Military Laptop Part 3 : It is alive !

Part 3 of my DRS LXI Military laptop series ... and we made some good progress with it .... video glitches are now solved and we can finally install the most hardened and secure OS on it ..... or we can install Windows 98 SE.
Check out what the issue was , how we fixed it, and what our future plans with this machine are.
#Military #Laptop #Repair

[@hmbrz]

the integrated yamaha chip makes this very appealing for retro gaming! and nice job getting it to this stage already!

[@necro_ware]

Isn't it suspicious to see Chinese Windows 98 on a NATO field computer? :)

[@DingleFlop]

@Nicholas McGee Change the language? This is from 1998, friend. ASCII versions of windows are not compatibile/convertible to the Chinese character set and vice versa

[@brendanheaney7372]

I could be wrong due to the bluriness, but this seems like traditional(taiwan) more than Simplified(Mainland) Chinese.

[@MSK_MKT]

Haha These Chinese apps really ignited my nostalgia! These are the apps we use in ~2003 to play music and movies etc. So this computer must have been exported to China as electronics junk (after decommissioning), used by someone for a while, and then went back to the global retro collection market! What an adventure!

[@MSK_MKT]

Brendan Heaney No these are Simplified Chinese.

[@MSK_MKT]

Nicholas McGee Yeah this could be a looking glass into ~2000s Chinese internet...

[@sysghost]

Most likely the compact flash is worn out at the start as those types of cards don't have any wear-levelling technologies implemented. Filesystems such as FAT, FAT32 and NTFS tend to wear out these drives really fast as they rewrite some sectors *a lot* even when idle. One can circumvent this by creating an empty small partition without formatting it at the start and not touch it. That will be a placeholder for the worn-out start of the flash drive. Better use a proper partitioning tool from a Linux live CD, as those are much better at that task than DOS/Windows is. Best is, of course, to replace the compact flash card, as the circumvention mentioned only delays the inevitable total demise.

[@xheralt]

Or, go with a lightweight (XFCE-based) Linux?

[@sysghost]

@@xheralt Would be perfect if one would use the computer for something. But I guess the point here is to keep the computer as "vanilla", or as original as possible. That includes the softwares.

[@EgonOlsen71]

Actually, CF cards in these systems are far less a hack than SD cards. The CF card has an IDE interface already. All the adapter does is to convert the pinout. It's much less overhead than using an SD card on an IDE bus via some adapter. That said, my experience with them hasn't been that great either. They work fine in my Amiga but I didn't have much luck with them in old PCs.

[@mima85]

What? Don't you know that the PWEEEEEHNTSCHLNM LLX was a super-secret CPU aimed especially at the military market? :-D

[@Lollllllz]

200 light cycles

[@user2C47]

@Bob Ross What's the point of the extra hardware in the IDE controller to send high voltage pulses to the drive if the data is still sitting on the drive after it finishes? Wouldn't it be better to simply overwrite the contents of the drive with garbage?

[@laylarodriguez1710]

Danke für dein Durchhaltevermögen!!! Es ist zwar “nur ein KZbin Video“ aber für mich nach einem harten Tag irgendwie doch sehr erfreulich mit zu erleben das daß Projekt zu einem positiven Ende kommt. Freue mich unheimlich auf weiter Videos!! Danke dafür!!!!!

[@RetroSpector78]

Vielen Dank für die freundlichen Worte

[@edameow]

@@RetroSpector78 WTF you can speak German???

[@RetroSpector78]

Ragetime Google Translate can :)

[@edameow]

@@RetroSpector78 ah ok

[@eagle20fox2]

Hallo Layla, den Computer habe ich von ebay.de gekauft und RetroSpector78 weiter verschenkt. Ich habe noch einen zu Hause. Die zwei haben mir nur 200 Euro gekostet. Der Vorbesitzer kann nicht schaffen, die wieder zu beleben.

[@Fr3nky666]

Damn nice. Glad to see all those ram chips needed was a bit of fresh solder. I have a feeling that Motorola chip could be a 68000 variant, who knows. Glad you got the thing working properly!

[@HuntersMoon78]

Good to see you got the old tank working. Also you said mesh correctly.

[@Eremon1]

I love military hardware and electronics. Great video, glad you got the video memory sorted. Cheers.

