What browser do I choose? Seems like I would probably almost need something with Javascript support these days.
The little puppy only has 16MB ram though, that's the problem.
It's the little teeny thing on the right.
>>51892220
http://toastytech.com/files/95browsing.html
I shitpost from NT 4.0 and 128 MB of RAM with the modified SeaMonkey browser, just turn off JavaScript and you're golden. You'll have to manually copy and paste post numbers to quote them though, which is a little annoying.
With 16 MB though, that's definitely going to be problematic. I couldn't even get 4chan to load on a system with 8 MB.
I managed to get it to load somewhat fine. There is a rare 32MB addon that would bring me up to 48 MB which is much more livable.
I would like to update the OS but I'm afraid that I won't be able to get ahold of the drivers for the screen. It's "virtually" 1024x768 but in actuality VGA. It edge scrolls with the mouse.
$5, I love older gear. The Libretto 50 and 70 are the smallest liveable laptops, I was dared to use nothing but my little hummer for a month and I think I can do it.
>>51892254
>http://toastytech.com/files/95browsing.html
BTW that page is golden, much thanks friend.
>>51892306
Toshiba has the video, sound, power management and "system LED application" drivers on their website for Windows 98, even more for 95. The bitch at this point though would be finding a PCMCIA CD-ROM drive for the installation if you went with an upgrade.
Alternately, you can grab an ssh client and surf the web that way. You can even do it graphically if you run an X server locally.
>>51892381
>Toshiba has the video, sound, power management and "system LED application" drivers on their website for Windows 98, even more for 95.
Yeah I just managed to find that shit too. Thanks.
>The bitch at this point though would be finding a PCMCIA CD-ROM drive for the installation if you went with an upgrade.
I was talking a while back (when I "won" this thing) to a Libretto dude on IRC who claimed that any PCMCIA floppy and / or CD-ROM will work. I tested it already with a SD <--> PC card adapter and it can read and write fine to an MBR-formatted FAT SD card just fine. I'm actually impressed.
>Alternately, you can grab an ssh client and surf the web that way. You can even do it graphically if you run an X server locally.
That would be cheating according to the deal though. I thought about it, X servers are pretty lightweight and it'd be fast as fuck. I have a 10/100 PCMCIA card as well as a WiFi card and the appropriate drivers (now).
Fun stuff, the keyboard is super small - key height it probably 505 normal, and width 67%. Almost too small, but I could see becoming really fast on that little baby with such a small finger travel on average.
I'm going to put Wing Commander and Ultima 7 on it.
>>51892447
>it can read and write fine to an MBR-formatted FAT SD card just fine. I'm actually impressed.
Damn, maybe I'll have to try that with my 110CT if I can find the fucking AC adapter.
>That would be cheating according to the deal though
True, kind of. Remotely running applications from UNIX servers was pretty common back then though, especially if you could snag some contemporary UNIX hardware to do it. Sun gear is very cheap right now, and I want to rig up a system like it myself.
However, if you got it to work, you could probably handle single-tabbed browsing with those modified browsers alright. Pretty much everything important works except the catalog and the aforementioned quoting problems, including image uploading.
>>51892505
>>That would be cheating according to the deal though
>True, kind of. Remotely running applications from UNIX servers was pretty common back then though, especially if you could snag some contemporary UNIX hardware to do it. Sun gear is very cheap right now, and I want to rig up a system like it myself.
>However, if you got it to work, you could probably handle single-tabbed browsing with those modified browsers alright. Pretty much everything important works except the catalog and the aforementioned quoting problems, including image uploading.
I agree, in those days running a remote Unix terminal was an everyday thing for me too. However it's not "on the machine" which is the term of the deal.
I have an old HP-PA system running Openstep here for my ancient Unix needs. It does pretty well with Omniweb circa like 2005(!). I wanted a Next Cube but they are more expensive and way slower than the PA-RISC system I have.
