VOGONS


Retro Gaming Laptops Win9x and XP

Topic actions

Reply 60 of 74, by Vipersan

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Hi RV ..
In truth Im trying to achieve a laptop for each 'popular' windows OS ..
So far I have a (under restoration) Toshiba T4900CT running win95
The T5200/100 I'm working on for Windows 3.1
The Inspiron 2500 will hopefully accomodate Win98SE (almost done)
An HP nc6000 earmarked for win2000
I have a Toshiba Tercra M5 running XPpro
and a Dell Latitude E6430 64 bit running Win7
Ill hopefully fill in the gaps NT ME and Vista at some point..
Windows 10 can go take a flyer ..
I hate it with a passion.

Reply 61 of 74, by nforce4max

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Going to add another laptop to this thread that being the Dell Precision M70 which is an uncommon laptop but it does show up on eBay. In short this laptop is pretty decent for those not wanting a heavier 17 inch model while at the same time it is lighter than it looks and very well made plus it is easy to work with and upgrades are painless unlike modern laptops which don't upgrade almost anything at all. The audio quality is pretty good when compared to modern laptops and comfortable to use despite the thickness.

http://www.notebookreview.com/notebookreview/ … tup-pics-specs/

On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.

Reply 62 of 74, by oeuvre

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

I had a Latitude D830 and brought it to grad school once. People thought I was using some 90s brick. It was great.

HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7
ws90Ts2.gif

Reply 63 of 74, by lvader

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I recntly bought a Sony Vaio x505 in near mint condition, a truely stunning ultraportable from around 2003, not exactly a gaming laptop but I’m looking forward to how it copes with Windows 98 and gaming of that era.

Reply 64 of 74, by SETBLASTER

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
misterjones wrote:

I owned a Dell Inspiron 5000e for a number of years. Combined with the port replicator it was my main PC for a while. The whole flippin thing is modular. Mine came with 700MHz P3, however the processor sits on a swappable module, and there were models available up to 1GHz. It was really like a mobile desktop in a number of ways including its size and weight. The CDROM bay could be swapped with a DVD drive, CDRW, and there were some DVD burners that worked with it as well, plus it could be swapped for a Zip drive. For video it could have either an 8MB ATI Rage Pro under the hood or a 16MB ATI Rage 128; these are also swappable modules. Display wide the thing had an almost 15" display and mine had the 1400x1050 resolution. It could also be had with 1600x1200. There were also the Inspiron 5000 variant with, IIRC, a 1280x1024 display.

I played a lot of UT99, Starcraft, Quake, Tribes, and a few other games on mine. Hated that I had to sell it but it had to be done.

i have a dell 5000e reading your post looks like it is a good machine for retro gaming
but sadly the notebook came with an ESS maestro 2 soundcard and there were no DOS drivers ever made for it, most of the drivers are win98 only. the resolution of the screen is very high, i wonder why in that era these resolutions were used

Reply 66 of 74, by OldCat

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

A bit of necroposting, but this thread is gold.

Just wanted to add my XP machine here: Dell Precision M70 which is almost the same as Inspiron D810. Mine has 1680x1050 screen and NVidia Quadro graphics card. Use it for XP gaming, runs like a charm.

Reply 67 of 74, by toricorn

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
Anaxagoras wrote on 2018-01-16, 19:59:
Hi. […]
Show full quote

Hi.

The laptop I use to play Win9x games that not run under WindowsXP is a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 [CNET.com]

CPU: Pentium III @ 800MHz
RAM: 256MB
HD: 60GB
FDD:
DVD reader.
WiFi / Ethernet / Modem / USB 1.1
Graphics card: Trident CyberBlade XP 16MB
Sound: Yamaha, sounds very good with their integrated 4 speakers!
LCD: 15" (4:3) 1024x768

IMO is a good choice to play Win9x games but not enough to run Dosbox.

WinXP games are out of the scope in this system since I have other laptop to cover this function.

