• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Alpha-Top Green 755 (AKA NEC Ready 200T series & Micron Transport VLX) laptops

The Alpha-Top Green 755 laptops were Pentium 1 (non-mmx) laptops with a single drive bay. A CD-ROM module or a 3.5" floppy drive module could be installed in that single bay. (Not hot swap-able) If dual drive use was desired the floppy drive module could be attached to the parallel port via a "L" shaped bracket with cable assembly. (Bracket is very rare these days) The generic and Micron versions of these laptops had the usual ports - one serial, one parallel, a docking port, a VGA output, a single dual purpose mouse/external keyboard port, IR ports and sound output jacks (with volume control) along with dual PCMCIA slots. The NEC version may lack a port or two. (more to follow) Input power was for all brands from a 4 pin AC adapter 110 - 220 input. The main battery was located on the bottom of the laptop and was removable. The main case plastics was made in three (3) pieces. The bottom case, the main upper case and a third piece that becomes the palmrest and holds the touchpad. Removing the palmrest reveals the location of the hard drive module and under this module are two 72 pin SODIMM EDO slots for expansion memory up to 72MB (2x32 + 8 onboard). LCD displays range from 11.3" TFT or dual scan to 12.1" LCD of both types and had a single latch top center on the lid assembly. All Micron laptops were painted black vs. dark gray for the generic and NEC laptops.
 
I'm going to document the Green755 now on my site - I have a few questions on specs that you may be able to clarify.

Specifically, I'm missing:
- What Video chip?
- VRAM amount?
- All LCD options were 800x600?
- What sound chip?
- Is the BIOS limit for hard drives 8GB like on the G753?
- Does the hard drive use a proprietary adapter to plug into the motherboard (not the caddy, an adapter for the electrical connection)
- Do they use the same 3-cell VARTA battery soldered in that the G751 and G753 use?
- Do these also use a Phoenix BIOS?
 
www.ebay.com

Vintage NEC Ready 230T (AMD K6 MMX @ 300 MHz, 64 MB RAM, Win98SE, 6 GB HDD) | eBay

This laptop was received through a pallet of older computers so I'm not aware of it's prior history. It has been tested to power on and boot into Windows 98 Second Edition. Model: Ready 230T. Processor: AMD K6 MMX.
www.ebay.com

This is an interesting listing. It’s running an AMD processor, apparently one at 300MHz. Shouldn’t be possible for this model?
It does answer the question of graphics, sound, and VRAM.

Edit: It's got a barrel jack. Must be a Green756. I guess not all the 200T series were 755s.
 
Last edited:
The Green 755 uses a proprietary connector somewhat like used in the Green 753, but adds a new twist in that it is mounted pointing up from the motherboard. The caddy has a circuit board that mates to the HDD and also has a 2nd connector that drops over the motherboard connector with a mating one. The Green 756 uses the same metal caddy, but has a longer connector since the height above the motherboard is higher due to the taller case that has USB and other things missing on the 755. The Green 735 uses the same metal caddy as the 755/756 and I think (got to check) uses the Green 755 circuit board and connector. I might be wrong on that it might be the taller Green 756 adapter board. All Green 755's use the 4 pin input connector. The Green 756's and the Green 735 use a barrel connector. If it has a USB port it's a Green 756 or a Green 735. The Green 756/735 have an adapter board mounted CPU and there's several versions of the adapter board, so an AMD CPU is possible in it. The Green 735 has both a floppy and a CD drive internal. Confusing? Yes. All three of these models (755, 756, 735) have a palm rest that is removed to get to the hard drive and the memory slots. Pictures to follow as I get time to post.

All of these laptops, including the Green 753's have case plastics made from a blend of polycarbonate (PC) and ABS. I working in the plastics industry for years and have to say that whatever PC they used has to have been crap. Medical PC grade components are nearly impossible to break. The AlphaTop blend of plastics seems more like if it was made from polystyrene for weakness and yet glues poorly like polycarbonate. ABS should add some flex to the mix, but I don't see any signs of ABS properties since acetone doesn't weld it very well. MEK (Methyl Ethyl Ketone) might work better, but I don't have any at present and the gov't is trying to protect me from myself and making it hard to find. I can only find the substitute crap locally.
 
DeltaDon said:
I working in the plastics industry for years and have to say that whatever PC they used has to have been crap.
Click to expand...
The Alpha-Top plastics do look a little weird. The texture is sort of odd, although some of my other Taiwan-made laptops do look a little similar. Not as strange though.
Compared to laptops from more “quality” brands, it certainly looks a little strange.
IMG_6797.jpeg
IMG_6798.jpeg
Top photo is a macro shot of the Green751 plastics, bottom is of a Toshiba Tecra 500CDT which looks more normal. The Green753 plastics look the same as the G751 ones do.
I’d agree that they were likely using some shoddy plastic composition.

In any case though, it’s not like the more “quality” stuff has fared any better. Said Toshiba laptop is literally falling apart, I notice new stress cracks every time I look at it. It’s at a level in which I genuinely think I won’t be able to hold it together long-term. The Tecra is the worst example I’ve seen, but plastics on nearly every laptop from this time I’ve touched have been really brittle, with only a couple exceptions (from Compaq and IBM, although I’m sure that mostly comes down to good design rather than the integrity of the plastic itself).

More time will tell, but so far, I haven’t found the Alpha-Top plastics to be worse than the rest, certainly not as bad as my Tecra’s are. I’m sure the hinges will break at some point, which should hopefully be a relatively easy fix whenever it happens. Didn’t break much when taking the G751s apart a bunch of times though. Just a few clips here and there.

