A bit of numeric symmetry arrived today.
![Image](https://i.ibb.co/MsdPP42/IMG-20240507-160251.jpg)
We ended up switching to a different brand of oil with the last tank of fuel on the Trabant, and it definitely doesn't like it as much as what I'd been using before. It's far more grumpy about idling - so I'll definitely be returning to the Castrol 2T that I had been. Only wound up with this one (think it's a Comma oil) as a target of opportunity while it was picking some other parts up. Will switch back with the next tank.
In old tech news, there was only one model left I had set up as a saved search set up for on eBay. The Toshiba T3100SX. With that I'll have completed the lineup of machines that my father used to bring back from work in the 90s.
This is a machine though which has been on the list for a while and I expected it to stay there as they generally fetch really strong money nowadays. Until one popped up with a £25 buy it now price. I'd barely even read the listing before grabbing it. Even if it turned out to be nothing but a parts machine at that price it was cheap.
It also turned out to be shipped by one of those people that think a couple of layers of the thinnest bubble wrap you can imagine and some brown packing paper are going to provide any meaningful protection going through the post.
![Image](https://i.ibb.co/WfDzdMW/IMG-20240426-113105.jpg)
I really don't quite understand what goes through people's heads when they post things like this.
Nevertheless it seems to have made it unscathed.
![Image](https://i.ibb.co/X24CST1/IMG-20240426-124142.jpg)
Normally I'd have been worried about the plasma display - however in this case I knew it was already broken.
![Image](https://i.ibb.co/ygqXyGh/IMG-20240426-124150.jpg)
I am 97% certain that I have a spare display panel for one of these in The Pile of Bits of Dead Toshibas in the loft from one I scrapped back in the very early 00s.
Have to wonder what stories this might have to tell. Definitely seems to have done a few miles.
![Image](https://i.ibb.co/cTZ6Ft4/IMG-20240426-124223.jpg)
I'm thoroughly expecting this to need a bunch of recapping to get the power supply up and running again. On the plus side if my memory serves me rightly, the HT supply for the display on these is derived by a pretty conventional inverter actually on the display driver board. This is good as it means that the main system power supply doesn't have anything awkward to emulate like a +295V DC rail for the display to handle. Unlike for instance the IBM P70 which is waiting patiently for me to deal with, with a dead PSU which does include the HT supply for the display.
Then like buses...hey look, another one!
![Image](https://i.ibb.co/6Zj9F0H/IMG-20240507-175739.jpg)
This wasn't as cheap as the last one, but was still right at the bottom of the usual price curve of these machines, so I grabbed it. While it's significantly less beat up than the last one there are immediate signs that this is likely to be a parts machine.
![Image](https://i.ibb.co/gSYymvG/IMG-20240507-172044.jpg)
Corrosion that appears to be leaking out from inside the machine doesn't generally bode well.
![Image](https://i.ibb.co/sFQx6DZ/IMG-20240507-172104.jpg)
Crossing my fingers that the hard drive (which is just behind that rectangular cover) hasn't been wrecked. As seemed to be Toshiba's fashion around this period, these machines use a drive with an oddball interface rather than a normal IDE/SCSI or ST506/MFM setup. Equally annoyingly, they seemed to love using *different* oddball interfaces on each model. The T1200, T1600, T3200 and this all use totally different arrangements. The T1200/1600 at least do use the same actual interface, but the drives aren't interchangable as they're 20/40Mb versions respectively, and there isn't any way to configure things so the right drive needs to go in the right machine. I can kind of give them a pass when the T1200 was being designed in 1987, as 3.5" drives were still pretty cutting edge then, never mind something suited to stuffing in a laptop with automatic head parking and ability to spin up/down the spindle under power management control. However by 1990 when the T3100SX launched 3.5" IDE drives were pretty commonplace, so the logic seems more questionable.
While it may well be in far worse shape internally, one thing this has over the first one is an intact display.
![Image](https://i.ibb.co/nDcg6Gg/IMG-20240507-172723.jpg)
Given the cover on the mounting screws is missing I do wonder if this has at some point had a replacement display. Either way there's no visible screen burn I can see at least.
It also has a UK rather than US keyboard layout.
![Image](https://i.ibb.co/BqhZrsK/IMG-20240507-172759.jpg)
I know I definitely have a spare one of these up in the loft, but not having to go spelunking to find it would be a bonus. Plus this one is far less worn than that one in the loft.
This one also came with all the original documentation and software which is always nice to have.
![Image](https://i.ibb.co/MhQM4w4/IMG-20240507-172007-2.jpg)
Only thing I'm missing is the external power supply. Which I'm not too surprised by to be honest given that they had a bit of a reputation for randomly going bang (loudly) and dying even back when these machines weren't all that old.
When I'll actually get time to get stuck into reviving this I'm not sure. Though I'd rather do it sooner than later as if the innards are being slowly eaten by capacitor and battery goo I'd rather put a stop to that. We'll see I guess.