Can anyone recommend a good PIII, Celeron (or AMD equivalent) laptop for Win98/DOS use? I've been looking at a couple but i want to make sure DOS audio is adequate (it'll probably be emulated though). I have a P233 MMX laptop, but i can't get used to the crappy screen! A 3D video chip would also be nice (D3D & OpenGL), but it's not a necessity.
Crappy screen? Plug in a nice CRT VGA monitor, or an LCD if you don't have CRT. I did this with our Pentium 133 Mhz laptop.
A Thinkpad T2x series would be a good idea. Get the 1024x768 model (they have 1400x1050 which no games of that era support).
T20-22 use PC100 SODIMM (2x256MB max) and top out at 800 or 900 MHz , T23 uses PC133 (up to 1Gb). You can still find new batteries for them (they can use T30 batteries).
Forget about 3d games
Collector of old computers, hardware, and software
If 3D is desired, I would probably look for at least ATI Rage Mobility 128. The one based on Rage Pro is ok too but obviously pretty limited. Rage 128 also brings decent hardware upscaling for those times when you can't run native resolution.
ATI is the only real option until NV enters with GeForce2 Go in 2001.
wrote:Crappy screen? Plug in a nice CRT VGA monitor, or an LCD if you don't have CRT. I did this with our Pentium 133 Mhz laptop.
I stripped my big bulky retro rig as it was taking up space and hardly being used (selling some of the bits over at Amibay)... I want something small that i can tuck away when not in use. No bulky CRT screens here 😁.
wrote:If 3D is desired, I would probably look for at least ATI Rage Mobility 128. The one based on Rage Pro is ok too but obviously pretty limited. Rage 128 also brings decent hardware upscaling for those times when you can't run native resolution.
ATI is the only real option until NV enters with GeForce2 Go in 2001.
I've seen a few with various ATI chips which are tempting, some PIII laptops even have Radeon 7000/7500 chips which should be fine. I used to have an 8MB Rage Pro and found it couldn't handle certain effects properly, but it still did the job back in it's day 😀. Does the Geforce 2 Go suffer from dodgy image quality like the desktop parts?
wrote:I've seen a few with various ATI chips which are tempting, some PIII laptops even have Radeon 7000/7500 chips which should be fine. I used to have an 8MB Rage Pro and found it couldn't handle certain effects properly, but it still did the job back in it's day 😀. Does the Geforce 2 Go suffer from dodgy image quality like the desktop parts?
ATI dominated decent notebook graphics with Rage and Radeon. Note that the memory bus width of these varies per notebook. Try to find Radeons and Rage 128 with full 128 bit bus width.
NVblur isnt a problem in notebooks. Notebooks use a digital display interface so no analog blur problems.
Toshiba 2804-s503
http://www.cnet.com/laptops/toshiba-satellite … _7-6749687.html
Has worked great for me weather it be early 2000s or early 90s games. has dos sound support.
EDIT: even though it's 16mb vram it can it JUST handle GTA VC.
wrote:Toshiba 2804-s503 […]
Toshiba 2804-s503
http://www.cnet.com/laptops/toshiba-satellite … _7-6749687.html
Has worked great for me weather it be early 2000s or early 90s games. has dos sound support.
EDIT: even though it's 16mb vram it can it JUST handle GTA VC.
Looks good for what i want it for (i won't be playing GTA VC as it runs fine on my Win7 PC 😀). Is the screen ok for gaming?
wrote:wrote:Toshiba 2804-s503 […]
Toshiba 2804-s503
http://www.cnet.com/laptops/toshiba-satellite … _7-6749687.html
Has worked great for me weather it be early 2000s or early 90s games. has dos sound support.
EDIT: even though it's 16mb vram it can it JUST handle GTA VC.
Looks good for what i want it for (i won't be playing GTA VC as it runs fine on my Win7 PC 😀). Is the screen ok for gaming?
YES the screen is good/decent, specially compared to the norm, it actually has image stretching most laptops had the option but, is was god awful horrid please show me some mercy and stab me bad. other than that pro it seems like a normal screen to me.
Rage 128 was the first chip with LCD scaling AFAIK. So anything newer from ATI and NV should have it.
The 16MB GF2Go only has a 32-bit DDR memory bus though. Performance must be somewhere around a plain TNT2 or even a TNT2 M64.
As an alternative I might recommend that if anyone runs across a early 2000's era Athlon 4/M based Compaq, some of them support Win98 pretty well. The graphics were usually S3 based, but I actually played early DX8 titles on mine without too much hassle. I don't have my old Compaq anymore, but I remember it had a Crystal chipset for integrated sound and even FM synth for MIDI. I thought it was odd at the time. The screen wasn't great, but not horrible either, I think it was 1280x1024(?).
