The Toshiba Satellite Pro 4260DVD Pentium 3 Laptop from 2000!

[@StaceyAyodele]

So glad I happened upon your channel. I love watching retro tech vids.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Happy to have you along!!! Welcome!!

[@ThatOnecat-m7q]

He reply's to all comments and makes amazing content! what an amazing channel

[@TheRetroRecall]

I do! I love the community and the interaction!! ❤️

[@JeffBreyer]

The Toshiba Satellite A10 was my first laptop that I got for college. I still have it and I just bought another in working condition. Miss the days of those laptops.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Nice!! Happy to hear you still have them and I hope in working order.

[@joshwalker4834]

What a beautiful machine. As always, great content!!

[@TheRetroRecall]

Tha k you, glad you enjoyed!

[@hiredgun7186]

I have a feeling that AVG and several other back ground services running (make sure start up folder is empty or everything in it is disabled)are your performance problems and AVG is a resource pig. had one just like this running win 2k on it and it ran like a top , I really liked the display on this one

[@TheRetroRecall]

Maybe a complete reformat will prove to be like yours.

[@Chriva]

I've only ever seen that bios on DELL laptops before. I wonder if they had some partnership going on back then?

[@TheRetroRecall]

It's funny. I make comment in the video that the keyboard reminds me a lot of the Dell Latitude CPx keyboard. I wonder....

[@911Salvage]

Yes, I've paid to register WinRAR when I was in college in 2002. But I wasn't exactly adhering to the licensing terms. I used it on multiple computers despite only having paid for a single license. I hope they don't see this comment.

[@surrealmemes3518]

hello, this is the winrar foundation. due to your breach of license terms, your free trial of Life® 2016 has expired. please report to firing squad by 4:30am tomorrow morning. respectfully, winrar

[@maxtornogood]

I have a hard time thinking they'll care that much in 2024!

[@TheRetroRecall]

Hahah that's funny!

[@TheRetroRecall]

😂😂😂😂

[@TheRetroRecall]

Tongue in cheek I think.

[@The_Magic_of_Zelda]

Very neat Toshiba laptop. I like Toshiba laptops and I even had a Core 2 Duo Toshiba Satellite that ran Vista like a champ. Too bad they left the laptop market and sold to Sharp under the Dynabook brand. Tecra is the business lineup which are still available today along with the Satellite and Portégé lineups. The HDD could be the issue but also check the thermal paste and the ram. I had a desktop that was running slow which after troubleshooting, it was a bad ram stick. Also check the voltage and amp of the charger and try using the laptop without the battery installed. I had some old laptops that ran much faster when I removed the old batteries out of them. Glad to see another Windows 2000 fan. I did not get a chance to use Win2K all that much but when I did, it was a great OS.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Great suggestions, I'll give all of this a try when it comes time to restore this system, thank you! Yes loved Win2k!

[@rsobe]

Capn Voyager seems to be a marine navigation software, and some of the other desktop icons are also related, this laptop seems to have being used on a boat/ship

[@TheRetroRecall]

Neat, thanks for looking into that!

[@stevencamp6824]

Only thing i dislike about old laptops is changing the cmos batteries lol

[@wdd6864]

Find and remove quickly! They leak bad

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yeah, it can be a challenge.

[@TheRetroRecall]

On it!

[@CasioMaker]

A cousin of mine, had one of these back in the day... he imported it from the US, since this model wasn't exactly available here in Chile, if I recall correctly. Seemed like a cool machine, back on those days.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yes not a bad machine at all. I think it deserves a little TLC.

[@simonlathwell]

I miss the good old days of Windows 2000, and Windows 2000 Server. It was such a great reliable and stable OS, and in my top three best Microsoft Windows versions that they ever released being 95, 2000, & XP. I've got very fond memories of installing it on lots of computers working at a private school upgrading from NT4 Workstation. I'll have to dig out my original Windows 2000 box and put it on display somewhere with the original CD. I've even got my original Office 2000 disks, but unfortunately not the box anymore, so I'm still looking for a boxed copy of Office 2000 so I've got a new box. I've also got my original MS Works 2000 (v5.0) disks somewhere in my software collection. I even found my Windows 2000 and 2000 Server four month evaluation kits the other day going through all of my old evaluation and beta disks I got from Microsoft back in the day.

