Magitronic "Multimedia Notebook PC" Model 600

[[Chris]]

Recently got this from my workplace for $5. As we were liquidating our inventory of various props, including several vintage laptops (they all went to happy new homes thankfully instead of being recycled), I noticed this one sported a Magitronic logo (mainly the reason why I got it as i have a Focus FK-2001 keyboard with the Magitronic logo on it).

After a bit of effort, and using a trusty ASUS power adapter I had laying around, it came to life, and it has seen better days. Sports a 133MHz Pentium, 256k external cache, 8MB of memory, and a 2GB Toshiba HDD. The floppy drive has issues (won't read any floppies and will just error even though the indicator light shows it tries to read the disks), and the optical drive is stuck. Runs Windows 95 and probably manufactured by Compal. It has a generic model number of 600. Battery is a Duracell DR36 and still holds about 15 minutes of a charge.last

For sound, it has an OPTi 930 with a Roland MPU-401 compatible chipset (it also has its own FM syntesizer for midi). Native resolution on the LCD is 800 x 600.

 

[LiqMatrix]

"95 RAVER'S MEGAMIX" = dance club memories come flooding back. :danceparty:

 

[TH2002]

Love collecting systems like this!

The CD-ROM and floppy drives not working is a bummer, though with systems this old that's something to expect. Hopefully you can get those drives working, if not maybe replace them or just use external drives. Still, great find! (especially for so cheap, vintage laptops on sites like eBay are ridiculously expensive nowadays)

 

[[Chris]]

Love collecting systems like this!

The CD-ROM and floppy drives not working is a bummer, though with systems this old that's something to expect. Hopefully you can get those drives working, if not maybe replace them or just use external drives. Still, great find! (especially for so cheap, vintage laptops on sites like eBay are ridiculously expensive nowadays)

I just hope I can find a replacement LCD panel as this one has serious light bleed. I'm tempted to get the battery rebuilt.

 

[DeltaDon]

I just hope I can find a replacement LCD panel as this one has serious light bleed. I'm tempted to get the battery rebuilt.

Chris,

As my signature says, I've got a lot of P1 laptops and parts stored in the basement. If you can, post the brand floppy and CD and I'll see if I have any spares in my hoard. Also, what size is the LCD? It looks to be a dual scan with the brightness/contrast cranked up too high, but most dual scan LCD's suffer from some form of visual quality. The best were the ones used by Alphatop, almost as good as TFT's, and some of the worse dual scan LCD's were the Panasonic's used by Chicony before they dropped out of making laptops.

Don

 

[TH2002]

Chris,

As my signature says, I've got a lot of P1 laptops and parts stored in the basement. If you can, post the brand floppy and CD and I'll see if I have any spares in my hoard. Also, what size is the LCD? It looks to be a dual scan with the brightness/contrast cranked up too high, but most dual scan LCD's suffer from some form of visual quality. The best were the ones used by Alphatop, almost as good as TFT's, and some of the worse dual scan LCD's were the Panasonic's used by Chicony before they dropped out of making laptops.

Don

I myself need a new CD-ROM drive for my Toshiba Tecra 500CDT (since all mine does is make concerning noises and fail to read any disks). Got a Toshiba XM-1402B?

 

[[Chris]]

Love collecting systems like this!

The CD-ROM and floppy drives not working is a bummer, though with systems this old that's something to expect. Hopefully you can get those drives working, if not maybe replace them or just use external drives. Still, great find! (especially for so cheap, vintage laptops on sites like eBay are ridiculously expensive nowadays)

Fixed the CD-ROM, I just needed to realign the lever responsible for the CD-ROM mechanism, that fixed it. The floppy drive needs a new belt.

I myself need a new CD-ROM drive for my Toshiba Tecra 500CDT (since all mine does is make concerning noises and fail to read any disks). Got a Toshiba XM-1402B?

The CD-ROM drive on the Magitronic is in fact a Toshiba XM-1402B. Has a DOM of June 1996

 

[TH2002]

Fixed the CD-ROM, I just needed to realign the lever responsible for the CD-ROM mechanism, that fixed it. The floppy drive needs a new belt.

The CD-ROM drive on the Magitronic is in fact a Toshiba XM-1402B. Has a DOM of June 1996

Good to know you got the CD-ROM drive working and the floppy drive shouldn't be too difficult to fix. Also interesting that the CD-R drive is the exact same type as the one in my Tecra 500CDT, presumably the only difference being the bezel is a different color. Guessing Toshiba offered that drive model to other manufacturers as an off-the-shelf component.

The XM-1402B in my Tecra 500CDT was working at first, now while it still spins it makes concerning noises and won't read any disks. Conveniently failed the same day I was going to reinstall Windows 95 on that computer...

 

[[Chris]]

Good to know you got the CD-ROM drive working and the floppy drive shouldn't be too difficult to fix. Also interesting that the CD-R drive is the exact same type as the one in my Tecra 500CDT, presumably the only difference being the bezel is a different color. Guessing Toshiba offered that drive model to other manufacturers as an off-the-shelf component.

