Resources
Wiki (T1200 version)
oldcomputer.info
Please also check the predecessor of Toshiba T1200XE: Toshiba T1000XE.
Documents
Internals
Motherboard
To change BIOS settings, you need a special SETUP1.EXE tool.
Power Supply Board
Display
Toshiba TLX-1631-C3B
Backlight Inverter Board
Keyboard
Accessory
Batteries
It is possible to replace all the batteries with modern cells, for example here are AA rechargeable batteries place in the original casing by the previous owner of the machine:
Hard Drive
The original T1200XE contained 20MB JVC HDD, which configuration was hard coded in BIOS. This HDD comes from T1200XE-40 version, that was upgraded to 40MB JDE2850P30-2 HDD. I noticed two versions of the BIOS (written on EPROM). Version 083A seems to support 20MB drive and version 083B supports 40MB drive.
The drive can be replaced with a modern Compact Flash to IDE adapter. I have not tried to make it boot, it probably requires installation of a solution like ANYDRIVE.
Floppy Disk Drive
2MB Matsushita ZA0856P01 EME263-TL. It is a really problematic drive with its rubber belt propelling the disk rotation. The belt dissolves with time. It can be replaced with a new belt, I fortunately had some belt that just fit, but I don’t know the exact parameters needed.
Power Supply
Briefcase
I am not sure if this bag is 100% accurate for this model, but it is Toshiba, it is retro and works well and look great here.
Reassembly
Did this machine have the blinking red LED issue ? I see the caps on the power board are all new and modern and not the original caps.
Honestly I don’t remember now if it had this issue or not. Definitely I recapped it and it works.
I’ve not had sucess recapping the power boards on these, of the 2 I’ve attempted to recap they still had the blinking red led problem. Not sure if those small caps the bottom main logic board also need replacing, as I usually skip the smaller ones.
The power board was soaked in old electrolite and stunk my house out, smelt awful for weeks 🙂
I think I remember that I powered it on by connecting regulated power supply to the battery terminals. Possibly there were problems with powering it on through the normal PSU and I didn’t know if it was because of missing battery. But I don’t remember if it was the red led blinking.
Oh what I wrote above was for 1000xe. Here I have a restored battery. But in 1000xe there were troubles powering it on without the battery through PSU.
Thanks for all the info and photos! I’m in the process of dissasembling a 1200XE at the moment with the help of your excellent photos. How did you remove the small plastic cover over the screen hinge with TOSHIBA logo stamped on it ?
I don’t want to break anything and it looks like it should just clip off to access the the screws behind it.
You need to slide the logo to the side, it goes off easily. Good luck!
Ahh, so simple. Thank you and have a great holiday!
This was the first laptop I ever owned. It was old and mostly obsolete by then, but I did a lot of work with it and it changed my life. Nice little machine for its time.
What batteries voltages of CMOS and for hard-RAM ? I couldn’t find. What battery did you use to replace old one?
I have a working T1200HB en route to me this week it seems to be somewhat different to the XE. Do you know anything about the memory expansions for these devices? I have spent days searching but can’t find anything more than part numbers.
Unfortunatelly I don’t have any information about the memory cards.
P/N PC13-PA8306U: 2MB memory card (from manual page 3)
Looking for a power supply for T1200 Model number TA7048U W. Need a power supply is there a source of or an alternative power supply that would work for this machine?
Any 12 volts power supply with 6.3 mm connector and 25 Watts or more output power will work. Regular 12 power supply has 5.5 mm connector. So you can find on Ebay 5.5mm to 6.3mm adapter for them. But if you need exact TA7048U model then best way “save search” on Ebay and wait.
Hello. i have a T1200XE I have not used for many years. It doesn’t power up now. The battery pack is a PA8705U. It warms up when plugged in. Is there a replaceable battery side the pack? How does it open? Thanks.
Hi Richard. I would suggest disassemble it and check for capacitor leaking. Also check for batteries leaking. You may not see the leak right on the board so better to swing capacitors a bit and check under capacitors for leaking. If you find some leak then wash the board immediately under warm water. You will need to disassemble it almost completely for sure. Be ready and careful with wires. All capacitors must be replaced. Don’t make it run too long if doesn’t power up, don’t make it warm because capacitors can leak more and even explode.
