I think Dave needs a moment alone with that keyboard

A Old laptop with modern hardware would be badass. Retro looks, kick ass performance.

its amazing that a computer more than 20 years old still works but my 3 year old laptop died on me yesterday

nothing on earth is more exciting than basic in rom

for those who don't know, Daewoo make everything from big tanker ships and dock cranes to computer hardware, consumer electronics and yes, cars. (the car manufacturing part was bought by GM lots of years ago)

Daewoo is actually still around. I bought a very good air-conditioner made by them a few years ago.

1991 even monochrome a 640x480 lcd screen is an amazing feat of technology, the first mainstream lcd color screens in the late 90s and early 200s were 640x480, if you wanted higher there was a massive premium in 98.

I love these retro teardowns so much

This took me back 23 years to when I was in an IT Helpdesk and talking customers through how to "run auto config from their Ref Disk". Has brought back lots of memories. Thanks for posting

Dave, your teardowns are my favorite, i just love em.

This computer was engineered by IBM Japan, and it actually came out later than expected, in 1992. It was IBM's first laptop, and it retailed for US$5,000.

Rats! I was hoping you would enter the date to see if it was y2k compliant.

Great videos, by the way. I had a computer shop back in late 90s up to 2001. I would buy surplus computer equipment some stuff good and other stuff not. We would spend hours dissecting the stuff that was not good, we had a blast. You must have so much fun doing what you do. Thanks for taking the time to share with us what you do....

Nice piece of history u got there, thanks for teardown! :)

- Can I play Crysis on it? - Sure. Just plug it in, grab your head, and scream and run around in circles. That's how we played crisis in the old days.

I managed to find some old IBM keyboards (PS2 connector) and you're right, the keys are like butter. Just amazing. Nothing like it.

Wow, a 387 coprocessor, those things were hard to find about a decade ago, they must be super rare by now. It's interesting that it has 2MB of system RAM. Most PC systems back then only had 1MB, before extended memory that is.

brings back memories of my dad lugging this beast around for his work. we ended up donating it to a mission, and its still in use now.

Nice teardown, worked with this laptop myself :) Great machine and indeed a perfect keyboard.

Wow. Thanks for bringing me back to the computers I learned on.

Sorry very late on this, but I just found it(and am really enjoying your channel!) Fun Fact, IBM spent over 1 million dollars(US) on just keyboard "feel", I bought myself 3 of them for my computers back in the day cause you couldn't find any manufacturer that even came close to the feel of the IBM keyboard. Man, I miss those days...

"Where's the fan? Where's the water cooling? Can i play Crysis on it?" Had myself a nice little chuckle with that one

Very nice! I have been able to obtain this machine in a very pristine condition for a small price. I absolutely agree with you about the keyboard. Cheers!

Just to be clear for the "noobies" watching this: The computer didn't normally come up with Basic. IBM PC's normally tried to boot from floppy first, then from hard disk, and if all of those failed, they would revert back to "cassette basic". No IBM computer had a cassette port except the first IBM PC's (they removed the port on the PC/XT) so it was totally useless: you couldn't save or load programs to/from floppy drives from cassette basic. The only reason it was still there in every IBM PC after 1982 was that the "BASICA" interpreter that was included with DOS (which WAS capable of using the floppy and hard disk) relied on the routines in the ROM to do its work. Back then, computers didn't have fancy BIOS user interfaces; I think the original PC BIOS was 16 kilobytes so no space for error messages. IBM used a scheme of error messages where the last two digits were the error code and the digits in front of it were the device that was causing the error. 1=motherboard, 2=memory, 3=keyboard, 6=floppy, 17=hard disk etc. www.bioscentral.com/misc/ibmdiag.htm contains a list of the errors from the BIOS and also the various diagnostic diskettes for all the IBM models.

I love those little LCD mini info displays!!

It's amazing on how far technology has come. These days you get all that in the size of a Watch. Computers back then where monstrous now they're just tiny little things you can throw in any bag and forget it's there.

Error 161: "CMOS battery fail." Error 163: "Incorrect date and time."

Nice, I've used one of those. Had one in school, used it for programming micros. Also had a PS/2 Desktop.

Loving these retro tear downs. I miss computers that mak hard drive noise.

Nice I also had an old ibm laptop with black/white display. And yes I freakin loved the keybord espacially the sound!

This has been one of the most exciting EEVblog videos I've ever seen. I also think that the keyboards were MUCH better before. Dave: Have you ever typed in a IBM model M?

Hey Dave, Daewoo still make cars under the Chevrolet brand now. Their car factories were purchased by General Motors in the early 2000's or even a bit earlier and their cars were rebadged in '04 or '05. They still make te same style of cars and have quite a bit of success in Europe.

