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Portable III setup disk

slugnoid

New Member
Joined
Mar 3, 2011
Messages
2
Location
Chicago IL
Hello All,

I recently acquired a Compaq Portable III in decent condition. I'm in the process of repairing and refurbishing what needs to be fixed hardware wise (crumbling keyboard cable, general cleaning, capacitor replacement etc.). The machine boots, but asks for the setup disk. I have not been able to track one down and I don't have a spare 5.25" drive to write one. So basically, it's beg or borrow time. I am happy to cover all costs necessary if someone here is able to write one for me. I'd really just like to get this guy up and running again.

Best,

Erik
 
Bumping this thread just to see if there is anyone able to help with the disk.

I've managed to do a full tear down and rebuild of the whole machine. Replaced the battery backed up RAM, replaced the crumbling keyboard cable and gave all components a good wash. The machine is now in beautiful visual condition and still boots... but I still need the setup or Diagnostic disk to move forward.
As far as I understand, it needs to be a 360k 5.25 disk. The file is located on the following page http://oldcomputers.net/compaqiii.html

I'm happy to cover any expenses. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Best,

Erik
 
Hi there

If you can wait, i might be able to help you out. I recently got my hands on a similair luggable computer, the Sharp PC-7200. I've bought a 5.25" drive for my main pc, so i can transfer files to and from the machines. The house is in a state at the moment, as where having the roof retiled. But once i'm back to normal and have have the PC all sorted out. I dont see why i couldn't write you a floppy, if your happy to cover the costs.

I can't give you a time scale mind, possibly looking at a month at least.
 
Bumping this thread just to see if there is anyone able to help with the disk.

I've managed to do a full tear down and rebuild of the whole machine. Replaced the battery backed up RAM, replaced the crumbling keyboard cable and gave all components a good wash. The machine is now in beautiful visual condition and still boots... but I still need the setup or Diagnostic disk to move forward.
As far as I understand, it needs to be a 360k 5.25 disk. The file is located on the following page http://oldcomputers.net/compaqiii.html

I'm happy to cover any expenses. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Best,

Erik
If it boots, couldn't you use it to make your own disk? Lots of info & threads covering how to transfer data, and you'll probably want/need to transfer other stuff some day anyway.

BTW, I scrapped one of these a while back; might have some parts left in case you need something.
 
Portable III has a 1.2mb floppy factory, but can use 3.5" 1.44mb as well. Also has IDE on board, factory HDs were 20mb or 40mb, but can use any larger HD. BIOS has 520mb limit, however with BIOS overlay you can access up to 8.6gb, maybe more depending on OS.

Also you could build a generic boot disk and put gsetup on it and configure the basic bios settings with that, not as full featured as compaq setup, but works in a pinch.
 
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