The $11k PS2 Laptop | Nostalgia Nerd
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- Опубліковано 13 січ 2025
- Head to www.squarespac... to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code NOSTALGIANERD.... IBM are famous for many computers, primarily the IBM PC. But the PS/2 line is interesting one. Mainly because it tried to do so much, but perhaps accomplished so little. It's for this reason that the IBM PS/2 Laptop is less well known than the more successful ThinkPad. But it contributed more to the ThinkPad thank you might think.
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Watched about 11 minutes before I realised this is not Playstation 2 related :)
3 minutes before I checked the comments and realized
Thanks for saving me 11 minutes!!!
SAME DUDE. Still a good watch.
Yeah, the title should probably be "PS/2".
aww
"Nicely contained flaps", might try that line on the missus.
lol
Flappy Bird?
I love the internet.
What you can say about your laptop and not your wife.
“Hmmm. These flaps sure are flimsy.”
Since you omitted the necessary forward slash in PS/2, I assumed PlayStation 2 laptop, and figured the laser in the optical drive would most likely be unreliable 😂
Yeah not gonna lie, I thought the same thing.
@@The_Keeper same
Me too. Never seen anyone mentioning IBM PS/2 line using just PS2, especially without IBM upfront.
same, it's almost like he did it purposely.
Un subbed
My immediate reaction upon reading the title was , oh my lord, a hidden Playstation 2 laptop? Little did I know I would be disappointed, still, great video.
I welcome both your disappointment and your praise.
@@Nostalgianerd The video was great enough for the praise, but my mind is still saddened, maybe one day.
Same. it only took a few moments of the video until I realised.
I unsubbed because of this no more clickbait these retro youtubers are getting out of control.
@@belstar1128 It was your error that brought you disappointment, not his. It really doesn't take much intelligence to work out what he was reviewing, especially as Sony didn't do a PlayStation 2 laptop. 🙄
I loved the vintage John Cleese, and that keyboard sounds magical.
Ok, I've been dabbling with consoles too long, legit thought this would be about a PlayStation 2 Laptop. Took three minutes till I realized I was going to be sorely off the mark.
Same lmao
Yeah, I thought that. LOL.
I did the same, you're definitely not alone lol
Me too 😂
LOL me too - there is safety in numbers
I bet LGR wants to type on that keyboard
I can hear the satisfied noise he'd make in my head.
I bet LGR wants to smell those keys.
lgr would die for it
@@masterkitty a fellow protogen, I see your a man of culture as well
@@ibishupessima_ progen :)
I see what you did there with the title. And I enjoy it a lot. It's been an absolute pain to filter out all those PS2 results when googling for PS/2 stuff. Oh sweet revenge… 😈
I usually prefix IBM when I google in order to filter out the Sony results, as it doesn’t always honor the forward slash properly.
Intentional clickbait much. :P
I came here to learn about a Playstation peripheral, but stuck around because I'd always been curious about PS/2
@@DavidWonn escape the forward slash with a backslash so the search engine interprets it as the character-literal
@@KinreeveNaku Sometimes encasing it in double quotes also works, but in either event, prefixing IBM or appending -Sony helps as well.
Well done my friend. My dad had a Compaq 386 with that same style keyboard and I would write highschool term papers on it through 2002, when I graduated. Something about that responsiveness yet quietness was "highly satisfying." I am not a fan of the loud ibm mechanical joints that most aficionados love. But this one was on point.
I started work at IBM in 1988, in the PC workshop (aka servicepoint) and went on to become the PC/server specialist for the Midlands, probably because I worked in the building that included the labs and software centres, so I got to see lots of products before production, like the luggable, thinkpads (and pre-thinkpad laptops) and experiments in VR and music peripherals. When I started we still had contracts to repair IBM selectric and golf ball typewriters, which is where I started (they lasted until roughly 1990) but most of our work was with the PC, AT, XT, before the PS/2 took off in the early 90’s.
I remember the luggable P70/75 and L40 well, because they were well made and relatively easy to work on, and I remember the L40 recall, even though we never really had problems that I remember, I think it was to do with the power brick.
