My preferred laptop for DOS/Win9x gaming is a Thinkpad 770Z. It has a nice SVGA TFT display; not only that, but coupled to a SelectaDock III (model 3547-003, you can still find them on ebay) it also becomes upgradable; the dock contains ISA and PCI slots in which you can put sound and video cards of your choice. Similarly for a later period (Win9x/XP) I use a Thinkpad R52 which also has a dock (model 2877) with a PCI slot for video/audio upgrades.

ElementalChaos wrote:

I can't confirm this for certain, but based on research all these models appear to use the same black rectangular battery. It could just be my luck, but in my experience these batteries have a shocking ability to retain their capacity after all these years and run a machine for at least 1 or even 2 or more hours. Hence, you can use these things unplugged more or less as a laptop is intended to be. Some distraction-free notetaking potential here?

I'm also a fan old the old Toshibas and I can confirm this as well.
These machines seem to be fragile with questionable plastic but somehow they hold together well.

I have a Thinkpad 380Z that I love

Pentium II 300MHz (it's MMC-1, with the half-clock cache, but you can upgrade to the P2-333/366/400 with the "fast" cache).
32MB RAM soldered on-board, with a slot for up to 160MB total
Crystal CS4237B that is SB compatible under DOS, not perfect but serviceable
1024x768 13.3 inch screen with small bezels, it's not too bad with the blur either
Built-in CD AND floppy drive, no drive swapping
USB 1.0 port, a godsend to transfer files from a modern PC under Win98
Neomagic MagicMedia256AV with 2.5MB, it can run 16 bit color on 1024x768 pretty well but forget about 3D acceleration.

The main problem with Thinkpad 700 (and 600) series is that they become 'sticky' (i.e. the rubber coating). I have also seen many with bad screens. The 300 series are not interesting because of their inferior performance (unless you only want to play DOS games, then some are fine). Overall my experience is that Thinkpads don't hold up so well after they age. Really the only laptops up until the year 2000 or so that are good enough for retro gaming come from Toshiba. Get another brand and you'll end up in trouble finding parts, service manuals, get technical issues etc. ElementalChaos has written some great advice. If you want something faster, then the Satellite Pro 4300 series is worth trying out (S3 Savage IX 8MB 3D card), one of the last before the built quality went down the toilet. Be aware though of all the different screen versions (not only DSTN/TFT, but also the different resolutions and color depth). The Tecra 8000 series are not good enough for 3D gaming.

ElementalChaos wrote:

I'm partial to the Toshiba Satellite Pro 4xxxCDT series, having owned several over the years, a 425CDT and a 490XCDT. The 4xxxCD […]
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I'm partial to the Toshiba Satellite Pro 4xxxCDT series, having owned several over the years, a 425CDT and a 490XCDT. The 4xxxCDT line I speak of in particular spans from 400CDT-490CDT/490XCDT and then 4000CDT-4025CDT. After that point there was a significant redesign and they lost most of what made them good for DOS.

• * All have TFT active matrix displays actually usable for gaming. (Hence, CDT; the CDS and CDX models had those awful DSTN displays).
  * CD drives (hence the D in CDT) make data transfers much easier.
  * All have great SBPro2.0 support utilizing real OPL3, with a ESS Audiodrive ES688 + YMF262 from 400-430CDT, and Yamaha OPL3-SA3 with YMF288 core from 440CDT onwards.
  * Video chipsets wise, most of these use C&T 6555x and only the 490/490XCDT uses S3 Virge MX for some reason. Both of these have great DOS VGA compatibility.
  * Drivers, specifications, and service manuals for these models are still available on Toshiba's website or a small amount of Googling.
  * Pretty nice keyboards with a TrackPoint-clone nub.
  * The earlier end of the series (up until 440CDT) all have internal power supplies which take standard two-prong figure 8 cables so you don't have to hunt for an adapter.
  * eBay prices vary wildly, but are generally cheaper than their Compaq or IBM counterparts.

I can't confirm this for certain, but based on research all these models appear to use the same black rectangular battery. It could just be my luck, but in my experience these batteries have a shocking ability to retain their capacity after all these years and run a machine for at least 1 or even 2 or more hours. Hence, you can use these things unplugged more or less as a laptop is intended to be. Some distraction-free notetaking potential here?

There was also the Toshiba Satellite 3xxCDT series, introduced concurrently in 1996 or so, that confusingly despite being one model number down, incorporate many if not all of the features of Satellite Pro 440-480CDTs. There was also the Tecra 5xxCDT and 7xxCDT, Tecras were Toshiba's highest-end business-made laptops and were usually quite bulkier than their Satellite counterparts. I don't know quite as much about those, and they appear to be a little less common. There is a ton of materials from specifications and brochures to service manuals on most of Toshiba's 90s laptops here.

im also impressed with the 400 CDT line
i own a 450CDT. the screen is defective and has a vertical line that never changes color.

when i bought it it came passworded. thanks to online tutorials i was able to do a paralel jumper conector and unlock it.

the cd drive did not work. i replaced the oil on the gears insode and no go. toshiba is messy because you cant use another cd drive..i think it has to be another toshiba ide drive. i tried with an hp one and failed..boot stuck forever. if they made it to only accept the toshiba original model ..then they are assholes.

the battery is as you all commented. a rectangular black box. never tried it...i would like to replace the cells with one of those spot soldering home made tools with tabs.

on mine the hdd gave noises and errors. i gently smashed it a little bit and it came back to life.

the machines got win3.11 .win95 and win98 drivers still on toshiba website
i think the resolution is 800x600 and there are some nice tegra models with 1024x resolution.

