Finds and questions

From: Doug Yowza <yowza_at_yowza.com>
Date: Mon May 18 22:49:46 1998

On Mon, 18 May 1998, Uncle Roger wrote:

> This weekend (despite iminent death due to a stomach virus) I managed to
> add a few interesting things to my collection:
>
> Toshiba T1000

Very common, but worth $50 on eBay!

> HP 110

Nice, one of the first clam-shell laptops (after the GRiD Compass, and
before the DG/One). I hope you have HP-IL cables and software!

> GRiD GRiDCase 2
> GRiD GridCase 1520
> Grid GridCase 1535
> Grid Battery (spare)
> Grid P/S (spare, replaces battery)
> Two external Grid Disk Drives

Army surplus or what?

> Now for the questions.
>
> The GridCase 2 seems to have an internal 10MB hard drive (gotta be a 3.5"),
> but it also has a DB25 sticking out the side where the HD is. Has anyone
> else seen this?

Yes.

> Is it a GRiD option?

Yes.

> Is the DB25 for an external floppy,
> since the HD seems to be where the floppy should be?

Right again. The external floppy seems to be hard to find. I should have
a couple of them later this week, though :-)

> The HD makes some
> rather unhappy noises, though it seems to work fine; anyone have any
> suggestions for the best way to get the data/OS off the hard drive in case
> of failure? (Just copy to floppies?) It comes up in something called
> (iirc) InteGRiD; anyone know anything about this?

InteGRiD is a version of GRiD/OS that you can boot from MS-DOS (usually by
running GRID.EXE). I've never seen InteGRiD in a machine that didn't also
have MS-DOS on it. If you have MS-DOS, you can just use laplink. If you
don't have MS-DOS, you'll need a GRiDServer or a floppy.

> Haddock claims the T1100 was Toshiba's first laptop; just by looking at the
> numbers, one would think the T1000 would have come first. According to
> Toshiba's spec files, both machines ran Toshiba MS-DOS 2.11, had 512K RAM
> (but the T1000 could go up to 1.2MB), both had a 4.77mhz 80c88, etc. So,
> anyone know for sure what came first?

Reprinted w/o permission from Newsbytes:

<<
1987 August 11 -- DUSSELDORF, West Germany (NB) -- Toshiba, the giant
Japanese Computer company has launched a new portable system onto the
European marketplace. The T1000 model which weighs in at 2.9 kg (or about
6.3 lb) offers 512KB of RAM, an 8088 at 4.77 MHz, serial and parallel
ports and a supertwist screen. The system, which costs about DM 2800
(about US$ 1400), is supplied with MS-DOS 3.2 and a 3.5 inch disk drive.
This model, which replaces the old T1100, is designed to fill in the gap
Toshiba has in its line of portable systems.
>>

-- Doug
Received on Mon May 18 1998 - 22:49:46 BST