Toshiba Tecra 8100

This is a typical business-oriented notebook from early 2000s. Tecra 8100 was released in 2001 as a business computer. It was designed to be reliable, have good screen visibility and nice keyboard. There are no wonders inside: Pentium III processor, clocked at 600 or 650MHz and 128MB of RAM in two 64MB SODIMMs. Tecra 8100 had no touchpad - only Trackpoint. It has two quite nice speakers (as comparing to today laptop's speakers) and some smart tricks which made Toshiba notebooks nice to use. 6 or 12GB hard disk (some models had 20GB) allowed to work with Windows 98 or NT, but my Tecra has Windows 2000 license sticker too.
Tecra 8100 has no network card, as in 2001 there were still different computer network standards. A card in PCMCIA slot may be used to connect Tecra to Internet.

Manufacturer Toshiba

Origin Japan
Year of unit 2002
Year of introduction 2001
Type Laptop, PC
CPU Intel Pentium III 650MHz
RAM 128MB
Floppy Disk None (3.5" external or in a bay)
Hard Disk 12GB or 20GB
Other media CD/DVD drive in a bay
Graphics and display: 1024x768x24-bit LCD TFT, 14.1" 4:3 screen
Sound: Stereo
Keyboard and pointing device: Small PC keyboard without numeric part.
Trackpoint
OS: Windows 98

Power supply:

1 - Ground
2 - +15V DC, 4A
I/O:  - 2x PCMCIA
 - Modem
 - TV-Out
 - USB
 - PS/2
 - IRDA
 - VGA (15-pin)
 - Dock connector
 - Serial port
 - Parallel port
 
 
 
 
 
 
Possible upgrades: Memory, modem module may be replaced.
Additional peripherals:  Power supply unit.

Personally I use my unit as primary Windows 98 notebook, for example for connecting serial port to other microcomputers or driving the EPROM programmer in field. For this application it's still excellent. In fact it is quite durable, more than many current notebooks.
In the second unit I had Haiku operating system and when it required at least 128MB of RAM it worked well (except some minor problems with graphics chip).
What I don't recommend is Linux - There are problems with PCMCIA, and you need PCMCIA to connect to Internet (thee's no network card built-in), sometimes graphics may go bad too.

Detailed specification

http://www.toshiba.co.uk/innovation/download_drivers_bios.jsp - Select "Archived files"->Tecra->Tecra 8xxx->Tecra 8100->PT810e to download drivers.
http://www.toshiba.co.uk/innovation/download_manuals.jsp - The same thing for manual. Not exactly PDF, but an online documentation to run on Your Tecra.