Reply 18760 of 27413, by Thermalwrong
yourepicfailure wrote on 2021-04-12, 21:24:Nice, always love seeing another classic Toshiba see the light of day. My T4400 has a nice display, though it takes a little to […]
Thermalwrong wrote on 2021-04-09, 00:03:~snip~
Nice, always love seeing another classic Toshiba see the light of day.
My T4400 has a nice display, though it takes a little to "warm up." Once it does the colors are nice, sharp and the viewing angle is nice.BA908BFA-B936-4C9A-8249-1E000DB24BCF.jpeg
The floppy drive also works, but if I stick the wrong floppy in there the belt starts slipping again. I should take care of that next time I go in there.
I only wish I could find a 32mb ram card for it. Because, theoretically, you could stuff a POD in there since it's socketed.
Unlike the newer 486 (and pentium 4900&4950) Toshibas that have soldered processors.And a T4900, I wish I could find one. I'm only stuck with this 4800 that I don't have the time and money right now to fix up.
Cool, I had no idea those older ones used regular PGA168 processors 😀 The backlights on all of these are pretty tired I think, the T4900CT's backlight matches how yellow it is, in that it's quite dim. I'm considering retrofitting some kind of LED backlight at some unspecified point in the future when it stops working right. This T4900CT was a lucky find, sold as 'working' and I snapped it up once I found it had both a 640x480 TFT LCD and integrated sound. But it didn't work, the standby battery had leaked and damaged traces around the video chip, so it wouldn't display anything. It works after I fixed those up, but it's got additional problems with the hard drive, which I might just replace soon. Right now, it requires a good *whack* from the side on boot for the seek arm to work, and that's starting to cause data loss.
It's not something I was aware of at the time, but this laptop was pretty special when new. Released in late 1994, it was one of the first 'low voltage' pentium 75 CPUs and one of the first Toshibas with an integrated pointing device - which is tolerable but quite RSI inducing with prolonged use. My particular one had an aftermarket EXP 16MB DRAM 3.3v memory upgrade, giving it an amazing 24MB of RAM, as well as a warranty until early 1999, maybe 4 or 5 years?
Don't these old TFT screens that have glass fronts just look kinda special? The T4900CT has the later plastic anti glare coating like a modern LCD, but the T1950CT's glass front looks especially nice.
Today has been quite a great day for 'retro activities'. Over the weekend I took the TDA1517 amp chip off of a very dead sound card, to make an amplifier board, since I've got some old un-amplified speakers that really benefit from having a proper amp. It didn't work, but today I figured out what I'd messed up on the protoboard PCB and now the amp is working excellently with my Sony SRS-7 speakers, which I bought a veeeery long time ago. They sound pretty great except for the comparatively poor handling of bass tones.
I also got hold of a new LCD for my Toshiba Satellite 2180CDT, which I received with a smashed screen. The correct LCDs for this model aren't cheaply available on ebay anymore, so I got a Torisan LCD which I knew was similar. But upon receipt, the pinout was different, not only was it flipped (so it shorted the laptop on initial test), but the LVDS pairs were 1-pin spaced instead of 2-pin spaced. But the LCD works now that I've moved the pins across on the LCD. Great to have this particular laptop finally up and running, while it's a later machine, I think the video and sound work really well for dos games.
Lastly, while doing some of these things, I was watching Necroware's (scorp's) latest videos on youtube, some very impressive repairs in the last 2 videos.