BH>On Thursday, "David B. Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> typed:
BH> ] I have a Compaq Aero myself. Seen some miles & looks every bit of it.
BH> ] Also had serious problems with the battery packs. Even sent off & got a
BH> ] new one. That stopped working, too.
BH>Being a true SurvPCer, I got mine second hand, for about half of what
BH>it really is worth. (Well, at least a computer shop offered me twice
BH>the amount I spent on it)
Same here, although you might say it was "gently used." Got it from
Computer Renaissance, where they refurbish before they resell. Was in
pretty fair shape when I bought it, fully functional & all.
BH> ] So I simply built a little box out of Radio Shack parts & battery
BH> ] holders & such, with a cigarette lighter socket on it. Plug the cig
BH> ] lighter adapter into that, and into the machine, and I'm up & running.
BH> ] Bit big & clumbsy, but functional. Then I started having problems with
BH> ] the display.
BH>I had problems with the display; the little cable broke. It is in the
BH>indent in the plastic above the F3 and F4 keys. For $35 I bought new
BH>(!) a cable to replace it, and fitted it my self (thus saving $200
BH>labour costs). Working mostly right since then, but need a hinge;
BH>gotta prop it up against a wall or box. But got no money now: just
BH>had to buy textbooks for university and my internet bill just got
BH>here. :(
Cable's fine on mine. The connector where the cable plugs in is where
the problem is. Motherboard got flexed a bit too much, so the solders
where the connector hits the board are flakey. For a long while, if I
jiggled the lid long enough, it'd start working again for a while, then
it quit completely.
I'm confident I could sweat the solder connections and it'd work fine
again, at least for a while. But I was never able to get the board
taken apart that far to actually get to the connections. So...
BH> ] Now I just use it like a compact desktop machine.
BH>So do I mostly. Handy when taking to friend's houses, and I can make
BH>them a virus-free boot disk, etc.
BH>Hey, do you think just putting wires into the correct holes of the
BH>docking socket let me plug an external monitor/keyboard/mouse to it?
BH>I have all these from a 286 that I'm slowly canabalising. I have the
BH>pin-outs in a manual somewhere...
Depends. Might be buffered or something inside the docking thingie.
But it can't be -too- complicated, I don't think. I got the docking box
with the machine when I bought it. Nice thing about buying used,
sometimes, the extras you pick up.
BH>PS: why does your mailer truncate the Subject?
I use an offline mail reader on my Compaq Aero through my BBS on my home
desktop machine. The offline reader uses QWK packets, which have a
rather limited space for subject lines.
There's a way to keep the full subject line, but I have to do it
manually, and I usually forget. Sorry.
* SLMR 2.1a * I doubt that you will Out-Evil our host, Teri! :) = Sincl
--
>> Sysop, American Tune BBS | DISCLAIMER: Hey, I -own- the place!
>> Anyway, my views are sometimes not even my own, much less anyone else's.
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