SONY VAIO VGN-C1Z/B
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo (T5500) @1.66GHz
RAM: 2GB
HD:140GB
NO FDD
DVD R/W
WiFi / Ethernet / Modem / USB 2.0
Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce Go 7400 with TurboCache 256MB
LCD: 13.3" 1200x800

Very pretty pics here [notebookcheck.net]

Hey! I got my hands on the Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 laptop today, been trying to get Win98 installed and running smooth.. Had no luch thus far. Got the OEM W2k drivers CD included with the laptop.. you wouldn't mind sharing the drivers for yours? 😁

Reply 68 of 74, by Anaxagoras

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
toricorn wrote on 2021-11-16, 00:15:

Hey! I got my hands on the Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 laptop today, been trying to get Win98 installed and running smooth.. Had no luch thus far. Got the OEM W2k drivers CD included with the laptop.. you wouldn't mind sharing the drivers for yours? 😁

Hi toricorn, and welcome!
You can find drivers here!

My computers

qp92nk-6.png

Reply 69 of 74, by crazii

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Anaxagoras wrote on 2018-01-16, 19:59:
Hi. […]
Show full quote

Hi.

The laptop I use to play Win9x games that not run under WindowsXP is a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 [CNET.com]

CPU: Pentium III @ 800MHz
RAM: 256MB
HD: 60GB
FDD:
DVD reader.
WiFi / Ethernet / Modem / USB 1.1
Graphics card: Trident CyberBlade XP 16MB
Sound: Yamaha, sounds very good with their integrated 4 speakers!
LCD: 15" (4:3) 1024x768

IMO is a good choice to play Win9x games but not enough to run Dosbox.

WinXP games are out of the scope in this system since I have other laptop to cover this function.

SONY VAIO VGN-C1Z/B
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo (T5500) @1.66GHz
RAM: 2GB
HD:140GB
NO FDD
DVD R/W
WiFi / Ethernet / Modem / USB 2.0
Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce Go 7400 with TurboCache 256MB
LCD: 13.3" 1200x800

Very pretty pics here [notebookcheck.net]

Yes Satellite Pro 4600 is a good choice to play Win9x games.
For anyone who want good DOS gaming experience besides win9x, I will recommend Satellite Pro 4300. With a downgraded CPU (750MHz/800MHz/850MHz vs 600Mhz/650Mhz/700Mhz) and preinstalled memory (128M vs 64M) and HDD capacity (20G vs 12G), the 4300 has a Yamaha YMF744 which is Sound blaster compatible and working for DOS games while 4600 has YMF743 which is not.

Toshiba Satellite Pro 4300 - YMF744, Savage IX
Toshiba Satellite 2805-S501 - YMF754, GeForce 2Go
IBM Thinkpad A21p - CS4624, Mobility Radeon 128
main: Intel NUC11PHKi7C Phantom Canyon: i7-1165G7 RTX2060 64G 2T760PSDD

Reply 70 of 74, by toricorn

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
Anaxagoras wrote on 2021-11-16, 11:28:
toricorn wrote on 2021-11-16, 00:15:

Hey! I got my hands on the Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 laptop today, been trying to get Win98 installed and running smooth.. Had no luch thus far. Got the OEM W2k drivers CD included with the laptop.. you wouldn't mind sharing the drivers for yours? 😁

Hi toricorn, and welcome!
You can find drivers here!

Thanks, will give it a go some time later! Currently just running W2k, got another machine for 98 for now 😀

Reply 71 of 74, by Pierre32

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Cool thread, good bump.

kanecvr wrote on 2016-04-21, 23:22:
Toshiba Tecra M2 […]
Show full quote

Toshiba Tecra M2

- harder to find then the Dell / Compaq / HP laptops
- pentium M cpu up to 1.73GHz
- Geforce FX 5200 GO with 64MB
- 2 DDR slots
- 14" display
- very well built

I picked up a Toshiba Tecra M3 last year. It seems like an incremental upgrade on the M2. Mine has the same CPU, but a Geforce Go 6200 TE. I run XP and haven't tested a ton of games, but it does run GTA III and NFS Hot Pursuit 2 quite well.

