Toshiba T1910CS 1994 Laptop

[@shadows9001]

This was my second ever laptop I had to help me with school work. It was way back in the 00’s and second hand at the time. I loved this little beast, it did struggle with windows 95 haha

[@MegaManNeo]

Seeing this Super Mario game always fills me with nostalgia. My dad bought a floppy on a flea market when I was still a little kid with an early version of the game on it. The laptop seems nice for a DOS machine too, I kinda want to type on that keyboard.

[@MadCatSE]

I have this machine in my collection, and it's in perfect condition cosmetically. I had three dead ones and managed to build one perfect machine out of them. I also have an additional 16mb RAM card, so Windows 95 runs quite good. I also changed elements in battery, so it has about 2 hours of autonomy. Strange CTRL, ALT and CAPS LOCK placement is similar how it was on first Toshiba laptops. Trackball is rather nice, but takes a lot of space in the bag. And I really like keyboard feel for some reason, it feels great to type on. The only real problem with this machine is total lack of normal sound (only PC speaker) and small amount of videoram, in limits itself to 16 colors in Windows.

[@zipty842]

My grandma sent me one of these during the Y2K scare. It burst into flames a few years later but that trackball was my favorite part. Mine had the ram card and I remember it running win95 fairly decently.

[@lachietg]

Burst into flames?????

[@zipty842]

@@lachietg I plugged it in after a few months of not using it and a short time later there was actually a hole burned through the plastic.

[@xianox8]

Cool, my brother borrowed a similar laptop in the late 90s from school when our pentium 1 was being repaired over Christmas. I played Kings Quest V on it, probably with pc speaker. Good times

[@MBDB666]

OMG! I had one of these when I was in the Army. I got one before a deployment in 1995. I can't for the life of me remember the model or specs. It had Windows 95, but I quickly got rid of it for Windows 3.11 and Dos 6.22 for playing a number of games because it just worked better. I used the trackball for all of 5 minutes, the tossed it back in the box! LOL 🤣

[@JapanPop]

I bought one of those for my Dad. He loved it back in the day and was very productive with Win311. Nice memories!

[@nickwallette6201]

I use to sit in the back of the family car on road trips and stare at ads for the Toshiba 4000 series of laptops in Computer Shopper and PC World. There was an ad with a sunrise image showing the 256 color VGA display, and I wanted it more than anything I could imagine.

[@ezquimal]

Wow that's old Toshiba notebooks are great with the same mouse like IBM. I love that notebook

[@Lee_Adamson_OCF]

That's cool. I used to have one of those in college, but not the trackball. This was after it was already obsolete of course, lol. But it sure beat the hell out of the 386SX-in-a-shoebox + 286 laptop acting as a serial terminal that I was using for a portable linux system before that. XD

[@shawnghenderson]

The battery removal is two steps, slide the battery spring cover and behind it there is a button, press the button while the little door is held back.

[@andlinux]

20 years ago my friend had one of these, I was also looking for a 2nd hand laptop at the time and he told me to buy one with a tft screen and another mouse system not like this one on the Toshiba. So I bought a Compaq LTE5300.

[@SeishukuS12]

Nice, I have a T1960CS my self, had to do a little repair on the internal PSU (bad caps), lucky there was a writeup on that for these laptops, apparently a pretty common problem. Otherwise, mine has a 10/100 ethernet card (missing the cable dongle though) and has the 16MB RAM card, and I've modded mine with an SD to IDE with an extended card slot out the front of the case, so I can swap SD cards... I have a few 2GB cards set up with a dynamic disk overlay and Win 3.11/NT 3.51, one Slackware Linux 3, and one Win 95. Pretty nice machine, other than the display.

[@curtisator42]

Curious if you did anything to the SD card adaptor to get it to be recognised by the Toshiba BIOS? I had to do a little firmware hack to my reader to change the drive identification string on my reader so the laptop would see it - T1900

[@eg8662]

Cool to find this video! I seem to be the new owner of this laptop 😀

[@momo.ru-kun]

This was my first laptop, it was handed over to me by mom. She used it for work in her office and decided to buy it to give it to me. I played a lot of games like Scorched Earth, Alley Cat, Apache Helicopter Attack.

