VOGONS


First post, by Socket3

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Hi everyone. After having to store most of my retro machine collection due to turning my office into a nursery, I've been researching and using old laptops for my retro gaming needs. There's very few info online about this topic, so I decided to open a thread about it. So far I've focused mainly on windows 98 / win XP capable machines with a 4:3 or 5:4 aspect ratio display and a dedicated video card. Here's a list of my favortites so far:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++ Pentium Class MS-DOS / Windows 95/98 Machines +++
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=== Dell Inspiron 3000 and 3200 (model 1997) * ===

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CPU: 166 to 233MHz Pentium MMX processor (266MHz pentium II version available, but rare). The CPU is not socketed - it sits on a MMC-1 card, and is upgradable up to a 300MHz pentium II unoficially.

Display: These machines come with either a 12.1 or 13.3" 4:3 active-matrix color TFT LCD module, depending on sub-model. Some come with a 12" 800x600 screen, others come with a larger 13.3" 1024x768 screen. I have a 13.3" model, so I can't speak for the 12", but the 13.3" has good colors and great response time (30ms) for a 1997 laptop screen. Blacks are washed out and look like backlit inkjet printed paper, and the screen is not very bright, but the response time more then makes up for that. There's little to no noticeable ghosting, making fast paced games a pleasure to play, unlike most other laptops from that time period. In fact, I'd say this is the inspiron 3000's main attraction, as other pentium 1 laptops I've played with have quite a bit of ghosting and/or use pretty small screens.

RAM: 16MB of PC66 SD-RAM soldered onto the motherboard + 2 free SD-RAM SODIMM modules, up to 144MB (2x64MB SODIMM SDRAM PC66)

Video card: NeoMagic 2160 or 2160B (NeoMagic MagicGraph 128XD) with 2MB of EDO DRAM. This card is a bit rubbish. It's quite slow, and causes issues in some DOS games, but said issues are usually solvable using UNIVBE.

Sound Card: Crystal 4237B Sound Blaster Compatible. Pure DOS drivers are available for this card, and OPL3 emulation is decent.

Storage:
- 1x 2.5" IDE HDD up to 120GB (the bios will not display disk drive size correctly with disks larger then 36GB, but the OS will be able to see and format the drive fine.
- 1x Multibay slot witch can take a CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, FDD drive or a second battery.

Connectivity:
- 1x COM port
- 1x PS/2 port
- 1x 15 pin D-SUB (VGA)
- 1x USB 1.0 port
- audio jacks (line in, mic, line out)
- infrared
- 1x paralel port
- 2x PCMCIA card slots
- docking station connector

Notes: As I said, this machine's main selling point is it's screen - it has very good response time for a pentium 1 laptop and the 13.3" version is one of the largest displays available on a pentium machine. The built in speakers are decent, the touchpad and keypoard are pretty good, and the laptop is quite well built. As for disadvantages, fist of all I'd say it's the video chipset. If it's not the most compatible card for older DOS titles, but most games will run fine on it. So far I've played Prehistork, Vikings, Doom 1 and 2, Dune 2, Jazz Jackrabbit, Duke 3D, Quake 1 and Dyna Blaster on my machine in pure dos and had no issues. I have encountered some issues in supaplex and Keen 6, but there are workarounds for those games. * Dell also realeased a core i5 inspiron 3000 laptop (inspiron 15 3000) so mind your searches. It helps to add exact model number like M233XT or D233XT or M233ST.

=== Acer Extensa 355 and Extensa 390 ===

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CPU: 133 to 233MHz Socket 7 pentium MMX. The CPU is socketed**, so you can replace it with say a AMD K6-2. I popped a 400MHz*** K6-2 into my unit, and after setting up the dip-switches for 2.4v and 2x mulriplyer (the K6-2 will interpret this as 6x) got the CPU stable at 400Mhz. BIOS lists "unknown processor" but otherwise the machine works fine. **Looking online, I've found pictures of a Acer Extensa 355 ram upgrade guide, and what I found odd is that the CPU did not come on a ZIF socket (regular socket 7) but instead had some odd smaller socket I've seen on some toshiba laptops, so don't count on this feature. There are at least two versions of the Extensa 355 - one with a 11.3" screen and one with a 12.1" screen. Mine has the 12.1" screen and the CPU is socketed.

RAM: 16MB PC66 SD-RAM soldered to the motherboard + 1 SODIMM slot (max 64MB)

Display: 11.3" 800x600 CSTN or 12.1 800x600 TFT LCD. The 11.3" display is a bit... sad. Washed out colours and noticeable ghosting. It is bright, but playing faster paced games can be a hassle. The 12.1" version comes is a TFT screen witch is a lot easyer on the eyes, and should have less ghosting as the manufacturer states a 36ms response time.

