bregolin wrote:

Precisely. I'm the lucky owner of one of those (Sony Vaio PCG-Z505JE SuperSlim Pro)- it's a powerhouse. Its analog output is cry […]
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cyclone3d wrote:

A bunch of the old Sony Vaio Pentium III laptops have a Yamaha YMF744 soundcard built it. They also have the PC-PCI/SBLink port wired up so you get full DOS support.

Precisely. I'm the lucky owner of one of those (Sony Vaio PCG-Z505JE SuperSlim Pro)- it's a powerhouse. Its analog output is crystal clear, zero noise, and it has excellent DOS compatibility as well. Under WIndows, the DX-G wavetable is one of my favorites.

I also own an Acer Travelmate 603TER, which packs a ESS Solo, also with excellent DOS compatibility, plus an ATI RAGE Mobility AGP which allows for some 3D acceleration under Windows (I can play Half-Life at 640x480 on both OpenGL and Direct3D at a fairly decent framerate).

Violett'Blossom wrote:

I am looking for laptop for win 98 era with sound support for late dos games, since I don't have much space at home at the momen […]
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I am looking for laptop for win 98 era with sound support for late dos games, since I don't have much space at home at the moment.And I want something that can play more or less everything without major sacrifices.

I would love if it had these:

Boxy design. 😊
Max 13" TFT screen.
Decent keyboard.
Floppy and CD-ROM combo.
Easy to get replacement parts for (CMOS battery, drives)

If you think of any model, I would love to hear it. 😊

The Sony Vaio was an amazing find- but it lacks both a CD and floppy drive. Both were sold as optional, external drives, but I wasn't lucky enough to get any). It packs a 12" screen and very small footprint. The GPU is quite decent for 2D, but no 3D accelelartion support at all. It is a pain to do any maintenance on it, hopefully I haven't needed to do any 😀. The keyboard is not that bad for a laptop of its size. Very boxy 😁
The Acer Travelmate packs a CD drive, but no floppy. It has an ATI RAGE MOBILITY GPU, as I said above, does some decent 3D acceleration for early 97, 98 games. It has a 13" screen, the keyboard feels great (good key travel). Very Boxy 😁

I never thought that acer made some decent laptops, every one I had seemed to be pretty cheaply made 🤣 however those Sony Vaio laptops are pretty neat, I will try to get one of those 😊

Garrett W wrote:

If you are that determined, you could always use a service to ship it to you. You essentially have the seller ship it to them and for an additional fee (usually not much) they ship it to you. Are you sure the seller doesn't provide international shipping though? Sometimes they do but do not update the sale accordingly, always a good idea to ask.

I have asked, postage only for UK 😒

Ugh, wish this was posted a few months ago. I would have gladly donated one to ya for cost of postage. But a friend took them off my hands 🙁 Sorry

How about one of the Toshiba Satellite Pro 4280 Laptops?

https://content.us.dynabook.com/content/produ … ro_4280xdvd.pdf

1024x768 display, S3 Savage IX graphics and Yamaha 744-B soundchip (XG).

90skidJohnny wrote:

Ugh, wish this was posted a few months ago. I would have gladly donated one to ya for cost of postage. But a friend took them off my hands 🙁 Sorry

Aww,It's a shame. 😢 Hopefully it makes him happy 😊

elianda wrote:

How about one of the Toshiba Satellite Pro 4280 Laptops?

https://content.us.dynabook.com/content/produ … ro_4280xdvd.pdf

1024x768 display, S3 Savage IX graphics and Yamaha 744-B soundchip (XG).

I used to have one of those in late 2010' it was a nice laptop, however screen died few months after i got it. 😢 Iam kind of unlucky person. 🤣

Someone has a very slim 11.3" laptop for sale on Amibay with a Pentium 3 and a Savage4 chip, might be worth a look.

I'd recommend looking for a Dell Inspirion 8100. 1.2ghz pentium 3 and geforce 2 go graphics chipset. Its only letdown really is the sound chip doesn't work under DOS. In windows though with late 90's early 00's games this laptop absolutely rocks. Can run any 3D game of the time period 1024x768 with graphics settings maxed out.

I picked one up a while back for only £10 and use it regularly.

Unite wrote:

I'd recommend looking for a Dell Inspirion 8100. 1.2ghz pentium 3 and geforce 2 go graphics chipset. Its only letdown really is the sound chip doesn't work under DOS. In windows though with late 90's early 00's games this laptop absolutely rocks. Can run any 3D game of the time period 1024x768 with graphics settings maxed out.

I picked one up a while back for only £10 and use it regularly.

