Uncreative Labs

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

This is one of those head scratchers. I just bought an Old Compaq Plus Portable, it originally would not boot giving the bad video beep beep beep

Reseated some stuff and it came to life and booted into a standard dos menuing system.

Problem is in plain dos if you get text that goes to the very bottom line of the screen all other lines of text turn pure bright green and only the bottom row of text stays intact. The only solution is to type in CLS and enter and start over.

Also in pure text games and programs any time the text should scroll up one line or down, one line the very top or bottom line (depending on if you are going up or down) stays as text and the rest of the screen is filled in green (PS green=white this is a mono screen)

I've also encountered on one of the text games that no movement of the characters occurs and you die without seeing anything move, not to mention everything runs faster than it should.

In word processors I have the same issue but have found using page up and down keeps the text visable. While using the arrows results in the dissappearing text.

I am thinking that either
1. A video ram chip(s) is failing
2. The bus speed is too high for the tired old video card

Something else unusual is that this unit turns on with an odd beep pattern which I believe refers to no video although the video works partly, quite strange.

Any ideas? I can't easily swap out the video card given the integrated monitor and cabling.

Cheers
Ryan

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 20

ryan wrote:

I am thinking that either
1. A video ram chip(s) is failing
2. The bus speed is too high for the tired old video card

#1, definitely. But you should run Checkit or some other RAM checker to be sure.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 22 Location: near myself

Did you try to see what happens on an external monitor? (is it present external monitor connector?).