Video card: Chips and Tech 65550B 1MB EDO. This card is great for old DOS games compatibility-wise, but don't expect great things from it in Quake or Duke 3D.

Sound Card: ESS Audiodrive ES1868. This card is SB-Compatible and you can find drivers for it quite easily. OPL3 emulation is spot-on.

Storage:
- 1x 2.5" IDE HDD up to 36GB
- 1x FDD

Connectivity:
- 1x COM port
- 1x PS/2 port
- 1x 15 pin D-SUB (VGA)
- 1x USB 1.0 port
- audio jacks (line in, mic, line out)
- infrared
- 1x paralel port
- 2x PCMCIA card slots

Notes: This machine's most attractive feature is the fact that is uses a socket 7 CPU making it very flexible. ***While I did manage to get a K6 running at 6x66MHz in this little laptop, it did get extremly hot. The cooling solution is a simple aluminum block that sits under a metal cover under the keyboard and a small fan. It cannot safely handle a 400MHz K6-2. While testing I used a large socket A heatsink and had the laptop partly dissasembled. When I tried to use the CPU @ 400Mhz with the laptop in one piece, it got very hot after 20 minutes of playing around. Other advantages are it's great sound card and very dos compatible video chipset, making it a good choice for early dos games. Despite the great sound card, the computer only has one speaker - it's not very loud, and it doesn't sound nearly as good as the inspiron 3000. The screen is pretty poor, regardless of what version it comes with. The 11" CSTN display is nigh-unusable for gaming, and the 12" TFT is a bit on the small side and I can notice some gosting in games like DOOM.

=== IBM Thinkpad 765D/L ===

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CPU: 233MHz pentium MMX

RAM: 16 or 32MB soldered, 1 SODIMM slot, up to 96MB

Display: 13.3" TFT LCD 1024x768, 40ms response time.

Sound card: IBM Mwave Audio - this card is a bit odd and I'd say the laptop's weak point. DOS drivers are available, but OPL-3 emulation is poor, and I've had issues getting sound at all in some games.

Video card: Trident Cyber 9385 with 2MB of VRAM. Excelent compatibility with early DOS games, and pretty speedy in Duke 3D and Quake

Storage:
- 1x 2.5" IDE HDD up to 36GB
- 1x FDD
- 1x CD-ROM

Connectivity:
- 1x COM port
- 1x PS/2 port
- 1x 15 pin D-SUB (VGA)
- audio jacks (line in, mic, line out)
- infrared
- 1x paralel port
- 2x PCMCIA card slots
- Docling station connector

Notes: At first glance this is a great little DOS machine, but it's let down with the quirky audio chipset. It also has a slew of proprietary connectors, and lacks USB witch would have been a quick and easy way of getting games onto the machine. The power brick for it uses an odd connector and is hard to come by these days. Beacuse of that odd connector i haven't been able to use it with a universal power brick, and it sat on a shelf for over 5 years until I came about an original power brick that came with a 760 with a cracked screen. It also does not come with a touchpad, but a rather hard to use pointing stick. One MAJOR ISSUE with this machine is the RUBBER COATING on the case. It breaks down over time, and turns into something resembling tar - sticky and frankly discusting to touch. It's not very easy to remove completly, but it's doable. I managed to remove the rubber coating on mine using the fuid found in car air freshners. I got the ideea after I noticed the rubber on my old car's center console start to come off where the air freshner leaked - so I started using it on various rubberised plastics with great results.

That's it for today, I'll post a short list of Win98 3D capable 4:3/5:4 laptops and quick specs in the post below, and will elaborate on them tomorrow.

Last edited by Socket3 on 2019-11-10, 00:18. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 1 of 9, by Socket3

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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++ Pentium 3/4/M Windows 98 / XP Gaming Laptops +++
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+++ Dell Inspiron 8200 +++

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CPU: 1.5-2.4GHz Pentium 4 mobile (willamette or northwood)

Video card: Geforce 2 GO 32MB, GeForce4 440 Go or Radeon 9000 64MB

Display: 15" 1400x1050 or 1600x1200 anti glare screen

The Inspiron 8200 is a large well built heap of plasitc that feels great to use. It's cheap and easy to find online, and they make great win98 gaming laptops. It has great speakers and a good screen, good cooling and a decent touchpad. The video card is upgradable, so if you come across a model with a Geforce 2 go, you can swap it out for a radeon 9000. The video cards are a propriatary dell format, and as far as I know specific to the Inspiron 8000/8200 line. Despite this they can be found online, or you could pick up a dead laptop and salvage the video card. Unlike newer laptops with MXM cards or the XPS 170 below, the video card is not a weak point on this machine.

