Have any of you Satellite owners managed to run games in full screen in 800x600 under Windows 98?

I haven't tried yet, no.

Mostly because I don't know of any good games to try.

RetroLizard wrote on 2021-07-29, 20:31:

I haven't tried yet, no.

Mostly because I don't know of any good games to try.

How about.. try any Windows game that supports that resolution? 😀

But which ones? I doubt it'll even support any 3D games.

RetroLizard wrote on 2021-07-29, 21:17:

But which ones? I doubt it'll even support any 3D games.

I know I tried Heroes of Might and Magic 1 as well as Curse of the Monkey Island. Both only ran in 640x480.

I don't run Windows 98 on my 430CDT. Windows 95 performs very noticeably faster and I don't lose any features I care about either (perfectly stable, usable, etc).

Anyway, under Win95 I can run games at 800x600, yes (e.g. Seven Kingdoms). I have not tried 3D games at that resolution (would run extremely slowly anyway).

Gered wrote on 2021-07-30, 12:12:

I don't run Windows 98 on my 430CDT. Windows 95 performs very noticeably faster and I don't lose any features I care about either (perfectly stable, usable, etc).

Anyway, under Win95 I can run games at 800x600, yes (e.g. Seven Kingdoms). I have not tried 3D games at that resolution (would run extremely slowly anyway).

Yeah, Pentium 120 is too slow for any sorts of software 3D rendering. I was wondering about 2D games. I have a 310CDT which has a Pentium 200 MMX and 64MB of RAM. It's capable of running Windows 98 perfectly fine. I'll try to do a fresh installation this week and see, if that helps at running the games in 800x600. I hate that black border that you get when running games in 640x480.

i got a 330cdt from my grandad, i used to play heretic and red alert on this back in 1998 at the time running w95, i wiped the hdd couple of years ago and found the laser unit doesnt move position, replacement drives were easy to find on ebay at the time, now nothing, any ideas for a fix? or any other laptop drives that are compatible? theres also some water damage on the left of the screen, finding a replacement might be possible.

after looking at the specs i thought DOS machine, 233mhz cpu, 64mb ram, 2mb vram, yamaha opl3, cd/floppy drive. vram being the limiting factor

I got a 430 last year as part of a lot of junk computers. I did start it up to verify it worked but haven't done anything with it yet. Surprisingly, the battery is not swollen and it did take a charge of some kind last year.
I ran games on a similar Satellite Pro with a 486DX4-100 back in the day with the same 1mb SVGA graphics, ESS/OPL3 sound, and TFT screen (I think it is a 2150CDT). It has a 500MB HDD. 8MB was standard but I am pretty sure it was upgraded to 16 (I think the 430 has 32MB installed but 16 was standard). It had 98 installed. It was nothing spectacular (about the same as a 486DX2-66 overclocked to 83MHz) but it didn't suck either. I also do not know the status of the battery in my other Toshiba but it was still working as of 2015. These things are getting to be rare enough I really don't much care if the battery works or not because I am not taking it out and about. Except for testing, I won't really use either of them.
As for gaming on the 430CDT, the first thing that springs to mind is Rollercoaster Tycoon, which I have. That's what I will be trying. you wouldn't think it but it should give the system a good workout because it just exceeds the recommended specs. It will be interesting to do a comparison where the only variable is the CPU. Since the Pentium ones even used VLB, the performance of the video chip is a constant.
EDIT: Today I fired up the 430CDT. Everything worked. I was even able to charge and use the battery! There are some minor issues - power button is missing and had to use a q-tip to press the microswitch. One of the pads on the screen for when you close it is missing. One half of the clamshell over the parallel port is missing a spring and flops around and the cover for the side I/O where you plug in the external drive is missing. There is one single, solitary dead pixel.
I installed 5 games. Super Huey II lacked sound and ran way too fast. Mig-29 would not launch and kept giving a conventional memory error message in DOS and when run in 98 DOS compatibility mode, it caused the computer to restart. Majesty Gold had difficulty playing opening video and was a bit sluggish but was playable. Originally, a P90 was specified as the minimum but Amazon sells the original version and recommends a P233 MMX as a minimum, with which I would concur, especially for network play. Roller Coaster Tycoon ran fine and Age of Empires Gold Edition ran very smoothly.
I got an RTC battery error so I will be opening it up this week.
This is an excellent source for Vintage Toshiba Laptop info and BIOS files: http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/Toshiba/Toshiba.htm
Here is the maintenance manual in case the site is down in the future.

