exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

So I found a little 386SX laptop branded 'Arche' on the "Vintage computers for sale UK" FB page and it was local to me. I thought I'd go and have a look and after a bit of haggling picked up this:


It comes apart surprisingly easily :)


Aside from the slight screen issue, which I'm not terribly bothered about, it's got a few problems.

1. The battery is a steaming pile of poop, and is now in the bin, but I expected that, but corrosion is minimal and cleaned up nicely.
2. The keyboard ribbon has no continuity one end to the other. I can plug in my little Cherry keyboard for now until I sort that out, so no biggie. It could really do with a much longer ribbon, so that's ok.
3. The Dallas RTC is deader than a dead thing that's really dead, so I can't set anything. I need to see if I can either get a replacement or dig the top out of the old one and fit in a battery.
4. The FDD seeks, but doesn't spin disks. It's an odd little drive for sure and uses a belt, which has stretched (Surprise surprise). The heads do seek though, so I think it's probably fixable.
5. The Connor HDD in it is done for. The seal around the edge has just evaporated, and you can see inside the drive. I have sealed it for now with Kapton tape, but I think it's probably toast, but is a standard laptop PATA interface, so finding a replacement should be relatively easy.

Although it's a bit of a laundry list, it should all be fixable :) Would make a nice little terminal and came with 2 decent bags and all the original software (DOS 4.01) on both 3 1/2" and 5 1/4" inch disks.

Should be a fun little doer upper.

Well, very annoying, the drive belt I ordered arrived, but I've obviously miscalculated because it's too big by about 10cm!!!

I guess that happens when you have an original belt thats both snapped and stretched. Smaller one is on order, I might go and take a Dremel to the Dallas next to see if I can expose the battery contacts hook up an external battery and get it going again..

I've found a few HDD's too that I can try in place of the one with the melty seal!!

Keyboard ribbon is on order too.

One thing this has made me realise is that the Amstrad NC200 I have that has a faulty FDD, also has an FDD with a belt drive, so I need to go and take a look at that as I think the belt has gone in that too. Perhaps my wrong size belt will work there...

OK, so a bit of Dallas archeology today:


Here is the battery dug out and ready to remove:


And here it is out:


I'll put a battery holder in the old battery compartment since the Dallas has a VGA board directly over it so room is limited, and I want the battery to be easily accessible for changing. In addition I won't be building a new battery pack so there is plenty of room there.

Hopefully a battery is all that I need as otherwise I need to find another Dallas or Dallas replacement. More later :)

OK, so the Dallas dig worked great and I now have a CR2032 battery holder fitted:


And the CMOS settings are now being retained properly :)


One other interesting thing is that this machine has SIPP sockets for upgrades, so I think I'll have to order some pin headers and make my own:


One upside of sorting the CMOS battery is that I have been able to see if the HDD works. It doesn't, the vaporised seal has clearly ended the drive, so I'll have to find something in my parts box. Once I get the new belt for the FDD I should be able to test that too, then I can take a look at installing an OS from the original disks and take a look at the lines on the display.

I like progress :)

It's a Conner, no wonder it doesn't work. Even if the seals hadn't gone the head arm would have been stuck to the bumper.

Oh, and it looks like you can upgrade the memory with SIPP modules... tricky... maybe replace with normal sockets?

stephen_usher wrote: 15 Sep 2024 21:13 It's a Conner, no wonder it doesn't work. Even if the seals hadn't gone the head arm would have been stuck to the bumper.

Oh, and it looks like you can upgrade the memory with SIPP modules... tricky... maybe replace with normal sockets?

I have some 1MB SIMMs I might be able to to convert to SIPPs, so that might go OK.

As for the Connor, yeah I have to agree, it's toast.

Hmmm.. those are 36 pin SIPPS, not 30 pin

stephen_usher wrote: 15 Sep 2024 22:21 Hmmm.. those are 36 pin SIPPS, not 30 pin

They're actually 30 if you count them, not sure why it says 36 there.

Ah, I didn’t bother counting. 🙂

stephen_usher wrote: 16 Sep 2024 06:36 Ah, I didn’t bother counting. 🙂

Here's a better pic:


That 36 has turned into a 30 :)

Not convinced theres room for sockets, so I'll see about making my own SIPPs.