As for my own project, I spent about four hours cursing at the Portable III and all the Lego stuff because it wouldn't properly run code that I knew "should" work ... until Jeff G. and Bill I. convinced me to try flipping a ribbon cable around ... after which it immediately worked perfectly. :)
Had a problem using the setup disk to configure the hard drive. Entered the date/time (also tried period-appropriate dates) but then it just said "please wait" and froze there on every attempt. I don't know if that
means
a dead CMOS battery or something else. Did not get any errors while booting. The battery appears to be a square plastic assembly, not a coin cell. Any ideas?
Basically you have to replace the battery. You might get something out of this thread, indirectly, at least in that you can contact this III owner: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?64063-Compaq-Portable-III-Keyboard... b