DudeFace wrote on 2021-09-01, 23:33:

i got a 330cdt from my grandad, i used to play heretic and red alert on this back in 1998 at the time running w95, i wiped the hdd couple of years ago and found the laser unit doesnt move position, replacement drives were easy to find on ebay at the time, now nothing, any ideas for a fix? or any other laptop drives that are compatible? theres also some water damage on the left of the screen, finding a replacement might be possible.

after looking at the specs i thought DOS machine, 233mhz cpu, 64mb ram, 2mb vram, yamaha opl3, cd/floppy drive. vram being the limiting factor

I am planning to clone the drive in my 430CDT tomorrow onto a 4gb DOM since it is a daily driver, as well as archiving it for future use. I was going to put it into a 386 desktop but when I saw that post, I realized it would be selfish to waste it in a desktop when desktop drives are readily available. So I would be willing to sell the 1.26GB drive...
I will be doing some maintenance on it in the next few days and can get the details on the drive if you are interested.

Hey everybody, first post so bear with me if I'm doing everything wrong... There's probably a more general Toshiba thread I've missed that this might be more suitable for, but I didn't see one, so here goes.

I recently got a stack of Toshibas of a similar era - including at least one 430CDT and a couple 430CDS's, which are the same thing but with a truly dreadful DSTN screen that essentially makes games impossible. A friend of mine works with a guy who had about 15 in a shed for some reason and had asked my buddy if he wanted them. My buddy said he could get these "ancient Toshibas" but I didn't know what to expect, and while he's tech-savvy, anything prior to Windows 7 era is a foreign language to him. I've came across so many broken or crumbling XP-era Satellites that I figured that's what we had here, but then he turned up with a practically mint 430CDS and a slightly newer Tecra (the exact model of which I forget, but it was a Pentium II//Win98 machine). The Tecra was a goner, but the 430CDS fired right up and the internals hadn't leaked (I removed them anyway, of course), plus the regular battery held a good charge still. I had used a similar machine back in the day and remembered how awful the display was and indeed, time hadn't made it any better. I probably would have kept it to play with, but the terrible display and an empty wallet motivated me to just clean it up and try selling it. To my surprise, it went quick at the price of $50 on the local Facebook Marketplace (and I threw in the dead Tecra).

So expecting the rest of the pile to be the same machines, I told him to grab the rest. To my surprise, it's a whole variety of machine types ...and unfortunately, the rest are almost all missing stuff and even worse, they're all dead. I haven't torn into them yet, but most of them exhibit the same behavior - when plugged in, the battery charge light comes on but when you press the power button, you get a brief flash of green and nothing more. The Tecra from the first go-round did the same and the internal batteries had leaked everywhere on that one, so my assumption is that these others that behave similarly are also battery-leak victims - and now I've got a stack of 'em. Joy. But...

A few years back I had a hobby/side-gig of rescuing and modding OG XBOX systems. And as some of you no doubt know, the majority of those machines are susceptible to a widespread problem involving the clock capacitor, which has a tendency to blow up and potentially kill the motherboard. Indeed, nearly every system I came across had a cap that had already leaked to some degree or another, and some were bad enough that the systems didn't seem to work at all anymore, but I found that the vast majority of the time, all it took was cleaning up the mess as much as possible and usually they would work fine again afterwards. The 470CDT's board looked pretty bad, but it didn't seem nearly as awful as a couple of those XBOX'es had looked, so I decided to tear it all down and see if I could get anywhere. I usually used nothing more than alcohol, Q-tips and maybe some gentle scraping with a razor on those XBOX machines. Tonight I didn't have any alcohol at my disposal, but I was able to gently scrape off most of the corrosion and carefully "wash" the affected areas. Upon re-assembly, I plugged it in, got the expected charging lights, and when I pressed power... a flicker of green and then nothing. Bah.

So this is a long-winded way of asking, has anyone attempted to revive these after a battery disaster? If so, any tips? And failing that, if anyone needs parts, feel free to send a message... Right now my stack includes the aforementioned 470CDT, plus a 430CDS, 430CDT, 440CDT, Tecra 750DVD, and finally a 490CDXT that I'll probably keep if I manage to get it going. My buddy still has another 4 or 5 of them I haven't picked up yet so I may have even more variants!