I own a 480CDT and I absolutely love it. 233mmx, 64mb ram, C&T 65555, the OPL-SA3 sound chip. The only issue I have with it is that none of the 3 (external) floppy drives I have for it seem to be recognized, so I have to do everything via CD/USB/Network for file transfer, which isn't much of a big deal. Thing runs pure DOS through Win2k like a dream and eats through every game I've thrown at it that isn't hindered by the video chip.

oh and i forgot

if you own one of those toshiba, open it and remove the battery and backup battery asap
when i opened mine...the battery green corrosion traveled from the battery.....all along the cable of the battery, to the connector on the motherboard, and had eaten part of the connector. nasty stuff.

ElementalChaos DO YOU KNOW WHAT CD DRIVES ARE COMPATIBLE WITH TOSHIBA 400CDT LINE?

senrew wrote:

I own a 480CDT and I absolutely love it. 233mmx, 64mb ram, C&T 65555, the OPL-SA3 sound chip. The only issue I have with it is that none of the 3 (external) floppy drives I have for it seem to be recognized, so I have to do everything via CD/USB/Network for file transfer, which isn't much of a big deal. Thing runs pure DOS through Win2k like a dream and eats through every game I've thrown at it that isn't hindered by the video chip.

there is a better option. i think i saw it on youtube
A PCMCIA adapter, that inside you can put a CF card. And there are CF cards adapters that you can put an SD card in the cf adapter

practically you get a second HDD, that would be an SD card.

Shameless Self-Promotion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTqI9172X8E

The 480CDT had some decent performance as of 4 years ago. This is a video of me playing audio from the pandora website on it.

well i didn't used many laptops from that era, but the one i have for that works really well:
is a Gateway Solo 5300
12 inch display DSTN? i think (there is a XL variant with a bigger and better screen)
pentium 3 900Mhz
i440BX chipset
ESS Maestro 3 soundcard
S3 Savage IX w/8MB SGRam
Max memory 512MB
Max HDD 128GB

i've noticed than, in 9x games like serious sam TSE, quake 3, ut99 and half life works really well, obviously doesn't hit 60 fps but more like 30 fps or so depending on quality, maybe later i will post a (sort of) review of it.

weldum wrote:

well i didn't used many laptops from that era, but the one i have for that works really well: is a Gateway Solo 5300 12 inch dis […]
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well i didn't used many laptops from that era, but the one i have for that works really well:
is a Gateway Solo 5300
12 inch display DSTN? i think (there is a XL variant with a bigger and better screen)
pentium 3 900Mhz
i440BX chipset
ESS Maestro 3 soundcard
S3 Savage IX w/8MB SGRam
Max memory 512MB
Max HDD 128GB

i've noticed than, in 9x games like serious sam TSE, quake 3, ut99 and half life works really well, obviously doesn't hit 60 fps but more like 30 fps or so depending on quality, maybe later i will post a (sort of) review of it.

Did they even do P3 era laptops with DSTN? I would be rather surprise if anyone did.

olivil wrote:

I have a Thinkpad 380Z that I love […]
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I have a Thinkpad 380Z that I love

Pentium II 300MHz (it's MMC-1, with the half-clock cache, but you can upgrade to the P2-333/366/400 with the "fast" cache).
32MB RAM soldered on-board, with a slot for up to 160MB total
Crystal CS4237B that is SB compatible under DOS, not perfect but serviceable
1024x768 13.3 inch screen with small bezels, it's not too bad with the blur either
Built-in CD AND floppy drive, no drive swapping
USB 1.0 port, a godsend to transfer files from a modern PC under Win98
Neomagic MagicMedia256AV with 2.5MB, it can run 16 bit color on 1024x768 pretty well but forget about 3D acceleration.

I own a Toshiba Tecra 8000 which has almost the same specs up to the graphics card, but can take 256 MB RAM and the sound card is a OPL3-SA3x. Problem is, 1024x768 is rather bad for DOS games. It does integer scaling by default, so 320x200 is boosted to 960x600, which is ok. However, 640x480 and 800x600 can not be scaled, so you get a huge black border. There's a stretch option in the BIOS, but that is completely useless, as there's no filtering and it ignores the aspect ratio, too.

if you own one of those toshiba, open it and remove the battery and backup battery asap
when i opened mine...the battery green corrosion traveled from the battery.....all along the cable of the battery, to the connector on the motherboard, and had eaten part of the connector. nasty stuff.

At least in the later Tecra series, all three batteries are lithium-ion with the two internal ones wrapped in plastic. Not much danger here...

My Tecra 8000 still has the 20-year old main battery which still works and can power the notebook for 1.5 hours. Quite amazing for a battery that old.

OldCat wrote:

Did they even do P3 era laptops with DSTN? I would be rather surprise if anyone did.

Yes they exist, up till the year 2000 or 2001 I think, but I have never seen P3 models with a DSTN screen, the ones that do have DSTN were all Celeron or AMD K6 models. The P3 CPU was very expensive, so most (if not all) manufacturers just put in a TFT screen because the customer was going to pay big bucks anyway 😊

I think that the option with bigger screen is tft

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2v7k-wAm2E

Hamby wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2v7k-wAm2E

Yeah, I saw this video, it's pretty informative, but I've noticed that since it was made the prices of a lot of the mentioned laptops went WAY up (on eBay), I'm just trying to find something obscure at this point that can play my old DOS games for a good deal tbh.

I'll just leave this here (AC only though)

bjt wrote:

I'll just leave this here (AC only though) […]
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I'll just leave this here (AC only though)

Pray, tell more: which IBM model is it? TFT screen? What is this base station? Any other extra info?

Presumably it's a 755C with a somewhat rare PCMCIA Roland SC-55 card

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:755C

Very, very nice, especially the speakers, but isn't it a bit uncomfortable to rest your hands on the keyboard when the laptop is so damn tall?

Close. It's a 370C according to this post: Retro Rig Photo Thread