When the thinkpad came along it was a massive pain in the ***** for us, they were difficult to take apart and we had loads of them, mainly due to cracked screens, keyboards and cases, a new phenomenon! The worse though was the introduction of the 701c with butterfly keyboard, the first one we had for repair, right at its inception, brand new and was owned by Roger Cook of the Cook Report at the height of his fame, and we couldn’t get parts quickly, that was an interesting conversation! 😊
Great video. This is the sort of stuff you used to do I feel that made your videos stand out to me. More like this please?
Insert obligatory “PlayStation 2 laptop” comment here. (pls fix title father)
That said, PS/2 will always be superior to every other option for keyboard input. 100% of the time.
Danny voice calls to me and makes me want to purchase a portable computation device
Love the little LCD info bar thing! What a great little machine.
Another thing that made the IBM ThinkPad keyboards so successful (especially during the later years) was that it was *_ENTIRELY CONTROLLED_* by hardware and interrupts versus laptops that came on the scene opting to drive more of that in software (similar to WinModems).
My first experience with Kings Quest V was on my cousins PS/2, so I appreciate this. At the same time the lack of slash in the video's title feels a bit clickbaitish, since this has nothing to do with the Playstation 2.
It might have been a misleading title but it did did have surprise John Cleese content, so I think we can call it even :)
Cheers from Canada
My first experience with a PS2 is when I was playing sonic classic collection on it, but I am talking about playstation 2!
showed up for a Playstation 2 video. stayed for a PS/2 history lesson.
Interestingly, IBM made some stand alone versions of this laptop's keyboard: The IBM M4 and M4-1. They were also produced under the Lexmark brand for a time. The main difference between them is that the M4-1 has the iconic Thinkpad red nub in the middle while the M4 does not. I own both this laptop and an M4 and can confirm they are the exact same keyboard, buckling rubber domes and all.
It's great to have this laptop's fantastic keyboard available on my modern PC. Makes writing reports a breeze.
Nostalgia Nerd, honestly, your content has been my addiction, I love your voice.
I was given one of these for work in the very early 90s. They were very good machines and the keyboard was excellent.
As a Thinkpad collector, I've been after one of these bad boys for years, but I've yet to find one in my price range, so I'm honestly jelly here. Nonetheless awesome video. 👍👍
During one of my college computer classes we learned about PS/2 ports and how it was unrelated to the Sony PS2.
Same for me 10 years back when I took Computer Engineering course.
ThinkPad keyboards were by far the best on the market for the longest time. Even regular IBM machines... I remember my IBM Aptiva 2140-L5H I got in 1994 had a keyboard that I was in love with and used well into the late-90's/early-2000's.
I thought it was a legit ps2 laptop, like the gba laptop and Xbox 360laptop lmak
Lmao
Totally not done on purpose. I wouldn't do that.
It is a legit PS/2…not sure the confusion…
You don't have the official keyboard that plugs into the PS2 controller slot? How did you even play FFXI?
@@ltrain_0311 I know right. Not ckickbaity at all
I scored the keyboard of this particular laptop for 25 pounds some years ago. I initially just wanted to test it and feel how it really was without having the intention of it ever being functional with a modern pc. I own two model M keyboards and I recently realized that I might be able to connect the membrane's connector to the model M board. I don't know if the matrix will partially correspond to that of the model m, but who knows. In view of how astonishingly good this keyboard is I might as well dedicate some good hours of research and tinkering and build my own controller and, later, a case.
What do you people think? Is it a good idea?
It's hard not to love the ThinkPad keyboards. I keep a W500 around (manufactured by Lenovo, but the last actually designed by IBM) just for when I need to spend long sessions typing, and want to do it comfortably and portably.
I was so confused at the title and thought you actually meant a PS2 built into the laptop 😂
technically, it's a PS/2, not a PS2
If you're looking for laptop PS2 action, that's more Ben Heck's department.
@@TheTurnipKing But then, it it would have been written "PlayStation 2", not PS2... so the apparent confusion is hardly warranted. Expecting a product that they know never existed, rather than a retro IBM laptop with a well known moniker also shared by the IBM keyboard and mouse standard, is just a bit silly.
@@another3997 what makes you so sure there wasn't a Playstation 2 laptop?
They did make quite a number of offbeat playstation variants, like the PSX. or indeed, the Bravia that had a built in PS2.
There are numerous other variants of other consoles, like the SNES built for hotel rentals, or the Saturn variant for airlines that certainly aren't common knowledge.
