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486 or pentium laptop

Y

Yzzerdd

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 20, 2006
Messages
1,292
Location
Boston, MA
looking for a 486(prefered) or Pentium laptop. Preferebly with built in floppy or cd. Or external will do fine too. Also would like a working battery, I don't really want to go shopping for one again anytime soon. Needs to be in overall good condition, and I would much rather buy from someone who is a reputable member on the forums.

--Ryan
 
486 is right on the border and pentium is over the line for Vintage. Moved to a better spot.

-VK
 
oops, that's right. I forgot pentium is still not vintage. No matter, theres still hope!

--Ryan
 
i have a 486 laptop laying around somewhere but unfortunately its missing the battery, and more importantly, doesn't boot :/

sorry, if it worked i'd help you out.
 
Sorry, just gave one away!

Sorry, just gave one away!

Sorry, Yzzerdd, I just gave one away!

It was IBM Thinkpad 486 with 48 M ram, ran Win 95 plus Office 95 pretty well. Had a tiny screen though... don't recall the model.
 
Well im new here, but i do have a working Pentium 133 laptop, 8mb Ram, Windows 98SE, 1gb HD and a floopy disk. I do not know the model, as who ever owned it before me painted the case. Battery life is about 5 minutes on a full charge.
 
I've already found a nice one one eBay, but thanks anyway. I have a '97 Toshiba Satellite Pro 235CDS(long name!) in near mint condition. There is ONE tiny scratch on the top of the case. It has built in good speaker, nice screen, and "select bay." Select bas means that wit the flick of a switch, I can make the computer go from having an internal CD and an external floppy, or just an internal floppy(CD won't work in external floppy casing). That is really neat, because when I travel, and I need a floppy drive, but not CD, I can just switch the drives, and not ahve to lug around an external floppy drive, if for instance, the drive was pernamently placed. The thing works like a charm. The battery lasts a good hour and a half, on a full charge. It even has infrared, that Windows 98SE concognized. But, I took Windows 98 off the thing. I want to leave it primarily a DOS laptop(6.22) with windows 3.1x. I am waiting for 3.11 in the mail. I have also had thoughts about putting DamnSmallLinux on it, though, as it meets the requirements. One last cool feature, before I have to go: I mentioned it has an external floppy, right? Well that uses some proprietary interface Toshiba built in. Well, luckily, Toshina thought ahead, and decided people might put different O/Ses on it. No special drivers are needed for the external floppy, or for the CD. When the floppy drive plugs in, The BIOS just tells the computer an A: drive was added. DOS doesn't even have a problem with it! Although, for DOS and Windows, I had to add a CD driver(off Toshiba website, for both) and a sound driver(for Windows). But that installation is taken off, 'cause I had to redo the computer when I took '98 off it. Silly me, when '98 asked me if I wanted to include the "uninstall" feature on Windows, I said no...

Pictures to come!

--Ryan
 
Old Compaq Pentium laptop

Old Compaq Pentium laptop

So, I've got an old Compaq LTE 5100 pentium (I think a 90mhz) sitting in my basement, with a couple extra 1.2gb hard drives, cd-rom, 32mb RAM (maybe 64, can't remember), 3.5 floppy, and the expansion/docking station. It works, was gifted to me by EDS (my old employer), and I pilfered as many extras as I could at the time. Used it mainly to surf the net way back in '00, but haven't used it since. Is this thing even worth holding onto?

I really have no business on this site... I'm a beancounter, not a techie. Obviously, I've determined that it's not a vintage computer (yep, read thru prior posts before jumping in here). What do you guys think, since y'all are the experts. :confused:
 
My personal opinion would say it's not worth much if anything right now. You may be able to sell it for $45 or under $100 to someone that just wants a laptop to play with or some expendable hardware for other tests or programming but general worth right now is low. Now you're question on things to hold on to, I'd still suggest it's probably not worth holding on to (hopefully some others will reply and give you more feedback) however on a technicality *anything* will be collectible if you hold on to it long enough. So if for some strange reason you hold on to the 90Mhz laptop for 20 more years, then sure it may be of some value although you have to consider how many others there are in working condition at that time.

Now keep in mind someone asking "Should I hold onto my Kim-1 is it worth anything?" in 1987 would have probably seen a similar result although it did have a slightly more historically significant role in the industry. Same goes for Apple offering folks with the very limited Apple-1 an upgrade/trade-in to the much more functional Apple II. At the time the Apple-1 wasn't worth much and Apple threw most of their stock away (or gave it to employees with the promise that Jobs wouldn't ever see it again) and now of course their worth more than most of us here can afford. The common laptop won't skyrocket like but it wouldn't be nice if I didn't atleast tell you both sides of the collectible story.

- John
 
While not exactly vintage, a functional laptop of any kind is of some interest to some folks here, but as you've already suspected, you won't put your kids thru college with the proceeds. OTOH, eBay is a seller's market this time of year, so you might do better offering it there. Just make the listing as detailed as possible, and include lots of pictures, especially screen shots with it running.

--T
 
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