I saw few old laptops with gameport (1993-1995). Mostly they were big, heavy and sometimes with no internal battery. For normal laptops there were only one way to get native gameport and it was a docking station. I had Toshiba Satellite 490XCDT and then Toshiba Tecra T8000 with docking stations that has four audio jacks (standardard three plus a line-output) and a standard gameport.

As I'm writing this post I recalled ThinkPads 755 and 760 in "workstation" versions (for example ThinkPad 760XD) that has a special game/midi connector with a bundled gameport cable. Look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIJWfXfGI4o (6:40)

diagon_swarm wrote:

I saw few old laptops with gameport (1993-1995). Mostly they were big, heavy and sometimes with no internal battery. For normal laptops there were only one way to get native gameport and it was a docking station. I had Toshiba Satellite 490XCDT and then Toshiba Tecra T8000 with docking stations that has four audio jacks (standardard three plus a line-output) and a standard gameport.

As I'm writing this post I recalled ThinkPads 755 and 760 in "workstation" versions (for example ThinkPad 760XD) that has a special game/midi connector with a bundled gameport cable. Look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIJWfXfGI4o (6:40)

Thanks for the information!...I may look into getting docking stations for all my old toshiba laptops (if I can find any) if they have gameports. I know many of my old toshibas have DOS SB compatible hardware so it might be worth it to set up. I don't know what else I would use them for. I do have an old IBM laptop as well (486 DX2/66 I believe)...I'm going to have to dig them out and see what I got.

retrofanatic wrote:

The only thing that has kept me from using a laptop as a dos gaming rig is the lack of a gameport. The only recolection I have of a portable with a 15-pin gameport is some compydyne or micron laptop advertised in a Computer Shopper magazine (yes the ones that looked like phone books!). Does anyone have a real 15-pin gameport on their laptop that can work with dos games? I can't use usb controllers because usb to gameport doesnt work for dos but does of course work for windows games.

I have read (on Vogons?) that a USB controller will work for DOS games if you run them from Windows 9x. Of course not all games will work then, but that sounds quite useful.
Should be easy enough to try.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I was thinking more late 90s as well, though I wasn't sure if there were any Pentium II notebooks with Soundblaster support. I think it would be really sweet to be able to run UT 99 and Quake 2 as well, even just in software mode.

The last thinkpad with SB support is actually a PIII -- the thinkpad A20 series and the like. They have a dual soundcard setup, ISA/PCI, and the ISA is SBPro compatible in hardware. The video card is a Rage Mobility with some basic DirectX 3d functionality.
I myself have a thinkpad 600, which has a NeoMagic 128XD with 2d acceleration, VESA VBE, WIn3.x/NT/9x/2k drivers, Crystal sound chip (SBPro compatible in hardware, also comptaible with NT/3.x/9x/2k native drivers, compatible with DOS boxes in WinNT and 9x), PS/2 Trackpoint (compatible with MOUSE in DOS), Linksys PCMPC100 PCMCIA (Win3.x/DOS/NT/9x/2k drivers) and Orinoco Gold (Win9x/2k/Nt/DOSPKT drivers, usable to a degree with windows 3.x using WINPKT). The HDD is standard IDE and the ultrabay is CDROM with external floppies possible or a ultrabay floppy. Finally, there's ultrabay Zip and Ultrabay DVD available. There's also a docking station with ISA slots and IDE bays available. It has built in USB 1.1 and supports DOS based USB drivers for flash drives. USB 2 is also available via CardBus (Win98SE/Me/2k compatible). It's great at DOS games and even has a enhanced MIDI sound for windows games like DOOM95.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I would be fine with that. I understand that laptops didn't really have decent 3D acceleration until much later on, so something […]
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m1so wrote:

We had a Pentium 133 Thinkpad. S3 Trio graphics. Perfect for most stuff you mentioned, but unfortunately no Quake 2 or Unreal.

I would be fine with that. I understand that laptops didn't really have decent 3D acceleration until much later on, so something like that would probably work.