[@Ashkimbo]

Man, watching you go through all the errors with Windows 98 installing was giving me flashbacks to my unsuccessful attempts at installing Archlinux (which I finally got to work after many failures). Good to see I'm not the only one with these kinds of struggles.

[@RetroSpector78]

Yeah ... I really thought this would the easiest 60 minutes of content production for this series but ended up taking up an entire morning.

[@spwim]

it should run command & conquer for sure :')

[@Lee_Adamson_OCF]

That battery probably has regular NiCd cells inside of it. You can probably make your own. If you charge up a big capacitor with a bench supply, you can use it to spot weld tabs onto batteries and create a block of them.

[@steviejanssen]

Groeten uit Zemst! Leuk dat er nog mensen dezelfde hobby hebben!

[@SudosFTW]

The display on the front has a timer and counts overall system hours. Consider replacing the PSU fan with a newer Delta 12v that doesn't run that fast and makes way less noise, or lube the bearing in the current one. that thing shouldn't be screaming like that. Aside from that, fairly nice laptop. You can get away with just wrapping the CF adapter really well in Kapton tape and leaving it loose in the bay, no need to do anything silly, but you can also mount it with double-sided adhesive rubber or something along those lines as well without any harm done. I stopped using CF cards as most of them don't do UDMA of any kind; you're better off using an mSATA to SATA or mSATA to IDE adapter and any size mSATA card to get better performance with some garbage collection instead of wearing out CF cards all the time. Do you *need* the BAMS card installed? it's putting more stress on the PSU just sitting there doing nothing, and there's no need for it anymore. You'd be better off using the spot for the BAMS connector for something else like a proper ethernet card on the outside of the case. Likewise, there's also no need to use such an old 802.11b card with that machine. You can get 802.11g cards that support 98 just fine, and honestly, if you want to, you can also get a Linksys WPC300N v1 and install Windows 2000 and get working N support. The metal case is probably not going to be the best for range, but it's still an option to consider, especially if you move up to an mSATA to IDE adapter.

[@RetroSpector78]

Thx a lot for the elaborate comment ... will take them into account.

[@leoleonard1580]

Compact flash cards were not designed to run so many write / read cycles as needed by Windows 95 / 98 when swap file / virtual memory is used. Industrial rated compact flash cards are a bit more durable, but SD / Micro SD are much more stable than CF. Had a couple die on me running Win 95/98.

[@eagle20fox2]

Congratulations!! Removing battery is definitely a good idea. I did the same.

[@DingleFlop]

No way? You have one of these? I'm jealous! This seems like a beautiful machine!

[@eagle20fox2]

Actually I got two of these, one is shown here by RetroSpector78. :D They were from ebay: www.ebay.de/itm/DRS-LXI-TM219-Outdoor-Military-Militar-Laptop-Drucker-u-GFK-Kiste-ohne-Festpl/322952889274?hash=item4b317e03ba:g:U4kAAOSwdUJcE5Wf

[@richard802]

I also ordered one from that German shop. That shipping fee was insane, and heavy too! 100euro, and still had to collect it at the post office ..

[@eagle20fox2]

@@richard802 Did you get it running?

[@richard802]

Hanwen I had it sent home while I was abroad. I’m returning home next week and look forward to try it out. I heard it’s a common issue that the bios battery is a special kind that needs to be ordered and replaced. I’m thinking of putting in a new modern main board and turn it into a daily work horse.

[@edwinguerraavendano1019]

This laptop is a beast!!!! I think it may be the badass sleeper laptop anyone can imagine... Greetings and blessings from Venezuela!!!

[@eddiehimself]

I'd say mesh is correct. Or you could say grill if you were referring to it as a component rather than the actual material itself, but eh.

[@conradpankoff5616]

Mesh, grill, grate - any of them would work. Hooray words!

[@TrevorMoore_]

I'd love to see someone take the shell from a laptop like this, and turn it into an awesome modern rig.

[@dcfuksurmom]

its big enough to fit a modern board (maybe not full size but definitely mini atx or micro atx), and 1024x768 is technically 720p if im not mistaken, he would just need a controller for the lcd, assuming its not feeding vga directly to it (could be a controller built in to the screen, not common but possible). this thing would make a badass sleeper pc.

