The Ultimate 90's Chonk
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
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Today we're taking a look at one wacky Zenith "laptop" from the mid 90's. Why does the screen come off?!
LINKS:
🍎 Every Zenith Data Systems File Ever Released: archive.org/de...
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#Zenith #Laptop #Pentium
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I think you should try creating a memtest86 floppy, some of the weird error messages and freezing makes it sound like it has a memory problem. Did you try it without the extra memory installed?
Came to say this, it's behaving exactly like it has a memory issue....
I just thought of that after reading this.
I'd almost put money on it's a memory issue. Not saying it doesn't have other problems, but pretty sure the memory seems to be one of them.
Definitely memory related.
@@EvilTurkeySlices I am seeing all of these comments saying it is memory related and that may very well be the cause of his problems. It would not be a bad idea to test the power supply too. Just make sure the power is clean if you know someone with an oscilloscope
"...and I have absolutely no self control, so I bought it" OK, I subscribed
clean that connector between the monitor and the base really well - deoxit and a toothbrush for finish once all potential corrosion is gone. otherwise, check the inverter board, likely in the monitor assembly - check directly below the lcd under the bezel. Also reeks of ram issues. First run with no modules installed, run memoery tests in checkit or something. if it fails, desolder them and only use modules. check them likewise.
the cmos, RTC batteries looks like it 3, in a row on the putout stick to
OMGosh, it's so beautiful! I'm a huge fan of the chonk look. I wish more modern laptops came in that look, but alas, slim is in. I've contemplated putting a modern laptop innards in a retro laptop case, but I'm not nearly confident enough in my modding capabilities to tackle that monstrosity of a project quite yet!
Did you try removing the DIMMs one at a time to see if the freezing repros? Bad RAM could be causing that.
Not a bad idea and as old as that thing is who knows what may be going on inside that thing. I am not sure what it would be like finding that sort of memory these days. It is probably one of those things you would have to call around some computer shops and see if they have it. Of course one chip could render a module useless. If you can get those and find the bad one that is another thing you could try. They are not the BGA type these days that would require a hot air gun to work with. As I write this I see a comment suggesting to try memtest86 and that is also a really good idea because it may just be a bad RAM chip on one or both of the modules.
it says it only has 640KB with no extended at all so it *has* to be something RAM-related
he knows but he needs a another video right?
8:48 He said he tried removing the memory.
@@PixelPipes Yes... but that was when he was trying to get it to recognize the hard drive. The video doesn't make it clear whether he put them back in when reassembling the machine. I assume he did.
I have the Zenith Z-Note Flex model of 1994. I got it at a garage sale for 7$ about 5 years ago. I absolutely LOVED it ! It came from Ford Motor Company and had Windows 95 installed on it. I used to play Doom and Wolf 3D on it all the time. I used to take it all over with me. Later on, I mad another hard drive I made with NT 3.51 and Windows Chicago 189 I'd use in it. Then one day, the hard drive cable went bad. I brought it to my cousin to try to fix it and he lost the power cable for it. I still have the power brick and some compatible cable I found online for what I think was a data cable to an Apple Mac of some sort. But the system won't turn on with that cable; maybe te power supply went bad. My system had the 486 and the 640x480 active matrix screen. If you would like me to send you my power supply and it's "cable" to mess with, go right ahead. I'd love to see if you are able to get my power supply to work with your unit. I tried making a new battery for my unit a few years ago and I'm not sure if I ruined my system. But in any words, I loved the video; it was great to see another person struggle with a Z-Note Flex like I did in it's later years XD
Oh cool, this must be from the period in the 90s when some French company owned Zenith Data Systems. I love funky multimedia PCs.
You’re right, that green tree symbol on the customised Windows 3.1 splash screen is the old logo for Groupe Bull, a big French computer conglomerate
Yes they were labeled as Zenith Bull in Europe at the time
@@andrewstones2921 ah, an inversion of the “Magnavox Philips” situation! This time a European company hoping to introduce their customers to the American name.
