I had one of these, running Red Hat Linux. The coolest thing was being sat on a train and dialing up to my home network via my mobile (Nokia, naturally) at 9600 baud. Not many folks had the internet on the go in 2001. :) Happy days.
Red hat was trash back then and they’re even worse now with all the crap bloatware they’re pushing on everyone (systemd, Wayland, pipewire, GNOME since version 3 etc etc etc)
Having any of those older Toshiba laptops did. I had both a 386 and a 486 Toshiba, both monochromes, but man- what a thing to pull out of your backpack at the library or the coffee shop and peck away at a document on. Good times!
@@BilisNegra For real. I remember being a little kid going to like OfficeMax with my father & scurrying over to the section with the "Mini Laptops" which were around *$600+* For a Monochrome Window CE (essentially useless) Unit up to like *$1700* for the BigBoy Full Color "Windows PocketPC". So that in 2018 Money (We're not pricing anything with this disgusting embarrassment of an economy/world in 2021/2022) would be: $940+ To $2650+. Again, Let's face it, for something essentially useless other than the "wow factor" lol
I remember seeing one on display at a PC Repair Shop. I was always fascinated by its size. People tend to think Microsoft or GPD pioneered this genre, but they'd be surprised by how old this niche actually is. I just hope bigger players reconsider this market, because I would love Lenovo to, for example, make a new iteration of the IBM PC110.
I love those mid-90s/early 00s tiny laptops. There was just something very fun about using them. Shame that their garbage-tier successors, the netbooks, effectively killed the tiny laptop market.
I disliked the netbook I had at the time, since it was so underpowered compared to the stuff i needed and wanted to run, including the OS itself, but looking back it really is such a neat piece of hardware, as long as you pair it with lighter software.
I'm still using to this day Eee PC 1000HG. It was painfully slow if you would use it like as normal laptop with Win7 without upgrading it. After I throw inside an SSD drive (2,5'' Goodram 120 GB), installed on it Lubuntu for modern tasks like exploring the internet (it's not recommended for sites like FB, Tweeter or Netflix - too weak for that, but blogs and older sites are welcome) and WinXP Home without internet support (I just did not install LAN, wi-fi nor bluetooth drivers), it works like a charm. Re-Volt v.1.2 works great, Autodesk Inventor R3 from year 2000 works perfectly, I even made some simple 3D models on it of some machine parts for project for my classes on college just to blow minds of my professors, when they saw that XD Netbooks are great machines until you don't treat them as casual laptops XD
I was in IT support for a large steel company, one of our executives had a libretto 50 later a 70. As well as a much larger Toshiba Tecra. He used the libretto when he traveled to the old Soviet Union. It was loaded with a pcmcia modem, and the docking station had a pcmcia token ring card. He used lotus notes and I think windows nt3.5.1 with ms office and lotus smart suite. I remember vividly upgrading the hdd to a 1.6gb drive that cost a small fortune. The advantage of the libretto was he could keep the computer in his overcoat pocket and keep it with him all the time. Today it would probably have been an iPhone.
@Zaydan Naufal I think you may be correct, checking it seems the Soviet Union stopped around 1991. Please accept my apology. While I am not old enough to have been working during the Soviet Union era, I am old enough for my memory to fail me on when the Soviet Union was discontinued
@@marksterling8286 When I read the comment I kind of imagined you meant the countries that comprised it or the Iron Curtain back then. Could that have been what you had in mind?
I still have nightmares of repairing those machines. I was the service manager of a major Toshiba laptop repair facility in the late 90s and early 2000s. The Libretto laptops were ones that in general only the experienced techs were allowed to repair. Neat machines with limited use cases but a real PITA to properly repair.
i remember recaping mine and overclocking it. had a 100CT back in the day that was gifted to me. was a bad ass machine, i always had it in my school backpack when still in highschool.
The IT room at my workplace has a shelf of old gadgets that I assume were at one point used by the company and among the old Wyse terminals and other assorted gadgets is a working Libretto 50CT. Still works, too!
yeah, the gpd win keyboard is kinda shit, unfortunally they lack the specialists a company like toshiba would have to develop a small but decent keyboard
@@oldtechnobodycaresabout seconded. People will knock them, but I picked up a second hand GPD Pocket 2 and it really satisfies my old Palmtop coveting inner child who always lusted after these and Scions, etc.
It came with the smaller dock giving parallel, serial and VGA ports. You get used to the keyboard and mouse nub pretty quickly when you're using it every day! Happy memories of logging on to IRC from the train between London and Paris. I've had my 50CT since new and I definitely didn't pay that price for it, so not sure what's up with that!
