General Technology & Troubleshooting Topics

[Curtis]

Okay, I've come in to posession of one each of both of these and am just about ready to pull my hair out.

1.  How the heck do I get into the CMOS settings?

2.  The L2 came with the hard drive slicked and I would like to load XP on it, but I can't seem to boot from a CD-ROM.  How do I do that?

3.  Where the heck do I find an external video cable?

That should do for now.  I'm sure I"ll have TONS of questions as I get to know these little beauties better!

Thanks,

Curtis McCain

[brad]

Never seen one of those, I think the last Libretto I came across was a 110, although I think I saw someone with a 1100 a while ago.

<Esc> should get you into the BIOS settings at bootup.

Not sure on getting it to boot from a CD drive.  The early USB bootable toshibas were kind of picky about which drives would work (based on porteges of simmilar vintage)

You might end up pulling the drives and installing base windows on a different machine.

No idea on the cable.

there are a bunch of libretto sites out there, but most now days seem to concentrate on installing Linux or FreeBSD.

This is an older one, but some of the links might help: http://www.silverace.com/libretto/

You might send an email to the people at http://www.dynamism.com since they have been importing Librettos all along.

Oh, just remebered, here are the video drivers.

http://www.s3graphics.com/en/drivers/legacy_software_archive.aspx

Actually, since those machines probably came with XP, I bet there's some japanese toshiba site with all of the drivers, but I don't have enough of the language to navigate through.

[Curtis]

Found out access to the bios is via a setup program.  May have a line on that from a Portege 3110CT.  Hopefully, it'll be close enough to work.

Re:  the CD booting.  I do believe you're correct about it being really finicky.  I think I'll have to do as you suggest and use a "mule" to install the basic Windows install and then put the hard drive back in the target machine.

Found the S3 video drivers on driverguide.com.  Luckily since my Japanese is, to be polite, pathetic!  I even tried Babel Fish and it wasn't much help AT ALL!

Will try dynamism and see what they have to say.

Oh, btw, I believe most of the L series came with ME installed.  Hence my desire to put XP on!

I've arleady checked out most of the English speaking Libretto sites and info on anything past the 110 is sketchy at best.

Do appreciate your come back tho Brad.  Maybe someone else will have a little more experience.

Curtis

[thebigguyy1]

Hello,

I also just got a Libretto L1 the other day, Japanese keyboard and all, and I am using it for this posting as we speak and I am running Windows XP Professional on it. I thought I might share how I got it installed.

First, I found out that there is no legacy setup on these system, meaning that you cannot get into the BIOS gy hitting ESC, that just prompts you to hit F1 to return to default settings. However, if you want to boot from a floppy or a CD ROM drive, you need to press the power on button and simultaneously push the "F" key to boot from a Network.

This Libretto is VERY picky as it will not boot from just any CD ROM. I have a USB CD ROM but it would not boot from it, so I ended up removing the drive and slaving it onto a workshop PC and loaded Windows ME files along with the files from my USB CD-ROM drive. I then loaded Windows ME and connected my USB CD ROM drive to the Libretto and it recognized the CD ROM drive and I proceeded to load Windows XP with no problems whatsoever. Windows XP had all of the audio and video drivers that the Libretto needed and they were all loaded on. I even loaded in a PCMCIA WIFI card and it works great.

The only other thing that I had to hash out was the power settings and LCD brightness settings. I ended you finding those on the Yahoo Groups site for the Libretto L1. Juat do a search in yahoo groups for "Libretto L1" and you will find it. Some of the site is in Japanese and other languages, but just go to where they have the "Files" section and you will find the power, dispay, audio and power settings drivers.

So far, everything is running smoothly albeit not nearly as fast as my 3 ghz system, but it holds it own and you cannot beat this little Libretto for the performance for it's size, not to meantion the portability and th wow factor.

My next move may be to try loading Linux on it as I hear it runs pretty quickly as a Linux machine.

Hope this helps a bit!

Ron

thebigguy1@hotmail.com

[thebigguyy1]

P.S.

My bad.....for the boot sequence, I forgot to add that if you press the "F" key as you power on the system the Libretto will boot from a floppy drive, the "C" key will allow you to boot from a COMPATIBLE CD-ROM drive, and if you hold down the left arrow key while powering on the system that will also give you the choice of either a floppy boot, CD ROM boot or a HDD boot....

And if your hinges are loose, that is also an easy fix as there is a little screw on the back of the right hinge that just tightens with a small allen wrench.....and voila, tight hinge again!

Ron

[Curtis]

Hi Ron,

Actually, I finally got XP Pro loaded a couple of days ago.  I did the "slave"/mule thing like you did, but kept getting a Stop 7B once I installed the drive back into the Libretto.  A quick(?) search told me this was an inaccessible boot device.  Microsoft didn't recommend the fix, but it worked.  Basically, I copied 4 files into the system32/drivers folder and merged about 3 pages of IDE drivers into the registry.  Rather frustrating taking the drive out and putting it back into my slave, merging the registry, taking the drive out of the mule and back into the Libretto, but it worked.

Yeah, I've heard booting from a CD is almost impossible unless you have the EXACT drive it'll recognize and that not available anymore!

Just found the L1 Yahoo group!  Had been looking in another group, but all they got was trash.  Got the files and about to load it up.

BTW, any suggestions on the BIOS setup program?

Also, I think I have another problem.  I picked up a brand new battery and popped it in.  Battery light came on amber and just kept flashing.  Charging circuit problem?

I've got an L2 that I'm waiting on a voltage invertor for the display (don't ask!).  When I plug the same battery in it, the battery light comes on solid amber.

Another quirky problem.  Blasted PC Card slot seems to be demanding more resources than are available.  I popped in a PC Card to USB 2.0 in and it saw it, but claims it's using too many resources.  Can't get an IRQ, I/O, or nothing!  Typical of the L1?

I'm thinking I may move on over to the L2 when I get that replacement voltage inverter in.

Finally, does anyone know where I can pick up a mini rgb to VGA dongle?  Don't say conics.com.  I contacted them and they said IF they had one it would run $92!

Curtis

[Curtis]

Well, Santa was good to me and I got a Toshiba netbook, so I'm probably going to put the L1 and L2 on ebay and mark it all up to experience.

I appreciate everyone who offered support on this topic.

Curtis