How Apple thinks all other laptops look to justify making their laptops unusably thin:
My college laptop was a Digital Hi-Note Ultra CT450T from 1994. (486/50-4MB RAM-40MB HDD-9" TFT Active Matrix Display) It had a multimedia dock very similar to this one, however everything was more compact (It was the ultrabook of its time). It also had the LCD strip for status display, but it was located alongside the monitor vertically instead of above the keyboard.
The multimedia dock has a CD drive, very nice stereo speakers, and even a subwoofer. It also had a floppy wedge that you could attach to the docking port, unfortunately this meant you had to choose between floppy support and CD support which made programs that required both a bit of a hassle since you had to copy the floppy to the hard drive, map the directory to A or B and then hook up the media dock.
The surprising thing with this Zenith is that despite being a full-sized dock it seems to lack both internal ISA/PCI slots and a 3.5" HDD in the dock, both of which were fairly common in docking stations of the era.
BTW: I know there is at least one other video that was done recently on this same laptop that went into the various display options. I can't remember if it was LGR or one of the other channels I follow but I remember it was in the last few months.
What a bonkers chonker. Imagine taking that to your local Starbucks! Does have some pretty neat design decisions, though. Hope you'll be able to get it to work sometime, would love to see that as it's such an interesting system.
I'm getting the impression that thing is having some serious issues with its power delivery.
I think your right, probably got cooked by badly filtered power and it's just barely limping along now on half working parts
‘Took out the power supply which is probably broken’
I’d have checked the output with a multimeter, especially in something like this where there’s always a chance it’s non-standard voltages for a molex connector to supply the laptop.
Ah yeah that would have been a safer move lol.
Would probably have to be under load to be sure to get a valid output. Also, those molex (molii?) coming from the power supply might just be that - connectors.
The actual rating per connector might be higer than on a standard PSU , meaning that even a beefy PSU might not deliver enough. Lots of spicy stuff in there needing power.
@@thorsteinj Coincidentally, today I started having issues with an external 5.25” enclosure. The ODD I have in it just wouldn’t eject although there was some life considering the LED would light up. I opened it, disconnected the power and whilst 5v was fine, the 12v rail showed 14v, now I need to experiment on a ‘throw away’ drive to see if load may be playing an issue.
I tested the drive in another system and fortunately it seemed fine.
And I bet if you was a young adult back then and saw this, you'd buy it in a second. 90's tech was awesome. So much evolution and experimentation!
I had one of these beasts in the early 2000s. It replaced a laptop I had with 2 full size ISA slots...
I also have a shirt like yours! I lived in Sandusky, OH for a while, it just made the shirt that much more amusing!
That's a gorgeous stackup right there.
I do all my WIn98 installs from a folder on a separate HDD partition, makes life much easier for reinstalls and you can copy drivers (including USB support) over as well.
"Zenith... what the FOLLOW ALONG!" 🤣🤣
That "what the-" was perfectly edited
I actually like the concept of removable screen
So there are three likely causes here:
1. The RAM is bad (onboard or sticks), which is supported by the error messages, and the most likely
2. Either the drives aren't receiving power from the motherboard to power them on
3. or there's a chip fault on the motherboard - probably the Super I/O controller which is pretty generic.
Rather than throw the unit out or let it sit in storage, there's probably someone in your audience or online who'd be willing to take a shot at sitting down and troubleshooting the chips themselves.
Its not very well documented, but is likely made up largely of generic components of the time so it will probably be seen as a fun challenge by the community.
If it is the Super I/O controller chip and the case has room, I very strongly recommend you ask whoever takes it a look over puts an integrated circuit socket on the failed package's pins so in the event of another failure (if its a common issue) it can be swapped without any hassle -- since keeping an old machine running sometimes means replacing a chip every year or so due to a manufacturing fault on your unit.
The chips themselves are worth pennies and can be brought in bulk easily so its not a problem to maintain them and coincides with when you'd usually want to clean them anyway as regularly scheduled maintenance.
The modular logic-board is honestly a godsend and you should immediately see if more are available if you want to keep this running long-term after getting the mainboard fault fixed.
"I have made 38 floppy disks with dd on the command line in Mac OS" Not all heroes wear capes.
Wish they would make some modern machines that thick (minus the boom box obviously), so much cooling and other features to make the thing better.