Damn, talk about synchronicity. I’m in the middle of restoring my 100CT when this video dropped. Love the Librettos. I have three more, a Japan only 1100ff with a way more modern design, a U100 which is basically a very high powered netbook, and the weird and wacky dual screen W100 which was released in very limited numbers and is such a unique design. If you are interested in covering these, Colin, drop me a line.
Love the last points you made, I know seeing this make me want to go out and get one, just for the novelty, but really, the use is so limited! I appreciate the lack the fabricated hype on this channel
I used a libretto as my travel computer in the 90s. With the docks and full size accessories, it was a great machine for the desk as well. Compared to the huge thing it replaced, I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I was able to tote this instead.
Yes, it was exciting and awful at the same time. Putting serious money on a machine just to see it crawl with the latest software in a mere 4-5 years. Now we can use our computery stuff for twice as long or more, and it's cheaper, too.
Props to letting us hear over a minute of audio playback! I get really frustrated when other you-tubers say "listen to this:" and then proceed to play 5 seconds of audio.
Around year 2000 my company's president left behind him the Libretto, along with all the accessories (and GSM Gen1 data modem as PCMCIA2 card from Ericsson). Shame to admit, but after few years staying on shelf as a curiosity, it was scrapped around 2007 during the relocation. How much I regret now it had not been saved before the "retro" era came....
I bought one used on ebay in 2001 and put a 20 GB HD and installed debian linux on it. It was awesome. I used it to manage servers, I would listen to MP3s from my home server via the command line mp3 player. If it had wireless and a decent battery it would have been perfect. Still I loved that thing. I would connect via VNC and ssh to my home media. I even found a 90 degree audio adapter (it had a weirdly tiny audio jack) so I could listen to music on the go with it in my backpack. I just loved this computer
My dad had one of these for his IT manager job probably 20ish years ago, he loved it’s small size when going from department to department for quick fixes
Fantastic video. Having spent some time with the Libretto 50CT... I fully agree with your sentiments about it. The craziest thing to me is the lack of a PS/2 mouse port. But I still love it and plan to keep it around for a long time.
Oh hey I own one of these! Nifty little machine, which I used to finish the entirety of Quake (the first). The hard drive isn't standard. Its *length and width* may indeed be standard, but its thickness is wholly non-standard, being some 2mm thinner than other contemporary drives. The first thing I did when I got it was ordering an SD-to-IDE because if the factory HDD dies, good luck finding a replacement. Plastics are extraordinarily brittle on this one. The ratio of super glue to plastic on the HDD cover of my device is *easily* 5 to 1... at this point, if it breaks again I'll throw it away and just leave a gaping hole there. The latch is very easy to jam on the "eject" position and you need to pull apart the machine to un-jam it. If you manage to jam it enough times, the *thin* sheet metal gets bent out of shape enough that it won't ever function properly ever again. Tight-fitting PC-cards that do not protrude are NOT for this device. The battery can be rebuilt at will but then you'll run into an interesting error: the battery may charge and function fine, the battery charging indicator on the lid may function fine, but the OS doesn't report a battery being there. Another funny thing about it is, the actual connections for the PS/2 mouse are directly on the dock connector. So a common mod (that I'm seriously considering) was to solder wires to it and fashioning some manner of external mouse connector. You really have to give it to Toshiba... the thing is a fully-working computer with extremely limited I/O.
I just dragged my old 50CT out of a storage box today, when cleaning at home. I bought mine used around 2000 or 2001. I upgraded it to Windows 98SE using floppies back then. I have the floppy drive, expansion base and network dongle. Used to have wifi back then, using a Symphony PCMCIA wireless card. Fired it up today. Works great. If nothing else, it is an attention grabber.
Oh, 70CT was my daily driver for two years. Keyboard actually was a joy to use and with extended battery Toshiba became a great word processor. I miss this one.
A friend of mine had one of these back in the 90s and even then I can remember we all could see the limitations of what was possible in that form factor. It was VERY cool though.
I installed Windows 98 on so many of those at my college job. They used these as data acquisition devices out in the field. I'd all but forgotten about them, great to see these kind of unique products still out there.
I only ever worked on one of these in my support desk days. I loved the design and it had the first "mini"-dock you showed. In my case, it was used by an exec for the company and so it got a fair amount of use... until it took a tumble and the screen shattered. I performed the Win95-=>98 upgrade on it... via floppy and a backpack CD drive. Major kludge but worked, barely. Not a memorable but of hardware but always reminded me of the tiny Tandy portable computers (Model 100 I think). Not the fastest but built for the exact market it aimed for. And 1200mah battery sounds so quaint. (Granted I know voltage was 10.8 there versus less on most cell phones these days, but still...)
