VOGONS


First post, by boxpressed

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I have a Toshiba Tecra 550CDT notebook computer that's a neat little retro computer. It has a Pentium MMX 266MHz, S3 Virge, and OPL3, among other good components.

The only thing it is missing is a game/MIDI port. However, its docking station (called the NoteDock II) has one.

My question is whether the game port works in DOS. Does it need a driver, or is it initialized automatically? Thanks for any advice!

Reply 1 of 2, by bregolin

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I have recently bought a Toshiba Tecra 750CDM and am waiting anxiously for it to arrive- I don't have the port replicator, but I assume that as long as you configure the game/MIDI port in BIOS, it should be accessible directly from DOS without any need for driver, as usually the software you'll be running will take care of talking to it.

Have you tried checking out your BIOS config?
I don't have any gamepads or MIDI devices I could test unfortunately, but I can try and confirm if there's any setting for the game/MIDI port in my BIOS and get back to you. I figure since they're similar laptops, the BIOS should be pretty similar to one another.

IBM Aptiva 2162 - P55 166 MMX, 32MB, CS4237B + Wavetable, ATI Mach64 2MB / Win98SE
Custom PIII 750, 64MB, SB AWE64, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP / Win98SE
Sony Vaio z505 SuperSlim - PIII 550, 192MB, YMF744, NeoMagic 256AV+ / Win98SE

Reply 2 of 2, by bregolin

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I just got my Toshiba Tecra and I was able to check the BIOS (before it stopped working, unfortunately) and there's no settings for the game port in it- I would give it a go if you own the port replicator.

IBM Aptiva 2162 - P55 166 MMX, 32MB, CS4237B + Wavetable, ATI Mach64 2MB / Win98SE
Custom PIII 750, 64MB, SB AWE64, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP / Win98SE
Sony Vaio z505 SuperSlim - PIII 550, 192MB, YMF744, NeoMagic 256AV+ / Win98SE