+Steve W If It wouldn't break the laptop, that is *totally* what ought to happen. If Panasonic Toughbooks have a docking station, maybe that is what it does?
My 7370 armada still gets daily use as an interface, for a cnc mill. Plus I can play DOS games like doom and nuke 3d while the machine runs. I wish they made laptops that reliable today.
You should look at the LTE 5000 docking station. That had an electronic micro switch that powered the laptop out of the docking station, on to the floor! I had one (the fancy TFT, 120Mhz version), and never dropped it, but I did have to catch it! Don't know about your model, but the LTE I had would use all PCMCIA (Card Bus) simultaneously. The expansion slots were both ISA. Great vid BTW, I love this stuff.
The weird port on the right (above the two PC Card slots) is for an international modem / US cell phone adapter, allowing the use of telephone lines other than those in North America. On European units with a modem it's the **only** modem connector present - if you lose the adapter, you're out of luck.
I'm very interested in old Compaq laptops, including IBM, Toshiba, Lenovo, ThinkPads and Dell. I found them interesting because of their history, design and how we use it.
I had a 7792 for 8 months as my main laptop, I had several spare parts computers, all the screens I have are 1024x768, in both 12 and 13 inch measures. I used a larger one. At the time(2004) a new battery was purchased, and soon after I found a working old one. You can slide out the CD drive and fit 2 in it for a whopping 4.5 hours of battery life. I installed a 40gb hard drive, and had a pcmcia G wireless adapter, and for all usb purposes, a pcmcia usb controller. I still have parts, and ...
I had a Compaq Armada that I bought a while back that was quite similar to this. I had it for about a month before I got hold of a power cord to proerly test it. Had some crazy screen issues, that much was for certain. Good find.
I really enjoyed watching this video! I do like my Compaqs... I actually own a 1997 Compaq Armada 4120T which is similar to that one and probably from around the same year. It has two batteries, both of which take a good charge surprisingly! Compaq obviously made (or sourced) good batteries for their Armada series. I haven't used the Armada though in over a year, so I suppose I'd better dig it out and stick it on charge sometime soon before the batteries go into slow discharge.
holy moly i dident relise how big the docking station was until you put the laptop on it most that i have seen just lift up the back of the laptop not raise it like 5 inches
I believe Toshiba was the only other mainstream company who made their own stuff. My Libretto 50CT says "Made In Japan" on the bottom, indicating that Toshiba themselves produced it. Nowadays, there isn't a single laptop that's actually made by the company who's selling it, save for maybe MSI, Gigabyte and Asus.
Early on, I'd say you could have gotten away with it. A few service packs and some software later, maybe not so much. Even NT4 could find plenty to do with 64MB of installed RAM.
This also reminded me of my old Armada 4120T! What a machine! Battery in a handle/stand, swappable trackpad or trackball. Mine had a trackball, have not seen any others like this. The multibay took a floppy or second battery, it had a port replicator and a base with some nice speakers and a CD-ROM. I miss that thing. The whole 4000 series was like that. Would love to get a top of the line 4220T for nostalgia. It was a pretty tiny machine too.
Great video Bill. Modern Thinkpads can still have a type of docking station like this for your desk (not the Ultrabase that slides underneath) but a real docking station. Regarding how you cleaned it up, what do you use to brighten up yellowed computer plastic? I saw someone use some cleaner / homemade mix that left yellowed plastic like new again on an old Mac Plus.
Deciphered: About a year ago my computer illiterate mother in-law got one of these. I gave it to her and she then kept calling me wanting me to install Sims 3 on it, and she still thinks I just don't want to do it to this day, no matter how many time I try to explain it to her. Great video.
I had a 7790DMT at one point, and it looked almost identical to this one, but it cooked itself to death because of a Pentium II MMX & NO ACTIVE Ventilation. There was only 1 cooling vent in the entire system.
Prepare for Starship separation. Move all non essential crew to the saucer section. "docking clams released!" Separation complete! I love that dock! And of course, had to put in the star trek for ya! Awesome machine!
As a fan of Pre-HP Compaq Machines, I very much appreciate this video. I have recently acquired both an LTE 5280 and an Armada 7770DMT and find that both machines are absolutely fantastic. The 7770DMT especially is brilliant at DOS gaming. Did you ever get around to doing anything with your 7770DMT? Also do you still have the LTE 5000 series machine? Thanks for the video (which I know is an older one).
I have the same machine, which I had turned on while watching this video, and the battery went down from 70% to 60%. My 3 year old HP would be dead before I've even seen half of it.
