😄

@philscomputerlab 6 месяцев назад

Nice surprise seeing something retro, well done!

@RWL2012 6 месяцев назад

on a channel that does retro videos?

@kaitlyn__L 6 месяцев назад

@@RWL2012 well, it is 80s retro while the rest is 90s retro... that's the most charitable explanation I can think of ;)

@candle86 5 месяцев назад

@@kaitlyn__Lno most stuff is 2000's

@kaitlyn__L 5 месяцев назад

@@candle86 the Voodoo cards weren’t late 90s? Okay. If you say so

@candle86 5 месяцев назад

@@kaitlyn__L your ability to read is questionable, most stuff he does is from the 2000's, he has a handful of older videos only a handful. Maybe try reading comprehension before you comment?

@ctrlaltrees 6 месяцев назад

That cable coiling trick is really useful to know!

@tarstarkusz 6 месяцев назад

4:53 I bought a Compaq Luggable for school in the early 90s used for $99. It was literally the cheapest DOS computer for sale in Philadelphia. The computer store was in downtown Philadelphia, right in the center city district. I parked like 10 blocks away to get cheaper parking (I was shopping, but I didn't know I was going to buy anything) and so I had to carry that thing for like those 10 blocks. It is both heavy and fragile. The worst combination., The salesman was really cool and he was like, "you're a starving student? I got just what you need" It was loaded with software too, so I didn't have to buy any software.

@AppliedCryogenics 6 месяцев назад

Seeing a DOScember video published in mid January.. that's my kind of RU-vidr. Insta-sub!

@SUCRA 5 месяцев назад

Great work with the montage, the restauration, you needed to be quite resilient to get another machine and finally get things the way you wanted. I love everything about this machine, these luggable systems were something I would dream about while paging PC magazines back in the day. Congrats on another video.

@PixelPipes 5 месяцев назад

Thank you Sucra!

@Colin_Ames 6 месяцев назад

Excellent video. As a field service technician, I lugged a 386 version of this to customer sites. It ran some proprietary software, and was also used to run an EPROM programmer.

@SonOfAdolf 6 месяцев назад

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth haha

@Colin_Ames 6 месяцев назад

@@SonOfAdolf Pretty much 😀

@SonOfAdolf 6 месяцев назад

@@Colin_Ames Haha just joking around bro thanks for being a good sport

@minombredepila1580 6 месяцев назад

Amazing video. Best compaq review and setup I've seen until now. Gave me a couple of ideas for my Portable 386. Subscribed!

@dan3a 6 месяцев назад

2:00 Oh a popped tantalum! Had the same thing happen on the CGA card of my Portable II, but I also had the camera rolling and the shell off so I saw the explosion live 😂

@djpirtu2 6 месяцев назад

I'm in to plasma-stuff too 😎 I have Toshiba T3200, T3200SX and T5200. That T5200 is actually pimped a litte: Ti486SXL2/40 with cache flush circuit, DIY 40pin SIMMs so 12MB RAM, 10GB HDD, modified BIOS with support for the CPU and included XTIDE. ISA-slots are filled with 3COM 509 and Gravis Ultrasound MAX. This thing is mostly used to play tracker music at retrolanparties 🤓 It runs FastDoom quite well too. And all this with plasma-glory...

@PixelPipes 6 месяцев назад

It sounds like a beast!

@djpirtu2 6 месяцев назад

It wont run Crysis but Second Reality instead 😅 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-sFz-ixKPYWI.html

@TechAmbr 6 месяцев назад

Love that plasma display! Wow! Commander Keen looks so good on that! IMO: a 286 is pretty much the minimum for a usable PC experience. I've never been able to get into the older 8086 and 8088 machines; they're just too darn slow. Also, I agree: GEOS on these older PCs is a breath of fresh air. I first discovered it as the "shell" around America Online for DOS back on my 486 SX/33. Also also: You mention it taking some getting used to, but here's how messed up I am: I love the AT keyboard layout so much (also similar: Apple IIe / IIc / IIgs layout) that I remap all of my modern machines to put the Ctrl / Cmd key in the place of Caps Lock. Great video! Love to see a Pixel Pipes vid on my timeline again!

