I do but lately have sold a lot of my collection off that I didn't need to make ends meet but I like my Mazda a lot more anyway. Just got it payed off a few months early 😀

Best bang for a DX retro gaming laptop is a Inspiron 9300 with the 7800 gtx go which runs cooler than the 6800 ultra. Next in line if you got money to burn is a e1705 and xps m1710. For Win 9x just go Thinkpads and don't look back.

I just picked up an old 486 Compaq and 286 Toshiba laptop for old school gaming, but like always, I am extremely limited by the lack of a gameport. For win95/98/ME/XP gaming I see no problems with using my old PIII laptops and my newer Lenovo Core Duo's, but for DOS, it just plain sucks not having a gameport and MIDI port for that matter. I have seen topics here on Vogons regarding PCMCIA adapter solutions and am well aware of them, but they are so rare and so expensive that I have pretty much given up on DOS gaming on laptops (for now) until I miraculously find a MIDI/gameport adapter.

I really don't understand why no one ever included a gameport on older laptops...I think I have only ever seen one laptop with a gameport in an an old computer shopper magazine (I think the brand was Compydyne or something like that)...even most docking stations available for older laptops never included a gameport. Anyone here have a laptop with a gameport?

retrofanatic wrote:

I just picked up an old 486 Compaq and 286 Toshiba laptop for old school gaming, but like always, I am extremely limited by the lack of a gameport. For win95/98/ME/XP gaming I see no problems with using my old PIII laptops and my newer Lenovo Core Duo's, but for DOS, it just plain sucks not having a gameport and MIDI port for that matter. I have seen topics here on Vogons regarding PCMCIA adapter solutions and am well aware of them, but they are so rare and so expensive that I have pretty much given up on DOS gaming on laptops (for now) until I miraculously find a MIDI/gameport adapter.

I really don't understand why no one ever included a gameport on older laptops...I think I have only ever seen one laptop with a gameport in an an old computer shopper magazine (I think the brand was Compydyne or something like that)...even most docking stations available for older laptops never included a gameport. Anyone here have a laptop with a gameport?

I do
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:760XD
Almost all of the 750/760 model Thinkpads had gameport/MIDI interfaces built in. Not much else though. =/

Dant wrote:

I do http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:760XD Almost all of the 750/760 model Thinkpads had gameport/MIDI interfaces built […]
Show full quote

retrofanatic wrote:

Anyone here have a laptop with a gameport?

I do
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:760XD
Almost all of the 750/760 model Thinkpads had gameport/MIDI interfaces built in. Not much else though. =/

Very cool. Thanks for that info. I didn't know those had gameports and MIDI. I actually had the opportunity to buy a 760 series one just a month ago for very cheap. I am still in touch with that person, so I may see if it's still available. I would love to have a laptop with that capability. Thanks again.

BTW, do you use your IBM's for DOS gaming? If so, how compatible do you find the MWAVE sound to be? I am guessing it is SB PRO compatible? How about the quality?

I haven't had much of a chance to properly use the 760, mostly because of a lack of a hard drive for it >_> Either way, the MWAVE drivers take a good bit of conventional memory and are pretty compatible... But don't sound like proper FM much at all. Although I have an PCMCIA soundcard with an ESS chip in it to remedy that.

Oh, BTW, http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Media-PCMCIA-Basi … =item1e88c590a7
There's your PCMCIA gameport adapters. I can post the drivers (that I paid $3 to get from driverguide because I refuse to use their downloader...) if you'd like.

Awesome...thanks a lot for the eBay link! I might go for it...that's not a bad deal at all. Do you know if that gameport adapter is dos compatible? And yes..If you can post the driver that would be great (if I buy the adapters...I'll let you know). Thanks again for the link.

junkman8650 wrote:

How many of you use laptops for gaming?

I use a couple of Dell Inspiron 8100's PIII 1ghz with GeForce 2 Go graphics. Works really well, much faster then then what I had back in the day. Saves a ton of space!!

Hello, what is the most heavy game you can play on one of those confortable? What about different resolutions on that TFT?
Thanks

I use my Lenovo ThinkPad W520 for gaming. 8GB RAM, i7-2720QM 2.20GHZ, NVIDIA Quadro 1000M. 😀 For me ThinkPad is the perfect machine. 😀

retrofanatic wrote:

Awesome...thanks a lot for the eBay link! I might go for it...that's not a bad deal at all. Do you know if that gameport adapter is dos compatible? And yes..If you can post the driver that would be great (if I buy the adapters...I'll let you know). Thanks again for the link.

No can't seem to get DOS drivers, just Win95, and interestingly, OS2 as well. =/

PeterLI wrote:

I use my Lenovo ThinkPad W520 for gaming. 8GB RAM, i7-2720QM 2.20GHZ, NVIDIA Quadro 1000M. 😀 For me ThinkPad is the perfect machine. 😀

I get very good use out of my T500 and T60p (the good one), got my T500 modded like there is no tomorrow. 😎
I could tell you how to do some cooling mods for that w520 that will drop the temps by a minimum of 5c.

I just snagged another Thinkpad 360c (486 DX/2 50 640x480 TFT screen) and was thinking about DOS gaming on it.

retrofanatic wrote:

I just picked up an old 486 Compaq and 286 Toshiba laptop for old school gaming...Anyone here have a laptop with a gameport?