[@Dan-TechAndMusic]

Nice Yamaha soundchip, those OPL3-SAx chips tend to be good performers. I have a Philips soundcard using one of those.

[@ErKtheErK]

@9:20 As a hobbyist, mistakes happen. @10:17 As a data hoarder. NOOOOOO. There was no backup. Oh well. Thanks for the videos. I've really enjoyed this machine's series.

9:22 In situations like that, you can just change the PATH variable with "SET PATH=C:\WINOLD\COMMAND;C:\;C:\SOMETHING"

[@RetroSpector78]

True ... but winold was a temporary thing and cd'ing into the thing was quicker. It was the analysis going on my head as to why the move command stopped working that took a long time :)

[@starspacepresents959]

Amazing looking machine. Very cool. Now you just need a bunker and Fallout 1 and 2. Some classic arcade might be good for the track ball. Missle Command! Also Centipede and Marble Madness. Thanks for the look. Look forward to the next.

[@leonardoantonio8756]

Awesome, I have always thought those machines were UNIX workstations too

[@eformance]

I noticed that the character corruption is a low bit error on the data bus of the RAM chip. The chargen ROM address lines are driven from the contents of video memory. The low bit toggles between 32 (space) and 33 (exclamation), and that explains the L vs M and D vs E error. It also explains the color background problem, as the low bit is toggling between 0 and 1. It would seem the lowest data bit was being forced to 1 except when you pushed on the RAM chip, suggesting there is a mild pullup on those lines.

[@eagle20fox2]

You must be a very hardcore EE guy who can give such a precise analysis.

[@eformance]

@@eagle20fox2 I just did a video on making a custom character ROM for a Hercules Graphics Card, so I'm very familiar with the character generation portion of the pipeline and what would cause the visible corruption.

[@RetroSpector78]

Excellent analysis ! Really insightful.

[@eagle20fox2]

@@RetroSpector78 This guy EFormance can fix everything, not only computer stuff but also trucks, tractors, diesel engines, air compressors, CNC ...

[@nneeerrrd]

Unfortunately, that SD card will wear out even sooner than a CF card. Add to this that SD cards have serial interface contrary to parallel in CF and you'll get terrible access times with random read and write.

[@RetroSpector78]

CF card is broken I think. Was the only quick alternative I had ... Couple of months ago tried installing another pentium with a 16gb CF Card. Was also a big mess (corrupt files, files disappearing). The whole thing felt really unstable .... should dive into the subject some more and make a video on it :)

[@nneeerrrd]

@@RetroSpector78 I'm talking about fresh CF vs. news SD. Your see, CF is basically an IDE (PATA) with different mechanical connector. So you can source cheap passive CF2IDE adapter for €10. Just make sure you use brand name CF card like Transcend or SanDisk. I'd happily watch that video you mentioned :)

[@Narayan_1996]

I am looking forward for the next episode! O/

[@charlesdorval394]

Wonderful! Glad you got it working! Quick question, in the BIOS, the Special Feature Setup, is it actually something special for this military machine or just the usual bios stuff ?

[@RetroSpector78]

No specific military setup ... the usual bios stuff

[@Desolator-fz5em]

Imagine playing Red Alert 2 on this machine. "Kirov reporting".

[@RetroSpector78]

You'll be able to see it (and hear it) in part 4 hopefully :)

[@Desolator-fz5em]

@@RetroSpector78 Nice sir! Lookin' forward to that.

[@justinjones8744]

Really enjoyed this video and what an awesome piece of kit i have a couple of itronix rugged laptops i want to get working but wish i had one of these bad boys i love the look of it glad you fixed the issues with it hopefully you do an update with the sound and other mods great channel just subscribed will check out some of your other videos thanks

[@GeoStreber]

CF cards have a firmware setting to be either recognized as a mobile card or as a HDD. Windows doesn't like to install on it if it's in mobile mode. It's possible you might have had to flash its firmware.

[@jindrichvasicek7226]

I can imagine a prank with it. Red Alert II installation and their “Warning, Military software detected!”

[@ML-gx9rp]

Great video,this machine will be awesome when it's fully repaired.

