I Turned My Toshiba Libretto into a Teeny Tiny Hackintosh with Apple Rhapsody OS!

[@angieandretti]

For a teenage PC enthusiast, the Toshiba Libretto was anything but useless! I got mine used on eBay back in 2000, and this was the first laptop I ever owned. Mine was the 100CT (slightly faster CPU and a wider 800x480 LCD) but I used that little thing for every task I possibly could! I browsed the internet over WiFi with an 11Mbps Belkin PCMCIA card, I did my homework on that little tiny keyboard, and I even took my Libretto to college with me in 2003! I used to write Visual C++ code on it in college - I had the whole development environment installed on that little thing! It was so impractical and I absolutely loved it!

[@DaytimeTelevisionSTL]

Most expressive hands in the business.

[@ActionRetro]

👋👈👆👆👋👋👈👈👈👋👍

[@theunreal_TOEBEANS]

It's 4 am and I read that as most *expensive* hands in the business and I spent the whole video trying to figure you out, bud. Great excuse to watch it again! 😂

[@ActionRetro]

@@theunreal_TOEBEANS 🤣

[@DaytimeTelevisionSTL]

@@theunreal_TOEBEANS Well, his mannerisms are pure gold, so expensive works metaphorically haha

[@Loggerten]

This guy be like "👈🤚☝️👇👌"

[@chelsona2574]

I've watched a talking hand for soooo long lol

[@danielbocelli]

Honestly very annoying

[@HughJaeness]

@@danielbocelli go cry about it

[@danielbocelli]

@@HughJaeness like you’re doing?

[@HughJaeness]

@@danielbocelli yep!

[@gnustep]

Rhapsody was basically OPENSTEP 4.2/Intel with a Mac OS veneer. It was actually meant to run on intel machines not branded by Apple. So it's not REALLY in actual fact a hackintosh. I used to run OPENSTEP4.2/Mach for Intel on my machine at home for years. Full Disclosure: I am the GNUstep lead (gnustep.org) maintainer and former NeXT developer. :) Much respect, though. My comment is meant to be informative. Love what you're doing here bro.

[@jonhall8575]

Hi, great video as always. A couple of points about CF cards: 1. Unless you pay ungodly amounts of money for industrial-grade ones, they identify as removable devices. This doesn't worry DOS, Win9x or Linux, but WinNT/2k/XP/7/8/10 get upset being on a removable device, and other OSes may do too. For Windows there is a driver called diskmod that can get around this, but it's a bit fiddly to use. 2. Modern CF cards are intended for digital cameras, and are optimised for fairly large reads and writes. On a computer OS where typical reads/writes are fairly small, the performance can be terrible (I've verified this with some thin clients I own that use CF cards). If you can find a suitable adapter for your hardware an SSD is a better way to go long-term - I upgraded an iBook G4 by using an M.2 SSD in an M.2-to-2.5" IDE adapter - the speed of this is only limited by the IDE interface. It does cost a bit more though. Thanks again for an intriguing video.

[@JeremyLevi]

Another good option is IDE DOMs (Disk on Module), so long as you don't need a lot of space. They're all fast, durable SLC flash, non-removable devices, available in 44pin versions that can plug straight into a laptop IDE port, and for something like this where you don't really need multiple GB you can get them for ~$25 each. Stupid expensive if you need anything much bigger than 1GB though, but the big advantage is they're still made new in small sizes that old computers expect (as small as 128MB). All smaller CF Cards are basically just new old stock when you can find them.

[@mambaaaaa7282]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/bJaTmImjpb6cpJI eu tenho libretto 70 ct quanto custa eu tenho pra vender mas nao sei o minimo que eu posso pedir, funcionando perfeitamente

[@mambaaaaa7282]

eu tenho libretto 70 ct quanto custa eu tenho pra vender mas nao sei o minimo que eu posso pedir, funcionando perfeitamente

[@mica7191]

DoogieLabs made a video installing Windows 95 to a Libretto with CF card... a 55 min long video

[@damian9303]

I know that some older consumer SanDisk CF cards can make use of a DOS utility which toggles a bit in the firmware that allows it to detect as a fixed disk. It’s just very hit or miss since there’s not an exact list as to which ones work with the program but from what I can tell they age upto the mid 2000s roughly.