I'd be interested to know if your 110CT does well with the SD reader. Mine's a Mediagear 5-in-1 (no more detailed model #) see pic.
>>51892220
I use the old Kmeleon browser, it works well.
>>51892832
Sweet setup dude. I love the wide screens on the 100 and the 110, I know what I'm getting next.
How much RAM do you have?
>>51892875
64MB
The expansion cards are proprietary and will set you back about £40.
You CAN get a 96MB card from a Toshiba Portege 3010, but its a bit larger and requires a little bit of the internal casing to be cut away.
>>51892627
>just went searching for the AC adapter again
>still couldn't find it
Fuuuuuuuuuck. Whatever, I'll probably find it in a box in a month when I've forgotten all about it.
I'll definitely check out one of those adapters though, looking at grabbing a CF adapter too while I'm at it. I'm running NT 4 on mine currently but I feel like 98 would be a better fit.
I wonder if you could strip the internals out of that and put a raspberry pi into it.
>>51893018
>I'll probably find it in a box in a month when I've forgotten all about it
My retrocomputing hobby also goes in spurts but I use my HP 200LX every day.
There are wifi drivers for that little son of a bitch too (2 chipsets?) but the batteries are kill with it on.
I wish I had one of those Gateway Handbooks, it's a micro laptop that can run off AAs. Real end of the world computing shit there. The Libretto 110 is in my crosshairs though, what a beauty.
>>51893059
>destroying something as rare and fascinating as a libretto to turn it into some lame hipster case for a cheap weak-ass SBC
literally why
>>51893059
It's a damn shame there isn't a similar product with a Pi already inside eh?
HP made an ARM netbook running Ubuntu for about 15 minutes back in like 2008 or so, haven't seen anything worth a shit since though. That's a real shame.
Whatever the fuck happened to Transmeta anyway? That platform had much promise (especially for certain kinds of computation) but died on the vine.
>>51893104
Fuck Toshiba that's why.
>>51893104
If you do it properly it'll still look like a Libretto externally but be much more powerful. Also you can upgrade as newer Pi models are released.
This is now a classic sub-notebook thread.
I have:
95lx
100lx
200lx
Libretto 50ct (needs help but will work with new BIOS battery)
Libretto 70ct
Powerbook Duo 230
>>51893104
I wouldn't do it with a working libretto, there's probably a few broken ones for sale somehwre.
>>51893132
>MOAR POWERRRR!
Not really the point tbqh.
I want a Gateway Handbook, an HP Omnibook (one of the B&W LCD ones), and whatever else I can find from the olden days.
Fuck new gear. The 11" Macbook Air is cool though.
>>51893098
The OmniBook 300, the 200LX's bigger brother can also run off AAs for up to 9 hours according to some reviews. On top of that, it comes with DOS 5.0, Windows 3.1 in ROM as well as Microsoft Word/Excel, an HP RPN calculator program, LapLink and some other stuff. Yet for some reason while it has a built-in modem there is no terminal emulator, weird.
Doesn't have a backlight like the HandBook or a 486 option though, but it's pretty impressive when you think about it being the early '90s equivalent to having a laptop with the performance of a low-end Sandy Bridge desktop that runs on AAs.
>>51893114
Same. Librettos are literally the only Toshiba system I will ever use, the rest of them were shit.
>>51893132
Doing it properly would be quite difficult, at least with the 100 series. You would have to figure out how to plug the gaping hole the PCMCIA cage would leave behind, as well as properly thread the connectors to the back in such limited space. Basically, I see it as a disaster waiting to happen. Though maybe it's worth a try if you manage to find a dead system, I wouldn't risk a working one for it though.
Other than for web surfing, I don't really see much of an advantage anyway. The best thing about Librettos is that they're so small yet relatively powerful for the time period, and can run desktop software. A pi-swapped Libretto would be more useful for web surfing, but in the end it would just be a slow as shit Linux system that does everything a smartphone or cheap netbook does better.