To be honest, ive just found your channel and i really amazed with these old digitech things. Your narration and voice with the channel intro and visual reminds me like something discovery channel would do. How its made and sort of those show. Ive watched several interesting vids and planning to watch em all. Thumbs up for you!
I remember this guy... I desired one of them.... Never ended up getting one, even though I tried a few times to get one.... but, it was a cool device back the day...
It's been a long time, like 20 years, but IIRC, there is more than one model of libretto. I am almost certain there was a 90mhz version, which uses a 60 or 66mhz motherboard, which is faster than the 75, which uses a 50 mhz motherboard. But even the best ones were slow and junk and expensive. All the people who had them in my organization were all travelers. This was a big company you would have heard of. They loved technology. They were the best people I ever worked for as far as technology goes. Most corporations, especially privately owned LLCs and such didn't ever want to spend any money on technology. This company had all their sites networked together with high speed WAN and this was in the 90s when the only option was T-3 or ATM. We had a t1 connection from Philadelphia area to Phoenix Arizona. We had many terabytes of disk storage (in the 90s). Every PC had at least 80 megs of RAM.
I got one of these in the original box. Was used by a BT Employee in the UK (has BT asset tags all over it) Have the docks with it too. guess it made sense for an on the road engineer but no idea how they dealt with that battery. The screen on mine is also failing in one corner sadly. but still love its funky design
I sold a fair number of these during a stint at Circuit City. Students loved them at University and they would use a dock in their room to get keyboard, mouse, monitor rather than ruin their eyes staring into the tine monitors. Later I had one that lived in my glove box with the smaller dock in case I needed to go onsite and log into a switch and didn't have a laptop with me.
Back in that period, I started my professional work life and was packing a Newton 2100 with 33,6 modem to check mail etc. Loved working with it, especially the assist function. Used together with a Nokia 9110i Communicator in case I had to get really mobile. *Chuckles* I regret selling that Newton to this day.
I knew someone who had one, they used it to type up emails and documennts on the go, and when they got home synced it up with their PC and on their way the they went.
"Honey, I shrunk the Laptop" - Oh, man, That is the most cringe yet satisfying Mid-90's Thing I've heard since a friend told me he "had to go drop the Cosby Kids off at the pool" earlier this week. Absolutely Delightful.
I had that laptop a long time ago; as a hand-me-down from my uncle when I was in elementary school. Still wish it wasn’t thrown away when it stopped working.
I have 2 110CT's (similar to this, but widescreen and faster 233 mhz), but both have dead screens. One of them had the screen die while I was in the middle of using it. Beware if you're looking for one of these used.
Did a video on this least beast a while back, but I was kinda impressed on how much was packed into the little thing vs the usual Windows CE based palm tops. But usability suffers without the dock or port replicator. So I see it was a beefy palm top vs a tiny laptop. Although it can play a decent game of Doom 😁
It was actually fairly common in that era for the BIOS to be able to be modified from within DOS or Windows - I know many ThinkPads offered at least some BIOS customisation within Windows, and Dell did as well. There is another quirk to the Libretto; if I remember correctly, everything from the 20CT through to the 110CT would not POST or even display anything on the screen without a good HDD being installed. They have survived pretty well for the most part though, despite being rare when new. The Japanese market got a whole host of different Libretto varieties, and the ff1100 line in particular is well worth a look if you can get one with all of the unique accessories it had.
Had a client many years ago that had one of these on one of the desks. Hilarious really as they had a network card in the PCMCIA slot, and external keyboard and mouse as well as an external monitor. Wires all over the place. I pointed out what a cable nightmare it was and got back a "yeah, but look how small it is" as a response.
That thing is neato! I used to have an old Mac Duo as a teen and always thought it was fantastic due to its small size, but they sure made em quite a bit smaller. Albeit less functional, but back then before wifi & higher speed internet than dial-up internet, we didnt really know what we were missing out on lol. LTT viewers would ask: but will it run crysis?? but I'd happily take it if it runs pong or tetris that I played as a kid lol
Oh man! I have one of these and I was going to send it to you to feature because you had covered so many smaller laptops. If you still want it let me know in DMs.
That's one sick little machine! for the power it actually holds- I'm honestly impressed. I'm surprised it didn't come with worse- It may work really good with 3.11. if everything might work- But for the price originally- we can all agree it should've been cheaper-
This was my dream machine when i was just starting as a system admin. Easy to carry around to troubleshoot issues with servers... but i never got one...
Hey, I didn't know you could get a larger dock with more options. As an occasional use micro DOS machine with Windows 95, I really like my 50CT. Despite it's noted abundance of limitation and decaying plastics.
