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Toshiba Libretto 60CT/810

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kishy

Veteran Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2009
Messages
1,065
Location
Windsor, ON Canada
Hi folks!
I have recently acquired an excellent condition little teeny tiny notebook PC, the Toshiba Libretto 60CT/810. This came complete with both the basic port replicator and more advanced dock, a Targus case, floppy drive and even some replacement AccuPoint caps (the pointing stick beside the LCD panel). I wanted to play around with something like this for a while and could finally justify the $$$ they go for (generally not "cheap"). I believe this particular model was only marketed by Toshiba in Japan; there seem to have been third parties which imported and sold them though.

I wanted to share the photos I took of this unit, notably including a teardown of everything except the display (don't want to peel off the stickers over the screws): https://imgur.com/a/FKOeD
Note these images are rather large so I'm not embedding all of them here, but a few downsized ones follow...

Libretto60-1.jpg

Libretto60-2.jpg

Libretto60-3.jpg

Cute, eh?

I would like to say something here which I had a hard time confirming for certain from various sources prior to purchase: this computer will not accept Cardbus cards. It, including the docking station, will only support 16-bit PC cards (the slots are physically keyed, the 32 bit cards won't go in). This is to be expected from its age, but there is conflicting info to be found online which uses the word "Cardbus" when that is absolutely not going to happen.

The hard drive in this unit was replaced at some point with a larger one, which is great, except it means I don't have the true original OS image. Thankfully, whoever swapped the drive did install various Toshiba utility software, but the computer is absent of any Toshiba original desktop backgrounds.

Here's what I'm looking for currently:
If anyone happens to have original desktop backgrounds that might have shipped on this or related Libretto models, I'd love to have them please.

Also, Toshiba does not seem to have a support page online for the 60 anymore, but they do for its sibling the 50: https://support.toshiba.com/support/modelHome?freeText=1073769618
I am wondering how much overlap there may be between drivers, utilities, and notably the BIOS update for the 50 vs the 60. If anyone has any information to that effect I'm interested in knowing it.

As my computer is a Japanese example, but I do not know Japanese, if someone can offer a translation of a particular screen that appears during POST sometimes I'd appreciate it. I suspect it's a "CMOS battery is dead" type of message though.

Enjoy the photos, and if anyone can help with the above points, I'll be very appreciative.
 
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kishy said:
As my computer is a Japanese example, but I do not know Japanese, if someone can offer a translation of a particular screen that appears during POST sometimes I'd appreciate it. I suspect it's a "CMOS battery is dead" type of message though.
Click to expand...

The top line:
前回の作業状態を復元しています。

Roughly translates to:
We are restoring the previous work state.

The bottom line:
起動までしばらくお待ちください。

Roughly translates to:
Please wait for awhile until startup.
 
Hi Kishy,
I have the 50ct complete with two docking stations, original PCMCIA, floppy disk, original leather bag and Libretto branded hard case.

To answer some points above:
I looked on my libretto and could not find the wallpapers for the libretto.

With my understanding the 50ct and 60ct were relatively similar. the only difference being the 50ct ran at 75 MHz were as the 60ct was at 100MHz
here is a Japanese specs page on the 60ct (translated).

https://translate.google.com.au/tra.../oldpc/libretto/lib60/index_j.htm&prev=search
If you want more information of the 60ct I suggest searching 東芝リブレット60ct or 東芝libretto60ct as the Japanese sites will have more information than English.

With my basic Japanese and with that screen appearing on mine it occurs when the main battery is low on charge and the system shuts off. The message displayed says that the system is restoring to its previous state (meaning the hard drive before the sudden power cut) please wait. which is why the animation of a screen filling up plays. I don't think it is related to the cmos as mine has a dead cmos and only displays an error message on start up but continues to boot.

If you need more help with software or drivers I am more than happy to help to the best of my knowledge.
 
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Ah, cool, thanks! I take it that it's referring to a suspend-to-disk type of thing, in that case.

Do these have an in-ROM BIOS setup menu at all? None of the common keys want to take me to one, if it does.
 
On the 50ct you have to reboot the system and hold escape down untill it says to press F1. I assume it would be the same for the 60ct
 
Fraz2299 said:
On the 50ct you have to reboot the system and hold escape down untill it says to press F1. I assume it would be the same for the 60ct
Click to expand...

I never saw either of your replies until today, sorry about that.

Right you are, I think. I don't know if Escape was necessary or just very specific timing of F1, but yes, F1 is what did it but it took some fighting to make it acknowledge it. Also, "RTFM" to me...I have the manual (in Japanese, and translated to English by the company that imported it for resale when new) and it covers that.

Libretto with some items for scale: https://i.imgur.com/vcAXDoZ.jpg
Libretto setup menu: https://i.imgur.com/x96o4kY.jpg

The current undertaking is getting a Cisco Aironet 350, which supports WPA in hardware/firmware, to connect to a WPA secured network under Win98 on this little guy. Investigating this McAfee Wireless Security software that I've found recommended elsewhere.
 
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Some updates...
kishy said:
The current undertaking is getting a Cisco Aironet 350, which supports WPA in hardware/firmware, to connect to a WPA secured network under Win98 on this little guy. Investigating this McAfee Wireless Security software that I've found recommended elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Mission...
kishy said:
OS in Win98SE. I had to install the NDIS and Windows Installer updates to achieve the below.
I had previously updated the firmware on the 350 in an XP laptop; I do not know if the firmware that ships in the 98 driver package will support WPA (tend to doubt it since the 98 drivers+software do not).
I installed the Cisco driver package, went through reboots as required (system hung during shutdown, I power cycled it after a wait to make sure nothing was happening).
I installed McAfee Wireless Security 4.1, sourced from here. Note the Libretto internal display is too small for the minimum resolution of the install wizard, but you can blindly operate it by keyboard or use a higher res external monitor via VGA if you have the dock.