[@ernstoud]

At that time I worked as product manager for Toshiba in The Netherlands. T1800 and T1900 series heavily competed against the Compaq Contura series that chewed away at Toshiba’s market share.

[@CarlosGomez-vt9pk]

Oh man, back in the day I loved that design with the add-on trackball mouse. Makes me want to make an adapter for "just the mouse" on a modern laptop, :) .

[@rottmanthan]

i used to look at pc magazine and similar ones, i always liked the laptops with the 3.5" disk drive built in like that one.

[@johnyk.4738]

Thats awesome vintage laptop.

[@alexsmith8021]

Thanks!

[@RetroSpector78]

Wow thanks Alex .... really appreciate the support ! Hope you enjoyed the past present and future content on the channel. If you have any suggestions feel free to let me know.

[@andreasklindt7144]

The moment you couldn't put the floppy in the drive I knew immediatly what was the problem. As a teenager it happend to me so often, that I lost the protective cover of floppy discs in the drive. But it only happend with the metal covers when they were slightly bend. I prefered the discs with plastic covers for that reason. Somehow it's a relieve to see I was not the only one who lost those things in the drive...

[@UpLateGeek]

Oh yeah, I remember those dual scan displays. I was always losing my mouse on my first laptop because of it! Turning on pointer trails does help though. It was a DEC HiNote Ultra CS433, a 486SX 33Mhz, but it was maxxed out with 20MB of RAM. I got it second hand a couple of years after it came out, and it was also running Windows 95. And it was just about as slow as yours.

[@retrotech486]

I have similar dualscan screen in my satellite 200cds

[@JohnDee1527]

I love the early Toshiba laptops. There's just something about that creamy white color. I just recently got a T4500C near complete in the original box. Only thing missing is the software.

[@michvod]

I have the T1910 Toshiba that I think still has the original installation of MS-DOS 6 and Windows 3.1. I can check and send you an image of the HD. The laptop is essentially the same, except for the BW screen on mine

[@krissjacobsen9434]

To remove the battery, you must slide the slider thing, but also press in on the area behind the slider thing, which is the actual lock button. This will release the battery, which is actually spring loaded.

[@curtisator42]

Was just going to post this - its a complicated little mechanism that requires RTFM

[@retropcdurham]

Such great condition

[@anidnmeno]

holy snot! i had one of these! the mouse addon is still probably at my grandma's house somewhere

[@jbaroli]

I used to have the competition, back in 1995, which was the Texas Instruments Travelmate 4000E, which had an SX 486 @ 25 MHz, 4 mb of RAM and came with monochrome monitor. It had the same mouse, and brings me back a lot because it was my first experience with a PC with Windows, we used Win 3.11 and was never able to install win95 (using like 20 diskettes).

[@andenmcleod7355]

keep up the amazing videos.

[@turntheblueiris4626]

I have an old Toshiba laptop (somewhere! So I can't proved the model details!) Unfortunately I don't have the charger & the screen got cracked in transit, but I was surprised to find a "full fat", socketed, 486 chip installed in it. I thought laptops had a smaller packaged processors, usually, surface mount, soldered into place. It also has a full height 2.5 hard disk. Not sure if it's IDE, though.

[@krissjacobsen9434]

The overlay feature allows you to pull up a overlay menu to change some bios settings (like LCD screen inversion) when the machine is running. Unfortunately it only works with DOS/Win3.1, not Win 95

[@TeslaTales59]

I had one of those when I worked at 3M! I remember those external trackballs. That was when Toshiba made fine laptops. Now they are really bad.

[@nneeerrrd]

Thanks for the video! also you got my instant thumb up 👍 for not do sponsorship with Chinese communist regime.

[@widicamdotnet]

Ah yes, that era - when my friends and I only had XT-class machines at home (and weren't allowed to sit in front of them all afternoon), we would often hang out in a nearby computer store, messing up the Win 3.1 system settings or writing silly QBASIC programs on all of the shiny new 486 laptops on display...

