Compaq LTE Elite 4/50E
| Project Compaq LTE 4/50E | |
|---|---|
| |
| I found a 1994 laptop, what can it still do? | |
| Status | In progress |
| Contact | Peetz0r |
| Last Update | 2018-03-24 |
I found this old laptop and I'm figuring out what to do with it. Fun fact: this laptop is almost exactly as old I am.
Status when I found it
It had the (presumably) original harddrive still present and working (after 23 years!). On it was Windows 3.x with lots of Compaq bloatware and personal data of the previous owner. I decided top keep this as-is, because the original software/drivers/etc is hard to find/replace but I did not peek around very much because of privacy reasons. The battery was very much dead, the floppy drive did not work, and the bottom RAM cover was missing, but it did work just fine. A service manual was easy to find online: Media:Compaq LTE Elite service manual.pdf (2.6 MB, 387 pages).
Specs
- 486 DX2 50 MHz
- 8 MB ram (4MB onboard + 4MB on a proprietary expansion card)
- 250 MB harddisk
- 9,5" 640x480 monochrome TFT display
- 2-button PS/2 trackball
- PC speaker
- 2 empty PCMCIA slots
- 3,5" floppy drive (broken)
- 12V 2Ah NiMH battery (dead)
- no real soundcard
- no network hardware of any kind
Storage
The first thing I did was take out the original harddrive and go replace it with something else. I went to Aliexpress and got myself a IDE-CF adapter and a 2GB CF card. It could not boot from the card. I borrowed some more cards from another Revspacer and found out that cards up to 1Gb work but larger cards do not. But since the original disk was 250 MB, I decided that 256MB would be enough. I ordered a "industrial" 256MB card and it has been working just fine so far. The original harddrive sits in a aluminium caddy, which is easily removable. That's great, since this is the only way to move files from/to this machine I'll have to use this rather often.
Floppy drive
The floppy drive does not work. It does make some noises but the disk never spins. The rubber belt inside was very much disintegrating, but replacing the belt did not result in a working drive yet. But even if it did, I have no other devices anywhere with a floppy drive anyway. WONTFIX. By the way, the drive is a Citizen W1D.
Display
The monochrome screen is surprisingly good. The contrast is great, the resolution is... Very Good Anyway. And there is no ghosting at all. I have seen early 90's laptops before where you could draw shapes by moving the mouse. Not this one. There is only one thing missing: color. But it's okay, there is a VGA port on the back, and there is plenty of color in there.
Sound
There is only a PC speaker inside. But it's a very loud one. Fortunately we get to change the volume trough Fn keys. It even has a graphical overlay on top of textmode MS-DOS, without any drivers!
But I want more! I did but two parallel port soundcards: a OPL2LPT (AdLib clone) and a CVX4 (Covox Speech Thing clone). Here is a YouTube video demonstrating how that looks. Fun fact, that laptop in that video is the high-end model of the same series as this one!
The OPL2LPT works perfectly fine, but I haven't had much luck with the CVX4 yet. Needs more testing...