I Fixed Toshiba's First Laptop - Sort Of?

[@declanmcquay3476]

One good thing about the battery pack it looks like it uses the sub-C size of cell. Those are still relatively popular in electric radio control cars, so you can still get new cells and build new packs that way. A lot of the bigger hobby stores should be able to get them in

[@TechTimeTraveller]

Warning: at 30:45 there is CRT whine, I forgot to apply the 15khz filter. :( This video is both an update and a test of my sound editing skills. I'm trying out 'auto gating' to reduce background noise (breathing, etc). Let me know what you think.

[@dbhansen]

Not an audio engineer, but it sounds great to me. Crispy.

[@BigCar2]

I had something pretty similar (sold cheap when it was going out of style). They were wonderful portables for basic work. This brought back some good memories.

[@SudosFTW]

The problem with the older Toshibas of that era is the capacitors. I've been saying for years (at least since 2014) to just replace them on sight, because they're prone to leaking. they have a reasonable chance of having caps with the quaternary ammonium salts/compound issue that does rear its ugly head in many things, including the power supplies for old Powerbook 100 series laptops with Elnas, for instance. better to not turn them on at all and just replace the caps outright. As far as the necessary need for the battery, I believe that's a design feature to make sure the battery has enough juice not only to run on battery if disconnected, but to also make sure from a functional standpoint that it has enough power to hold standby power perhaps? until the issue was explained I was saying all along, screaming at the monitor that the issue was probably caps... I'm still not convinced you don't have a problem, even though yours looks quite clean. caps are a plague with these older toshibas and I have yet to have one come into my posession from anywhere that doesn't need it.

[@TechTimeTraveller]

Yes I agree. Caps will need to be dealt with. I've had many give me grief over the years. I've a Mac II that needlessly got wrecked by capacitor leakage because at the time I didn't know they could do that and left it sitting too long. I've sort of learned my lesson there. For this one I thought it was likely toast already. Got lucky. But for the longer term replacing caps and the battery pack are on the to do list.

[@chasonlapointe]

Great video, Lode Runner would drive me nuts not being able to tell the cultists from the hero like that.

[@50shadesofbeige88]

A good way to spend a Sunday afternoon

[@dbhansen]

Thanks for the update! FWIW the basis of the IEEE Milestone award for this machine was that it was the first of this form factor that was fully IBM compatible *and* a market success... those earlier clamshell examples (like the DG1, Gavilan SC, Sharp PC-5000, GRiD Compass of course) didn't meet these criteria. Reading the IEEE debate chain on this is interesting, even if it seemed like splitting hairs.

[@TechTimeTraveller]

Supposedly someone in the IEEE put a motion forward to consider the Apple-1 the first personal computer, which they justified via selective criteria that only the A1 could really meet. People get quite passionate about this stuff. I kind of cringe when I go on camera sometimes.. "is this a laptop? A portable?".. knowing someone will potentially take umbrage with my description.

[@jsalsman]

My company had this and it's the first laptop I ever used, in 1989 IIRC. Thanks for the nostalgia jolt!

[@Controllerhead]

Crinching that plasticky case together is whatever the opposite of ASMR is 😅 Neat machine, thanks for the video!

[@AppliedCryogenics]

I lusted after this thing so much from the computer mags when I was a kid. The closest I could afford, for many years, was a used TRS-80 Model-100.

[@Lachlant1984]

I love the sounds of those old school floppy drives.

[@50shadesofbeige88]

So fresh so clean on the inside.

[@gentuxable]

When I was a school kid I got an old Toshiba Pentium 150MHz Laptop in like 2002 and the battery actually still held a bit over 2 hours. I was surprised because the laptop I had before that was a Compaq LTE Elite 4/75 which didn't even hold 30 minutes. I don't know what Toshiba batteries were made of more than Nickel-metal hydride but at they were extremely good.

[@TechTimeTraveller]

My first brand new laptop for myself was a Sager 820 I think. 166mhz *desktop* CPU that would leave scorch marks on my desk and cook my lap to well done. But I was just excited it had active matrix screen and was all mine. :)

[@gentuxable]

@@TechTimeTraveller active matrix was really neat I was so glad both had them. My first very own laptop I bought with my money new was the first Intel MacBook Pro in 2006. Before that I was always using something someone else threw away, was really a great moment when I unpacked it.

