Vintage Original Compaq Portable suitcase PC, powers on, no display, no keyboard

Description: Here is a great parts machine for someone rebuilding one of the true classics of vintage computing: the original Compaq Portable, which was the very first model ever sold by Compaq Computer Corporation, back in 1983. My first PC was one of these, purchased used in 1989, and I still own it. The computer upgrade/repair shop I owned in the 1990s worked on these regularly, so I am old enough to know all the jokes about them. Henny Youngman could have said, "I just flew in from the coast, and boy are my arms tired. I had to lug a Compaq Portable through the airport. Yes, it still weighs 28 pounds and measures 19.4" wide x 15.4" deep x 8.5" tall without extending the bottom feet. This is one of the cleanest examples I have purchased this century. It still has all the original torx screws. There is only one area with broken plastic: a corner shown in my last picture. Unfortunately it came to me without a keyboard. I have not tried to repair it or even troubleshoot it by exchanging any chips. Most Compaq sewing machine portables have a 63W power supply which failed years ago. This one still powers on and sounds normal. Unfortunately, the system gives no display on the internal 9" green CRT. The two 360K floppy drives are the originals, but the system does not POST, so I don't know if they read or not. There are still two free ISA slots available. Two of them are filled with standard cards for this model. One has Compaq's CGA graphics card for an external monitor, which also drives the internal screen to MDA text or CGA graphics. The second card has a parallel port on back and an internal floppy controller for the two drives. The motherboard has the maximum of 256KB of RAM installed, but an AST SixPak Plus in another slot has 54 chips which max out the total RAM to 640KB. The AST SixPak Plus also adds a clock/calendar and a DB25 serial port. I welcome questions from interested buyers. Local pickup in zip code 60438 is free. If you can not come here, I will package the item securely without any handling charge, but with ample free packaging materials. Shipping charges are calculated by eBay with no handling fee.

Price: 150 USD

Location: Lansing, Illinois

End Time: 2024-11-15T03:25:00.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD