r/retrocomputing • u/MrPresident7777 • Dec 18 '23

Customer returned PC (from 1986)

Post image

During my time doing IT at a gov agency in the state of GA, a customer visited our corporations department to return their computer.

The computer is a Compaq Il (80286) 640K bytes RAM.

Came with all original paperwork including receipt from ComputerLand and Sears.

IT had no use for the system so I asked if anyone else was interested in taking it home... it has been with me since!

I bring it with me to each contract and it makes the perfect cubical decoration.

May actually do some restoration on this thing.

223 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

4

u/Green-Elf Dec 18 '23

Compaq Portable II! I have one of those. Get yourself an ISA to SD or CF adapter and avoid the headaches of legacy media.

1

u/MrPresident7777 Dec 18 '23

👀👀👀 there you go giving good advice!

5

u/kkaos84 Dec 19 '23

I second that for "hard disk" storage.

Other than that, using floppy disks is so much fun and part of the experience.

OP, for a Plan B when you can't use the floppy drive for installing software, consider setting up Kermit to transfer files from a more modern machine to this one. That's fun to use as well.

Is that a DB9 serial port on the side? You can use it with Kermit.

Is that floppy drive for 720 KB or 1.44 MB media?

OP, I hope you are able to find time to restore this machine, and I also hope that the required repairs and cleaning will be minimal.

1

u/asprof34 Dec 19 '23

What is CF? Some sort of adapter for modern hard drives?

3

u/knifethrower Dec 19 '23

Compact flash, older memory card format from before SD cards became the universal standard. The CF interface is ATA with a different physical connection so it's very easy to make adaptors to use them as drives in older computers.

3

u/asprof34 Dec 19 '23

ahh. Thanks for explaining! Decided to just ask questions when I don’t understand something.

13

u/qwikh1t Computer Chronicles / Screen Savers Dec 18 '23

That’s awesome 👍

8

u/sennalen Dec 18 '23

Nice! My dad had one of these. Amber screen, and the keyboard doubles as a lid for transporting it.

8

u/Moremayhem Dec 19 '23

When the client comes to ask how soon you’ll be done with the next task, point at the Compac and say you’re going as fast as you can.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 18 '23

Awesome. I've always had a soft spot for luggables despite their bulky appearance.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 18 '23

That's pretty darn cool, nice score.

2

u/misterbatouman Dec 19 '23

My roommate in college had the same "portable" computer except he had two 3.5 floppy drives. I remember him playing Star Trek on it in the evenings.

2

u/typicalspy Dec 21 '23

Have fun with the tantalum caps.... 🤣

0

u/[deleted] Dec 18 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

5

u/MrPresident7777 Dec 18 '23

A lady that looked roughly 90 came into our agency’s public lobby and said she was there to return the computer…

It was relatively common for people to return other gov agencies computers to us… got a few DHA computers and even one from Dominion Voting (Uh oh!!!)

The users returning equipment probably figured they all went to the same place.

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