OldCat wrote:

Why would you do that? (O__o)

Just a simple spare display. I like to use the computer for retro gaming, and while the 16 shade plasma is nice and all sometimes I'd like a little color without having to swap vga cables back and forth on my monitor. Not to mention standard vga comes out pretty horribly on it anyways.
I was also influenced by someone else's project on the custom screen a little far back in this thread.

Hamby wrote:

I've been following another message thread about someone whose cmos battery dies after 1-2 weeks.
One suggestion was bad bios chip... I don't have the wherewithal to burn a new one, or even figure out what's wrong with the old one, if it's the bios raping the cmos battery 🙁

not bios chip, RTC chip
I would check if theres a diode protecting battery from being charged, and if its working.

rasz_pl wrote:

Hamby wrote:

I've been following another message thread about someone whose cmos battery dies after 1-2 weeks.
One suggestion was bad bios chip... I don't have the wherewithal to burn a new one, or even figure out what's wrong with the old one, if it's the bios raping the cmos battery 🙁

not bios chip, RTC chip
I would check if theres a diode protecting battery from being charged, and if its working.

I don't believe there's a diode. I replaced the original cmos battery with a 2032 button cell, but it's been awhile now since I've been in there, so I'll go take a look. Thanks.

The original barrel battery was nonrechargeable, long duration and backdraw/loading protected. You have to protect it with a diode from charging, or use a reachargeable 3V battery which doesnt care.

jaZz_KCS wrote:

The original barrel battery was nonrechargeable, long duration and backdraw/loading protected. You have to protect it with a diode from charging, or use a reachargeable 3V battery which doesnt care.

Okay, thanks! How do I figure what size/kind of diode I need to use? (do they make rechargeable 2032 button batteries?)

One of these days I want to work up the guts (after I get practice on less important to me items) to recap the whole thing, and try to ensure it remains usable for a long time.

They do make rechargeable cr2032s, but they are lithium batteries. They need a special loading circuit. What I have done is replace it with 3x AAA rechargeable NiMHs, that - due to their size - reside in the free modem compartment underneath and attach via a longer cable. That is not a very graceful solution, but I can leave it at that, since they are rechargeable and dont care for small back currents.

This is an older topic --> Re: A couple of retros I'm working on.

It would be somewhat sacrilegious, but I can't help but see the T5200 as having a lot of potential as a 'sleeper'. Completely gut a dead one, and you could likely stick a modern mini-itx motherboard in there if not larger. Same with the screen.

Maeslin wrote:

It would be somewhat sacrilegious, but I can't help but see the T5200 as having a lot of potential as a 'sleeper'. Completely gut a dead one, and you could likely stick a modern mini-itx motherboard in there if not larger. Same with the screen.

I've actually thought of that, and would love to do that (with a 2nd, dead machine) but I would sooo want to keep the gas-plasma display.

Apparently they've got more modern gas-plasma VGA displays in the medical field. I remember coming across some on ebay or somewhere. I briefly toyed with the idea of building a lunchbox with one of those displays. If only I could get one with 64 or 256 levels of orange...

Hi IanB

Are you still willing to HDD/XTIDE patch rubbish Toshiba BIOSes for others please? I have a Toshiba T1850C where the old Conner HDD is failing. I'd love to get it up and running again with either a period hard drive or CF card. I'd be very grateful if you can.

My thread is here Old Toshiba notebook - limited HDD replacement options?
and this bios is here:

Thank you.

Michael

Dear All,

I have a small problem with my "new" T5200/200. I would like to install an 8bit ISA to CF adapter (XT-CF ECO LITE) in it as a secondary drive.

The card has some jumpers but I am not sure how to set them correctly. I have weird and unreproducible errors with a jumper at position 2. At position one, the computer seems to ignore tha card.

I updated my BIOS to T5200 BIOS V5.30 (Award) patch 1.2 with LOMEM XTIDE 640K (and also tried the T5200 BIOS V5.30 (Award) patch 1.2 with HIMEM XTIDE 639K) but it does not recognizes the card.

Could you share your opinion with me? Do you have any suggestion? Sorry if my question is very noob, but this is my very first retro PC.

Thanks,
Gergo

Hi,

I also have an error with the contrast of myt5200. The contrast control stops working a few seconds after powering up the system (during ram check). In the text mode, it is fine, but most games are just generating pure orange screens with a few dark spots. The vga output on the back is fine. Playing with the few display options in the bios doesnt solve the issue.

Maybe there is a bad capacitor somewhere? Does anybody know how to fix it?

