Hello, I have a great 99/2000 era Compaq Presario 1800 notebook, with P3 800, 440BX, Ati Rage 128 8MB, ESS Solo-1, gameport capability and fully working dos audio.
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Re: Windows 98 retro gaming rig/laptop
GTA3 + 8MB vram (registry hack)?

That machine has only 8MB of VRAM, but is capable of 16MB (model 1800T). Textures are sometimes bugged because of lacking memory. This laptop performs almost as good as desktop PC, for example Half Life was totally smooth (looked like 60 fps, but I didn't measure) in all resolutions up to native 1024x768, but in higher resolutions problems with textures are starting. GTA 3 is almost playable with a hack that removes memory check.

I would like to add another 8MB, so the performance would be better. I disassembled that notebook in order to replace RTC and made some photos of both sides of mainboard. Two TQFP soldering pads are clearly visible, they are empty but you can see that there are memory chips soldered in 1800T models (picture: http://www.benchtest.com/images/18-8.jpg). So I was wondering if I could just solder the addidional memory. Do you think that it would start working immediately? That ATi RAGE Mobility 128-M chip apparently has 8MB on-chip memory + the ability to use external memory (it doesn't use system memory, it's all dedicated).

Or is there a chance that it would end up in a total catastrophe? 😜 I could buy just the new mainboard, but the shipping to my country would be expensive (and I can't find anything locally).

I guess that memory chips from that card could be used:
http://allegro.logosms.webd.pl/fotki_07/grafi … gro20160129.jpg