[@tiporari]

Cool machine and a simple fix in the end. I wonder what the performance penalty of using a cheap SD card is on a machine like this. More modern machines struggle because of the interface speed limitations. Maybe it doesn't matter with such old hardware.

[@tom_123]

You didn’t want to check out what interesting stuff was on the original copy of Windows? You could have changed the system language on the original version by following the steps that correspond to an English version (if that makes sense!)

[@r2daw158]

Great work! :) 14:44 Oh, the OPL-3! What a nostalgic bit, I was using sound card with it back in late 90-s. Good audio. 17:57 Yellow to blue and vise versa? Well, it's a speaker anyway.... 20:05 Shouldn't be a problem as it have 32-bit CardBus. But as someone mentioned in comments - metal shielded case - so you need to connect an external antenna somehow...

[@TheotanyaSama]

you were lucky to be able to repair it easily.

[@JakeJoris]

You can make a ni-mh battery by soldering couple cells together. You need total voltage of 24v. One ni-mh cell is 1.2v.

[@TheDefpom]

Always start with recapping the power supply.

[@electronash]

That video RAM issue looked like a classic address pin problem. You can tell by the fact the colours were usually OK, but some of the pixels in the EPA logo had kind of swapped position on each line, so probably a dry solder joint on only one or two address pins. Looks like it might be using SRAM chips instead of DRAM, too, since the chips have quite a few pins. (I'd also expect the graphics problems to be a lot worse if DRAM had a bad solder joint on an address pin, as DRAM uses multiplexed Row/Column addressing.) Always interesting to see massive laptops like this, and just how much harder they had to work back then to cram an entire PC into a smaller case. ;)

[@electronash]

I stand corrected. lol Probably is DRAM after all. (PDF page 4.) www.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheets_pdf/F/6/5/5/F65550B.shtml

[@nticompass]

Did you make a backup of the CompactFlash card before messing with it?

[@RetroSpector78]

Off course :) but besides some games / drives and the chinese setup files there was nothing special on there ... don't think the Belgian military used CF cards with a Chinese operating system, so this was aftermarket :)

[@CRG]

Still laughing at PDNTHTL, LLX. CF cards can be a pain in the backside, certainly in Amiga land you need to be very careful how they are setup or you'll get all sorts of problems plus the fact that some cards just don't work. A modern solution I've been meaning to try is an ide to msata converter with a nice modern msata drive. Anyway... fantastic laptop, a real oddity for your collection. Perfect machine for a bit of classic Command and Conquer.

[@RetroSpector78]

Yes... that’s the plan ! Looking forward to some classic gaming and taking it to the local computer club when corona settles ...

[@Chriva]

That Motorola chip belongs to a legendary series :) I believe this one still has the old 68000 ISA while most of the later versions had a CPU32 core. (basically a 68020 with som extra goodies and some other stuff removed that you don't really need on embedded systems. This family was used in everything from engine management systems to network switches. There's also a offshoot family called dragonball that was used in several Palm and Handspring devices.

[@SockyNoob]

The ultimate computer to play Shadow President on.

[@6581punk]

Compact-flash is basically IDE. So should work fine. But the brand of card is important I find.

[@LazyBunnyKiera]

great that the cpu isn't soldered, maybe you can upgrade it! not sure if it's socket 7 or if it can do super socket 7, the pentium mmx line tops off at the 233mhz.. so a tiny boost. But the amd k6 line has the k6 300mhz, and k6-2 333mhz and 366mhz which both use socket 7. But if you're going super socket 7 then there's a k6-2 550mhz. I have zero clue what kind of upgradability you can do with that board, not sure what the bios, board or heatsink will handle, but with modern thermal pastes and maybe even a newer heatsink you may be able to upgrade it a fair bit. I also wonder how much ram you can get into it. 256MB? 512? i'm so excited! Also they sell 2.5" IDE SSDs Which are easilly fast enough to totally saturate the IDE lines. So it's probably ATA-100, so the SSD would totally max it out. :D The compact flash cards and especially SD cards have low IOPS, so not ideal for an OS, but an SSD, even one designed for IDE would have lots of IOPS.

[@RetroSpector78]

Will try to check in the next video.