If chonk laptops were still produced today I'd definitely buy one
Woah that Zenith Computer is very cool 😎
I recently been looking into Zenith Data systems Computers some of them have nice design languages great find
To quote Master Shake
"Now that I have seen this that is the Shiznite"
That Z-Note Flex has some potential for a custom build
Thank you for the quality content, good sir.
Action Retro, you bought a really neat doorstop, because NO multimedia machine from the mid-1990s ever ran right; they all had to be played with constantly to run at all.
I have a Zenith 386 desktop that I might want to try that Zenith-branded windows on...
That keyboard is not level 😬 I think this thing deserves a proper/full restore. Caps and LCD replacement if that little thing has a replacement 😉 Not that I can really demand anything, but this thing is fascinating. Is the monitor cable loose?
Now that is a DOCK if ive ever seen one ! lol
P75. Play some War Craft II or Diablo ;-)
Zenith made computers? I only know them from their VCRs, TVs, and radios.
Funny how we both said what the fuuu at the same time XD 😂
It's the ancestor of the Framework laptop.
my nec versa p/75's screen detaches like that as well, it was upgrade-able to 800x600 from 640x480. it also didn't like 90% of the drives i threw at it seems to be something all laptops from that time have in common, anyways one sd to ide converter finally worked though, and it was limited to making 600mb partitions till i used ontrack disk overlay now it has a 64gb sdxc so i have win3, 98lite and graycatlinux on there and a bunch of dos games, midis, mods, etc.
Throwing the screen off it's the ultimate debloat method
"the screen comes off" framwork has entered the chat
I personally would gut the hardware and stick in modern computer parts.
the boombox can be repurposed with a SATA optical drive and more.
Vintage hardware is a gamble, if something doesn't work, then I will just mod the heck out of it
I have a Toshiba DeskStation V that looks much like that, except it's beige. Am able to put my Tecra 780 and other Tecra 700 series on it.
Yeah... So I had to install Windows 95 off floppy disk one time on a family friends white box PC many years ago, many painful memories. CD-Drive bit the dust and the family friend couldn't afford a new one (because they were expensive back then!) so after some digging around, I get handed 13 floppy disks and the family friend saracstically said "Have fun!".
"What the F-follow along..." subscribed XD
Many PCs from this era will not work at all without a working CMOS battery. Keep in mind that many from this time also will not auto-detect hard disk parameters either, and that many hard disks (and solid state media as it had before) did not auto-identify themselves either! You must know the media's geometry to tell the computer where to look.
Booting MS-DOS successfully basically requires NO hardware at all - Not even the first megabyte of RAM needs to be functional. It needs something like the first 96KB of RAM, a diskette controller and diskette drive, and a semi-functional 8088 or compatible. Run actual testing hardware like Spinwrite, SpeedStor, Memtest, etc to look for issues.
Keep in mind that if the CMOS settings are not being held, your parallel, serial, etc ports probably will not be assigned either. Also worth noting that DOS is not great about seeing fixed disks at all in my experience, even on drives that are perfectly working and properly formatted! Run fdisk if you can.
Anyways, the design mostly reminds me of a PowerBook Duo! Maybe that's what they aimed to compete with? Certainly very strange that the display is removable, but I suppose this would make it more convenient to use on a desk without a keyboard or mouse.
16:22 Wolfenstein is only showing 288K of free base memory. Memory in the first megabyte seems wrong or bad. It's not an easy replacement but you know people with legendary soldering skills, might be worth a shot.
Okay I’ve been screaming at my iPhone for too long, looks like memory, would explain screen blinking, the Memory allocation issue and the fact things randomly freeze.
A memory test and some other basic tests seem to be necessary.
Honestly, that thing is rare and crazy enough that it might be worth reaching out to someone capable of doing a deep dive into the electronics. IMO that is worth while saving, lets be honest, its as crazy as a box of frogs 🙃 Also not sure you even noticed but it only has 4MB of RAM (plus the 640K onboard), 95 will struggle with that, 98 stands zero chance.
I would love for someone to take apart that SSD. Very interrested what chips it uses
Reminds me of an old Sony Vaio laptop with a dock someone I knew found in a dumpster. It was wiped but booted Windows 2000, though I shouldn't have formatted it and installed Windows 98 because there are no drivers online I could find at the time.
