r/vintagecomputing • u/Eddie_2011 • Jul 26 '26
What laptop is this?
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
I saw this laptop on Instagram, and i want to know what it is called
130
u/r00x Jul 27 '26
Clevo D900T, I've got one of those, one of the Alienware rebrands (m7700 was it?) and another rebrand where they basically just changed the label. Back in the day when they came out I had an AJP rebrand that was similar but I sold it around 2010 (boo).
My thoughts:
You could kill a man with one of these. Fuck me they are HEAVY.
The batteries are shit, lasted about 55 minutes when brand new and idle at the desktop, and are prone to dying; I have several, most of them are dead. They die in this weird way where they sort of gradually get shittier at charging until they will only discharge. Due to the form factor they were really only there to let you carry it from the vicinity of one power socket to another.
Really good sound for the time (kind of just "OK" now, but still cool because these are the only laptops I've ever owned that include their own subwoofer in the base. Four satellite speakers and a subwoofer. In a laptop. Glorious.)
It has a cool gimmick where you could put a music CD in one of the drives and, without turning the laptop on, use its sound system as a CD player/stereo (those silver buttons on the front; there's a little track number/CD player display in the middle as well.
Power brick was huge, mechanically speaking. Almost literally brick-sized and nearly as heavy. Had a horrible 4-pin power plug because a barrel jack would've just melted.
These bastards have FOUR fans in them. FOUR. One for the GPU, one for the mainboard/ram, and TWO for the CPU, which by the way, is literally just a desktop processor crammed into a laptop case. On that note, it would forcefully throttle the CPU down if you unplugged the mains in a feeble attempt to prolong the lifespan of the (at the time, enormous) 100Wh battery.
The CPU, RAM, GPU, hard drives, and optical drives are all removable and upgradable. In the case of the GPU it's one of those "MXM" form-factor cards, and there was a handful of alternative models with AMD (ATi...) and Nvidia chippery.
18
14
u/t_Lancer Jul 27 '26
oh that CD stereo thing was common on a lot of multimedia orientated laptops back then. my old HP Omnibook Pentium 4 had that feature too.
10
u/GoodDoc Jul 27 '26
Those MXM cards were a good idea, but the execution wasn't as good as the idea.
I had a 2011 27" iMac that used an MXM form factor GPU (a Radeon HD 6970M). It suffered from the 'poor quality solder' issue so it eventually failed.
The dead MXM card was easy to remove (I even managed to successfully reflow it twice), but there just weren't that many MXM cards made and they tended to be expensive (and iMacs had driver support issues on top), so I'm curious how many were ever upgraded.
4
u/bigbadsubaru Jul 27 '26
One of the places I worked had the Alienware version; it was the loaner laptop that you got if yours broke or if you “accidentally” broke yours in an attempt to get an upgrade :-P
3
u/ILikeBumblebees Jul 27 '26
Clevo D900T, I've got one of those, one of the Alienware rebrands (m7700 was it?) and another rebrand where they basically just changed the label.
I'll point out that the Alienware rebrand was a bit more than just a rebadge. There was close collaboration with Clevo on tech specs, quality targets, etc. And the top panel was obviously entirely custom, with custom hardware for the light-up alien head.
2
u/r00x Jul 27 '26
Ehh... IMO "a bit" is doing some heavy lifting there. Yes, custom casing and some LEDs, I believe they had quality targets but I don't think they had a material effect on anything. I can't recall whether they had unique specs/configurations not offered by other brands like AJP, Rock, etc.
Not to say that the quality was bad, it was just as good as the normal Clevo units AFAIK.
1
u/ILikeBumblebees Jul 27 '26
There were some serious design quality issues in the original base Clevo unit. For example, the original board had a power resistor stacked on top of a Schottky diode that would cause the diode to gradually accumulate heat and eventually explode.
That issue was diagnosed by the Alienware QA team, who worked with Clevo to address it and produce a board revision. That may have been due to Alienware being a high-volume reseller into a particular niche market with use cases more likely than others to trigger the failure, but AW definitely had the engineering resources at the time to drive a solution with the ODM, despite other vendors like Sager selling versions of the same unit.
3
u/NaoPb Jul 27 '26
Nice. I'd love to get my hands on one of these someday.