Love your key tapping obsession. The sound gives an insight to feel..a high Q hard plastic plunk with smooth instant action and light foam damping with a 0.3mm 6 turn high tensile return spring...Oh no I was listening to my granny taking her teeth out.

Dave, you made my Day

oh man! what a gorgeous unit. I remember these.

oh shout out or what! I work for IBM UK! We're still going strong. Lovely. PS/2 takes me back. Even though it's all about the cloud these days ;-)

I see these come up on ebay from time to time and have been tempted to pull the trigger on one. I just have too many retro project computers already. This one is in beautiful shape!

Surprised at how aesthetically pleasing its design is.

25:04 it's interesting to see they used a monochrome LCD in this thing.. In some of the really old laptops I've owned, there was an orange-on-black flatscreen plasma on it, the contrast was amazing!

Great stuff, vintage hardware.

Dave, thanks so much for this! My first engineering job was at Western Digital, where I designed the SRAM and worked on the real time clock and battery detector circuitry in the 7620/7621. I also did some of the physical layout and touched parts of the 7610. That was an exciting time to be able to design so much of what went into this laptop for IBM. So this is very near and dear to me, bringing back so many memories!

I was literally watching a video on one of these yesterday XD haha made me laugh when I saw your new video was on it!

Nice teardown! :)

That reference diskette was for programming the CMOS. PS/2's did not have BIOS configuration software in ROM - the Reference diskette was used instead. This is probably why the hard drive wouldn't boot - because the CMOS battery died. It may be able to boot that drive after running the auto-config (and don't power it off in between!)

That keyboard sounds beautiful!!!

Need more EEVBlog retro computers!

The keyboards that came with the early IBM PC's, - say 1985, - were superb. The gold anodized cross lever contacts and the tactile response was fantastic. You always knew if your finger depressing the button had come home. These days, you have to look at the display now and then to be sure that all the buttons you have pushed has actually been detected. BUH!

Old computers? You have a new subscriber. :)

I remember the LCD's on those things had rely slow update intervall so if you changed from black to white screen you could see a wave of pixels changing on the screen, thanks for the video Dave :)

I had one of those about 8 years ago. I bought it from a second hand shop for about 5 euros or something like that. Mine had 14MB of RAM, a 960MB hard drive and Windows 3.1 installed on it! I miss it! Don't know where it went! :(

Sounds like a mechanical keyboard, awesome!

Oooh. I can hear that keyboard. I know that sound. No wonder you love it so much. I had a PS/1 and used a bunch of PS/2s. I don't recall what their keyboard was like.

love all the little details and wow those crusty nichicons still work ... no puff the magic dragon ...

I was 8 or 9 when these computers appeared. I remember being taught about the ultra fast ALU and later on, that it was incorporated into the CPU. It would be nice if you could do a little episode on various techniques of storing data or creating your own ALU (at least adding and subtracting/2's complement) as the history is just mind boggling. I think that's the main gap that when bridged, can get you from logic gates to the microprocessor. Nowadays, these processors have this black magic aura around them and it's a shame that we just take them for granted. I'd also be interested in how you get to above 25-50mhz hacker style (no expensive ARM cpus). PS: I was a happy coder until I discovered this blog. In less then 2 months afterwards, I had my house full of plastic boxes and pieces and had read through everything I could find. Now I look at assembly language as that high level decadent bourgeois luxury that I just don't have. A coder's take on what you can achieve with such low level insight is out of this world. Best hobby I could ever find!

The keyboard on this uses what's been referred to as "buckling rubber sleeves" in recent years. The keycaps have long poles that acuate by pressing the membrane beneath. However, there's a hollow rubber cap sleeve between the keycap and the membrane that buckles when pushed. That's what gives you that tactile feedback despite there not being any mechanical switch involved. IBM later created the IBM M4 and IBM M4-1 keyboards as desktop equivalents to the IBM L40SX's keyboard. The only difference between the two desktop keyboard models is the M4-1 has a track point in the middle, similar to a Thinkpad keyboard. I own an IBM L40SX, the numpad attachment for it, and an IBM M4 keyboard. I can confirm they use the exact same keyboard. I know because the numpad is broken and I used one of the rubber sleeves in it to replace a worn down one in my M4's spacebar and it worked flawlessly. I also compared the L40SX and M4 keyboards side by side. There were no noticeable differences between the two. I have to agree with the video, this is a fantastic keyboard. On par with the Model M in its own way imo. If you want to experience this keyboard then track down either an IBM/Lexmark M4, M4-1 or a Unicomp Mighty Mouse (discontinued but were replicas of the M4-1 made from 2008 to 2010). The Topre Type Heaven is a more modern interpretation of this design and also comes highly recommended. My only word of caution is that since these use rubber sleeves that are unique to this style of keyboard, finding replacement sleeves will be difficult if any of them give out. I was lucky enough to have a broken numpad to pull replacement sleeves from, but it's something to keep in mind.

