I've been looking for a gaming laptop too, but don't want to cough up for a new one (at least not until razer release theirs over here). Looks to me like xps's have reliability problems with graphics chips needing a reball.

I wouldn't go for anything too old as the screen will most likely be rubbish for gaming (motion blur/ghosting). A gaming laptop from 2004 will also struggle with games such as Farcry and FEAR with everything cranked up.

Older Dell XPS/Alienware, Rock and Clevo laptops are good for XP gaming if you can find one that's still working properly (the heat those things produced was quite immense!).

I generally think of gaming laptops as a problem waiting to happen. I'd be surprised to find one from that many years ago that's still good. But maybe some of them are more robust than I'd have assumed.

sgt76 wrote:

Obviously, laptops, especially high-end ones can run hot, so what should one look out for before buying one of these used? Are they restorable/ pratical to be restorable / easily repairable?

Some models have service manuals downloadable online. Having the manual makes it a lot more comfortable to work on them without fear that you'll break something.
The most frustrating thing IMO is that if you forget 1 step, you have to take the whole thing apart again to fix whatever you missed.

Some laptops have affordable replacement parts available, others don't. If shopping for a used laptop, I suggest finding models where replacement motherboards (preferably NOS) are in plentiful supply for cheap on eBay. Availability of replacement screens is another thing to consider.
Sooner or later an old laptop will likely need a motherboard - especially the ones that run hot. Hopefully not right after buying it, but I've had that happen in one case.

I wonder if anyone got any 3d acceleration out of Neomagic chips.

Why not a new AMD APU laptop with a 76xx/77xx series card. Should be able to handle DOSbox, XP games, and emulation with not much trouble.

There are enough patches, affinity programs to get around the limitation and probably won't even work the a new laptop that much.

I've had the itch to grab a new one and see what it could do. I bought some $400 AMD A6 dual core (really single core crap trinity) and returned it the NEXT day. I'd rather save up and get something way better than that thing.

RogueTrip2012 wrote:

Why not a new AMD APU laptop with a 76xx/77xx series card.

Because AMD/ATi have not replaced/killed Catalyst programmers. The result is - dx5-dx7 games are broken on anything newer then Radeon X series. Even ddraw is broken sometimes.

Gamecollector wrote:

RogueTrip2012 wrote:

Why not a new AMD APU laptop with a 76xx/77xx series card.

Because AMD/ATi have not replaced/killed Catalyst programmers. The result is - dx5-dx7 games are broken on anything newer then Radeon X series. Even ddraw is broken sometimes.

Killing them would be somewhat too radical, instead I'd advocate forcing them to play all games they broke over and over again 🤣

Putas wrote:

I wonder if anyone got any 3d acceleration out of Neomagic chips.

My Compaq Presario 1622 with a P233 MMX CPU uses a Neomagic chip (MagicGraph 128XD). I'm almost sure it used to be advertised as being 3D capable, but i don't have any 3D acceleration enabled according to DirectX. Hardware 3D would be crap on a 2MB chip anyway 🤣.

In the pre-XP era, we had this awesome thing called "Software Rendering". It did the trick.

The Wikipedia article about NeoMagic used to say in the history section

Specifically in regards to the MagicGraph 128XD, NeoMagic used to have incorrect information on their website, stating that the chip had Direct3D support when it definitely did not. This caused much confusion among users of the chip.[citation needed] The incorrect information was eventually removed from their website due to consumer complaint, but no official statement was released by the company as to why the mistake occurred

This part has been removed since.

my Toshiba 2805-s503 has 16mb geforce 2 with 384mb (max) pc133 with 900 mhz socket Pentium 3. fairly sure if check the chipset specs i could see if tualatin is supported. the s503 and s403 are the only ones that support smooth screen stretching, you probably are wondering what the fuck i'm talking about because most computers do this normally except the 2805 series which does do it but, it makes everything looked like pixalated ass with the exception of the s503 and s403.

they all support dvd and have onboard floppy drives too and run 1024x768.