All drivers and docs are still available at https://support.dynabook.com/. It looks like they dropped 98 support after the M2, with the M3 supporting 2000, XP and Vista.

Reply 72 of 74, by dr.zeissler

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Acer 1300 is a nice retro-laptop but it has a very big issue. there is only native resolution (1024x768) or halfscreen (512x384) displayed as fullscreen.
there is no scaler-option in bios. the xp-driver of the s3 savage has an option for softwarescaling but that is very ugly and only usable in winxp and not in plain dos/win3x/9x ?

I don't get this to work on my machine, don't know why.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- launch regular BIOS by tapping F2 a few times right after boot.
- hold Power button on BIOS screen to force a shutdown.
- now while the laptop is off, press (in order) F4, 4, R, F, V, F5, 5, T, G, B, F6, 6, Y, H, N.
- now press Power and tap F2 a few times to boot into the BIOS again.

you should now see all the tabs that were hidden before. Ik am a bit late tho
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 73 of 74, by Dodobird

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
Vincent_Vega_SA wrote on 2018-01-17, 19:03:
Hi, for me the perfect machine is Toshiba Satellite Pro 4300. […]
Show full quote

Hi, for me the perfect machine is Toshiba Satellite Pro 4300.

CPU: Pentium III @ 600MHz, can be downclocked to 500
Cache 1,2 can be disabled in BIOS
RAM: 256MB
HD: 100 GB (using msata ssd to IDE)
FDD / CD ROM
PCMCIA Ethernet Zyxel
GPU: S3 SAVAGE
Sound: Yamaha YMF 744b

It's runing DOS, WIN98, XP.
Perfect SB PRO/OPL MS-DOS compatibility, nice XG MIDI in WIN98 as a bonus.

Very versatile laptop...

Reviving this old thread, I recently did a video review about this laptop: https://youtu.be/Cbg4KlX5YWc and also a comparison with other Toshiba models based on the same 440BX platform: https://youtu.be/Dk8_TEo_4N8 I hope you like it. Cheers!

Reply 74 of 74, by Dodobird

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
crazii wrote on 2021-11-16, 16:21:
Anaxagoras wrote on 2018-01-16, 19:59:
Hi. […]
Show full quote

Hi.

The laptop I use to play Win9x games that not run under WindowsXP is a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 [CNET.com]

CPU: Pentium III @ 800MHz
RAM: 256MB
HD: 60GB
FDD:
DVD reader.
WiFi / Ethernet / Modem / USB 1.1
Graphics card: Trident CyberBlade XP 16MB
Sound: Yamaha, sounds very good with their integrated 4 speakers!
LCD: 15" (4:3) 1024x768

IMO is a good choice to play Win9x games but not enough to run Dosbox.

WinXP games are out of the scope in this system since I have other laptop to cover this function.

SONY VAIO VGN-C1Z/B
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo (T5500) @1.66GHz
RAM: 2GB
HD:140GB
NO FDD
DVD R/W
WiFi / Ethernet / Modem / USB 2.0
Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce Go 7400 with TurboCache 256MB
LCD: 13.3" 1200x800

Very pretty pics here [notebookcheck.net]

Yes Satellite Pro 4600 is a good choice to play Win9x games.
For anyone who want good DOS gaming experience besides win9x, I will recommend Satellite Pro 4300. With a downgraded CPU (750MHz/800MHz/850MHz vs 600Mhz/650Mhz/700Mhz) and preinstalled memory (128M vs 64M) and HDD capacity (20G vs 12G), the 4300 has a Yamaha YMF744 which is Sound blaster compatible and working for DOS games while 4600 has YMF743 which is not.

I agree with the Satellite 4300 recommendation too! Its sound chip has a hardware sidelink active - PC-PCI (aka. SB-LINK), which makes it work as if the PCI card was connected on the ISA bus.
Check these videos: https://youtu.be/Dk8_TEo_4N8, and https://youtu.be/Cbg4KlX5YWc