Old Toshiba w/ Slack 10.1

[wa4chq]

Greetin's all.  I found this in the attic this afternoon.  I orginally was my folks first laptop, bought used so my mom could play scrabble.  I had an older Satellite...I think it was a 110.  Anyway, at some point, they stopped using it and I ended up splitting the HD and putting Slack 10.1 alongside W98.  I never really used it for anything.  And I doubt I'll be using this for anything now.  My 110's HD bit the dust and instead of keeping it,  I pitched the whole thing.....

[V.T. Eric Layton]

HAHA! Slackware 10.2 (June of 2006) was the very first Slackware I ever installed on a computer. I did have a set of floppies for Slackware 9.1 that a friend's son had given me back in '03, but I never tried to install them on anything.

[Hedon James]

Holy Cow!  I think I had that EXACT same laptop in the late 90s!  Bought new from CDW (Computer Discount Warehouse), it was state of the art for the time, and cost me $5K with the RAM bumped up (2k or 2GB?) and external CD drive that plugged in, as CDs were starting to overtake 3.25" floppies at the time.  That Intellipoint (finger pointer) device was always in my way, and was extremely sensitive when it came to moving the mouse on the screen.   But once I got used to it, I LOVED it!  To this day, I prefer it over a trackpad, and I seek Lenovos for this reason!

 

This is also the machine that was destroyed in a flood because my desk was 1" too short.  Learned a lesson about backups, rebuilt my database of spreadsheets (took me YEARS to accomplish that!) and I'm still paranoid about redundancy in computing.  I'm always looking for 2 ways to do everything, and if I can do both with the same effort, even better!

 

But back to your Toshiba Satellite....state of the art dream machine in the late 90s, baby!  Nice!

[wa4chq]

13 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

HAHA! Slackware 10.2 (June of 2006) was the very first Slackware I ever installed on a computer. I did have a set of floppies for Slackware 9.1 that a friend's son had given me back in '03, but I never tried to install them on anything.

Right on......the 110 didn't have a cd drive so my first run with linux & slackware was with floppies.  I was copying every "Linux on a disk" and trying make sense of it.  Once I got the modem setup, I was able to use Lynx and Links to get online.  Biggest issue with the early slack was getting X working!  After messing with it for hours, days, months.....I kinda, sorta figured it out.

[wa4chq]

13 hours ago, Hedon James said:

Holy Cow!  I think I had that EXACT same laptop in the late 90s!  Bought new from CDW (Computer Discount Warehouse), it was state of the art for the time, and cost me $5K with the RAM bumped up (2k or 2GB?) and external CD drive that plugged in, as CDs were starting to overtake 3.25" floppies at the time.  That Intellipoint (finger pointer) device was always in my way, and was extremely sensitive when it came to moving the mouse on the screen.   But once I got used to it, I LOVED it!  To this day, I prefer it over a trackpad, and I seek Lenovos for this reason!

 

This is also the machine that was destroyed in a flood because my desk was 1" too short.  Learned a lesson about backups, rebuilt my database of spreadsheets (took me YEARS to accomplish that!) and I'm still paranoid about redundancy in computing.  I'm always looking for 2 ways to do everything, and if I can do both with the same effort, even better!

 

But back to your Toshiba Satellite....state of the art dream machine in the late 90s, baby!  Nice!

Wow, I had no clue what they cost new and sorry about the flood...I liked the screen better on the 110 than on the one my folks bought and mine didn't have a CD drive.  I too like the nipple.  I don't recall ever having a mouse plugged in on the 110.  Like you, I went with a Lenovo lappy, the E420.... just for that reason....but now, neither the nipple or trackpad work, so plugged in mouse it is.

[Hedon James]

1 hour ago, wa4chq said:

Wow, I had no clue what they cost new and sorry about the flood...I liked the screen better on the 110 than on the one my folks bought and mine didn't have a CD drive.  I too like the nipple.  I don't recall ever having a mouse plugged in on the 110.  Like you, I went with a Lenovo lappy, the E420.... just for that reason....but now, neither the nipple or trackpad work, so plugged in mouse it is.

 

Back then, Toshiba was top end stuff, far as I was concerned.  And they weren't $5k in their base configuration.  But I chose the nicer screen of the options (color vs. LCD B&W?...can't remember), to bump the RAM as far as it could go, increased the hard drive size to the highest capacity available at CDW, and the BIG ticket upgrade was the CDR...which was an external device that plugged into a port when you wanted CD access.  Consumer CDR was in early stages and that was a $1K+ upgrade, if I remember correct.  I wrestled with that decision, but rationalized that I had "future-proofed" the machine with so many upgrades, and CD media were obviously the way of the future.  I forget the math....700+/- 3.5" floppies equal 1 CD?  It was OBVIOUS were the industry was going, so I talked myself into that also.  Then added a "rush fee" and "expedited shipping" cuz I was so excited to finally get a machine that wasn't expected to crash on a daily basis from the workload I was throwing at it.  (side note:  couldn't have been Win98 right?  Win95 was solid, so Win98 was prolly even better, right?!)

