It took a few years, but I finally found one! This was the only "laptop" model of the FM TOWNS that Fujitsu ever made, and it was only available to schools. The CD-ROM doesn't appear to work, the screen is dodgy, and it almost definitely needs to be recapped, but it even mostly appears to work besides that.
(for more teardown and repair pics, the current end of the thread is here)
This boy's definitely a chonker, and if anything looks bigger in person; it easily ways at least 10 pounds. Here's a picture with a 15" Titanium Powerbook (itself pretty big by today's standards) for comparison. Despite the "laptop" form factor, there's no battery; the internal power supply takes mains power in directly from a figure-eight connector on the left side. On the right, doors open to expose two PC card slots and the hard drive bay. The 2.5" SCSI hard drive pulls out easily in a little caddy. There's also two ports for external gamepads or mouses as well as audio in and out ports.
A door on the back covers up more of the ports; inside, starting from the top left, there's the reset button, an external keyboard connector, and S-Video, composite, and a 15-pin RGB connector. (I don't know whether it's VGA compatible or not; other FM TOWNS computers use a PC-98 style DB15 connector with its own pinout.) By some miracle, this FM TOWNS SN actually has a video capture expansion card in the expansion slot below it, with S-Video and composite video inputs. On the bottom row, there's a switch which controls whether the little nub controller behaves like a mouse or a game pad, a 25-pin RS-232 port, a 50-pin SCSI port, and a parallel port.
The CD-ROM is interesting because it has what seems to be a mechanical opening latch, rather than the door motor being controlled electronically. You can release the tray even while the computer is turned off, and it springs open.
On the bottom, another little door gives access to the RAM expansion slot. I got this computer with a 32MB SIMM in the slot, giving 36 MB total RAM.
I pulled out the video input card in preparation for taking apart the computer itself. It uses a totally different form factor from the video cards for FM TOWNS desktops and has a double-decker layout.
Even though this FM TOWNS SN is in great cosmetic shape, and mostly works, there are definite issues that need addressing—something is wrong with the video output causing rolling black bars on the LCD output, and the CMOS battery is dead, meaning the system has lost its hard drive configuration and won't access the contents of the drive even if the drive itself is working—and even if capacitor plague hasn't yet killed it, it's only a matter of time, so I need to get a look inside. First step is to remove the eight bolts from the bottom of the computer, though we'll be taking it apart from the top down.
Flipping the computer back over, with those fasteners loose, the first part to come free is the back plastic cover behind the display. Removing it reveals part of why this thing is so heavy—everything is mounted inside a thick steel frame. There might be a more convenient order in which to take things apart, but my next step was to disconnect and remove the display. With the expansion card removed, and the two ground clips undone, there's just enough room to work the four connectors from the logic board to the display (two on each side) free with spudgers. The display hinges are held to the frame with three screws on each side; with the hinge screws removed and the connectors released, the display lifts off the top, revealing the keyboard bezel, which comes off with two screws on the sides.
