This is one of three N45 SL machines I have in a box. I previously gave up a day and ended up with one complete boxed one, a second unboxed one as a nice working companion and a third 'parts' machine. The N45 came in two models sporting different CPUs - the SL and SX.
You'll notice the case badge has similarities to both the 2141 (a PS/1 type) PS/note 182 and the PS/1 case badge - unlike the other PS/note and IBM Thinkpad oval badges, you'd think it is architecturally closely related to the (same year) PS/Note 182. However this machine feels Zenith-made through and through - much like the Thinkpad 300 which usurped it as the 2615. It shares a similar case plastic, power brick, display, keyboard and battery. Perhaps IBM were briefly marketing the N45 as the low-end (outsourced) notebook and the N51 as the high end (IBM-built) notebook, which eventually became the Thinkpad 300 as low-end and 700 as high.
Putting it another way, IBM were obviously toying with what to do about the cost-reduced 'low end' and had the 2141 "Lexmark Lexbook AR-10" PS/note and the Zenith-made N45 SL then "Zenith Z-Note 433Lnc+" 300 all coming out at once. You'll find some very reputable sites not even acknowledging the 2141 or 261x machines because they do not follow the 'true bloodline' of the IBM notebooks. The N45 SL may well have a Zenith step brother, but I haven't found a reference to it.
My first machine amazingly has a i387 upgrade chip (a maths coprocessor for the 386) fitted.
| Model | IBM PS/note N45 SL |
| Machine Types | 2614 |
| Release Timeframe | Sold from July 1992 for around 1 year. |
| Preceded by | Nothing, really. |
| Superceded by | Thinkpad 300 (Type 2615) |
| Motherboard Specs | 25 MHz 386SL, 2MB on-board RAM, i387 FPU slot and an 80 or 120MB HDD |
| Display Specs | 9.5" 640x480 monochrome screen with 64 scales of grey |
Additional speculation: It seems Zenith were given three cracks of the whip with the subcontractor for low-end or budget notebooks for IBM - this PS/note N45, the Thinkpad 300 and finally the PS/note 425/425C/Thinkpad 350/350C. There are some whiffs of other external influences of what eventually ended with the Thinkpad 350 because the 2141 PS/note case and board design is very similar to that of the Thinkpad 350 as well and a closer influence of it's layout and design than the N45 SL. IBM's subcontracting of portables never really paid off - the Acer Thinkpad 310 and G40/41/50 all went nowhere along with the Lexmark-made 500 and 510 and the shortlived Canon 55x collaboration.
The N45 is an interesting piece in IBM's attempts to juggle cost and the competition. It was a machine which arrived at a point in time where good colour notebook displays where astronimically expensive, power hungry and thick. Batteries weren't very energy-dense but were very dense (heavy!). I think IBM either couldn't or couldn't be bothered to manufacture cheaped-out hardware and offloaded it to Zenith. The N45 SL was $2000 but if you wanted a really good notebook, without compromise, the 700C (released 6 months later) was nearly $4350. Double these figures for today's pricing. Both propositions offer a workable level of portability but are absolute worlds apart for performance. The N45 SL was still a huge compromise, whereas the 700C was not.
Here is a nuggety comparison of IBM's jaunty 'rebel' PS/1 style of badge design and how it differs from the more general oval IBM badges of the time. Notice how some edges of the letters are cut off? Naughty:
DC/DC Board
The DC/DC power board inside often has dead capacitors, which need replacing. I had to do this on my machines.
Through Hole:
C602 330u/16v
C303.1 and C303.2 1000u/6.3v (2 of)
C404 100u/16v
C112 100u/6.3v
C108 10u/6.3v
Surface Mount:
C504 47u/25v (easy to replace with a through hole or Tantalum)
The LCD
This will also need recapping and these are 4 x 22uf/16v, 1 x 4.7uf/50v and 1 x 10uf/16v capacitors.
Hard Drive
If you find your hard drive is not working, it's worth investigating the PREP command using the advanced diagnostics disk in order to get it to find the hard drive and make it ready to be used... There is more details on this here.
Power Supply
The power supply is a very non-standard off-the-shelf unit with a 4-pin connector which is hard to replicate. I found that you could just-about modify an S-Video connector and use that. Here is a pinput:
I also documented a repair of the display and the connor hard drive here.