That's going to happen to a lot of these Toshibas : ) The 750DVD is totally worth saving! It even has an integrated wavetable and DVD decoder. The corrosion of NIMH standby & CMOS batteries is somewhat different from electrolytic capacitors - Not much I can recommend other than be thorough and clean stuff up with vinegar, then clean off with water & IPA. Don't try to clear out vias as those are multi-level and basically impossible to clean. If the vias are toast, the board is toast. But good luck with them 😀 My Tecra 750DVD is essentially my favourite toshiba, nice video scaling, built in wavetable and great build quality.

Hi Gered,

I saw that you replaced your floppy and as i am in the same situation (i replaced the belt with a proper on on the original drive and it can read properly, but it cant format (says that track 0 is bad). I have the 480CDT with this external floppy, same as yours i believe.

I noticed at a brief glance that the Toshiba fdc seemed "wider" on the original drive than it does on for example my two drives (one is an YE unit and the other is a Matsushita) but they should all really be 26 pin flex cables with 1mm pitch. Is the Toshiba/Citizen "standard" like that?

Edit. Have the same issue as this poster. I checked my own and its the same proprietary connector unfortunately 🙁

Anyone know about old laptop floppy drives?

Gered, hi! Any chance you have factory restore disks for this laptop? Just bought it and soon I'll start digging inside. Wanna try original vision of the system. Thanks!

vorob wrote on 2022-01-08, 14:43:

Gered, hi! Any chance you have factory restore disks for this laptop? Just bought it and soon I'll start digging inside. Wanna try original vision of the system. Thanks!

I do not! That would be neat to have though ...

You've probably found this via searching around already, but just in case you've not, you can find the original drivers and such for the 430CDT here: https://support.dynabook.com/support/modelHom … 67&osId=3333621 .

Does anybody have a port replicator/docking station for this particular laptop? If not, where would I most likely be able to find one?

serenitatis wrote on 2020-10-22, 14:28:

Yesterday I got Satellite 210CS which is very similar to 430CDT and find few tips very cool. fan.exe helps me to test fan (working OK) and vexp is also very useful. If they could to replace horrible CSTN matrix to TFT 😀 But my laptop is very reliable for Win95/DOS stuff. For DOS games I plan to use external monitor. Also my CD-ROM seems to be died at my hands. But I'm lucky one and have spare drive. Now my 210CS have 24x CD-ROM and ability to read CD-RW discs. Which is very useful for files exchange from modern PC.

Can you upload your utility for time setup on boot?

Which cd Drive do you have? And what date have it?
I have also a 210 cs, but with the original cd-rom without cd-rw.

Which cd Drive do you have? And what date have it?
I have also a 210 cs, but with the original cd-rom without cd-rw.

Hi all,

This is my first post on Vogons, despite I signed up many years ago 😀

Thanks to this thread and also excellent resources on minuszerodegrees.net I managed to restore an old Toshiba 430CDT bought off eBay for around 80 dollars imported from US into Switzerland for extra 50 dollars. The device looks and works great, so I think this was a good deal. It was booting absolutely fine with the original HDD, but I swapped it with SD to PATA IDE and now it is absolutely silent. I tested the fan, it works, but it does not kick in at all, and computer gets just slightly warm after hours of usage.

The machine came unfortunately without an external floppy drive - just the main unit. So I decided to buy old Toshiba external floppy that was visually compatible to install GoTek/Flashfloppy emulator. (see below for details) The external cable/plug turned to be indeed compatible, unfortunately the internally it uses different/smaller connector. Therefore it cannot be put directly into the main laptop body, i.e. swapping it with CD drive. Fortunately CD drive that came with the device works well, so having external floppy and internal CD is good enough for me playing some Retro games. Note that the floppy unit I bought has 1mm pitch flex cable, but I think original older unit shipped with 430CDT used 1.25mm pitch flex cable.

I managed to install fresh Windows 98 SE copy without any problem. I am into Win98SE DOS to play DOS games. The only catch is that Windows apparently does not support any hard drive (Ultra?) DMA on 430CFT using FC1307A SD to PATA adapter, that is relatively slow providing only <1MB/s. Windows Device Manager does not show any DMA checkbox at all, but HWInfo for DOS says both SD to PATA adapter and CD drive support Ultra DMA. But not sure if CPU/mainboard does. Anybody knows?

