The ONE thing keeping this iconic vintage laptop from working...

I haven't been having good luck with old laptop hard drives lately -- and this Toshiba Libretto 50CT isn't helping.

Sources:
"Libretto 50CT good for executives on the go," InfoWorld, August 25, 1997.
"New Libretto debuts," Computerworld, November 10, 1997.
"Libretto, Take III," PC Magazine, May 26, 1998.

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[StarkRG]

Every time I'm reminded of these machines, I'm reminded how much I have always wanted one.

[milyrouge]

I worked for Toshiba’s PC division at the time of the launch of this (and still have a Libretto 30 and 50 in storage). They were as much a technology statement as a solution for road warriors and certain verticals at the time, and got us a lot of attention. Fun times and a great team!

[cypherian]

MANY years ago, I used to go to LAN parties to play DOOM and other games. A friend of a friend of a friend brought one of these machines one time! It was a trip playing DOOM and or DOOM II on this thing! We all seemed to take turns giving it a try. The overall tiny size did not slow us down at all. In fact the idea of playing PC games on a "Pocket Computer" was very compelling to me at the time, and fueled many speculative dreams of what we might be able to do in the future. Now that we are in that future it's still fun to look back and see how far we've come!

[dangingerich]

I had to deal with one of these back in 1998. A Senior VP for a company I worked for insisted on having it for his trip to Germany, but he wanted two PCMCIA modems in it, one that connected to his cell phone and one that would connect to international phone lines. Well, Windows 95 didn't deal with resources very well, and whenever these two modems were in at the same time, they'd come up with resource conflicts. He insisted that he had to have both at the same time. It took me three days to get it to come up with a combo of resources that wouldn't conflict through some manual resource allocation, but Windows 95 would reset those as soon as it booted up without one of those modems, and they'd conflict again.

I told him SPECIFICALLY that it was tricky to do and to NOT eject either of the modems or all the work I did would reset, OR that it could work with EITHER modem installed, but not both at the same time.

What was the FIRST thing he did in getting to Germany? He took one out.

He complains his whole two week trip that he couldn't do his work. Then he comes back, the day he gets back, comes to my desk and yells at me, calling me incompetent and lazy. As SOON as he used the"L" word, I stood up and look him right in the eyes. I don't remember what he was saying during the next couple minutes, as it took me a bit to get my blood pressure back down to be able to hear and talk again. I told this SVP of a multi-billion dollar company, without cursing or threats of violence and without yelling until the very end, that I specifically told him how it would work and how it would be screwed up, and he did the specific thing that screwed it up, and he needed to take his "sophomoric attitude AWAY from my desk NOW." Then sat back down and ignored anything further he had to say.

That job was HELL. ALL the executive management were yellers. They constantly yelled and belittled the IT staff, and pretty much everyone else, while refusing to spend the necessary money to get reliable server hardware and software. They had an IBM AS/400, and 5 developers, but not testing environment, so all changes were done on the live system, bringing it down about 2-3 times per week. They had a Dell Dimension Pentium 133 tower for a Lotus Notes SERVER, and it would hang DAILY because it simply wasn't designed to handle such duties. Yet, they also had one help desk phone person (me), one desktop support tech, and one helpdesk "manager, " for 300 people in the company. Whenever either the AS/400 or the mail server would go down, I'd get a ton of calls, most of the people literally YELLING at me to get it going, as if I was to blame for it being down and I was the one to fix it.

In the 6 months I worked there, I broke 5 molars from grinding my teeth in my sleep because I was so stressed. I was the one and only person who stayed there for over a month at that helpdesk phone job, as everyone else walked out because of the treatment. I spent a week in the hospital because of an abdominal infection, presumably because of chip from one of my teeth cut a wound in my intestine. While I was out, the helpdesk "manager" had to answer the helpdesk phone, and attempted suicide in his cube in the middle of the day. Those horrible people left his blood in the carpet of his cube for a MONTH, until the stench reached up into the executive area and they FINALLY paid out to have it cleaned. That job was the final reason I moved away from Chicago and swore I would NEVER return.

It did teach me three things, though: how much I can endure when I need to, how to properly stand up for myself, and how to identify a bad job from the beginning. Those lessons have served me well in my later career, but I have NEVER worked for, or even encountered, management as bad as that again in my IT career.

[sir.fender]

Fun Fact: Did you know that Toshiba was founded in Tokyo, Japan in 1875! Some of the first products made by Toshiba were clocks and electric lamps. The TOSBAC-3400 was the first Toshiba computer that came with an Operating System. Great video as always!

[kpbendeguz]

I had a 50CT in 1998, was totally satiesfied with it as a student traveling around with all my stuff in a backpack. The main limiting factor was not the CPU speed or the keyboard size but the battery capacity, which barely hold for 1-1.5 hours max.

[rapurimanka]

It's great to see you returning to this laptop. I must admit, the previous video left me somewhat disappointed because despite the shortcomings of this device, it is a unique item that should definitely be on the shelf of every collector.

