ThinkPad 600E

/thread

oeuvre wrote:

ThinkPad 600E /thread

A bit too slow for XP SP3.

Compaq n410C

P3 1.2 GHz
Up to 1024 MB ram
Radeon Mobility 16MB (enough for basic gaming, games made up to year 2000 or so will run great)
12.1" TFT 1024*768

You need the docking station with dvd drive, I bought the docking station for ~$20 new in box a couple of years ago.

https://www.cnet.com/products/hp-compaq-evo-n … t-series/specs/

tbh if you want an XP laptop Pentium M or C2D is much better

oeuvre wrote:

tbh if you want an XP laptop Pentium M or C2D is much better

Well of course but then suddenly Windows 98 drivers can become an issue. 😀

Looking through his list of wanted specs the Compaq n410c seemed like a decent fit as it's made for XP but has official support for Windows 98SE. A year 2003-2004 Pentium M machine with a decent video card and Windows 98 drivers would be better but most of those use a higher resolution screen than 1024*768. I do own a couple of early 12.1" or 13" Pentium M laptops with 1024*768 TFTs but those use Intels craptastic video.

ThinkPad T40/41/42 all had 98 drivers and Pentium M

oeuvre wrote:

ThinkPad T40/41/42 all had 98 drivers and Pentium M

A quick search also reveals that the ThinkPad T42 has (or at least can have) an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 - 32 MB DDR video solution so it would indeed be a superior choice.

Try to find one with the SXGA+ screen (1400x1050) instead of XGA

You need the T4x series with a "p" suffix, these should all have ATI's.

I did a similar thread about XP laptops a ways back but there is some middle ground where there is some performance for both but drivers are a problem however just getting the laptop is going to eat that sort of budget very quickly then there is added costs mainly storage. As for what machines exactly I am not going to spill the beans just yet as I don't want to get eaten alive price wise especially on my rather meager salary atm.

Thinkpad T42P is a good starting point as well the T43P if one can deal with the drivers and not be financially bleed dry buying one if it had the IPS screen.

Compaq Presario 1800 is great if you want excellent DOS/Windows compatibility 😜 :
* it has Pentium 3, mine had 733MHz speed
* Ati Rage Pro 128, you can play Half Life and even SVGA mode in Win 3.11 works,
* Sound Blaster compatible ESS Solo-1 Card - full FM synth support (ESFM/OPL3 emulation) and digital sound in DOS games + speakers are pretty good, you can hear the stereophony and a bit of bass,
* has both FDD and DVD,
* has Cardbus/PCMCIA.
Gameport available through docking station, you could probably also solder the wires to the motherboard.

So, everything from DOS/Win 3.11 to XP works (i tried; obviously 98 or 2000 runs better than XP).
Here is some gameplay with hacked GTA3 (forced to work with 8MB VRAM, but models with 16MB also exist), choppy but you can see that this machine is pretty powerful anyway https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2rbHIj6SMlF … V9ieWdYbXc/view
and here is a demo of DOS audio (you can also hear the bass here, especially at the end)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2rbHIj6SMlF … zVjQXQ0bFk/view

Another machine, with much more powerful graphic card (if you buy a good version):
Dell Inspiron 8100 - Pentium 3, I have 1GHz model,
* it has replaceable graphic gard, so I installed a Radeon 9000 64MB pulled from a better model (it had broken BGA memory joint, so I had to replace the balls by hand and re-solder it... https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2rbHIj6SMlF … 0wtTjkxaG8/view)
* it gets 5600 points in 3dmark 2001SE which is pretty good for a laptop, GTA3 is fully playable.
* Sound card is ESS Maestro 3, which won't work very well in DOS, you won't get FM music for sure.
* You can have an "Ultra HD" (UXGA 😜) 1600x1200 LCD here if you want, but I swapped it with 1400x1050 model because everything was too small for me. 1024x768 is probably also available. I have both DVD and FDD installed, it is also possible to use a docking station with two PCI slots. This machine looks really high-end and expensive feature-wise, it is an 2001 model but performs the same as desktop PCs from that time.

And one more thing: both Compaq and Dell have hardware LCD scaling/anti-aliasing, so DOS games played in lower resolutions won't look like they were stretched in MS paint to fill the entire screen. Laptops with P1 or P2 don't have such features.

+ a little bonus: I also have a 2003 Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop, with Pentium M 2GHz (upgraded) and Radeon 9600/128MB. You can even play Steam version of Half-Life 2 here. But I didn't check Windows 98 compatibility, I put an 32GB SSD here (using an adapter) and installed Win XP. Probably around 10000 3Dmark01SE points or more, I don't remember.

martin939 wrote:

You need the T4x series with a "p" suffix, these should all have ATI's.

nforce4max wrote:

Thinkpad T42P is a good starting point as well the T43P if one can deal with the drivers and not be financially bleed dry buying one if it had the IPS screen.

Even though that the original configuration of the T42 has three choices of the following ATi Mobility graphics chips, Radeon 7500 (32MB), Radeon 9000 (64MB) and Radeon 9600 (64MB), yes, I know that T42p can be considered as the "the ultimate Windows 98 gaming laptop" and "the semi-ultimate Windows XP gaming laptop". Though, I should stay with the original T42 instead in my opinion.

BTW, another reason why I wanted to get a dedicated Windows 98/XP gaming laptop is because a few of my games have compatibility issues on Windows 10 (also covering Windows 8 and 8.1, as well as Windows 7). A few of the games such as Police Quest: SWAT 1 (I haven't played yet) and SWAT 2, which caused severe graphical glitches on higher resolutions and, LEGO Island 1, which shows pixelated graphics (even when using Ramp Emulation) caused compatibility issues on modern Windows OSes.

I've been also looking for an older laptop (particularly a 486-based or a Pentium 75/90-based) so that I could play No. 11 Downing Street: Ninja Nanny & Sherrloch Sheltie or any older DOS/Windows games (from pre-1994) as well (DOSBox would also do for Windows 3.1 games as well, except for Quicktime-based CD games, like Myst).