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Compaq LTE Lite 4/25C

Timo W.

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 25, 2014
Messages
2,138
Location
Germany
A couple of months ago, I got a quite banged up Compaq LTE Lite 4/25C. It was dirty, had loose parts, the hinges were stiff, and the floppy didn't work either due to a broken belt. So I originally wanted to keep it just for parts, as I had another LTE Lite/25 that needed repairs, too. But since the 4/25C was the more powerful of the two, I couldn't resist and started bringing it back to life. Took me ages to completely disassemble it, clean and fix every single part, fix the floppy drive (boiling the belt did the trick), make the hinges move smooth again, re-install the system software etc.

Now it almost look brand-new - and it's working, of course. ;) Only the hinged lid on the rear is missing, just like with my other LTE Lite (if someone has one spare, let me know).

As for the hardware:
i80486SL (with FPU), running at 25 MHz
12 MB RAM
120 MB IDE hard disk
8.4" TFT display

It's running MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 with Office 4.2 installed.
 

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Too bad I made no pictures of how it looked originally. The first owner was apparently a bank assistant (found traces on that on the hdd before wiping all data), so you can imagine that this little thing was heavily used also for field work.
 
About how long did you boil the belt for? I have a couple of these laptops and all of them have bad floppy drive belts.
 
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Three to five minutes. You'll actually notice when the belt is "done", as it will stop twisting then.
 
I used to have this setup along with the docking station, keyboard, mouse, and Compaq monitor. Very sad it is gone now. It was a nice setup. :(
 
Wow, you had me with the boiling of the belt! So, you say the belt was broken but you managed to repair it – I didn’t know it was possible.
I’m grabbing all the half height 26 pin ZIF FDD I can get my hands on – like a Squirrel preparing for the retrocomputational winter ;-)
 
Mine works, but broken floppy drive belt.

Anyone ever replace the belt? It seems to be something like .5mm x 2mm x 180ish mm? Not sure if it stretched after it broke.
 
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If anyone is following this thread I took the drive apart to install a new belt and found some extra length wrapped around the drive motor, so total length is estimated around 237mm for a diam of about 75mm ish (rubber probably stretched and measuring multiple small pieces gives plenty of error).

So back to finding another belt.
 
I know this thread is a few years old now, but I found a solution to this. The brittle drive belt failing is a common fault. In fact, I have not seen an LTE Lite without this fault. The drive in the 4/25 and 4/33 is made by Citizen. There are a very many drives which are almost the same, mechanically speaking, and many are available on eBay. To identify them you need to look at the back of the drive. The platter motor is on the back right and the head motor is to the left of that. As long as they have those motors in the same place, there's a 90% chance they're the same drive.
 
About how long did you boil the belt for? I have a couple of these laptops and all of them have bad floppy drive belts.

I have had two of these belts made by a specialist. They're arriving on Tuesday 22nd January. I'll let you know how how good they are.
 
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