[@ThomasCaraccio]

I had a water damaged 486 version of this which I tore down for parts and I own a pentium equipped one now, which had an intermittent issue with total video failure and failing to post. I had to replace the ram and video chip. Neither has that interesting ISA card though! Also they both had a thermal pad between the cpu and case, with no vents. interesting to see yours has a fan!

[@nickwallette6201]

The CF may be fine, you just need to rewrite the MBR with the CHS translation you’re using in the BIOS. Boot from a floppy with the version you want to use - Win98 would support LBA and FAT32, which is important. Then run: fdisk /mbr format c: sys c: That should fix non physical issues with the CF and boot sector code. :-)

[@RetroSpector78]

Think I did that at least 5 times that morning :)

[@STX_12]

Good work, thank you!) That microSD card you use in this laptop?

[@daw7563]

Some SD cards prefer to be formatted with a dedicated SD card formatting tool.

[@Gameplayer55055]

Connect it to military stateliness! Or add USB interfaces.

[@Michael500ca]

That would be awesome and funny at a LAN party.

[@douro20]

The 68302 is a microcontroller specifically designed for bus interface duty. It's a bit odd finding one in a PC application.

[@ultrametric9317]

A tip, you need to run the Intel chipset setup to get the best performance from the hardware. Recently Intel have taken down a large chunk of their old downloads so good luck finding it. That will probably fix your APM yellow mark.

[@NoNamenoonehere]

late to comment ,but has to be said,doom really needed to be played on this machine

[@TheVexCortex]

You probably want to replace the SD card, they don't like all the activity an OS brings, and wear out fairly quick some times. I've worn out several on raspberry pi and clones.

[@86smoke]

Glad to see that thing going. Next part: playing Prince of Persia nad firing some anti-tank rounds out of it.

[@KrissBartlett]

very good soldering but a big soldering iron but still good i found the sd to ide converters work good i dont like the flash cards much

[@RetroSpector78]

Will pass on your compliments to the electronics wizard.

[@ismail3404]

konten ente gak ada duanya, nice job

[@mcbain7392]

That's a rare video chip, I had to go to the wiki because I never heard of it.

[@lepompier132]

About the Compact Flash card. Now you had a chinese version of windows on it, this tells me that it was some counterfit CF card. The internal of that card was working differently. Now the best proof I can give you, is your CF to SD interface worked fine to finaly install Win98. That orginal CF card probably had a specific driver that worked only with the chinese version of W98 or the Win98 was design for this type of CF card.

[@RetroSpector78]

Not sure .... lots of people report stability issues with CF cards / SD cards. Think I just got unlucky with this one. The computer setup originally came with a faulty IDE extension cable and when hooked up to the IDE->CF adapter, the CF card became really hot ... Perhaps it got damaged back then I don't know. But have had issues with these things in the past.

[@MSK_MKT]

It is a common misconception that everything with Chinese printed on it is counterfeit :) CF is just IDE with a different name, so nothing special at all.

[@kilrahvp]

I have a PC from that era that won't work right with a 8GB or 4GB CF, it sees them right and I can install 98 but it will never boot it afterwards. It works great with a 1GB one, but that's too small to play with 😕 Also bought a CF to MicroSD but that just doesn't work at all, surprised it worked for you

[@RetroSpector78]

Think you really need to luck out with the correct motherboard / bios / ide adapter / CF card combo

[@richardharding760]

Your videos are brilliant.

[@771racing]

That display on the front near the floppy drive I believe is an hour meter showing how long the machine has been running in total?

[@woldemunster9244]

Holy shit! "Why would Windows need to restart when changing resolution" . Every time i ask that same question. What about Windows 2000, was it the last real Windows?

[@Basomga]

Did you back up the bad compact card? If so, i wonder what was in it, if anything at all.

[@CameronVarley]

Your English is really good, where are you from?

[@DoctorDos0016]

This is the first time I've ever seen Scandisk actually report something.

[@RetroSpector78]

Because you were always quick to press exist or skip ? :)

[@macshune]

Thanks for posting this! Any idea where the CMOS battery is? It died on my LXI and I can't find it :(

[@thomasvlaskampiii6850]

I'm going to assume, from your comment about the word mesh, which was correct by the way, English is not your first language. May I ask what your first language is?

[@RetroSpector78]

It’s Dutch.