[@crashmatrix]

Ahhh yes, my weekend's entertainment! Those libretto's where funky little devices, used to have one with a broken display that I used as a micro server on the home LAN. Good times.

[@ActionRetro]

Oh goodness, you used it as a SERVER?! That's amazing! What did it serve?

[@crashmatrix]

@@ActionRetro I converted it to a linux machine and used it for 'hosting' some of my first php projects, and there was a summer that it ran a quake1 server for a few LAN parties at my house, which worked out surprisingly well on the janky 10mbit pcmcia card I got with it.

[@ActionRetro]

@@crashmatrix that's so awesome lol

[@mambaaaaa7282]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/bJaTmImjpb6cpJI eu tenho libretto 70 ct quanto custa eu tenho pra vender mas nao sei o minimo que eu posso pedir, funcionando perfeitamente

[@mambaaaaa7282]

eu tenho libretto 70 ct quanto custa eu tenho pra vender mas nao sei o minimo que eu posso pedir, funcionando perfeitamente

[@dorinxtg]

Nice ;) 2 things: 1. You've installed/selected the wrong driver. For the 50CT it's C&T (Chips and Technologies) B65550. If you can't find it on the OS, The Openstep has drivers for your chip (6555x) 2. I think there is a configuration file that you can modify in order to change the resolution/BPP, but I don't remember which file.

[@ActionRetro]

Thank you!!!

[@larbob]

​@@ActionRetro OPENSTEP 4.2 w/ Patch 4 also has a VESA driver which should provide color if it doesn't have a C&T 6555x driver.

[@dosenfisch24]

Be cautious with the driver, as there are PCI and VLB variants of the 65550. The Libretto 50 uses the VLB variant. It has no PCI bus, only ISA and VLB. For some reason, Toshiba went the difficult route and adapted the VLB bus (originally a direct connection the the 486 bus) to the Pentium CPU. (The datasheet is still available: support.dynabook.com/support/modelHome?freeText=1073769618&osId=3333621)

[@ActionRetro]

@@dosenfisch24 thanks for this, super helpful!

[@mambaaaaa7282]

eu tenho libretto 70 ct quanto custa eu tenho pra vender mas nao sei o minimo que eu posso pedir, funcionando perfeitamente

[@XodiumLabs]

"I'm dating myself..." Oh, Sean, you silly person! The 90s were last decade! ...wait...oh no. Oh god. I hate time, sometimes.

[@RamLaska]

I relate to this feeling of terror.

[@nickwallette6201]

Every time someone starts talking about “30 years ago” I’m like, we didn’t have that stuff in the 70s. ... awww. :-(

[@MattExzy]

Easy mistake to make. The 2000s and 2010s didn't feel like much - easy to forget they ever happened.

[@braddl9442]

"We are going to get a little weird with it. " Jokes on you im into that shiz

[@sandycheeks7865]

When it was disassembled, you need to unplug and bin that green CMOS battery of death immediately. I went through 4 LIbrettos this weekend and 2 of them had green corrosive crap coming out of the connector to the motherboard and in another year or so would have eaten away at something important. It doesn't need the battery to boot and you just set the time and you're away.

[@Cmdrbzrd]

The libretto series are so awesome and rather powerful for their size and time. Nice video as always!

[@TheCerealHobbyist]

I supported these back in the day. We would set up our Executive's homes with a docking station, then docking stations in a few offices at different sites and their homes, so they could just carry the Libretto back and forth. They loved them.

[@simonsaman]

I always wondered why the Macintosh Garden hosts so much utilities that seem quite obsolete, like virtualization software for a rather slow G3 PowerBook, now I know why. Excellent video!