The Samsung Notemaster SX20 was one of its competitors back in the day. I inherited one from my father in 1993, I believe, and most magazines showed offers from Toshiba, IBM and Samsung.

I live in the USA and I used that laptop for programming PLC . It worked try IRD and serial port. I was working for a big UPS company . They made from .5 kva up to 10,000.00 KVA . The switch gear had sy/max and Allen Bradly. and a few older ones. That laptop worked great for the 11 years I worked there. I even have one kicking around somewhere . All the guys who programmed the PLC got the first dibs when they upgraded the laptops . We had to use the parallel port for a dongle . You have to have one for each of the different programming software .It was 1992 when we started using them . That was the job a headhunter got me after I spent 7 years in the NAVY on submarines . I was going to reenlist for 4 more years as I was going on my first shore duty rotation. I was going to San dingo for CCTV school then back to my hometown to run the security system at a torpedo maker. Now that I look back I wish I had stayed in the NAVY!!!

The old IBM machines did not have a fully-fledged CMOS BIOS like the IBM-clone-machines, so the "BIOS-program" is on that diskette, and after being run, it saves the information in the computer's NVRAM.

Great video Dave! Just so you know, according to a Microsoft Knowledge base article on the web, boot error code 161 is BIOS battery error (it's probably flat), and 163 is Time and date not set, probably due to BIOS battery being flat. EDIT: Sorry, was writing this comment before you found out yourself the same conclusion. Still a great video though.

Hi Dave awesome video.... my favorite videos are your fundamental Fridays videos... do more of them... Thanks

I actually replaced the hard drive in my L40SX with a IDE to Compact Flash adapter and put a 512MB Compact Flash card in there to act as solid state drive. Works like a charm.

I believe the "161" and "163" BIOS error messages relate to the CMOS. Dead battery or something for the CMOS, probably.

wow this is awesome iv had one of these laying around my self given to me by my grandfather and it still boots just need to find some way to use it.(do still have the original leather case fully in-tacked).

I used one of these for several years when I was a teenager. Wonderful machine.

Hey Dave, I'm interested in old tech and new tech but to be honest I don't have a clue about motherboards, resisters or any of that mombo jumbo but I love watching your videos man your hilarious great stuff mate!

Looks very similar to the Tandy 1500 HD laptop that I rocked back in the early '90's. Had a 486 SLX that was actually more compatible than the regular 486 chip I had in my desktop. The CPU was actually a Cyrix chipset. It was counted as either a fast 386 or a slow 486. It lasted from 1992 until 2005 before both the floppy and hard drive gave up the ghost.

dude, if you think a computer of that era was slow without the math co try a 486 with the on-board cache pulled a generation later. used to have to pull it out of computers to see if it had gone bad and to test it i had to let it go through and boot then try to replicate the error with the cache out, that could take forever. the reason i couldn't just swap it out was because there were so many standards of cache at the time and it was so expensive that it would have been insane for a small shop to have a set that would fit in every 486 setup, a replacement cache sometimes cost more than a grand.

the rubbery keys was just very nice also... they kept it in the laster slim laptops and also the clam shell...which i really loved at 1st site

As a Defense Contract Audit Agency sub-contractor I once stood on a truck dock above a dumpster tossing 4 of these (or very similar model) and almost 100 CRTs in "As hard as you can." Because they had become fully depreciated and needed to be Destroyed. LOL The real heart breaker that day was the Compaq Portable. : (

i had the same IIT (running 25MHz) and it was REALY good!!!

Booting vintage computers is priceless!

Back when I was a youngin' I would have loved to have this. Now that I am not so young I still want to have this.

The Crysis bit killed me haha, particularly because my close friend always makes that comment jokingly when I talk about video performance. ;) Great little laptop. I had a 386 one as well when I was a kid, running Windows 3.1. It had no soundcard, but I remember using some app under windows, that PWM'd the PC speaker (the little internal speaker that strictly makes beeps) to allow it to play .wav audio files with a few bits of resolution haha. It didn't sound too terrible! :)

24:05 hahahahhah what the hell is that thing hahahahah Nice video Dave... Thanks

This was the first computer I had ever used! I was about 4 years old and my dad had this laptop for work at the credit union he was employed at. Every night he'd bring it home so I could play games on it. I still have it and made a few repairs on it. I even managed to install Windows 95 on it! YES! The 386 is actually a 32-bit processor, so it can handle Windows 95, albeit it's a bit sluggish on this machine. Also when installing Windows 95 you need about 25 floppy disks! XDDD

I think it could render crysis at 1 frame per year.

