Compaq Contura 430C Laptop

I get a call at work one afternoon. It's one of our contractors asking me if I wanted his old laptop. It seems that the thing was dead. Whenever one pushed the power button, the screen flashed, the battery meter went on, and that was it. It didn't do anything else. I told him that it was probably the system board that crapped out on him and he said that's what the tech he talked to on the phone told him as well. I said I'd be happy to take it off his hands, because I would.

It was in surprisingly good cosmetic shape, but, true to his word, the thing just wouldn't boot. I put it in my project bin and figured I'd get to it someday. It's a funny thing how some projects get in your head and stay there. Shortly after he gives me this laptop, I score another one for an extremely reasonable price. They said that one was broken, too, but you really can't trust an 18 year old with his fly down to be really clued in. The old laptop booted to a diskette and that's all I needed.

I got the other one running, and then, with my appetite for laptops thoroughly whetted, I turned to the project of getting this one up and running. It really wasn't all that hard. I searched the net and then EBAY, and of course, I found what I needed on EBAY. I bid on a "parts laptop" that the seller assured me functioned, it just wouldn't be coming with a HDD, nor a battery. Well, it did come with a battery, and as advertised, was in pretty tough cosmetic shape, but I plugged it in after installing a HDD, and it worked. Cool.

I then swapped the good parts of the laptop I already had--HDD, screen and lid, memory door--and started making it into the one to use. The other laptop, handy and interesting as it is, just isn't very fun to use. It's too slow, and the keyboard is really difficult to use.

I'm also going with this one because it is much faster. It has a 486DX/4 100MHz processor. For those of you in the know, this is almost in the same league as a low-end Pentium chip. It pretty much rips (for what it is) and with the addition of a 24Mb RAM card, it is a truly functional machine. I've scored a bigger HDD and I'm just waiting for a chance to install it so I can get up and moving with my nice, little laptop.

Its 10.5" SDSTN screen is big enough to do real work on, and fast enough so the mouse pointer doesn't disappear when you move it. I've ordered a docking station for it as well as a battery. I should be good to go here pretty soon. Life is good!

I had this laptop for about a year. I ended up trading it and all the parts for it for my Toshiba Tecra Laptop. Oh, yes. And a hundred bucks.