@PixelPipes 6 месяцев назад

Thank you, thank you! Oh wooow yeah I can't imagine using the AT layout full-time, but I will admit I was surprised how quickly I was able to adapt.

@techdistractions 6 месяцев назад

Good to see a new clip from you 🎉 loved the portable 3 back in the day. Would prop up the unit on the family coffee table and have the keyboard on my lap. Spent hours programming and writing notes… and maybe a bit of sim city/leaderboard golf

@caicai491 6 месяцев назад

It is so nice to see your return.

@sn1000k 6 месяцев назад

Killer montage! I'm new to yr channel. Thanks for sharing this awesome machine!

@margyoan97 6 месяцев назад

Happy new year! Good to see you still kicking about!

@KitelessRex 6 месяцев назад

I have 2x of these Portable 3's. One of them has vertical lines on it but otherwise boots and works fine. I was thinking I could reflow the solder, but it sounds like it might be the chips themselves. The other one went BANG when being tested by a friend. I think it was a bad tant, I wasn't there so not sure. I've not had time to go into them yet. Both need new keyboard cables. I was DREADING figuring out how to replace the spinning rust of a HDD inside, so I was very pleased to see that you can use a cheapo SD/IDE. Absolutely great video, so glad you are still out there in the hobby and making content too! Cheers!

@racinggameschannel 6 месяцев назад

Nice to see you back from your hiatus, love your winxp gpu vids and enjoy see you spread out your content!

@silvestronsbitsandbytes 6 месяцев назад

Great vid, I definitely love seeing these beauties get a new lease on life. Also really love your menu system and the very involved demo. Glad my keyboard repair vid could be of assistance, too!

@PixelPipes 6 месяцев назад

Yeah man your series was great! Helped a lot. Now the machine stopped posting so I may have to rewatch some of your videos to see what's what. It just has a blinking cursor and won't count the RAM.

@Carstuff111 6 месяцев назад

Happy late DOScember! And as always, it is awesome to see a new video!

@shawnstillman736 6 месяцев назад

More often than not the driver chips are still fine on gas plasmas. What ive found its the connections around the screen itself you need to heat them up and that seems to fix them.

@10WA 6 месяцев назад

Glad your back!

@jwoody8815 6 месяцев назад

Long time no see, and your one of my favorite tech youtubers, not to mention Mr Phil. Also in your games menu I love the Wargames referance. "Shall we play a game?" Do i get a prize? lol j/k

@PixelPipes 6 месяцев назад

You are indeed the first to notice! Thank you for the kind words as well :)

@marksmith9566 6 месяцев назад

We used one of these with a CD-ROM on the back.

@kirishima638 5 месяцев назад

Glorious machine!!!

@icedmuons 3 месяца назад

Oh nooo!!! Did it died??? I'm in the process of rebuilding one. I gave mine away in 2005 or so and had regrets soon after. ShuttleTech had an external ~500MB hard drive back in the 90s that connected via the parallel port and was powered by a Y-splitter for the keyboard cord. Back in 1999 I had Windows 3.11 on mine and was writing my thesis on it using Word. I publish regularly now and am hoping to get my new one recovered so I can get back to writing again with it. I agree.. it's a glorious system and very fun to work on - when it's working!!

@anasevi9456 6 месяцев назад

the longer you are gone, the bigger chunk to chew you come back with. Thank you regardless for the videos.

@paulstubbs7678 6 месяцев назад

I scored one of these years ago, trouble was it sucked heaps of power and all but acts as a hair dryer, heat wise. So I passed it off to a fellow worker wanting to use it as a terminal on a PDP11 or something similar.

