I have the 2150CDT as well and it's a unicorn on eBay these days. The plus is the external floppy drive for the 4XXCDT series is compatible with the 2150CDT. Installing a new hard drive isn't that hard either, which is good.

Unfortunately, the HDD didn't have the original files, so I did my own version and it worked out well.

Another 2150 appeared on “Russian eBay”. Do I need it or 4ХХ is better?

I’m worried about 486… I’ve got Toshiba 4700 with 486 50mhz and it can’t even run doom properly.

[offtopic]
What is Russian eBay? Avito? There are often nice things there. But I'm not in Russia and it seemed complicated/impossible to set up an account for sending abroad and paying with PayPal. I ended up registering on Meshok. There it is possible to negotiate terms with individual sellers, and some of them (not so many) agreed to accept PayPal and ship me stuff abroad.
[/offtopic]

You cannot upgrade the CPU on these models, can you? A 75MHz 486 is quite a bit faster than a 50MHz one, but a 100MHz would be even better.

dr_st wrote on 2022-01-04, 08:19:

[offtopic] What is Russian eBay? Avito? There are often nice things there. But I'm not in Russia and it seemed complicated/impos […]
Show full quote

[offtopic]
What is Russian eBay? Avito? There are often nice things there. But I'm not in Russia and it seemed complicated/impossible to set up an account for sending abroad and paying with PayPal. I ended up registering on Meshok. There it is possible to negotiate terms with individual sellers, and some of them (not so many) agreed to accept PayPal and ship me stuff abroad.
[/offtopic]

You cannot upgrade the CPU on these models, can you? A 75MHz 486 is quite a bit faster than a 50MHz one, but a 100MHz would be even better.

The "russian ebay" is most probably avito.ru (at least I can see the mentioned laptop there 😀 )It's not auctions, but rather classified ads board, the biggest in Russia.

Bondi wrote on 2022-01-04, 09:05:

dr_st wrote on 2022-01-04, 08:19:

[offtopic] What is Russian eBay? Avito? There are often nice things there. But I'm not in Russia and it seemed complicated/impos […]
Show full quote

[offtopic]
What is Russian eBay? Avito? There are often nice things there. But I'm not in Russia and it seemed complicated/impossible to set up an account for sending abroad and paying with PayPal. I ended up registering on Meshok. There it is possible to negotiate terms with individual sellers, and some of them (not so many) agreed to accept PayPal and ship me stuff abroad.
[/offtopic]

You cannot upgrade the CPU on these models, can you? A 75MHz 486 is quite a bit faster than a 50MHz one, but a 100MHz would be even better.

The "russian ebay" is most probably avito.ru (at least I can see the mentioned laptop there 😀 )It's not auctions, but rather classified ads board, the biggest in Russia.

offtopic: Is there an agent company help you buy from Avito and ship to United States?

Yeh, I was talking about avito 😀 Btw, I was using some mediator services to buy stuff from eBay to Russia since not all sellers wish to enable international shipping…

So I spent some time and and that’s the models I can buy:

Toshiba Satellite Pro 445CDT
Toshiba Satellite Pro 430CDT
Toshiba Satellite Pro 420CDT
Toshiba T2150CDT
Toshiba tecra 500cdt

Now I wonder which one will be the best for retro gaming? As far as understand they all differs by cpu, screen size and resolution. But they all have opl chip.

Is 640x480 better for old stuff than 800x600?

Maybe I’m more interested in laptop what works from wall outlet, saw such in Toshiba laptops.

sangokushi wrote on 2022-01-04, 09:52:

offtopic: Is there an agent company help you buy from Avito and ship to United States?

Never used and even heard of any. Googling "forwarding service from russia" brings this link https://en.aukciony.com/

vorob wrote on 2022-01-04, 10:30:

Is 640x480 better for old stuff than 800x600?

640x480 is for sure better than 800x600. There is a famous video from 8 bit guy re best DOS gaming laptop where he analyses all these aspects. With 800x600 screen you end up with eiter ugly scaling or black side borders.

The machine will have to scale for 640x480 as well, since most DOS games run at a resolution of 320x200, which has a different aspect ratio, but it's easier for the old scaling algorithms (which I think are just a nearest, linear algorithm) to go to 640x480 than 800x600.

🤣, Toshiba T2150CDT is gone again!

Well, maybe i'm a greedy child and don't need another old laptop 😀

I already own Toshiba 2805 with Yamaha with OPL and WaveTable. Both, S3 and GeForce 2go. And I also have Siemens Mobile 710 with a driverless dos-working WaveTable sound card.

