Reviving the Toshiba Tecra 8100+Other Stuff
This example of a Tecra 8100 suffered from the same long-standing problem alot of Toshiba laptops from this era suffer from: the power jack either breaks free from the solder joints, or breaks the PCB entirely. Fortunately, just the solder was broken in this case, so it was easy enough to fix. I don't quite understand why and how Toshiba managed to screw up with the soldering of the power jacks, and it really makes you question the overall build quality of the motherboard. I've never seen one outright fail from broken solder, but that isn't to say examples aren't out there. This is the reason that I always recommend to people looking for vintage Toshiba laptops, either get the ones that have the internal power supplies (and thus only need the two-pin boombox-style power cord and aren't nearly as easy to break), or make sure you can put the power supply near the computer so as to minimize the stress on the power connector. The last time I looked in-depth at the stereo setup,the Dell Latitude CPx was the music computer. Nothing happened to the Dell itself, but when I started doing live streams and really testing the audio output, I noticed that it was incredibly dirty and filled with hash, so bad that you could hear it over quiet music. Thus I had to quickly find a replacement, which came in the form of the T500. Given I needed to find a more permanent replacement (I need the T500 for other things), reviving this Tecra seemed like the obvious solution, and that it was. I don't understand it at all, but this PIII 500-based system is running the Mixxx software (DJ program I use to play music) far better than the Dell with it's PIII 750. What's more is that Dell specifies the CPU in that CPx to be a 1.2 GHz model. Perhaps it has to do with the difference in RAM (512 MB in the Tecra as opposed to 256 MB in the Dell), or the OS (XP vs 2000), but it's still rather odd. For those that managed to read down this far (and THANK YOU for reading the video description!), and are potentially wondering about my live streaming activities, I do have a live radio-like show, during which I play music, tell stories, have lights go out, and swear at equipment when it doesn't work. I do have a regular weekly (or at least bi-weekly) show that is announced on here, but most shows will be announced through the Stereo Dust Particles forum under the "No Lights Radio" requests section. Any links you need to have are listed below. http://www.stereodustparticles.com/forum http://www.ustream.tv/channel/low-end-radio http://firealarms.redbat.ca/stream And yes, I am well aware that XP is out of support. So is Windows NT 4, and yet I still use that, sometimes it's even online too! This system will not be running Linux, and there will be no push-back accepted against this. I have other systems that run Linux, and this particular setup works. So don't bother asking me to try Linux on this, because it won't happen.
This example of a Tecra 8100 suffered from the same long-standing problem alot of Toshiba laptops from this era suffer from: the power jack either breaks free from the solder joints, or breaks the PCB entirely. Fortunately, just the solder was broken in this case, so it was easy enough to fix. I don't quite understand why and how Toshiba managed to screw up with the soldering of the power jacks, and it really makes you question the overall build quality of the motherboard. I've never seen one outright fail from broken solder, but that isn't to say examples aren't out there. This is the reason that I always recommend to people looking for vintage Toshiba laptops, either get the ones that have the internal power supplies (and thus only need the two-pin boombox-style power cord and aren't nearly as easy to break), or make sure you can put the power supply near the computer so as to minimize the stress on the power connector. The last time I looked in-depth at the stereo setup,the Dell Latitude CPx was the music computer. Nothing happened to the Dell itself, but when I started doing live streams and really testing the audio output, I noticed that it was incredibly dirty and filled with hash, so bad that you could hear it over quiet music. Thus I had to quickly find a replacement, which came in the form of the T500. Given I needed to find a more permanent replacement (I need the T500 for other things), reviving this Tecra seemed like the obvious solution, and that it was. I don't understand it at all, but this PIII 500-based system is running the Mixxx software (DJ program I use to play music) far better than the Dell with it's PIII 750. What's more is that Dell specifies the CPU in that CPx to be a 1.2 GHz model. Perhaps it has to do with the difference in RAM (512 MB in the Tecra as opposed to 256 MB in the Dell), or the OS (XP vs 2000), but it's still rather odd. For those that managed to read down this far (and THANK YOU for reading the video description!), and are potentially wondering about my live streaming activities, I do have a live radio-like show, during which I play music, tell stories, have lights go out, and swear at equipment when it doesn't work. I do have a regular weekly (or at least bi-weekly) show that is announced on here, but most shows will be announced through the Stereo Dust Particles forum under the "No Lights Radio" requests section. Any links you need to have are listed below. http://www.stereodustparticles.com/forum http://www.ustream.tv/channel/low-end-radio http://firealarms.redbat.ca/stream And yes, I am well aware that XP is out of support. So is Windows NT 4, and yet I still use that, sometimes it's even online too! This system will not be running Linux, and there will be no push-back accepted against this. I have other systems that run Linux, and this particular setup works. So don't bother asking me to try Linux on this, because it won't happen.