On 5/12/2016 7:26 AM, dpb wrote:
On 05/12/2016 8:43 AM, Don Y wrote:
....

My oldest "PC" is a Compaq Portable 386 (lunchbox) -- from the late 80's.
http://www.thecomputerarchive.com/thearchive/Computers/PC%20portables/Compaq%20Portable%20386.PDF

....

I spent a memorable summer lugging one of those back and forth between Oak
Ridge and Raleigh developing code for online coal elemental S analyzer--we were
using the NCSU NE department's high-intensity neutron source for the
developmental work; the analyzer was a gamma-spec device destined for power
plant emissions monitoring control...

While the laptop belonged to the company was consulting through, I had to add
the '387 coprocessor on my own in order to be able to get a spectrum fit and
peak-stripping computation done in under minutes in order to have any chance
whatever of getting anywhere--they were too cheap to buy a second actual
hardware system and the other developer doing the user-interface commandeered
it 'cuz had to have access to the actual hardware while I did the physics end...

Oh, the memories...

The plasma display is reminiscent of playing Empire on Plato in the early 70's.

I keep the box as its the smallest ISA machine I had so I can still coax
devices that require ISA slots to work in that box. I've had to do some
surgery over the years (e.g., the "CMOS battery" is a proprietary BIG thing
sourced out of Israel, I think; not the sort of thing I need to keep
"OEM". Likewise, the BIOS ROMs don't support big disks (and no "Type 47"
support) so I had to patch the ROM images and burn new ones to support
the ~600MB disk in there.