My first laptop was a 486 Compaq that had a similar setup for the mouse, although it used a trackball rather than that nub thingy. Really wasn't so bad once you got used to it. Of course, that laptop was also substantially larger than this little thing as well.
I had one, and the lack of USB ports was a serious problem. You could of course add a USB 1.0 interface via trhe PCMCIA cards, but they were pretty flaky in 1997. The only think I added via PCMCIA was a Modem card, and a 10base T Ethernet card. Still for what it was at the time, it was an awesome little computer.
I have two 70CT's, the exact same as the 50CT, but a little bit faster. I think they are great collectors items, even netbooks are big compared to the libretto's. Just don't expect to enjoy gaming on it with it's tiny keyboard. With some fine soldering, you can unlock some extra CPU speed. Replacing the drive with a CF card using an adapter, will make it dead silent. You could create some tiny low-end pentium 1 setup by using the docking station and external monitor/keyboard/mouse/speakers.
I owned one of these with the limited dock. The lack of ports is annoying but it was a useful road warrior. I replaced it with an IBM Windows CE laptop which had it's own problems, but had as much expansion as this did. You could put a modem/ethernet card in either of these for communication on the road, Raspberry Pi type interfaces would be needed to make this useful today. The 640 by 480 display was acceptable due to small size. I liked the trackpoint and back button arrangement. Agree battery life was pathetic.
Me: “Wow, I’m old enough to remember when this retro notebook came out! We sold it at CompUSA.” Wife: “Not only old enough to remember, but be working!” Me: “Thanks for that…”
I have a late production Libretto 50CT and when I received it I was puzzled why there's a Pentium MMX sticker instead of the normal Pentium sticker. Turned out towards the end of the 50CT production run Intel had already stopped making the 75mhz Pentium so Toshiba actually used 120mhz Pentium MMX and *underclocked* it back to 75mhz, a popular mod back then was to open the thing up and solder a few wires to get it back up to the 120mhz speed.
I had one of these, running Red Hat Linux. The coolest thing was being sat on a train and dialing up to my home network via my mobile (Nokia, naturally) at 9600 baud. Not many folks had the internet on the go in 2001. :) Happy days.
How did you connect the Nokia to it for internet connection?
@@jackwilson5542 Probably the infrared port
@@tomrow32 Yeah, still surprised it could tether back then. He probably had one of those high-end Nokias with keyboard.
Red hat was trash back then and they’re even worse now with all the crap bloatware they’re pushing on everyone (systemd, Wayland, pipewire, GNOME since version 3 etc etc etc)
Winning!
When PCs were fun! Having one of those back then did make you feel a James bond or a worldclass hacker...
Having any of those older Toshiba laptops did. I had both a 386 and a 486 Toshiba, both monochromes, but man- what a thing to pull out of your backpack at the library or the coffee shop and peck away at a document on. Good times!
Prices were anything but fun, tough.
@@BilisNegra For real. I remember being a little kid going to like OfficeMax with my father & scurrying over to the section with the "Mini Laptops" which were around *$600+* For a Monochrome Window CE (essentially useless) Unit up to like *$1700* for the BigBoy Full Color "Windows PocketPC". So that in 2018 Money (We're not pricing anything with this disgusting embarrassment of an economy/world in 2021/2022) would be: $940+ To $2650+. Again, Let's face it, for something essentially useless other than the "wow factor" lol
I remember seeing one on display at a PC Repair Shop. I was always fascinated by its size.
People tend to think Microsoft or GPD pioneered this genre, but they'd be surprised by how old this niche actually is.
I just hope bigger players reconsider this market, because I would love Lenovo to, for example, make a new iteration of the IBM PC110.
Funny I remember too seeing one on display at a PC Repair Shop (back in Italy)
I love those mid-90s/early 00s tiny laptops. There was just something very fun about using them. Shame that their garbage-tier successors, the netbooks, effectively killed the tiny laptop market.
I disliked the netbook I had at the time, since it was so underpowered compared to the stuff i needed and wanted to run, including the OS itself, but looking back it really is such a neat piece of hardware, as long as you pair it with lighter software.
Not a bad word about my beautiful eee901 :(
Right, Sony was doing crazy things with the vaio line. Like first ultrawide laptop screens.