1) I would try removing the ram sticks one by one, booting with only onboard ram then trying each stick on its own.
2) seems you always had issues with video cutting out when you pressed enter on keyboard, could be lose connection or board flex causing stuff to be haywire. Not sure if it's fixable
Holy fudge! For a second there, I thought this was one of NanoRaptor's (Twitter) weird monstrosities.
Bring back whiteboard guy!
Hit those keys just a BIT harder, please. 😂
The lap meme is real.
What if you put the original hard drive back on after you have removed the metal piece?
oo, i'd love one of those, i have a zenith data systems zselect 100 486 desktop pc , unfortunately not working, afflicted with nicad rot 😢
nearest i have is a compaq thing you can detach the floppy and cdrom thing from it!
That is an awesome shirt.
0:03 Square your Space so this guy can afford to make more better retro videos about computers, upgrading Macs and things!
That's a pretty uncomfortable work position when the laptop is in the dock.
Meant for standing use, I could see it being, "alright."
Wow , a super easy removable display , that´s a super easy fix if the display got damaged , all laptops should have this feature instead of the crappy (modern since 2007) hinges that open only 120 degrees (thanks to Apple) & it´s also easy to dissassemble = I love tihs & which all laptops have it ... for a weired thing the power supply is ultra super standard (Molex) = I love this (but its also always on)
Very nice.
I had a 40mb hdd. Installing 311 and zero space left.
Oooh I do love an impracticable big chungus... just imagine typing on that monster, not a fun time!
I was a bit confused when you persisted with trying to install Windows, that thing has hardware problems. Guess would be RAM related, might even be the soldered on chips unfortunately.
Yeah I'm thinking the soldered chips too
If anyone has a time travelling phone, please call Zenith in the 90s and make sure they're okay, this thing is concerning. 😅
i rmeber seeing this thing here in germany under the compaq brand name
The system is setecting less disk then the one you have. try to get a 40MB disk instead of shoving an HDD that the bios can't handle. it could solve your installing problems.
I remember having to load a driver that divided a 40 mb hdd in 2 virtual 20 mb hdd in order to access the whole capacity.
you fail to mention wich processor it is
Hi
You should take the motherboard. and Replace with something modern. and Cpu. And a new PSU.
Such an interesting machine. A video so painful to watch.
Between the constant Kamila hackling and the lack of basic knowledge.
The atx power supply will provide better (as in cleaner) power than either the docking station power supply or the laptop power supply.
Before you give up, remove the RAM and or test the RAM. This is the most likely cause of the lockups.
Remove every accessory from the docking station that you can. Bring it to the point that the docking station is only acting as a power supply. Also remove everything from the laptop that you can, even the floppy drive.
You want to minimize hardware that can be causing any issues. I've seen a bad floppy cause weird issues because it was causing noise feedback on the DC power rails.
I want that. Chonky laptops are absolutely amazing. Must. Have. Chonk.
It'd fit a better cooler and more battery. Only negative is going to be the weight. I'd gladly have a thicker laptop for it not to be at 90c and for it to last a long long time though.
@@utfigyii5987 agreed!
that old SSD maybe only support old style C/H/S config and they will not work with the usb adaptor, try it in an older PC and set the C/H/S
Anyone have a full Duo Dock setup? I was always looking at that back when they were for sale but ended up with a PowerBook 180.
I have a couple of those, but it has been a while since I last tested them so I’m not sure what works and what doesn’t.
This is what I call a chonky chonker XD
that looks like a old mac power plug
Is that shirt a reference to Tommy Boy?
I'd rather buy a chunky laptop than a skinny one ngl
Now you just need to install macOS high sierra 😝
Ask big tom Callahan about it he will know
I remember back when Zenith made good computer hardware - ZKB-2 > Model M any day!