@chubbyadler3276 6 месяцев назад

That tantalum is a simple fix, so it may be worth passing it on. I would like to round up a Portable 3 as well.

@drumboy02 6 месяцев назад

happy to see a new video!

@yopachi 6 месяцев назад

My childhood Tandy had a 3 button mouse. Well done! Retro show and tell #doscember all year

@StompySan 6 месяцев назад

Glad to see new content. BTW, Halt and Catch Fire really is good TV and worth a watch.

@danielsuguwa746 6 месяцев назад

Wow, you're back! Happy new year 2024, that's a pretty chunk length of the video to be honest! ❤

@edgarwalk5637 6 месяцев назад

It's funny how the brain sees the red on the playing cards in GEOS, and blue on the headers in Windows. Excellent upgrades!

@ChristopherBushman 6 месяцев назад

Always excited for Pixel Pipes. And a DOS video?! Oh my

@Arivia1 6 месяцев назад

For 3D printers: many libraries have a makerlab you can access to get help with 3d printing for cost of materials or close to it. Might be worth looking into if you're near a city and want to get a better drive cage going.

@ghosthuntergr 6 месяцев назад

Very nice config!

@BCProgramming 6 месяцев назад

DOS 6.22 can format up to 2GB Partitions (limit of FAT-16) and handle drives up to 8GB (limit of Interrupt 0x13). Most likely the limits you encountered were the result of the system's BIOS having the ~500MB Limitation, which is typically the result of trying to save space in things like the CMOS RAM by only using 4 bits for the heads and thus limiting the number of heads at a maximum of 16. (1024 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors per track, 512 byte sectors = 504MiB. (528MB if using decimal).

@PixelPipes 6 месяцев назад

Probably

@itismezed 6 месяцев назад

I love to see a Pixel Pipes video in my feed!

@Alexlfm 6 месяцев назад

I’ve had great success with Mercari when it comes to vintage machines (though admittedly not as much lately, especially after they raised their shipping rates multiple times). Got a 5150 for $70 shipped with a model M, a nice P3 machine, a TAM (which I actually bought from their UI guy) and a bunch of Apple II stuff all from there at great prices. The shipping rates when the app first appeared in the US were incredibly good. They had to been losing their shirt subsidizing them.

@rogert151 6 месяцев назад

i used to have a portable that made the same squeaky noises, i had to replace all of the orange tantalums on the motherboard to get it going, then few weeks later another one blew inside the psu near a heat sink with a scary cloud of smoke, i replaced it also and that made the machine work again

@cjhawk67 6 месяцев назад

What I did with my Portable 3 is I just left it set to Type 17 formatted a 530mb conner I had laying around in another machine installed dos and games on it and plopped it into my portable 3 and it boots and is able to use the full formatted size of the drive.

@PixelPipes 6 месяцев назад

You're lucky to have a working Conner drive

@kaitlyn__L 6 месяцев назад

Not only was the original the most-compatible clone at the time, it was more-compatible than some of IBM's own sequel machines! (Or so said the Compaq founders in a documentary about the company.)

@loganjorgensen 6 месяцев назад

Fun run through, a very nice machine for the era if you could afford it heh. Some really nice and easy to use interface software, like a DOS front end heh. Shame about the display problems, even if the chips had some kind of modern replacement option the screen itself will eventually quit. I do think they're worth running as long as you are able to since I don't think we'll see gas plasma ever again. Yeah so bright, sharp, and that lack of ghosting was awesome compared to most LCDs bitd.😁 If I had to guess about the retro future of these units, likely modern LCD swaps like most handheld game consoles have had to do. Quite the sound capability, that's what I remember from the earliest laptops, little to no sound hardware at all. I do find the retroactive matters shown pretty fun, so many rocks unturned like Wolf3D dropping a lot of video card support that people lovingly resurrect. Big fan of the Keen conversions to Composite Artifact Color capability, something I think could have been exploited more heavily in the 80s.🙂

@sebastian19745 6 месяцев назад

Dos 6.22 can even format up to 2G FAT 16 partition. And it can access up to 2 partitions (one primary and one extended with many logical volumes, the total sum of all of them being max 8G). Natively. Dos 5 the same. That only if the BIOS is able to recognize the capacity of the HDD, as some old BIOS had a 526M limit. To overcome that limitation, can use a Disk Manager software (from Ontrack, Seagate) that install a Dynamic Disk Overlay, to patch the BIOS at boot, in the MBR.

