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The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

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Reply 160 of 928, by bjwil1991

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That's good to know. If only 486 laptops had the ET4000 series video. I have a 4000AX ISA and 4000/w32p VLB and those are wonderful cards for DOS.

So wait, the T4800CT has an ES688 or the Panasonic quad-speed PCMCIA CD-ROM with integrated sound?

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Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
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Reply 161 of 928, by ragefury32

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bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-07-20, 02:08:

That's good to know. If only 486 laptops had the ET4000 series video. I have a 4000AX ISA and 4000/w32p VLB and those are wonderful cards for DOS.

So wait, the T4800CT has an ES688 or the Panasonic quad-speed PCMCIA CD-ROM with integrated sound?

T4800CT - this implies no CDROM built-in, and only the Windows Sound System (if I remember correctly is defined as 2 chips - one for WAV (ESS688) and one for FM synthesis, and that FM synthesis is an OPL3 (YMF262) or an OPL3 clone. It can also be a one-chip solution like an ESS1688 with ESFM integrated)

If you plan to buy a Toshiba T-series for classic gaming and you need a CDROM drive, consider a T2150/2155CDT instead (practically the same but with a CDROM drive integrated, and a C&T 65545, which performs better than the WD). And that Tseng ET4000 will likely be rather power hungry.

Last edited by ragefury32 on 2020-07-20, 11:31. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 162 of 928, by bjwil1991

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I already have a PCMCIA external CD-ROM drive that I can use and hope it works since it never worked on my Satellite Pro 410CDT laptop since the CD drive for it broke.

But thanks for the information. Appreciate it, plus, it's hard to find a T2150CDT these days on eBay, but I'll keep searching.

Discord: https://discord.gg/U5dJw7x
Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
Twitch: https://twitch.tv/retropcuser

Reply 163 of 928, by vorob

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My N600c is here! Worked for two hours and then died. Was blinking like crazy, looked like I was plugging and unplugging the charger. That was expected, the seller told me that the laptop had some charging port issues. Had to disassembly it completely to get my hands on charging port. And some weird guys say that modern laptops are hard to disassembly, 🤣!So the soldering between port and motherboard was dead, I renewed it. But the laptop still didn't boot up. As a last resort, i've reinserted ram, and surprisingly it started working again! Already tried few windows games (quake 3, thief ii, unreal) that wasn't working well on M1 from N400c, and here they work perfectly. Now I'm going to install win 98.

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Reply 164 of 928, by vorob

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If anyone has this laptop and have a guide on how to enable native dos sound I would be appreciated to have it. Just to save some time. If such a thing doesn't exist I'll google myself 😀

Reply 165 of 928, by HandOfFate

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I'm dealing with exactly the same problem atm (Compaq N600c: hangs on playing audio in DOS, music works)

I'll update the topic because I had it working for one boot yesterday. And then suddenly the I/O, IRQ and DMA combination didn't work anymore. Sigh.

Am486 DX4 120MHz, no L2, 16MB, Tseng ET4000/W32 1MB VLB, ESS ES1869 /// 5x86 133MHz, 256kb L2, 64MB, S3 Virge/DX 4MB PCI, SB16 + Yucatan FX, PicoGUS /// Pentium III 1GHz, 512MB, Asus V7700 64MB AGP, SB Live!

Reply 166 of 928, by vorob

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From what I learned I need VXD driver instead of current WDM. Dunno where to get this for now.

Reply 167 of 928, by HandOfFate

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I found one on this driver CD at Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/mmcd9v22

Should you get it working btw then I would very much like to get your ESSAUDIO.INI (which is created by the non-WDM drivers) and perhaps everything that Compaq Diagnostics (https://driverscollection.com/_44749461801219 … dows-98-XP-free) spits out 😀

Am486 DX4 120MHz, no L2, 16MB, Tseng ET4000/W32 1MB VLB, ESS ES1869 /// 5x86 133MHz, 256kb L2, 64MB, S3 Virge/DX 4MB PCI, SB16 + Yucatan FX, PicoGUS /// Pentium III 1GHz, 512MB, Asus V7700 64MB AGP, SB Live!

Reply 168 of 928, by vorob

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Did you install this? ES1989 4CH\WIN9X I can't get it working. After reboot second generic device can't find its driver and I have no sound.

Reply 169 of 928, by HandOfFate

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Yes, I had the same.

For the unknown device you can manually pick the ESS ES1989 PCI audio device from the list. Then it automatically installs a DOS emulation device, a gameport and then you should have sound.

Am486 DX4 120MHz, no L2, 16MB, Tseng ET4000/W32 1MB VLB, ESS ES1869 /// 5x86 133MHz, 256kb L2, 64MB, S3 Virge/DX 4MB PCI, SB16 + Yucatan FX, PicoGUS /// Pentium III 1GHz, 512MB, Asus V7700 64MB AGP, SB Live!

Reply 170 of 928, by ragefury32

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When in doubt, the WDM driver set for the Latitude C600/Inspiron 4000 works as well.

Reply 171 of 928, by vorob

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HandOfFate wrote on 2020-07-24, 15:12:

Yes, I had the same.

For the unknown device you can manually pick the ESS ES1989 PCI audio device from the list. Then it automatically installs a DOS emulation device, a gameport and then you should have sound.

It’s not working well. Trash midi sound and some games won’t have sound even with proper settings.

Reply 172 of 928, by vorob

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I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong here. IRQ more than 7 is impossible to set here, I’m getting error.

Reply 173 of 928, by HandOfFate

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You've got completely different IRQ/DMA settings than what my drivers gave me. Interesting.