I'm still using to this day Eee PC 1000HG. It was painfully slow if you would use it like as normal laptop with Win7 without upgrading it. After I throw inside an SSD drive (2,5'' Goodram 120 GB), installed on it Lubuntu for modern tasks like exploring the internet (it's not recommended for sites like FB, Tweeter or Netflix - too weak for that, but blogs and older sites are welcome) and WinXP Home without internet support (I just did not install LAN, wi-fi nor bluetooth drivers), it works like a charm. Re-Volt v.1.2 works great, Autodesk Inventor R3 from year 2000 works perfectly, I even made some simple 3D models on it of some machine parts for project for my classes on college just to blow minds of my professors, when they saw that XD Netbooks are great machines until you don't treat them as casual laptops XD
Netbooks didn't kill themselves, it was smartphones and tablets with ARM processors
I was in IT support for a large steel company, one of our executives had a libretto 50 later a 70. As well as a much larger Toshiba Tecra. He used the libretto when he traveled to the old Soviet Union. It was loaded with a pcmcia modem, and the docking station had a pcmcia token ring card. He used lotus notes and I think windows nt3.5.1 with ms office and lotus smart suite. I remember vividly upgrading the hdd to a 1.6gb drive that cost a small fortune. The advantage of the libretto was he could keep the computer in his overcoat pocket and keep it with him all the time. Today it would probably have been an iPhone.
that man would have loved the ipad mini.
@Zaydan Naufal I think you may be correct, checking it seems the Soviet Union stopped around 1991. Please accept my apology. While I am not old enough to have been working during the Soviet Union era, I am old enough for my memory to fail me on when the Soviet Union was discontinued
@@marksterling8286 When I read the comment I kind of imagined you meant the countries that comprised it or the Iron Curtain back then. Could that have been what you had in mind?
The Soviet Union? I thought you guys broke up?
I still have nightmares of repairing those machines. I was the service manager of a major Toshiba laptop repair facility in the late 90s and early 2000s. The Libretto laptops were ones that in general only the experienced techs were allowed to repair. Neat machines with limited use cases but a real PITA to properly repair.
Still more repairable than a modern laptop
@@KazyEXE Oh, MacBooks, yeah. But no, not more repairable than -every- modern laptop.
i remember recaping mine and overclocking it. had a 100CT back in the day that was gifted to me. was a bad ass machine, i always had it in my school backpack when still in highschool.
The IT room at my workplace has a shelf of old gadgets that I assume were at one point used by the company and among the old Wyse terminals and other assorted gadgets is a working Libretto 50CT. Still works, too!
I used to love playing Passport. Ahh the memories
I hope to find one someday for cheap. A kid in my collage had one back then. That’s where my fascination for the device comes from.
Those tiny 90s laptops are awesome! I wish someone made one with today's technology, but kept the big, clicky keyboard keys.
GPD?
yeah, the gpd win keyboard is kinda shit, unfortunally they lack the specialists a company like toshiba would have to develop a small but decent keyboard
@@oldtechnobodycaresabout seconded. People will knock them, but I picked up a second hand GPD Pocket 2 and it really satisfies my old Palmtop coveting inner child who always lusted after these and Scions, etc.
@@oldtechnobodycaresabout yeah, I've been eyeing the GPD WIN 3 but those prices are... a bit more than I'm willing to drop for a novelty
Sony tried to do it with their half height ones but also discontinued it, smart way to not sacrifice on kb width. GPD is your best bet these days.
It came with the smaller dock giving parallel, serial and VGA ports. You get used to the keyboard and mouse nub pretty quickly when you're using it every day! Happy memories of logging on to IRC from the train between London and Paris. I've had my 50CT since new and I definitely didn't pay that price for it, so not sure what's up with that!
@Tim Clark Can confirm it's an oven
Aww, that laptop is just adorable.
This is one of the best retro laptops, I have two 110CTs
GET OUT OF HERE. You must have at least 3% of production. I just have the 50. Always admired the "Big Boy". Cheers RL
Damn, talk about synchronicity. I’m in the middle of restoring my 100CT when this video dropped. Love the Librettos. I have three more, a Japan only 1100ff with a way more modern design, a U100 which is basically a very high powered netbook, and the weird and wacky dual screen W100 which was released in very limited numbers and is such a unique design. If you are interested in covering these, Colin, drop me a line.
Don't suppose you have any spare RAM upgrades for the 50/70? 😅 Been trying to find one since I got mine last year.
Love the last points you made, I know seeing this make me want to go out and get one, just for the novelty, but really, the use is so limited! I appreciate the lack the fabricated hype on this channel
Passport was my jam back in the day! 😂
I used a libretto as my travel computer in the 90s. With the docks and full size accessories, it was a great machine for the desk as well. Compared to the huge thing it replaced, I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I was able to tote this instead.
With-in 3yrs of this laptop's release, cpu's were 10x's+ faster. That is incredible when you think about it.
Yes, it was exciting and awful at the same time. Putting serious money on a machine just to see it crawl with the latest software in a mere 4-5 years. Now we can use our computery stuff for twice as long or more, and it's cheaper, too.