 

My wife at the time came unglued when she saw the final price, even though we discussed this extensively before I pulled the trigger.  So i'm not sure what her shock and anger were about?  (another side note:  just exactly WHO doesn't listen to WHOM?!)  She reasoned we could've bought a new car for $5K, which was true.  But a new car wasn't a business TOOL that I could use to recoup the investment, plus future funds.  Deaf ears, she had.  That's the ONLY reason I can still remember the price tag, all these years later!

 

It's amazing to me that we can buy computers today that are 10x more powerful, but at 1/10th the price.  Maybe a better comparison is my first computer....a Commodore 64 with external tape drive/cassette storage.  Can't remember the exact price or the exact specs, but I'm pretty sure it was a 1st generation x86 processor, with RAM in the "KBs" instead of MBs or GBs.  That money spent in the early 1980s would still buy me a decent laptop in 2023, with no need to index it for inflation, LOL!

[raymac46]

https://history-computer.com/commodore-64-guide/

[raymac46]

I had Vic-20, C64 and Amiga 500 back before I got my first DOS machine in 1991. It was a generic 12 MHz 80286 laptop that eventually ran Windows 3.0. Black and white screen. That one eventually blew up when the battery melted away.

Edited December 7, 2023 by raymac46

[Hedon James]

16 hours ago, raymac46 said:

https://history-computer.com/commodore-64-guide/

ahhh....yes, that was it!  reading the article sparked memories of the 64k RAM, hence the name, Commodore64.  It was a very well-spec'd machine for home use, and a budding 16-yo computer programmer.  I had just taken a computer programming class, for extra credit, and learned BASIC (Beginner All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code!), and was quite proficient according to my teacher.  I worked out a "bubble sort" program all on my own, with no instruction, which my teacher then used to publish test scores on his corkboard, so we could see where we ranked compared to our peers.  (side note:  that would never be allowed today, without anonymizing the results....might "shame" someone.  ironically, I can attest that he fostered a very competitive culture in his classes....folks WANTED to be at the top of his list.)  once a quarter, if you were in his top quintile, above the red line, he would let you leave class 10 minutes early for lunch (his class was right before lunch period).  Sounds silly, but that was the currency of hungry 14-15 year olds in the early to mid 1980s!

 

I had the C64 and the cassette drive, and used the family color TV as a monitor.  All I had to do was flip a switch on the back of the TV, which we had been doing for years with Coleco and Atari devices.  I really wanted the 5.25" floppy drive and monitor, but the C64 and cassette was all I could afford.  The DOS system was ROM, and that cassette drive was the "hard drive", with your programs loaded into that 64K of RAM to run.  Those 16 colored sprites were a BIG DEAL back then.  All the machines I had worked on until that point, were B&W.  Color on a PC was in its earliest stages, and the C64 had that!  I had a little chart that I had made up, referencing the colors and their codes.  I spent HOURS with that thing, conjuring up my own little projects and games; until dad came home and took over the television.  Good times!

 

Upon realizing that BASIC was a "beginner" language that I had mastered sufficiently, I started to look for the "next level" languages and discovered ForTran (Formula Translation) and COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language); which became my first experience with "punch cards" and card readers.  I realized that all programming was the same....the same logical processes for similar tasks (re-usable code?!), but different syntax and nomenclature for different languages.  The last language I learned was PCI-E, I think, in college.  This was circa 1985.  Much as I LOVED programming, I had determined that it was a niche hobby that didn't really have a future as a career....and I drifted away from it.

 

The daughter showed interested in computers and gaming, so I found some Python tutorials and projects, and went through them with her, so she could understand how to "speak the secret language" that code would understand.  She picked it up very quickly and finished on her own.  She took a class in her high school, and was actually showing the teacher things he didn't know!  Python was interesting to me, because I could see just how much programming had changed in the 30 years I was away from it.  The logic sequence is still there as a central tenet; but now everything is a module, or an "object" to be called upon.  Reminded me of nested "if, then, else loops" and "go to" statements.  I don't have that kind of time to delve into things like I did back then, but retirement is on the horizon now; maybe I'll finally pursue that programming career that I whiffed so badly on, back in the 80s?!  LOL!