Maybe I miss some drivers? I found only TSETUP.EXE for DOS utility and Win98 W95UT430.EXE tools, but they did not provide anything else than otherwise can be achieved by holding ESC during boot and entering bios via F1. I know there exists 6.50 BIOS B430CDT.EXE file, but this file is nowhere to be found.

I may try installing CF card with built-in ATA controller and simple 44-pin PATA adapter, but not sure if it is worth to spend additional $15 for an adapter and a CF card that will bring no performance benefit.

My 430CDT came with discharged but otherwise working Li-Ion (laptop still can work for around 40-60min!) and two completely dead zero-volt Ni-MH batteries, but no leak onto electronics. I removed both NiHM batteries as recommended. I put Li-Ion half-charged aside, as I don't trust 25 year old batteries 😉 I only replaced the BIOS battery with similar specs 20mAh 3.6V NiMH. I bought for around 10 dollars. I simply swapped the plastic plug enclosures. I think there are some sites selling "original" Toshiba batteries, but I don't see point of paying 40 dollars for such thing.

The BIOS battery cable was caught in some adhesive tape under metal bracket, so I had to remove this first to free the cable.

Now I want to write a bit more about GoTek/Flashfloppy fitting into Toshiba enclosure. This took some effort but it was fun and it was worth it! Despite the whole procedure was only partially documented in "FF with 26-pin header Gotek Floppy" project issue and some other Flashfloppy wiki entries, I managed to successfully mod SFRM72-DU26 720K (much cheaper than 1.44MB model that only differs in firmware) I got for around 23 dollars. I fitted small OLED display and additional rotary encoder I had lying around. With 1mm FFC PFC extension board I managed to connect everything without straining Toshiba enclosure flat cable.

Finally I also got network and Internet working great under Windows 98 SE with PCMPC100 bought off eBay for around 20 dollars. This one should also work in DOS, but I haven't tried it yet. The good thing about this model is that RJ45 port can be unplugged, so there's nothing sticking out of the laptop. Also there's enough room to put another PC card, e.g. SD to PC card, but not a sound card, since ESS688+OPL3 built-in 430CDT work great as a drop-in Sound Blaster replacement for all the games a tried so far.

Overall I am really happy with Toshiba 430CDT and impressed how well this computer was designed back in 1997. It does not need any external AC/DC brick, has built-in HW scaler if you want to upscale to 800x600, if not then it does pixel perfect scaling. Overall I think this is best mid-90ties model to play some Retro PC games.

If you have any questions or comments on my build here, please let me know.

ono wrote on 2023-08-21, 16:09:

Hi all,

This is my first post on Vogons, despite I signed up many years ago 😀

Welcome to the forum 😀

Thanks to this thread and also excellent resources on minuszerodegrees.net I managed to restore an old Toshiba 430CDT bought off […]
Show full quote

Thanks to this thread and also excellent resources on minuszerodegrees.net I managed to restore an old Toshiba 430CDT bought off eBay for around 80 dollars imported from US into Switzerland for extra 50 dollars. The device looks and works great, so I think this was a good deal. It was booting absolutely fine with the original HDD, but I swapped it with SD to PATA IDE and now it is absolutely silent. I tested the fan, it works, but it does not kick in at all, and computer gets just slightly warm after hours of usage.

The machine came unfortunately without an external floppy drive - just the main unit. So I decided to buy old Toshiba external floppy that was visually compatible to install GoTek/Flashfloppy emulator. (see below for details) The external cable/plug turned to be indeed compatible, unfortunately the internally it uses different/smaller connector. Therefore it cannot be put directly into the main laptop body, i.e. swapping it with CD drive. Fortunately CD drive that came with the device works well, so having external floppy and internal CD is good enough for me playing some Retro games. Note that the floppy unit I bought has 1mm pitch flex cable, but I think original older unit shipped with 430CDT used 1.25mm pitch flex cable.

The attachment 430CDT_9577.jpeg is no longer available

I managed to install fresh Windows 98 SE copy without any problem. I am into Win98SE DOS to play DOS games. The only catch is that Windows apparently does not support any hard drive (Ultra?) DMA on 430CFT using FC1307A SD to PATA adapter, that is relatively slow providing only <1MB/s. Windows Device Manager does not show any DMA checkbox at all, but HWInfo for DOS says both SD to PATA adapter and CD drive support Ultra DMA. But not sure if CPU/mainboard does. Anybody knows?