I wonder, how would something like this work? http://www.ebay.ca/itm/IBM-Thinkpad-600E-Lapt … =item1c37b86d86
You can find more information about it here http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:600E
It sounds decent, aside from the NeoMagic graphics adapter which I have never heard of. Does anyone have experience with those? Would one provide decent 2D acceleration and/or VESA? I'm fairly certain 3D is a no-go. 🤣

Or what about this? http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Dell-Latitude-CPi-R400 … =item1c3706c80b
Or this http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Compaq-Armada-7400-Lap … =item53ef0e6b59

Yes, neomagic provides decent 2d acceleration, at least for windows (never seen it be slow in windows, even 2k and XP which i've run succesfully). It is VESA compliant, to the degree i've used its VESA support to drive NT 3.51 (which lacks native drivers) with no issues. I'm not super knowledgable on DOS use of VESA, but i'll try DUKE3d and SC2k and report. I usually play ROTT and DOOM on it, and they play well. Quake runs OK with software drivers. The SBPro compatibility is amazingly good and no TSRs are needed. It has two PCMCIA slots and the dock lets you use ISA stuff. It even supports DVD and it does boot from CDROMs just fine and read CD-Rs (CD-RWs are iffy). the PC speaker is emulated by the BIOS using the Crystal, as such PC speaker sound (for older games) is loud and clear and has good definition and is adjustable in volume. The APM sleep system lets you sleep the machine with DOS or other pre-Win98 OSes'''.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Careful with Sound Blaster compatibility. Many work well from within Windows, but not from MS-DOS mode.

A standard Pentium MMX notebook maybe?

With crystal ISA chips like used in the PII Thinkpad 600, they are hardware compatible to the point where Windows sound blaster drivers will work without a problem. Naturally dos programs work fine as well once you SET BLASTER. You must turn off "quick Boot" in the BIOS to allow the BIOS to initialize the ISA bus. The PS2.EXE utility lets you set the blaster emulation and WSS I/O and IRQ.

I actually us an IBM Thinkpad X20 for old DOS/Win95 games.
It's a rather slim machine, but comes with a dock that has a CD and floppy drive, when you need them.

It supports hard drives up to 120GB, and works with the Thinkpad Dock II, which will allow you to use a full height PCI slot (only half length though, so no Voodoo 5 cards). Also, the X20 has Intel 440ZX chipset, so it supports Distributed DMA, which means a Yamaha YMF724 works!

I use mine with a Voodoo3 for 3DFX games.
It has the CS4281, which has some decent DOS support. (the MIDI is kinda off using the win95/DOS drivers from the IBM website, though, maybe there are better drivers somewhere?)

If you want a laptop with a dock that support an ISA card, try the following:
ThinkPad 360, 360C, 360Cs, 360P, 360CE, 360CSE, 360PE
ThinkPad 370C
ThinkPad 750, 750C, 750Cs, 750P
ThinkPad 755C, 755Cs, 755CE, 755CSE, 755CD, 755CX, 755CV, 755CDV
ThinkPad 760C, 760CD, 760E, 760ED, 760EL, 760ELD, 760L, 760LD, 760XL, 760XD

Pair it with the IBM Dock I (FRU 3545) and you get an excellent 486/Pentium 1 game station with everything you need.
The dock even has a direct audio input (perfect for the ISA sound card) to powered stereo speakers and SCSI support for either CD or an additional hard drive.

It's a full height, full length ISA slot too, but I don't know if it will support monster cards like a Roland LAPC-I.

I personally have bad experiences with 3d cards in a dock.... PowerVR PCX2 through a IBM Dock was an interesting but slow experience and is the only choice for 3D on the internal LCD...besides a Canopus Pure3D maybe

i made a thread about 98 gaming laptops but, i can't find my own threads/posts.

EDIT: fastest 98ish era laptop with flopyp drive?

I recently came into possession of a Gateway 2000 Solo model 2300.
If audio is important to you, I HIGHLY recommend it.

It has a Yamaha YMF715, which when configured properly has near-perfect Sound Blaster Pro/Adlib compatibility, and even has MPU-401 support, stereo speakers, and an audio in plug.
The only real problem I have with it is that it's a Pentium MMX 200mhz, which is a little fast for a lot of old dos games.

The LCD is also TERRIBLE at scaling, but you can set it in BIOS to not scale, and center lower resolutions.

Stay away from Neomagic MagicGraph 128 chips if you plan on doing dos games. It skips / lags / stutters in lots of games:

- Horrible nausea inducing stuttering in Supaplex - makes the game unplayable
- Stuttering in Golden Axe
- Skipping / Stuttering when scrolling in Warcraft 2 Battle Net edition (DOS)
- Random freezing in Stargunner
- Some minor graphical corruption in Volfield.

*Tested on my Dell Inspiron 3000 (Pentium 233MHz / 1MB L2 / 96MB ram / 30GB HDD [old 3,6GB died] / 14" 1280x1024 LCD / ESS Audiodrive with DOS SB emulation.)

Rest of the games I tested work fine. Although most implementations of the card feature 4MB of ram built into the chip itself, it features no 3D Acceleration whatsoever. No openGL, no Direct3D. It's a shame really - other than the video card, the Inspiron 3000 makes a great dos gaming machine. If only it came with an S3 Virge or ATi Mach64...