It is not problem free however. Bot it and the Inspiron 8000 use an odd 7.2v rechargable battery for CMOS, and that tends to degrade and LEAK. When it leaks it can destroy the motherboard (witch is why you can find plenty of parts laptops for this model with good screens and video cards but dead mainboards). The laptop will work without this battery, but will not retain CMOS settings and you will be prompted with an error on startup, unless you keep it plugged in. You can buy another CMOS battery, but be weary of new old stock, as batteries degrade over time, regardless if they're used or not.

Another issue is the speakers. I don't know why, but the speakers themselves fail on these machines. I've bought a lot of 10 8000 and 8200 laptops in various conditions, and out of all 10, only 2 had working speakers. It's not a sound card or jack or mainboard issue - I've thoroughly investigated this issue.

+++ Dell Inspiron 8000 +++

CPU: 850MHz Pentium III-M
Video Card: Geforce 2 GO or Geforce 4 GO 32MB
Display: 15" 1280x1024 or 1400x1050 anti glare screen.

This machine is very much like the Inspiron 8200, and they share several components (case, display, speakers, keyboard, touchpad etc). It makes a very good windows 98 / late dos laptop.

+++ Compaq N800c/N1000 +++

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CPU: 1.5-2.2GHz Pentium 4-M
Video card: Radeon 7500 (DDR) or Radeon 9000 64MB
Display: 14.1 or 15"" 1400x1050 anti glare screen

The N800c and n1000v are very similar to the NC6000. Great for win98 3d games and late dos-games. Problems with these machines are build quality - as the case is made out of rather brittle plastic, and it's not uncommon to come across laptops with a cracked bottom case or display case, or broken / tworn hinges. Apart from that, the palmrest is coated with the same disgusting rubber finish as the IBM 760, witch has turned into a sort of tar because of age. The rubber can be removed using refills for liquid car odorizer just like for the IBM 760. Put a coat of the stuff on the palmrest, wrap the palmrest in clear foil and leave it for 2 hours. The rubber will start cu bubble and come off with a soft plastic tool without damaging the plastic. The laptop will smell nice to boot!

+++ First model Toshiba Qosmio laptops +++

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Toshiba Qosmio E15-AV101 - 1.7GHz Pentium M, Geforce FX 5200GO 128MB, 15" 1024x768 glossy screen

Toshiba Qosmio F15-AV201 - 1.8 GHz Pentium M, Geforce FX 5700GO 128MB, 15" 1280x1024 glossy or anti glare screen

Toshiba Qosmio G15-AV501 - 1.8 GHz Pentium M, Geforce FX 5700GO 128MB, 17" 1440x900 glossy screen

These make pretty good win98 gaming laptops. I'm particularly fond of the G15 because of it's 17" display. The only downside is that it has a glossy finish - this is because these older LCD pannels are not as bright as modern displays, and you will notice a lot of glare and reflections. Other then that, the laptop is very well built and very pleasant to use.

+++ HP Compaq NC6000 +++

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CPU: 1.5-1.8GHz Pentium M (Dothan)

Video card: Radeon 9600 64MB

Display: 14" 1280x1024 screen

The HP NC6000 is cheap and pretty easy to find due to them being used as mobile workstations by lots of large companies. The Radeon 9600 only comes with 64MB, but at 1280x1024 is overkill for most games up to 2002. It has decent speakers, the screen may be small but is bright and has good viewing angles, and is a robust machine. It can run boh XP and 98, but I'd recomend it as a 98 gaming machine. You might have noticed it looks a lot like the N800C - but the NC6000 is thinner and does not have a rubber coated palmrest.

Parts and accesories for the NC6000 can be easily found online - from batteries to screens and optical drives, so maintaing one is pretty easy and cheap. Be weary of new old stock batteries, as they most likely only last a couple of weeks. Neither the CPU or video card get particularly hot, BUT the laptop does have some hardware issues. The motherboard is very densly packed, and units that have been lugged around will develop defects - cracks in the PCB or under SMD or BGA component pads. I've seen quite a few NC6000's run fine when on a desk but shut down or hang when you move the screen or pick it up, so be sure to check for that when buying one.