I have a local used laptop store close to me, and as you I know the guy that runs it there very well. I go in and trade old laptops that I get for free for something better!
Speaking of upgrading processor upgrades i recently upgraded my acer 5251 laptop from a amd v120 piece of junk processor to a amd phenom 2 2.3 ghz quad core processor its a amazing little laptop now amazing speeds i have learned alot from ur videos and would greatly appreciate if you could spare some more time to make more videos keep up the good work thank you uxwbill
Very enjoyable video for me! I'm a bit of a "dock enthusiast" if there is such a thing. Which is mostly due to working largely with and on ThinkPads for a long time. If there was ever a company that loved to do really complex docking solutions, it was IBM! Of course, all the "big boys" had these elaborate ones in those days. I believe that the reason for the 4 battery charge circuit is that it can take a battery in all 4 bays when its docked.
Absolutely agreed: the modern MS Word interface gets my goat. I'm a bit of a hippie when it comes to software so I'm going all out free and open-source; I use Linux for just about everything and LibreOffice. Aside from political reasons, I also much prefer the UI on LibreOffice to MS Office '10 because it's so much clearer. Also with regard to the processor on the LTE5000, I heard you mention an LTE5380. I have one of those very laptops (Belgium imported and currently running Windows 3.1, because Windows 98 died and I didn't have any other floppies). I did a relatively basic tour of it on my channel, but I'd heard later about the Armada series, so interesting to see how it compared. Good video!
I have a Compaq Deskpro EN from 1999 which has never broken on me, or him, and he used it as a work PC for around 10 years, and again, never broke on him.
I've been interested in laptops of this age for a long time and have been wanting to find something between the Pentium to late Pentium II or early Pentium III for a while. It's a shame that people on eBay seem to think that they're worth a small fortune and I couldn't trust shipping companies with something as fragile as that anyways. Also, I haven't seen anything of the sort in the local classifieds for a very long time. I almost got my hands on a 1980s era Compaq laptop (don't remember the model) for $20CAD but someone had already beaten me to it. That must've been at least a year and a half ago and I'm still disappointed that I missed it. In any case, the oldest laptop I've got is either my Dell Latitude C600 (which is in near perfect shape) or my IBM ThinkPad i Series laptop. I haven't cared to verify which one is actually older.
I have been into computers since 1986. This laptop was my first one. I could change the floppy for cd-rom. Very expensive laptop for me back yes in around 2000s.
I actually have a LTE 5300, nice little machine. I got it for free with a full size dock. Oddly enough the dock has a expansion port on the back for possibly a port replicator, but this thing already has a full set of ports on the back, along with 2 multibays one on each side, 2 additional PC card slots, and has some front mounted LEDs and power button. It also takes a standard AC cord, which is handy.
"MSN versions 8 and 9 were released in 2002 and 2004 respectively." Source: Wikipedia - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Dial-up#MSN_8_and_9 that has to be the longest surviving Internet Explorer cache I've ever seen
The Armada line was amazingly well built back in the day. I have a 4160T @ 100Mhz, 64mb Ram, docking/media station, optional track & ball mouse, 2 batteries & it all still works! Even runs Win2K. I also have a 7770DMT which is almost as good... The ONE thing about this laptop (besides a dim/pinkish display) is the sudden & unpredictable catastrophic failure of the lid hinges... I closed the lid one evening and the next day upon opening it, both hinges froze up and destroyed the display frame & bezel. That was quite a morning.... xD
+Nexarianz The pink display is indicative of backlight failure. It could run like that for a very long time. The backlights aren't much fun to change. Compaq has had something of a history with faulty hinges and it doesn't help that the plastic turns brittle over time. The Contura 386 and 486 series laptops are famous for having the hinges lock up or pull out of the brittle plastic. I was very careful with my own Contura 4/25 and even it has done the same.
You should do some podcast style videos. Just kind of talking about various old stories / old technology / etc, and not a particular topic. I think it'd be pretty interesting.
huh, how does synthesis work? i have a sb audigy 2 and it is selected as the MIDI in windows xp but it doesn't sound different, is there something i'm not doing?
The corporate Fujitsu and the Panasonic are most well sought for used durable business machines. The good thing are the loaded softwares that came with it!!!
