HP 150 Touchscreen II

I purchased this computer locally as untested, directly from the previous user. Together with an HP 9133XV disk drive and a 9142A tape drive. The computer also included the HP 9123D dual floppy drive, which will also be covered in this article, since it was only available for the Touchscreen II.

The HP 150 Touchscreen was HP's first attempt at an Intel 8088 computer and although it runs MS-DOS, it is not IBM compatible and most PC software won't run on it. The Touchscreen II is the second iteration, which is mostly compatible with the 150, but still has no IBM PC compatibility.

Unlike the name would suggest, (and unlike its predecessor) this computer doesn't actually have a touch screen, although an option was available.

Although one might assume that the idea of an all-in-one, compact computer might have been copied from Apple, the first HP 150 was actually released in November 1983, 3 months before the Apple Macintosh. In addition, the screen has a useful built-in tilt adjustment. And the computer lacks any built in storage.

Here it is, after fully cleaning it:

Work done:

Full cleaning

Planned work:

Battery replacement

Exterior inspection:

Overall, the computer was in good shape, just with the usual dirt and grime from years of storage:

On one side is a brightness adjustment:

The other side has the keyboard connector (SDL):

At the back is a cover to hide all the connectors and cables:

Once removed, you can find the following connectors:

At the top, a power connector for the 9123D dual floppy drive
Two DB-25 serial ports
HP-IB interface for connecting HP storage, printers, etc.

Under the top cover, you can find adjustments for the screen, as well as brackets for expansion cards.

Interior inspection:

The power supply / analogue board was in good shape, with no leaking or RIFA capacitors:

The logic board after cleaning:

There is also a card installed in one of two smaller expansion slots. I'm not entirely sure what this card does, but it seems to be installed in all examples I could find on the internet:

Batteries

There are two non-chargeable lithium batteries installed on the power supply, which are meant to continue storing the configuration settings and time while the computer is powered off.

I removed these batteries, and I'm currently researching a suitable replacement, which will be easy to maintain:

Memory expansion board

This computer came with a 256K memory expansion board (45631-69001), which brings the total memory up to 512K

Keyboard

The outside of the keyboard looked particularly filthy:

This is a HP-HIL keyboard, which uses SDL connectors:

But the inside was actually not that dirty:

Here is the final result after cleaning it:

HP 9123D dual floppy drive

This dual floppy drive was designed specifically for the HP 150 Touchscreen II, as such, it receives power directly from the computer and has a fixed address of 0 on the HP-IB bus.

Inside is a simple arrangement with the controller and two drives:

The floppy drives were already fairly clean and only required lubrication and a head cleaning:

After cleaning and lubricating the drives, it seems the 2nd drive is not working properly yet, the computer does recognize it, but can't detect that a floppy is in the drive.

I will investigate further and attempt to repair the fault in the future.