Instead of posting about any of the lovely gifts I received for Christmas, I am going to write about a piece of garbage I found on the street
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The only experience I ever had with a luiggable was a compaq portable pc III (on sidekick, google the bugger), the power suppy had blown up, taking the system board with it. The spiffy thing with it was that it was the last full on luggable, iirc, that compac ever made: mono VGA LCD panel, the board was either a 386 or 486 processor, and was otherise very upgradeable.
I'd love to have one of those with a 'modern' lcd and system in it. Done right, it'd be an awesome machine to lug around to LAN parties, or for having a full size machine without all the hassles of lugging around a couple pieces of hardware.
I'd like to wish that we had forgotten about that monster. Who ended up with it, anyhow?
I'm thinking that if I had one of those aforementioned chassis, I know enough now about making things fit and whatnot that I could probably retrofit a modern machine into a portable III chassis.
... And of course eBay delivers, although I'm rethinking that idea...
If anything, I know a couple dudes that could possibly *build* a custom designed case to house everything for me for probably not much more then it'd cost otherwise.
With enough tools, you can probably modify the thing to take just about anything. Mount a video iPod in it, even; the CRT already takes a monochrome video signal.
If you want a motherboard that'll fit in the case as-is, the XT form factor might get in your way. I think your best chance is if it's actually an AT machine. I think that form factor lasted into the Pentium era.
I can probably find entire motherboards that will fit in the volumetric space of one of the full-length ISA cards currently installed in it. It'll probably need some custom mounting hardware, but that's a given.
Maybe if I have room left over I will stuff a bootleg NES clone in there, too.
I actually owned one of those. In 1990 I traded someone a Soundblaster card for it and it was my main computer for several years. I have genuinely fond memories of buying and installing 256K RAM chips for it, of popping a Radio Shack VGA card into it, of special ordering the 360KB 5 1/4" version of Norton Utilities for it, buying a modem and discovering BBSs with it (as well as Genie and Prodigy), and putting a 40MB MFM drive in it. When I got a better computer I used the Compaq for years to run a dial-up BBS. When it finally died, I cut the cord off the keyboard and gave it to my then-toddler to use as a toy.
I LOVE your idea to modernize it, and it WILL be the Coolest File Server Ever!
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I'd love to have one of those with a 'modern' lcd and system in it. Done right, it'd be an awesome machine to lug around to LAN parties, or for having a full size machine without all the hassles of lugging around a couple pieces of hardware.
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Reply
I'm thinking that if I had one of those aforementioned chassis, I know enough now about making things fit and whatnot that I could probably retrofit a modern machine into a portable III chassis.
Reply
If anything, I know a couple dudes that could possibly *build* a custom designed case to house everything for me for probably not much more then it'd cost otherwise.
Reply
If you want a motherboard that'll fit in the case as-is, the XT form factor might get in your way. I think your best chance is if it's actually an AT machine. I think that form factor lasted into the Pentium era.
Reply
Maybe if I have room left over I will stuff a bootleg NES clone in there, too.
Reply
Reply
I LOVE your idea to modernize it, and it WILL be the Coolest File Server Ever!
Reply
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