@GigAHerZ64 5 месяцев назад

20:48 - DOS 6.22 *can* format natively bigger drives/partitions than about 500MB. It's the bios limiting the size to around 500MHz. DOS 6.22 is limited by FAT16, which is 2GB *per partition* limitation. You can have 8GB drive with 4x2GB partitions with DOS 6.22, if you wish.

@PixelPipes 5 месяцев назад

This does not appear to be the case with the SD card to IDE adapter that I use in most of my pre-XP systems. 500MB is the most DOS 6.22 wants to recognize.

@GigAHerZ64 5 месяцев назад

@@PixelPipes The 500MB thing is purely on bios and the way how C-H-S numbers are held in memory for addressing blocks of disk space. Only thing close to DOS being a limit is some older MS-DOS 3 or 2, that had 32MB limit. I daily run my 386DX40 with MR-BIOS and 4GB CF card running MS-DOS 6.22. Because of 2GB partition limit on FAT16, i have 2 partitions, of course.

@Legend4444 6 месяцев назад

The line in the display problem may just be ribbon cable issues. Some can be fixed by just reflowing the solder on the cable ends, it may be worth a shot. This issue is common on gameboys with the fix almost always being this.

@tarstarkusz 6 месяцев назад

While the 5150 is certainly more historically important than the Tandy 1000, the Tandy is a much better early DOS PC to have in your collection. It doesn't have the problem of newer PCs that won't boot the disks or are too fast and need a slowdown utility which are a royal pain. The Tandy 1000, at least most of the models will play CGA 8088 games just fine. They also allow you to play TGA games, though I do think most games that support TGA will also support EGA and pretty much all VGA cards have backwards compatibility with EGA. Though you will still miss out on the sound and have the speed problems.

@kaitlyn__L 6 месяцев назад

Yeah, I definitely think 4 shades of grey (or 4 shades of neon red-orange) CGA looks better than the colourful kind. Composite CGA, or hacky high-colour CGA, is a different matter. But the base colours are eye-searing, no matter which way you use them. (Except for Wolfenstein's swapping to greys and almost entirely using grey, I suppose. Does that count as basic-ass hacky high-colour CGA?) That's a nice boot menu as well.

@readycheddar 6 месяцев назад

How come everyone finds all these amazing things at garage sales but when I go all they have is old clothes, dishes, and furniture?

@ViperSan57 6 месяцев назад

Greetz from the UK.Loved your video.I have 2 of these a 386 and a 286 both mechanically restored but cant help being envious that you have the memory expansion module in your 286 (those are rare)..sadly mine is just base 640k but has been modified to use a CF card as a hard drive...and the floppy changed from 1.2 to 1.44.I do have a backpack expansion unit..which I can use on either...any chance I could get a image of your 512mb menu driven HD to experiment with ?

@PixelPipes 6 месяцев назад

I was actually thinking about posting a pinned comment with an image of the drive (maybe sans games for legal reasons), so that might happen.

@ViperSan57 6 месяцев назад

@@PixelPipes btw if you search vogons for topic 46&t=62482 there is useful info about using a flashed XTIDE bios directly in the 2 unused mainboard sockets to integrate a modified XTIDE bios in the compaq...I have successfully done this.

