GRiD 286 Vintage laptop

[Deskproff]

Hi All,
I couldn’t find any information online about this type of GRiD 286 laptop. It looks like a Toshiba T3100/20 of T3200 but it really is branded as a GRiD 286 computer. Is there anyone with more information?

 

[Conventional Memories]

Hi, welcome to the forum.

I have one of these as well, but I've never seen another one. Mine is only 59 higher in serial number. I don't think many of these were made. What you have is actually a rebranded Toshiba T3100 Everything is exactly the same as a standard Toshiba T3100 apart from the labelling on the case and the colour of the case.

What's very interesting about this is that GRiD never rebranded any other machine until they were bought by Tandy.

Announced April 9th 1987 and I think discontinued only a couple of weeks later due to the new US sanctions on Japanese chipmakers.

Here are some articles:

April 9, 1987
GRID OWN-LABELS TOSHIBA T3100
By CBR Staff Writer
Grid Systems Inc is marketing the Toshiba T3100 portable AT-alike as the Grid286. It costs $3,850 with 80 by 25 plasma display, 640Kb CPU, 10Mb Winchester and 720Kb floppy.

source: InfoWorld 13 Apr 1987


April 13, 1987
GRID286 ENHANCED VERSION OF T3100
By CBR Staff Writer
What’s the difference between buying a T3100 portable AT-alike from Toshiba and buying the same machine with a label saying Grid286 on it from Grid Systems Inc, Mountain View? There’s simply no comparison – We have taken the basic T3100 machine and enhanced it through the addition of software, training, support services and a business philosophy that puts customer needs first, says the company’s president John Morgridge: these value-added segments are integral parts of a Grid laptop computer system.

 

[Conventional Memories]

Here are some pictures of mine, as you can see the tracking number difference is only 59. I wonder how many were actually made before they were discontinued.


@Deskproff , Is there any software on yours?
Mine came with a bad HDD, but I'd love to find some of that Grid software they talked about in their marketing.

 

[3lectr1c]

You're probably going to want to recap that, I'm pretty sure the T3100s have a whole bunch of caps in the power supply that go bad and leak sludge.

 

[Deskproff]

@Conventional Memories
Very cool! Thanks for all the info. There is MSdos 3.20 installed on this laptop, with 3 additional programs:
Display write 4, a kind of MS word.
Then there is Lotus, kind of MS excel. And last program is checkbox plus, a database program.

 

[Conventional Memories]

You're probably going to want to recap that, I'm pretty sure the T3100s have a whole bunch of caps in the power supply that go bad and leak sludge.

Not really in my experience the T3100 is a very reliable machine. I have about 5 in my collection and haven't had a single PSU issue. It's mainly some of the later Toshiba models that suffer from bad caps, like the T3100sx for example.

Some common problems with the T3100 are the 20MB HDD in the /20 models. They are very unreliable compared to the 10mb hdd in the original T3100

And then there's the lines in the plasma display. This is a very common issue on the T3100. It's caused by the driver IC's corroding on the back of the PDP.
Although very hard it is possible to repair if you can find the IC'S or have a donor panel.
A better solution would be to swap in a later PDP display like the one used in the T3100e those don't have the same issue.

 

[3lectr1c]

Ah it's the sx that has power supply issues? I'm not fully aware of the differences between them all. Is there a good resource that breaks that down? I just know that Toshiba used ELNA caps in a lot of their computers, and ELNA caps make a mess.
Is the IC corrosion internal, or is it possible to clean and resolder the old ones? I do tend to see more "bad" plasma panels with these sort of issues than good ones when they show up online unfortunately...

 

[Conventional Memories]

Ah it's the sx that has power supply issues? I'm not fully aware of the differences between them all. Is there a good resource that breaks that down? I just know that Toshiba used ELNA caps in a lot of their computers, and ELNA caps make a mess.
Is the IC corrosion internal, or is it possible to clean and resolder the old ones? I do tend to see more "bad" plasma panels with these sort of issues than good ones when they show up online unfortunately...

I don't think there's a clear list of al the models. But from what I have learned collecting Toshibas these are the models that have those unreliable PSU's with the leaking caps. I tend to call the issue the "red light of dead" because most of the time even after a recap the red power led will keep blinking without turning on.

Unaffected: T1000, T1100, T1100+, T2100, T3100, T3100e, T3200, T3200sx, T3200sxc, T5100, T5200, T5200c
(of course some of these have other non psu related problems)

PSU problems: T1200, T1600, T3100sx, T1000le, T1000se, T1000xe, T2000, T2000sx, T1200xe

As a rule of thumb you could say that all the models with a user replaceable battery are affected by this.

Thom aka Fust reverse engineered the T1600 PSU and made a troubleshooting guide.
The power supplies are all similar enough that you could use this for most of the models

GitHub - fust/T1600-PSU: Schematic and troubleshooting guide for the Toshiba T1600 Power Supply board (PSU)

Schematic and troubleshooting guide for the Toshiba T1600 Power Supply board (PSU) - GitHub - fust/T1600-PSU: Schematic and troubleshooting guide for the Toshiba T1600 Power Supply board (PSU)

github.com

 

[Conventional Memories]

Is the IC corrosion internal, or is it possible to clean and resolder the old ones? I do tend to see more "bad" plasma panels with these sort of issues than good ones when they show up online unfortunately...

found some pictures of the last T3100 display I worked on.

As you can see the corrosion is very bad on this one, the legs just fall off when you clean them. so this one required a lot of new IC's from another PDP with cracked glass.

If it's just a couple of lines then you can clean them up most of the time. In the case of OP's grid, That one is not too far gone I think. But it would require a lot of work.
one of the problems with working on them is that they are directly soldered to the flexible pcb that's bonded to the panel. so you have to be very careful not to use to much heat or you'll start to delaminate the flex pcb.

when looking at listings online I would try to avoid anything with more then 10 bad lines. unless they are all grouped together then it's probably just a single driver IC.

This corrosion I have have only seen on very early PDP displays by Matsushita (panasonic), I think it was probably only the very first generation of PDP portables. I've seen it on: T3100 T2100, Victor V286P CGA and Ericsson Portable PC. But I assume other first gen PDP pc's like the Panasonic Executive Partner have the same issue.

I don't know exactly what causes this but I think it's moisture that gets absorbed into the glue they used to attach the IC's to the flex pcb.

Some later panels can also have bad lines but it's usually just a couple, and they can be fixed more easily because they don't corrode as badly. It's often just a single line caused by a loose pin or bad solder.

 

[3lectr1c]

Dang you're right, those don't look great at all. Interesting. Good info!

 

[shawnerz]

You're probably going to want to recap that, I'm pretty sure the T3100s have a whole bunch of caps in the power supply that go bad and leak sludge.

Mouser has made a few dollars of of me. I've recapped 3, T3200's. Both the power supply and the display board. I used a T3100 as cheap parts donor for the T3200.