[@simonlathwell]

For gaming on Windows 2000 you will need to set compatibility. So for the games I would set it to run the games under Windows 95 or 98 by right clicking the executable and the selecting compatibility. Most or nearly all games were not compatible with Windows 2000 as it was aimed at the business market. If I recall correctly Windows 2000 was the first Windows version with a compatibility layer available so it could run older software, but I'm sure others will keep me honest in the comments if it wasn't.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Love when people share these memories, it beings back so many nostalgic memories for myself as well :)

[@TheRetroRecall]

For sure, absolutely correct. That said, I never had issues running games on my Win2k PC's.

[@LatitudeSky]

The serial port is one of the reasons I love my Dell D630. I do use it, for talking to Dell network switches, ironically. And also to program communication equipment that only supports serial port dongles, and software that loves being on slower hardware. There is no downside.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Those d630s are amazing!!!!

[@liliwinnt6]

18:49 me too, i love Windows 2000 as well

[@TheRetroRecall]

Awesome!

[@grahamshaw5531]

My first Laptop was a Toshiba Satellite 1710CDS. It ran Windows Millennium. Only have the User Manual left.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Oh oh, I assume you got rid of it?

[@PiercedJedi]

I used to sell systems like this, not many people would buy them because they were more expensive and people always wanted the cheapest, that's why Office Depot and Office Max (two different companies back then) would push the eMachines HP and Compaq systems with Celeron CPUs

[@TheRetroRecall]

Definitely. That Celeron CPU option cut the cost big time, yet the customers would always scream wondering why their system (full of bloat) was running so slowly :)

[@electrofreak0]

I'd love to see the full maxed out version with a recovery original OOBE. The lag might also be from dried out thermal paste on the CPU too. Probably a combination of a lot of factors.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yeah, this will require a good restoration!

[@SYIBOI]

Man on the topic of Toshiba laptops I have two interesting anecdotes. First of which being around 2008/9ish there was a persistant rumor that Toshiba laptops like literally all models of their laptops had full sized desktop processors and would cook themselves. The second thing being a friend of mine at the time got a laptop in high school. Well in 2012 shortly after we graduated, my friend left his laptop in sleepmode on a lazy chair he had in his room. (Was kinda rich kid). I went to look soemthing up opened it up started googling something, i smell burning. Look for the source and see smoke coming out the exhaust port. I flip out in the moment and try to toss it before it catches fire. The brokennplastic around the vent (he didnot take good care of his laptop) sliced my arm. I still have a scar (though its fading).

[@TheRetroRecall]

Wow!!!! Now that's a memory you'll never forget!

[@pierreinthavong181]

Cool retro toshiba laptop!😊

[@TheRetroRecall]

Agreed!

[@Tybearius]

I still have my Toshiba Satellite 225CDS, it's in the garage. Still works too. MFG Year: 1996, 133MHz Pentium, 144Mb RAM, 4.3Gb HDD, Yamaha Sound Card, Windows 98SE

[@TheRetroRecall]

That's awesome!!! Dig it out, time for some networked Doom2 over dial up! 😂

[@horusfalcon]

This thing reminds me of the old Dell Latitude CP series. Make a screw map if you disassemble one of these. Back then, Toshiba was infamous for using several different sizes and lengths of screws to build these things. If it runs true to form for the designs of this era, there will be two more DIMM sockets under the keyboard. Win2K was notoriously not for gaming - the driver support wasn't there because the OS was business-focused. You might try to put your OS on a PCMCIA card? That would be less costly than finding an IDE SSD. Heh. Like no. 255.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Oh my I have some SSDs I bought from Amazon for 17.00 each and the adapters are between 10 and 20 dollars. Not a bad investment if it gets this system up and running at full speed.

[@horusfalcon]

@@TheRetroRecall Cool! I look forward to seeing more on this project.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Stay tuned!

[@geoffreyreuther5260]

Good old Toast-ibas!

[@TheRetroRecall]

Hahah I can totally see that.

[@maxtornogood]

Your video was early this week! Have to admit I kinda enjoy the design of 90's - early 2000's Toshiba laptops. I think there is too much loading at startup & forcing everything into the slow swap file. It's not that slow for me on my older Toshiba's & their spinning rust 😉

[@TheRetroRecall]

It was, testing out the release times and viewership, however I think it backfired. The algorithm is not promoting the video as much as it does on Saturday.

[@maxtornogood]

@@TheRetroRecall That's a bummer, it's just as well your regular viewers are keeping an eye out!

[@TheRetroRecall]

:) I appreciate each and every one of you!!!