I have been scheming up ways to boost the on board ram from 128 to 256 and possibly solder on bigger vram chips via re balling.

cdoublejj wrote:

my Toshiba 2805-s503 has 16mb geforce 2 with 384mb (max) pc133 with 900 mhz socket Pentium 3. fairly sure if check the chipset specs i could see if tualatin is supported. the s503 and s403 are the only ones that support smooth screen stretching, you probably are wondering what the fuck i'm talking about because most computers do this normally except the 2805 series which does do it but, it makes everything looked like pixalated ass with the exception of the s503 and s403.

they all support dvd and have onboard floppy drives too and run 1024x768.

I have been scheming up ways to boost the on board ram from 128 to 256 and possibly solder on bigger vram chips via re balling.

Thanks, this is exactly the sort of info I'm looking for. That there are Win98 capable laptops with decent video cards on them. I need the model numbers, importantly, so that I know what to look for in jumble sales/ junk shops/ used sites.

Toshiba satellite 2805-s503, Toshiba satellite 2805-s403. quite literally put 2805-s503 or 2805-s403 in ebay it should bring them right up.

keep in mind the 16mb vram limitation i can just get gta-vc to run 20-30 fps average 25 fps. games like American McGees Alice run fine at medium settings. Same with Command and Conquer renegade i can run it at medium settings. GTA 3 is unplayable. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 is just playable.

EDIT: OH yeah i forgot to mention it's possible to get wifi and flash working with it, YT videos are doable on lowest setting. Under 98se that is.

For Windows 9x you should look for a model with a fast PIII. PIIs and slower PIIIs usually came with video chips with either no or very mediocre 3D capabilities. (Eg. PIII 500 with a Rage Pro based Rage Mobility.)
(Keep in mind that you probably want to play in native resolution which would be at least 1024x768.)

I'd prefer a business model (more sturdy) so a Dell Latitude C810 might be right, it came with a Geforce 2 Go. (But always check, sometimes a laptop model was available in different configurations, for example one with discrete graphics and one with integrated graphics.) I'm not sure about Win98 support, the model came out in the beginning of 2002 with XP installed.

A Geforce would be preferable to an ATI card for retro gaming, see http://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/NVIDIA#Retro_value
If that's not an issue for you you could also look for a model with a Radeon Mobility or a Rage 128 based Rage Mobility (for the latter, Wikipedia is somewhat confusing with the model numbers. If it has at least 16MB VRAM it is probably Rage 128 based.)

IBM didn't have models with an early Geforce, but the T2x series has mobile S3 Savage chips which might enable you to use S3 MeTaL. (If you don't need that a Geforce is much better.)

For later (XP) laptops: Avoid the Geforce 8 Series, these fail a lot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_Series#Problems

That Dell Latitude C810 is easy to get. But it came with XP as you have correctly pointed out, so I don't know if it would run Win98SE flawlessly and painlessly.

I'll try looking up the Toshiba satellites pointed out by cdoublejj and also see if the C810 and C600 support Win98. Any other models?

An XP laptop would be easy to come by. I think one just needs to get a Core 2 era laptop, with some decent video and that would do it.

I don't need it to be too modern. My daily lappie is an Ivy Bridge i7 with GT640 video so this is just to handle XP era stuff (and 98 for the other one).

There are a lot of Windows 98 (or at least ME) drivers on this list:
http://ftp.dell.com/Pages/Drivers/latitude-c810-all.html

An alternative could be an Inspiron 8100, very similar to the Latitude C810:
http://ftp.dell.com/Pages/Drivers/inspiron-8100.html

It seems from this list that the model also came with a Radeon 7500 so you will have to see what you prefer. The Radeon would probably be faster but AFAIK does not support palletized textures or table fog.

@ idspispopd

Excellent! Looks like it can support Win98. I'd settle for ME too, as I don't need hardcore DOS support. The games I play are from the late 90s, i.e. Dungeon Keeper II, Star Wars Pod Racer, System Shock 2, etc. Thanks!

Keep 'em coming folks...

Windows ME can be patched up to boot in real DOS if required.

http://www.dewassoc.com/support/winme/real_dos.htm

The above link is just one of the plenty available in the web.

Is a radeon Radeon 7500 better than geforce 2? I wonder if that dell came with more than 16mb vram.