>>51893150
>tfw you have a Duo 230 but no DuoDock
life is suffering
literally the only thing that would make it more perfect is A/UX compatibility
>>51893207
>The OmniBook 300, the 200LX's bigger brother can also run off AAs for up to 9 hours according to some reviews. On top of that, it comes with DOS 5.0, Windows 3.1 in ROM as well as Microsoft Word/Excel, an HP RPN calculator program, LapLink and some other stuff. Yet for some reason while it has a built-in modem there is no terminal emulator, weird.
>Doesn't have a backlight like the HandBook or a 486 option though, but it's pretty impressive when you think about it being the early '90s equivalent to having a laptop with the performance of a low-end Sandy Bridge desktop that runs on AAs.
The Handbook 486 is really rare, one guy in fucking Croatia already tried to scam me but Paypal saved the day. These small subnotebooks aren't even made any more really. You can get a phone or a phablet but ugh.
The Omnibook 300 is really neat. I want one too. Once WWIII starts and they send the remote shutdown signal to every Intel machine with iAMT / vPro we will all be back to shitposting from ancient machines.
>The best thing about Librettos is that they're so small yet relatively powerful for the time period
This. Even with 16MB RAM I am surfing the internet right now on a 20 year old machine just fine. Word 97 fires up in about 15 seconds, though it thrashes if I try to open Internet Exploder at the same time and browse.
Our computers have gotten 1000 times as powerful in 20 years and software bloat has increased by 2000 times. We're fucked.
>>51892220
Just get a cheap laptop you fucktard. You autistic nerds are so repulsive.
>>51893224
>>tfw you have a Duo 230 but no DuoDock
Got mine cheap at TAS by being patient. Keep your ear to the ground.
>life is suffering
>literally the only thing that would make it more perfect is A/UX compatibility
I haven't tried A/UX but I recently got a IIci which I think will run it. I want an SE/30 though, that to me is the ultimate vintage Mac. It can take a shitload of RAM for the day and also drive a color monitor, plus there are CPU upgrades and even an internal monitor upgrade for a color screen.
Still the 230 even without the dock is a nice little machine. So you have a floppy drive or networking gear for it?
>>51893207
The fucked thing is other than 3D accelerated video games and watching videos on the internet, we're not really doing anything more advanced than we were in 1995.
I love your Omnibook BTW, don't ever go nuts and sell that thing.
>>51893300
50 year old virgin spotted
@51893269
you don't even deserve a (You) for that
>>51893274
>I haven't tried A/UX but I recently got a IIci which I think will run it.
if you can go for it, I haven't tried it out either but I got myself a Quadra 700 and I'm debaiting whether or not to do it, it's a pretty neat OS, has full compatibility with almost every 68k Mac OS application and can run them at nearly full speed
>So you have a floppy drive or networking gear for it?
absolutely nothing, I picked it up from a recycler for $5 where it was sitting in a shopping cart full of random P4 laptops and all I have to transfer files between it is fucking phoneNET
a side thing, is your keyboard mushy as shit? mine is and it's awful to type on, I'm wondering if it's degenerated over the years or if they were all just awful like that
>>51893300
Nice nerdshelf bro. Do you use your 200lx much? I run Forth on mine quite a bit.
Also what's that IBM on the right? I have a bigger POS Celeron from like 2000 or so but other than working great still, it has nothing in particular to recommend it and I want to axe it for a smaller machine.
I would love a Thinkpad PC110.
>>51893327
>if you can go for it, I haven't tried it out either but I got myself a Quadra 700 and I'm debaiting whether or not to do it, it's a pretty neat OS, has full compatibility with almost every 68k Mac OS application and can run them at nearly full speed
I had four Quadra 700s, tricked out, in a home network and we'd play Bolo and Spaceward Ho! on them in the olden days. Had to give 'em up for a cross country move though.
Yeah I have been looking eagerly at A/UX for years. I believe it's actually an AIX variant.