Edited December 8, 2023 by Hedon James

[raymac46]

I first learned programming in university - started out with FORTRAN. Later on I programmed statistical models in BASIC using teletype - time sharing. When microcomputers came out, my first one was a VIC-20, so I had the cassette drive and later on a floppy drive. Upgraded to C64 after a while. I also used a portable color TV as a monitor.

My daughter's school had a Commodore PET - an early B&W all in one with the same specs as the C64. My job at the time gave me Friday afternoons off so I volunteered to teach BASIC to a Grade 8 class at my daughter's school. We made a massive spaghetti code project for Education Week that give a history quiz to parents. It was in a way object oriented because each member of the class had to contribute some of the code. Fortunately I had a couple of nerds who helped me debug all the errors.

The last real programming language I learned was APL - we had a least cost ingredients program at work written in APL that ran in DOS.

Spreadsheets made my programming skills redundant. I think Python would be my language of choice today. We'll see what the grandkids learn as coding is now part of the math curriculum.

I have a neighbor who worked into his late 70s programming COBOL on hopelessly obsolete mainframes for the government.

 

Edited December 8, 2023 by raymac46

[securitybreach]

Very cool find. Its basically useless for web stuff but you could run some command line tools just fine.

[wa4chq]

55 minutes ago, securitybreach said:

Very cool find. Its basically useless for web stuff but you could run some command line tools just fine.

Yeah, I wasn't planning on using it for anything.  I just wanted to boot it up and have a look.

[crp]

i can't figure out the 2 semicircles in the front.

 

Toshiba used to make terrific laptops. I recall a software demo that was given and all people wanted to know about was the Toshiba machine the presenter used.

 

[wa4chq]

10 hours ago, crp said:

i can't figure out the 2 semicircles in the front.

 

 

 

I think they kinda go hand in hand with the "nipple" pointer.  Your index is "pointing" and your thumb can hit hit either of the "half moons" ... ie: instead of removing the hand to hit "enter", hit the upper moon.  I don't have the machine out and running, so this part is from memory but the half moons are like buttons on the mouse....

[Hedon James]

1 hour ago, wa4chq said:

I think they kinda go hand in hand with the "nipple" pointer.  Your index is "pointing" and your thumb can hit hit either of the "half moons" ... ie: instead of removing the hand to hit "enter", hit the upper moon.  I don't have the machine out and running, so this part is from memory but the half moons are like buttons on the mouse....

you are correct.  the "arc" buttons are akin to left & right click mouse buttons. 

 

those "nipple" pointers were SUPER sensitive, and just bumping the "nub" would shoot your pointer across the screen.  A LOT more movement than a mouse, from way less interaction.  I HATED it at first, and cursed all that money I spent on such a state-of-the-art machine.  Until I started to develop a "feel" for it (only took a few days) and started to LOVE it.  Fingers never had to leave the keyboard, so they were always on the "home row" and typing mistakes almost disappeared.  Not to mention the time-saving of lifting your hands from keyboard to locate mouse, move mouse to desired location, click mouse button, relocate hands to home row of keyboard, then resume.  Doesn't sound like much, but multiply that by several hundred times a day and it added up.

 

even later still, I learned to click those "arc" buttons with my left hand for even more efficiency.  Those "nipple" finger-point devices really need to be used by your dominant hand (right, for me), although they were designed for use by either hand.  By habit, you really want to click buttons with the same hand doing the pointing.  But I soon learned that if I "pointed" the mouse with my right, and clicked the arc buttons with left thumbs, I was even faster.  Yep....I'm a fan of the "intellipoint" mouse!

[wa4chq]

44 minutes ago, Hedon James said:

those "nipple" pointers were SUPER sensitive,

 

 

Cold air effects them too.

[wa4chq]

HJ, your are right about the slightest bump and the pointer was gone.  As I recall, the old Toshiba I had...(not the one that is here)...was better at not loosing the arrow.  I think a lot had to do with the screen.  Whereas with the other Toshiba, the one from up in the attic...that display really sucks.  When you first boot up, the screen looks like a screen with the severe sun glare.  There's a small "wheel" (a potentiometer of some sort) on the side of the screen and you tweak it to get a better display but is sometimes very hard to track the pointer.  I didn't have that problem with my 110.  I think I mentioned my Lenovo e420 has a nipple and touch pad.  They worked up until a few years ago, so now I have to plug a mouse in.  Not always convenient.  I'm tempted to replace the keyboard/keypad.  I've looked at YouTube on that type of repair and it looks pretty straight forward.  Not a pressing issue as I don't really use the Lenovo as much as I did before the house but I would like not having to plug one in.