Dynapaedia
Being a nice and accurate account of further efforts towards the installation of
32-bit operating systems on early Toshiba pen-based hardware
Toshiba T200CS/80
What a beautiful machine! The form factor isn't quite as nice as the T100x (my
first pen-based romance), but it's quite a nice computer on the whole.
Do Not try this without the memory upgrade; nothing after this sentence
should be applied unless the hacker fears and respects windows' appetite for RAM.
This system is by far the best behaved early pen computer in my menagerie;
the hardware is mostly standard, and while I'm slowly breaking it of it's old
16-bit software, there are still a few Windows95 kinks to iron out. Here are a
list of the things I know, as well as the ones I'm still working on:
the evil i know:
- Digitizer: A Wacom 510 tablet underneath the display. Penwin has a damaged, unsupported
driver. You can get a fixed version here, with
instructions for use after installing Microsoft pen services
2.0 beta on top of your Windows 95 install. As usual, FOR GOD'S SAKE, don't try to install without hooking up a keyboard and mouse; windows makes it almost impossible to install with just one (unless you feel like writing in the install-scripting languages they provide).
- Memory Modules: Standard Toshiba cards, now manufactured by Kensington
(KTT4600/8 KTT4600/16: T1950-4600C) toshiba (TSxxMT4600), and some other, smaller
vendors. Available
at commodity prices, due to the scarcity of working machines of this age. It
looks like the can acommodate up to 24MB of RAM, but we're still
checking on this. Dynapad RAM is clearly compatible with other Toshiba
Models: the T4500, T4600, and T4700 to name a few.
- Display:
Panel:
9.5" (7.6"W x 5.7"H)
DYNAMIC-STN DUAL SCAN COLOR LCD
.30mm x .30mm
Chipset:
1MB/80ns WD90C24A/A2 Paradise VESA Local Bus VGA video & BilBLT support
Guido Lehwalder (who provided the display info above) remarks: "AND there sould be a VESA-Driver for DOS :-)) at
http://www.scitechsoft.com/down_sdd_dos.html"
Fractint and Duke Nukem: here we come.
Note the ominous "Stretch" TSR message at
boot-up, after which the Windows 95 logo assumes it's rightful aspect ratio (it begins full width, but 1/2 height;
we assume that this is due to the odd logo dimensions and a fixed 640x480 LCD; more in this later)
still at large:
- PCMCIA Card Bus: Toshiba Standard; load up with the dos drivers
installed, and use the PCMCIA element in the windows control panel to copy
accross the necessary 32-bit drivers before removing the old dos PCMPLUS
stuff..
- Hard Drive: unknown: believed to be PCMCIA
- APM:Toshiba Maxtime compatible. Some functionality was presented immediately under
Windows '95.
- :
I took the easy way out with this system, loading the necessary Win95 OSR1 UPGRADE
installation onto a calluna 250MB PCMCIA type II (don't e-mail me; that's correct)
drive on loan from my advisor. Running PCMPLUS3's (the toshiba's card services version 3.0
for dos; available via their 1+MB "all downloads"
page by searching for "t200", PCMSETUP utility
allowed me to install the calluna drive at reboot, and launch the upgrade process from within
windows 3.11 for workgroups. As usual, windows was a pain to install, forcing me to remove the
(in my opinion) superior Windows Pen Services 1.0, and complaining bitterly about the 80MB
root disk (do not back up your old system files during install; do it beforehand,
and don't choose the wrong option, or the install will use up too much free space to complete).
Some Dynapad Links
Pen Windows, a great pen computing
resource
The
offocial Toshiba Support Bulletin on the T200
Toshiba's
Parts list for T100x distributors
The
T100X tech center