My Compaq Armada M300 with a Mobile Expansion Unit from 1999

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k-m-la@reddit

Hey, do you have a battery for this thing by any chance? If you do, could you please share the model/capacity, anything?

I'm a soon-to-be new owner of one of these but it doesn't come with a battery :(

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k-m-la@reddit

Thank you!! :) Unfortunately and, well, quite predictably these are unobtainium these days 🫡

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ThinkCamp-1395@reddit

Have you tried any dos games on it? Is the soundcard Soundblaster compatible?

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Diplodock@reddit (OP)

No, I didn’t, because I have win 2000 on it. The VxD maestro drivers for soundblaster emulation were only made for win 98.

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Maybe it's just my eyes but the keyboard and the overall plastic on it looks terrible and cheap. What was Compaq trying to achieve with this laptop back then? I know it's a special laptop from that time but the thinkpads, sonys and dells of that era looked WAY better at that time. I will never understand somethings... With that it is a cool laptop and setup. Also how's fallout 1? I've personally tried Fallout 2 but I can't seem to get passed the first Temple area, I think I have too short of an attention span but for some reason I can play StarCraft???? What gives

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JCD_007@reddit

Sony laptops were consumer grade crap. ThinkPads were overpriced. The Dell Latitudes and Compaq Armadas are pretty much interchangeable from that era. But cheap they were not. Magnesium alloy construction made them probably better built than a lot of machines today.

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Diplodock@reddit (OP)

For me this laptop doesn't look cheap at all. It has a magnesium chassis so it is very stiff and feels very solid. Also plastic didn't disintegrate in 25 years, it didn't become sticky. The keyboard feels fine, nothing special, just a regular membrane keyboard.
I love Fallout 1, but it is very short. I think I can complete it in less than 3 hours. It is a great game but when you've completed it once, there's not much left to explore on a second playthrough. The sequel on the other hand, is MUCH bigger. You can complete it multiple times and still find new paths. But I agree that as each year passes it gets harder and harder to play these games, especcially if you didn't play them back then. Don't blame your attention span, we just get used to modern game design, that evolved drastically in a quarter of a century (btw RTS didn't evolve as much so that's why you can still play Starcraft and it feels fresh).

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MasterKnight48902@reddit

Back when laptops meant business in everything

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Diplodock@reddit (OP)

I like its restraint and rigor. It feels quality. And for the price they asked for it back then, it was worth it.

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MasterKnight48902@reddit

And the businesslike style is as good as it can get

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daibido1123@reddit

I always wanted one of these back in the day.

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Diplodock@reddit (OP)

Yep, same. When I found out that in 1999 this laptop with an MEU cost $3.5K ($6.5K adjusted for inflation), I started to see it in a different light XD

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TitularClergy@reddit

Asking just on the off-chance -- you wouldn't happen to know where one could get a charger for one of those machines?

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Diplodock@reddit (OP)

At first, when I got this laptop, I simply used a power unit from my main Viewsonic monitor. But it only worked if I plugged it directly into the laptop itself and not into the docking station. If I wanted to use the dock, I just bought a no-name unit with these specs: HP 18.5V 4.9A 90W 4.8x1.7. It works just fine.

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WatchdogLab@reddit

Cool machine, but I'm more impressed by your photography skills! This could have easily been used as an official two-page advertisement in a computer magazine of the era.

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Diplodock@reddit (OP)

Thank you very much! I really appreciate your compliment :)

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2HDFloppyDisk@reddit

Welcome to Camp Navarro.