Is it really so unbelievable?
I'm typing this on an old Thinkpad that's like, 18 years old!! All I have upgraded was the HDD to a SSD, installed Zorin OS 32bit lite for old pc's, and this thing beats any of my new laptops in starting up, shutting off etc. Literally boots up from a cold start, to being able to surf, in under 10 seconds!! It also runs UA-cam videos perfectly as well. Every time I use it, I'm amazed that it is really such an old computer.
The first computer I ever used was a P70. I loved that thing. Also, not gonna lie, my immediate reaction on the one IBM commercial was "Wait a minute, that's Colonel Potter!"
That's not a coincidence; the ad included several ex-MASH actors.
Please let Chyrosran22 review this laptop's keyboard in excruciating detail!
that would be one hell of a crossover lol!
I came to the comments looking for him.
I wonder if the keyswitch design is related to Topre?
Coincidentally, I commented on his channel to please review this laptops keyboard just a day or two before this video came out :-)
Btw.: EEVblog has a video about it too and is very enthusiastic about the keyboard.
@@DoobooDomo It is not - Topre is a capacitive rubber dome switch whereas this is a buckling sleeve over membrane switch. They're both really good though.
Might want to change the title to PS/2 with the slash intact to avoid confusing all the Sony PS2 fans…
Not just PS2 fans, it's confusing to anyone who knows of both the PS2 and PS/2.
Where's this Playstation 2 laptop you dragged me in here for? I think you missed a "/"
One of my friend's dad had one of those in the early 90s. Blew my mind back then (only played DOS games with a 386, hehe)
It's nice to hear about the history of these machines.
well done, that was super Nastalgia Nerd quality:)
PS/2 Laptop? Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time…
At least, IBM is a genius company for helpers and the whole company’s future.
Your jealous keyboard: "I've heard you've been typing on something else."
This is so OldWorldBlues-Lightswitches, I love it!
Thanks for an informative and entertaining video. The keyboard also SOUNDS nice :-)
What is the nice jazz-piece played at the end? (and as a musician, please add credits/track(s) info for the music so those who are interested can go and listen to them and maybe support the composers/players)
That is a genuinely beautiful bit of kit.
The cast of MASH in an IBM advert. 👍
I used to work at the IBM facility in Rochester MN where the made the AS/400 mini computers. The MASH cast (No Hawkeye or BJ I'm pretty sure) were featured in the AS/400 ads too and where there for the big release.
Needless to say that when i read "PS 2 laptop i thought i was missing something 😏
Yeah. The front slash between the "PS" and the "2".
love keyboard sound
And I'm like 11k seems pretty steep for a laptop that plays PS2 games, but than I remembered how someone made an Xbox 369 laptop and it cost a lot of money, but it was like the P2 hookup for my keyboard, I think.
Okay, I wasn't expecting to get a history of laptops and notebook computers. But I am SO glad I got them. As I am using a really nice gaming laptop to play some games while listening to this. SO COOL!!!
I have never in my life seen a computer with a humidity sensor. That is just bonkers to me for some reason.
But thinking about it now, I'm sure LGR can dig up some oddware PC accessory that does just that.
Don't most phones have them
@@DuckRotation I don't know what kind of wacky Chinese knockoff phone you have that has weird and unnecessary stuff, but no.
@@Darxide23 famous Chinese knockoff... Samsung Galaxy Note 5
The screen goes up, not down behind the case like made now on today's note-books. What a relive for the back!
So that's the OG Play Station 2? Crazy! Thanks for sharing 😁
I learn so damn much watching this channel 🥰
That's the same size as my laptop and I bought mine 10 years ago.
Full size keyboards ftw!
Upgraded mine with a 486SLC and maxed the RAM with standard 30-pin SIMMs. There's enough space under the flip-up keyboard to fit a clip-on CPU upgrade. Great video!
I still got mine, lying in the cupboard and working, except the battery. Yes, I totally agree - the keyboard was (and still is) very nice to the touch. The screen, however - for daily use, it worked fine but anything that involved games with rapid scrolling was unplayable.