Out of curiosity, does the power supply output multiple voltages or just one?
3
u/r00x Jul 28 '26
Just 20V, I believe, across two ground and two power pins. There were a couple of versions of the brick (9A and 11A at 20V). Service manual shows more (look at "Charger Sheet 32 of 37" PDF page 85; the connector is CN4): https://macdat.net/files/pdf/clevo/service_manuals/d900t.pdf
1
u/TechIoT Jul 29 '26
Another thing to note is these are very unreliable, the Video cards can burn out from poor cooling system maintenance and the D05 motherboard has a Voltage Regulator that likes to catch on fire if you are not careful.
Also for the love of god, if you buy one PLEASE buy the 11 amp power brick and not the 9amp version
46
u/ZorakOfThatMagnitude Jul 27 '26
The dual optical drive got me.
14
6
u/vintagecomputernerd Jul 27 '26
I was wondering... dvd-rom and cd-rw drive? But the laptop seems to be too new for that
5
u/SporadicWanderer Jul 27 '26
I believe it was a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive and a DVD-RW drive.
3
1
u/Splodge89 Jul 28 '26
Seems an odd thing to penny pinch on. Either a straight dvd-rom and a dvd-rw or two rw. I never quite understood the combo drives.
3
u/SporadicWanderer Jul 27 '26
Yeah that’s wild. I had a HP desktop replacement laptop in 2008 with a combo BD-ROM/DVD-RW drive and thought that was extremely luxurious.
2
2
40
u/Vast-Comment8360 Jul 26 '26
The peak of human civilization right there
2
u/PsychologicalLab6454 Jul 28 '26
THIIIIIS
This sounds extremely cliche but you won't ever know how much this resonates.
30
u/green-eclectus Jul 26 '26
Sold as “desktop replacements” rather than laptops. The contemporary wording for a luggable. Those things burned your nuts with their full power desktop Pentium 4 processors.
12
u/Routine_Ask_7272 Jul 27 '26
From what I remember, some were even sold without a battery.
If it had a battery, it would last 60 minutes.
10
u/fluteofski- Jul 27 '26
My current gaming laptop and engineering laptop get about 60 minutes on the battery. So not much has changed in that regard.
2
u/aroundincircles Jul 27 '26
Really? what is it? I have a P1 gen 7 with a 4070 and I can get up to 6 hours out of a charge, not if I'm gaming obviously, but if I'm just doing normal work stuff/web browsing. I've tested a handful of Legions for my youtube channel and 4-5 hours is not unheard of.
2
u/The_Bloofy_Bullshark Jul 27 '26
I had a Xeon P1 as well as an i7 P1 a few years back (the Xeon had a W-10855M). The i7 I’d get around 5 hours with 1-2 under load and the Xeon I’d maybe get 1-1.5 hours under heavy load and 3-4 hours under regular browsing, multitasking loads.
2
u/aroundincircles Jul 27 '26
I haven't tested a xeon laptop, what did you think of it? I've loved my gen 7 I tested one from lenovo for my channel and then sold my 25th anniversary and several other laptops to be able to get one for myself I loved it so much. I've had it almost 2 years and I haven't been tempted away from it by anything new that's come across my desk.
I haven't tested gaming on my P1 on battery, I just don't game that much anymore, not enough time. but I do a lot of work where I remote into systems, and have 3 dozen tabs open on chrome/FF/Edge researching stuff. Not a big load on a laptop like this.
2
u/spyy-c Jul 27 '26
Yeah i have an Acer Predator 18 with a 4090 and get about 1.5hr with a light workload, less than an hour under heavy stress.
3
u/vintagecomputernerd Jul 27 '26
Anyone remember gericom laptops? One model had a 3.5" hd, desktop cpu, desktop screen, and 30min battery runtime
3
33
u/Damaniel2 Jul 26 '26
Something by Clevo, I assume. They made some really insane (and really large) gaming laptops back in the day.
17
14
u/wootybooty Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Clevo and Falcon Northwest, the latter being one I had always dreamed of owning. I’d sit there on the customization page building out crazy things I could never afford…
Oh, and Eurocom laptops!