I did make some progress and I now got sound to work reliably in Rise of the Triad, stuttering sound in Quake (edit 2: fixed 99% of stuttering) and no sound in Doom (edit: got sound working in Doom). I will update my topic about the sound issues later. I'm going to try some more things to hopefully improve the sound in Quake, at least.

But I am starting to doubt, after 6+ hours of trying to get it to work, that this notebook (or even this chipset?) is really suitable for DOS gaming 😜

Am486 DX4 120MHz, no L2, 16MB, Tseng ET4000/W32 1MB VLB, ESS ES1869 /// 5x86 133MHz, 256kb L2, 64MB, S3 Virge/DX 4MB PCI, SB16 + Yucatan FX, PicoGUS /// Pentium III 1GHz, 512MB, Asus V7700 64MB AGP, SB Live!

Reply 174 of 928, by ragefury32

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HandOfFate wrote on 2020-07-25, 09:59:

You've got completely different IRQ/DMA settings than what my drivers gave me. Interesting.

I did make some progress and I now got sound to work reliably in Rise of the Triad, stuttering sound in Quake (edit 2: fixed 99% of stuttering) and no sound in Doom (edit: got sound working in Doom). I will update my topic about the sound issues later. I'm going to try some more things to hopefully improve the sound in Quake, at least.

But I am starting to doubt, after 6+ hours of trying to get it to work, that this notebook (or even this chipset?) is really suitable for DOS gaming 😜

Hmmm...the audio or the setup? Well, there are several issues here:

a) Tulatin is really too fast for the old DOS stuff, but not really great for the later WinXP stuff, so it's in that weird transition period between Win98 and XP. setmul can only give you limited magic here.
b) ESS Maestro 2/Allegro (really a Maestro 3) does not do all that great for FM (emulated).
c) Tulatin P3 is a weird little in-betweener - If you buy Tulatin mobile (2001), you might as well buy Banias Pentium-M (2003), which is a much better Tulatin derived core but better clock control, faster FSB and USB2 support. Of course, I am not sure if there are ANY pre-AC97 Pentium-Ms out there.
d) Same goes for the Radeon M6 - its better than the Rage 128 Mobility or the S3 Savage Mobiles, but it's not great against the Geforce2Gos (came out around the same time) and beyond.

So yes, the n600c is the "ultimate" DOS laptop out there (in terms of fastest CPU and most performant mobile GPU), but I would not say the best.

Reply 175 of 928, by kalohimal

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You can try out my hardware speed control program CPUSPD if you're interested in playing old DOS games which the N600C CPU is too fast to run. It's not tested on this system but since the PIII mobile has enhanced speedstep and the south bridge is ICH3-M, I think it should work fine under DOS/Win9x/Win Me.

Slow down your CPU with CPUSPD for DOS retro gaming.

Reply 176 of 928, by adalbert

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ragefury32 wrote on 2020-07-28, 04:07:

So yes, the n600c is the "ultimate" DOS laptop out there (in terms of fastest CPU and most performant mobile GPU), but I would not say the best.

I also have Dell Inspiron 8100 and it has mostly the same specs including ESS Maestro, but the GPU is Radeon 9000 which is superior to everything else mentioned here (it's pretty rare version, usually came with GF2, GF4). But it's big and heavy... it also has PCI dock so you can install Solo1 and even maybe Voodoo.

Dell Precision M60 or Inspiron 8600 is also nice as a bridge between old and modern systems. It has lots of legacy connectors (irda, pcmcia, lpt, com, TV, usb, firewire, LAN), possibility to install floppy in a bay. Docking station you can usually get for free on scrap or for 1EUR at most which has DVI, all mentioned ports and PS/2 ports. There is also PCI dock. It has Pentium M up to 2.2 GHz so you can run modern OS, Radeon 9600 Pro (in best version), unfortunately no DOS audio (it's Sigmatel c-major, maybe there is some legacy emulation but I don't know). LCD screen up to 1900x1200. With PCI dock in theory you could install ESS Solo 1 and floppy drive in additional bay...

Repair/electronic stuff videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/adalbertfix
ISA Wi-fi + USB in T3200SXC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX30t3lYezs
GUI programming for Windows 3.11 (the easy way): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6L272OApVg

Reply 177 of 928, by HandOfFate

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Does the sound work in DOS with the Inspiron 8100?

Am486 DX4 120MHz, no L2, 16MB, Tseng ET4000/W32 1MB VLB, ESS ES1869 /// 5x86 133MHz, 256kb L2, 64MB, S3 Virge/DX 4MB PCI, SB16 + Yucatan FX, PicoGUS /// Pentium III 1GHz, 512MB, Asus V7700 64MB AGP, SB Live!

Reply 178 of 928, by adalbert

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Honestly I didn't even try it because i use it only with Windows 98 and XP. I expect that there may be the same problems as with N600c, but i will try later and report.

Repair/electronic stuff videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/adalbertfix
ISA Wi-fi + USB in T3200SXC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX30t3lYezs
GUI programming for Windows 3.11 (the easy way): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6L272OApVg

Reply 179 of 928, by HandOfFate

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That would be great, thanks 😀

Am486 DX4 120MHz, no L2, 16MB, Tseng ET4000/W32 1MB VLB, ESS ES1869 /// 5x86 133MHz, 256kb L2, 64MB, S3 Virge/DX 4MB PCI, SB16 + Yucatan FX, PicoGUS /// Pentium III 1GHz, 512MB, Asus V7700 64MB AGP, SB Live!