VOGONS


First post, by multiplebaboons

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Hi all,

I'm new here, likely not nearly as hardcore of a vintage computing enthusiast as you are, but I recently got this beast as a gift from a friend. Behold what I think is an incredibly boring specimen: no sound adapter of any kind, 75MHz 486, a horrible screen featuring 256 colors at 640x480, 16MB RAM. But, overall in great condition. I've managed to install W95 on a 4gig CF card and it's fully functional (great driver support out of the box, as it turned out), I may even get the original external CD drive that came with it.
Seems like a machine for typing up reports and checking email. Do you think one could make it a bit more fun? Max out RAM & PCMCIA sound adapter(?!) to play games, maybe? What's a good place to shop for those? I also saw someone on youtube actually use a wifi adapter on a similar machine. Any other ideas?
Thanks!

Reply 1 of 13, by bakemono

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In my experience, I had a PCMCIA soundcard that worked in Win 95 but it didn't support DOS games. I also had 802.11b wireless ethernet cards for PCMCIA but they only worked with WEP or unencrypted networks, so you'd have to set one up yourself that is unsecured. Maybe there are better options out there. If it has a parallel port you might want to look at parallel port sound devices like OPL2LPT for instance.

GBAJAM 2024 submission on itch: https://90soft90.itch.io/wreckage

Reply 2 of 13, by multiplebaboons

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Whoa, thanks. LGR had an episode on that thing! My little bastard does have an LPT port, so this could work!

Reply 3 of 13, by multiplebaboons

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How much electronics is in that Syba CF to IDE adapter, by the way? A bit of a strange glitch from day one: sometimes windows 95 is unable to shutdown, just displays that "wait while your computer shuts down" screen indefinitely. Tried several CF cards, happens anyway. Didn't happen with the original HDD. Any ideas?

Reply 4 of 13, by multiplebaboons

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Does anyone happen to have Toshiba's video driver for this laptop? w95's own driver leaves me with 256 colors at 640x480, not sure if this all this adapter can do.

Reply 5 of 13, by DudeFace

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multiplebaboons wrote on 2025-05-12, 01:00:

Does anyone happen to have Toshiba's video driver for this laptop? w95's own driver leaves me with 256 colors at 640x480, not sure if this all this adapter can do.

try this one in my post here.
Re: Found a Toshiba Tecra 710CDT on eBay - how to install DOS & Windows (laptop hard drive arrived broken)

also looks like 640x480 is max for your lcd, supports 64k colours, 16bit.

Reply 6 of 13, by multiplebaboons

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DudeFace wrote on 2025-05-12, 01:50:

try this one in my post here.
Re: Found a Toshiba Tecra 710CDT on eBay - how to install DOS & Windows (laptop hard drive arrived broken)

also looks like 640x480 is max for your lcd, supports 64k colours, 16bit.

Ahh, thanks. And all i need is the content of the 2_4_9_2 directory, none of the panning business, correct?

Reply 7 of 13, by DudeFace

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multiplebaboons wrote on 2025-05-12, 02:38:
DudeFace wrote on 2025-05-12, 01:50:

try this one in my post here.
Re: Found a Toshiba Tecra 710CDT on eBay - how to install DOS & Windows (laptop hard drive arrived broken)

also looks like 640x480 is max for your lcd, supports 64k colours, 16bit.

Ahh, thanks. And all i need is the content of the 2_4_9_2 directory, none of the panning business, correct?

that right thats the main driver, as theres no installer you need to go through control panel/device manager and direct it to the driver folder, as for the panning file im not sure if its compatible with your model but it may be worth a try, with my model the lcd only supports 1024x768, the panning file will give me 1280x1024 but the desktop is bigger than the lcd can display, only useful if im plugging into an external monitor also at 1280x1024 my colours are reduced to 256 colours.

i looked at your system specs and it should support up to 16 bit colours, if your model has a VGA out and you want to make use of it for higher resolutions on an external monitor, it would be worth giving the panning file a try, as your lcd supports 640x480 you might gain a few extra resolutions, if theres no VGA out on your model there will be no benefit in using the panning file.

Reply 8 of 13, by multiplebaboons

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DudeFace wrote on 2025-05-12, 15:38:

that right thats the main driver, as theres no installer you need to go through control panel/device manager and direct it to the driver folder, as for the panning file im not sure if its compatible with your model but it may be worth a try, with my model the lcd only supports 1024x768, the panning file will give me 1280x1024 but the desktop is bigger than the lcd can display, only useful if im plugging into an external monitor also at 1280x1024 my colours are reduced to 256 colours.

i looked at your system specs and it should support up to 16 bit colours, if your model has a VGA out and you want to make use of it for higher resolutions on an external monitor, it would be worth giving the panning file a try, as your lcd supports 640x480 you might gain a few extra resolutions, if theres no VGA out on your model there will be no benefit in using the panning file.

I tried it through 'have disk' and it installed fine (there's even a "Chips" tab in the properties now), but still only 256 colors. Any attempt to try 16 bit leads to w95 yelling and reverting to 256. Not sure what I am doing wrong there. If color depth needs to be added through a manual edit of any of the files, please let me know.