[@JamieBainbridge]

One of these popped up on eBay a few weeks ago, a friend of mine grabbed it. My friend has plenty of CF-IDE adaptors but the hard drive makes such aesthetic retro noises she kept it on purpose 😎

[@Comm0ut]

I find the hard disk seek relaxing. He could record it then substitute it for other .wav files if he wants the best of both worlds. Some hobbyists do that with floppy seek noises.

[@zoomosis]

I don't know much about Rhapsody but a PC with those specs should easily run OS/2 - Warp, eComStation or ArcaOS.

[@Nord72]

and BeoS R5 as well.

[@emala.banana]

Haiku OS would also be cool

[@laurensnieuwland4657]

From now on it shall be known as the mighty Apple SuperNewton!

[@ActionRetro]

I literally chortled at this

[@hamzasafdari9360]

Totally!

[@droodguy]

Hey man, I spend a lot of time messing with Rhapsody dr2, I've patched a number of drivers to get more hardware working with it. Hit me up if you have a device that you need a rhapsody driver for

[@ActionRetro]

Oh man that's awesome! Will do, thanks!

[@larbob]

What all have you patched to get working?

[@droodguy]

@@larbob I made a small tool for patching the drivers in Java (Rhapsody ships with a java compiler+runtime) Got all variants of 3c905 cards working through that, more info here: www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=4551.0 Similar trick can be applied to lots of other hardware of the era (Worked on one of my ATI cards too) I'm currently working on patching the EIDE driver to work with generic PCI IDE adapters like the promise ultra DMA cards (source of the EIDE driver is public) I'm not super familiar with programming drivers in general. It would be really cool to port a generic usb driver to rhapsody but thats far outside my knowledge right now

[@RetroReviewYT]

Could use a Rage Mobility 128 AGP 2X driver and a Intel PIIX4 IDE driver.

[@cleanycloth]

To make life easier with the SD card being so far back in the machine you can buy SD card extension adapters. Then you can stick the card slot right up at the front of the HDD bay and get easy access ^^

[@dionelr]

When I was in college, my boss had that exact Compaq Presario. I think it ended it’s life as a music player for hold music in the company’s phone system.

[@safetinspector2]

In the 90's I was an IT guy working for a VAR (predecessor to MSPs, conceptually) and spent a lot of time on the road in server rooms that were often little more than cramped closets. I wanted the Libretto so very much but could never convince my boss to buy them. It was fun seeing you hack on yours!

[@joshuarichards2421]

4:10 Is it odd that I love that sound? I even went as far as to gut a rare Apple 20SC SCSI external drive with working original HDD to add a clickey, loud, relay driven server scsi drive with a MASSIVE capacity of 320 MB?

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

Ok now that’s pretty impressive. Before OS X came out Apple was going to not include desktop drive icons so I emailed Steve Jobs saying that was a huge mistake and he replied saying simply “Boy, are you wrong”.

[@kbhasi]

(11:38) I just noticed a green backup battery near the connector for the main battery! I hope you've removed that before it leaks! (it can corrode through the wires)

[@ps5hasnogames55]

These tiny little laptops have always been a little (pun intended?) fascination of mine. Fantastic video as usual!

[@NormanF62]

The netbook failed because it tried to cram the laptop form factor into a small device using slow chips. My iPad Mini runs rings around them and its blazing fast. It doesn’t look like a netbook but that its appeal.

[@salguodrolyat2594]

Little fascination is a euphemism for lifelong all consuming obsession.🤣🤣🤣

[@JessicaFEREM]

wow a Toshiba Libretto is kinda like the first gen version of what GPD does today.

[@nrg753]

Fusion for DOS is a great old 68k emulator that you can use to turn an old laptop or PC in to a hackintosh. IIRC it ran great on Pentium II and above.

[@thealterlion7163]

That isn’t a hard drive! You accidentally installed windows 95 on a Geiger counter

[@ActionRetro]

🤣🤣🤣

[@thealterlion7163]

@@camthesaxman3387 hahaha. I can tell. The powerbook 520c I own also has an extremely loud hard drive

[@blorpburnday4249]

@@camthesaxman3387 the computer wants to eat you, that's why it's grunting.