1280x1024 (5:4) is often a problem for old games that expect 4:3 since old notebooks often don't have a "preserve aspect ratio" scaling and you'll get skewed output as a result. It's certainly not a bad resolution for productivity apps though.
The cousin/brother models of my Toshiba have S3 graphics and they DON'T have screen scaling.
wrote:The cousin/brother models of my Toshiba have S3 graphics and they DON'T have screen scaling.
Pixel stretch or centered-screen were the only options until Rage 128.
Rage Mobility 128 @ Anandtech
(ratiometric expansion)
The Radeons sometimes give you aspect-ratio scaling too but it's not always available. This is mainly useful for 16:10 notebooks. I have a notebook with Mobility Radeon 9600 and it doesn't have this option for some reason (my guess is a video BIOS issue).
GeForce Go chips do scaling too.
wrote:Pixel stretch or centered-screen were the only options until Rage 128. […]
wrote:The cousin/brother models of my Toshiba have S3 graphics and they DON'T have screen scaling.
Pixel stretch or centered-screen were the only options until Rage 128.
Rage Mobility 128 @ Anandtech
(ratiometric expansion)The Radeons sometimes give you aspect-ratio scaling too but it's not always available. This is mainly useful for 16:10 notebooks. I have a notebook with Mobility Radeon 9600 and it doesn't have this option for some reason (my guess is a video BIOS issue).
GeForce Go chips do scaling too.
what are the specs on that beast?
Also if any one has an intel mac book you can install program called parallels, i got 98se working under parallels with all the 3rd arty goodies but, the best part is that parallels has GPU acceleration, i test a monster truck game from the 98 se disc and plan on testing some other games to see how well it really works.
wrote:what are the specs on that beast?
It is 2004's midrange gaming notebook favorite, the eMachines M6805 / M6807 / M6809 / M6811 / Gateway 7422GX / Arima W730-K8. It's a DTR essentially so it is a bit heavy.
15.4" 1280x800 LCD
Mobile Athlon 64 3400+ (2.2 GHz)
VIA K8T800 + VT8235 chipset
ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 64MB (300/200 MHz clocks)
2GB PC2700 RAM (one slot is buried inside)
100GB 7200RPM HDD (limit is 120GB because of the BIOS)
DVDROM
Broadcom 802.11n Wifi (I found an N card for it, was originally G)
VIA Rhine 10/100 ethernet
Realtek ALC201 audio (has 98 support)
I don't know if I suggest looking for one. They tend to have a LCD backlight flickering problem because of poor connectors inside. You can fix it but it's annoying. The plastic lid also inevitably develops superficial cracks near the hinges. Ugly but it doesn't matter.
The Cardbus slot is cool and you can of course use the Audigy 2 but the ENE cardbus chip and the Radeon don't get along and you get PCI latency problems (audio issues).
Notebooks always seem to have a bunch of issues you don't notice at first though. This thing is almost 10 years old and I still use it occasionally. I've put Win7 and 8 on it but XP is really the best choice.
that's a beast. i almost used my mid range Pentium M laptop that had an fx5200 once but, i didn't know as much as i do now to get it all working right plus the one down side for mid 2000s laptops is the lack of floppy. do just burn your stuff to cd or use flash drive ? i know 98 needs a 3rd party flash drive patch for that.
EDIT: what are some of the demanding games you are playing?
CD or flash.
Geforce FX would be better for old games than Radeon 9600. Fog table and pallette texture support.
I've played lots of games on it over the years. Anything from 2005 and older is fine. I've eve put Oblivion on it but the 9600 is really too slow and 64mb insufficient.
The 9600 overclocks a lot. I can run a 120mhz core overclock for 420mhz. The RAM can only go up about 30mhz though.
wrote:CD or flash. […]
CD or flash.
Geforce FX would be better for old games than Radeon 9600. Fog table and pallette texture support.
I've played lots of games on it over the years. Anything from 2005 and older is fine. I've eve put Oblivion on it but the 9600 is really too slow and 64mb insufficient.
The 9600 overclocks a lot. I can run a 120mhz core overclock for 420mhz. The RAM can only go up about 30mhz though.
is the overclock able in 98 as well? will morrowind run on 98? there is a new project called Open MW making a new engine for morrowind from the ground up with all sorts of optimizations.
Have you thought about flashing your clocks?
wrote:is the overclock able in 98 as well? will morrowind run on 98? there is a new project called Open MW making a new engine for morrowind from the ground up with all sorts of optimizations.
Have you thought about flashing your clocks?
I use ATITool or ATI Tray Tools to overclock it. If either work on 98 then it's possible. I don't run 98 on it though.
Morrowind runs pretty nice thanks to the powerful CPU.
I don't want to mess around with flashing a modified video BIOS. It's very risky with notebooks since you can't put a backup card in and blind flashing may be impossible too because it may not even get through POST. I've been there before. There's also no reason to have it overclocked full time.