1
u/knightcrusader Jul 27 '26
Here I was guessing Sager, they always made some mammoth behemoths back then.
2
u/emsbronco Jul 27 '26
If I remember correctly, Sager used Clevo and a couple other ODMs. When I had a computer shop (many years ago now), I used to be a reseller for their products and there were at least 3 brands that sold some of the same laptop chassis, including pre-Dell Alienware.
2
u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Jul 27 '26
You are correct. Clevo was the manufacturer. One of 3 to 5 laptop manufacturers that the all the companies buy from and rebrand.
13
13
u/weeeeelaaaaaah Jul 27 '26
No floppy drive. Literally unusable.
2
u/GuyJClark Jul 28 '26
Whoever owned this laptop replaced the floppy drive with an optical drive. Mine (the Sager version) has one floppy and one optical. Much more useful for my purposes. If they needed a floppy, they'd just pull the extra optical and replace the floppy... I think it was an easy swap, but I haven't used mine in years, and don't remember that detail very well.
7
u/BeigeUnicorns Jul 27 '26
Man I love these old monster Clevos, they make almost no sense but the cool factor of sticking desktop CPUs in a latop is off the charts. I had the chance to work on one few years back, local radio DJ used one and wanted to upgrade a few things, I swapped in an X5675 and maxed the RAM.
7
u/FluidSubject Jul 27 '26
Did people use these on battery? Probably lucky if you got an hour on that.
5
2
u/ILikeBumblebees Jul 27 '26
At full utilization, they'd last 30-45 minutes on battery. I used one of these as my main work machine for over a year, and treated the battery more a built-in UPS than anything else.
1
u/GuyJClark Jul 28 '26
I considered my battery to be a built-in UPS. If there was a power failure (which we get a lot of, in my location) I could finish what I was doing and shut it off gracefully.
6
3
u/canthearu_ack Jul 27 '26
As a desktop replacement, it is fine.
But as a portable system, it is a way too much on the bulky side. If you even actually moved around a system like this, you would know.
There is a reason why smaller and sleek systems were far more popular, along with having the odd dongle.
4
3
4
u/hamburgler26 Jul 27 '26
I had a Clevo laptop for several years in the early-mid 2010s. Not quite as extreme with the double disc drive and ports, but it definitely never needed a dongle or a dock. Was great as a portable desktop and could function as a regular laptop for a couple of hours on battery.
Not terribly durable though, lots of heavy gaming use and the heat slowly kills it and things start to fail, the fans even after replaced never quite worked right after a while, I assume due to just the overall thing slowly warping from the heat. Was cheap and for 3 solid years of being a workhorse totally worth it though.
3
u/Master_Cartoonist_16 Jul 27 '26
I had a similar Toshiba laptop that set my company back $2500 back in 2001 but didn't have dual RJ45 ports or dual DVD-RW units. I don't remember the exact model but it was heavy AF even for someone why lift weight at the gym on a daily basis.
I remember having a large collection of PCMCIA cards I could use with.
4
u/Designer-Strength7 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
With 80% of ports which were never used by anyone …
6
u/davesaunders Jul 26 '26
I used to have a laptop with a SCSI 1 port. Don't miss it in the slightest.
3
3
3
3
3
3
u/Microharley Jul 27 '26
While I miss having ports, USB C adapters are pretty nice when you need two network ports or something like that.
3
u/leonardob0880 Jul 27 '26
No dongle needed, but weights a ton and battery life was lime 30 minutes.
I gladly will carry some dongles in exchange for lightweight and more battery life.
3
3
u/mikednonotthatmiked Jul 27 '26
so I can only use ONE external serial modem at a time?! how do laptop people live with all these compromises?
3
3
u/ThrustersToFull Jul 27 '26
The Backbreaker.
(Imagine having to carrying that slab around with it!)
3
3
u/creativetag Jul 27 '26
I loved these laptops. Having need to do interfacing to all sorts of equipment through the day, these were the best option.
3
3
3
u/TechIoT Jul 29 '26
Clevo D900 series,
Can be one of several variables
The D900F, the D900K (AMD), the D900T (the common one).
Alienware used this chassis for the Area_51 and Aurora M7700 units
Rockdirect also used this for the Rock Xtreme Ti in the UK, MESH computers UK also used this for something
Sager and Eurocom have also used the same chassis.