[@bland9876]

@@camthesaxman3387 I sometimes hear my hard drive spin up while I'm using Chrome and I don't know what's going on? To make matters even more confusing my OS is installed on an SSD.

[@yet_another_communist]

@@bland9876 Browser might be checking the HDD for whatever reason, sometimes even the system is doing that, again, for whatever reason.

[@DerekWitt]

It’s a itsy, bitsy, tiny, weeny, little hackintosh thingy! :) This is definitely something you don’t see everyday ! 👍

[@basketballsteve54]

finish it!!!! that he booted for the first time today....

[@photolabguy]

My friends parents had one of these computers. I remember being blown away at how small the device was and also how nice the screen was. I still think the power plug for the unit is in a weird spot, but Toshiba probably had nowhere else to put it. Great content as usual!

[@myf-w]

The design of the Nintendo DSi and posterior version looks very close to the Toshiba libretto.

[@UNSCPILOT]

I wouldn't be shocked if DSi or 3DS had a little more power though, or at least similar preformance. All I can say for sure is that a homebrew hacked 3DS is really fun to play around with, even have a version of linux installed that I need to tinker with some more

[@myf-w]

@@UNSCPILOT I think that MJD channel shows a video of a DS running old versions of windows, that's amazing

[@icanrunat3200mhz]

You could also try using PCem for the virtualization, which has a lot more control over the emulated hardware (especially of that era), you could more closely match what you're trying to flash the OS onto.

[@allycat7699]

Cute!!! Love the music for the tear down too!

[@mima85]

3:55 - Call me mad, but the clicky and noisy hard drive is one of the things that I most appreciate from old computers :-D

[@filipevasconcelos1980]

AND YES! With a flashlight, a stick and a little patience (15 seconds) you can put a adapter with SD or another adapter WITHOUT OPEN ENTIRE LIBRETTO. 2 screws...

[@wolarts]

"loud, hot and bulky and way underpowered compared to their desktop brethren" well we fixed the bulky part, but other than that I'd say laptops haven't changed much.

[@brandonnesfan]

Nah, they're pretty much same spec. They're only really underpowered if you're comparing them to gaming rigs but even then, you can get gaming spec laptops.

[@lemagreengreen]

I remember reading about that Libretto 50CT and wanting it so bad. Still do, kinda.

[@isaiasprestes9759]

9:36 I agree this design looks weird nowadays, but back there in the 90s, this was one of the most sexy designs. Any laptop back there was boxy, and the Toshibas and Compaq surprised the market with these rounded lines. This was a design, futuristic, and present in many segments of the industry. For instance, the Ford Taurus (1996) and Contour. Great video! Amazing hacking! :D

[@MarkNeri]

That's pretty much how hard drives sounded at the time

[@CommodoreFan64]

Yep a lot of HDD's back then where loud AF, & we didn't think much of it. Same for 40X - 52X CD-ROM/CD-R/RW drives back then as well.

[@bibasik7]

The Libretto is the 20-years-ago equivalent of the GPD Win.

[@MATAM29]

GPD Pocket*

[@stuartaxon2898]

Keyboard looks more sane, I probably would use the GPD Win if the keyboard wasn't so weird.

[@duplicake4054]

It looks more like the gpd pocket

[@MainAvel]

Wait doesn't the 50CT have a 75MHz Pentium? I thought only models after the 70CT had over-100MHz Pentiums. Also the 50CT and I think all of them have proper sound chips. The 50CT itself has a bona-fide Yamaha OPL3. By far my favorite Windows95 machine. ALSO also how did you get your PCMCIA adapter to get recognized so easily? I still haven't managed to get my PCMCIA adapter working on my 50CT.

