Siemens Nixdorf PCD-4ND

Typical notebook with 486, color VGA LCD and trackball. It was offered in few configurations, with 486DX2 50MHz , DX4 75 or 100MHz CPU and RAM expandable with cards the same as in some ThinkPads, but without parity and a bit shorter. It had VGA (640x480) display and trackball.
My unit was used in some office, there were 6 or 8 of these and I got 3. Their hard disks were professionally cleaned with random data and then Windows 95 was installed. Stickers suggested that these computers were used till 2005.


Manufacturer Siemens-Nixdorf

Origin Germany
Year of unit 1994/95?
Year of introduction 1994?
Type Laptop, PC
CPU Intel 80486DX2, 50MHz
RAM 4MB On board, 16MB card
Floppy Disk Internal 3.5", 1.44MB
Hard Disk 800MB
Other media None
Graphics and display: Color VGA LCD (TFT)
Sound: PC Speaker, ES1x88 sound card
Keyboard and pointing device: Full PC keyboard without numeric part. (my unit has German keyboard with universal stickers).

Trackball working as PS/2 mouse

OS: MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, Wnidows 95

Power supply:

1 - Ground
2 - 23V DC

I/O:  - Serial port
 - Parallel port
 - VGA
 - 2x PS/2 port
 - Sound I/O
 - Dock connector
 - 2x PCMCIA.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Possible upgrades: Memory with special cards
Additional peripherals:   Additional battery, Floppy can be removed and second battery installed.

Its BIOS... is a typical Phoenix BIOS. It has menu as in other Phoenix BIOSes for notebooks, boots to OS as normal.

The only thing that disappointed me in this computer was its floppy disk drive. I've seen many Siemens machines and they all were good quality computers with mechanical parts precise and long-lasting, in this model floppy disk drive is very poor quality Citizen unit with belt transmission mechanism (very old technology, even for 1994), low quality bearings and easily deformable internals. Only one of 5 was working, others had damaged mechanical parts (bearings, skewed frames, deformed shafts).

MS-DOS utilities, VGA drivers, power control
DOS restore bootdisk
Windows 3.11 audio, VGA and IRDA drivers
Windows 95, OS/2, BIOS and dock drivers
Operating manual

Sound and video should be detected and installed by Win95 setup itself. The only thing that needs to be installed in Win95 is IR (if present) and PCMCIA (I don't know which driver is good, there are no drivers for Cirrus PCMCIA in packages above!)