[@nalinux]

Many power supplies need a load to work. I usually use a dead hard disk I don't care about. Capacitors don't leak acid :) They are basic inside. That's why their juice can be neutralized with vinager or citric acid. I prefer citric acid, it doesnt' smell, works perfect to remove rust with no effort, and is tasty :)

[@FleetStreetBarber765]

Thanks for the post. Love old tech especially old Laptops 😀😀😊😊

[@esra_erimez]

I know it is important to preserve these vintage computers, but I'd really like to put an SBC (like a Raspberry Pi) into one of these with a display and make a Pi laptop.

[@josephlunderville3195]

There are lots of nonworking ones you could gut! I especially recommend the slightly newer T1000LE and friends, because (a) they're more available and not too expensive and (b) based on my experience they're especially prone to destruction by leaky caps in the power supply (which is part of the main board). I haven't had much success with the repairs I've tried and I don't think it would be any great loss for you to trash a corroded motherboard. The keyboard will be nontrivial to deal with, though!

[@ZXRulezzz]

FWIW, one could "downgrade" a HD disk to DD by covering up the appropriate hole on the disk, if HD floppies are more readily available. Magnetic material is probably different, but most equipment doesn't seem to mind that - Amiga and ZX Spectrum didn't.

[@qwertzy121212]

Floppies on ZX spectrum?

[@ZXRulezzz]

​@@qwertzy121212 Yep. Betadisk & TR-DOS was popular in ex-USSR and are still emulated on modern Speccy peripherals such as DivMMC, probably DivIDE also but I'm not sure. There were other floppy disk systems for Speccy; +3 even had an internal 3" floppy, but AFAIK those were nowhere near as popular.

[@thekaylors5819]

I've owned multiple T1000s. I still have one, but I need to replace the battery pack.

[@zh84]

Seeing you hit Enter when asked for the date makes me wonder: is this thing Y2K compatible? ;-)

[@sergiynazarenko1542]

The og battery on mine still charges and holds enough charge for a few hours. I was similarly surprised when I found out.

[@pikadroo]

I’d make a 18650 battery for it with one of those protection boards.

[@bborkzilla]

The later T5100 (386) is annoying to take apart, including screws behind a sticky thin plastic bezel.

[@TechTimeTraveller]

I have sad experience with this. I'm dreading going into my T5100 for a suspected video ram issue.

[@Lukeno52]

I'm not so aware of NiCads leaking - NiMH batteries definitely do, but the handful of old NiCads I've seen haven't leaked. Still, that those batteries take a charge is extraordinary.

[@TechTimeTraveller]

I've had some pretty horrific leaks with NiCds. Or at least, it said NiCd on the label. I've always been on alert for leaks as supposedly applying charge to a compromised battery pack can sometimes cause fire.

[@VicTheVicar]

Re: 720k floppies. My personal experience is that they usually hold out better than 1.44M floppies. But any floppy that has lived a decade in a moist basement or left unprotected on a dusty shelf surely has issues by now.

[@TechTimeTraveller]

Yeah maybe storage has been part of my issue. Also many of my 720k disks tend to be older than my 1.44mb so that may be working against me also.

[@VicTheVicar]

@@TechTimeTraveller Finding 720k floppies nowadays is almost impossible, it can easily go months before a reasonable deal pops up on facebook. I've bought an unopened box last year and got two unopened boxes when I bought a Macintosh SE/30. Most of my old 720k floppies are IBM install disks (my dad's school had a bunch - one set for each school computer) so he gave them to me to reformat. They're still working flawlessly. My floppies has lived in a box in a closet at my parents. Re: age, I prefer to get older floppies. The new stuff, especially from after the millenium aren't very good - a dozen reads in a USB-floppy drive and they're damaged. Sometimes they can be fixed with a reformat, sometimes not.

[@TechTimeTraveller]

@@VicTheVicar Yes I have some weird issues with usb floppy drives. I've tried two different units. Mostly they work but every now again you'll write something to disk and the whole disk goes bad. And it was all good before.

[@josephlunderville3195]

The batteries might not be original, FWIW. That would be a pretty easy pack to rebuild.

[@hentlerob7565]

King quest 3 is great game …but a lot of work with the little guy for change wizard in cat with magic stuff 😊😊😊

[@TechTimeTraveller]

I played it a bit the other day and got completely lost for an hour trying READ SPELLBOOK. I had forgotten all the spells were in the manual lol

[@stdorn]

It's late and my math may be a bit off but if I calculated correctly if a modern computer with 16 GB of RAM took as long to test memory at startup it would take over 14 million hours for memory test to finish.

[@张兴潼]

I like this looooooooong spacebar.

