Toshiba T1600
My Toshiba T1600 laptop (added to my collection in 2014)
- 80286 at 6 or 12Mhz (switchable)
- 1MB RAM
- 20MB Hard drive
- 1.44Mb Floppy
I actually have two of these, and both are dead. The internal DC power supply boards are shot, capacitors leaked all over the boards, and caused other issues, neither works after re-capping, I found shorted transistors in one and replaced them, but still no signs of life. Without any schematics or pinouts of what’s coming in and out of this power board, it’s unlikely I will be able to repair them. I hope to collect a few more of these T1600’s and try to get a working one and re-cap it before it shorts out and cooks itself. These are pretty tough boards to work on, they seem to have a massive internal ground plane, they take a combination of hot air and a very hot iron to even get the capacitors changed out.
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- Sellers photo, updated photos to follow.
What OS have you installed?
None as of yet, the power supply cooked the first time I plugged it in. But I plan on MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 once I have the power supply repaired and laptop booting.
Oh no! Post some details of the repairs you make if you don’t mind, I’d be interested to know. Did this laptop have any sort of battery? Maybe not, considered that it had a hard drive.
I will certainly post details and photos of repairs, from the smell of the failure it smells like blown capacitors, so I am HOPING all it needs is a recap of power supply and DC input board at worst. The laptop does have a battery, but I am sure its long since gone bad, there’s actually 2 hot-swap battery bays up front, pretty advanced for a 1980’s laptop. I assume the batteries are likely NiCd so MAY be rebuildable.
Interesting… my recollection was that due to high power consumption, 80s laptops either had batteries or hard drives, not both. Anyway, great find!
I’ve seen plenty of 80’s 286 and laptops with battery and (3.5″) HD’s, they just typically don’t have very long lasting batteries, between massive power draw and low capacity of NiCd or Lead-acid batteries (compared to LiIon), run-times were quite short. Lower power 2.5″ drives came on the market in the late 80s, so things improved greatly from there, and you ended up with laptops like the Compaq LTE in 89, a small light weight package (6lbs) with decent battery life (claimed up to 4.5hrs!), laptops like this paved the way towards what we have now days 😉
Hello,
I have one just like it does not work, has one of the two batteries and Modem card has no power supply, which worked very well remember, in 1990, had the application installed Symphony,
regards
I’ve got one of these as well, no power supply no batteries, but has the modem/network card installed and needs the latch on the screen fixed and is in good clean condition otherwise.
It’s going to go to a good home for free once I find someone to take it. I’m in Sydney Australia, so if you know anybody here who’d like it put them in touch with me.
Cheers
Wayne
Wayne, I don’t personally know anyone in Australia, but I know of a gentleman named Terry (goes by Tezza) in New Zealand who is very much into vintage computers, you could get in contact with him via his webpage http://classic-computers.org.nz/collection/index.htm, that’s the closest collector that I know of, with it’s proximity to Australia I can’t imagine shipping being too bad. Barring that though, you could try listing it on some local sale site, you might find a more local taker too.
Good luck!
Ryan
I just purchased one in sydney, no batteries, no power supply. I do wonder if it is the same one in question. I managed to find the workshop manual online so i was going to pull it apart and inspect everything before I try and boot it up. looks like it’s been sitting a little while and i’m always cautious about that sort of thing. looking forward to getting it up and running as i’ve never had anything pre win95 (apart from a c64)
Could have been one in the same, but who knows, they were common laptops in their day. I had one back in the mid 90’s combined with a Toshiba mobile printer, always thought they were neat machines.
Are you able to tell me the power supply requirements? once i clean mine up i’d like to test it out but I do not wish to supply too much voltage and cause more damage. Thanks.
It’s 12Volt, I do not recall amperage off hand, I want to say its 2.5amp, but that is less important, you won’t damage it with a higher amperage supply.
Cleaning out I just found that my Dad has given me a looking time ago…..too fun!