The Toshiba Libretto 30CT

The Toshiba Libretto 30 is one of the smallest conventional portable computers available running a standard version of Windows 95 (or 98, NT or Linux!). Although not much bigger than some PDAs, my original version 30 sports most of the features of a larger laptop or desktop machine; that is a 6.1" diagonal VGA screen, with 16 bit colour, a then 840Mb Hard disc, standard serial(/IRDA) and parallel ports a type II PCMCIA slot, a good moving key keyboard and an integrated PS/2 mouse in the top lid, which comes easily to hand. Together with it's multi-voltage, international power supply and fair battery life, it makes an ideal light weight travelling companion.

I had already seen one in action, in the hands of one of my Japanese students, when I found out that Morgans of Oxford Street had cornered the market in some grey imports of Korean assembled Libretto 30s. These had a larger than normal 840Mb Hard disc, and were available for just over £500. When I purchased my Olympus C900, I soon realised that the Smart Media it uses has a limited capacity for high resolution photos, and I immediately thought of a Libretto as a suitable, portable backing store, with x50 more storage capacity! So without further a do, I bought one. I subsequently found out that someone else had already had the same idea of a portable digital darkroom (unfortunately now a dead link!).

Being more than I really could afford at the time, I purchased a minimum specification, with no memory expansion and no floppy disc, although it did include the essential mini port replicator, which includes the normal pc style parallel and 9 pin serial ports. I subsequently bought the 12Mb memory expansion, to bring it up to its maximum 20MB, from Richnight Ltd (also now a dead link!), via an online Internet order, at an inclusive price, including postage and VAT, less than that of Morgan's ex VAT! Since that time, I have purchased the floppy disc unit, a SCSI PCMCI card, a Xircom parallel port network adapter, and a CardPort Swift SM by Chase Research, a parallel port Smart Media reader to speed up the transfer of images from my camera. This, because I had recently acquired a 32Mb Smart Media card, and had been trying out the uncompressed setting available on the C900. This resulted in just under 4Mb TIFF files, with 8 on the card (73 JPEGs at the minimum compression level!), and they took for ever to download via the serial port. It is important to note, that this reader works with my Libretto, without the external power supply lead, which should connect to a non-existent PS/2 keyboard socket! The Libretto must supply power via it's parallel port, lucky, since the power connection was needed for use with several desktop machines, with dumber parallel ports! One of my major regrets is a lack of a USB port in this older Libretto. It is a sad fact that all the PCMCIA USB adapters that I have found have been Cardbus 32bit Cardport devices, and hence incompatible with this Libretto's 16bit type II slot.

Since then I have purchased, for one of my desktop PCs, a USB smart card reader from STAK Trading, which has proved to be the fastest way of directly downloading photos. However, the use of this device, with the help of the illustration on it's box, allowed me to make use of a PCMCIA Smart Media reader, which I had obtained very cheaply when I bought my C900. I had never got this to work. It installed OK in my Libretto, and the media slotted fully in, with the label side up, which I assumed was the correct orientation (it did not have any instructions with it). Since the cards are strongly keyed, with a cut off corner, I never attempted to turn them over, as I did not think they would fit!! Not until I saw the illustration on the above box, and had already tried, and failed to get the USB reader to work, did I try turning the card over. Bingo! both devices now work! Why did they bother to put a key on the cards in the first place, when two different readers that I have tried haven't bothered to implement them! I wouldn't mind, but Chase Research manage to get their reader to work the logical way, with the label on top!! Since then I have bought a C3030. with it's much larger file sizes, and a 64Mb card. The PCMCIA reader has now come into its own, and I transfer the Libretto's final, bulky photo collection to my main machine, (a home built twin Pentium Pro machine running Windows 2000) via a 3-Com PCMCIA 10-Base-T network card!

I intend, in the near future, to publish here a quantitive analysis of the relative speed of my now considerable variety of camera-computer interchange devices.

The advantage of the installed Windows 95, is in it's complete range of accessories and games (inc. my addiction; Freecell!), of which initially most usefull was the Direct Cable Connection software. Using this, together with a parallel cable, actually supplied with Carbon Copy32, I was able to install a range of software, from a shared CD Rom on my main desk top machine. Even after having included these, there is 566Mb free for images!