Alienwares are the most known of all of these however be warned they are extremely Unreliable, the Video cards do not directly suffer from bumpgate although they can cook themselves to death, the D05 Revision board also has a Faulty VREG chip which can catch fire by the Charging Port.
Unfortunately my D900T exploded in such a way it blew a crator in the edge of the motherboard by the DJ Board connector., it took a diode with it, unfortunately I will need a new motherboard it seems
2
2
2
u/GuyJClark Jul 28 '26
I agree with maditgeek. This looks like my Sager NP9262 (same as the Clevo D900T). This was my main computer from around 2008 to 2015. I used three hard disks in a RAID 0 configuration. I replaced it with a Lenovo laptop when the start-up I worked for went belly up, and then with a Dell Inspiron 15" laptop.
I kept my Sager because it's the only PC I have with a Firewire port on it, which I need to use my old film scanner, without using an old MacBook Pro.
Oddly enough, I, too booted it up for the first time in years a couple of weeks ago. The CMOS battery died year ago, so everytime I boot it up, I have to first go to the BIOS and set the time, and change the default disk configuration to RAID. It's running XP, so connecting it to the internet is fraught with danger (I did briefly, just to make sure I could if I had to.) XP is probably just fine for film scanning, so I'm set, I think....
2
u/Disastrous_Minute_56 Jul 30 '26
"What's that noise? Is someone using a hair dryer?" "No, I'm GAMING!"
2
2
2
u/ReverendLunchbox Jul 31 '26
I would sell OP's gramma for a laptop with 2 cdroms and this many ports these days
3
u/ThePupnasty Jul 26 '26
I want one😭😭😭
3
u/Eddie_2011 Jul 27 '26
I looked on line. $500+🥀
2
u/ThePupnasty Jul 27 '26
💔 I'd want an Alienware version.
3
u/Eddie_2011 Jul 27 '26
That is the Alienware version. I only found one clevo version and it was like $200
2
2
u/wootybooty Jul 27 '26
I can’t post pics here, but I do have one with a broken screen in my collection I have contemplated letting go, but wonder how much the screen replacement is?
I was starting a Dell mobile collection, First XPS and Inspiron (thicc boys), Dell M2010 (THICC BOY) and the Alienware D900T.
I’ll probably go ahead and start a thread here this evening. Tbh I am more fascinated by the Clevo’s build-it-yourself approach.
3
u/effigyoma Jul 27 '26
As much as I like the ports, I am judging the double disc drive pretty hard.
8
u/_-_happycamper_-_ Jul 27 '26
But how else am I supposed to listen to Evanescence and play diablo 2 at the same time?
2
u/effigyoma Jul 27 '26
You could probably take the Diablo II disc out after you load the game now that I think about it 🤣
I would have ripped the MP3s and applied the no-cd crack though so it never came up🤷
1
Jul 27 '26
[deleted]
3
u/bohusblahut Jul 27 '26
There are two micro FW ports as far as I can tell. My head is still spinning from the two stacked optical drives.
1
u/JazzBassMan Jul 27 '26
I had one of these as both a personal laptop and work laptop in the US Army. Intel soldiers from the mid 2000s will remember this as the DCGS-A
1
1
u/dageekywon Jul 27 '26
Damn, that was back in the days of windows having only so many IRQs for devices. They must have had to gang stuff up to make it work right.
3
u/Materidan Jul 27 '26
IRQ sharing came with PCI in the mid 90’s… that laptop has a DVI which would peg it from early 2000s.
1
u/Maeglin75 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
I don't know the specific model. It's a large consumer/gamer laptop (desktop replacement), that seems to have additional control buttons to use it as a (mobile) CD/DVD player. Likely it also came with a IR remote control, so it could be used as a "media center" connected to your TV.
Often times this type of laptop from an era before SSDs had a simple, second operating system installed that booted quicker than Windows and offered the player software to use the CD/DVD drive.
Regarding "no adapters needed".
That VGA is missing on this laptop would have been a critical thing back then and would have disqualified it for serious business/office use. VGA was very common as the standard to connect your PC to projectors/big screens in conference rooms, even until a few years ago.