[@DHirschfelt]

Yeah. The 50CT has a Intel Pentium 75 MHz, 16 MB RAM (32 MB max.), 810 MB hard disk, 6.1-inch TFT display. I overclocked mine to 100mhz in 1998 or 1999 and compressed the HDD to squeeze out some more storage. If he has 32mb then he already has the proprietary memory expansion module and it’s maxed out. That was expensive for me on a college student budget. It came with the “port expander” (that he referred to as a dock) that came with it. It also came with the PCMCIA floppy drive that he’s missing. I have the dock and it is very nice. I also rocked Iomega’s 40mb click drive that also sat flush in the PCMCIA slot. I loved this thing.

[@Bushidounohana]

I wonder if the initial CF boot issues have to do with fixed versus removable mode for the CF card? Getting ready to do a similar surgery to my old iBook G4, and was researching how some older PCs and some OSes require installation/boot from a fixed drive rather than removable, though I suppose the SD booting might negate that?

[@zoomosis]

The CF boot problem in the video looked too early in the boot process to be related to fixed vs removable. It was as though the CF card wasn't being recognised by the BIOS, which suggests to me the card might have been too big for it to recognise. I'm not sure what size the successful SD card was. PS. Years ago I got OS X 10.3.9 to boot from an 8 GB SDHD card using a generic eBay adapter on an Apple iBook G3. It replaced a hard drive that was even noisier than the one in this video.

[@Bushidounohana]

@@zoomosis Great point-thank you for that thought! Also appreciate the note about your experience with the old iBook-waiting on one such a generic adapter from eBay. Shipping times are measured in months these days ...

[@piecaruso97]

On 486 and any old machine the bios limits the max hdd size you can use, so you have to either use software to workaround that like ezdrive or you have to use an appropriately sized disk

[@grahamc87]

I’m sure someone has mentioned it somewhere deep in the comments but don’t forget about the Libretto 100/110. They have a NeoMagic NM-2160 and both can support 96MB of RAM. The 100 can also be overclocked to 233Mhz fairly easily.

[@Comm0ut]

They were also delightfully well made. I'd buy a properly done modernized clone in a heartbeat as I found them quite nice to use.

[@easontekreviews1647]

8:54 if you have DD version 8.32 and higher you can set a Progress argument to show the progress or use PV and pipe the command through that

[@nixboox]

That's the one I had...I couldn't remember the name until right now. I loved it. I had it when I was still in school and it was smaller than anything anyone else had so it was instantly a sensation.

[@bland9876]

I don't think I've ever seen someone use a compact flash card without an adapter so it seems like it would be better to just manufacture a solid state IDE device.

[@MadITGeek]

Couple of things. the reason why the graphics driver went wonky on the Libretto. its not a S3 card. its actually a C&T (chips and technologies)video card as others have said. Also, it looks like the max is 32MB of ram for that. and its not a P166 MMX...the 100CT is. what you have is a lowly Pentium 75mhz no mmx

[@MaximNightFury]

Ah... I remember accidentally overwriting about 300 GB of data over the last 6+ years by accidentally mixing up drive assignments while using DD Always check with sudo fdisk -l

[@bland9876]

I'm going to guess that you guys are talking about diskpart cuz ya that thing is not to be taken lightly.

[@MaximNightFury]

@@bland9876 I'm talking about DiskDestroyer command

[@bland9876]

@@MaximNightFury you're making diskdestroyer sound like LibreOffice whereas diskpart is Microsoft word So the exact same thing.

[@steaker-gi9uw]

On my old thinkpad with ide to SD adapters I’ve used a bunch of electrical tape to make a handle. Then to install it I dangled it in there and used a plastic poker to get it into the ide slot. It’s a little fiddly to install, but it’s much better than taking it apart.

[@jwoody8815]

You know your an old-school tech enthusiest when you use ithe an egg carton or an icecube tray as a screw organiser. (Pill holders aslo work especially well because of the closable lids.)

[@imark7777777]

I have a 70 CT however I picked up a longer CF card adapter which allows me to swap cards without taking it apart. I was planning for other operating systems I wasn't thinking Mac!

[@vicsar]

4:03 Wow! I hadn't heard that sound in... oh, so many years.

[@AverageMichaelJordans]

I don't know why but that laptop with that vapourwave background is a match made in heaven

[@jbritain]

Is there anywhere we can download that cool wallpaper you use everywhere?