Appreciated the 1 min + of Passport... Some serious nostalgia vibes there.
I like that this video has a full jam session in it
Props to letting us hear over a minute of audio playback! I get really frustrated when other you-tubers say "listen to this:" and then proceed to play 5 seconds of audio.
Love these netbooks-before-netbooks-existed laptops!
Around year 2000 my company's president left behind him the Libretto, along with all the accessories (and GSM Gen1 data modem as PCMCIA2 card from Ericsson). Shame to admit, but after few years staying on shelf as a curiosity, it was scrapped around 2007 during the relocation. How much I regret now it had not been saved before the "retro" era came....
I bought one used on ebay in 2001 and put a 20 GB HD and installed debian linux on it. It was awesome. I used it to manage servers, I would listen to MP3s from my home server via the command line mp3 player. If it had wireless and a decent battery it would have been perfect. Still I loved that thing. I would connect via VNC and ssh to my home media. I even found a 90 degree audio adapter (it had a weirdly tiny audio jack) so I could listen to music on the go with it in my backpack. I just loved this computer
My dad had one of these for his IT manager job probably 20ish years ago, he loved it’s small size when going from department to department for quick fixes
Fantastic video. Having spent some time with the Libretto 50CT... I fully agree with your sentiments about it. The craziest thing to me is the lack of a PS/2 mouse port. But I still love it and plan to keep it around for a long time.
Love all the content lately. You're really crushing it!
That music is wonderful to listen to
Oh hey I own one of these! Nifty little machine, which I used to finish the entirety of Quake (the first). The hard drive isn't standard. Its *length and width* may indeed be standard, but its thickness is wholly non-standard, being some 2mm thinner than other contemporary drives. The first thing I did when I got it was ordering an SD-to-IDE because if the factory HDD dies, good luck finding a replacement.
Plastics are extraordinarily brittle on this one. The ratio of super glue to plastic on the HDD cover of my device is *easily* 5 to 1... at this point, if it breaks again I'll throw it away and just leave a gaping hole there.
The latch is very easy to jam on the "eject" position and you need to pull apart the machine to un-jam it. If you manage to jam it enough times, the *thin* sheet metal gets bent out of shape enough that it won't ever function properly ever again. Tight-fitting PC-cards that do not protrude are NOT for this device.
The battery can be rebuilt at will but then you'll run into an interesting error: the battery may charge and function fine, the battery charging indicator on the lid may function fine, but the OS doesn't report a battery being there.
Another funny thing about it is, the actual connections for the PS/2 mouse are directly on the dock connector. So a common mod (that I'm seriously considering) was to solder wires to it and fashioning some manner of external mouse connector.
You really have to give it to Toshiba... the thing is a fully-working computer with extremely limited I/O.
I just dragged my old 50CT out of a storage box today, when cleaning at home. I bought mine used around 2000 or 2001. I upgraded it to Windows 98SE using floppies back then. I have the floppy drive, expansion base and network dongle. Used to have wifi back then, using a Symphony PCMCIA wireless card. Fired it up today. Works great. If nothing else, it is an attention grabber.
Thanks, Caal’n. Love your work.
Huuuuuuge late 90s PC Pro magazine flashback! I remember thinking that there was no way computers could be any more compact than this!
Oh, 70CT was my daily driver for two years. Keyboard actually was a joy to use and with extended battery Toshiba became a great word processor. I miss this one.
Thanks for the video. Great audio capture.
I have this one too with the original packaging. Used to own the touch screen model as well, but sold afterwards.
A friend of mine had one of these back in the 90s and even then I can remember we all could see the limitations of what was possible in that form factor. It was VERY cool though.
I installed Windows 98 on so many of those at my college job. They used these as data acquisition devices out in the field. I'd all but forgotten about them, great to see these kind of unique products still out there.
I only ever worked on one of these in my support desk days. I loved the design and it had the first "mini"-dock you showed. In my case, it was used by an exec for the company and so it got a fair amount of use... until it took a tumble and the screen shattered. I performed the Win95-=>98 upgrade on it... via floppy and a backpack CD drive. Major kludge but worked, barely. Not a memorable but of hardware but always reminded me of the tiny Tandy portable computers (Model 100 I think). Not the fastest but built for the exact market it aimed for.
And 1200mah battery sounds so quaint. (Granted I know voltage was 10.8 there versus less on most cell phones these days, but still...)
To be honest, ive just found your channel and i really amazed with these old digitech things. Your narration and voice with the channel intro and visual reminds me like something discovery channel would do. How its made and sort of those show. Ive watched several interesting vids and planning to watch em all. Thumbs up for you!
