Found an old vintage laptop!

Greetings. I find myself in need of some technical guidance—I’ve recently come across an old-school laptop that appears to be in pristine condition, almost suspiciously so. The issue, however, is that it refuses to boot into Windows. I have spent quite a bit of time poking around the BIOS settings, but so far, my efforts have yielded absolutely nothing. To make matters worse, there isn't even a USB port available, which effectively eliminates any modern troubleshooting via flash drives. On a separate note—and perhaps this is premature—is this machine actually worth anything? I happened to spot a similar model listed on eBay for around $250, though one can never be too certain about those online valuations.

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Susan Rivera73 said:Greetings. I find myself in need of some technical guidance—I’ve recently come across an old-school laptop that appears to be in pristine condition, almost suspiciously so. The issue, however, is that it refuses to boot into Windows. I have spent quite a bit of time poking around the BIOS settings, but so far, my efforts have yielded absolutely nothing. To make matters worse, there isn't even a USB port available, which effectively eliminates any modern troubleshooting via flash drives. On a separate note—and perhaps this is premature—is this machine actually worth anything? I happened to spot a similar model listed on eBay for around $250, though one can never be too certain about those online valuations.

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http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/sys/booterrGBER47-c.html
You probably need to check the CMOS battery and swap it out if it's dead. If that doesn't fix it, the motherboard might be fried.

A beautiful piece of history. A solid quarter-century old. 😬

It’s worth something to collectors. Maybe. Because its actual utility is basically zero. Actually, it can't even be less than zero, but by today's standards, getting this hardware to do anything useful is nearly impossible unless you track down a 1.44" floppy with Windows 95 or some Unix/Xenix distribution (if I recall correctly, that was right around when Thorvalds was studying and just released the first Linux kernel)...

The CMOS battery might be dead, just like the main battery, but the hardware recognition probably works fine, and here is what it shows:

- You've got a sweet Intel 486 DX4 processor running at a whopping 75 MHz (that's not a typo 😬)
- You have a grand total of 1 MB of memory (the 640 KB that DOS could address, plus the rest of the "extended" memory up to 1 MB that could be used as a RAM disk 😍
- You have one 1.44" floppy disk drive
- There is no internal hard drive.

You could technically add a hard drive or upgrade the specs (well, you could back then—today, good luck finding working parts), but in those days, that stuff was incredibly expensive, so they shipped them in minimal configurations to keep the price down.

Those were the days when software was written differently and you could actually get things done on a setup like this. You boot up Windows, swap out a floppy, pop in the one with your app and data, and you're good to go...

So—zero points. Unless you find some collector.

Otherwise, Texas Instruments is one of the true pioneers in electronics; they had the first programmable calculators and back in the 70s, they were an essential player alongside companies like Apple, Tandy/Radio Shack, Commodore, Atari, IBM PC, and Compaq....

The Extens name lived on because TI pulled out of the computer market in 1997 and sold their division to Acer, who kept developing it and kept the Extens name alive...

Well, I’m quite pleased with this one—my old man was clearing out some junk in the garage and stumbled upon it tucked away in a box. Honestly, I was floored to find it in pristine condition, without a single scratch on it. It turns out the previous owners were living out in Australia, so it makes sense that the keyboard lacks those specific accented characters you'd expect here in the States—though, then again, they probably weren't even manufacturing them for our domestic market back then. Regardless, it’s a beautiful piece of hardware. I was also somewhat surprised to discover that it accepts a modern charger and boots up just as straightforwardly as the laptops we use today.

If you don't have a plan for it, just toss it on eBay—maybe even run an auction. Who knows, if you price it right, someone might actually bite. 👍

Just make sure you check the shipping costs first...

I don't actually have an eBay account—so I suppose I'll just try my luck on Craigslist first and see where the chips fall.

darkowl72 said:A beautiful piece of history. A solid quarter-century old. 😬

It’s worth something to collectors. Maybe. Because its actual utility is basically zero. Actually, it can't even be less than zero, but by today's standards, getting this hardware to do anything useful is nearly impossible unless you track down a 1.44" floppy with Windows 95 or some Unix/Xenix distribution (if I recall correctly, that was right around when Thorvalds was studying and just released the first Linux kernel)...