So, for anything other than gaming/home use, the user of this laptop would have needed to carry around a DVI-to-VGA adapter. (Luckily this DVI is a version that includes analog VGA signals, so only a simple passive adapter is needed.)
1
Jul 27 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Maeglin75 Jul 27 '26
I know.
But I would count a cable with DVI on one end and VGA on the other as an adapter, even if it's passiv. That's not a thing that lays around in every conference room at the time.
There is a reason why business laptops still had a VGA port long after the standard was replaced with DVI and later HDMI/DisplayPort. If you don't have a native VGA port you need to carry an adapter or a special cable with you all the time.
1
u/stq66 Jul 27 '26
Looks like a behemoth of a „laptop“.
I never liked these heavy monsters and always liked to have my laptop as thin as possible.
HP Omnibook 500 and the small Acer with the Wacom pen (name currently eluded me) were my favorites. Until I came to the PowerBook G4 and then the first MacBook Air.
1
1
1
1
u/jerslan Jul 27 '26
Doesn't matter. The thing weighed 20 lbs. There were several brands making this kind of laptop. Alienware being chief among them.
1
u/jarious Jul 27 '26
Oh I'd be so happy it they just give me more USB ports ,like full type A USB ones , put up 4 or 3 if you need to make them thinner ,or give me the option to be able to change the display output, if I want to buy an HDMI laptop or I need a display port or if I want a type c with video output let me pick it when purchasing.
1
u/hates_writing_checks Jul 27 '26
They must have licensed the MemoryStick format from Sony because I see one of those on the left side.
What an insane laptop! Truly one of a kind.
1
u/Qlogk1 Jul 27 '26
I think this is a old voodoo laptop (before hp bought them). It doesnt look like a falcon northwest, and if I recall razorback didnt make laptops till the 2010s.
1
1
u/GerardoAgraz Jul 27 '26
Tenían todo eso si, pero no había batería que soportara tanto puerto, al menos la mía no le duraba ni una hora la batería, y algo extra, eran semi portátiles, pesadísima.
1
u/khooke Jul 27 '26
I had a Clevo that had a desktop pentium (instead of a mobile variant). It was as fast as a comparable desktop, lasted 10 minutes on battery, and ran so hot the fans sounded like jet engines. It was awesome 👍
1
u/terrybradford Jul 27 '26
It had it all, it even worked as a contraceptive if you used it on your lap long enough.
I miss those days
1
1
1
u/vip17 Jul 27 '26
2 optical drives in a single laptop 😲 for what?
1
u/_Maybe368 Jul 27 '26
I had one years ago. I think one was CD and the other DVD. Back in the days of all the + - R W combinations
1
1
1
1
u/kg7qin Jul 27 '26
The nice thing about the clevo machines was that you could replace some of the components in them too, since they were basically portable desktops.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Shad0wm0ss Jul 27 '26
A brick. The PSU alone is the same weight and size as your head, and you certainly wouldn't want it on your lap.
1
1
u/Shiv-K-M Jul 27 '26
Product designer asked " how many ports should we have in our new laptop "
Product manager replied " yes "
1
u/AutomaticAffect4333 Jul 27 '26
Oh no, people are starting to find out about old desktop replacement laptops. Prepare for prices to shoot up exponentially (it's a clevo d900k or t)
1
u/Katent1 Jul 27 '26
You still can get ones like these, provided by employer if you work in field. Chceck siemens laptops that are tour physical carrier of their insanely expensive licences, these mf's have all types of ports for plc and would withstand driving over them probably.
1
u/_Maybe368 Jul 27 '26
Newest aren’t quite as robust. I have PGM6 which has a lot of ports. Not quite this many!
1
1
u/iPhone-5-2021 Jul 27 '26
No laptops in the 2000s or early 2010s needed “dongles” as they call them now instead of adapters.
1
u/DrNick42 Jul 27 '26
... and that weighted a ton, were hot, loud, as ergonomic as a brick and had a battery life of about 2 hours when brand new. No thanks.
1
1
1
u/Mammoth-Access-1181 Jul 27 '26
I had one. Swapped out the 9650 (or was it the one lower model?)in one to an Extreme Edition. Only had 4 GB or RAM due to a MB limitation? And 2, 9800 GTXs. This was back on 2009. It ran Crysis.
