Compaq Armada 7770DMT Laptop

Here is nearly thirty minutes of laptop filled goodness!

My dad picked this relatively well-kept Compaq Armada 7770DMT laptop and a much less common docking station up from the "free" pile at a garage sale. (Compaq actually calls the docking unit an "ArmadaStation".) It is fully functional, although it could stand a good cleaning and reloading of the operating system. Windows 98SE is probably the "best" operating system for this machine due to its RAM limitations. (Windows NT Workstation 4.0 would run, and is supposedly supported on this machine, but it is not well-suited to laptops.) Everything works, right down to the battery. This was from Compaq's business grade laptop line. The Armada name was used by Hewlett-Packard after their purchase of Compaq Computer Corporation.

Does anyone have any information on the Compaq NorthStar chipset...technical reference, datasheet, whitepaper, anything?

This machine has a few unique features. In particular, it has a built in power supply, so there is no power brick to lose or break. I well remember when this was new, and the advertisements that Compaq ran in computer magazines of the time. They did not stick with the built in power supply design for long. Toshiba's use of built-in power supplies on their laptops was longer lived, although they eventually abandoned the design as well.

This computer was new in late 1997 and I found one review of it still online today from PC Pro magazine:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/laptop...

The computer was priced at £4,229 including VAT, which would be US $6,886.74 (using conversion data as of 8/2/2011). Sales tax is not referred to as a "value added tax" here, yet it would still be charged.

The ArmadaStation was priced at £699 (excluding VAT) or US $1,138.29. The prices mentioned are the only ones I have found and probably would have been lower than the converted figures. They were the only prices I could find, so they will have to do.

As I only have one of these, it's more of a flotilla than an armada. :-)