The CMOS battery might be dead, just like the main battery, but the hardware recognition probably works fine, and here is what it shows:

- You've got a sweet Intel 486 DX4 processor running at a whopping 75 MHz (that's not a typo 😬)
- You have a grand total of 1 MB of memory (the 640 KB that DOS could address, plus the rest of the "extended" memory up to 1 MB that could be used as a RAM disk 😍
- You have one 1.44" floppy disk drive
- There is no internal hard drive.

You could technically add a hard drive or upgrade the specs (well, you could back then—today, good luck finding working parts), but in those days, that stuff was incredibly expensive, so they shipped them in minimal configurations to keep the price down.

Those were the days when software was written differently and you could actually get things done on a setup like this. You boot up Windows, swap out a floppy, pop in the one with your app and data, and you're good to go...

So—zero points. Unless you find some collector.

Otherwise, Texas Instruments is one of the true pioneers in electronics; they had the first programmable calculators and back in the 70s, they were an essential player alongside companies like Apple, Tandy/Radio Shack, Commodore, Atari, IBM PC, and Compaq....

The Extens name lived on because TI pulled out of the computer market in 1997 and sold their division to Acer, who kept developing it and kept the Extens name alive...

Agreed, though I think it has 640 KB conventional plus 3 MB of expansion. That makes 4 MB total.
Maybe Win 3.1 or OS/2 Warp, or even Win95 (I was squinting, but looking closer, it definitely says Win95).

You could probably sell it 🙂; a buddy of mine has something similar.
- And man, that DX4 75 is a beast. We barely notice speed differences these days, but back then, choosing between a 386 SX and a 386 DX (or a 486 SX vs a 486 DX) was like night and day, remember? 🙂

A little comparison with how things look by today's standards

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I suspect the issue won't be solved—it’s likely that dying CMOS battery on the motherboard. Every single time I power this thing up or shut it down, the BIOS resets itself back to January 1st, 1970. I go through the trouble of manually updating it to today's date, but the second it loses juice, it just reverts right back to being stuck in the past.

Jessica Hayes said:Agreed, though I think it has 640 KB conventional plus 3 MB of expansion. That makes 4 MB total.
Maybe Win 3.1 or OS/2 Warp, or even Win95 (I was squinting, but looking closer, it definitely says Win95).

You could probably sell it 🙂; a buddy of mine has something similar.
- And man, that DX4 75 is a beast. We barely notice speed differences these days, but back then, choosing between a 386 SX and a 386 DX (or a 486 SX vs a 486 DX) was like night and day, remember? 🙂

Yeah, you're right... Guess there are still a few of us left who remember those days. 😬 Though if I'm being honest, I remember stuff even earlier 😍 back when machines were absolute beasts...

Susan Rivera73 said:A little comparison with how things look by today's standards

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I suspect the issue won't be solved—it’s likely that dying CMOS battery on the motherboard. Every single time I power this thing up or shut it down, the BIOS resets itself back to January 1st, 1970. I go through the trouble of manually updating it to today's date, but the second it loses juice, it just reverts right back to being stuck in the past.

The link isn't working, I can't see anything. And are you even sure there's anything to boot from? Is there a hard drive actually visible?

You gotta remember, you really do. Everything that feels like a total headache today? Back then, we thought it was absolutely top-tier. Or did we? :=

It’s such a beautiful piece of history. Honestly, just seeing it brings a bit of comfort—and maybe a little nostalgia for anyone else out there. If you can actually get it up and running, it's still useful. My oldest machine is just a tiny bit younger than this one, and even then, it's still in pristine condition without a single scratch. I still use it to move data from another vintage rig that won't talk to anything else—it's the only way to connect them, and honestly, it works perfectly. Meanwhile, my old laptop runs flawlessly too... it's just that it can't really touch anything from the modern era. 😁