Reply 9 of 13, by DudeFace

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multiplebaboons wrote on 2025-05-12, 23:46:
DudeFace wrote on 2025-05-12, 15:38:

that right thats the main driver, as theres no installer you need to go through control panel/device manager and direct it to the driver folder, as for the panning file im not sure if its compatible with your model but it may be worth a try, with my model the lcd only supports 1024x768, the panning file will give me 1280x1024 but the desktop is bigger than the lcd can display, only useful if im plugging into an external monitor also at 1280x1024 my colours are reduced to 256 colours.

i looked at your system specs and it should support up to 16 bit colours, if your model has a VGA out and you want to make use of it for higher resolutions on an external monitor, it would be worth giving the panning file a try, as your lcd supports 640x480 you might gain a few extra resolutions, if theres no VGA out on your model there will be no benefit in using the panning file.

I tried it through 'have disk' and it installed fine (there's even a "Chips" tab in the properties now), but still only 256 colors. Any attempt to try 16 bit leads to w95 yelling and reverting to 256. Not sure what I am doing wrong there. If color depth needs to be added through a manual edit of any of the files, please let me know.

i just checked the manual again, seems theres 2 different displays which i missed.

STN color LCD (T2110CS/T2130CS)
A high-resolution, Supertwist Nematic (STN) color Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)
displays 640x480 pixels with 256 colors.

TFT color LCD (T2130CT)
A high-resolution, Thin Film Transistor (TFT) full color LCD displays 640x480 pixels
with a maximum of 64k colors.

i was looking the CT rather than the CS, looks like 256 colours is maximum for your LCD. my bad 😀 , you should be able to get 16bit with an external monitor and at least you've got the chips tab in properties, even though it serves no purpose 🤣

Reply 10 of 13, by multiplebaboons

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DudeFace wrote on 2025-05-13, 00:44:

STN color LCD (T2110CS/T2130CS)
A high-resolution, Supertwist Nematic (STN) color Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)
displays 640x480 pixels with 256 colors.

Yup, CS is my model -- thanks for checking.
Now that we're here, it looks like the floppy drive (which worked two years ago) didn't survive moving and now just whirs/buzzes on floppies perfectly readable in another drive. Aside from disassembling things, is there anything I could try here? I am just not very comfortable taking this thing apart, given how brittle the plastic has become.

Reply 11 of 13, by DudeFace

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multiplebaboons wrote on 2025-05-13, 01:15:
DudeFace wrote on 2025-05-13, 00:44:

STN color LCD (T2110CS/T2130CS)
A high-resolution, Supertwist Nematic (STN) color Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)
displays 640x480 pixels with 256 colors.

Yup, CS is my model -- thanks for checking.
Now that we're here, it looks like the floppy drive (which worked two years ago) didn't survive moving and now just whirs/buzzes on floppies perfectly readable in another drive. Aside from disassembling things, is there anything I could try here? I am just not very comfortable taking this thing apart, given how brittle the plastic has become.

no worries 😀 as for the floppy drives, yeah i cant really advise on that, last two that was in my pc stopped reading disks, i replaced it a couple of years ago with a good one to recently find that one now doesnt read disks, i think im done with floppys. 🤣

it may just need cleaning, my floppy drives seemed to collect dust without even being used, you can get floppy head cleaners though i dont know how well they actually work, probably your best option without opening it up.

Reply 12 of 13, by Thermalwrong

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multiplebaboons wrote on 2025-05-13, 01:15:
DudeFace wrote on 2025-05-13, 00:44:

STN color LCD (T2110CS/T2130CS)
A high-resolution, Supertwist Nematic (STN) color Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)
displays 640x480 pixels with 256 colors.

Yup, CS is my model -- thanks for checking.
Now that we're here, it looks like the floppy drive (which worked two years ago) didn't survive moving and now just whirs/buzzes on floppies perfectly readable in another drive. Aside from disassembling things, is there anything I could try here? I am just not very comfortable taking this thing apart, given how brittle the plastic has become.

The ABS plastic on these T21xx laptops isn't too bad, but the palm-rest arms have a rather bad design and that can break a bit from not much use.
It predates the glass / plastic mix that they used on the Librettos which is far more chalky and breakable.

For the floppy drive, nothing you can do but get a replacement belt and you need to remove the top half of the laptop to get to the floppy drive.
Not as bad as the T1950CT I had to replace the belt on yesterday, that one was ~30 screws to get the floppy drive, I think the T2130CS is more like 10-15. Make sure to follow the maintenance manual if you go into it - there's a process to follow and you should have minimal further plastic breakage if you follow it, like the top-case+screen part once all the screws are loose, undo the clips at the back where the power supply sits and rotate it forward to undo the clips at the sides, then you have full access to the floppy drive.

Hmm, you could replace the drive with a regular direct drive laptop floppy like the teac fd05HF but the pin pitch of the FDD flex cable is 1.25mm on the Toshiba vs 1mm with everything else, so you'd need an adapter board to do that.

Reply 13 of 13, by multiplebaboons

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That's pretty useful, thanks!