This video brought back a lot of memories for me, my Dad worked for IBM and had a L40SX as a work laptop. When he got an upgrade it became mine to use and my first pc I had in my bedroom and replaced my Amiga 600. I had it connected to an external monitor, the one I had was a 386sx and had 10Mb ram. I managed to install Windows 95 onto it via a zillion floppy discs even though it didn't meet the win 95 minimum spec, it ran, albeit a bit slow. I eventually replaced it for a beige box with a P120 rated Cyrix CPU and 16Mb ram which I got given for Christmas 1996. I think my Dad then returned the L40SX back to IBM.
It wasn't a "zillion" floppies, but 13 (1.68dmf). There were games with more back then...
I am a fledgling ThinkPad collector, I have a X230 and a T450 and on the hunt for more, I would love one of these for my collection.
7:00 where'd u get that early footage of the top hat gaming man
Midnight Nerd? Might as well stay up a little longer 😉
🕹keep up the good work fella and stay safe🕹
The best laptop keyboard I used is the Texas Instruments TravelMate 4000E (75 MHz 486). Followed by the GridCase 1550sx (although the last time I used it, it wasn't as good as I remembered it, maybe it deteriorated). Then comes the IBM L40SX whose keyboard didn't deteriorate so I now place it at #2.
(also if you own a L40SX go check the capacitors if you haven't. They probably started leaking about a year or two ago. And change the BIOS battery. On mine, it's a PITA because my machine's floppy drive is faulty)
(I can stack my ancient laptop computers up to the ceiling and I got most of them from e-waste)
This was my first laptop back in the early 90s that was given to me along with a Tandy 1400 HD and still got them. Learned to type on these 2 clearing 100 wpm on either one but for some reason the Tandy 1400 had a better keyboard for me but the IBM had a much better monitor and was a lot smaller and lighter. I liked Tandy’s more mechanical feeling keyboard as the sound and feel of the feedback while typing fast was great. But when your smoking the keyboard, the IBM one is a lot quieter. And the only desktop keyboard I have so far that comes close to it is an IBM- model-M from 1990 which I still use today.
That Bios reference disk was a bear to find in the mid 90s when I needed it.
Played a lot of games on this machine along with the Johnny Castaway screen saver. And if it was really cold, the monitors response time was very bad.
And ya, that little red round knobby pointer thingy on later think-pads seemed useless. I couldn’t ever figure that thing out.
451,000 subscribers. My, you have done well sir.
PS/2 Compaq laptop with its exceptionally smart design was a near to perfect choice for a personal computer back at that time.
You got me w the title ngl.
I had a 386 monochrome Amstrad laptop in 1998. It was a bit out of date, but fun.
Laptops where so expensive buying a new model would be unaffordable for the average person and that 386 pc was probably still less than 10 years old at that time so it was better than nothing.
I had one of these in the early 90s as my first computer (dad worked for ibm), agreed on the keyboard.
Man, that P70 looks amazing!
I've never seen one of these working. It's incredible you have one in such a great condition. Was this just kept in a box until you opened it?
I've got a Toshiba(I think) laptop that I think is older than this, and it seems to work fine. The LCD is likewise very slow, and smear any kind of movement.
Like others, I was almost 3 minutes in before the penny dropped. Still, I do quite enjoy your docu-style videos so I'll stick around.
@2:48 is that a part of a set of 50?
That proto-Thinkpad looks very interesting. The blue highlights were strange given we’re all so used to the red ones, but they actually look pretty good. Couldn’t spot the trackpoint in that one though, even if it was black or something. Was it not in the usual position?
IBMs logo, and general theming is blue. I have an i7 (lenovo though) thinkpad, which has both blue & red buttons, and many blue button labels for secondary functions.
@@DoubleMonoLR well, obviously they used blue elsewhere such as the PS/2. The video even said as much itself. But it’s strange to see what otherwise registers as _a ThinkPad_ with the red swapped for blue and the black/slate swapped for white, aka a ThinkPad in PS/2 colours.
Now, if I’d said “it’s strange to see an IBM machine use blue”, a much more universal statement, then maybe I could see why you said what you said.
Lastly, obviously ThinkPads have always had some minor blue highlights, such as with the RGB motif, or the Fn key, and sometimes other colours for the other modifier keys too. But that’s besides the point because they’re not case colours, which is what my OP was about.
