Dylan's Projects: Packard Bell Axcel 130 restoration

I purchased a robust collection of an Axcel 130 along with its monitor, boxes, manuals, peripherals. I was really enticed by the stickers on the desktop which promised "Packard Bell Navigator", Microsoft Works, etc. Unfortunately, when I brought it home, it wouldn't boot. I explored some of this in a Vogons post.

With so much of the original material included, I really couldn't help myself.

I believe some of the software promised here was missing from the hard drive.

The original board with some cards I tried adding

The culprit: a leaky battery. This seems to be such a problem with these models that I couldn't find any without a leaky battery. This Youtuber found the same issue.

I desoldered the battery and cleaned up the corrosion, but I still could not boot - the BIOS kept claiming a missing operating system.

I was lucky to find a replacement board just down the road from me. This IBM board came with its own processor and RAM.

The IBM board's floppy connect had all of its male pins populated, while my cable (and all my other cables) had a female pin blocked, so I created a little adapter to fit them together.

I could also boot from my CF adapter using the IBM board. The board fit in the case and worked with the AT power supply. The ports were in a different order, yet fit just right, so now the subtle labels are amusingly mismatched.

I also had to replace the 3.5" drive, but now everything works! I may try to switch the drive's plastic face to match the colors again.

The next step is to wait for the replacement ISA riser to arrive so I can install some more cards, and try to fix the monitor's power switch, which needs to be held down for it to work.

Update: Rather than replacing the power switch, I just closed the circuit. I'll shop for a nifty retro surge protector to control it.