who told IBM it was a good idea to put the power connector for the IBM Convertible approximately 8 miles inset into the case?

The IBM convertible is a neat little computer, and it only needs 15v 3a.
That's an easy power supply to provide! Heck, my Toshibas use that same adapter!

EXCEPT THEY PUT IT SO FAR BACK THAT NONE OF MY CONNECTORS CAN FIT INTO THE FUCKING CASE

GOOD NEWS

this is fine, I'm sure

Insert a disk? uh-oh. I don't have a 720k boot disk on hand.

but I can hit escape and end up in BASIC!

good news: I found a 720k disk.
Now I just gotta set up a computer that'll format this properly.

I DON'T TRUST YOU. YOU'RE PROBABLY JUST A BAD USB FLOPPY DRIVE

nope.
it's really bad. shit.

OK, don't tell anyone I did this. And don't do it yourself!
DD disks are physically different from HD disks, so while this might work for a bit, it will not be remotely reliable.

but hopefully this'll last long enough to get the other machine booted

And we're formatted. Let's see what happens when I make this bootable and stick it in to the convertible

It seems to be hung here.
Ugh, I'm gonna have to find a real dd disk that works!

BUT WHERE AM I GOING TO FIND A BUNCH OF DOUBLE DENSITY FLOPPY DISKS AT THIS TIME OF NIGHT?

oh right, I'm me.

WE GOT DOS

it aint a lot of DOS, but it's a dos

Found a boot disk for the convertible

who needs memtest86+ when you have IBM diagnostics?

Keyboard test time! it wants me to push EVERY KEY
I was born for this.

I did!

oh yeah, share your whole character map, I STEAL YOUR FONT

those are some fun emoji-style smilies.

I got the Application Selector set up.
This is a weird shell IBM included

it won't accept the current date, because it's invalid.

you know, I agree, IBM

Fortunately DOS itself has no such problem. it's happy with 2020

it's time to play some DONKEY

DONKEY TIME

Setting up a communications program. This has a built in modem, so I was thinking I'd dial in somewhere.

ahh yes, here's all the online services. all of them.

wait...
I turned off the power supply!

BUT IT'S STILL ON

I didn't realize this thing actually had a battery in it, let alone one that WORKED

Yep. this big heavy motherfucker is the battery.

9.6v, apparently.
I'm gonna pull this out and make sure it doesn't ever charge again, just in case charging it after, uh, 33 years, causes it to leak

Anyway, that's enough IBM PC Convertible! Let's look at another computer
How about... An IBM PC Convertible!

Although this one is LONGER. Why is it longer?

BUILT IN DOT-MATRIX PRINTER, MOTHERFUCKERS!

I wonder if this ink is still any good.
heck, I don't know if this thing turns on at all, yet... so maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

Yep! it turns on too.
Although the power connector seems to be EVEN FARTHER BACK, somehow.
Same amount of RAM (512k), same dual-disks, same modem, just with PRINTER.

OH YEAH WE CAN PRINT LIKE GEORGE BUSH SENIOR IS STILL IN OFFICE

about 0.2 seconds after printing this, the machine turned off

99% sure that was the connector falling out because it wasn't making a good connection, but it might be that the battery (which I can't figure out how to remove, as the printer is in the way) just caught on fire

so I'm gonna put these away for tonight and maybe fiddle with them tomorrow