>a side thing, is your keyboard mushy as shit? mine is and it's awful to type on, I'm wondering if it's degenerated over the years or if they were all just awful like that
Yep, mushy as shit but when it's in the dock I have my good old Apple Extended Keyboard II. Love the trackball though. Almost as good as the IBM nipple eraser thing but I love my home row.
>>51893349
Its a 95LX which sadly limits its use quite a bit, I'm still after a static RAM card to expand its memory but they are so expensive.
The ThinkPad on the right is a 301 and the one on the left is a 380ED. Both are Pentium class machines with 64mb of RAM installed.
>>51893254
>Our computers have gotten 1000 times as powerful in 20 years and software bloat has increased by 2000 times. We're fucked.
CPUs double in transistors every two years bu programmers get twice as lazy in that time frame.
>>51893388
noice, I got my Quadra 700 in a lot with a dead but card-loaded IIci and an accelerated (!) IIfx that also won't power on, I wonder if they need to be recapped. also found an AAUI to ethernet transceiver so I don't have to use up a NuBus slot on ethernet
that's both good and bad to see about the keyboard though, I was hoping there was some way I could fix it. that damn thing with a working battery would actually probably be a pretty nice portable for offline work
>>51893423
Wirths law.
Can you run starcraft on it?
>>51893435
yeah, a 70CT or better should run it just fine
>>51893435
I play Theme Hospital on my 100CT.
>>51893404
I use a Lexar CF card adapter and an older 128MB Sandisk CF card for all my LX needs. Works great. I also have a holster full of the SRAM cards too and I have different software loadouts. I'm a nerd, so what.
The 200 is so cherry but it's expensive now on TAS. I had the hinge issue but I used a hyper-fine needle to inject superglue into the fissure, and then filed the resulting glue seam down with a diamond file and it is almost impossible to tell and stronger than ever.
I really want one of the backlight kits but they're almost impossible to find. My best second option is to find one with the backlight already installed.
>>51893431
IIfx probably does need a recap but it's a sweet machine and worth it. Get a SCSI2SD for it and you're golden, it has one of the fastest 68K SCSI 'subsystems.' Specialized and weird but fast.
Yeah sucks about the keyboard, Apple used to mostly have kick ass keyboards but it was really Toshiba, Panasonic, Sony, or IBM who made literally every single Apple laptop until the Aluminum G4 era.
>>51893423
It's a fucking tragedy and I bet I won't even really notice much difference with this older machine for a month. Probably some shit won't work but oh well.
>>51893548
> Get a SCSI2SD for it and you're golden
was thinking of it, dunno, I really like running my old shit exactly to manufacturer spec but finding 5.25'' SCSI drives is a bitch
I've thought of looking for a dead drive that stills spins up and just building one of those adapters into the controller board, you get the full experience but nobody would ever be able to tell.
>>51893431
>accelerated (!) IIfx
I'm such a replyfag here but I gotta ask, what do you mean, a CPU upgrade?
I never heard of such a monster but I'm not surprised. What one? Sweeeeet.
>>51893583
>I really like running my old shit exactly to manufacturer spec but finding 5.25'' SCSI drives is a bitch
>I've thought of looking for a dead drive that stills spins up and just building one of those adapters into the controller board, you get the full experience but nobody would ever be able to tell.
LOL. Just change the startup sound in the ROM to a SCSI drive spinning up?
Anyway we have to keep this stuff alive lads. It's our duty for the future.
>>51893496
What's the actual screen resolution on those? Is it stretched or native at a widescreen resolution?
>>51893612
yep, it's equipped with some newertech CPU upgrade of some kind, probably chipped up to 50 MHz, I'm not sure. It's definitely not the original chip though, it's equipped with a heatsink which no stock IIfx ever shipped with.
upgrades on IIfxes were pretty rare, they were so fucking fast when they came out and I'm sure by the time they started really showing their age PPC hardware was in full swing anyway
>>51893626
no way, the noise is half of the shitbox experience, plus I just want to see if you can even do it without totally hacking it up
>>51893632
800x480
>>51893207
>Excel, an HP RPN calculator program
Do they integrate like in the 200LX? That's a neat feature, I'm also an HP calculator fan.