[@mccrh7737]

Little hint from an old school tech, Windows 98 for gaming and 2k for productivity. Dual boot and all your problems will be solved. Also, max the ram and get a SSD in it 😀

[@tarajoe07]

I never had any issues with gaming on 2k🤷

[@TheRetroRecall]

Absolutely needs an upgrade and to be hinest, Win2k never gave me any issues with gaming over the years.

[@mccrh7737]

@@TheRetroRecall Win 9X for gaming will give you the best speed and support. 2k will game , but the loss in performance on slow hardware isn't worth it 😉

[@mccrh7737]

Oh ya before I forget, Make sure that the 98 is a lite as possible and once it's configured, change the shell to Program Manager. "C:\windows\system.ini" "Shell=progman.exe". Also make sure that VB 1-6 is installed, dx 7 - 9, glide and MS Dotnet 1.1. From my personal experience that seems to cover a good majority of classic games 😀

[@TheRetroRecall]

Oh for sure!

[@laurencejohnson4106]

It's in good nick and the user manual is available online.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Appreciate it!

[@MaskedGEEK]

That laptop was the very exact model I first play the PC ports of Tomb Raider 2 and Tomb Raider 3 on. I hated those nipple mouse tips, I would've preferred a ball on the side before trackpads became the norm. EDIT: Looking into the Capt Voyager Tides32 software, it appears to be nautical navigation software. So it's likely this laptop was used to pilot a personal luxury vessel, or small to medium passenger ship.

[@TheRetroRecall]

That's so cool, thanks for looking that up and sharing, much appreciated!!

[@markwiehenstroer2831]

How did the speakers sound? I have a couple of old laptops (Dell and HP) where the embedded speakers have degraded and don't sound as good when they were newer.

[@TheRetroRecall]

They weren't too bad actually. I get what you are saying though - the materials can degrade over time.

[@ChingasoClown]

I really miss the old days of the internet :( Pretty sure you can update ram cpu and hdd, Trying to find a model like that but they are expensive and hard to find, also most have a really dim lcd

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yes for sure. More ram and an SSD is on the menu!

[@Derpingtonshere]

They do have a recovery backup on the archive website. They also have a tools and utility backup, and looks like they have manuals. Oddly it looks like windows NT 4.0 and 2000?! I thought it would have been 98. EDIT: Their seems to be a copy of windows 95 and 98 as well with the drivers as well... So maybe these did go up until windows 2000 natively. Seems like a long stretch though.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yeah I agree. I just looked and they are there. I'll definitely try it out as part of the restoration :)

[@matcentrino7602]

I wish new laptops have kept the same Thick design like this. Nowadays laptops are too slim and feels like using a laptop just for work than Fun of owning it.

[@TheRetroRecall]

100%!!!! When using these systems I get so many nostalgic vibes.

[@rybakawalarz]

i think that AVG is major thing that slow down this machine

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yes I remember it being a resource hog. More ram and an SSD would also be a big help.

[@stevencamp6824]

P3 is one of my fav cpus from the time

[@TheRetroRecall]

Agreed, very powerful. I actually did a dual slot 1 P3 video earlier on, they are a ncie CPU

[@GamerisawesomeYTonPSN]

I hope you’re doing awesome @TheRetroRecall

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thank you and yes, always!

[@RetroTechTom]

I have a similar Toshiba laptop that uses the same design but mine is a Satellite 2065CDS I ordered a charger for it since it didn't have one and I can't wait to test it

[@TheRetroRecall]

Now that's pretty cool. It's great the adapters are still available for them!

[@RetroTechTom]

@@TheRetroRecall I got the adapter and it worked one time and the laptop never worked again (I found some battery corrosion inside of it)

[@TheRetroRecall]

Oh no..... Repairable?

[@kopspijker3515]

I have it's newer(?) brother, a Satellite Pro 4600, that i used in high school. My parent bough it for me second hand about 17 years ago. Don't know the exact date anymore, i was around 13 at the time. Last year i decided to power it on again after being stored for while(about 10 year) and only had to repair a broken solderjoint on the power plug. Still works! Even with the Windows 2000 install i put on it about 15 years ago. Mine is kitted out with a Coppermine Celeron @ 733MHz, 128MB Ram. Strangely Toshiba decided to put a Trident Cyberblade XP in it for graphics. The 3D performance is just 💩. Though i admit i don't know if i tried unreal on it. The original battery is still installed. And holds enough of a charge to keep the CMOS clock going.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thanks for sharing this. I'm shocked to hear about the RTC still working.