... almost a complete laptop. Sold after 8 months of use. What replaced it was an Armada 3500, Pentium 2 366 with 196mb ram and it was even smaller. I even had a dock for it, it was a lot smaller though, portable in fact. What I really wanted though was an Armada m300, those things were faster and cooler than the first netbooks, and were around 7 or 8 years prior to their introduction. /memories
Hi Will. I used to have one of this series of laptops, a good friend of the family had it from his business and gave me it to look at many years ago, I reckon 10 or so, when I was srill getting into computers and gaining knowledge and experience with them. I can't remember what exact model it was, it might've been a 770, but it was an Armada series same case, power supply, keyboard and everything, I think mine was a Pentium 166 or something running windows 98 or 2000 again can't remember since I gave it back to him once I discovered nothing was wrong with it like he thought there was. I will say these machines just felt like they had something to them, just solid, yes rather chunky and heavy by today's standards, but I really wish laptops would go back to this sorta design, maybe not as thick but with abit more solidity and durability to them, although obviously that's very unlikely to happen soon. Loved those screen sliders, and that great clicky keyboard.
do you hav any idea about what i can do with an old stationary windows 98 computer whit intel pentium 2 and a almost empty 20 gigabyte harddrive.(i do not remember how much Ram it has, as it is quite a long time since it has been powered on.)?
that slot that's a bit smaller than a PCMCIA/cardbus slot is a laptop RAM upgrade slot (that predates PC-66, PC-100, etc laptop memory modules.) I have a Toshiba Satellite T1960CT and a Panasonic CF-580C with those slots. I've seen 4, 6, 8, 12 and 16MB RAM cards. currently have a 16MB card in my Toshiba. And I'm also a lover of TrackPoint (or nipple) mice. One of the many reasons I always use ThinkPads.
Nice laptop :D That eject function would keep me amused for a while xD, I think XP will run on that laptop fine, i have an old toshiba with 64mb ram and i run xp on it :P
I have two LTE 5100 laptops. One was broken down for parts and thank god I did that instead of binning it because my working LTE 5100 went up in smoke after the power board failed while the machine was live. Lots of smoke... And a Motherboard, chipset and power board replacement from the parts system.
I have a Compaq LTE Elite 4/40CX laptop with an Intel 80486DX2 CPU at 40 MHz.(currently the oldest computer I have) I was surprised that the clock battery kind of works (prone to slipping back). However, the Floppy Disk drive does not work, and the screen has 2 dead pixels. Thankfully, HP still has the drivers for it. So when I get the guts to replace the Floppy Disk drive and install a different OS, I can still reinstall the drivers.
It looks like there still are some computers that use the same power cord as that Compaq Armada. For various reasons I'm borrowing a raltive's ASUS laptop with Windows 7, its AC Adaptor appears to use the same strange 3 prong power plug to connect the AC Adaptor to mains electricity, that strange figure 8 plug with 3 prongs instead of 2. So it may still be possible to replace these power cords.
My dad's Toshiba Tecra 530cdt's docking station does the same thing, except it never blue screened when I ejected it, or redocked it while it was powered on. (I would test this, but I don't have a battery that holds a charge in it anymore.)
I can't beleive the battery is working. I agree with the remarks on Microsoft Word, I remember when we switched to the newest version of Word at school from 2003. It was hell, nobody knew how to do anything! I prefer the older ones too. I am easily amused, so I find that docking station cool, and entertaining. Although it seems like it would push the laptop off of it and off the table if it was at a slight angle in any way. Id rather watch a 30 minute video like this, than a TV show!
Still got my LTE5400. Thing is a tank and still works, only failure was the HD which was replaced. Came with a 6x CDROM, P150 and I upped it to the max 80MB RAM. Also have the docking station for it, never found the MPEG video attachment though. Windows 98 was the best OS for it by far. Win2k will run on it with 80MB, but you have to strip it down a bit for it to be "fast". NT4 was fine if you had the 3rd party APM and PCCard PnP drivers. OS/2 4.51 ran somewhat well on it too believe it or not.
@uxwbill i guess but it also breaks stuff if you don't have the factory installed os too. about every infection can be cleaned without a install too. i had trouble before. bleeping computer helped me fix it.
hey Bill, as soon as you mentioned the midi plug, the video abruptly ended. Is there a part 2 for this? I would like to know about the implementation and capabilities of the midi on this unit.
I wish I could find stuff like that. only thing I ever find at yard sales are emacines from around 2003 or so (which I currently have 4 of that are identical internally) and lawn mowers that have bad bags or rusted through decks or broken rope starters
@uxwbill One thing that really bugs me about the HD camcorders on the market today is that most of them don't have a built-in LED video light, which is essential for the kind of videos I do. And the prices are still outrageous. My Canon FS200 has external stereo microphone and headphone jacks, and Canon will gladly sell you a refurbished one for $150. But Sony's least expensive HD camcorder with those features sells for $800!!! I could buy a used car for that much!
