VOGONS

My Toshiba Libretto Journey

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First post, by bionicsa

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I've posted a few threads, and also some questions on others threads, but i though id bring it all together on my own thread, to show what i've tried, and eventually (hopefully) what the fix was.

Symptoms
When powering on the unit, the power an on light show, but there's a black screen (image A1)
When powering on the unit holding F12, i get a message about updating BIOS (image A2)

Internal Investigation
I opened the unit up and I could see the backup battery had leaked (image A3)
I cleaned the unit using vinegar, then washed it of with isopropyl alcohol. At this point i could see three points of possible damage on the board (image A4)
I replaced the backup battery with https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09217RQZT?ref_=p … ed_asin_title_8 (image A5)

Attempting to get it working
I haven't made any repairs to the board as of yet.
When powering on normally (i.e. no buttons pressed) the two lights come on and i can hear the HDD spin up, but the screen is blank.
Putting the HDD into my PC, it looks to work fine, i can see all the files on it.
I had a 40GB HDD which i partitioned to 5GB, flashed a 2GB 50CT image to it from https://archive.org/details/toshiba-libretto-50ct-hdd-image, also tried an 815MB image from https://archive.org/details/toshiba-libretto-50-hdd-image, but no change in behaviour.

Reply 1 of 1, by bionicsa

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Attempting to get working continued
-I tried the same with a 2GB CF card and adapter (image A6), the 2GB image was too large according to Win32 Disk Imager, but the 815MB image went on fine. Still no change in behaviour

-At this point i tried to upgrade the BIOS. I got a 70CT BIOS file from https://ia600708.us.archive.org/view_archive. … tto%20L70CT.zip. I have an extranal USB floppy and an old WinXP laptop, I ran the 6.40 BIOS program on Win XP and it wrote the files to a 1.44MB disk. I then copied GHGBIOSA and BIOFCE6T to a 720k disk. The Toshiba floppy drive and disks were verified by connecting the PCMCIA floppy drive to my XP machine, and although it saw it as a 5 1/4 inch floppy, and it took quite a while to read, i did end up seeing the files on the disk. So i'd say the drive and disks are working.The procedure i then did was power on Libretto with F12, update BIOS screen displays, insert disc into PCMCIA floppy drive, press any key, disc drive makes a read noise, but then just whirs, screen goes black, waited 5+mins. Video of this at https://youtu.be/xscnxCB8XYE

-Unable to update the BIOS, i moved back to something else.

-I also have a SD card adapter with a 4GB SD card (image A7). I wrote the 2GB image to this and tried it in my Libretto, something different happened this time! Along with the power and on LEDs, the HDD LED was now a solid green! (image A8). Alas no change in the screen, its still black. I also tried powering on with FN+F5 pressed, and again trying Esc pressed whilst powering on, no change.

Next Steps
Try a proper 70CT image on the SD card, i believe this should be 1.6GB, as is my original HDD that came with it.
I could attempt to get another PCMCIA floppy drive, but these are £100-£200 on ebay for the Sony version, so i dont think i'll be doing that.
Try flashing just DOS to the SD card with the HP tool (https://www.malavida.com/es/soft/hp-usb-disk- … ge-format-tool/) and attempt to boot.

Question for Vogons
I've read that if the Libretto was hibernated rather than switched off this can cause issues. Does anyone have any experience with that?
Looking at the images of the board, could any of this damage have any affect booting normally from a HDD?

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