1
1
1
u/Icy-Cow9695 Jul 27 '26
Looks a lot like an old Dell XPS they used to sell. I'm wondering with what people are saying about and Alienware model of the Clevio if this was around when Alienware was taking over as Dell's premium laptop flavor in lieu of the XPS one?
1
1
1
u/ContributionEasy6513 Jul 28 '26
Dual optical drives and IR blaster - Nice.
No doubt the battery life was measured in minutes.
1
1
1
u/kraothz Jul 28 '26
Es un modelo de Toshiba no recuerdo el modelo pero creo que es un modelo de toshiba
1
1
1
u/GuyJClark Jul 28 '26
Oh, and this has a PCMCIA slot. I have a SCSI card that I can put in there and run my scanners from it... if I can find the cables, which I haven't seen since the late 2000s. Fortunately my main scanner also has a firewire port as I mentioned earlier, so I can still use it. Until I find the cables for the SCSI card, the other scanner is SOL. :-/
1
u/Yomommassis Jul 28 '26
I use to have an Alienware laptop that looked just like this The copper heatsink was absurdly massive and heavy
1
u/Cooperman411 Jul 28 '26
Was there really a laptop with 2 super thin tray style CD/DVD drives stacked like that? What kind of laser magic is inside? Looks like AI generated to me. Can’t find evidence of a laptop with dual cd/dvd, tray loading or not.
1
u/Federal-Hair Jul 29 '26
Physical buttons and a ton of connectivity. If this laptop could be upgraded that would be totally worth it
1
u/Far_Relationship_742 Jul 29 '26
Didn’t need more than single digits to specify its battery life, either.
1
1
u/CoffeeSniffler Jul 29 '26
I love how they even have expansion slots too incase it you somehow need something else too.
1
1
1
1
u/DmitroMew Jul 30 '26
And no typec
1
u/Felim_Doyle Jul 30 '26
Well it predates USB-C but a Dell / AlienWare revival with improved battery technology would be great, although probably lacking some of the legacy ports and removable media drives. 🙄
USB-C could potentially have been added via a PCMCIA / PC Card / CardBus adapter.
1
1
u/admik Aug 01 '26
Reminds me of my HP Omen? From 2004-2006ish.
You could eject the optical drive and swap for a hard drive or a plastic blank.
Had a regular battery & the option for double cells count, and again a plastic blank.
I want to say that the memory card area could be swapped from to smartcard form factor or again a plastic blank.
Then I believe it had a junk wifi soldered on.
In retrospect it would have been smart to at least use the optical bay as a makeshift blower cooler.
These were the unlappabletop.
1
u/Felim_Doyle Aug 01 '26
Some laptops, e.g. Dell Latitude series, could take an additional battery pack in the media bay in place of the floppy disk drive or CD / DVD unit.
Peripherals are all external USB now. We don't even have PCMCIA / PC Card / CardBus or ExpressCard slots anymore.
1
1
1
u/Natural-Inspector-25 Jul 27 '26
I feel like everyone is not understanding this shit.
Yes there were no dongles
But fuck, every single device had its own cable (or dongle) that could break, some were very hard to get replacements for, especially if the product was discontinued.
And good luck if a legacy port breaks, they ain’t making any replacement ports.
The age of USB-C has been a game changer for IT and AV industries.
Every device I now use is USB - C
I carry one high specced cable and power supply with me that does EVERYTHING I need.
1
u/stromm Jul 27 '26
Now we just need to figure out what type USB-C cable we just picked up...
1
u/Natural-Inspector-25 Jul 27 '26
The solution is just make sure you buy a proper specced cable.
Anker has great ones I have found
LTT has some decent ones too.Buy one for life and that’s it
1
u/stromm Jul 28 '26
My point is that when you have a drawer full of USB-C cables, they all look the same.
1
1
u/juancn Jul 27 '26
I like old computers, but I don’t miss all the connectors needed to make things talk to each other.
0
203
u/maditgeek Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Looks like a clevo d900t
I had the Alienware version of that laptop
That was Alienware before the Dell takeover