One of my first IT jobs out of university was working at Zenith Data Systems' QA labs. My job was to test newer OEM hardware on their older machines. For example, ZDS would buy large quantities of OEM parts, like Matrox or ATI graphics cards, to be put in their new machines. Why not sell those cards as upgrades for older machines? Well, someone had to actually test to make sure those cards *actually* worked in the older machines. That was me! I spent my days plugging in and testing graphics cards, keyboards, monitors, mice, sound cards, etc, on older computers and laptops from ZDS and Packard Bell (who owned ZDS at the time). It wasnt the most exciting job. However, the best part about it, was that OEMs would send in free samples of their products. Monitors, graphics cards, all the good stuff. However, unless they were specifically ordered and approved to be tested, they were not allowed in the lab. So what happened to those free parts? Obviously, we took them home! :D All that being said, they werent great computers. Just a hodge-podge of OEM parts. A lot of people only remember Zenith for TVs, VCRs, and various other home electronics. Most people have no idea they had a PC division. While they did have a home consumer market, it was small, as Packard Bell didnt want to compete with themselves. The majority of the ZDS computers were sold to schools, government agencies, and businesses that bought computers in bulk. I dont remember seeing that model there, but I have a feeling that would have been "new" or even after my time there. I also highly suspect that is not a ZDS computer. ZDS computers were not known for innovation. They were designed to be cheap and mass produced. I would bet that was a Packard Bell computer, rebranded as ZDS.
Interesting! What a dream job.
Knowing how companies are now, they'd never let you take anything home
These come from a time before ZDS was bought by PB so there's a good chance it is their own design
My first computer in the early 90s was a second hand Zenith AT clone Good memories!
Interesting. I had both a Zenith 286 and a 386, through my uncle who worked for British Telecom in those days (1989+). I only had the 286 (1mb ram) for a few months before getting the 386 (with 2mb ram) in a swap + cash deal as I couldn't play Fate of Atlantis on the 286 (I'd got a copy from my cousin and was pissed it wouldn't load due to lack of ram). I think he also sold us an Oki laserprinter around the same time. I had the 386 for about 2-3 years before we got an Amstrad multimedia PC with sound card and CD etc from Dixons just around the time I was starting college. It was like a whole new world. Our family still remember the first time we started it up and slipped Star Wars Rebel Assault (bundled with the PC) into the CD drive and we heard the 20th Century Fox music boom out of the speakers. It was like being in a movie theatre....Dad ended up taking the Zenith to work to use for CNC programming and it was still in use up to the time he retired and the boss sold off the company, though sadly I think the new owners probably threw it out. They also had an old Compaq 286 that I gave to them which I'd acquired a few years earlier (2002) from a place I worked that had been using it as a POP 3 mail server (I kid you not). I used it for retro gaming for a few months, then gave it to Dad to take to work as another old PC there had died. He needed the older PC's to run the ancient dos CNC programming software. The first job I had after college (summer '96) was backing up all his floppy disks of CNC programs on the Zenith and an Olivetti PC he had at work.
There are 2 types of people who watch this channel. The ones who go THATS COOL and the ones that go I REMEMBER THAT
It looks like memory to me. Sod's law says it'll be one of the chips soldered on the board to make it hard to fix, naturally.
What a sad truth.
Murphy's Law🤔
@@Zeon01 nah, Murphy's law is the one where if you want to know the right answer to a question on the internet you need to say the wrong one, and people will say the right one.
@@utfigyii5987 No that's Cunningham's Law
... wait Deja Vu
Neat. It's always interesting to see bizarre machines like this. PC notebooks have at least one CMOS battery (some also have a separate standby backup battery) and they often get super angry if the battery's missing or dead. Also this was the era of PC hard disk size limitations. Make sure your disk drive is 2GB or under unless you know the BIOS supports a larger drive.
Even modern laptops have a CMOS battery hidden away somewhere and will pester you if it's somehow dead.
Yep. The big difference is that, on a lot of these Pentium or earlier models, there's no persistence across a reboot and the machine sets very basic defaults and loses drive configurations and such (which usually need to be set manually; they won't auto-detect). So turn it on, it says there's a CMOS error, you set the settings and reboot and... it says there's a CMOS error and lost its settings, and it does this until it gets a new battery. Modern machines usually at least hold settings for as long as power is applied or at least can auto-detect enough to boot somewhat normally.