It's a shame that IBM doesn't build laptop anymore. I consider myself lucky to have one of their last thinkpad.

Great video Dave. I suggest investing in a Cherry MX Brown mechanical keyboard from your comments on the feel of the laptops keyboard.

I had this one! :) awesome machine

Words may not but the sound of you pushing those buttons do them more justice than you think, I think... :s

This laptop is right up my street.

In the US, that Daewoo laptop was likely branded "Leading Edge". They also had a MCA license and marketed a MCA bus desktop called the Leading Edge Model D3/MC.

Very simple enclosure, almost like a homebrew arrangement. Basically just a rectangle where the battery, motherboard, HDD and FDD sit next to each other. Quite different to modern laptops, where there are is a complex tight sandwich of custom plastic/metal pieces. The thermal management is another hassle. Blows my mind how they these days are able to get it all together, and in a relatively short time. Must be an interesting but stressful job.

Here, Dave, let me give you a helping hand with that LCD panel - Front > animus.pro/public/lcd_1.jpg Back > animus.pro/public/lcd_2.jpg It's Hitachi 97-24634-2, made in Japan. Display matrix is VGA, monochrome, capable of 32 levels of gray. It has multiple OKI m5299a segment drivers on the back of LCD board. I also had exactly the same laptop, and also teared it down few years ago, so upon seeing Your video, went to attic and found LCD panel. :) And I must agree with you - typing on that keyboard was pure pleasure. I remember running Windows 3.11 and learning Pascal programming on that rig even in late 90s, when everyone around was already playing StarCraft/Half-Life on their 133Mhz Pentium MMX.

Pretty amaZing tech for early 90's IMHO. I was just introduced to CLONES in the late 80's. Without a GUI that speedster would be a joy. 👍😎

I had one of those! Was my first laptop even tho it was old when i got it. Too bad i threw it away a few years ago.

I remember that computer. :-)

EEVblog I bet that the hybrid with PLL was connected to the power save switch. Probabally used to generate the main clock or a low clock that was fed into a multiplier. Especially because you mentioned the missing 4 pin crystal. I never knew Western Digital made chipsets or video controllers. Even less a whole set. That keyboard sounds (when you press the keys) just like a Dell Quietkey I have. I looked inside to clean out the dirt and found all the little rubber cups actually glued to the plastic matrix sheet with a tiny drop of silicone glue (its white and rubbery, what else). Such a nice keyboard, the keys no longer stick that Iv cleaned the dust out. I know what you mean, it just feels nice typing on it. I use it whenever I have to type a lot, but keep my multimedia keyboard for general use as the 12 programmable hotkeys get a lot or use (the built in calculator and hibernate buttons are my favorite). As to the graphics, it definitely wouldnt run Crysis LOL. Maybe Doom though considering it could have MS-DOS installed if one wished (I know it runs IBM DOS, it would probabally run normal DOS).

Dave, really enjoyed the teardown. The Bruce Springstreen and gamers references made me laugh ;) Find an old DOS terminal emulator; you can use that nice keyboard on the serial ports on all those development boards you have. You know that will be more fun than using some crappy windows terminal emulator ;)

Those WERE the days :) but just a minor point, the first colour laptop was the 5kg Sharp mains-only luggable in early 1993, so it is unfair to knock the L40SX's grey-scale LCD. The Sharp was £5,000+ too, because of the ridiculous failure rate of the early colour LCD panels.

The big chip on the left side of the planar (IBM term) is a Hitachi H8 microcontroller which serves as the ISA bus controller; quite a common thing on 386 systems.

When you hear that "Hai", you know you're in for a good video.

i have a 1999 ibm aptiva and has 256mb of ram, and that was HUGE in those days.

Excellent!

Hearing Dave ask if it can play Crysis about had me on the floor.

Love it!

i got a toshiba ct50 laptop with a solid state cf card with cf to ide and its hell of a difference in speed and battery lasts 2x longer

IBM always had (or have) excellent keyboards.

161 and 163 are due to a dead Cmos battery. Bios settings for the chip set, and date time are not set. All bios information was stored on the Hard Disk.there was no bios chip on the motherboard.

nice "Simple Jack" computer nerd impression :) @ 24:04