Years ago I bought a 286 laptop. I think it was a Zenith SuperSport 286. It wouldn't work because it needed a setup disk for CMOS settings - set by disk in those days. I didn't realize this at the time and thought it was broken. And threw it away. I still hate myself for that..

You could get an old 16-bit PCMCIA audio adapter. I think they made them with game ports. Probably the easiest route.

@OP - I've used the aforementioned Inspiron 8100 for gaming. (Which brought me to this forum!) Older systems I found quite decent at the time were the Armada 1700. I have fond memories of the Toshiba 440CD-(X?) - which was, I think a P120. It played games of the era fairly well, I think. Or at least what I threw at it...

Dant wrote:

No can't seem to get DOS drivers, just Win95, and interestingly, OS2 as well. =/

I beg to differ, here's a quote from the readme:

This is version 1.03.0 of the BASICS Gameport distribution diskette.
It contains drivers for the following operating systems:
DOS/Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows NT, and OS/2

Driver found on ftp://ftp.axiz.com/PCCards/newmedia/

New Media also made the "Mobile Gamer" card wich comes with DOS drivers.
EXP sold a clone of that card as the "Game Traveler" or "Game Traveler Plus/Midi Traveler" wich can also be used as a MIDI interface in Win9x.
IO DATA made the PCJOY and PCJOY2 cards, the first one works in DOS.
Some PCMCIA sound cards came with a joystick port such as New Media's GameJammer and a card by Ratoc.
Some cards only had the joystick port as an optional dongle (IBM 3D & New Media's Wavjammer come to mind).

Dant, what PCMCIA sound cards do you have?

lolo799 wrote:

I beg to differ, here's a quote from the readme: […]
Show full quote

Dant wrote:

No can't seem to get DOS drivers, just Win95, and interestingly, OS2 as well. =/

I beg to differ, here's a quote from the readme:

This is version 1.03.0 of the BASICS Gameport distribution diskette.
It contains drivers for the following operating systems:
DOS/Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows NT, and OS/2

Driver found on ftp://ftp.axiz.com/PCCards/newmedia/

New Media also made the "Mobile Gamer" card wich comes with DOS drivers.
EXP sold a clone of that card as the "Game Traveler" or "Game Traveler Plus/Midi Traveler" wich can also be used as a MIDI interface in Win9x.
IO DATA made the PCJOY and PCJOY2 cards, the first one works in DOS.
Some PCMCIA sound cards came with a joystick port such as New Media's GameJammer and a card by Ratoc.
Some cards only had the joystick port as an optional dongle (IBM 3D & New Media's Wavjammer come to mind).

Dant, what PCMCIA sound cards do you have?

Well, thank you for sourcing the driver then! I decided to pass on getting one of those gameport cards, upon remembering that most of the standard controllers for gameport (besides racing wheels and flight sticks, which I don't normally play related games anyway) aren't especially good.

I only have 1 PCMCIA soundcard, the one from the Panasonic KXL-D745 SCSI CD-ROM and Sound kit.
ftp://ftp.panasonic.com/pub/panasonic/busines … ets/kxld745.pdf
The sound is pretty decent, and the SCSI is nice to have for laptops without optical drives.

EverythingOldIsNewAgain wrote:

Years ago I bought a 286 laptop. I think it was a Zenith SuperSport 286. It wouldn't work because it needed a setup disk for CMO […]
Show full quote

retrofanatic wrote:

I just picked up an old 486 Compaq and 286 Toshiba laptop for old school gaming...Anyone here have a laptop with a gameport?

Years ago I bought a 286 laptop. I think it was a Zenith SuperSport 286. It wouldn't work because it needed a setup disk for CMOS settings - set by disk in those days. I didn't realize this at the time and thought it was broken. And threw it away. I still hate myself for that..

You could get an old 16-bit PCMCIA audio adapter. I think they made them with game ports. Probably the easiest route.

@OP - I've used the aforementioned Inspiron 8100 for gaming. (Which brought me to this forum!) Older systems I found quite decent at the time were the Armada 1700. I have fond memories of the Toshiba 440CD-(X?) - which was, I think a P120. It played games of the era fairly well, I think. Or at least what I threw at it...

Never hate your self over just stuff, I've lost my collection multiple times and have always been able to rebuild plus it gave opportunities to collect things that I didn't have before let alone ever thought I would ever own. Starting over from nothing isn't easy but things are things...

The lot of my laptops are Pentium 3 compaq armada's. I also have a pentium 2 laptop but that's it.

I have a Compaq Armada 7400. It's a Pentium II 333Mhz, 196MB of RAM and has an ESS AudioDrive 1879 with wavetable synthesizer (excellent for General Midi). Got a DVD drive and floppy drive and PCMCIA 802.11G wireless card. Running Windows 98 and its a great little setup.

Thanks nforce: modification voids warranty so that will have to wait. 😀

junkman8650 wrote:

How many of you use laptops for gaming?

I use a couple of Dell Inspiron 8100's PIII 1ghz with GeForce 2 Go graphics. Works really well, much faster then then what I had back in the day. Saves a ton of space!!

Do you use win98, and if so... how do you get the freaking nvidia drivers to work?