GRiD Compass II

Project Name: Discovery

The GRiD Compass is a bit of a famous machine for being the first clamshell laptop released in 1982. This is the slightly upgraded Compass II model 1129 released in 1984, making it currently the oldest machine in my collection. And this machine is one of my dream machines. It is built like a tank and works perfectly. The only thing I’ve done internally is replace some RIFA capacitors on the power supply and make sure there wasn’t a battery inside to replace (it appears to have been removed already).
Currently I am running GRiD-OS 3.1.0 out of the internal Bubble Memory, along with a couple of other programs. There isn’t a lot of space there, but the external 5.25” floppy drive really helps out a lot and is the only way I have right now to load software. Fortunately I found a decent collection of software for the Compass, including GRiD-OS and MS-DOS disks. Eventually I would like to figure out how to make some ROMS for GRiD-OS so I can boot from there and free up some internal storage for other programs. I would also like to try building an external GPIB hard drive emulator for even more storage.