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3 Pentium and 2 80386 Laptops for sale - Zenith, Toshiba and Gateway

Caleb Hansberry

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 23, 2014
Messages
624
Location
Colorado Springs, CO
I must cull my laptop collection, I have too many, and I found I especially had too many Pentiums. Here's what I'm offering for sale, PM me for any details you'd like. Prices are without shipping:


Toshiba 225CDS 48MB, Pentium, $30: Usually boots to Windows 98, PCMCIA to CF adapter read fine, battery holds a charge.

Has writing on the bottom that I tried but could not get off. CD-ROM drive sometimes will not close, though it will read if you hold it shut. Keyboard missing a key and at least one key did not respond easily. A piece of plastic broken near PCMCIA ports. General heavy wear on the top of the case. There is a bump in the palmrest plastics. The hard drive might be dying - it was stuck when I got it and I opened it up and manually started it, now it spins fine but I can't guarantee it'll keep going. And the biggest issue: The screen does weird things sometimes, and is very affected by squeezing a spot on the left bezel. It varies in contrast and sometimes shows vertical lines in the top half of the screen.


Zenith Z-Note 325L 8MB, 386, $100: Boots to FDD, in fairly good condition, this feels like a well built laptop to me. I really would like to try to fix it, but I don't have the time, and with my other laptops I know I cant justify keeping this one anyway. Zenith added cool features, like being able to access the BIOS settings and return from them to your OS, and they keys can make a clicking sound from the speakers, and the hard-off power button asks for confirmation before turning off.

Big issue: the screen contrast flickers. I'm personally confident this is the caps on the contrast board, but never got around to testing that theory. It sometimes settles down and you can set it with the slider, and it sometimes doesn't. I tried the other contrast board I have and with it the screen was always only one color. Next, the hard drive head is stuck, I once freed this one as well and it booted but don't feel like doing it again, and really an unreliable hard drive is a nonworking hard drive. The floppy disk drive, I succeeded in loading MSDOS and some programs but it DID FAIL to load edit and qbasic, so it might be unreliable at reading. Or I could have a messed up file, I didn't try another disk. There is a bent spot in the case on the back and the battery does not hold a charge. If you could recell the battery, fix the varying contrast, and get a new HDD in, you might have a great 386 laptop.

There is a second 325L included in this sale, it receives power but does not do anything when I press the power button. It's missing some screws and hinge covers. If memory serves (which it often doesn't but oh well) the CCFL is broken in this one, but I really could be thinking about my Dell 386 that had similar issues and I had two of... Also includes two massive chargers, the port replicator which is in great condition, sealed z-note manual (I would have loved to read this one...), sealed copy of Windows 3.1 with manual, sealed "Network Client Software", and an MS-DOS 5 manual (there's no copy of MS-DOS 5 unless it's in Windows 3.1 box).


Gateway 2000 Solo 2100 56MB, Pentium, $80: Boots to Windows 95, hard drive actually works fine, in generally good condition. Includes a lovely case, and Windows 95+ CD, Office 97 CD, blank tray for using FDD bay for storage (this is very cool), and some random HP PS/2 mouse.

For issues, the big one is the screen has similar issues to the Satellite, but not as bad. At least not right now. If it got worse I couldn't accept a return for that - it very well might - but it hasn't in the over a year I've had it. It'll mess itself up and then if you squeeze the left hand side it'll snap into place. Unlike the Toshiba, this one will usually keep the fixed status until the next time it's turned on, and unlike the Toshiba this one has a gorgeous screen (TFT instead of STN? idk, it's the crisp one, not the grainy nasty one). The battery does not hold a charge. The LCD latch is broken and does not hold it shut. That's it. Overall, I think this is actually a wonderful machine, good quality, well thought out, runs great, clean install of Windows (not totally but it's not all nasty like some installs get), and I love the Targus case it has - very good quality, metal clasps. I'd like to keep this one but again, can't justify it, I already have three other Pentium laptops.


Clevo 6400AT 16MB, Pentium, $80: Clevo didn't make particularly high quality or stylish laptops, but they made very featured and expandables ones. This is one of my favorite laptops, but I'll offer it for sale nonetheless. It's branded Sager, though my research indicated it was made by Clevo for Sager, and I put the Toshiba sticker on the lid. I had an extra one on hand and it fit perfectly into a cavity that used to be there so I could not resist (it used to say "NOTEBOOK" or something there). This one actually does not have screen issues, it has a very nice screen. CD-ROM and FDD, good sound (pic of the screen shows it playing the best song ever composed in Winamp), HDD in removable bay, a MIDI/game port, adorable little feet to raise the back.

Missing a couple screen bezel screws I could not find - might be good to find some that fit to protect the hinges. There are two dead pixels on the screen, a green and a red. Appears to be missing a door to cover the battery. The battery does not hold a charge- also, something in the battery shorts out the charger (there's also no guarantee it's the right charger, feel free to experiment, it was hard to find info about the correct power input, so it was hard to even find this power brick), so you MUST have the battery out to turn the laptop on. It only has 16MB RAM, so 98 SE runs rather slowly sometimes, but the RAM is extremely easy to upgrade as shown in the pics - push two buttons above the kbd holding it in and rotate it up. I just didn't have any EDO RAM on hand, but two slots, it could easily use 64MB, that'd be sweet.
 
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