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Your best and worst vintage computer investments?

CommodoreZ said:
I used to believe that too. Seems that all of the Toshiba 486's have a certain specific problem wherein capacitors go bad and prevent the on board regulators from receiving power from an external power brick. Apparently they all work fine on batteries, but who's bothering to rebuild or replace Nickel Metal Hydride batteries these days? I've been compiling a few links to helpful resources that were able to help me fix my T1960CT earlier this year. Apparently one specific capacitor is the main point of failure, attributed to a design flaw that I understand Toshiba service centers were aware of. Maybe this will be of help: https://www.commodorez.com/satellite.html

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I've spent far too much on T19XX series Satellites, some of which have been given to me for free. I ended up with 5 by the end, some relegated to parts machines. They made so many, and sadly far too many have been damaged by careless owners and the harsh realities of time -- but they can be fixed! I enjoy this laptop despite its shortcomings.
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I just modded my “battery” to be a power supply (back when I had a Toshiba)
I just gutted it and wired up a generic voltage appropriate Walwart into the battery internals

It thought I had a perpetually full battery.
 
VERAULT said:
Collecting vintage laptops or vintage equipment with lcd screens is just not a good idea. Laptop boards are very tricky to repair, there are no spare parts for the most part and the screens are all going bad with practically no replacements out there.

Toshiba was a great laptop from the mid 90s into the early 2000's but thats irrelevant in the long run.
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If you find a well built laptop with a reliable LCD panel, you will be fine. The biggest thing with LCDs is that they are stored in CLIMATE CONTROLLED conditions. Extreme heat and humidity is a death sentence to them. All of my important laptops are stored inside. And you absolutely CANNOT stack laptops on top of each other to store them, especially not old 7-10 pound units. The weight of the machines will cause severe damage to the LCDs at the bottom of the stack. Laptops should be stored like books on their side, never stacked.

The only issue I see with most LCDs is the “vinegar syndrome” where the adhesive for the LCD polarizer bubbles up, but that’s actually entirely fixable if your willing to put out the effort. The new polarizer film is easy to get.

Some LCDs however are more prone to failure than others, and I would definitely avoid machines with high LCD failure rates, such as the Epson Equity 286/386 laptops. The LCDs are garbage on those.

Battery leaks can be a concern, but laptops are by no means the only computers with that issue. I make sure to disassemble all of my laptops as soon as I get them and remove that evil green pack of cells.

I’m roughly 12 years into my laptop/computer collecting journey and I really haven’t noticed things failing more now than they did 12 years ago. I see some people say “they are all going to fail soon,” but where’s the proof? Hell, most of my old hard drives even are holding up perfectly fine.

But if you take absolutely no care to remove any batteries and store them in a humid environment, then yes, they absolutely won’t last much longer.

A good example is, out of the twelve Compaq SLTs I’ve owned over the years, I have seen one, exactly one, bad LCD with lines on it. Ironically, that ONE machine had mold and dirt all over it and looked like it had sat in a leaky barn for 25 years. The way they are stored is everything.

Guitars are the same way, heat and humidity will absolutely destroy them, especially a hollow body or acoustic. Yet, they can last decades and decades if they are cared for and not exposed to extreme conditions.
 
I don't have any Compaq laptops but all my Toshiba laptops (2x T1200XE, T1600) are dead now with PSU faults. 15 years ago they worked fine. They were stored carefully indoors.

I really don't have any desire to work on them. They are annoying to disassemble and hard to find parts. Components are surface mount and proprietary. Batteries are all dead so they aren't portable anyway.
 
Plasma said:
I don't have any Compaq laptops but all my Toshiba laptops (2x T1200XE, T1600) are dead now with PSU faults. 15 years ago they worked fine. They were stored carefully indoors.

I really don't have any desire to work on them. They are annoying to disassemble and hard to find parts. Components are surface mount and proprietary. Batteries are all dead so they aren't portable anyway.
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Yes, the Toshibas from that era are notorious for flakey PSUs. They always have been. I gave up on those long ago. Best to stick with more reliable machines.
 
After a ton of effort that was getting me nowhere, I too thought these machines were lost causes, until someone showed me the piece of information that proved they weren't. Imagine what else you have or have encountered that has been written off, but really is just a piece of knowledge away from revival and making someone happy. I think many of y'all have missed the point of why we do this, why we bother in the first place. If you ignore the dust-in-the-wind defeatism, if you invest your time and money into the machines you get enjoyment from maintaining and using, then you've won. That's it. Even better if you can share that with others. Thinking about this stuff as an investment financially is... just sad to me.

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CommodoreZ said:
After a ton of effort that was getting me nowhere, I too thought these machines were lost causes, until someone showed me the piece of information that proved they weren't. Imagine what else you have or have encountered that has been written off, but really is just a piece of knowledge away from revival and making someone happy. I think many of y'all have missed the point of why we do this, why we bother in the first place. If you ignore the dust-in-the-wind defeatism, if you invest your time and money into the machines you get enjoyment from maintaining and using, then you've won. That's it. Even better if you can share that with others. Thinking about this stuff as an investment financially is... just sad to me.

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My comment above is actually referring to the older models from the late 1980s that were mentioned. I have owned several and even after replacing all capacitors, they never worked.

The 486 era ones like the T1960CT are much better and easier to repair in my experience. I actually own a T1960CT and I think it’s a great laptop. It’s gotten to the point where it’s stubborn about turning on so I think that cap needs to be replaced, which is something I’ll definitely do eventually.

As far as vintage computers being “investment,” I really don’t think about them like that. I collect machines I enjoy, and the value of them is fairly irrelevant to me.

That being said, I have gotten considerably more than I paid for some of the thrift store find computers I sold, so I guess you could say those were “good investments,” but that’s certainly not why I’m in this hobby.

And I try not to overpay for systems unless it’s something I feel is very rare. For example, if the typical going rate for a particular machine is $100, then I probably won’t pay $250 for it.

By not overpaying, you can always unload a machine easily if you decide you no longer want it without losing much, and you might even make a little, especially if you bought a “fixer upper” and made it nice again.
 
I'm going to attempt to retrofit a T4800CT battery with NiMH AA cells. I ordered a couple of 5xAA battery holders from Digikey which should come in today, but it will probably be the weekend before I can use my CNC to cut away some of the plastic top of one of the three dead batteries I have. I think they use 4/3A cells, but they are much more expensive than AA NiMH cells.
 
In the best 'investment' category I'd like to submit my dark green slot Rev 0 Apple II. I got it for $2600 a few years ago. The last two dark green slot, both later than mine, sold for $6600+. I do not know why.. thats the price point the light green slot used to occupy, and one or two have sold in between the dark green ones for around that price. Anyway, I guess for once I've made some money on something!
 
Both my later Apricots were high-stakes gambles that paid off. I did pay $300 on both which sounds really bad when you consider both were sold AS-IS.

The FP came with the core accessories and the case but would only beep and display nothing. That turned out to be a bad ribbon cable that was trivial to replace.

The Xen gave POST errors and would not boot, but turned out to not be battery damaged and just had a bad hard drive.
 
How many of these "investments" are things you will pretty much keep forever making their value meaningless?
 
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