[@ActionRetro]

Right here! www.wallpaperflare.com/outrun-vaporwave-wallpaper-gjedg/download/2880x1800

[@-arGru]

Small note, the 50CT shipped with 16MB of RAM, with an optional 16MB memory card available.

[@cellularmitosis2]

Tip: you can speed up dd by specifying a larger block size. It speeds up because it makes fewer system calls.

[@tech34756]

Sounds like my Amiga 1200’s old HDD, it was so loud you would think it had a fan in it. It was almost weird when I replaced it with a much quieter drive a few years later.

[@acw2099]

I just got a Libretto. what cf to ide adapter did you use? I so wanna do this. and do you have an image for the windows install too?

[@blaiserobitaille1940]

I think there was a writeup on this in PC MAGAZINE in the 90s - was the first time I even heard of sub notebooks. Keep up the great teardowns!!!

[@ianbrisland1982]

You missed the USB port that is hidden behind the door on the back

[@williamrogers5367]

Aww, I miss the sound of the sped up screwdriver sounds when you took apart machines. Still a fantastic vid as ever. One of my favourite channels ❤️👍

[@jasondinger9984]

I, too was fascinated with portable computers when I was a kid. Imagine a computer that could be easily moved with a forklift!

[@norebonomis]

I am just in awe. That this was accomplished in 2021 after the release of the M1. Just fantastic. Bravo. is there some kind of award we can give this guy? #WINNING

[@salguodrolyat2594]

Nobel prize for physics.😁

[@rovert94]

Rhapsody is the most 90's Apple product name there ever was.

[@zembryoz]

Voice coil hard drives are not terrible - lots of people love the sound! I definitely do.

[@stephencox4224]

One thing I found with the Libretto 50 CT which I still have also having bought it new (Not Cheap back then ) I really like how useable the trackpoint is on the display lid actually is it works really well. Standard they came with a port replicator which helped out but remember these were Windows 95 originally some 25 disks for windows and another six from memory for drivers and other software. The original hard drive was well what you expect for the era I suppose and yes I still have it. One thing was the first Toshiba I owned was an 8086 CPU and the operating system Dos 3.0 was installed in Read only memory and expansion was a very expensive plug in 2 megabyte card the real advantage with the OS being installed the way it was is it makes it totally virus proof shut down and reboot and you have a clean OS as it cannot be written to or compromised a very useful feature nobody seems to have remembered these days for IT security repairs to client systems.

[@Ms_Princess_Zelda]

Literally Oregon Trail and Sim Ant. Thats all we did in “computer lab around 1995-1996 on our mac OS Rapsody computer lab

[@kaitlyn__L]

I don’t have any apps to try, but I’d absolutely love to see more exploration of Rhapsody and the ways it’s similar to Nextstep and OSX. Some parts of it looked like OSX or, as you say, OS8, while other parts look like Nextstep. I’m of that age too. Damn I would’ve killed for that Compaq laptop back in the day. With its janky shortcut keys on the trackpad and everything. Adults around me would tell me, oh the battery is crap and you can’t really do anything with them anyway, but I just wanted to play games on the sofa instead of in the office. I was too young to care about graphics, and I would’ve been plugged in the whole time.

[@lepidotos]

I've heard that Mac OS X DP1 is still very similar to Rhapsody DR2 just with Carbon and Classic.app bolted on, so that might be an avenue for getting Rhapsody with more software.

[@johnknight9150]

I know if it were me installing that HDD mod, I would've spent two hours with an endoscope and pliers and chopsticks (or whatever else came to hand) trying to stick the mod in place instead of just opening up the laptop some more. ;-)

[@kippie80]

Cool! I'd spent 5,000$ back in the day to have a 32meg 486 machine and ran OpenStep. Still have the original box that I'd purchased.

[@KazyEXE]

I gasped when I saw that module. I've been searching for one for like a year!