I myself had been eyeing this laptop for some time, and now the Libretto 70 holds a special place in my collection. Interestingly, my unit originates from Japan, still running the original Japanese Windows, and equipped internally with Toshiba's corporate software, including an address book with all company employees. Clearly, the previous owners had worked at the company. I take good care of the software :)

[joetheman]

Thanks. I learned something new today. I have watched 100's and 100's of vintage computer videos for over 10 years from dozens upon dozens of great channels. So many of them have used CF cards with adapters to replace hard drives yet I have never heard even one of them before mention the difference between some CF cards being in fixed mode rather than removable. I have seen channels mention that they tested multiple cards to find one to work but this is the first time I have seen an explanation as to WHY! Great to know. I recently went into my garage and pulled out a box full of vintage parts. Many well over 20 years old. I have been thinking of rebuilding some of my old machines. I already rebuilt a 22 old P4 WinXP gaming machine and a 17 year old Athlon 64 5000+ as a Minecraft running server Arch Linux. Next I'm planning on rebuilding my old Super Socket Seven AMD K6-II 500 machine for Win98 and planned on using a CF card for the HDD. This information is DEFINITELY going to come in handy.

[thecrow]

I worked in a computer shop when these were introduced and they were very impressive. I still think they're extremely cool machines

[gozs]

I had one of these in the late 90s and early 2000s - ideal when travelling to work in data centres around Europe - fond memories !

[foxyfoxington]

I remember these things from back in the day! When I was in college (circa 2000) our lab had one.

Excessive use of that nubbin on the bezle led to many cases of what was colorfully referred to as "Libretto Claw" or "Libretto Hand".

[CraftComputing]

I remember shopping for a 50CT back in the earliest days of eBay, hoping to find someone getting rid of one. Active TFT screen, Pentium CPU, and super compact. Heck, I still want one. Very cool to see one in such good condition.

[Max_Mustermann]

8:30 - speaking of vintage, it's cool to see that people are still using vintage DSLRs like the Nikon D70s. I have a D40 with the same 6 MPix CCD sensor, and the image quality holds up surprisingly well despite the relatively low resolution and the age of the camera.

[JapanPop]

I had a Compaq Contura Aero 4/25 (greyscale) and it was my daily college driver from 1996-98. It was tiny, had a 170MB HDD and one of those CF Card FDD devices. I copied all the Windows 95 setup files to a parallel Zip drive, booted from a FDD with Zip drivers, and was able to install that way! When I replace the HDD in my Vaio, I used a SSD-IDE adapter and had enough room to dual-boot 98 and XP. Definitely SSD-IDE was so much easier than IDE-CF. I used an IDE-CF in a Mac Performa 640 DOS edition (with a tasty Intel DX2-66) and I had to get a VERY specific sandisk card that would work, AND I went through three different IDE-CF adapters to get it all working. It took weeks to figure it out! Love your videos.

[PotatoFi]

Great video, I enjoyed this a lot! On my Libretto 50CT (you know the one), I struggled through a big pile of CF cards, looking for something that was either fixed or could be converted. I eventually gave up and went with an SD card adapter, which was something like $8 on Amazon. I also designed an adapter bracket for it, which is available on Printables.

[StaceyAyodele]

Love seeing all these retro PC videos. Awesome work yet again, Colin!

[Lurch-Bot]

My mom went to grad school in 1998 and bought a laptop for school. I remember looking at the Libretto but it was too expensive and she ended up with a Satellite. I picked up a second one, different model, along the way.
I'm lucky my Toshiba paving slabs have functional drives. However, I am planning to convert them to solid state storage. A DOM is the obvious solution here and there are new manufacture ones out there. I got one that is 2GB, perfect for a DOS machine, which the non-MMX one is going to be whenever I get back around to it.
That sound is one I've only heard once. I bought some used enterprise drives a few months ago. One of them got damaged in transit. It was a BB size dent in the top cover. It was enough to contact the platter and made a similar grinding noise. In fact the drive behaved similarly - it would spin up and down, trying to initialize, all the while attempting to self-disassemble.
My experience with Win95 was a pirated late beta which I used for years on my 486 because it wasn't networked. Never had a single compatibility issue. I eventually upgraded to a Pentium and Win 98 and eventually a P120MMX which I used until fall 2001 when I bought a P4 Vaio desktop. The P120MMX just wouldn't run XP. Not really. Not in a useable fashion. I was starting college and being able to run XP was required.

[jackoneil]

Thank you for covering this. I bought a 50CT and a 70CT when they were introduced and this reminded me to dig them out and to my surprise they both still function. I rarely used them except for checking email when I used to fly for a living and was limited on to a single small carry-on when flying jump-seat or comp., and they were (still are?) brilliant devices. They have a most of the accessories and some extras, and for me taking up closet space if anyone if interested.

[CF]

I always look forward to your content and watch them all when they come out.

[ChishanFipz]

I still use a 70CT today to copy and update PCMCIA cards for my Tech-II system for diagnosing Saab ECU's - An amazing little PC.