Pictured: a souped-up HP-41CL (modern logic board replacement for an HP-41 series w/ 50x speedup and huge memory). I love it.
>>51893720
Not sure, I only just got a hold of a linear flash card for it so I haven't played around with it too much.
>>51893703
>probably chipped up to 50 MHz
Wow. I hope someday to join my chipped overlords.
I almost forgot about my trusty Powerbook 5300c, which while it has a reputation as a road Apple has served me extremely well since I bought it brand new.
Still works great.
>>51893764
>linear flash card
It will work with the type of adapter I mentioned in
>>51893548
and then you can easily get stuff onto and off of that amazing piece of work.
The linear cards work fine too but getting your little machine hooked up to a PC could be problematic.
>>51893796
Yeah, I have a bunch of legacy gear but the only systems I have that are suitable for file transfers either don't have the optional driver installed or aren't working, like my Libretto.
I think I'll go pick up a cheap adapter and a tiny CF card with it, I don't really trust this card anyway, it's older than shit.
>>51893831
>I think I'll go pick up a cheap adapter and a tiny CF card
Read first, you can't use any old adapter nor can you use any old card.
But once you get the right pair everything works well. You need special drivers (I THINK!) for a card >128MB.
That http://www.palmtoppaper.com site has good info.
Shit's cheap used but make sure to pick the right stuff.
>>51893889
Noice. I found a lexar CF adapter on Ebay with a Viking 128MB card for $10, I think I'll keep an eye out for a sandisk card though.
Just to keep the thread going and on the same topic, what was everybody's first computer, and first portable / laptop?
My first computer was an Apple IIGS (Still have it, it's tricked out to the buhjeezus next to me) and my first portable was my Apple Newton 110, which died but I replaced in the day with a 2100 which I also still have and which still works great.
Forgot to mention my Apple eMate, a weird Newton in a micro-Powerbook clamshell case, great little thing and it too gets on the internet like the 2100.
I have a Zaurus too, also able to get online. I obsess over getting this old shit online.
>>51894023
My first portable was a Thinkpad 600E, still have it, but it was gutted and had the parts moved over to a much cleaner 600E of the same machine type, which I now use as one of my main NT4 test boxes.
>>51893300
MOOOORE !!!
>>51896841
>not using a GSM modem
I can shitpost from my 100CT anywhere.
>>51897078
I want to rebuild the battery pack now with some of the newer much higher-capacity low self discharge NiMH's. The size of the thing plus the fact that it's a 10.8v pack makes me suspect it's just a bunch of AAAs wired up in series. I pulled a bit at the edges of the battery pack just now and it seemed to like to come apart, but I decided not to go completely nuts and rip shit to pieces so I will have to do more research. It'd be neato if it was an easy job.
WiFi kills the poor worn out old battery in a few minutes.
I'm taking this machine on vacation with me for Christmas. My wife and I rented a tiny cabin you have to snowshoe into. This Libretto, and my KX3 ham radio, plus some hot buttered rum sounds awful comfy.
>>51894261
Personal legacy machines are awesome. I kept every machine I was ever attached to. My buddy still has his Powerbook G4 12" which is a pretty sweet little number even today, he babies that thing and bought a bunch of extra batteries and accessories to 'future proof' it.
Holy shit are people talking about the LX in earnest over here? Here I was, shitting up the PDA thread.
Anyway, if anyone wants to get their LX online, peep this VC thread:
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?38300-Networking-on-an-HP-palmtop
The Sohoware ND5120 is a good NIC to have for any of your old-ass laptops. They go for like $10 on ebay.
>>51897987
1000cx, extra rare. Have you experienced the hinge issue?
What kind of battery life do you get with the NIC installed and operating anyway?
So many gadgets, what a time to be alive.
>>51898233
Hinge isn't a problem yet.