[@aldob2282]

used libretto with msdos for a couple of year as a usenet reader during train commuting. very useful

[@real_schlumpus]

Great seeing dosdude for once. Such a nice guy with great projects. Cheers!

[@LOCAL5_NEWS]

The libretto kinda looks like its an nintendo ds from the 90

[@trevormang7464]

About the specs of the machine, I think you have got the wrong info on the Libretto 50CT. The 50CT should have a Pentium 75 (w/o MMX), 16MB RAM (Upgradable to 32MB) and a 6.1" LCD Display. The specs you mentioned in video should be the 100CT. As an owner of a later model Libretto 70CT, I have plenty of spare parts for this lineup of machines, including RAM upgrades, LCD panel, power bricks, and a compatible floppy drive. I surly can help if you @Action Retro need help of those.

[@M0LHA]

Yeah I was going to chime in and say the same. I own the 50/100/110 (and I'm still on the hunt for the others). Bruce is correct. There is a fabled 96meg upgrade on the 100CT+ but it requires a donor laptop and case modification.

[@MacintoshMen]

Awesome project! Also a very crisp display on that little Toshiba

[@IvanIvanov-ug5dc]

4:10 - it is just very old. My was pretty silent in the previous in the previous millennium.

[@dosdoktor]

No color on the Chips F65550. The latter models (Libretto L110) use a NeoMagic chip.

[@MontieMongoose]

The clicky noisy hard drive is one of its most endearing qualities.

[@zoomosis]

It might be possible in some circumstances to boot from the CF card in the PCMCIA adapter, negating the need to take the machine apart to swap out the SD card. Though from my rough googling it seems to require a magic combination of a compatible CF card, cooperative BIOS and operating system to actually work.

[@greggv8]

I had to reinstall Windows 95 original on a Libretto 50CT back when they were still a new thing. The owner had the special PCMCIA floppy drive. The process was complicated by Toshiba not yet having 32bit drivers for the floppy drive. For some reason that made it impossible to complete the install off the big stack of disks so I resorted to removing the hard drive and copying all the files off the floppies to one folder on it, after doing a format /s. Put the hard drive back in and installed from the hard drive. Not having a 32bit driver for the floppy did some weird shiznit with Windows whenever it was plugged in. IIRC Toshiba did finally produce a proper driver for the floppy to make it work as it should. Dunno why some companies in the late 90's dragged their feet on releasing drivers for 95 and NT4 for some of their current products. Iomega shot their Ditto Max tape drive product line down for business use by not releasing a NT4 driver until a long time after the release of the drives. A dentist wanted his new computer to run NT4, and he also insisted on using the Ditto Max for backup. The only solution was to install NT4 with FAT16 and dual boot with Windows 95B, also on FAT16, so that to do backups it could be booted to 95 and access the NT4 partition to backup the dentist office data. It worked, including restores, but was kludgy and required additional training for the front desk people, thanks to Iomega releasing NT3.5 drivers but not NT4 drivers.

[@shinypb]

😲 Ice cube tray! What an amazingly good idea!

[@ptonpc]

I first saw a Libretto in 1999 running NT server. I still have my little Libretto 100 with full dock (It has USB).

[@JasonStevens]

Drivers on Rhapsody were so rare... Oddly enough Darwin 0.1 opens it up mostly but there is no PCMCIA code so we couldn't build it. I guess the request is doom? Or quake? I haven't seen people post source and my ports are terrible. I gutted UAE (yes the Amiga emulator) for my IO. I did get that frontier II rebuild running although it is incredibly slow. I ought to do more games..

[@ActionRetro]

Wow amazing!!

[@tomaszk2242]

Do you really call that HDD sound annoying? It's one of the magicest of magical sounds of those times! Honestly, whenever I hear it I'm back to the day I sat by my first computer for the second time in my life - the morning after getting it, because particularly then that sound felt - somehow - most crisp. Can't imagine such laptop without it, something would be clearly missing.

