Many hours of work and endless tweaking later, my latest project, this time involving a Toshiba Libretto 100CT, is a success. The GPS receiver came in yesterday afternoon, after which I promptly went to do a couple of hours of wrangling with nonexistant installation instructions, then eventually testing with Streets & Trips 2006.


Starting Specs for the Toshiba Libretto 100CT:

• Pentium 166Mhz
• 32MB RAM
• 2.1GB HDD
• Windows 98
• Internet Explorer 4.0
• Office 97
• Lotus Notes
• McAfee Antivirus 4.0
• Xircom 56k Modem/100mbps Ethernet Card

Post-Project Specs:

• Pentium 266Mhz (after soldering modification to the motherboard)
• 64MB RAM (after reseating a loose 32MB module)
• 2.1GB HDD
• Windows 98SE (pared WAY down, and secured)
• Office 97
• Firefox 1.5
• Thunderbird 1.5
• Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006
• Winamp 2.9 (streams smoothly from Shoutcast, and from MP3s over the LAN)
• Filezilla FTP Client
• AVG Anti-Virus Personal Edition
• AMN Refrigerator v2.x (for cooling the CPU, unit has no built-in fan)
• Netgear WG511v2 802.11g Wireless Card
• Xircom 56k Modem/100mbps Ethernet Card
• PQI CompactFlash to PCMCIA Adapter (GPS receiver/digital photos)
• Generic UG-200-CF CompactFlash GPS Receiver
• …and about 20 classic games from the 90s (Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, etc.)

All-in-all, it was a pretty challenging project. Endless swapfile tweaks and whatnot kept me on my toes for days. The biggest impediment to getting anything done was easily the paltry size of the hard drive — Streets & Trips takes up 1.1GB on its own, leaving the rest to sit in the remaining 900MB of space. At last check, I still have anywhere between 150-175MB free (varying due to the swapfile).

In the end, though, I’ve taken what was a pretty ancient, unused computer and given it a new life as a lean, ultra-portable machine not only capable of accessing the Internet from most anywhere, but of reading in photos from the CF card and of course uber-cool GPS functionality for the road — normally retailing in the hundreds for a standalone unit. Since it has Office 97, a modern web browser, and a decent mail client, I can pretty much do anything I’ll ever need to on it when a larger laptop would be too unwieldy. It was well worth the effort put into it; it handles everything much faster and more efficiently than I ever expected from a computer literally the size of a VHS cassette.

Image Archive: http://www.op9.net/images/libretto/

1. I have a Generic UG-200-CF CompactFlash GPS Receiver but it came with no drivers. I need some for Windows 98 .. any ideas? thanks, Dan

   Dan (#)
   Wednesday February 22, 2006

2. I forget the location I found them at, but there are no special drivers. What you need are the complactflash generic reference drivers. It took me a few hours to finally find them on the net, but they worked.
   
   Alternatively, the steps in this PDF may help as well: http://www.usglobalsat.com/downloads/BC-337/BC-337_USerGuide.pdf

   Gary (#)
   Saturday February 25, 2006

3. I have the same problem. My UG-200-CF GPS receiver came with no driver. Did you happen to figure out how to get it working?

   ed (#)
   Thursday April 6, 2006

4. How and what did you remove from win 98SE to get the libretto to run efficiently?

   Ken (#)
   Sunday July 23, 2006

5. I recently came into posession of a Libretto 100CT, and I’m thinking of doing pretty much exactly what you did: GPS, winamp, etc.
   Do you have any tips?

   Nik (#)
   Thursday August 31, 2006

6. Very good website, well done and thank you for your job –

   video gratuite (#)
   Friday July 4, 2008

7. Nice article on the mother of all EEE clones!

   I am very happy to see some other people ing great things with their Libretto.

   I dedicated a website and forum to the Toshiba Libretto.

   Just click below!

   Librettoworld.com (#)
   Monday November 24, 2008