Then, use the McAfee software to browse available networks and connect. I got on my b/g/n network secured with WPA/WPA2 (the card will only do WPA) and all is working quite happily.
Click to expand...
...accomplished!

https://i.imgur.com/V7HkjxP.jpg

I'm not sure how I got Google to come up with IE5, but it did. IE6 won't. Something to do with HTTPS and certs, I'm pretty sure. IE5 working was a fluke.

My Libretto had a 3GB HDD put in at some point, which is convenient, because 810MB is restrictive. However, I noticed the drive seemed too tall by a bit, stressing the system board and chassis, having torn the plastic motherboard lining during install and subsequent removal/reinstall. Didn't seem great to be like that. I have since upgraded to a 20GB drive (yes, 8GB size limit, but I partitioned it in another machine and all seems to work fine) which is how I noticed this.

I stumbled upon this: https://download.milesburton.com/Libretto/www.fixup.net/tips/hddswap.htm#warnning
Important Warning:
For better reliability and let a 9.5mm hard drive settle in comfortably, you should remove two plastic pieces covered by a black tape. L50 was actually designed for a 9.5mm hard drive, so they put in these two 0.5mm-high plastics to fill the gap between the 8.5mm hard drive and the bottom case. Do not remove the three pieces of blue foams though, they protect shock. My L50 developed a memory problem about two months after I put in a 9.5mm drive. It could not boot. Sometimes it could after I swapping out and in the HDD, but could still hang at any moment. So I thought one of these two plastic pieces, the one below the four memory chips, bended the memory chips. So I had to re-solder all the memory chip pins to mend the solder cracks (invisible) caused by the bending stress. I saw, on Libretto mailing list, at least another Libretto user got exactly the same problem. So the next one could be you.

You do not have to open the case to remove these plastics:
1) Pull out the HDD;
2) Tear up the black tape from the bottom case and look for two transparent plastics;
3) Tear off the two pieces with a long screw drive;
4) Pick up them out with a long twicess;
5) Put the HDD back in.

10/16/98: Another L50 user, who did this upgrade without removing the two pieces, reported memory failure. So here I describe how to re-solder the broken pins in the following picture. You should use a sharpest solder gun and thinnest rosin core solder to solder all the pins. If you are not good at soldering, you'd better ask a handy friend to do it. It is a very tough soldering job, not a normal one. It is very easy for you to mess up all pins with solder.
Click to expand...

Upon reading this, and wishing to protect my investment (these things aren't cheap), I opened it up to verify what is said above. Previous owner seems to have removed a couple of the blue foam pieces mentioned above, but left the plastic spacers, and this was causing the fitment issues.

Photos: https://i.imgur.com/7PZp14u.jpg, https://i.imgur.com/nqR7BMX.jpg, https://i.imgur.com/VVjpfS5.jpg
I cut out the plastic that was hopelessly mangled and replaced it with tape (not ideal but need something there). The tall HDD now fits like a glove, and not like a glove you should have replaced in your childhood anymore.

Now, to find more of those hard drive pull-handle screws with the step on them: https://i.imgur.com/7aX0zcV.jpg
 
Here’s some DOS based utilities for the Libretto you might find handy: http://retro.timb.us/Systems/Toshiba_Libretto/LIBRETTO_DOS_UTILS.zip

Included are Three Toshiba Utilities:
TSETUP - Enter BIOS setup from DOS without rebooting.
TVER - Displays system BIOS version.
TDIAGS - Performs diagnostics on the motherboard, floppy and hard drive.

Plus Two Third Party Utilities:

VEXP13 by Adrian Gradwell - Written for the Tecra but works fine on the Libretto (they both have the same CT65550 chipset); allows you to set screen scaling and font stretching options for text mode video display.

TLCD by Myself, Timothy Brown - Allows you to change the LCD brightness from DOS. Also works in a Win 3.x and 9x DOS Box (which is good since the Toshiba Power Managment Utilities don’t run properly under Win 98SE).

—

I’ve also got a full set of drivers for Windows 3.x that work with the 50, 60, 70 and 100CT. I can upload them if anyone wants them. (It’s basically drivers for Video, Sound, Mouse and 32-Bit Disk Access. I couldn’t get the OPL3 drivers to work under WfW3.11, so I used Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 one’s instead.)
 
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I have a 110ct (and somewhere a 70 I think - can't remember where it is at the moment), can confirm that they have a hibernation feature which is what you're seeing with the Japanese screen.

There are some more DOS utils including one that lets you choose the scaling mode (stretched or centered), at least for the 100/110 - not sure how many also work with the older models. There are (or were at least when I got mine and looked around) a lot of Japanese fan sites for the Libretto series that you might find helpful via Google Translate.

I’ve also got a full set of drivers for Windows 3.x that work with the 50, 60, 70 and 100CT. I can upload them if anyone wants them. (It’s basically drivers for Video, Sound, Mouse and 32-Bit Disk Access. I couldn’t get the OPL3 drivers to work under WfW3.11, so I used Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 one’s instead.)
Click to expand...

I'd definitely take that - unless of course they're all just generic drivers, in which case I've likely already got them all.
 
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