It's retro laptop time - TI TravelMate 4000 WinSX

[rubber_jonnie]

So I came away from Cyber Legends 4 with a few things I didn't arrive with A big thanks to @mrbombermillzy for this and the other item I will get to at a later date.

One was a lovely TI laptop:

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It's a little discombobulated here because I found there was an issue with the floppy drive. I've seen a few like this lately, a bad belt:

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So a new belt is on the way. Looking at the HDD:

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It is apparently 128MB and shows up as missing operating system at the moment, so may be blanked, but I can't do much until I have the FDD belt. Fingers crossed that'll come before I go away on holiday for a week and I can get it all reassembled.

Interestingly the FDD is almost identical to the one in my Amstrad NC-200, so I know exactly what size belt to order.

More on this as parts arrive

[HigashiJun]

That was the hidden part of CL4...

[rubber_jonnie]

That was the hidden part of CL4...

Indeed it was, I also got a Bush Internet TV box from @mrbombermillzy that will apparently run RISCOS, so a project for another day

[HigashiJun]

Indeed it was, I also got a Bush Internet TV box from @mrbombermillzy that will apparently run RISCOS, so a project for another day

Nice !

I guess you have already bookmarked this:

https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.or ... ernet.html

[rubber_jonnie]

Indeed it was, I also got a Bush Internet TV box from @mrbombermillzy that will apparently run RISCOS, so a project for another day

Nice !

I guess you have already bookmarked this:

https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.or ... ernet.html

Actually, I hadn't, thanks

[rubber_jonnie]

Well, the FDD belt arrived today (66mmx2mm for those who are interested) and the FDD is operational ish. It may need more work as it struggling to read disks, though it seems to work on about the 3rd or 4th retry.

Although it's not bootable, it turns out that the HDD is now I have the correct specs for it in the BIOS:

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IMG20251014221153.jpg (166.38 KiB) Viewed 118 times

And although there seems to be a backlight issue, it will dual display hence the lovely colour VGA 2nd display for Win 3.1.

So next up I need to have a look at the backlight. According to the BIOS it should be turned on, but I think next up I will try and check all the cable are plugged in as expected.

So good progress, if not perfect. I need to figure out a PSU for it as at present I'm using my bench PSU clipped to the battery terminals. The battery is a 6v pack consisting of what looks like 4 NiCD D cell batteries.

The BIOS battery (Not sure if it uses the main battery for this) is not working, so I need to figure that out too and either replace the battery or rebuild the battery pack.

Overall so far so good though.

[HigashiJun]

Looking good !

[mrbombermillzy]

Great work so far Jon.

[rubber_jonnie]

Thanks both

I think the main battery is also the BIOS battery, sa after leaving overnight with power on but the laptop turned off, it kept its settings. A bit more digging to do though.

[stephen_usher]

Re: backlight. It's probably the cold cathode florescent tube gone bye-bye rather than anything else.