As readers of my blog will know, I have a bit of a soft spot for XT class machines with the Intel 8088 processor and similar processors. One of my first retro computers was the Compaq Portable from 1983. My friends at Free Geek know this about me, and so I'll occasionally get a machine from them that needs help. I recently got a Toshiba 3100 machine from them that matched up well with some machines that I helped my friend John with, a couple of those Toshiba machines appeared in this video on his channel.
Anyway, the latest acquisition was an Epson Equity LT machine from 1988. This make it a "later" XT machine, and instead of a gas plasma display, this has an early monochrome TFT display.
I tried quite hard to get a hard drive going in this machine. After reading this article about the somewhat proprietary XT Laptop based Hard Drive interface, I even went as far as pulling the Hard Disk out of the Toshiba 3100 which has a bad screen and trying to transplant it into the Epson Equity LT, but I was not able to make this work. The Epson does spin up the disk, so it worked better than the totally dead drive that I started with, but I was not able to get past a drive error. I looked for information about a low-level formatting the drive, but that is either not possible or just not documented.
However, I have found what I think may be a better solution in the long run because it's a more generic solution that will apply to other XT class laptops or luggables as well. I installed a GoTek floppy drive emulator with the Flash Floppy firmware into this machine. Once the Hard Drive is removed, it's easy to move the original "A" drive over to the left side of the machine and use it as the "B" drive, installing the GoTek as the "A" drive. Using another computer, I setup a new low-profile USB Flash Drive with 720K Disk Images on it. One of these disk images has DOS 5.0 and another has DOS 3.3. Most of the disk images on the floppy have games on them. These are early DOS games that run in CGA graphics mode, like Alley Cat, Burger Time, Avoid the Noid, and titles like this. I also created a boot message on the DOS 5 (default) boot drive that lists out which programs are stored on which floppy drive so you don't need a list of Floppy Numbers if you are using a basic GoTek like this one...
A couple of other "longevity" upgrades included installing a new 3.6 Volt Lithium battery for the realtime clock and permanently removing the main battery that was installed in the machine. This machine will just be used for demonstrations with power and it's one less thing to worry about. As an added bonus with the battery, hard drive, and drive controller removed, the machine is alot lighter!
With the low profile USB drive installed, I plan to leave this machine setup and ready to go. Now I just need to find an old laptop bag that will work for this monster!
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