No idea what this Toshibas with 640x can give me...

Guys, what’s the fair price for this, from your point of view? Condition is very good, comes with floppy drive and AC.

Within USD 100, IMO.

30,000 rubles (almost 400USD) and clearly aiming at the local market, eh? The guys is certainly not a sucker... 🙄

Toshiba Satellite Pro 430CDT

Just bought Toshiba Satellite Pro 430CDT. No idea why I did this 😀 But it has OPL 3 chip and despite it's 800x600 with VEXP utility 320x200 can be fully stretched.

Recently I bought a Toshiba Satellite 320CDT and after playing around with it I consider it pretty much the perfect DOS-machine for me.

The specs are:

• Pentium MMX 233, 32 MB, VGA 2MB, SB-Pro compatible sound with Yamaha OPL3
• Serial, parallel, USB, PS2, Infra-Red
• Headphone/Mic/LineIn-jacks with volume dial
• Built-in 3.5" floppy, 20x CD-ROM, 2xPCMCIA
• 12.1" active matrix TFT screen with 800x600. Video output can be configured to stretch to full screen which I like better than black borders.

Overall build quality and keyboard seem totally fine to me.
The USB port makes it easy to transfer files simply by using a Dual-boot Windows 98. All drivers can still be found on the Dynabook-website.

One really great feature that makes it perfect for DOS is that one can configure L1/L2-caches in the BIOS and even underclock the CPU to half the speed! Thus it can be slowed down to a (slow) 386. I doubt that's possible on many notebooks.

Here are the 3DBench-results for different cache/clock-settings:
7, 14, 47.4, 49.8, 63.2, 65.6, 92, 96.6, 121.3, 126,7
So this covers approximately a 386/16, 386/33, 486/66, P60, P90 and P133

And I've never seen such a fast POST. With an SD-card-adapter it takes 3 seconds to the DOS boot-menu after switching it on. After a soft reset it's only 1 second.

Things that could be improved are:

• Memory speed of the graphics-card (ca. 17MB/sec - although even that might be considered a good thing)
• HD-controller seems to support only disks up to 8 GB
• Even if the memory can be expanded to 160 MB, it's hard to find 144Pin-EDO-SODIMMs. For DOS that doesn't matter but would be nice for Windows. But 32 MB is enough for using Windows to transfer files via USB.
• Of course the screen can't compete with modern displays (low contrast and brightness) but I think it's good for the era.
• The laptop is quite thick and heavy (5.4cm, 3kg) but that's the price of the internal floppy and CD-ROM.

Disclaimer: This is my first impression after two days 😀

Today I received my Toshiba Satellite Pro 430CDT = 23 USD.

The condition is, well, acceptable: One port cover is missing, keyboard print two symbols on some buttons (like typing O will type O and 9), CD-Drive won't close and read disks, few cracks on laptop's exterior, and completely destroyed mouse buttons.

I used a soldering iron to recover parts that I can and the big button was cracked in the middle so I had to solder plastic there too. It's far from perfect, but at least I can press the button if I need now.

In CD-Drive I had to bend a small bulge that is used to catch and keep Drive closed. It seems to have worn out over the years and became smooth.

I also had to move back and forward the CD mechanism cause it was stuck:

But it wasn't for nothing, now CD-Drive is working and read disks!

With VEXP (Full screen scaling issue) tool I was able to stretch 320x200 with no borders and the games work awesome:

https://youtu.be/QQUQBXhT5cA

Now I need to recreate the port cover with my 3d pen, fix the keyboard, and glue some cracks on the exterior.

That's looking good. The exterior is worn but the internals look fresh, including the pins and traces around the two internal NIMH batteries - you should pull those out ASAP. Working 4xxCDT laptops are becoming more and more rare because those leak and destroy the board.
That has a minor upside for you though - the keyboards are cheap and plentiful because so many of these get broken for parts. I paid something like £6 a few weeks for a practically new one of those keyboards.
For the mouse buttons, those do turn into goo - I made a fix for mine with TPU, perhaps you could print some of these (ah, I didn't share the files yet, gotta do that) Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

How do you remake the port door with a 3d pen? would that be strong enough to cover those up and stay in place?

Do I understand correctly that the big battery is for standby mode, and allow the main battery hot-swap? I see no other reason why this laptop has two internal batteries. Also do you know any cheap replacement for them? Btw, the main battery still works!

If you'll share the schematics of this button cover, I'll try printing it. I'll also search for a dead laptop and maybe take out from there.

As for the port cover, no idea actually. I recently made legs for one of my laptops, it's bad 😀