Really cool! Almost never saw sub-notebooks in the wild back then. It's apparent how janky the touchpad/button combo would be for everyday use and probably even the engineers knew too. But it didn't matter. These products were all about how small you could build a "real" PC. Nobody else in the world could do this at the time. Japan showing off a bit!

@techdistractions

5 күн бұрын

The manual explains how to “roll” on the touchpad, like I do in Virtual Pool to create enough runway to move the mouse cursor. It reminds me of how you pick up and drop a mouse if you run out of room.. I remember being absolutely gobsmacked when this japanese businesswoman brought a Toshiba Libretto FF1100 in to the workshop in late 1999. It has this translucent case and a wired remote to control music and it could text to speech email. I remember swapping a motherboard on it and just being amazed on what they could cram jn there. It looked almost fake

Hey! It has scaling! Windows logo on boot is at 320x200, but it shows it similar to MS DOS display size. That means it does integer scaling! When you can double the pixels, it will do it. For many, this is exactly the ideal behavior of scaling on lcd. ;) Edit: later dos software also shows integer scaling. They are 2x scaled.

@techdistractions

5 күн бұрын

Yes, in some resolutions it will double but not all. For example 400x300 (HSVGA) does not double and fill the screen. My point (perhaps not well made) was I’d actually prefer the chunky “stretch to fit” that was common with laptops. Yes, it’s not the ideal way to do it but it sure beats squinting :-) I’d like the option to have been there in some way.

I wonder if there's a secret button combination that will let you expand to full screen scaling, might be worth trying different combinations as this has worked for me before!

@techdistractions

4 күн бұрын

Yep have tried the lot :-) I even looked for potential register settings but I dont believe there’s a way to do it. I noted on the later models they also had no ability to “scale to fit” either

Idk much about Australia, but what I can tell you is this. I worked damn hard wearing the top of my unit, and I’d do it all again… 28 seconds at a time! 😂

I would Love to find a Small Pentium 90 or 486 100 like I used to carry around, but smaller like this. I had a small P2 or 3 VIO years ago, but Its been lost to the trash over time The Book 386 is cool, but so limited, this is a major upgrade lol

@techdistractions

5 күн бұрын

they're becoming a bit harder to find thesedays thats for sure!

How does it compare to Toshiba Libretto? They seem similar size, but to my eye it seems that Librettos better specked, and got impressive expand-ability, especially in later models.

@techdistractions

4 күн бұрын

The Libretto 100CT is a good comparison, released around the same time. I concur with your statement above, all around the Toshiba was the better unit, at-least in my memory. The Casio keyboard, screen resolution and quality is a bit better (scale-to-fit issue aside). I’ll need to circle back later regarding battery life but I remember my 100CT lasting about an hour and a half - just under my daily commute. That was on the standard battery. One last thing about Libretto, many were sold in Australia and I barely saw any in the workshop (we were one of 2 authorised repair depots in sydney) when we did it was usually due to customer damage