Maybe this is something for you:

http://www.cnet.com/products/acer-travelmate- … ram-3-2-gb-hdd/

or

http://www.cnet.com/products/toshiba-libretto … b-ram-2-gb-hdd/

and their derivates.

Thanks!

Toshiba Libretto 100CT is perfect, just a bit heavy.
I already own a pentium 200 laptop, but it is too big to take around, these libretto's look much smaller.

EDIT: I saw you need IDE to USB or PCMCIA to USB2.0 to copy things to libretto HD, it is not too difficult 😀
Also the sound is an OPL3-SA3 , so... perfect

I'll try to find one of these librettos, i like the 70CT (MMX 120 Mhz, 16 MB RAM).

One of my favourite PCs is hp 200LX. It features 80186 compatible CPU running at 7.92 MHz, has CGA greyscale screen and is smaller than a VHS casette.

It has one PCMCIA slot, which, in my case, has a 128MB CF card installed. A whooping amount of space for an XT!

Great Stuff! I always wanted to get my fingers on one of these (only the x86s).

This one

is very slow and a memory - monster:

8088 CPU with 4.92 MHz
128 KB RAM
256 KB Flash
64 KB Memory Card (extension to the Flash Disk)
DIP Dos

.... and it plays a tiny role in a well known movie (guess what it is).

Terminator 2 of course 😎

Biggest issue with a retro portable is getting a decent screen, you want a TFT really. For this reason the oldest you can go is probably 486. There are 486 Toshiba/Compaq/IBM Thinkpads with decent TFT screens. Sound-wise you want one with an onboard ESS or Yamaha chip for DOS compatibility.

I want to play games that were made just for DOS, so to play them in a "portable" device, i'll need a "libretto" or a very powerful android phone.

I'm also testing the android way, if someone has tested these games on android "dosbox turbo" i'd like to know.

GAMES:

Alone in the dark (1,2,3).
Little Big Adventure 2: Twinsen's odyssey.
Ignition.
Crazy Drake.

What do you think about these "ultra mobile pc's", could I use them for DOS games?
I don't know if all cpu's are x86 compatible.

1-Amtek T700

CPU = 1GHz VIA Chipset.

2-Samsung Q1

CPU = Intel Celeron M 900 MHz

3-OQO model 01

CPU = Transmeta 1 GHz.

A netbook of some sort is the way to go. You need a usable keyboard and touchpad. I would look for a netbook using some form of Intel's Silvermont CPU architecture or something with an AMD APU. Intel's CPUs will have much more CPU performance and run DOSBox better, but AMD's will probably be better for Windows 3D games.

swaaye wrote:

A netbook of some sort is the way to go. You need a usable keyboard and touchpad. I would look for a netbook using some form of Intel's Silvermont CPU architecture or something with an AMD APU. Intel's CPUs will have much more CPU performance and run DOSBox better, but AMD's will probably be better for Windows 3D games.

Thanks, but i want the pc to run native MS-DOS, (not dosbox) and maybe two or three 3d windows games, so i need an x86/windows compatible cpu.

I found Samsung Q1 and OQO are able to run native x86 code, so they would be perfect. I'd just need to emulate the sound blaster with VDMSound or similar.

I described machines with x86 processors. Some of them even run 32-bit Windows and I suppose nasty old VDMSound might work. But VDMSound. Ack. VDMSound is what we used before DOSBox was created to surmount all of the problems with NTVDM/VDMSound. I joined this forum to get help with VDMSound back in 2002...

swaaye wrote:

I have no idea why you'd want to go back to VDMSound. That was what we used before the DOSBox developers created DOSBox to surmount the problems inherent to NTVDM and VDMSound. VOGONS even used to be VDMSound headquarters.

My English is not very good, This is what i want:

-Portable/handheld x86 (or compatible).
-Install msdos (or windows98) on it.
-Play games without an emulator: Alone in the dark, Little Big Adventure 2: Twinsen's odyssey, Ignition, some 386 games...

Thanks to this thread I found Toshiba Libretto. But it is too big to take it like a handheld.

Then I found Samsung Q1 and OQO. They are perfect, but they don't have an OPL chip, and a lot of msdos games will run without sound... that's why I want a sound emulator.

Maybe I don't understand how Dosbox runs, I think Dosbox will always emulate the cpu, even if you are running it on an x86... ??
If that's not the case, then OQO or any handheld pc with an x86 compatible cpu would be perfect, because dosbox will only emulate some features like soundcards.

EDIT

D'OH!

From wikipedia:

Since DOSBox can emulate its CPU by interpretation, it is independent of its host CPU.[12] However, on systems which provide the i386 instruction set, DOSBox can use dynamic instruction translation, which results in execution several times faster than interpretive CPU emulation.

So... will a compatible x86 at 1 Ghz be OK for dosbox?

I used to have a EeePC 900 (Celeron M 900MHz). DOSBox ran well enough to play Dark Forces at an acceptable speed so it was performing maybe like a 486DX 33. I also played X-Com UFO Defense on it and that ran well. Native Windows games of course ran very well, and I played Master Of Orion 2 and Star Wars Rebellion, for example. Most SVGA DOS games will be too demanding.

VDMSound is an option too and if it works it is indeed very fast.

Native DOS gaming in portable form is difficult because you ideally need an internal ISA sound chip like the ESS Audiodrive chips in many '90s laptops. All PCI-based sound chips have troublesome DOS support because they essentially emulate an ISA card in order to support DOS audio.

swaaye wrote:

I used to have a EeePC 900 (Celeron M 900MHz). DOSBox ran well enough to play Dark Forces at an acceptable speed so it was performing maybe like a 486DX 33. I also played X-Com UFO Defense on it and that ran well. Native Windows games of course ran very well, and I played Master Of Orion 2 and Star Wars Rebellion, for example. Most SVGA DOS games will be too demanding.

VDMSound is an option too and if it works it is indeed very fast.

Native DOS gaming in portable form is difficult because you ideally need an internal ISA sound chip like the ESS Audiodrive chips in many '90s laptops. All PCI-based sound chips have troublesome DOS support because they essentially emulate an ISA card in order to support DOS audio.

Thanks a lot.

I also had an AMD 900 Mhz and run dosbox on it. But i only played 386 games (2d VGA + ADLIB).

I also found that Amtek T700, Samsung Q1 and OQO model 01, all use x86 compatible CPU's, so 😀.

Anyway, the most demanding 3D games have usually windows versions, and don't use OPL chips, so if I get one of these handheld PC's, I'll be able to play nearly all the games I want.
😊

Last week I was able to test dosbox turbo on a galaxy s4 smart phone. The games run fast. But they look awful.. always with 2/3 frameskip even if you set it to zero, and a lot of v sync issues. So the best option is still one of these little pc's.

I believe you can go two ways about having a portable retro-PC:

1- Reasonably powerful and modern x86-64 machine to run Windows+DOSBox

2- Actual retro portable

For an actual retro machine, my pick would be a reasonably powerful (for the time) Windows 98 SE PC. If it's got some sort of 3D acceleration (OpenGL/D3D), even better, but do not expect much in that departament from a machine meant to be very portable. The reason for 98SE (or even ME) is that even if your sound card's VxD (Win95+) drivers do not feature decent SoundBlaster compatibility, you'll get basic SBPro support from WDM (98/98SE+) drivers. If you get a reasonably powerful processor (late P3/Athlon) odds are DOSBox will run well enough to fire up older 386/486-era games that do not run well inside Windows.