creepingnet
Veteran Member
NanTan is a Taiwan based manufacturer of laptop computers and other digital devices. They are about the closest thing to a "White Box" laptop that ever existed as they sold these seemingly almost generic laptop computers under various models. This page is my attempt to document these devices as much as possible since there's almost no information about them on the internet, and I have owned 3-4 of these over the years myself. They still exist and currently go under the name of Clevo. I'll put a company profile once I have more information on them.
Just a note that I will be adding to this article as I find more information - so please excuse any blank spots. This is pretty huge to work on. The reason I chose to make one page for multiple systems is to help collectors/gamers/etc find out more about their particular unit, or for me to find out from owners of these machines what is inside them and add it. I will be adding more photos of each model as I find them online.
Nan Tan sold these laptops under many names. These include....
Altima
Duracom
Enroy
Eurocom
Highscreen
Liberty
Lion
Nan Tan
Prostar
Ranger
Sager
Ultinet
Vobis
A WORD ON POWER SUPPLIES
NanTan laptops are notorious for not having the power supplies provided with them. This is often a huge problem because the power supplies for most of the 1990-1993 models are 4-pin power supplies that seem to mystify most people. Thankfully our own retro-pc_user mentioned this.
PINOUT - Laptop uses a barrel DIN jack on the back, this is the pinout from the Laptop view.
12
34
Pins 1 & 2 (top two) deal with the charging circuit - I'm guessing a lower voltage trickle-charge setup designed to charge the battery.
Pins 3 & 4 (bottom two) deal with the regular power-circuitry - pin 3 is ground, pin 4 is the voltage input for powering the laptop.
NOTE: The writer here is seriously tempted to do a write up on the below when/if he ever decides to buy one of these again and test it out.
A Reddit Post on Providing power to these laptops by converting them to a regular Barrel Jack....this looks like a great idea for these so you can use a more general PSU. I would not doubt there could be a way to wire up the charging circuitry to work this way as well and update the battery technologies using a BMC and some new cells as a lot of these could have some freed up room in the battery cases themselves or the chassis in the case of earlier models.
https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport...otebook_power/
NANTAN LAPTOP MODELS
The Model of NanTan built laptops from the late 80's/early 1990's are easily found by the sticker on the bottom which will contain a model# that says "FMA" at the beginning. Later models such as the 9200 may have a "K" or "P" after the "FMA". - Please note this is a work in progress and I'll be updating/editing as I find more information. Much of the information was pulled from my own machines, internet auctions, and the FCC directly.
Just a note that I will be adding to this article as I find more information - so please excuse any blank spots. This is pretty huge to work on. The reason I chose to make one page for multiple systems is to help collectors/gamers/etc find out more about their particular unit, or for me to find out from owners of these machines what is inside them and add it. I will be adding more photos of each model as I find them online.
Nan Tan sold these laptops under many names. These include....
Altima
Duracom
Enroy
Eurocom
Highscreen
Liberty
Lion
Nan Tan
Prostar
Ranger
Sager
Ultinet
Vobis
A WORD ON POWER SUPPLIES
NanTan laptops are notorious for not having the power supplies provided with them. This is often a huge problem because the power supplies for most of the 1990-1993 models are 4-pin power supplies that seem to mystify most people. Thankfully our own retro-pc_user mentioned this.
PINOUT - Laptop uses a barrel DIN jack on the back, this is the pinout from the Laptop view.
12
34
Pins 1 & 2 (top two) deal with the charging circuit - I'm guessing a lower voltage trickle-charge setup designed to charge the battery.
Pins 3 & 4 (bottom two) deal with the regular power-circuitry - pin 3 is ground, pin 4 is the voltage input for powering the laptop.
NOTE: The writer here is seriously tempted to do a write up on the below when/if he ever decides to buy one of these again and test it out.
A Reddit Post on Providing power to these laptops by converting them to a regular Barrel Jack....this looks like a great idea for these so you can use a more general PSU. I would not doubt there could be a way to wire up the charging circuitry to work this way as well and update the battery technologies using a BMC and some new cells as a lot of these could have some freed up room in the battery cases themselves or the chassis in the case of earlier models.
https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport...otebook_power/
NANTAN LAPTOP MODELS
The Model of NanTan built laptops from the late 80's/early 1990's are easily found by the sticker on the bottom which will contain a model# that says "FMA" at the beginning. Later models such as the 9200 may have a "K" or "P" after the "FMA". - Please note this is a work in progress and I'll be updating/editing as I find more information. Much of the information was pulled from my own machines, internet auctions, and the FCC directly.
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