The XM-1402B in my Tecra 500CDT was working at first, now while it still spins it makes concerning noises and won't read any disks. Conveniently failed the same day I was going to reinstall Windows 95 on that computer...

The floppy drive on the other hand, I was surprised it was a belt drive unlike a direct drive i've seen on others. It's a Mitsumi D353F2. The belt was stretched out like no tomorrow.

 

[TH2002]

The floppy drive on the other hand, I was surprised it was a belt drive unlike a direct drive i've seen on others. It's a Mitsumi D353F2. The belt was stretched out like no tomorrow.

That does happen with belt drives. Indeed surprising that it is a belt drive at all, by then most floppy drives (especially those in laptops) used direct drives.

As for the LCD, what is the screen type? I've seen light bleed on many older laptop LCD's, for some reason a lot of IBM ThinkPads seem to have that issue as well. I even have a Compudyne laptop where the screen contrast changes based on the display's temperature... it uses FSTN, not sure if that issue is due to age or the type of screen used.

 

[DeltaDon]

Couldn't find any Toshiba CD or floppy drives so far. I didn't do much work on Toshiba laptops (couldn't get factory parts). Mitsumi floppies are something that I have worked with, don't know if I have that model. IIRC, they had models with connectors on the right or on the left and maybe also long and short length drives too. Panasonic/Citizen had smaller drives than most. PITA to replace a drive unless exact since ribbon cables needed to reach the correct side of the drive. Plus with or without a custom face plate. Not like PC desktops that most used std. faceplates and IDE cables.

New belts can be had on eBay for a few bucks for 50-100 belts of various sizes.

 

[[Chris]]

Chris,

As my signature says, I've got a lot of P1 laptops and parts stored in the basement. If you can, post the brand floppy and CD and I'll see if I have any spares in my hoard. Also, what size is the LCD? It looks to be a dual scan with the brightness/contrast cranked up too high, but most dual scan LCD's suffer from some form of visual quality. The best were the ones used by Alphatop, almost as good as TFT's, and some of the worse dual scan LCD's were the Panasonic's used by Chicony before they dropped out of making laptops.

Don

I was able to find a replacement panel for $20, it's a 74H0740. The weird part is, the laptop has contrast controls, which would suggest an STN panel, yet those controls do nothing at all, only the brightness controls actually do something. It's a 12.1"



Turns out the RAM module is actually a 16MB EDO module, which disables the on-board 8MB of ram.

I did a little digging and at least based on the battery it uses (or maybe just a coincidence?), seems to be manufactured by Clevo.

That does happen with belt drives. Indeed surprising that it is a belt drive at all, by then most floppy drives (especially those in laptops) used direct drives.

As for the LCD, what is the screen type? I've seen light bleed on many older laptop LCD's, for some reason a lot of IBM ThinkPads seem to have that issue as well. I even have a Compudyne laptop where the screen contrast changes based on the display's temperature... it uses FSTN, not sure if that issue is due to age or the type of screen used.

Oddly enough the part number for that LCD panel suggests it was used in IBM laptops (even the listing I got the replacement panel from clearly indicates its from an IBM laptop). Check out the obvious IBM marking on one of the boards, "IBM 12J":

 

[DeltaDon]

Perhaps someone replaced the original LCD with the IBM one presently installed. That could explain the contrast adjustment. Lot's of bad things happen to LCD's and you might not be the first one in there.

Duracell 36 battery was an off the shelf battery that Duracell was pushing on ODM's to be used as a universal battery. That didn't work out very well.

Clevo is still in business and has (had) a service center in California, but will have zero support for anything that old. I used to purchase parts from them some dozen years ago. Prostar, Eurocomm, Sager and Alienware are a few of the brands selling or have sold Clevo machines of late. You might try looking in the wayback machine for early Clevo website listings. You might need to search for clevo.tw vs .com to get much.

 

[[Chris]]

Perhaps someone replaced the original LCD with the IBM one presently installed. That could explain the contrast adjustment. Lot's of bad things happen to LCD's and you might not be the first one in there.

Duracell 36 battery was an off the shelf battery that Duracell was pushing on ODM's to be used as a universal battery. That didn't work out very well.

Clevo is still in business and has (had) a service center in California, but will have zero support for anything that old. I used to purchase parts from them some dozen years ago. Prostar, Eurocomm, Sager and Alienware are a few of the brands selling or have sold Clevo machines of late. You might try looking in the wayback machine for early Clevo website listings. You might need to search for clevo.tw vs .com to get much.

Oddly enough, I just found out the Magitronic uses the same exact LCD panel as my Monorail, it even works with it installed.

 

[[Chris]]

So the original HDD died, and I replaced it with a 4GB CF card. This required reinstalling Windows 95 from scratch though and since the floppy drive was unusable, ended up going this route. Only thing left to resolve is loading the correct OPTi 930 and OPL3 drivers (the drivers i find online makes it show as a "SoundBlaster Pro" and the MIDI part doesn't correctly show as an OPL3, which causes weird issues to happen).

 

[[Chris]]

And now i've got it running again and very satisfied with the results!