I can vouch for the IBM ThinkPad 755CD, they came in Pentium 75 and 486DX4-100 versions. The one I had had 48MB of RAM and I used it for both DOS Gaming, work, and play. the MWAVE Sound chipset worked pretty well in DOS (Seemed to be a SB2.0 Compatible). It also takes CD-ROM's (hot swappable IIRC with the original floppy drive), and can take up to an 8GB HDD without a DDO. It paid for itself as my BYOD on various IT projects it did in the mid 2000's so there's plenty of oomph there if a 486 DX4 running 48MB of RAM on Win98se and using Open Office (latest release, 32-bit of course) daily for about 2-3 years as well as playing DOS Games and emulated old consoles. I used it till it literally fell apart from so much heavy traveling. One of my favorite laptops of all time both in DOS Gaming and day-to-day work.

I've got the 486 version of the 755CD myself. The Mwave chipset, which can do wavetable(!) has decent DOS compatibility (I think it is SB2.0 compatible), using emulated FM to work in DOS. I've always wondered if the wavetable that the chipset uses works in DOS, because it seems like a better option than the emulated FM. Usually it runs DOS 6.22/WfW 3.11, but right now it's my OS/2 tinker system, running Warp 3. (Side note: I managed to play a 128kbps MP3 on it a while back, at the expense of grinding the rest of the system to a halt. 🤣 It only has 12MB of RAM, so increased RAM is definitely going to be heading its way in the future. It also needs a battery.)

Right now, my main 486 system happens to be my aforementioned Toshiba T2150CDT laptop. It has options for disabling the cache and slowing down the CPU to get roughly 386SX-ish performance. It also has a genuine OPL3 YMF262 chip as opposed to the emulated FM that the 755CD uses. For those reasons alone, I'd honestly recommend it more for gaming because of its flexibility and better compatibility with older games. (That and it has more RAM than the 755CD, 16MB to be exact.) I'm guessing there's options to do this on my 755CD, but I would have to check for sure.

I also have a few other laptops that I use for my gaming needs. My main P1 and PIII systems are laptops: my Satellite Pro 425CDT and my Dell Inspiron 8100. The 425CDT has a P100, 24MB of RAM, and 2MB of VRAM, making it perfect for Quake. Oh, it also uses the same audio chipset as my T2150CDT (ESS 688 AudioDrive, which features genuine OPL3). My Inspiron 8100 has a PIII 1GHz with 256MB of RAM and a GeForce2 Go with 32MB of VRAM. Also, the video card can be upgraded up to a Geforce4 440 Go with 64MB of VRAM (though it doesn't seem to be as common as the various GeForce2 Go models or the 64MB ATI Radeon 7500 option).

T2150CDT
I had one, I used to play Duke Nukem 1.3D on it at 640x480 but you have to get a docking station to connect a joystick or a ps/2 mouse, its ps/2 ports on the only support keyboard/numpads

Dell Latitude CPx J650
Pentium III-M 650 Ati Rage Mobility M1 8MB
Its sound chip works in real mode emulating SBpro but stereo is reversed, its docking station adds 2 PCI slots but no gameport 😠

Dell Inspiron 8000/8100
Pentium III 1GHz, 512MB RAM, GeForce 2 Go 32MB
Can be modded into Latitude C800/C810 to be used with a docking station that adds 2 PCI slots
Its gfx card is not the fastest DX7 and C/Dock II docking station is larger than the laptop but with Aureal Vortex 2 and SB Live!/Audigy inside, it will be good for win9x era
It has a RJ45 ethernet port, but actually, it is internally connected to the MiniPCI slot and needs this card to be enabled.

Dell Precision M70
Pentium M 760 Dothan 2GHz, 2GB RAM and Nvidia Quadro Go 1400 256MB, can be softmoded to GeForce Go 6800, or replaced with a GeForce Go 7800GTX 256MB
Its docking station add 1 PCI slot, put an X-Fi inside and you get a good DX9 era portable rig.

StickByDos wrote:

Dell Precision M70
Pentium M 760 Dothan 2GHz, 2GB RAM and Nvidia Quadro Go 1400 256MB, can be softmoded to GeForce Go 6800, or replaced with a GeForce Go 7800GTX 256MB
Its docking station add 1 PCI slot, put an X-Fi inside and you get a good DX9 era portable rig.

I have this one as well! Which compatible Dell docking station has PCI slot? Also, does anyone know more about this "softmod"?