Rescued! 1998 Compaq Presario Laptops And An HP Vectra Saved From E-waste

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Retro Hack Shack After Hours

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 32

@ohioterran7374 6 ай бұрын

Looks like some great finds! I would absolutely love to see an EWW trip video!

@johnn0hj 6 ай бұрын

Yep, I'd love some ewaste visit videos.

@antsgamingvideosn2b 6 ай бұрын

Same!

@jamesdye4603 6 ай бұрын

Good reminder that laptops used to have good speakers you could actually hear.

@ristopoho824 6 ай бұрын

Yes please a whole e waste place video, we don't have one like this here and i'm really interested

@Rodville 6 ай бұрын

I had a Compaq 1245 back when it was new, and it is still my favorite laptop. I wish I would have kept it but I sold it for a Dell one I sill have in a closet somewhere.

@MonsterMovieTV 6 ай бұрын

Yeah I want to see your visits to Ewaste.

@thanhmcgriff3387 6 ай бұрын

Love yr Radio Shack sign. So retro!!

@horusfalcon 6 ай бұрын

That Adaptec is quite the find. It should be capable of 32-bit SCSI Wide, which would be useful to anyone supporting HP-UX systems. I used to do that at my old job, using a PowerEdge 2600 to enable me to image and backup the drives from B2600 HP-UX workstations. (There are industrial clients still using HP-UX hardware to this day.) Those old Compaq hinges were entirely too fragile. Battery packs can be split open and rebuilt using 18650 cells, and aftermarket packs may still be available. Dead hard drives can be replaced by a PCMCIA Memory Card, but be selective - later cards may not mount properly. Whoa... that old HP Vectra is nearly a basket case. It looks to have seen sea water at some time in its life. I wouldn't fire that up until after a thorough inspection and cleaning. Please use DeOxit on every cable before trying to unplug them. THis will be an interesting restoration, and you are the guy for the job if anyone is.

@RetroHackShackAfterHours 6 ай бұрын

I would be a little scared to put a lithium battery in here. I was thinking of rebuilding using NIMH.

@Torbjorn.Lindgren 6 ай бұрын

AHA-154x doesn't do Wide, hence the internal 50-pin connector and centronics for external (wide is 16-bit, not 32, and uses a 68-pin connector). But width doesn't really matter, what matters is "bus type", IE whether it's SE vs HVD vs LVD. Both the 154x and 152x cards are all SE (single-ended) which is directly compatible with SE and the newer LVD (low-voltage differential) but would need a converter for HVD (high-voltage differential) or just "differential" as it was know back then (LVD was much later and forced them to rename differntial to HVD). SE/HVD co-existed early on, HVD allowed long extertal cables, I don't know if HP uses HVD but it wouldn't surprise me (SGI loved it and was in a similar niche). This card should talk to any SE or LVD equipment, but if connected to HVD equipment the best case scenario is that nothing works but there's a chance the card will be destroyed (and any other SE/LVD equipment on the card). LOTS of hardware was destroyed from this ill-conceived split, they could have made them safe but no thought was put into that and HVD/differential effectively died before anyone bothered to do so.

@Torbjorn.Lindgren 6 ай бұрын

@@RetroHackShackAfterHours Yeah, the built-in charger is presumably intended for NiMH cells so that sounds much safer.

@horusfalcon 6 ай бұрын

@@Torbjorn.Lindgren Thanks for the info. The B2600s were SE/LVD, and looking at a label from one, they were, indeed, 32-bit UltraWide as you said. The original HP labeled drives were actually Seagate Cheetah 18 GB drives. I was also able to successfully use drives salvaged from an old Compaq Proliant (a 350, maybe?) with some alteration of the image, but they were somewhat slower (10K vs. 15 k?).

@horusfalcon 6 ай бұрын

@@RetroHackShackAfterHours Yeah, probably a good idea unless the adapter used is smart enough to know the difference.

@geezerdiamond 6 ай бұрын

Nice to see a folder for mIRC on that second laptop. I had a lot of fun back in the 90s on IRC using mIRC at University, and AmIRC at home.

@oliverw.douglas285 6 ай бұрын

I think I have a laptop & a desktop like that in my garage, from back in the day. Looks like a weekend project. Thanks for jogging that memory! :)

@matthewspence3251 6 ай бұрын

I love these old Vectra machines, the ES , QS, RS are really solid quality. Youll need a setup floppy disk to get past the bios. Get that battery out of there!

@Torbjorn.Lindgren 6 ай бұрын

AHA-1542C - ISA Bus-master (faster) SCSI card, C means it's somewhat late, they went 154x (no letter), then B, C, CF & CP. And yes, the 2 at the end means it includes a floppy controller (1540 was the non-floppy variant). The card & Adaptec chip is marked with 1542C, but the handwritten text on the BIOS/MCODE chips says 2.10 CF so I suspect a user upgraded it to add some functionality. I didn't know this was possible but the C vs CF cards do look very similar so it might be just firmware differences (not sure what, perhaps "F" meant it added support for Fast SCSI). No idea if you can do the same with the original and B models, but the BIOS/MCODE from the final CP cards might have been incompatible with everything else since these ditched the DIP switches for software configuration. At the time Adaptec dominated the SCSI market with their premium 154x bus-master and their budget 152x non-busmaster cards.

@RetroHackShackAfterHours 6 ай бұрын

Thanks for the info!

@schnasndasn1504 6 ай бұрын

Walkthrough, yes please!!!

@JVHShack 6 ай бұрын

Before you get to restoriung that HP Vectra, invest in some Apple Cider Vinegar (about 2 gallons for a good soak). It's very effective against rusty metal, but it takes a long time (about about a week) to eliminate the rust. At the very least, ACV is non-toxic, cheap, and it shouldn't hurt any pets that encounter it.

@RetroHackShackAfterHours 6 ай бұрын

Why not just regular vinegar?

@JVHShack 6 ай бұрын

@@RetroHackShackAfterHours Apple Cider is a bit stronger.