[@sebastian19745]

I have a P2@233 laptop with 128M RAM, Trident Cyber 3D 2.5M RAM and it runs Win2k like a champ. Of course, no fancy games (HL1, Anno1602, AoE, Diablo1&2) but also did not lag so much like yours. Maybe a cleanup/format would help. I see that this computer was used so it might have some fragmentation on the HDD, also I think I saw an antivirus software (that should unistall because these are hogging system resources). These might be the cause of poor performance. My Win2k laptop idles at

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thanks for the tips! I agree - I also thing the original software is on archive. More ram and an SSD should make a huge difference!

[@jjohnson71958]

built better back then

[@TheRetroRecall]

Much.

[@dmcintosh1967]

I have only one Toshiba laptop and it's a satellite 2250CDT and came with windows 98SE. The laptop works but the HDD was removed as it was going to be scrapped but luckily I was able to save it. Unfortunately I'm not able to find any drivers or a recovery CD for the laptop so it's in a closet collecting dust for time being.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Did you check the Toshiba (now Dyna book) support site? Lots of drivers there - link in the description.

[@DarKnightKilla13]

I almost can guarantee the HDD is running at 4200 rpm, that's what my HP HDD used to be linked to. Beyond that, even a 7200 will help, and Toshiba hardrives are notorious for either going bad or being bad to begin with. Not saying every single one is bad, but a good "sector check/scandisk" wouldn't hurt, either.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yeah I agree. In the end, more ram and an SSD with a fresh install - future vid!

[@DarKnightKilla13]

@@TheRetroRecall Good luck and I look forward to it!

[@TheRetroRecall]

Thanks!

[@jjohnson71958]

i have the 4015 cdt toshiba just needs a replacement motherboard and notebook pata drive

[@TheRetroRecall]

Ah, what's up with the motherboard?

[@jjohnson71958]

@@TheRetroRecall broke the cd-rom drive ribbon connector holder tab but it does turn on and everything else is in mint conditon and it has mmx pentium 2 cpu

[@TheRetroRecall]

Awesome and nice. Hopefully it works out. Good luck!

[@MajenkoTechnologies]

Finding drives is not easy. I'd recommend an IDE 44 pin to SD card adapter, easily available from Amazon.

[@jjohnson71958]

@@MajenkoTechnologies 2.25 notebook to cf card adapter

[@mercuryvapoury]

yay!

[@TheRetroRecall]

Early release, enjoy!

[@ChrisJackson-js8rd]

i would like to see a fresh windows 98 install. just to see if it has any effect on the games. because by all rights this should be able to run unreal no problem

[@TheRetroRecall]

I agree, I think it's that HDD running at probably 4200 rpm.

[@rmcdudmk212]

I had a AMD dual core DDR 3 Toshiba satellite that was not a powerful machine but it could take a beating. I beat that thing up and it booted up perfectly every time.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Really, so they were built well? The only line I remember being built like a brick were the Tecras.

[@rmcdudmk212]

​@@TheRetroRecallthis was a 2006 or so model I want to say but still badged as a satellite. They used the name forever.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yea for. Sure.

[@khx73]

Never had a Toshiba Satellite, but wanted one way back then... too expensive (or I was too poor)

[@TheRetroRecall]

Haha I think they were too expensive. I remember drooling over these types of systems in PC magazines or in the local advertisements.

[@liliwinnt6]

it's kinda rare to have a dvd-rom on a Pentium 3 laptop, by my opinion

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yeah, it would have been expensive at the time.

[@jjohnson71958]

mine has a ir transmitter/receiver and 1 usb 2.0 port

[@TheRetroRecall]

Nice!

[@gentuxable]

I think the GPU is the bottleneck. I remember even the Desktop Savage4 were quite abysmal even compared to the Rage 128 and the Riva TNT 2 and the laptop versions are running on even lower clocks. The hard drive might just need some time to refresh the magnetic charge on the disks, I've seen some hard drives being very slow at first if stored for a longer time. It might help to just reinstall the system and write fresh bits.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I'll try an SSD to see with a fresh install. Unreal should be running even at a low resolution with a lower end GPU.

[@autingo6583]

as i understand it, "bulging" ist exclusively an issue with lithium polymer casing batteries and never with these far older lithium ion 18650 standard cell packs.