That's really cool laptop 😊 I have found one in my vicinity probably will go for it 😊

Violett'Blossom wrote:

I am looking for laptop for win 98 era with sound support for late dos games, since I don't have much space at home at the momen […]
Show full quote

I am looking for laptop for win 98 era with sound support for late dos games, since I don't have much space at home at the moment.And I want something that can play more or less everything without major sacrifices.

I would love if it had these:

Boxy design. 😊
Max 13" TFT screen.
Decent keyboard.
Floppy and CD-ROM combo.
Easy to get replacement parts for (CMOS battery, drives)

If you think of any model, I would love to hear it. 😊

I second the ThinkPad T20/21/22 series, but it's a bit bigger than you might want (it's either 13 or 14" LCD). I have a T21 (850MHz Coppermine P3) and it handles most late DOS to mid Windows 98 games well. It has that mix of a halfway decent (not great) Win98 compatible 3D accelerator (S3 Savage IX) and a decent (not great) DOS compatible OPL3 sound chip (Crystal Soundfusion).

For the old P2/P3 laptops, there's not much to choose from if you want both DOS audio compatibility and solid graphical prowess. Most GPUs in the late P2/early P3 laptops are Neomagic 128XD/256AV based (decent 2D only, and the 256AV have questionable DOS support), ATi Rage Pro LT/Mobility M1 (decent 2D, terrible 3D), or in the rare Taiwanese models, Virge MX (great 2D, horrible 3D). As for OPL3 FM support, there are threads regarding audio quality here already. If DirectX5/6 or OpenGL 3D support is something you need for retro gaming (X-Wing Alliance, Unreal Tournament 1999, Quake2/3, etc), that will eliminate classic machines like the Thinkpad 570e/600x/a20/X20-21 series, the old Dell Latitude CPis, and the otherwise decent Compaq Armada M300/M700s.

What you want to look for is something with okay/decent DirectX6 3D support (so that's ATi Rage Mobility 128/M3, ATi Rage Mobility 7000/M6, S3 Savage MX/IX, or nVidia Geforce2MX Go), a soundchip with DOS compatibility (Crystal SoundFusion, ESS Maestro 3i, Yamaha DS-XG/YMF744 or equivalent) and a bit of a warhorse for corporate use (so they are not rare on auction sites). All of those machines will inevitably be mid-range Coppermine P3s and above.

So here's a few choices if you need that combination of decent 3D/DOS compatible audio:

Dell Inspiron 4000/Latitude C600 (Rage Mobility M3+Maestro 3i), good solid 13"
IBM Thinkpad A22e, T20/21/22 (the 23 is excluded because the audio is AC97 only, as is the X22-24, even though they have Radeon M6s)

Of course, if you are not looking for DOS sound compatibility (or you plan to use PCMCIA/cardbus audio), then anything made in the Pentium-M era with only AC97 would fit the bill as long as they don't have Intel Integrated graphics - at least they have USB2 and WiFi onboard as a rule. I would not recommend buying Pentium IIIm (Tualatin) or Pentium 4m machines. If you buy a Tualatin you might as well buy a Pentium-M (which works like a faster Pentium III and features native USB2). If you buy a Pentium 4m, they are notorious space heaters with reliability issues, so you might as well buy a Pentium-M. Pretty sure Thinkpad T40-43s/Dell D6x0s are very cheap on secondary markets nowadays.

Unite wrote:

I'd recommend looking for a Dell Inspirion 8100. 1.2ghz pentium 3 and geforce 2 go graphics chipset. Its only letdown really is the sound chip doesn't work under DOS. In windows though with late 90's early 00's games this laptop absolutely rocks. Can run any 3D game of the time period 1024x768 with graphics settings maxed out.

I picked one up a while back for only £10 and use it regularly.

I was just about to say the same thing!

An 8100 is perfect for this, IMO. If you get lucky and get one with the 32MB GeForce 2Go you can really crank out some video. I got mine for about $20 at a thrift store and it has served me very well since.

bregolin wrote on 2019-05-08, 02:15:

Precisely. I'm the lucky owner of one of those (Sony Vaio PCG-Z505JE SuperSlim Pro)- it's a powerhouse.

Really great laptop with crystal clear sound, I can confirm!

Found it very cheap, for about $13 as "not tested" and it's turn on immediately after I plugged it in and did not boot before I replace sound module part (fortunately I had it in my trash parts collection):

tl,dr

thinkpad was also the first to my mind.

But, obtainium-wise, just out of the blue, the Siemens Amilo line might be abundant next to Germany and too vanilla for anyone to care, yet offer some documentation and replacement batteries.

The early win XP era models still had 4:3 screens and a parallel port that might help with fallback sound options for dos. Else you're stuck with MS-DOS mode of windows, at best. Things like this:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/192849357639