@uxwbill well it would help if i had stuff backed up i guess. i also don't like to have to set stuff back up. there are a lot of settings and i forget what i did with some of them. i have been moving my firefox and mirc from comptuer to comptuer since 2006... i was useing the P2 400 mhz then with win98. i been moving firefox profile and mirc folder. don't like change really. tok me months to even move stuff to the dell from the old one when i got it free from a friend.
Hey man, awesome video, - it was nice to learn about older tech. Your dad had an awesome find! Just a question maybe someone may have an answer to: why exactly do we use external power bricks on modern portable workstations? Is it a safety issue or does it take up more space? I understand it may not be conventional on typical netbooks and laptops, but as a highschool student doing 3D work on a portable workstation, it seems logical to have a built in power supply since most modern portable workstations are bulky as it is.
Yea, that seems logical. I forgot about heat.. My external power brick can get pretty warm. That excess heat + the heat of cpu+gpu from the pc would be pretty uncomfortable for anyone.. and neither would I enjoy extremely loud fans while im working.. Great point mate. Keep up the awesome videos!
@uxwbill ok, it looks like it worked, thanks for your help. I found out why windows 98 is considered the most recent unstable system. ( only managed to keep it running for two days.) so for now, im using windows xp.
@uxwbill can you help? i have a 2002 dell latitude, and im trying to install a operating system, when i try windows 98, it gives a abrupt err about a MS-DOS extender, when i try windows xp the installation fails with a err code 6, what is going on and how do i fix this?
Hi uxwbill, i just got the laptop today from Ebay. I want to access the BIOS for sound setup, but whenever i turn on the laptop and press F10. It always do nothing, and boot straight to WIndows 98. What can i do to fix this issue?
Find yourself a program that reports keyboard scan codes or presents a map of the keyboard that indicates which keys are pressed. See if F10 registers.
uxwbill Thank you very much, man. I now can boot to the BIOS. By the way, the laptop does not have any sound come from it. My Sound driver is the same one like you - ES1878. I turn on all the volume up, even the volume bars in Properties setting. It still does not work, same thing when i plugged my headphone to the headphone port on the laptop.
Hey Bill, I just acquired a Compaq Armada 7770, but I can't get into the Bios setup. It's kinda like it's in a Fast Boot setup where it doesn't prompt to press "Fx" for setup. Do you know what the sequence is to get into setup on this Laptop? I'd really appreciate any help you could give me. Thanks for your time!!!
Brady Thomas, I did. Geez!! That's why I'm asking Bill. I was asking Bill in case he knew about some setup partition that needs to be on the hard drive.
LOL, I'm picturing clicking Eject PC and watching the laptop fly across the room!
+Steve W If It wouldn't break the laptop, that is *totally* what ought to happen.
If Panasonic Toughbooks have a docking station, maybe that is what it does?
Haha, maybe!
uxwbill If anyone could make it happen it be you Uxwbill lol
My 7370 armada still gets daily use as an interface, for a cnc mill. Plus I can play DOS games like doom and nuke 3d while the machine runs. I wish they made laptops that reliable today.
That is definitely one sweet laptop! And wow, that docking station is amazing! What a score!
>the laptop of doom
Gimme back my laptop, bruh!
You could entertain us even longer by presenting unedited, real-time installation of Windows XP on this laptop! :-)
That docking unit alone is as huge as a whole laptop.
+johneygd It's even bigger than that!
you should restore the color of the laptop
I have an Armada 7770DMT right in front of me. Mine is fitted with a CDROM and it is fitted where yours has the floppy drive.
Love your videos on old computers/laptops. Very informational! The way you speak reminds me of Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad! It's totally epic
!
I remember when all that stuff started coming out, it's still cool.
You should look at the LTE 5000 docking station. That had an electronic micro switch that powered the laptop out of the docking station, on to the floor! I had one (the fancy TFT, 120Mhz version), and never dropped it, but I did have to catch it! Don't know about your model, but the LTE I had would use all PCMCIA (Card Bus) simultaneously. The expansion slots were both ISA. Great vid BTW, I love this stuff.
I have Compaq Armada 1750 that has the power supply centered in the back. That power supply made the thing a chunky beast.
The weird port on the right (above the two PC Card slots) is for an international modem / US cell phone adapter, allowing the use of telephone lines other than those in North America. On European units with a modem it's the **only** modem connector present - if you lose the adapter, you're out of luck.
