The Ascentia 950N suffers from many known failures that affect many laptops from its time, including battery leaks and plastic issues. Beyond this though, the 950N has gained a very poor reputation in general, based on comments that David Murrary from The 8-Bit Guy YouTube Channel spoke about the laptop while giving a presentation on his time working for AST. This page will go into that and more.
In his presentation (that he later uploaded to YouTube), David used the 950N as an example of the declining quality of AST's products. He said that these laptops would have frequent screen failures, plastic parts breaking, other problems, and even battery fires. He stated that the 950N managed to achieve a return rate of around 110%! I don't really doubt these claims because I have little reason to, but what I can say is that I've found a few YouTube videos, and also a forum post showing these working. So at the very least, they're not all dead. My best guess is that David was correct, and that AST likely fixed the production issues causing these failures eventually, replaced most of the bad units, and then the fixed ones were likely pretty decent, reliability-wise, when new. Apple had a very similar situation with initial quality issues with the PowerBook 5300, and the later "fixed" units are no more unreliable than any other laptop from the time. I can somewhat reinforce this theory based on testimony I've heard from a user on the VCF forums, who used one of these for over a decade as a work computer, and had zero issues. He also reported that he didn't remember any major complaints from the other people at his job that also used them.
However, they certainly are provably prone to failure today, for reasons due to time rather than poor initial quality. Not saying initial quality was good on these, just that other time-related issues are now rearing their ugly heads. Let's talk about those known issues.
The 950N has an internal VARTA NiMH 6-coin-cell battery located in the upper top left of the laptop. It was likely used as a hiberation battery as these also had a coin cell Lithium battery for backing up the CMOS. These sorts of batteries are incredibly prone to leaking with time, and a large quantity of 950Ns have likely fallen victim to corrosion from these batteries. The battery in this unit is placed directly near critical components. This battery should be removed ASAP in any unit to prevent damage.
Like nearly any other 90s laptop, the 950N's plastic is quite brittle with age. Most I see show up for sale have stress cracks around the display hinge mounts. You may need to do some ugly epoxy work to keep one of these intact.
YouTuber RetroSpector78 has made two videos on the 950N, documenting his attempts at getting one working out of a bunch of parts he had. He did manage to produce one working laptop in the end, but encountered trouble along the way. Mainly, multiple motherboards would simply fail to power on most of the time, only sometimes making it to POST. He also encountered at least one leaking VARTA battery, and broken plastic around the display hinges. The power issues were not related to any bad capacitors and had an unknown cause. Notably, all of his motherboards had significant rework done on them, likely either from the factory or from AST servicing them after purchase.
Like any other laptop of its time, the screens on the 950N can get Vinegar Syndrome.
You may want to remove or tape over the contacts of the Lithium Ion battery out of a 950N if you have one, just in case, considering the report of fires.
I've seen one of these that looked like the top of the trackpoint cap was missing. It likely turned to goo and then fell apart when someone tried to use it, as can be common in certain early TrackPoint caps, as rubber ages. Just something to keep in mind.
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