@channelkerr 5 месяцев назад

Hey man what's the animation playing at the end? Also I really gotta try Microweb on my T5200 😀

@PixelPipes 5 месяцев назад

It is the complete Steamboat Willie short as an XDV file. You will need Jim Leonard's XDC player program. github.com/MobyGamer/XDC And the XDV file here. archive.org/details/steamboat_willie_xdc

@EirikrTinkerTries 2 месяца назад

Nice! I got really ADHD’d out during this and lost focus. Do you have the full 6MB RAM in this machine? ISA graphics, Ethernet would be interesting for sure for use with Microweb. Now just need a RU-vid video downloader and converter to CGA with MIDI audio haha.

@danielktdoranie 6 месяцев назад

Would it be possible to replace the gas plasma display with some sort of LCD display?

@CavemanPerson 6 месяцев назад

Are the gas plasma displays on early portable machines essentially just monochrome versions of color plasma TVs? Reason I ask is, nearly everyone seems to call the monochrome displays _gas_ plasma, whilst color TVs are simply called plasma displays. Is there any difference in how they work (other than the RGB subpixels present in a color display)?

@PixelPipes 6 месяцев назад

Gas plasmas are just plasma displays with indigestion. I actually don't know the technical differences between them and newer plasmas. Would be interesting to find out!

@joetheman74 6 месяцев назад

The Geoworks thing just goes to show that what is the best thing doesn't always become the winner. The standard. Geoworks was obviously so far superior to Windows in features and design of the GUI yet it died and we got stuck with Microshaft. Thank god for Linux because I couldn't imagine having to use Windows every day. It's 2024 and Windows still doesn't even have a unified interface. I have a Win11 machine for games that don't run on Linux (which isn't many nowadays) and I'm in dark mode. I'm still dumbfounded by the fact that some programs still open with a bright white window background no matter the setting. And you can only customize the accent colors and not the entire UI. you only get to choose light or dark. Even Windows 9x allowed more customization. I miss the good old days where in Win98 and ME you could even design your own custom window backgrounds and interface elements with HTML for each individual window. Now windows is just spyware.

@michaelwood9866 6 месяцев назад

i have 6 of the hardcards from 20mb up to 80mb for the hardcard 2

@michaelwood9866 6 месяцев назад

i have 2 of the portable 1's one has a hard drive whereas the other has 2 5 1/4th floppy drives.....one didnt power on and the other did what yours did with a pop.

@paulbatterbury1886 6 месяцев назад

Ywhats next an Amiga video, pre and post AGA maybe???

@marksmith9566 6 месяцев назад

Kaypro CPM machines predated this and were the model for the luggable.

@highpath4776 5 месяцев назад

I have one and have used it , it is not as functional for me nowdays as a "normal" laptop due to screen size and so on

@oidpolar6302 6 месяцев назад

Why don't you replace with the modern TFT?

@PixelPipes 6 месяцев назад

I'd only do that as a last resort. The orange glow of the screen is a big part of the vintage appeal for me.

@50shadesofbeige88 4 месяца назад

Those compaq "portables" are fickle beasts. I have one but it doesn't work.

@PixelPipes 4 месяца назад

Yep. There's a lot that goes wrong on them.

@thecrow3461 6 месяцев назад

Geoworks was really far ahead of its time

@James_T_Quirk 6 месяцев назад

Yes Wolf3d on My 286 Toshiba Plasma Laptop is very Similar, slower but clear, SHARP maybe needs a repair I did own 1 of those, sorry I sold it .. If you want the Game to TEST a 286/386 = ANCIENT ART OF WAR

@animalmuppetmonster664 6 месяцев назад

Not chance of dual monitor ??

@sumplais 6 месяцев назад

Wait....that last bit.....after demonstrating all those games and apps and operating systems....after using in for almost every day while making this video.....are you telling us it died?

@PixelPipes 6 месяцев назад

Yep just suddenly stopped posting. I have the tear the whole thing down and maybe do a full recap. But god knows what it could be