[@McTroyd]

If the NiCd cells don't leak, they can last an awfully long time. I've found this is especially true if they're discharged first. I have a Datavue Spark from that era which was given to me by an uncle. It supposedly sold well, but finding much on it is nigh impossible. Any tips for finding service manuals for now-obscure hardware?

[@TechTimeTraveller]

I have a Datavue Snap 1+1 and share your problem with manuals. It's weird because I remember Datavue as a name so they must have had some presence... but weirdly I've not been able to find a thing. As for NiCds.. yeah, I'm really surprised these take any charge at all. It's quite possible someone replaced them somewhere along the way.. but still must have been quite a while ago.

[@McTroyd]

@@TechTimeTraveller My uncle was detailed enough to keep the boot disks and manuals with it in the case, so I have the original user's manual. I'm specifically interested on a pin header for an optional modem. My hope is, if I can pin it out, that I'll be able to fabri-cobble something together for a flash-based hard drive. 😁

[@HoboVibingToMusic]

31:00 oh jesus that CRT noise x_x I think that's 15Khz and above, so, for future reference for younger audience, I think 15Khz and up should have a filter when TV is on. ^^'

[@TechTimeTraveller]

Drat. And I just learned how to do that. But I was messing around with so many filters and then forgot that one. Need to have an actual checklist I think. Thanks for alerting me.

[@slincolne]

Thanks for posting this. I think I have one or two of these sitting in the garage somewhere - one is a 'DOA" Ebay special. You've motivated me to dig it out and give it a quick look over. Can you post details of the sites you use as source details for these please? Thanks!

[@TechTimeTraveller]

I've added the site in my description (meant to do that).. here it is though in case. Lots of good stuff here. minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/Toshiba/Toshiba.htm#1100

[@NerdlyPleasures]

Does the T1100 not output color from its composite video connector? KQ3 should be displaying in color on the Apple Composite Monitor IIe unless the monitor's switch is set to black and white.

[@ryangrg4222]

All I can think of when I see this is Avon Beauty vision

[@cesccasadesus4191]

I have a T1100 that I want to repair but I'm missing two things: the power cable and the original floppy disk with the operating system. Do you know where I can get them?

[@avalinah]

So cool.

[@zsombor_99]

Can you connect a serial mouse to it? That can be another good possibility. 😉

[@TechTimeTraveller]

Yes that 'modem' board seems to have a normal RS-232 port on it. Once i find the power adapter for my Mouse Systems mouse I might just try it out with that for fun!

[@zsombor_99]

@@TechTimeTraveller Do you have a serial mouse which not requires any power adapter instead?

[@Jkauppa]

legend laptop!

[@Jkauppa]

when generational leaps are now 1M times more memory in personal desktops, and more (like 512GB)

[@Jkauppa]

but why it did not have DOS in EEPROM

[@Jkauppa]

point and click adventure games (vs text based) is more user friendly, but the text is very challenging, to get it right

[@____________________________.x]

I had one of those, gawd it was slow. Worst screen ever, viewing angle of like ~10 degrees 👀

[@mraaron1584]

were is the Mimetic polyalloy

[@TechTimeTraveller]

Bahahaha. "It's a T1100. We can defeat it but someone has to reach into the alloy and disconnect the batteries. After that it won't start up or shape shift."

[@mraaron1584]

@@TechTimeTraveller i guess toshiba didn't put any Hydrogen fuel cells in this one that can power it for 120 years and blow up like a mini nuke went there damaged lol.

[@numberslettersstuff]

I had one of these. I Never did anything useful with it and eventually I bricked it somehow. Lol

[@WhatALoadOfTosca]

Why does it have two separate rows of number keys?

[@TechTimeTraveller]

That's a question I'm curious about also. I can't see any practical reason for it.. my only guess is maybe some keyboards in Japan had been arranged that way previously and they simply carried it through. Thankfully they fixed it with the plus.

[@WhatALoadOfTosca]

@@TechTimeTraveller Thank you. Yeah it's definitely a curiosity. I enjoy watching your videos. You are very patient! Thanks for replying and well done on the fix :)

[@Symplegades]

Really? No one? All right, I'll take the low road: '...can barely see the sausages..' That's what she said.

[@ryballs4569]

My mum had a very similar Toshiba laptop when I was a kid in the early 90s. It had a cool custom menu built in config.sys by the previous owner. One time when I was playing around with it, I discovered they had also installed Leisure Suit Larry 1 on its HDD. However try as I might I couldn't get past the age questions. So I asked my mum for help.. Once she saw the questions she quickly deleted it :( When I accidentally formatted the HDD she was not impressed.