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Compaq Portable 486 screen replacement

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RadRacer203

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I'm thinking of picking up a Portable 486 (not sure if it's color or monochrome), but the screen is dead. It appears to work apart from that but I was wondering if anyone has replaced the screen on theirs successfully and what parts they used, etc. I can't seem to find much of anything on google. Also, just out of curiosity, is the CPU socketed? If it is I might see how far I can go with upgrades
 
Stone said:
If there is nothing on the screen how does it appear to work?
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They have a VGA connector on the video card

There was just a post about replacing the screen, but no details if it was a different type of panel or they managed to get a working one out of China

The fastest stock 486c was 66MHz. I've never tried a 100MHz in one.
 
It's currently a few states away and my friend will be picking it up for me. The seller says nothing comes up on the screen but the hard drive spins up, floppy drive seeks, it beeps, etc. I've seen a couple posts in various places about people looking for a solution but really no details or followups whatsoever.
I have a dx4-100 laying around I'd like to try out in it if the cpu is socketed.
 
I'm on the fence whether I should buy this Portable 486 or not. The seller is asking $160 for it and it makes all the right noises like it's booting but nothing on the screen
 
RadRacer203 said:
I'm on the fence whether I should buy this Portable 486 or not. The seller is asking $160 for it and it makes all the right noises like it's booting but nothing on the screen
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The only 'noise' that you're going to get out of that deal is the 'wha-hoo' from the guy you just bought it from when he gets his hands on that $160. I'd pass unless the thing fully POST's.
 
RadRacer203 said:
I'm on the fence whether I should buy this Portable 486 or not. The seller is asking $160 for it and it makes all the right noises like it's booting but nothing on the screen
Click to expand...

Don't buy any system you're not prepared to spend 20 hours and $100 troubleshooting. There are other portable 486s out there, likely for cheaper.
 
RadRacer203 said:
I'm on the fence whether I should buy this Portable 486 or not. The seller is asking $160 for it and it makes all the right noises like it's booting but nothing on the screen
Click to expand...

Agent Orange said:
The only 'noise' that you're going to get out of that deal is the 'wha-hoo' from the guy you just bought it from when he gets his hands on that $160. I'd pass unless the thing fully POST's.
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Al Kossow said:
They have a VGA connector on the video card.
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Shouldn't be too hard to sort this one out. Hook up a VGA and see what happens.
 
Often a "dead" LCD display is a blown inverter board. Looking closely at the LCD, move it around for several angles, and see if there's a very dim picture. If so, the LCD is working, but the inverter or backlight bulb died. Changing the bulb can be a B-!@#@@! on some displays. Inverters have a fuse and a couple of transistors that can pop.
 
DeltaDon said:
Often a "dead" LCD display is a blown inverter board. Looking closely at the LCD, move it around for several angles, and see if there's a very dim picture. If so, the LCD is working, but the inverter or backlight bulb died. Changing the bulb can be a B-!@#@@! on some displays. Inverters have a fuse and a couple of transistors that can pop.
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Seems like you are way more LCD savvy than I so see if you have an idea about this one. I've got a laptop where the screen has suddenly gone totally negative, color wise. I've run a gimmicky program on it that actually runs the colors in a negative fashion and all the colors look quite normal, this way, although it's too cumbersome for normal use. Do you know of any fix for this short of replacing the screen? The color output is also normal when I connect an external monitor to the laptop. FWIW, this color reversal does not manifest on a clean DOS boot. The screen is black and the characters are white.
 
That sounds like it could be a device driver issue. Is the screen only in reverse once in DOS, but not if you enter the BIOS screen? That would be a good test to see if driver related. Or perhaps there's a driver setting or even a function key to reverse video. Only other thought is that on some old style non-tft LCD's adjusting the contrast too high might make the display look reversed.
 
DeltaDon said:
That sounds like it could be a device driver issue. Is the screen only in reverse once in DOS, but not if you enter the BIOS screen? That would be a good test to see if driver related. Or perhaps there's a driver setting or even a function key to reverse video. Only other thought is that on some old style non-tft LCD's adjusting the contrast too high might make the display look reversed.
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No, I misspoke... I hadn't run that machine in quite some time. Even on a DOS boot and in the BIOS Setup it's reversed. But with an external VGA monitor it's normal in all modes, BIOS, DOS and Windows. So, apparently it the laptop's screen that's at fault.
 
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