I remember this guy... I desired one of them.... Never ended up getting one, even though I tried a few times to get one.... but, it was a cool device back the day...
It's been a long time, like 20 years, but IIRC, there is more than one model of libretto. I am almost certain there was a 90mhz version, which uses a 60 or 66mhz motherboard, which is faster than the 75, which uses a 50 mhz motherboard. But even the best ones were slow and junk and expensive. All the people who had them in my organization were all travelers. This was a big company you would have heard of. They loved technology. They were the best people I ever worked for as far as technology goes. Most corporations, especially privately owned LLCs and such didn't ever want to spend any money on technology. This company had all their sites networked together with high speed WAN and this was in the 90s when the only option was T-3 or ATM. We had a t1 connection from Philadelphia area to Phoenix Arizona. We had many terabytes of disk storage (in the 90s). Every PC had at least 80 megs of RAM.
I got one of these in the original box. Was used by a BT Employee in the UK (has BT asset tags all over it) Have the docks with it too. guess it made sense for an on the road engineer but no idea how they dealt with that battery.
The screen on mine is also failing in one corner sadly. but still love its funky design
My guess is charging in the van?
I sold a fair number of these during a stint at Circuit City. Students loved them at University and they would use a dock in their room to get keyboard, mouse, monitor rather than ruin their eyes staring into the tine monitors.
Later I had one that lived in my glove box with the smaller dock in case I needed to go onsite and log into a switch and didn't have a laptop with me.
Back in that period, I started my professional work life and was packing a Newton 2100 with 33,6 modem to check mail etc. Loved working with it, especially the assist function. Used together with a Nokia 9110i Communicator in case I had to get really mobile. *Chuckles*
I regret selling that Newton to this day.
I had one of these around 2000. I used it on the couch for IM, e-mail and a remote.
YES!!! I was hoping you’d cover this model!!
I own a 70CT. Best retro purchase ever.
I knew someone who had one, they used it to type up emails and documennts on the go, and when they got home synced it up with their PC and on their way the they went.
Nice vid Colin. Love these tiny machines you find. And the accessories as well!
Thanks for reviewing this! I'd thought about looking into these to add one to the collection.... I'm now a little more educated on these :)
I still have one of these, with the larger dock and palm-rest
Long time viewer. I really did your style, format and consistency. Keep up the great work!
"Honey, I shrunk the Laptop" - Oh, man, That is the most cringe yet satisfying Mid-90's Thing I've heard since a friend told me he "had to go drop the Cosby Kids off at the pool" earlier this week. Absolutely Delightful.
I had that laptop a long time ago; as a hand-me-down from my uncle when I was in elementary school.
Still wish it wasn’t thrown away when it stopped working.
Oh my. This reminds me of a tiny laptop I had in the color pink. This was about 40 years ago or more. I cannot remember where I bought it.
I recently found one of these on eBay in good condition. Told a friend about it and she bought it! It's so cool 😎
This is precious
I’ve honestly been waiting for this video since your first video I’ve seen, awesome as always Colin :)
Finally, now I can bring Lego Island with me wherever I go!
I have 2 110CT's (similar to this, but widescreen and faster 233 mhz), but both have dead screens. One of them had the screen die while I was in the middle of using it. Beware if you're looking for one of these used.
Really good screen for 1997.
That is such a cool old piece of tech 😀
I remember desperately wanting of those these as a teenager. So bad I cut out a cardboard box with exact measurements and drew on a screen!
Okay that song you played to test the audio was pretty jamming.
Missed opportunity by Toshiba to call it the 50cc
I have the 110CT. Got the docking station. For it that give it a USB port and several other ports, as well as an additional PCMCIA
This makes the Toshiba laptop I once had seem like a monster in comparison (and yes it had that "nub" you mentioned this one's missing).
It’s truly staggering how my M1 MacBook Air just absolutely blows thing this out of the water, yet this old laptop is just so freaking cool.
These are very sought after collectables as well for retro gaming. Once in a while they'll turn up with the battery still working.
Tiny early 2000-late90s laptops are too entertaining to listen about
I almost lost my frigging mind when that song kept going... ;)
Check out that Toshiba 300CT from the ad you showed. Widescreen? Wow! Hopefully you'll get a hold of one of those, too.
Did a video on this least beast a while back, but I was kinda impressed on how much was packed into the little thing vs the usual Windows CE based palm tops. But usability suffers without the dock or port replicator. So I see it was a beefy palm top vs a tiny laptop.
Although it can play a decent game of Doom 😁
It was actually fairly common in that era for the BIOS to be able to be modified from within DOS or Windows - I know many ThinkPads offered at least some BIOS customisation within Windows, and Dell did as well.