Interesting to hear about the weirdness of the composition in regards to bonding characteristic. I really do wonder what exactly they were using.
 
The texture is sprayed on, the plastics underneath is smooth in most cases. Many well worn palmrest areas will have all the paint worn off and matching the missing texture is the hardest part of respraying. I'm not an expert on this, but I've tried painting some laptops for various reasons including changing butt-ugly black Kapok 8500's into something more pleasant.
 
I've wanted to do a custom paint job on some laptop for a while now - it's something I want to practice in the future. The one I want to do is a white or very light creme colored PowerBook 500 Series laptop. Someone did a render of what one would look like, and it looked incredible.
 
Tamiya makes a huge number of rattle can paints. A few come close to matching the grays or silvers of many laptops. Whites and creams might take an undercoat. They also have bright colors if you want to make your own early Alienware style fluorescent green or orange custom scheme. Harbor Freight sells a low cost air brush if you want to mix your own colors and spray. Propellant in a can is a few bucks if you don't have an air compressor. Prep time covering things that you don't want sprayed can be long if you don't totally disassemble the laptop.
 
Great info there. I’ve more been waiting until I get a laptop I wouldn’t feel bad about painting over - something all scratched up that’s not also cracked somewhere is a tricky one to find.

A friend of mine insists I should paint the Green753 green so the name would actually make sense. Not going to do that to a NOS one but if I do end up with a Green laptop that’s in rough shape but intact, I would possibly consider it.
 
"I'm going to document the Green755 now on my site - I have a few questions on specs that you may be able to clarify.

Specifically, I'm missing:
- What Video chip?
- VRAM amount?
- All LCD options were 800x600?
- What sound chip?
- Is the BIOS limit for hard drives 8GB like on the G753?
- Does the hard drive use a proprietary adapter to plug into the motherboard (not the caddy, an adapter for the electrical connection)
- Do they use the same 3-cell VARTA battery soldered in that the G751 and G753 use?
- Do these also use a Phoenix BIOS?"

The Green 755 has a Phoenix BIOS, a C&T 65550 VGA chip, 800x600 LCD's, ES1788 sound chip and up to 72MB of 72 pin EDO SODIMM memory. A heavy metal HDD caddy and I believe 8GB is the max size. More coming soon.
 
Sweet. Specs have been updated and will be out in the next site update. Looking forward to further info!
 
I tried a 16GB SD card (with adapter) for a hdd replacement and the BIOS reported 8455MB as the size. So based upon this result it appears the max. hdd size is 8GB. I'm messing around with installing Win 95, Win 98 and Win ME on my test bed 72 MB RAM Green 755 along with several hdd's from 2.1GB to 4GB, several 2-4GB CF cards plus a 16GB SD card just to see what works. I don't have a 2GB- 4GB SD card to try. The only installation problem was one old 2.1GB IBM hdd (19mm?) that was too thick for the hdd caddy. Also, the CD-ROM drives for the Green 755 are the same Teac 8x non-atapi drives as used in the Green 753. I still have issues with these drives reading burnt CD-R disks. The CMOS battery is not the Green Varta 3-cell type. It appears to be a single NiMH cell with solder tabs about a dime in size. AC adapter is the same as the Green 753.

I'm working on the LCD lid plastics on a 2nd G755 that has the screw standoffs broken off for the hinges. I'm using filament extruded from my 3D print pen. I'm not very skilled with getting the melted plastics flowing exactly where I want it to go and the tip is too short to allow the filament to flow into tight spaces. So I'm thinking I'll have use a soldering iron tip to help push some of the plastic into tight places. since the repair will be hidden once the LCD lid has the bezel in place it doesn't matter to much as to beauty - as long as it holds up!
 
One thing I'm thinking about trying is a Chicony MP975 laptop external parallel port floppy adapter cable and a MP975 floppy drive connected to the G755's parallel port. The Green 755 used a parallel port adapter device with a G755 floppy module for dual drive use when the CD module was installed into the single drive bay. So both laptops used the parallel port for the same abilities and both need the same signals, I assume. It might be interesting t see if the Chicony floppy solution also works too. There's no reason to believe it does, but maybe the two companies looked over each other's shoulders and shared pinouts/designs. Was there a standard for Taiwanese laptops?
 
DeltaDon said:
One thing I'm thinking about trying is a Chicony MP975 laptop external parallel port floppy adapter cable and a MP975 floppy drive connected to the G755's parallel port. The Green 755 used a parallel port adapter device with a G755 floppy module for dual drive use when the CD module was installed into the single drive bay. So both laptops used the parallel port for the same abilities and both need the same signals, I assume. It might be interesting t see if the Chicony floppy solution also works too. There's no reason to believe it does, but maybe the two companies looked over each other's shoulders and shared pinouts/designs. Was there a standard for Taiwanese laptops?
Click to expand...
Some dell laptops did support the same thing. I have an adapter that goes from parallel to Dell’s C Series modular bay connector for use with a floppy drive. I’d honestly doubt that there was any sort of standard though.
 
Here's some photo's of the Green 755 hard drive caddy, the PCB inside the caddy plus a close up of the Green 755's area under the caddy when it is removed.
 

Attachments

  • Caddy in place.jpg.jpg
    Caddy in place.jpg.jpg
    2.1 MB · Views: 2
  • G755 area.jpg.jpg
    G755 area.jpg.jpg
    2.6 MB · Views: 2
  • connector.jpg.jpg
    connector.jpg.jpg
    1.8 MB · Views: 2
Very helpful, thanks!
I also see the CMOS battery there - in about 95% sure that’s a Lithium cell, which should mean no leaks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top