[@desumoyo]

I own one of those, I'm not surprised your graphic driver doesn't work, this system has nothing made by S3, and doesn't even have anything PCI to begin with. The video device is a Chips & Technologies B65550 connected via an ISA bus, Audio (I don't remember if Rhapsody support it) is a Yamaha OPL3-SA2.

[@nitrax8629]

Technically the video adapter uses Vesa Local Bus(!), but there is no PCI - so 32-bit PC cards don't work.

[@vasya_cat]

This Toshiba laptop is pretty small, i like it

[@andresbravo2003]

I always appreciate throughout the development...

[@fsfs555]

Those ATA flash adapters can be a little tricky. Make sure you have a type that's able to manually select master, slave, or cable select for the best chance of getting them to work.

[@AbolishStakeout]

I've heard about Apple having an Intel version of Mac is even before 10.4. . This is the time I've seen it.

[@JustinFrost302]

they make a 2.5" CF IDE adapter

[@kippie80]

You should be able to run a console window from the serial port and make vid driver changes that way.

[@TristanKingly]

I have been having the exact same issues with an IBM T22 laptop trying to replace the old IDE drive with a CF one (not seeing the system disk). I suspect it might have something to do with master slave settings on the disk (like the option shouldn't exist?) but am yet to try the third adapter I bought (which unfortunately looks like the one you are using in your vid.) :(

[@JeremyLevi]

Some CF Card to IDE adapters cause problems, for sure. Could also be a drive (or boot partition) size issue. Not sure about this Libretto, but some older PCs (or maybe an OS limitation? I forget) won't boot if the boot partition isn't fully contained within the first 2GB of space, regardless of how large of a total drive size it supports. I remember running into something like this when I first upgraded to a 6GB hard drive from 1.2GB and was trying to set up multiboot for a couple of different OSes.

[@TristanKingly]

@@JeremyLevi I transferred the image of the spinning ide drive to the CF card. The original hard drive is 20GB and the CF is 64GB which all should work. Bloody thing can't see it though. :( The T22 is a perfect W98 retro gaming rig otherwise.

[@TristanKingly]

@@JeremyLevi Well, Nothing worked with the CF card but a SD to IDE card worked, exactly the same as in this video. There must be something weird about CF cards on some of these older machines?

[@JeremyLevi]

@@TristanKingly Ah, there is a hint here on the Transcend site, I think might be relevant. "A CompactFlash card can be used as a fixed disk, as it is defined in the CompactFlash specification. However, Transcend does not support using our commercial solutions, including the CF133/400/600/800/1000, in Fixed Disk mode, as this has gone beyond the scope of their intended use. Therefore, all of our commercial CF cards are shipped, by default, in Removable mode. Please kindly refer to the following link to find out more information about Transcend industrial CF cards."

[@JeremyLevi]

Apparently most OS check to see if the boot media is removable and refuse to boot. I see mentioned using GRUB to boot other OSes to bypass as it doesn't care if boot media is fixed or removable.

[@atknoell3]

That clicking you mentioned is very nostalgic to me. It's the sound of computing for me. ^u^

[@timanderson4348]

I always wanted a Libretto when they were hot and fresh in the market. To turn one into a Hackintosh. That would have blown my 90s mind.

[@pocketscience911]

Hmm, has anyone had any luck with that image Sean posted on the garden? I've used dd (and BalenaEtcher) to put it on a couple different drives and each time end up with an unreadable drive? Reformatting brings the drive back thankfully. I simply downloaded that last zip, expanded it, and wrote it to the drive...

[@michaelhill6453]

Pizmo. That name always makes me smile.

[@EriolGaurhoth]

Wasn't the 50CT equipped with a 75MHz Pentium (some variants had MMX, others did not) and maxed out at 32MB of RAM? I don't recall there ever being a 50CT with a 166MHz Pentium, unless this one was modded/overclocked. I think the 100CT came with a 166MHz Pentium.

[@5thaltaccount547]

The Libretto sounds like a real Apple product form the mid 90’s BEHOLD- THE APPLE LIBRETTO 🍎

[@ActionRetro]

😂

[@leontechtalks]

Where did you buy it? I want to see if I can buy it