I Fixed Toshiba's First Laptop - Sort Of?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

A good way to spend a Sunday afternoon

The old T Toshiba laptops are absolute workhorses. I worked for a large accounting firm in the mid 90s and we still had dozens of these things, though most were 286es.. We used them as loaner laptops for the accountants to take home with them. IIRC, they had 20 meg hard disks in them with 123 and other productivity software loaded on them with DOS 3.3 or 5, I really don't recall. These things were old even then and they worked great and rarely broke down.

It's been my experience that nicad cylindrical cells do not leak very often and can tolerate being very old. In fact, if you can find new old stock nicad batteries, they will be good. The clock usually doesn't start ticking till the first time they are charged. I have 20 nicad batteries I bought in the late 90s that still hold a charge.

I love the sounds of those old school floppy drives.

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.

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.

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 :)

So fresh so clean on the inside.

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

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.

If this machine needs battery power to boot, you should probably find a way to fix it. Because what inevitably will happen is they will fully discharge between use sessions. Nicad batteries self discharge pretty quickly, especially old batteries. I have a bunch of old nicads which hold their rated capacity, but not sitting. If I power a radio or something with them, they run for the right number of hours, but if they sit a month or 2 with no use, they're dead. Of course, you can always just plug it in before you plan on using it and get them to enough of a charge to boot. You can also just rebuild the battery with low self-discharge NIMH cells. The charging circuits for nicad will work with NIMH.

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