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One of the things I've been looking for for a long time is a laptop with an Alpha processor. Tadpole made these in the mid-1990s, and they are exceedingly rare.

Last Tuesday, I delivered a presentation in Paris for the French OpenVMS User Group, about VMS Software's future plans for the OpenVMS operating system. At the occasion one of the HPE employees present gave me a large, old Compaq laptop bag. Inside: A Tadpole ALPHAbook 1, complete with charger, docking station, 12V car charger, external hard disk, floppy drive, and various cables.

Unfortunately, while it was put away in working order some 15-20 years ago, it is now no longer working. The battery has leaked some acid. I've repaired some damage, but there's still a problem with the keyboard. If either the internal keyboard or an external keyboard is plugged in, the system does not pass its firmware initialization. If neither are plugged in, the firmware reaches the boot prompt (>>>), but there's no means to provide any input. Plugging in either keyboard at this point does not work. Since this happens with both the internal and an external keyboard, I suspect that there's something amiss with the keyboard controller.

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