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My Vintage Computer Virtual Museum and blog page.

ZEOS Notebook 386

My ZEOS Notebook 386 (added to my collection in 2014)

  • i386sx 16Mhz
  • 2MB RAM
  • 20GB Hard Drive (with Ontrack DiskManager to overcome BIOS limit)
  • 9.5″ VGA Mono STN LCD
  • 2x working batteries (one lasts 1hr 30min and the other 40min)

I have two of these laptops, one has a bad LCD backlight, I am keeping it for parts as the rest of it works.



24 Comments

  1. Marius says:

    Hello,
    Congratulations for your collection! It’s impressive! I have a Zeos Contenda laptop and I would like to take it apart to see what it contains. Do you happen to have a manual for it or a disassemble guide? Thank you!

    • Ryan says:

      Thank you for the kind words, my collection has been a long time in the making.
      Unfortunately I do not have any disassembly guides, I would just carefully work your way through it, if you spend some time examining the screw locations it usually will make some sense which ones need to come out, older laptops are usually no too terrible to work on, just make notes or take photos which screws came from where, many are different sizes.

      • Marius says:

        Thank you for the advice given. I have another question: I would like to install a compact flash adapter so i can change the hdd to a large compact flash.
        If a use a 4gb cf card would it be recognized by the BIOS?
        Is there any way I can bypass the BIOS limitation?

        • Ryan says:

          You should be able to install a CF adapter, but I can tell you the BIOS in this computer will only recognize 520MB without help, so if you use a 512MB CF card you should not need any extra software.
          However if you are set on using a 4GB card, you will need to use some kind of BIOS overlay, something like OnTrack Disk Manager (I have some OEM versions for download in my utilities page, however they are linked to certain brands of hard drives and would not work for CF cards, you need to find the non-branded version of Disk Manager). There were other options for overlays, Disk Manager is just the most popular by far.

  2. Damon Barber says:

    Hi yall!
    Just got a zeos 286 notebook. Was wondering what brand of hdd you installed and where you purchased it from. Thanks!

  3. Damon Barber says:

    2.5″ pata with ontrack disk manager. Got it. Thanks Ryan!

  4. Walter says:

    Hi, I have a ZEOS 386+ that I’d like to go to a good home. Send me a note if you’re interested.

    • Ryan says:

      While I do have a thing for ZEOS equipment, I actually have 2 of these already, but if you would like I could pass your info on to someone else who may have interest in it.

    • Marius says:

      Hello Walter,
      I own a Zeos Contenda 486SL.I’m interested in your laptop. Is it functional? I’m from Romania, so the shipping might be a problem.

  5. Marius says:

    Hello collectors,
    Does anybody know, what type of external floppy connector, uses the Zeos Contenda 486SL? I need a floppy drive in order to boot a dos disk or to perform ontrack software install. Thank you!

  6. Marius says:

    I think that the drive you use is the same.
    If you find the spare one, would you consider selling it? I love my Contenda and the lack of a floppy is a really problem to me.The other poctures from the gallery that i posted above were stored in order to see what other accesories I might find for it. I only have the laptop.

    • Ryan says:

      From your photo links, it looks like the same floppy connector, however I searched and searched and I cannot find the spare I thought I had, it’s been probably 15 years since I had it out and I fear it was lost to time 🙁

  7. Scott says:

    Hi, would you be interested in a compatible working display for the second one? Please email instead of replying here.

    • Ryan says:

      Thanks for the offer, but not at this time.
      If I do decide to get my 2nd unit running, I will likely attempt an LED backlight mod on it, in my experience replacing it with another old stock LCD is just delaying the inevitable, all CCFL backlights will eventually burn out, so going with an LED conversion would be the best long term fix.

  8. Mike says:

    Hi, Came across this while researching the one of these I have recently picked up.

    It also has a dead screen, well the backlights dead anyway.

    I have seen mention online of a utility on a driver disk that can be used to switch over to the external display, I think it’s called EAGLE. With this I could actually use it for something rather than gathering dust.

    I don’t suppose you have a copy of it, or even an image of the disk itself.

    Kind Regards

    Mike

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