Ricoh NP-50

[eightbit]

Here's an odd one. I was at some yard sales over the weekend and came across a small-ish cardboard box that said "Ricoh" on the front. I have seen these boxes before...usually a printer cartridge. But, when I saw the side of the box it said "Pentium 233mhz MMX" and some other laptop specs. I opened the box (top of the box was ripped but the contents look brand new) and sure enough there is the cutest little Ricoh laptop in there. It has a TFT display, 3GB hard drive, 64MB of memory, two camera looking batteries (neither take a charge), com port, vga, three PCMCIA ports, PS/2 port and even ONE USB!

 

I have been scouring the net for this model and can find nothing. No pictures, no past auctions, no mention from Ricoh...nothing. This is the first time I was not able to find ANYTHING on a computer online.

 

The computer works, well I can access BIOS. After post sequence it gives an error which I am fairly positive means that there is no OS installed. The laptop lacks a CD or internal floppy drive, but it did come with an external slim 3.5 floppy drive (came with the unit obviously, same color scheme which is a darkish blue) and I'm going to try giving it WIn 98 SE or XP as soon as I have the time to connect one of my older computers that has a floppy drive to write the images. I do not see an option for booting from USB in the BIOS unfortunately.

 

Well, if anybody can shed more light on this mystery machine I would be grateful. I suspect this was an internal thing for Ricoh employees only...but I could be wrong.

Edited May 2, 2017 by eightbit