[@thomasvlaskampiii6850]

@@RetroSpector78 Ah, the language of my forefathers. It's a shame I don't speak it, though

[@MinorLG]

mesh is perfectly fine to use for that. the other option would be grating or grill.

[@4krist]

NiCd batteries is really heavy to kill it. You should try to charge it and discharge few times, i guess it's come back to live. NiCd like by stored discharged, so.... try it.

[@coleeau]

3:40 you got like the perfect word there. by the way what is your native language?

[@RetroSpector78]

It's Dutch.

[@DanielOliveiraMenelkir]

Some pcmcia wireless cards have external connectors for antennas, maybe you should try searching for one and reuse the external modem connectors for an external antenna? Or even better, also exchanging the external modem connectors for external antennas connectors.

[@Laluan]

You just formatted a Chinese windows version with all kinds of stuff on it, too bad.. I was wondering what was on it..

[@rixille]

0:31 It's quite simple, the graphics card suffered a stroke.

[@gyanendramajhi]

Love your videos btw 🤩🥰🥰🥰

[@nocultist7050]

Such a beauty...

[@bamdadkhan]

oh man.. when you have to do reinstalls in a row, just use SETUP /IS : ))

[@RetroSpector78]

Forgot all of these little details :) and must have installed thousands back in the day ... a lot with /is :)

[@thelovertunisia]

I think the radio board acts as a kind of radio modem for teleprinter over radio.

[@kenshindoman9757]

This laptop or a Panasonic Toughbook...which is more rugged?

[@rembramlastname3631]

14:00 Scan lines. Is that the external monitor? I thought it was my screen for a sec.

[@asf130thecompany7]

Maybe the compact flash drive was custom made for military? What I mean its setup won't accept other than military contractors version of Windows... That might give your issues too but dunno :/

[@Conenion]

What camera are you using?

8:40 I would have chosen Windows NT 4.0 Workstation for a machine like that and would rather prefer a dual boot for DOS gaming than Windows 9x problems and crashes

[@dcfuksurmom]

it would probably run like shit, but i would like to see him try windows xp lol. i believe the ram meets the minimum requirements, cpu may be too old though. worth a shot lol.

[@podlinux]

Why would you not insert the CF card to a different computer and format the card?

[@vladimir.zhyliaiev]

When will be part 4 available?

[@rossknowles5608]

I blame an area 51 emp burst. either that or you're just about to connect a rogue military AI to the internet. lol

[@marcosassis0]

Wait, you didn't backed up the original Chinese Windows 98??? Oo

[@RoyHess666]

3 years late but at 2:00 you can see black lines and a couple seconds later they're gone at 2:22 nobody noticed that?

[@heavenlystories]

Now add a big red button with a "Launch Nuclear" printed on it

[@foley2k2]

For a retro game on this hardware, try Mechwarrior 2.

[@dykodesigns]

Odd that is has a chinese version of windows on it. A few months ago I tried install windows XP on a compact flash card, but it wouldn’t work. 95 and 98 install just fine on a CF card using the IDE to CF adapter in my Pentium 2 system . Also got a Sata to CF adapter for a pentium 4 system, but not much luck with that one.

[@RetroSpector78]

Also had mixed results ... perhaps I am missing something or you just need some luck with the correct setup (computer / ide adapter / CF card)

[@petr56321313]

I know this CF problem. It is some compatibility issue related to DMA with CF.

[@Jamesits]

I'm curious why this computer came with a Windows 98 in simplified Chinese and some Chineses software installed

[@RetroSpector78]

Original owner had chinese roots ... win98 is a good OS for a pentium 200mmx.

[@Jamesits]

@@RetroSpector78 Thanks for the explanation! That 超级解霸3000 really made me nostalgic.

[@serpent213]

What happened to part 4…? 😀

[@Mr._Sandman]

5:58 that appears to be Socket 7, just without the ZIF mechanism.

[@RedShift5]

You should test if it runs crysis

[@RetroSpector78]

Will do that when I turn it into a sleeper :)

[@exil3dlivecom]

I wonder if this could run Crysis at Ultra settings

[@Match451]

If possible, I think it'd be awesome if you upgraded the CPU to a 233Mhz Pentium.

[@eagle20fox2]

It has already a 200MHz Pentium MMX.