Toshiba T1200 Power Supply Issues

Scott

New Tinkerer
Sep 30, 2021
5
5
3
I suspect this is capacitor related due to the smell, and I think it's coming from the power adapter and not the computer, but I have a Toshiba T1200 that no longer powers on at all. Has anyone had any luck restoring these?
 

techknight

Moderator
Staff member
Dec 2, 2021
76
79
18
North Carolina
The Toshiba T1XXX line are horrible for pissing capacitors everywhere, eating traces away and even blowing up transistors. I have worked on many.

The T1200, and especially the T1200xe is the worst offender. I have a pair of those and I have been unable to repair them. The power supply circuitry was novel for the time, but its complexity was its own downfall especially when cap juice gets everywhere and eats the board completely out.

The AC adapters are just as bad, yeah. I have not worked on AC adapters that old because i never see them with the machines, but the newer Toshiba PSUs for the T19XX series and T4XXX series are awful. They all need recapped.
 

Scott

New Tinkerer
Sep 30, 2021
5
5
3
Oh man, sounds like I have a piece of work on my hands here.

Any hints on the hard drives? Weren't they proprietary too?
 

techknight

Moderator
Staff member
Dec 2, 2021
76
79
18
North Carolina
Some of them were, yeah. The ones that were traditional IDE, Toshiba was notorious for hardcoding the BIOS to only work with their specific drive bundled with that machine so you need the expansion card which has an XT-IDE to CF solution.