Just got around to opening up the Compaq Contura 3/25 I 'won' on eBay the other week to see if it works or not. I got out my trusted universal power adaptor of the day, plugged it in, pressed the power button and hoped for the best!... and it powered on, booted and failed the POST due to the CMOS/BIOS battery being flat - no surprise really as this laptop is originally from 1992!
Time to take it apart to explore its innards:
Ooh! Is that a Hard Disk Drive I see hidden at the top right of the laptop under the silver piece of metal? Lets find out...
Yes it is!
So, the reason it was sold on eBay as not working is due to the CMOS/BIOS battery being flat and not storing the HDD geometry settings so it doesn't think it has a hard disk inside (which it clearly does).
It doesn't take the standard CR2032 battery but a slightly larger CR2430 so I have ordered some from Amazon (Same-Day Delivery) so I should be able to get this up and running tomorrow so watch this space...