If they released a PC in this exact dimensions with modern specs I would buy it instantly.
nearest option is the gdp win max 2
Same, I need a portable PC with removable media options and sound options and ports for legacy compatibility, I was thinking of gutting a burned out kaypro or Compaq portable and building my own "desktop-in-a-suitcase" with a long lasting battery.
@@patrickglaser1560 XMG Neo 15
go for it lol
@@ibm5155 most of us only have 2 kidneys to spare
@samuelcolvin4994 panasonic toughbook cf31 mk5 I bought 1 for 150 dollars and it it the best laptop ice ever had, look it up
Near the end I recall there was talk of a Z-note variant with a touch screen that could be used as a tablet by swapping the display. I worked back in the service dept on desktop boards, so I never got to see some of the last laptop models made before Group Bull gutted us and merged our assets with Packard Bell.
I remember the days of having to troubleshoot constantly to get anything to install. Hardware used to be so much more of an adventure than it is now. It’s what really taught me about how computers work.
The CD drive looks like a Mitsumi which will need extra drivers side loaded on the Win98 boot floppy. If you manage to get somewhere with getting it up and running, I have one of the small Zenith LCD's that show the HDD/FDD access status. It's from a 486, but with some luck it may be the same.
He doesn't seem to be an edit config.sys autoexec.bat kinda guy coming in from Mac stuff... maybe. in video he mentions loading drivers for the dock from the win 3.1 disks but didn't look for them.
he should use a different drive then, like a more modern one, which should be Plug and Play
@@zarkeh3013 though he also mained Linux and BSD a while ago, which makes me think he at least knows how to be aware of such requirements (despite the specifics being different)
@@zarkeh3013 His DOS floppy comes up with LOL USB messages so he's definitely did some system file editing.
@@eDoc2020 ah yes! that's right! ... still, show us the edit skills!
Looks like a bad RAM issue... Maybe try something like Memtest from a floppy to see if there's something wrong in there?
Also, I think Windows 98 will be an absolute nightmare to run with only 40 MB of RAM. The IE4-based File Explorer would be kinda sluggish, even on a Pentium...
Consider using Windows 95 instead. (I recommend to install Windows 95 OSR2, as it has DOS 7.1 just like Win98, so it also has FAT32 support)
Nah I ran Win98 back in the day with 32mb ram and it was fine.
A lot of very clever ideas in that laptop, but the one I most applauded was the drawer for the bios battery!
Sean, we already know you're the ultimate 90's chonk here 😉
😂😂😂
Bruh I love that pfp 2dfx
Your commitment to making it work is unparalleled and appreciated, a very cool little boomboxy situation. I thought sure your power supply swap was going to be the key when the screen didn’t cut out after a directory command. Keep us posted if you get after more shenanigans on it!
I hope whiteboard guys kid gets the hang of it. Nice video as always. flat cmos batteries have given me weird boot/startup behaviour in a laptop one time.
Way back when, I had EXACTLY that - the p75 notebook and the big clunky dock. I also had a couple of 486 versions with several different types of screens amongst them. In fact when the p75 died, I put it's much better screen on one of the 486 models. I got rid of almost all of it a long time ago (though if I searched in my basement, I think I have one of the smaller docks still packed in it's shrink wrap).
ProTip from my experience with Flash memory that's not a full fledged proper SSD - USB thumb drives included - Please do a FULL FORMAT on your CF/Flash media (the one that takes a few minutes, NEVER a quick format) it will alleviate issues. I originally experienced this issue while experimenting with nLite and creating and testing various copies with drivers slipstreamed and started getting "can't find file" or read errors. Figured out that doing FULL format on these flash media seemed to help A LOT...
The problem is flash media isn't designed to be used in this way, so they don't set up the partition table to support it from the factory. Usually the MBR is missing, but sometimes I have to dd /dev/zero the whole card and create a new partition table to get it going. Both for CF and SD cards.
This feels like an old-school Framework laptop, pretty modular for its time!
I've thought Framework should do a docking station as well, something that can hold an optical drive and maybe an oversized battery, along with extra module ports. I'd envision it as something that would actually clamp to the laptop through two of the swappable module ports. Lenovo (or IBM) did something similar with the "UltraBase" for one of their ThinkPad models.