I'm very interested in old Compaq laptops, including IBM, Toshiba, Lenovo, ThinkPads and Dell. I found them interesting because of their history, design and how we use it.
I had a 7792 for 8 months as my main laptop, I had several spare parts computers, all the screens I have are 1024x768, in both 12 and 13 inch measures. I used a larger one. At the time(2004) a new battery was purchased, and soon after I found a working old one. You can slide out the CD drive and fit 2 in it for a whopping 4.5 hours of battery life. I installed a 40gb hard drive, and had a pcmcia G wireless adapter, and for all usb purposes, a pcmcia usb controller. I still have parts, and ...
This was my first laptop, and damn did i love it!
I had a Compaq Armada that I bought a while back that was quite similar to this. I had it for about a month before I got hold of a power cord to proerly test it. Had some crazy screen issues, that much was for certain.
Good find.
I really enjoyed watching this video! I do like my Compaqs...
I actually own a 1997 Compaq Armada 4120T which is similar to that one and probably from around the same year.
It has two batteries, both of which take a good charge surprisingly! Compaq obviously made (or sourced) good batteries for their Armada series.
I haven't used the Armada though in over a year, so I suppose I'd better dig it out and stick it on charge sometime soon before the batteries go into slow discharge.
seeing that MSN page brought back so many memories!
Very engaging video, I had forgotten Compaq made laptops; laptops were so much more interesting in the 90s!!!
holy moly i dident relise how big the docking station was until you put the laptop on it most that i have seen just lift up the back of the laptop not raise it like 5 inches
this video is very interesting i love learning about cool old things like this :)
Also, have a Dell Latitude D810! I Got it back in May (this year). It's my laptop that I use for uploading videos.
I believe Toshiba was the only other mainstream company who made their own stuff. My Libretto 50CT says "Made In Japan" on the bottom, indicating that Toshiba themselves produced it. Nowadays, there isn't a single laptop that's actually made by the company who's selling it, save for maybe MSI, Gigabyte and Asus.
That is a sick laptop! It must have cost an arm and a leg back when it came out.
I used to run Windows 2000 Pro more than happily with 64Mb RAM. Those old Compaqs were great machines that just went on and on!
Early on, I'd say you could have gotten away with it. A few service packs and some software later, maybe not so much. Even NT4 could find plenty to do with 64MB of installed RAM.
I want one. That one. They really tried to please back then. Nice.
This also reminded me of my old Armada 4120T! What a machine! Battery in a handle/stand, swappable trackpad or trackball. Mine had a trackball, have not seen any others like this. The multibay took a floppy or second battery, it had a port replicator and a base with some nice speakers and a CD-ROM. I miss that thing. The whole 4000 series was like that. Would love to get a top of the line 4220T for nostalgia. It was a pretty tiny machine too.
Great video Bill. Modern Thinkpads can still have a type of docking station like this for your desk (not the Ultrabase that slides underneath) but a real docking station.
Regarding how you cleaned it up, what do you use to brighten up yellowed computer plastic? I saw someone use some cleaner / homemade mix that left yellowed plastic like new again on an old Mac Plus.
Really nice on it's docking station 😀.
Deciphered: About a year ago my computer illiterate mother in-law got one of these. I gave it to her and she then kept calling me wanting me to install Sims 3 on it, and she still thinks I just don't want to do it to this day, no matter how many time I try to explain it to her. Great video.
I had a 7790DMT at one point, and it looked almost identical to this one, but it cooked itself to death because of a Pentium II MMX & NO ACTIVE Ventilation. There was only 1 cooling vent in the entire system.
That docking station is certainly a bag of tricks. :)
Prepare for Starship separation. Move all non essential crew to the saucer section. "docking clams released!" Separation complete! I love that dock! And of course, had to put in the star trek for ya! Awesome machine!
As a fan of Pre-HP Compaq Machines, I very much appreciate this video. I have recently acquired both an LTE 5280 and an Armada 7770DMT and find that both machines are absolutely fantastic. The 7770DMT especially is brilliant at DOS gaming. Did you ever get around to doing anything with your 7770DMT? Also do you still have the LTE 5000 series machine? Thanks for the video (which I know is an older one).
It just occurred to me that "Laptop of Doom" might apply to those Sony Vaios with the exploding batteries. :D
I have the same machine, which I had turned on while watching this video, and the battery went down from 70% to 60%. My 3 year old HP would be dead before I've even seen half of it.
i love old laptops
Great presentation. I like this laptop. I thought it had a Creative Sound Blaster hardware.
I love built in power supplies
Excellent machine.
