PCjs Machines

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COMPAQ Machines

PCjs currently supports the following COMPAQ machines:

Here is a roughly chronological list of COMPAQ machines from the 1980s, which PCjs hopes to eventually support:

Regarding The COMPAQ Name

As best I can tell, COMPAQ preferred to print its company name in all-caps, so that’s my practice as well.

However, it seems that sometime between the release of COMPAQ MS-DOS 3.10 and COMPAQ MS-DOS 3.31, there may have been a shift in policy. Both products still called themselves The COMPAQ Personal Computer MS-DOS, but in 3.31, the copyright string changed to Compaq Computer Corp.

Their all-caps practice also extended to product names (e.g., COMPAQ DESKPRO), at least in their marketing literature. Contemporary news stories, however, tended to lower-case the product name (eg, COMPAQ Deskpro). I’ve decided to split the difference and use mixed-case where it seems appropriate (e.g., COMPAQ DeskPro).

The rest of this page provides brief highlights (and PCjs resources where available) for each of the machines listed above.

COMPAQ Portable

PCjs now has ROM Dumps (Rev B and Rev C).

Reviewed in Byte Magazine, Jan 1983. Reprinted here.

Also see Wikipedia.

COMPAQ Plus

The COMPAQ Plus was essentially an “XT” version of the COMPAQ Portable; ie, a COMPAQ Portable with a 10Mb hard disk.

Reviewed in Byte Magazine, Jul 1984, pp. 247-251: “The Compaq Plus”.

COMPAQ DeskPro

Introduced June 28, 1984. Reviewed in Byte Magazine, May 1985, pp. 260-267. For use with MS-DOS 2.11.

Model Price CPU Options
Model 1 $2495 4.77-7.14Mhz 8086 128Kb RAM, 1 FDD
Model 2 $2995 4.77-7.14Mhz 8086 256Kb RAM, 2 FDD
Model 3 $4995 4.77-7.14Mhz 8086 256Kb RAM, 1 FDD, 10Mb HDD
Model 4 $7195 4.77-7.14Mhz 8086 640Kb RAM, 1 FDD, 10Mb HDD, 10Mb Tape Drive
       

COMPAQ DeskPro 286

Announced on April 30, 1985 at Houston’s Wyndham Hotel, along with the COMPAQ Portable 286.

Reviewed in InfoWorld, May 20, 1985: “Compaq Edges Past AT Speed and Memory: New Products Use Intel 80286 Processor For 30 Percent Speed Boost”.

Updated to 12Mhz in 1987. From InfoWorld, June 1987: “Compaq Brings 12-Mhz Machine to 286 Market”

COMPAQ Portable 286

Announced on April 30, 1985 at Houston’s Wyndham Hotel, along with the COMPAQ DeskPro 286.

Model Price CPU Options
    8Mhz 80286 Up to 2.6Mb RAM, 1.2Mb FDD, 20Mb HDD, 10Mb Tape Drive
       

See this COMPAQ Advertisement.

On July 8, 1985, the Los Angeles Times reported:

It’s not cheap and it’s not for everyone. Equipped as described, the portable lists for $10,378 and contains about $3,000 worth of extra RAM memory that cannot be utilized by any application software programs now on the market. (It can be used to simulate a disk drive to speed up programs, however.)

A standard Compaq Deskpro 286 with 512 kilobytes of RAM memory, a 30-megabyte hard disk and a monitor is priced at $6,254, compared to IBM’s similarly equipped enhanced PC AT that offers only a 20-megabyte hard disk. The Portable 286 with 512K of memory and 20-megabyte hard disk lists for $6,299.

COMPAQ Portable II

The COMPAQ Portable II (“slimmed-down version of the Portable 286”, as described in Byte Magazine, Oct 1986) was released on February 20, 1986. For use with MS-DOS 3.10.

Model Price CPU Options
Model 1 $3499 6-8Mhz 80286 256Kb RAM, 1 FDD
Model 2 $3599 6-8Mhz 80286 256Kb RAM, 2 FDD
Model 3 $4799 6-8Mhz 80286 640Kb RAM, 1 FDD, 10Mb HDD
Model 4 $4999 6-8Mhz 80286 640Kb RAM, 1 FDD, 20Mb HDD
       

Also see Wikipedia.

COMPAQ DeskPro 386

Released in late 1986.

PCjs has detailed information about the DeskPro 386 ROMs and system boards, along with a number of DeskPro 386 Machine Configurations.

PCjs also has some hard-to-find COMPAQ Reference Manuals, such as the COMPAQ DeskPro 386/25 Technical Reference Guide (Volume I).

COMPAQ Portable III

The PCjs Project now has a ROM Dump (REV K, 1987-01-29).

Reportedly intended to be an 80386-based machine, the Portable III was first released in 1987 as a 12Mhz 80286-based system.

Model Price CPU Options
  $5000+ 12Mhz 80286 640Kb RAM, 1 FDD, 20-40Mb HDD
       

COMPAQ Portable 386

[TBD]

COMPAQ 386/20e

Released in late 1988. For use with MS-DOS 3.31.

COMPAQ SLT Series

From Wikipedia: “The COMPAQ SLT/286 debuted in October 1988, being the first battery-powered laptop to support an internal hard disk drive and a VGA compatible LCD screen. It weighed 14 lbs.”

COMPAQ LTE Series

First model in 1989.

Also see Wikipedia.

COMPAQ LTE 286

ROM Dump (REV B.1, 1989-09-07).

Machine Configurations

Various models, such as the Model 40.

COMPAQ LTE 386

[TBD]

[GitHub Source]