Joe Studholme (04/30/91)
Hi. I just bought myself a T1000 laptop. "Why?", I hear you asking. "$275" I answer. However, this bargain price did not include frills like a user manual, so I have a few questions... Q. What is the battery life on this thing? How long do I need to charge it, while it's on/while it's off? I'm taking the precaution of 'burning in' on my first charge for 24 hours; hope this doesn't bother the NiCad battery which I suspect is inside. Q. Where is the battery? It doesn't seem to be the type which you can remove. Does one plug a spare battery into one of the many cryptic ports in this thing? Q. Where can I find the fabled "768K memory expansion", which I am told is must-have accessory (it can act as a RAM disk, I guess - does it have a low power mode so that the data survives while the power is off?) Q. How about the modem? *Is* there some internal modem for this thing? What does it weigh? Am I better off just dragging my Zoom 2400 box around? Q. Software. The screen is CGA, right? (well, without the color...<grin>) Is there a good, small comm program I can use that will let me dial up my friendly neighborhood Unix host and do VT100 with it? I realize I ask a lot of questions for someone from New Jersey. However, any help would be much appreciated. -Joe Studholme joes@phoenix.princeton.edu
zlraa@marlin.jcu.edu.au (Ross Alford) (04/30/91)
In <8853@idunno.Princeton.EDU> Joe Studholme writes: > I just bought myself a T1000 laptop. "Why?", I hear you asking. "$275" I >answer. However, this bargain price did not include frills like a user manual, >so I have a few questions... > Q. What is the battery life on this thing? How long do I need to charge it, >while it's on/while it's off? I'm taking the precaution of 'burning in' on my >first charge for 24 hours; hope this doesn't bother the NiCad battery which I >suspect is inside. Battery lasts between 2-4 hours, depending on disk use, RS232, how good the battery is. Charges for about 14 hours after complete discharge. > Q. Where is the battery? It doesn't seem to be the type which you can remove. >Does one plug a spare battery into one of the many cryptic ports in this thing? The battery is actually a wired-up set of sub-C cells buried in the guts of the thing. Requires disassembly to get at it. Can with a bit of fiddling be replaced with a set of full-sized C-cell nicads, increasing battery life to about 12 hours (!). I haven't done this, but there was a short article in the last year of Micro Cornucopia on how to do it. > Q. Where can I find the fabled "768K memory expansion", which I am told is >must-have accessory (it can act as a RAM disk, I guess - does it have a low >power mode so that the data survives while the power is off?) Can't say where to get it. It does stay on when the machine is off. > Q. Software. The screen is CGA, right? (well, without the color...<grin>) Is >there a good, small comm program I can use that will let me dial up my friendly >neighborhood Unix host and do VT100 with it? Just the other day I got what must be the champion in this category--on SIMTEL20, in the MSDOS.MODEM directory, is DGTERM.ARC. This comm program is only about 10k in size, loads as a TSR that takes up 24k, emulates a VT100 quite well (I haven't found any problems yet), and does xmodem and Ymodem/batch file transfers. So far, complete magic. (When I say no problems, now that I think about it, there does seem to be one--the arrow keys don't emulate VT100 arrow keys. I use hjkl in vi anyway, so this doesn't bother me.) Ross -- Ross A. Alford Department of Zoology Internet: zlraa@marlin.jcu.edu.au James Cook University Phone: +61 77 81 4732 Townsville, Qld 4811 Australia
tnaa7@isuvax.iastate.edu (Steven M. Knapp) (05/08/91)