[@TheRetroRecall]

I've literally run into new batteries in cell phones, tablets netbooks bulging. The same for these older systems.

[@ocsrc]

I really wish I could find a store with old 486 laptops with hardware 9 pin serial ports The Thinkpads like the R50 if you can find a docking port you can get a hardware uart 16650 serial port and USB I need to be able to boot from USB into pure DOS

[@TheRetroRecall]

Yeah, I think those days of finding those systems in stores is rare. Keep an eye out on online marketplaces etc.

[@MajenkoTechnologies]

Booting into DOS from USB... now there's a trick if you can do it. Personally I use a CH375 based ISA card with a special boot ROM on an IBM 5150 PC. Finding something as old as a 486 with built in support for booting from USB is probably not going to be possible. You're really into the P4 era for that sort of thing.

[@0MeALot0]

If you really want to game on this laptop, win 98 (se) with dos support would probably be the way to go and see if it runs 2d games. S3 never really produced any great 3d cards and laptop parts are normally much weaker then the desktop counterparts because of power savings. Personally i would much rather grab a desktop and pick the parts and screen.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Oh for sure this is all for fun!

[@MajenkoTechnologies]

Windows 98 is the only operating system that will work 100% on this laptop, Linux is a no-go (unless you want ancient slackware or bizarre Tiny Core). All other windows versions don't have the right soundcard drivers (your 2000 installation there only has OPL3 drivers, not XG drivers). So if you want the best out of that laptop, use 98. And use the correct XG drivers, or you'll bluescreen it and trash the installation of your OS...

[@TheRetroRecall]

Hmmm it would be interesting to try DSL 9m this to see if it works. Wouldn't it be something if it worked and not on yours?

[@MajenkoTechnologies]

@@TheRetroRecall It certainly would. It would mean that I truly have a cursed computer. But I wouldn't expect it to work.... Unable to mount root filesystem. Can't execute commands....

[@MajenkoTechnologies]

@@TheRetroRecall And it took me a long time trying different SD-XG drivers until I found the one that worked. The laptop is so badly designed (possibly intentionally....) that any other driver will kill 98. If it's not toshiba's own, then it's doomed to failure.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Im definitely going to try it out tomorrow, I'll keep you updated!

[@TheRetroRecall]

Definitely good to know. I saw the stream, so very interesting indeed. We shall see what results I yield!

[@spike5552]

Hello❤

[@spike5552]

Btw it's 1:54 AM in Romania😂

[@TheRetroRecall]

Haha! I released early!!!

[@TheRetroRecall]

Hello!!! ❤️

[@spike5552]

​@@TheRetroRecallNice ! 😊

[@thomasschuler5351]

give it some RAM. it's full with win2k already, everything on top you want to run will start swapping on the harddisk at bullying level. after that some of the games should be running a whole lot better

[@TheRetroRecall]

Agreed, more ram and an SSD with a clean install!

[@MajenkoTechnologies]

Ah, the 4200 series. A laptop I both love and hate. The best ever soundcard, but the worst ever hardware... Such problems getting it working, as you have seen over the past couple of weeks on stream.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Ahhh yes!!! That is the machine, I had forgotten!

[@MajenkoTechnologies]

@@TheRetroRecall You want to get inside it and remove the CMOS battery ASAP. It will have leaked down the wire and the connector where it connects to the motherboard will be nice and green. Fortunately the battery itself is in plastic and well away from the motherboard so shouldn't do much damage.

[@alaricjeard269]

Laptop at this time werent design for gaming, and savage 4 graphics is just junk. You can put the fastest ssd in this, game 'll always won't work. First decent GPU for laptop was the GeForce 2 Go and came around 2001.

[@TheRetroRecall]

For sure it will be limited, however an SSD and a fresh install should at least run these games on a low resolution smoothly.

[@Laziter73]

The harddrive is certainly a bottle neck, but that's not all. RAM should be upgraded for a (slightly) better performance, but getting Unreal to run on that one.. Well, just forget it. There will be no decent 3D gaming on that laptop. Unless you throw DOS on it and run some Doom that is.

[@TheRetroRecall]

Hahaha well, I love a good challenge. Time for a restoration video and see what we can squeeze out of it!

[@stevef6392]

AC3filter? Divx & Xvid? Winrar? Man, someone must've been downloading Gladiator.2000.Ac3.xvid.DvDRip.rar back in the day. ;-)

[@TheRetroRecall]

Hahha so true 😂