Thanks,
Gergo

ggergo wrote:

Dear All,
I have a small problem with my "new" T5200/200. I would like to install an 8bit ISA to CF adapter (XT-CF ECO LITE) in it as a secondary drive
I updated my BIOS to T5200 BIOS V5.30 (Award) patch 1.2 with LOMEM XTIDE 640K (and also tried the T5200 BIOS V5.30 (Award) patch 1.2 with HIMEM XTIDE 639K) but it does not recognizes the card.

I wouldn't expect my patched BIOS to recognise an XT-CF card as the version of XTIDE in the BIOS is limited to just the primary IDE interface.
Also it looks like the XT-CF card itself has another copy of XTIDE on board and running two copies is unlikely to work due to conflicting workspace.
The best way to add a CF card to the system is to use my patched BIOS which supports master and slave drives on the internal IDE interface and use a longer IDE cable to connect to the HD and an IDE to CF adapter which could be fitted either under the keyboard or in one of the expansion slots, both as discussed in this thread.

The expansion slot CF to IDE would be something like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/40-Pin-CF-compact-fl … JF/254185928692

Note there might be a problem getting a CF card to share an IDE bus with the very old 200Mb drive but the only way to find out is to try it.

Hi IanB!

I haven't had my T5200 out of its case in months, for fear of it dying on me. I still need to install that rechargeable cmos battery.
And I probably should recap it, but I need to get more experience soldering, first.

And all of which got tossed into a cocked hat yesterday when the HD on my main Windows 7 machine died. I had backed up all I could, but there were some things I know were lost 🙁 (what really aggravated me was I was going to get a 256gb thumb drive to carry my personal data on, and decided it could wait...)

But I really do want to start using my T5200 on a daily basis.
I've found another one for sale, which I may buy to have a parts backup in case something goes south on my main one.

Maybe gut the case, store the parts and install an ITX motherboard on it... if I can get the keyboard to work with it... and if I can find a replacement display (the main part I want a backup for is the display...)

I just bought an MT-32 which I've been thinking of connecting to it, just for fun.

mikeyp wrote:

I'd love to get it up and running again with either a period hard drive or CF card. I'd be very grateful if you can.

Unfortunately there isn't enough free space in the 64K BIOS section to add a copy of XTIDE.

Hamby wrote:

I haven't had my T5200 out of its case in months

Hi Hamby,

I haven't looked at my T5200 for a while either, I've been working on another project:
MDA/CGA/EGA/VGA to HDMI using Raspberry Pi Zero

Hi there,

I have my T5200 fully functional but with the plasma screen broken... (it's a shame)

Can you guys explain better how do you changed the screen to a newer lcd ??? the wire conections, etc.. really aprricieted

thanks

IanB wrote:

mikeyp wrote:

I'd love to get it up and running again with either a period hard drive or CF card. I'd be very grateful if you can.

Unfortunately there isn't enough free space in the 64K BIOS section to add a copy of XTIDE.

Bah. Okay, thank you for looking and getting back to me. I really appreciate it.

nuno14272 wrote:

Can you guys explain better how do you changed the screen to a newer lcd ??? the wire conections, etc.. really aprricieted

The T5200 uses a 4 bit ttl connection to transmit pixel data synchronized with horizontal and vertical clock pulled from a vga signal. Unless you can figure out the data being sent, you can't drive it with the display connector even if you figure out the pins. I figured that one out because I wanted to do an LCD swap with my T3100SX, which uses a similar method.

The way to go is to remove the display cable and display socket from the hinge assembly. Then hijack the vga port and maybe use
Toshiba T5200 mods and upgrades (first post) connected to it.

There should be enough space in the shoulder (where the leds are) to cram the lcd controller.

Most likely, the system uses some sort of WD90C series display controller. If you want to play rough, you could solder directly to the controller and dac when you figure out what goes where. Wouldn't recommend it though.

The T5200 already does a clone method between the internal display and the vga port.
So if you do it right, you could still get vga out.

yourepicfailure is spot on with this approach ...
I have a 5200 and a 3200sx ..
Sadly only one working plasma screen ...the other being smashed when I got it (3200).
I chose to keep the plasma screen in the 5200 and fit an lcd screen in the 3200.
It worked great.
The method was as Ian suggests to hi-jack the vga ..but instead of just using the vga out to drive the lvd I obtained an active vga splitter ..
Thus was able to drive the lcd screen with one output whilst retaining a psss through for external monitor use.
I use the 3200 for DOS mostly ..which is great for playing old DOS games in colour.
Wheras my heavily modded 5200 is now running win95 (thanks to the mods)..486cpu...integrated stereo audio...and PCMCIA...12mb ram.
I still am indebted to Ian for his help with this one.
🤣

Great... The ideia of a VGA Passthrough..

Do you power the lcd with an external cable or some kinf od direct conection to the internal power supply ?