I have "The Microsoft Sound" off windows 98 set as the login sound for both my Win7 computers, pulled off a crippled laptop. I love it.
That was COOL!
I have a local used laptop store close to me, and as you I know the guy that runs it there very well. I go in and trade old laptops that I get for free for something better!
Speaking of upgrading processor upgrades i recently upgraded my acer 5251 laptop from a amd v120 piece of junk processor to a amd phenom 2 2.3 ghz quad core processor its a amazing little laptop now amazing speeds i have learned alot from ur videos and would greatly appreciate if you could spare some more time to make more videos keep up the good work thank you uxwbill
Very enjoyable video for me! I'm a bit of a "dock enthusiast" if there is such a thing. Which is mostly due to working largely with and on ThinkPads for a long time. If there was ever a company that loved to do really complex docking solutions, it was IBM! Of course, all the "big boys" had these elaborate ones in those days.
I believe that the reason for the 4 battery charge circuit is that it can take a battery in all 4 bays when its docked.
Absolutely agreed: the modern MS Word interface gets my goat. I'm a bit of a hippie when it comes to software so I'm going all out free and open-source; I use Linux for just about everything and LibreOffice. Aside from political reasons, I also much prefer the UI on LibreOffice to MS Office '10 because it's so much clearer.
Also with regard to the processor on the LTE5000, I heard you mention an LTE5380. I have one of those very laptops (Belgium imported and currently running Windows 3.1, because Windows 98 died and I didn't have any other floppies). I did a relatively basic tour of it on my channel, but I'd heard later about the Armada series, so interesting to see how it compared. Good video!
Now that's wild!
I have a Compaq Deskpro EN from 1999 which has never broken on me, or him, and he used it as a work PC for around 10 years, and again, never broke on him.
I've been interested in laptops of this age for a long time and have been wanting to find something between the Pentium to late Pentium II or early Pentium III for a while. It's a shame that people on eBay seem to think that they're worth a small fortune and I couldn't trust shipping companies with something as fragile as that anyways. Also, I haven't seen anything of the sort in the local classifieds for a very long time. I almost got my hands on a 1980s era Compaq laptop (don't remember the model) for $20CAD but someone had already beaten me to it. That must've been at least a year and a half ago and I'm still disappointed that I missed it. In any case, the oldest laptop I've got is either my Dell Latitude C600 (which is in near perfect shape) or my IBM ThinkPad i Series laptop. I haven't cared to verify which one is actually older.
I have been into computers since 1986. This laptop was my first one. I could change the floppy for cd-rom. Very expensive laptop for me back yes in around 2000s.
I wish status LCD's still came with laptops. I would love to have one on mine haha
I actually have a LTE 5300, nice little machine. I got it for free with a full size dock. Oddly enough the dock has a expansion port on the back for possibly a port replicator, but this thing already has a full set of ports on the back, along with 2 multibays one on each side, 2 additional PC card slots, and has some front mounted LEDs and power button. It also takes a standard AC cord, which is handy.
"MSN versions 8 and 9 were released in 2002 and 2004 respectively." Source: Wikipedia - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Dial-up#MSN_8_and_9
that has to be the longest surviving Internet Explorer cache I've ever seen
The Armada line was amazingly well built back in the day. I have a 4160T @ 100Mhz, 64mb Ram, docking/media station, optional track & ball mouse, 2 batteries & it all still works! Even runs Win2K.
I also have a 7770DMT which is almost as good... The ONE thing about this laptop (besides a dim/pinkish display) is the sudden & unpredictable catastrophic failure of the lid hinges... I closed the lid one evening and the next day upon opening it, both hinges froze up and destroyed the display frame & bezel. That was quite a morning.... xD
+Nexarianz The pink display is indicative of backlight failure. It could run like that for a very long time. The backlights aren't much fun to change. Compaq has had something of a history with faulty hinges and it doesn't help that the plastic turns brittle over time. The Contura 386 and 486 series laptops are famous for having the hinges lock up or pull out of the brittle plastic. I was very careful with my own Contura 4/25 and even it has done the same.
You should do some podcast style videos. Just kind of talking about various old stories / old technology / etc, and not a particular topic. I think it'd be pretty interesting.
huh, how does synthesis work? i have a sb audigy 2 and it is selected as the MIDI in windows xp but it doesn't sound different, is there something i'm not doing?
So much fun :)
The corporate Fujitsu and the Panasonic are most well sought for used durable business machines. The good thing are the loaded softwares that came with it!!!
Computers with Docking Stations...
That is very cool.
my laptop has a dock
leongamingprogect I might buy one that connects via USB.