There is another quirk to the Libretto; if I remember correctly, everything from the 20CT through to the 110CT would not POST or even display anything on the screen without a good HDD being installed. They have survived pretty well for the most part though, despite being rare when new. The Japanese market got a whole host of different Libretto varieties, and the ff1100 line in particular is well worth a look if you can get one with all of the unique accessories it had.
Had a client many years ago that had one of these on one of the desks. Hilarious really as they had a network card in the PCMCIA slot, and external keyboard and mouse as well as an external monitor. Wires all over the place. I pointed out what a cable nightmare it was and got back a "yeah, but look how small it is" as a response.
That thing is neato! I used to have an old Mac Duo as a teen and always thought it was fantastic due to its small size, but they sure made em quite a bit smaller. Albeit less functional, but back then before wifi & higher speed internet than dial-up internet, we didnt really know what we were missing out on lol. LTT viewers would ask: but will it run crysis?? but I'd happily take it if it runs pong or tetris that I played as a kid lol
seing linus thought he likely would manage to break one of these with how often he drops stuff
Loving the gratuitous midi music segment!
"Honey, I shrunk the laptop"
Such topical marketing lol.
Oh man! I have one of these and I was going to send it to you to feature because you had covered so many smaller laptops. If you still want it let me know in DMs.
That's one sick little machine! for the power it actually holds- I'm honestly impressed. I'm surprised it didn't come with worse- It may work really good with 3.11. if everything might work- But for the price originally- we can all agree it should've been cheaper-
This was my dream machine when i was just starting as a system admin. Easy to carry around to troubleshoot issues with servers... but i never got one...
I had an Omnibook 530 back in the day and I thought that was small. Wish I still had it.
I'd still rock some Spacequest on that xD
Hey, I didn't know you could get a larger dock with more options. As an occasional use micro DOS machine with Windows 95, I really like my 50CT. Despite it's noted abundance of limitation and decaying plastics.
My first laptop was a 486 Compaq that had a similar setup for the mouse, although it used a trackball rather than that nub thingy. Really wasn't so bad once you got used to it. Of course, that laptop was also substantially larger than this little thing as well.
I had these. In fact, all three models that existed. They were notoriously slow, however.
I had one, and the lack of USB ports was a serious problem. You could of course add a USB 1.0 interface via trhe PCMCIA cards, but they were pretty flaky in 1997.
The only think I added via PCMCIA was a Modem card, and a 10base T Ethernet card.
Still for what it was at the time, it was an awesome little computer.
The issue with the bios settings in a control panel is hackers. If they get in they can muck around with your bios and get stuff really embedded.
As a kid this was everything I dreamed of.
I have two 70CT's, the exact same as the 50CT, but a little bit faster. I think they are great collectors items, even netbooks are big compared to the libretto's. Just don't expect to enjoy gaming on it with it's tiny keyboard. With some fine soldering, you can unlock some extra CPU speed. Replacing the drive with a CF card using an adapter, will make it dead silent.
You could create some tiny low-end pentium 1 setup by using the docking station and external monitor/keyboard/mouse/speakers.
I owned one of these with the limited dock. The lack of ports is annoying but it was a useful road warrior. I replaced it with an IBM Windows CE laptop which had it's own problems, but had as much expansion as this did. You could put a modem/ethernet card in either of these for communication on the road, Raspberry Pi type interfaces would be needed to make this useful today. The 640 by 480 display was acceptable due to small size. I liked the trackpoint and back button arrangement. Agree battery life was pathetic.
i used to have the Olivetti Quaderno, properly tiny XT class mono pc
and a compaq that had a trackball in the lid.
I saw one of those in the wild, they were gorgeous, I really wanted one but alas no money.
Very cute machine. Nice Video as always ;)
I miss my Libretto. It was stolen long before I tired of it.
Road Warrior "Pocket EDC" in the late 90's, oh except for the battery, that is
cute smol laptop
Saw one of these in a Computer City store. Amazingly compact but just too small.
Me: “Wow, I’m old enough to remember when this retro notebook came out! We sold it at CompUSA.”
Wife: “Not only old enough to remember, but be working!”
Me: “Thanks for that…”
I have a late production Libretto 50CT and when I received it I was puzzled why there's a Pentium MMX sticker instead of the normal Pentium sticker. Turned out towards the end of the 50CT production run Intel had already stopped making the 75mhz Pentium so Toshiba actually used 120mhz Pentium MMX and *underclocked* it back to 75mhz, a popular mod back then was to open the thing up and solder a few wires to get it back up to the 120mhz speed.