[@kencreppin2146]

If I were you, I'd make a maximum effort to get that battery out ASAP!!!

[@dykodesigns]

I wonder what VGA chipset it uses. That bios font looks quite nice a different from the IBM font that most clones have.

[@MrWarneet]

Wonderful machine and when Toshi meant something.

[@lucrems1199]

Min. Fin. 😁 you got one from the Belgian Ministry of Finance. Probably not much used 🤣

[@thesillyhatday]

I swear I used a laptop just like this. I remember that strange ball mouse on the side. It must have been a 486 running Windows 95 too.

[@BilisNegra]

This made me think of another 486 laptop (from Dell) that I have in my storage unit. I bought it a few years ago but hardly powered it on a couple of times because the floppy drive does not work and I have no easy way of getting data in or out of it. Maybe it deserves to be taken a look at again?

[@wendyrock4260]

My first computer

[@marinedalek]

I had (and still have) a T1950CT, and have subsequently inherited a few more. The "T" suffix indicates an active matrix TFT which is stunning compared to the "S" variants. Be careful doing any work on this laptop. The screen open/closed sensor located in the left hinge is extremely fragile and I don't think any of mine are still working. Specifically, the pin to which one of the wires is soldered likes to break off flush with the plastic housing. Also under the keyboard, next to the HDD, is a rechargeable battery used to preserve RAM contents for the hibernate mode. These don't appear to leak as readily as those in the later Satellite Pro laptops, but its a good idea to remove them anyway.

[@TheRadiogeek]

What is the thing just above the f9 f10 keys? It looks like sensor or LED.

[@ouch1011]

Something that doesn’t get mentioned much is how much LCD panel technology has improved over the years. These old LCD panels were awful. The ghosting effect, narrow viewing angle, bad contrast, florescent backlighting…yeah. We are spoiled by modern LED and OLED panels lol. I briefly used Win95 on an old 486DX/25 with 8MB of RAM and yeah, it was “usable” lol. With a LOT of patience. I replaced it later with a used 486/66mhz shortly afterwards. This was in the late 90s when I was a young teenager with parents who couldn’t afford to buy me my own computer. The 25MHz was a hand-me-down and the 66MHz was a used computer bought from the local government surplus.

[@airfixer9461]

Nice vintage stuff 🙂

[@senilyDeluxe]

I had a gray version with a 486 (it ran at 50 MHz iirc and also had a color DSTN with Win95 and no sound card, I didn't use it much and one day it just froze and then stopped working completely) Long long time ago (in this galaxy though) I had a T3100SX and that I think that overlay would show you the battery status on the screen (at least under DOS in text mode). (that 3100SX had a VGA Plasma display and two chonking batteries that could be replaced while the machine was running, because Plasmas are insanely power hungry, it probably also had a runtime of 3 hours if you happen to carry a wheelbarrow filled with fully charged spare batteries - in '99 it had a runtime of 5 minutes on two battery packs. The machine died 3 days after I got it and I haven't even disassembled it yet... young me didn't know the smell it was giving off, but the puddle under the caps certainly wasn't right, but young me had a terrible soldering gun which made even thinking of replacing the caps damn near impossible...)

[@alexandermorozov8593]

I think this laptop was featured in a Thinkpad commercial, wasn't it?

[@Rangerman9404]

I ran Windows 95 on a486 DX2/66 with 8 megs of ram, and while it did ok, even it was bogged down vs running MS DOS 6.22 with Windows 3.1. The benchmark software I was using on it at the time reflected slower overall performance trying to run something that really was designed for a Pentium based machine, (even though Microsoft claimed that Windows 95 could even be run on a 386).

[@GeoStreber]

Nice machine, but you forgot the compusory game footage of Doom.

[@maxtornogood]

Dual-PS/2 ports on a laptop, don't think I've seen that before!