In article <8853@idunno.Princeton.EDU>, Joe Studholme writes: >Hi. > > I just bought myself a T1000 laptop. "Why?", I hear you asking. "$275" I >answer. However, this bargain price did not include frills like a user manual, >so I have a few questions... > > Q. What is the battery life on this thing? How long do I need to charge it, >while it's on/while it's off? I'm taking the precaution of 'burning in' on my >first charge for 24 hours; hope this doesn't bother the NiCad battery which I >suspect is inside. 5hrs on a T1000 is what I remember > > Q. Where is the battery? It doesn't seem to be the type which you can remove. >Does one plug a spare battery into one of the many cryptic ports in this thing? > Inside.....internal.... > Q. Where can I find the fabled "768K memory expansion", which I am told is >must-have accessory (it can act as a RAM disk, I guess - does it have a low >power mode so that the data survives while the power is off?) > ELEK-TEK (home of the helpful salesperson :>) still even sells the system unit as well as the RAM card Yes, I believe it is HARDRAM Toshiba's ramdisk. > Q. How about the modem? *Is* there some internal modem for this thing? What >does it weigh? Am I better off just dragging my Zoom 2400 box around? > It takes the original toshiba internal modems right...the real cheep ones...the standard that they did not keep for my T1000SE(for which internal modems are real expensive) > Q. Software. The screen is CGA, right? (well, without the color...<grin>) Is >there a good, small comm program I can use that will let me dial up my friendly >neighborhood Unix host and do VT100 with it? I use telix, tho kermit(public domain) will also do VT100 enulation.... BTW: telix occasionally messes up its emulation, doing weird things to the screen. sTEVE
jerry@wrs.com (Jerry Fiddler) (05/10/91)
In article <8853@idunno.Princeton.EDU> joes@phoenix.princeton.edu writes: >Hi. > > I just bought myself a T1000 laptop. "Why?", I hear you asking. "$275" I I have one, and I like it fine as a portable, except that the screen is horrible in airplane lighting and its kind of big. But I still use it and carry it ALOT. > Q. What is the battery life on this thing? How long do I need to charge it, >while it's on/while it's off? I'm taking the precaution of 'burning in' on my >first charge for 24 hours; hope this doesn't bother the NiCad battery which I >suspect is inside. Like any NiCad, drain it completely before recharging it. I think it takes about six hours to charge completely, but 24 won't hurt it. Battery life is 4-5 hours - a bit less if you use the floppy much. > Q. Where is the battery? It doesn't seem to be the type which you can remove. >Does one plug a spare battery into one of the many cryptic ports in this thing? It's inside, and you can't replace it. > Q. Where can I find the fabled "768K memory expansion", which I am told is >must-have accessory (it can act as a RAM disk, I guess - does it have a low >power mode so that the data survives while the power is off?) It IS a "must-have". It can be configured in various ways - as EMS memory, as RAM disk, or as a combination of the above. The usual is to devote 126K of it to bring main memory up to 640K (from 512K) and use the rest as a RAM-Disk. And yes, it is nonvolatile, unless your battery goes dead. I got mine from the dealer when I bought it, but I have no idea if its still available. > Q. How about the modem? *Is* there some internal modem for this thing? What >does it weigh? Am I better off just dragging my Zoom 2400 box around? Yes, there are several available, including one from Toshiba, unless they have been discontinued by now. Just flip through Computer Shopper. However, any internal modem reduces the battery life by at least 30 minutes WHETHER YOU USE IT OR NOT! Therefore, I use a Bell 2400 baud pocket modem. It only uses battery when I plug it in. This is important to me cause I do a lot of long plane flights, and I use the 4-5 hour battery life to the max. > Q. Software. The screen is CGA, right? (well, without the color...<grin>) Is Yes. >Is there a good, small comm program I can use that will let me dial up my >friendly neighborhood Unix host and do VT100 with it? I use Microsoft Works for most everything. Its got a word processor, spreadsheet, comm package, and database, all available from a common shell. They're all very wimpy, but entirely adequate for what I usually do with my laptop. It all fits into the RAM-disk, which is really convenient. The comm program, though, is pretty slow, so I sometimes use Pro-Comm 2 if I'm logging on for a long time. The works comm program has vt100, but its far from perfect. Pro-comm 2 emulates everything. Good luck. -- Jerry Fiddler Wind River Systems jerry@wrs.COM uunet!wrs!jerry