Somehow, [acidx] knew that I coveted a libretto for years. He sent in his writeup on modding his Libretto 50ct to be a bit more useful. The mods are pretty basic, he overclocked it to 133Mhz and added a ps/2 port. The tweaks keep the well aged libretto a usable platform.
Pssst. wanna see your hack on Hack-A-Day? Use the tips line!
If you like the Libretto, you should look into a Fujitsu Lifebook… I have a P1120, 800Mhz, 256ram, touch screen, internal wifi, and the same size as the Libretto.
Posted at 9:10 am on Mar 1st, 2007 by Unorthodox
I love my old Libretto 70. I use it to drive a Eprom reader/writer that happens to be bigger than it. heheh.
Great little device. :)
Posted at 10:35 am on Mar 1st, 2007 by Yorgle
I honestly had no clue these things existed – certainly a hacker’s toy if I ever saw one.
Linux Installation:
http://ecg.mit.edu/george/libretto.html
Hacking the libretto 100 – overclock to 266Mhz:
http://aelinik.free.fr/libretto.htm
A little digging through google and the web archive got me this gem (site is now defunct; no idea how stale any of those links are):
http://web.archive.org/web/20000824180332/www.silverace.com/libretto/
Ebay and other e-tailors seem to be awash with cheap complete sets, extra batteries, etc. Happy hacking!
Posted at 1:34 pm on Mar 1st, 2007 by pragma
I love my Libretto! Can’t imagine o’cing it though, it runs so hotly as it is…
Posted at 6:45 pm on Mar 1st, 2007 by Jakeh
Ditto on the lifebook. I have a p1510d, and it is fantastic for it’s size. 1.2 GHz pentium mobile, 512 Ram, 30 GB harddrive, CF and SD slot, wireless, 2 USB, VGA, and audio out. Plus the screen swivels into tablet form with a touch screen and finger print scanner. An amazing laptop no bigger than a portable DVD player.
For extended use though, I recommend a separate monitor, usb keyboard, usb mouse.
Posted at 1:55 am on Mar 2nd, 2007 by cide1
hey i have one of these. looks like i’m going to have to overclock this tonight. i have found that some harddrives gererate enough heat to trip the heat sensor in to shuting the system down. now we just need a hack to add more then 32mb of ram ;)
Posted at 4:57 am on Mar 2nd, 2007 by Gr0bschmit
Yeah, Librettos are sweet. There’s also a mailing list which is still fairly active (archive is my url), even though most discussion is about the US-marketed Libs (almost ~10 years later!). I’ve got FreeBSD on my 100CT now, planning to intsall OpenBSD very soon. Some other good sites include Xin’s site (linked to in the post); it is king of the libretto hacks. Also, http://www.silverace.com/libretto/ is definitely not defunct, and has lots of good technical manuals and drivers.
I’m looking to repack/rebuild the extended battery for my Lib–any one else tried this?
I wonder what happened to silverace’s site, it was fully working less than a week ago, with lots of up-to-date links for the Libretto series.
Over the next week, I’ll likely put Windows 98 on my 100CT, so I can get USB and Wifi going. I’ve also picked up a ~$12 card that is a hardware MPEG/MPEG II/DVD decoder so I can play DVDs (see link in name for it) on the Libretto.
My Libretto has enhanced my wants for a beefier platform in this size,. So, it might end up hanging off my KVM as a retro DOS box if I find a suitable replacement for cheap (i.e. not a p1510d).
I’ve got a 100CT with a dead battery. I found the old style camcorder batteries happen to run at 12 volts. A little snipping of power cords and a little soldering and I have a massive external battery. Followed by a 6gb hard drive and shoehorning XP in. Yeah, it takes a little bit to boot but it is great on the airplane. I can comfortably use it even when the bloke in front leans back for a shave.
Posted at 9:14 pm on Mar 3rd, 2007 by mozman
after diggin out my old CT100 and needing to replace the HD. I was shocked to find that a Hitachi(40gb)HD
and an IBM(40gb)HD, could be placed into the Libretto body and it would recognize and access them no problems! especially after reading Here that I would need a disk manager for anything over 8.4gb due to a bios limitation. (I must say I found no such limitation, and only used a 40gb drive because it was the only one I could find around my desk which fit (size wise) into the unit.) I did have to cut a few pieces of plastic off the HD near the pins to make sure it would slide all the way into place. but all in all I was Happy with the results! next thing to do is find a way to add more memory then the 64mb Cap.
my Goal is to beef it up as much as possible and use it for a combo “on board Diagnostics reader” for my truck ( so I could monitor the engine stats in real time as I drive) and also to be able to use it for a navigation unit with a PCMCIA gps unit ( or maybe I would have to get a PCMCIA USB card to hook it up ) and last but not least to output Media player audio to my Stereo for entertainment, you know MP3’s and whatever I want to watch or listen too. esentialy this would bcome a Sort of Entertainment Brain for my Truck! now I have a DVD/CD/TV indash unit already, but this would have the ability to download from my wireless network in the house without ever coming out of the truck! bottom line is I got a couple of these units that were expensive 10 years ago, and then sat around for years, so i will try and give them a new life, and get some of that value back from them.
Mod On!
Posted at 9:11 am on May 22nd, 2007 by Angry Kreyon
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crap that’s a big ic
Posted at 7:50 am on Mar 1st, 2007 by crgwbr