thoger@solan.unit.no (Terje Th|gersen) (03/15/91)
Hi!
I've been offered an IBM portable PC for a nominal sum and I need your
help in deciding if worth trying to turn this baby into a usable
machine..
Anybody know if this is just a PC-2 (it's got a 256k motherboard) in a
strange case? In other words, is the thing "IBM-PC compatible", or
did IBM put in some strange doo-dads like on the Convertible / Jr?
I'm pretty sure the BIOS was dated in -81, and I've always heard that
October -82 was the D-day for the extensible BIOS. Am I wrong? Can I
add extra BIOS-equipped devices?
Does anybody know if I make the thing run a Hard-disk? (I have a
suitable (11MB :-)) drive in an external cabinet lying around here..)
How about a 1.2 MB drive? (I've got a spare high-density
floppy-controller, too :-)) Upgrade to DOS ver => 3.2, add
driver.sys and then ?
About that so-called monitor.. It claimed to be a CGA when i tried
Nortons SI on it. It had a serious problem displaying reverse and
some high intensity "colors" (almost unreadable) Has IBM done some
fancy things with the display-system, or is it what it looked like, a
regular CGA adapter connected internally to that monitor? Can I throw
out the CGA adapter, put in a EGA (which i have lying around..), and
connect this to a mono monitor (yup, got one of those, too..) and run
mono-EGA / Herc emulation?
About the switches.. A cursory glance revealed only one bank of
DIP-switches. Are the switch-settings the same as for a XT?
There's a "Tall Tree" memory card installed in the thing. This card
carries 768k RAM in a full-length design, with a ser / par adapter + a
clock on a daughter-card. Anybody have one of these? The RAM is
*not* "hardwired" in, you can select how much of the card you want to
put in the DOS-area by a loading a driver in config.sys (jboot?). The
rest appears to be available as a RAM-disk. I'm not sure i like the
thought of having the some of the RAM loaded through a driver like
this. Does anybody know if a PC supports additional memory on the bus,
like an AT? Can this card be hardwired to give 640k DOS memory?
I think that's about it.. I'll be grateful for any help you can
offer..
Regards,
-Terje
--
____________________________________________________________________________
thoger@solan.unit.no | Institute of Physical Chemistry
THOGER AT NORUNIT.BITNET | Div. of Computer Assisted Instrumental Analysis
| Norwegian Institute of Technology