NIC is a pretty big suck. Kills a pair of AAs in less than 5 hours. I use this 5v to 12v converter out of the USB port of the mini router to keep the palmtop powered:
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/171308356888?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
Might take a new pic since it's changed a bit from the solar setup
>>51898347
What do you use your 1000CX for? I use my 200LX for Forth programming, as storage for secure passwords (nobody's hacking this son of a bitch) and as a terminal for ax.25 packet networking.
My wireless card won't go in.
>>51898747
16bit PCMCIA and 32bit PCMCIA slots are mechanically different. Most wireless cards are 32bit
>>51898803
Yeah I was on crack earlier when I said I had it working, it was the Ethernet card which thankfully works great that drained my battery.
>>51898676
IRC, shitchatting with my buds on skype with an IRC<>skype tunnel, SSH (through DD-WRT router), email/web from a unix shell (sdf.org), a bit of APRS fuckery, oldass roguelikes, ms word 5.5,
I really love old laptops, especially the mini ones.
Anyone got some recommended models to look out for?
>>51898347
>>51898892
Other than Librettos, I have a thing for ultraportables in general, especially weird shit like this OmniBook Sojourn. This isn't really a mini laptop, but still pretty neat.
>>51901719
The specs are probably a little limp for a $5,800 system, but reasonable nonetheless. You get a Pentium MMX 233, 64 MB of RAM, USB, and two PCMCIA slots all in a laptop as thin as the card slots.
The trade-off is that you get a rather... unconventional keyboard, probably one of the shittiest I've ever seen on any system, only those membrane keyboards they played with in the late '70s and early '80s could beat it.
>>51901743
The price also included the "media slice" which bumped up the weight to a more standard 6 pounds but turned it into a fully featured portable, with CD-ROM and floppy drives, retractible stereo speakers, two PS/2 ports for a keyboard and mouse, VGA out, a microphone jack, an extra USB port, and of course serial and parallel ports. There was also a battery slice option which can clip to the laptop or the media slice, making it even thicker but giving it a much longer battery life.
Still need to buy an AC adapter for it so I can actually give it a test drive, but when I do it will probably become my primary Windows 95 system.
Thanks for reading my blog.
>>51901771
Wow, pretty cool stuff there.
>>51894023
Oh god I got an OMP from my uncle, but fried it eventually with a cheap ass power adapter
Is the eMate worth it?
I love fiddling with Newton OS and those things are pretty cheap on ebay
>>51903797
>Is the eMate worth it?
I like it even better than the 2100, even though it's slow. The batteries last a long time, I made a new pack out of low self discharge NiMHs.
The keyboard is actually really nice too, typical of older Apple gear but there are exceptions like the PB Duo 230 as seen above thread.
It has a pretty kickass graphing calculator app / pseudo-CAS too which I think is completely unique to the eMate. Muh many digits of precision.
>I love fiddling with Newton OS and those things are pretty cheap on ebay
That's what we all thought years ago about all the stuff that's $150-400 now. Act while it's still cheap! Pictured is my next acquisition when I can find a cheap one - also I need the Forth ROM which is usually $300+ these days too.
Fuckin' original-era IBM PCs are getting to be worth some money, and I have seen more than I could count on curbs in the olden days. I have saved a number of Apple IIs of varying kinds, though - currently I have only eight of them but I used to have more. IIc+ is a hot little number, currently my rarest. I also have a Platinum IIe which I think is probably the ultimate 8-bit Apple II.
>>51901227
That's a pretty handy little setup. I have a bunch of converters just sitting around (I'm a ham) so I might brew up a USB power solution for my 200LX.
I still wish there were laptops made in the exact same form factor as the 70ct
damn some of these are real comfy. only if some of them had modern day parts.
>>51904670
yeah, it really sucks that you can't find real ultraportables anymore
on the other hand, if all you want to do is web surf you can cheat with a Linux system and an X server as long as you can find a good fast or gigabit Ethernet card
