I've recently purchased and retro-modded a Toshiba Libretto from eBay.
It was listed as non-working, untetested. I added a IDE to CF card adapter, a fresh install of w98, added a $3 PCMCIA wireless card, with a hot spot running from my phone.
Even the battery that was made back in the mid to late 90's is holding a charge. I've owned countless phones in the last decade that can't say that.
I'm thoroughly enjoying reliving my retro years telneting around experincing BBS nostalgia from my couch and micro-laptop. I've had to dust off learnings from a few decades ago working with such an old os, but somehow I find it both relaxing and fun.
Here's to the late 90's.
This lovely image made me go up into the loft and get my little Dell
laptop down. It's not quite as old as I thought, though, with a Pentium
233 processor, and the hard drive seems to have died. Better order
myself another CF to 40 pin IDE adaptor, I think!
Here's to the late 90's.
Enjoy!
BobW
Nice. Took me a while to get my PCMCIA wireless card working. Now that I have that figured out, looking for a DOS style BBS client. mTelnet works until it crashes whenever I try to post a message. An older version of Putty works,2~ but doesn't have ZModem support...
Hope you get it running...
A pretty authentic 90s online experience, then :) Takes me back to
'95, having to swap between two "known good" copies of WINSOCK.DLL
depending on what I was trying to do that day...
Shaggy wrote to All <=-
I've recently purchased and retro-modded a Toshiba Libretto from eBay.
It was listed as non-working, untetested. I added a IDE to CF card adapter, a fresh install of w98, added a $3 PCMCIA wireless card, with
a hot spot running from my phone. Even the battery that was made back
in the mid to late 90's is holding a charge. I've owned countless
phones in the last decade that can't say that.
Bob Worm wrote to Shaggy <=-
Serial to WiFi adaptor out of the question? Would probably double the footprint of a Libretto, though!
Tiny wrote to Bob Worm <=-
Laugh, I remember doing that as well! I switched to OS/2 right around that time because it worked better.
Xircom used to make a parallel to Ethernet adapter - was a good fraction
of the size of the Libretto! They finally came out with a CF card that worked with it, my user was much happier.
A pretty authentic 90s online experience, then :) Takes me back to '95, having to swap between two "known good" copies of WINSOCK.DLL depending
on what I was trying to do that day...
Yeah, I'll probably just cheat and install Linux on it. I have a couple
of PCMCIA WiFi cards around here somewhere, I just can't lay my hands on one right now - I'm not sure USB1.1 would really work for WiFi.
Nice! My company's CEO had one back in 1998 or so, loved getting to
configure/fix it for him. About that same time, I got an IBM workpad
Z50, a little 2/3s form factor thinkpad that ran Windows CE. Another
person in the company had a HP 200LX. Good times for small computers.
I did love OS/2, though. I started out running OS/2 1.3 on IBM PS/2s,
and could run a modem session, MS LAN Manager networking, Novell
networking, connect to a AS/400 over twinax, and run Word and Excel on
a system with a 386 and 8 MB of RAM.
If there was a device back then with CE and the PSION
keyboard, that would've been better.
I think I might walk into my next meeting with the CIO and whip out my Libretto. See what his reaction is. :)
Need to find a FSE that works on linux for my WWIV BBS though...
Shaggy wrote to Poindexter Fortran <=-
I had a HP CE device, but was never impressed by how it was pokey slow
and hard to type on. If there was a device back then with CE and the PSION keyboard, that would've been better.
I think I might walk into my next meeting with the CIO and whip out my Libretto. See what his reaction is. :)
Bob Worm wrote to Shaggy <=-
Re: Re: Toshiba Libretto
By: Shaggy to Poindexter Fortran on Mon Nov 06 2023 23:45:44
Hi, Shaggy.
If there was a device back then with CE and the PSION
keyboard, that would've been better.