Maybe I miss some drivers? I found only TSETUP.EXE for DOS utility and Win98 W95UT430.EXE tools, but they did not provide anything else than otherwise can be achieved by holding ESC during boot and entering bios via F1. I know there exists 6.50 BIOS B430CDT.EXE file, but this file is nowhere to be found.

I may try installing CF card with built-in ATA controller and simple 44-pin PATA adapter, but not sure if it is worth to spend additional $15 for an adapter and a CF card that will bring no performance benefit.

I think some of the files that were on the support.dynabook.com site have started falling off. The internet archive has lots and I put together a personal archive with working links that I should really put online at some point. Here's the list of files for the 430 laptops, you might be able to find them by searching for the filenames:

My 430CDT came with discharged but otherwise working Li-Ion (laptop still can work for around 40-60min!) and two completely dead zero-volt Ni-MH batteries, but no leak onto electronics. I removed both NiHM batteries as recommended. I put Li-Ion half-charged aside, as I don't trust 25 year old batteries 😉 I only replaced the BIOS battery with similar specs 20mAh 3.6V NiMH. I bought for around 10 dollars. I simply swapped the plastic plug enclosures. I think there are some sites selling "original" Toshiba batteries, but I don't see point of paying 40 dollars for such thing.

Yeah, the proper type of RTC batteries are going to have the same problem. I've had recently bought 3.6v nimh battery packs leaking just in storage before they've ever been used, it's likely many of these are old stock and will fail just like the original cells did and on a similar timeline. One thing that might help to avoid future problems is to use solid core wire at some point, it seems like electrolyte can wick through multi-strand wires over time.
If reusing the original plug wires, give them a bath in some vinegar or lemon juice and wash them to make sure there's nothing corrosive left in the cable that could do damage.

Personally I think that two diodes and a CR2032 or two are the way to go but I haven't tried that on my Satellite 400 to 430 laptops yet.

Now I want to write a bit more about GoTek/Flashfloppy fitting into Toshiba enclosure. This took some effort but it was fun and […]
Show full quote

Now I want to write a bit more about GoTek/Flashfloppy fitting into Toshiba enclosure. This took some effort but it was fun and it was worth it! Despite the whole procedure was only partially documented in "FF with 26-pin header Gotek Floppy" project issue and some other Flashfloppy wiki entries, I managed to successfully mod SFRM72-DU26 720K (much cheaper than 1.44MB model that only differs in firmware) I got for around 23 dollars. I fitted small OLED display and additional rotary encoder I had lying around. With 1mm FFC PFC extension board I managed to connect everything without straining Toshiba enclosure flat cable.

The attachment 430CDT_9556.jpeg is no longer available

Finally I also got network and Internet working great under Windows 98 SE with PCMPC100 bought off eBay for around 20 dollars. This one should also work in DOS, but I haven't tried it yet. The good thing about this model is that RJ45 port can be unplugged, so there's nothing sticking out of the laptop. Also there's enough room to put another PC card, e.g. SD to PC card, but not a sound card, since ESS688+OPL3 built-in 430CDT work great as a drop-in Sound Blaster replacement for all the games a tried so far.

Overall I am really happy with Toshiba 430CDT and impressed how well this computer was designed back in 1997. It does not need any external AC/DC brick, has built-in HW scaler if you want to upscale to 800x600, if not then it does pixel perfect scaling. Overall I think this is best mid-90ties model to play some Retro PC games.

If you have any questions or comments on my build here, please let me know.

Wow that Toshiba caddied flashfloppy looks superb. I've got that same SFRM72-DU26 but it's not mounted in anything, I might try it in an external caddy - I really like your idea of using a 26pin 1mm flex cable extender to get around the different connector/cable positions inside the caddy 😀

The caddy you've got is from a Tecra (500 to 750 models) or later satellite laptops (440 to 490) which has the right connector. Sometimes those have direct drive floppy drives in them or you can use the direct drive floppy from a darker grey tecra 8000 series in its place. Good to know that a regular flashfloppy can work with no special requirements with Toshiba laptops, thank you for sharing your findings with this.