And what Lenovo has or hasn’t done with the design, matters if you’re buying one I suppose, but I’ve never felt like they truly Got the designs they’d inherited from IBM, IMO the spirit is dead. They keep a few of the hallmarks but the rest has changed so much - like how a Škoda used to be unique, but now it’s basically just a VW. Of course they’re still usually quite rugged if you buy the business models, but they’ve watered-down the lineup with “prosumer” ThinkPads too, which are much more fragile and even come with bloatware.
13:50 Makes sense it was popular amongst businesses with that price point
3:31 Hey it's Colonel Potter, RADAR, Frank Burns and Mulcahey!
There's actually a video that puts all the MASH IBM commercials together. They are a treasure.
Me: The play station 2 laptop? Never heard of thst before, sure I'll give this warch
Me at the end: wait... Where's the play station laptop!?
Omg that IBM commercial with frank burns radar and col potter from mash lol 😂
I may possibly have been the first student at Northwestern University to take notes on a laptop in class - using one of these while I was the campus IBM sales rep. People found the typing sounds distracting
Ps/2 computer parts and ps2 playststation parts will never stop being confusing huh?
im just here looking at how solid the hardware and build quality of computers back in the day was, everything seems solid and would last a century compared to nowadays where i just bought a laptop thats already breaking apart
I miss these days of tech, as much as they could be a pain. I found the simplicity much nicer than a lot of tech that came later.
I love clicky keyboards :-)
At 3.28 advert had fours actors from Mash, Radar, The priest, Frank ( I think) and Potter.
LOL omg seeing John cleese in that ad was awesome..
Mine has the original hard drive still in and working. I don't know what it was like new but it is very loud now - probably the loudest hard drive I've ever heard and it's a really annoying sound too
Those IBM Thinkpad keyboards are amazing!
I do miss my Toshiba satellite just for its keyboard. I don’t think it was on the level of this one but easily the best laptop keyboard I’ve ever used
i have that same laptop I used it as a kid playing dos games :) I havent used it in over 15 years but i liked it. Had the numpad addon and a clip on microsoft ball mouse. Played many dos games with it on the go :)
I do enjoy the pleasing grunt of old floppy disk drives. It's the only thing I miss about having a physical Amiga rather than an emulator, honestly
That keyboard might be the most satisfying sounding laptop keyboard I've heard.
I’m ready for this video
Nowadays, thankfully, laptops have *basically* caught up to full fat desktop performance.. I have a Core i7 - 10875h, 64gbs of ram, nvidia 2080super, 2x 2tb m.2 nvme ssds, in raid0-- and it's a laptop that will handily beat most peoples "high end" gaming rigs. 4k 43inch hdr1000 screen as main, with 2x 27inch 1440p screens, one on each side. All I have to do is unplug the power, displayport, and thunderbolt3 plugs, and then my workstation fits in a backpack.
I love how far tech has come, just in my lifetime. I'm just a touch older than Peter here, equally as much a retro nerd, and started on a commodore vic20.
well laptops are good enough to do anything a desktop will do, desktops meanwhile are getting completely insane with the speed and power of both desktop processors and dgpu's
Thanks for sharing. 😎👌🏼
I could imagine people buying this today as a word processor machine, great keyboard, readable screen in the daylight, and quietness.
I love my ThinkPad E540's Keyboard. I do most of my writing on my laptop despite my very nice mechanical keyboard.
I was never so lucky back then. I had a Zenith 286 laptop with 287 CoPro running AutoCAD !. Oh the LCD Blurrrrrrr. Still have nightmares about it today.
I got bamboozled !
03:25 Radar O'Reilly sighting
Imagine the battery sizes and hardware that could go into a modern laptop if we went back to those thicknesses.
oh, the cooling in such a laptop would be very nice as well.
Watching this on a 10 year-old T420 ThinkPad, its keyboard a near replica of the one in your review. I need to do a lot of typing and no other laptop is as comfortable.
I never new the PS2 was released before the PS1. Good find sir
I'm definitely not the first comment that says this, but I genuinely assumed the PS2 was referring to a PlayStation 2.
Overlord! Still play that on my modern M1 mac in dosbox!
14:10 at least this PS2 laptop can play games
This keyboard looks just like the ThinkPad ones. Amazing.
But the big question is can it play doom?
Its a 386 with vga, why not? It probably looks awful because the refresh of that type of LCD screen is very SLOW.