I have a series 5 up in the loft (this loft is starting to sound like
an Alladin's cave) but, as they often do, the display has stopped
working on it. I may revive it one day but I gather that's quite an expensive thing to do - I wonder if there's an IPS screen replacement
for those? That would be lovely :)
I really liked Psion's OS, as well. It's a shame they're not around any more :(
I think I might walk into my next meeting with the CIO and whip out my Libretto. See what his reaction is. :)
I was thinking of taking my Acorn A3020 with me to the datacentre the
next time I'm there. I imagine it might attract some odd looks sat on a crash trolley, especially if I started inserting 3.5" floppies into it.
In truth, I work on telecoms / networking kit so anything with a 9600
baud serial port is perfectly fine.
In fact that's how I found out the Psion was dead - I thought it would
be ideal as an ultra-portable serial terminal and got it out for that purpose.
Speaking of professional computing, another one of my permanently
shelved projects was to take my son's old Leapfrog Clickstart "My First Computer" and decode the IR coming out of the keyboard and mouse so
that it could be used as an input device on a "real" computer.
For those unfamiliar:
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2007/06/27/technology/28computer.600.jpg
I got some way into that project using a logic analyser but never got
to a working prototype. Anyway, I thought it would be pretty amazing to use as a daily runner, or at least to take into the office and to
pretend to use it as a daily runner...
We are an interesting group...
BobW
--- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
* Origin: >>> Magnum BBS <<< - bbs.magnum.uk.net (21:1/205)
Need to find a FSE that works on linux for my WWIV BBS though...
I had to Google that... I assume you mean "Full Screen Editor", rather than "Furry Search Engine", which is the first hit when you search for
[...]Bob Worm wrote to Shaggy <=-
BobW
I really liked Psion's OS, as well. It's a shame they're not around any more :(
I had to Google that... I assume you mean "Full Screen Editor", rather
than "Furry Search Engine", which is the first hit when you search for
"FSE BBS"?
Or at least it is when I search for it... not sure what Google is trying
to tell me, there!
I think I might walk into my next meeting with the CIO and whip out
my
Libretto. See what his reaction is. :)
That would be awesome, especially if you plugged it into a desktop
projector and pulled out a powerpoint. It's got VGA out somewhere,
doesn't
it? Maybe on the dock?
BTW - I want to see this loft! Seems like a treasure trove of nastalgic technology.
It's funny to think of Windows XP as nostalgia now. I remember using
XP when it was brand new and thinking it was pretty cool.
You're not alone. I remember when we had to phase Windows XP out, and we
had holdouts who preferred it to Windows 7.
I wasn't an XP holdout, as I liked WIndows 7 as well. But I think Windows XP was one of the best versions of Windows they produced.
It's funny to think of Windows XP as nostalgia now. I remember usi
XP when it was brand new and thinking it was pretty cool.
You're not alone. I remember when we had to phase Windows XP out, anI wasn't an XP holdout, as I liked WIndows 7 as well. But I think Win XP was one of the best versions of Windows they produced.
had holdouts who preferred it to Windows 7.
unc0nnected wrote to Ogg <=-
For me I was a windows 2000 holdout, I just couldn't get past how
bubbly and dumbed down XP felt after being with 2000 for a couple of
years so I stuck with that until Windows 7. Although compared to
Windows ME, XP was a dream come true.
This message thread made me think about how I didn't mind Vista all
that much. It was a bit faster than 7, but the hardware at the time was
crap. I remember core 2 duos with 3 GB of RAM being high-end for home
use, and Vista could have used more - did more than XP did. Vista on a
SSD would have been a different story.
In retrospect, I think I spent as much time tweaking OS/2 config.sys
files trying to get drivers to load correctly as I did running
trying to eke out a little more RAM out of DOS.
Tiny wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
In retrospect, I think I spent as much time tweaking OS/2 config.sys
files trying to get drivers to load correctly as I did running
trying to eke out a little more RAM out of DOS.
Probably but it was more fun. LOL
When compared to Windows at the time, it was amazing - once you got it
up and running. I ran Maximus and Frontdoor on my desktop and barely
noticed it running in the background. It took years for Windows to
catch up to that.
Tiny wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
True. I think Windows XP SP2 is around where it caught up enough that
you could run a BBS in the background without really noticing it. At least it was the first version of Windows I could use to run a BBS.
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