Hi,
My HDD was a Conner CP-2024
Regards,
Hi, do you know what are the CHS values of that 40MB JVC drive? I removed that drive from broken T1200XE, hooked it up to Asus A7V133-C based “test bench” and made the mistake of reformatting it, now I can’t boot from the drive even though I can install operating systems and access files on the disk just fine. Before reformatting I was able to boot from this drive to DOS 3 with that Asus board.
D-E2850P* is: capacity 42, heads 3, cyl 791, spt 35. You can find it in a book called Hard Drive Bible, it’s on archive.org.
The screen looks very bright and high-contrast on your photos, much more so then I have seen anywhere else. Have you altered it in any way or changed the backlight to something more modern?
No, I didn’t change anything, but the photos with content on screen I usually make with manual shutter settings, in those pictures it was 2 seconds, so it may not reflect the real intensity of the screen brightness.
I poked around the 083B BIOS which is the more recent version (1.10) and it supports 7 hard drive models of various sizes.
It’s possible to add support for a CF card by replacing the parameters of one of those disks with the ones for the CF card (CHS).
For a 512MB CF card these could be the parameters for example (1017 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors):
F903 10 0000FFFF0000000000 F903 3F 04
The last byte I guess could be 04 or 07 but I don’t know what it does or means so I’d just leave it as is depending on what parameters you replace.
After replacing the parameters and adjusting the model string accordingly it’s necessary to fix the checksum and voilà.
Also the 27C010 is only half used so it might be possible to use a 27C512 EPROM by leaving empty the top two rows of pins (basically aligning it toward the bottom of the socket leaving empty the 2×2 pins at the top toward the notch) or a 29C512 EEPROM as is.
This is the entire HDD table starting at 0x1E471 matched with the models listed starting at 0x10D8E:
Model: Cylinders Heads Unknown stuff Landing Zone Sectors Unknown byte
CP2034: 9B01 04 0000FFFF0000000000 9B01 26 04
CP2064: 3703 04 0000FFFF0000000000 3703 26 04
JD-E2850P: 1703 03 0000FFFF0000000000 1703 23 07
CP2044: D403 05 0000FFFF0000000000 D403 11 04
CP2024: 6702 04 0000FFFF0000000000 6702 11 07
JD-E2825P: 4502 02 0000FFFF0000000000 4502 24 07
NK1122FC: DC03 05 0000FFFF0000000000 DC03 11 04
“Also the 27C010 is only half used so it might be possible to use a 27C512 EPROM by leaving empty the top two rows of pins (basically aligning it toward the bottom of the socket leaving empty the 2×2 pins at the top toward the notch) or a 29C512 EEPROM as is.”
I miscounted the number of pins so this is not really correct in regard of the 27C512 which might need an adapter socket, but the 29C512 EEPROM has the same number of pins of the 27C010 and should be compatible (need to split in half the original bin file and program the “bottom” half)
Thanks for the excellent photos! I’ve had quite a journey with my T1200XE. First I had to make a power adapter – the 12V is quite common, but the barrel jack is much bigger than usual, as someone mentioned.
Then I had to recap the screen PCB as it was intermittent. Then the belt in the floppy drive needed changing. I got hold of a spare machine for parts, and it turns out there was something wrong with the motherboard of the first one, probably because of battery leakage (yellow package). The second motherboard worked but then the floppy drive stopped working again. I managed to get one working by transferring the belt to the floppy drive of the second machine.
Then the it worked and then it didn’t again. This time it was the PSU board that needed recapping. This worked nicely although it was hard work. I fund that without one of the little connectors plugged it would just blink red as someone mentioned – the one close to the floppy drive.
None of the hard drives in the two machines worked and so I got a CF-card adapter and a 32MB card. The BIOS will only accept certain drives as mentioned above, but I finally got it working with ANYDRIVE. I was able to find the correct parameters of the CF-card in a windows machine. I’m using the OEM Toshiba MS-DOS 5.0. Only thing now is refurbishing the battery. I just love the crispness of the screen!
Congratulations on the great job fixing this machine! Would you mind sharing the drive parameters you discovered? Thanks
Thanks! The ANYDRIVE parameters that worked for my 32MB Cisco CF card are:
0 255 3 63 (unit cyls heads sectors/track). I used the “wmic diskdrive” command in the terminal on a Windows 10 machine to see the parameters of the CF-card to use.