WinBook Service Manuals

3lectr1c

Hi,

First off - not sure if this is the best subforum for this post - feel free to move it if it fits better somewhere else.

I'm wondering whether or not Micro Center keeps archives of support documentation from "the old days" of WinBook (1993-2008). Content such as drivers, specifications, and user manuals can still be found through browsing winbookcorp.com on the WayBack Machine, but Micro Center/WinBook never released service manuals for these computers. As someone who collects, restores, documents, and still enjoys using these older/vintage laptops, having the service manuals for reference would be incredibly useful for both myself and the rest of the vintage computing community that enjoys fixing and retro gaming on them. It's easy to break clips when you don't know how something's supposed to come apart, and hardware this old usually requires some maintenance to get running again.

One example where a service manual would be incredibly helpful is with my 1996 WinBook FX. It has a 150MHz CPU installed, but for whatever reason, the motherboard is set to 133MHz. Back in those days, the BIOS couldn't autodetect your CPU and required jumpers to be manually set. Without documentation on the jumper settings (which would likely be in the service manual), I cannot set my FX to the proper 150MHz speed it should be running at.

If Micro Center no longer has archives of this material, or if it is against company policy to release them, then I understand. I figure that asking couldn't hurt.

PaulL

https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/14972/winbook-service-manuals

Hello! Due to the products themselves being discontinued what we have available for WinBooks is very limited. I looked into your specific 1996 WinBook FX and we do not have any documentation or drivers available for them at the moment. Are there any newer WinBook models that you own that you are looking for?

3lectr1c

Thanks for checking!

Models of interest would be any released from 1993 to 2008 (back when WinBook had a dedicated website) with the final models being the TL35 and GL35.
I’d assume though that if you don’t have anything for the FX anymore that you probably only have documentation for the newer tablets and the CW140. Is that correct?

I’ll bet though that service manuals never existed in the end-user tech support database anyway since they were never available on winbookcorp.com, so they might have only been sent to your service centers. Is there any email I could contact to reach the service center directly?

Thanks for the help.

PaulL

Just based on what I was able to look into it does not appear that we have any of these models documentations, however, you can always reach out to our technical support email at support@microcenter.zendesk.com!

3lectr1c

Thanks, I reached out to that email.

PaulL

https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/comment/55874#Comment_55874

Glad to help! Let us know if you have any further concerns!