The ESS AudioDrive 1878 can use several different wavetables, including a Roland MT32/LAPC-1
... almost a complete laptop. Sold after 8 months of use.
What replaced it was an Armada 3500, Pentium 2 366 with 196mb ram and it was even smaller. I even had a dock for it, it was a lot smaller though, portable in fact. What I really wanted though was an Armada m300, those things were faster and cooler than the first netbooks, and were around 7 or 8 years prior to their introduction. /memories
Hi Will.
I used to have one of this series of laptops, a good friend of the family had it from his business and gave me it to look at many years ago, I reckon 10 or so, when I was srill getting into computers and gaining knowledge and experience with them.
I can't remember what exact model it was, it might've been a 770, but it was an Armada series same case, power supply, keyboard and everything, I think mine was a Pentium 166 or something running windows 98 or 2000 again can't remember since I gave it back to him once I discovered nothing was wrong with it like he thought there was.
I will say these machines just felt like they had something to them, just solid, yes rather chunky and heavy by today's standards, but I really wish laptops would go back to this sorta design, maybe not as thick but with abit more solidity and durability to them, although obviously that's very unlikely to happen soon. Loved those screen sliders, and that great clicky keyboard.
LOL the ejects and the crash
Not bad and a free laptop to and at least its not getting smashed up to.
Anyone remember the model numbers of the BLACK version of this laptop? (Later model, had a USB port, if I remember right.) 7800 series?
Opti Inc. was dissolved in September 2001, but they still have an active website, with a copyright date of 2003 for some reason.
I want one of these old laptops. i don't even know what I would do with, I just know I want one.
it looks like an old Toshiba laptop
well back in the day thats all we had.
that slot above the cardbus slots was for a cellular modem
do you hav any idea about what i can do with an old stationary windows 98 computer whit intel pentium 2 and a almost empty 20 gigabyte harddrive.(i do not remember how much Ram it has, as it is quite a long time since it has been powered on.)?
that slot that's a bit smaller than a PCMCIA/cardbus slot is a laptop RAM upgrade slot (that predates PC-66, PC-100, etc laptop memory modules.) I have a Toshiba Satellite T1960CT and a Panasonic CF-580C with those slots. I've seen 4, 6, 8, 12 and 16MB RAM cards. currently have a 16MB card in my Toshiba.
And I'm also a lover of TrackPoint (or nipple) mice. One of the many reasons I always use ThinkPads.
Oh, the plug with the radiating icon /should/ be microphone. I also think that the slot above the cardbus is a CF slot, but I'm not sure.
Nice laptop :D That eject function would keep me amused for a while xD, I think XP will run on that laptop fine, i have an old toshiba with 64mb ram and i run xp on it :P
I have two LTE 5100 laptops. One was broken down for parts and thank god I did that instead of binning it because my working LTE 5100 went up in smoke after the power board failed while the machine was live. Lots of smoke... And a Motherboard, chipset and power board replacement from the parts system.
Oh my
I have a Compaq LTE Elite 4/40CX laptop with an Intel 80486DX2 CPU at 40 MHz.(currently the oldest computer I have) I was surprised that the clock battery kind of works (prone to slipping back). However, the Floppy Disk drive does not work, and the screen has 2 dead pixels. Thankfully, HP still has the drivers for it. So when I get the guts to replace the Floppy Disk drive and install a different OS, I can still reinstall the drivers.
It looks like there still are some computers that use the same power cord as that Compaq Armada. For various reasons I'm borrowing a raltive's ASUS laptop with Windows 7, its AC Adaptor appears to use the same strange 3 prong power plug to connect the AC Adaptor to mains electricity, that strange figure 8 plug with 3 prongs instead of 2. So it may still be possible to replace these power cords.
My dad's Toshiba Tecra 530cdt's docking station does the same thing, except it never blue screened when I ejected it, or redocked it while it was powered on. (I would test this, but I don't have a battery that holds a charge in it anymore.)
I can't beleive the battery is working. I agree with the remarks on Microsoft Word, I remember when we switched to the newest version of Word at school from 2003. It was hell, nobody knew how to do anything! I prefer the older ones too.
I am easily amused, so I find that docking station cool, and entertaining. Although it seems like it would push the laptop off of it and off the table if it was at a slight angle in any way.
