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What are typical issues for Toshiba T1000LE's?

C

Capt. 2110

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Just bought an untested one on eBay for about $20(which is great compared to the $60 untested alternatives). What are some common failures? I know the hard drive is probably going to be FUBAR, and I've seen the floppy drive sometimes has belt issues, but is there anything else I need to look out for?
 
Ooh that is a great price! I got a T1200 for cheap untested and for me even the hard drive still worked great. :D Might take some effort changing the CMOS settings though, it was a hassle with my T3100 and they had to be changed for it to boot.
 
Some common faults:

- HDD broken
- FDD belt broken, head greasy
- Battery dead
- Capacitors busted
- Contacts corroded
- Power supply fried
- Board damaged due to leaked battery
- Backlight broken or degraded
 
Alright, the usage of this post has now changed. I got the laptop today, and now I'm glad I don't have an AC adapter yet. I looked at the drive to make sure it was actually there, and I found a nasty green slime covering everything. I looked closer at the drive after cleaning it all up, and saw the rubber seal was FUBAR. And so were the platters. Now I need to know what the largest supported drive size is for this laptop. I have a 172 MB drive, but I don't know if it will work. I also followed the "maintenance manual" and lifted the keyboard. What does the capacitor corrosion typically look like? Is it sometimes wet, and does it spread to other parts, or no?
 
Just try the HDD, if it is a 2.5" IDE it should work i think. "Green slime" doesn't sound so great - might be from a leaked battery. If a capacitor looks "exploded" or is wet then it is most probably busted. But sometimes they even look good and are still broken. For such an old machine the safe way is to replace all of them. Might also be a good idea to "wash" the board with mild formic acid and alcohol.

I think the T1000 I had a long time ago needed a "working" battery - afaik you could not even turn it on with a broken or discharged battery when the AC adaptor is plugged in. Not sure if this also applies to the "LE" model, but quite likely.
 
That stinks. Are there any capacitors under the back part of the frame, or is it all that part underneath the keyboard? Also, can I trick the laptop into booting by plugging some specific AC adapter into the battery terminals, to simulate a battery?
 
Can't remember every single capacitor but there sure are loads of them. Main battery was afaik 7.2 Volt and there was also a small RTC battery (alos NiCD). With 7.2V DC you should be able to "simulate" the battery.
 
Cool. Could I use 9Volts, or would that be too much? Also, I found an actual Toshiba adapter that fits, but it's 15V instead of 12V. I assume that won't work. Right?
 
Ok. I've taken the computer apart entirely to check for corrosion(it looks like one of the caps committed suicide), and found only a little, so no problem there, but I checked the floppy belt through a small hole, and it looks bad. How do I disassemble the drive to replace it?
 
Alright, I pulled the drive apart, and removed the goopy mess of a belt. I'm trying to clean the motor spindle, with limited success. I'm hoping to get this drive working, but if I can't, where can I find a replacement?
 
I am pretty sure the floppy drive in it was a standard 3.5" 1.44MB floppy disk drive. So replace with some spare FDD you got around. Can also buy them for 1 Dollar on ebay.
 
I'm not sure about that. It has a weird ribbon cable, and I've never seen anything else with it. It's also not an adapter, so I can't switch the connector. I'll try to post a photo later.
 
Toshiba used a 26-pin floppy connector in some of their laptops. I know I have seen a webpage that listed how to modify a 34-pin floppy drive to work with the 26-pin cable but I can't find it now.
Be careful, some IBM machines used a 26-pin floppy with different layout. An modification done for the IBM style connector will damage the Toshiba.
 
I might be needing a new one no matter what. The ribbon cable has two pins lifting off of it. I've fixed it for now, but it's not pretty.
 
So, I'm recapping the board, and I'm having trouble finding 120uf capacitors.

EDIT:
I'm cheating by putting a 100 UF cap and a 22 UF cap on top of each other, and 122 UF falls within tolerance.

Now I just need to find that dang drive belt, and it should be working.
 
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The original drive belt may be hard to get. If you can't salvage one from another FDD then the best replacement is a walkman drive belt. Check sizes carefully before buying one. If you can't get the exact size then you can also get one that is a little bit (few mm) smaller, these will still work. On ebay you can search for the term "Cassette belt" to find plenty.
 
I think I found a good one in my parts bin. Assuming everything is working, I'll stop by Radio Shack and pick up an ac adapter plug and hack together a good charger, then test it out. Even if the original battery is FUBAR, I have a Sega Game Gear battery pack that is vaguely functional.

And just a quick question, on the LED panel, it says Battery L R. What does it mean? I know there are three batteries in the system, but only one is critical to the system's operation(unless the sub-battery actually matters), so what L and R batteries is it referring to?
 
I've encountered an issue. No matter what battery I wire up to the laptop, including the original, it won't charge the battery past 5.75V. What could be wrong here?
 
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