[@XLGaming]

I have an old toshiba 100cs with a dead backlight inverter board. It works fine otherwise, and boots windows 95

[@matheusmascon8580]

Which super mario is this? I played it in my childhood, I had a CDrom called Select 2 and I had this game, I lost it in 2005 and I never found this game for download

[@EnjoySynthSounds]

It'd be better with Win 3.1 or pure dos. These days you can run freedos and there's a soundblaster emulation package available. You can also buy a parallel port sound card, use it as a portable Spectrum or C6 or just as a distraction free typewriter. A useful machine.

[@BilisNegra]

I'm surprised to see that metal slider from a floppy disk could be taken out with some tweezers from the outside, bent as it was, through an opening barely thicker than the diskette itself. One would fear a complex disassembly of the machine and the drive itself would be necessary.

[@stevenanderson3205]

Nice video.

[@drPeidos]

Really cool machine. Don't forget to remove the BIOS battery, Toshibas have terrible batteries.

[@jjohnson71958]

you can change the startup time buy going to run and type in "msconfig"

[@DavidWonn]

4 megs is definitely the bigger bottleneck on that laptop for running Windows 95, so I'd concur that 3.11 would be more responsive. I have Win95 (among other OSes) on an SX25 but with 32 MB and that helps considerably. I'd imagine if you manage to max yours to 20 MB, then it will feel like a new machine, especially when running Office.

[@force4200]

A and Q button on the wrong place ?

[@DavidWonn]

If you also look at the numeric keys above, then you'll notice it as a French layout, which he has for some of his desktops as well.

I have one, Very good machine, i buy a longe time ago, and work fine today! using PCMCIA hdd, run faster!

[@thedopplereffect00]

Really surprised to see Windows 95 running on that, especially with no RAM upgrade. Not sure what benefit that would have been over Windows 3.1 for such a slow CPU.

[@klaushergesheimer8602]

It will be much snappier with more RAM. I think with only 4MB Windows has to swap constantly to the slow Hard Disk that makes it dog slow.

[@BilisNegra]

No doubt. MS recommended at least 8 MB. 4MB was the bare minimum with which the OS could install successfully...but not much else, I reckon.

[@stephensalex]

Put it back to DOS and 3.1. That's a perfect machine for it.

[@rottmanthan]

i have a toshiba satelite but its not as old, its window xp.

[@bryandrobny7690]

Stick 16 mb of ram in it! It might run better 😆 see if there is any cpu upgrades for it

[@LastofAvari]

Win 95 has to have 4 MB of RAM at the very least & SX33 CPU definitely sucks. I would maybe try Win 95 on a DX2-66 machine, but not this laptop, which is best suits DOS or Win 3.1 / 3.11. The previous owner was a weird person I suppose.

[@Lee_Adamson_OCF]

Ah man, that's the correct position for the Control key! ;D

[@IkarusKommt]

If you are still living in 1970, maybe.

[@graealex]

11:44 Hiroshi Yamauchi rotating in his grave.

[@hamman3726]

hamburger

[@mikesilva3868]

😊

[@kgfgfg1]

The keyboard layout looks very strange

[@divarin1]

Yeah I noticed that too, it doesn't look like it's Dvorak or Qwerty.

[@marvintpandroid2213]

It's azerty

[@andlinux]

It's a Belgian Azerty layout

[@lonxx9473]

It's an Azerty layout for French language

[@andlinux]

@@lonxx9473 Indeed I was wrong, it's the French azerty layout.

[@marvintpandroid2213]

Purpleish?

[@zarkeh3013]

Toss more memory at it! maximize or even go beyond specs! a leading edge desktop 486 I tried 8x 16MB 30 pin simms AND It Did NOT WORK! uh, butt 4x 16MB sticks did! so, a 64MB 486 is what I gots! if this toshiba's memory allows for such whacky-hacky-ness then it down to soldering big chips on old pcb's... Windows 95 is a compelling reason enough to leave it, or even dual boot (Plop Boot Manager or SmartBootManager) with DOS/Win3 and win95 and FreeDOS and... heh, whatevah

[@wowitsshit9734]

nice museum piece!