Id rather watch a 30 minute video like this, than a TV show!
i cannot get to bios, how do i reset the BIOS? i press F10 booting and nothing happens, it only go straight to windows, HELP? please
the power port is called a CLOVER leaf plug
Still got my LTE5400. Thing is a tank and still works, only failure was the HD which was replaced. Came with a 6x CDROM, P150 and I upped it to the max 80MB RAM. Also have the docking station for it, never found the MPEG video attachment though. Windows 98 was the best OS for it by far. Win2k will run on it with 80MB, but you have to strip it down a bit for it to be "fast". NT4 was fine if you had the 3rd party APM and PCCard PnP drivers. OS/2 4.51 ran somewhat well on it too believe it or not.
@uxwbill i guess but it also breaks stuff if you don't have the factory installed os too. about every infection can be cleaned without a install too. i had trouble before. bleeping computer helped me fix it.
hey Bill, as soon as you mentioned the midi plug, the video abruptly ended. Is there a part 2 for this? I would like to know about the implementation and capabilities of the midi on this unit.
I wish I could find stuff like that. only thing I ever find at yard sales are emacines from around 2003 or so (which I currently have 4 of that are identical internally) and lawn mowers that have bad bags or rusted through decks or broken rope starters
@uxwbill One thing that really bugs me about the HD camcorders on the market today is that most of them don't have a built-in LED video light, which is essential for the kind of videos I do. And the prices are still outrageous. My Canon FS200 has external stereo microphone and headphone jacks, and Canon will gladly sell you a refurbished one for $150. But Sony's least expensive HD camcorder with those features sells for $800!!! I could buy a used car for that much!
my heart is in H.P and dell what I am looking for is the monitor stand for the d series Latitude docking port
I have a 7790dmt armanda and can not find the bios key
@uxwbill well it would help if i had stuff backed up i guess. i also don't like to have to set stuff back up. there are a lot of settings and i forget what i did with some of them. i have been moving my firefox and mirc from comptuer to comptuer since 2006... i was useing the P2 400 mhz then with win98. i been moving firefox profile and mirc folder. don't like change really. tok me months to even move stuff to the dell from the old one when i got it free from a friend.
Hey man, awesome video, - it was nice to learn about older tech. Your dad had an awesome find!
Just a question maybe someone may have an answer to: why exactly do we use external power bricks on modern portable workstations? Is it a safety issue or does it take up more space? I understand it may not be conventional on typical netbooks and laptops, but as a highschool student doing 3D work on a portable workstation, it seems logical to have a built in power supply since most modern portable workstations are bulky as it is.
Yea, that seems logical. I forgot about heat.. My external power brick can get pretty warm. That excess heat + the heat of cpu+gpu from the pc would be pretty uncomfortable for anyone.. and neither would I enjoy extremely loud fans while im working.. Great point mate.
Keep up the awesome videos!
@uxwbill ok, it looks like it worked, thanks for your help. I found out why windows 98 is considered the most recent unstable system. ( only managed to keep it running for two days.) so for now, im using windows xp.
@uxwbill can you help? i have a 2002 dell latitude, and im trying to install a operating system, when i try
windows 98, it gives a abrupt err about a MS-DOS extender, when i try windows xp the installation fails with a
err code 6, what is going on and how do i fix this?
this is most likely the beginning of the life of this Compaq Armada 7770DMT Laptop :) QC
Jugging buy the doom wallpaper. The laptop was still in use in 2005.
@joeyf504327 the games I play support windows 7 fully, but thats cuz almost all games I play are from 2007 and later. mostly FPS.
I have a Compaq Portable III, old lunch box style portable machines.
Hi uxwbill, i just got the laptop today from Ebay. I want to access the BIOS for sound setup, but whenever i turn on the laptop and press F10. It always do nothing, and boot straight to WIndows 98. What can i do to fix this issue?
Find yourself a program that reports keyboard scan codes or presents a map of the keyboard that indicates which keys are pressed. See if F10 registers.
uxwbill Thank you very much, man. I now can boot to the BIOS. By the way, the laptop does not have any sound come from it. My Sound driver is the same one like you - ES1878. I turn on all the volume up, even the volume bars in Properties setting. It still does not work, same thing when i plugged my headphone to the headphone port on the laptop.
Whatever became of this machine and docking station?
Hey Bill, I just acquired a Compaq Armada 7770, but I can't get into the Bios setup. It's kinda like it's in a Fast Boot setup where it doesn't prompt to press "Fx" for setup. Do you know what the sequence is to get into setup on this Laptop? I'd really appreciate any help you could give me. Thanks for your time!!!
Brady Thomas, I did. Geez!! That's why I'm asking Bill. I was asking Bill in case he knew about some setup partition that needs to be on the hard drive.
msn 8 was launched approximately October 24, 2002.