Well, ain’t this a pretty chonky machine! I got it from a friend a few months ago, but never had the time to fidget with it too much until now, although I was thinking to use this one as the one for the Old Computer Challenge of 2024.
Unfortunately, as things go, this seems to have some display issues. It starts up but as soon as it warms up, it starts to jumble pixels around pretty much all over on the right side, as you can see in the video below. I think it’s either a connector ribbon cable or a capacitor acting up, but before I’m going to open this, I’m just doing a stress test on the display for a 48 hour non-stop run of Vitas’ “The 7th Element” video. This will either fix it or break it completely, but while I’m writing this post, it’s getting only worse and not better.
Despite the screen issue and the fact that Windows reports the mobile AMD Athlon XP-M 2200+ to be at various speeds between 300Mhz and 1.67GHz, the laptop itself looks really great, and it’s in almost mint condition. It does have a low resolution screen though (1024x768 pixels), but the keyboard is super ergonomical, has a shitload of ports (LAN, VGA, Parallel, 3xUSB, Cardbus. Floppy! FIREWIRE!), so as soon as I will fix this, I will put it more to work, as it has great potential as a retro machine. Until then, enjoy the photos!