@@SenileOtaku the amount of people who still need optical drives on the go is very small, and shrinking. Also a USB-PD powerbank is much more practical than some kind of attachment
I had a Simens laptop with removable screen. That screen had a removable backside that also removed the backlight. With the help of a special cable you could put the screen on a overhead projector and show stuff at the meeting. Really cool stuff!
That's amazing.
Well that explains that mystery.
@@ActionRetro I googled a bit and found out that those machines are quite rare. There were a similar solution from IBM with a detachable backside:
ThinkPads 755CV/CDV
That monitor's connection might electrically mirrored - the monitor might flip around for the presenter to stand behind the unit, using it for ppt
Ohhhh I didn't think to check that! That would be sweet lol
You're doing great! 🤨👍
I lol'd
The cpu temps may be a bit suspect, even if it is just a pentium 75 mhz. I'd try to monitor temps on that somehow.
Ah didn't think of that!
old CPUs generally don't heat up much, I don't think that's an issue
@@RealEpikCartfrenYT not generally, no, but pentium was one of the earlier CPUs from Intel that included a heatsink that wasn't a super clocked 386 or 486. I don't think you want to run without something pulling out heat.
It could be the memory as well.
Unironically think detachable screens like that should make a come back. I've had laptops suddenly become useless for the reason I got them because the screen got damaged one way or another. Being able to just easily replace the screen instead of having to get a whole new laptop would have been great. I know you technically can repair that but I really hate having to unscrew stuff, replace parts, etc.
Did you try using an external keyboard and mouse? The freezes could be a result of the dock edge connector having dirty/flaky contacts that lose connection when the top part is slightly vibrated from the typing or trackball use?
This is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. I wish modern laptops were like this. Just... you know... more reliable.
I kinda want one.
You can make one, and it could be awesome. Boombox, Pi4, and accessorize. I put something together back in February, and it's evolved into a Portable DVD player case that docks on a boombox, but could run on it's own. Runs on Milwaukee 12v tool batteries. Laser trackball is a must.
My new laptop bends and clicks the trackpad if I pick it up by a corner... disappointing is the way of modern build quality.
@@MattExzy I hate trackpads. They always do the wrong thing. Back in 94 I had a Compaq 486 laptop with a marble size trackball, buttons on the side. I loved. It was actually before we had a single mouse at home. We had a 386 running DOS. Back then even the mice had to be cleaned, so it wasn't even an issue to have to clean a trackball. I usually disconnect trackpads so I can rest my hands anywhere. All wrist issues went away after switching to a modern laser track ball. 5-6 years now.
I used to fix these, the screens were upgradable so you could buy a greyscale screen and upgrade it to colour later. The trackball could be upgraded to a trackpad and with a little work, the CPU was upgradable too!
The only part I never got to see was the boom box add on, not even sure it was ever available here in the U.K., and all the ones I worked on were in professional environments.
There was an upper HDD limit, however you could get bootable utilities at the time to see bigger hard drives, though not sure how easy they would be to find now. Probably as easy as the upgrade cPU boards that we never got to see here. There was supposed to be an OverDrive chip upgrade, but alas I’m not sure it was ever released.
The machine was designed and built by Sony for Bull computer group, who owned Zenith and Packard Bell, among others. Excellent machines at the time, if a little overpriced but they were still kicking around in the early 2000’s
Zenith didn’t die after the flex, the Z-Note GT was a monster pentium laptop and the had a number of other devices I worked on well into the year 2000 before leaving where I was working to go into consultancy. The z-star 900 was a slimline machine and quite powerful for the budget business range though they were pretty much dead by the mid 2000’s from what I can see. I was no longer a field service engineer by then and had lost contact with most of the companies I used to work in, though I do know many switched to Compaq which was then owned by HP, so the Zenith Data Systems name did die a lingering death which was a shame. Had the Z-Note Flex been more popular, we may well have had more modular laptops today.
Ah,the laptop to surpass all laptops,the pinnacle of upgradeable mobile computing units.The one thing all PCMR members hope for in a high performance laptop.
Sean in what moment the whiteboard guy took over ? or you share the same t-shirt? Coz in the last segment of the video it's him admitting defeat against the laptop :)