+++ Dell XPS M170 +++

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CPU: 2GHz Pentium M (Dothan)

Video Card: Geforce 6800GO or 7800GO, 256MB

Display:17" 1920x1200 glossy finish

This machine is prehaps one of the first (if not THE first) true gaming laptop. It comes with a gorgeous large high res screen, great speakers and a subwoofer, beefy cooling, and high end video card options. It makes a great XP box, and will run windows 98 (at least the Geforce 6800 GO equipped model). It's only downside is reliability. The 6800 and the 7800GO tend to fail due to bad BGA solder balls, so make sure to test them thoroughly before buying. If you find a fully functioning example, give it a good clean and replace the thermal paste with something expensive. Mind the VRAM pads as they tend to degrade over time. Replacing them is a good ideea. The fans on units that have been gamed on a lot tend to go bad. You can usually tell by noise alone. A faling fan will lead to a dead video card, and they are hard to come by.

The glossy display is a bit of a let-down. It's not as bright as modern LCD panels and the glossy surface causes a mirror effect.

Overall, the XPS M170 is my top pick for a 3D retro gaming laptop, since it can run anything from 1996 up to 2007, but they are hard to come by and can be expensive to buy and even more expensive to fix.

Last edited by Socket3 on 2019-11-11, 19:51. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 2 of 9, by snickersnack

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Oh nice, a lot of these machines aren't the usual suspects.

I'm curious, how well do those Neomagic chips work in DOS? I had assumed they were meant for cheap Windows office machines and had very minimal backwards compatibility but your experience sounds better than my Rendition Verite. Is the scaling reasonable vs something like a C&T CT65550? It seems like the Neomagics were really prolific for a few years and then totally disappeared.

I got a Tecra 8000 (Neomagic MagicMedia 256AV) in a lot with a more interesting machine a few months back, currently collecting dust on the shelf. It's missing its covers and every single screw was stolen from it but surprisingly, it seems to work fine. Maybe I should give it some attention.

Reply 3 of 9, by Intel486dx33

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I have always wanted to know which notebooks have the best displays.
What about the Macbook G3 and G4 and Sony Vaio PCG-xxx
The IBM’s have good DOS and Win3x support.

Reply 4 of 9, by Windows9566

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1uQy3hX.jpg
I have a Gateway Solo 2500, it doesn't have a HDD yet unfortunately.
It's in good shape except for some scratches and a stress crack next to the hinge on the top.
Specs
Pentium MMX 150 MHz
32 MB RAM
Neomagic MagicGraph 128XD 2 MB Video Card
Neomagic MagicMedia 3DX Sound Card
No HDD
No OS

R5 5600X, 32 GB RAM, RTX 3060 TI, Win11
P3 600, 256 MB RAM, nVidia Riva TNT2 M64, SB Vibra 16S, Win98
PMMX 200, 128 MB RAM, S3 Virge DX, Yamaha YMF719, Win95
486DX2 66, 32 MB RAM, Trident TGUI9440, ESS ES688F, DOS

Reply 5 of 9, by Socket3

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Intel486dx33 wrote:

I have always wanted to know which notebooks have the best displays.
What about the Macbook G3 and G4 and Sony Vaio PCG-xxx

I wouldn't know... I have no experience with macbooks, and I don't plan on getty on in the near future since the games I'm interested require dos/win98. I am however curious about them.

Intel486dx33 wrote:

The IBM’s have good DOS and Win3x support.

That wasn't my experience. The 760/765 have a quirky sound chip and I've had difficulty getting sound in some games under DOS.

snickersnack wrote:

Oh nice, a lot of these machines aren't the usual suspects.

I'm curious, how well do those Neomagic chips work in DOS? I had assumed they were meant for cheap Windows office machines and had very minimal backwards compatibility but your experience sounds better than my Rendition Verite. Is the scaling reasonable vs something like a C&T CT65550? It seems like the Neomagics were really prolific for a few years and then totally disappeared.

I got a Tecra 8000 (Neomagic MagicMedia 256AV) in a lot with a more interesting machine a few months back, currently collecting dust on the shelf. It's missing its covers and every single screw was stolen from it but surprisingly, it seems to work fine. Maybe I should give it some attention.

They're OK I guess, but you will experience tearing or flickering in some dos games. Popular titles work well enough. Scaling seems to depend more on the laptop. On the inspiron 3000 scaling is very good for example.

@Windows9566 - that gateway looks a lot like the inspiron 3000. I've never seen a gateway live - they're really hard to come by in eastern europe.

Reply 6 of 9, by creepingnet

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NEC VERSA 40EC

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SPECIFICATIONS
PSU: 45 Watt NEC 4 Pin Power Supply, very sturdy connector design
BATT: Six Cell Nickel Metal Hydride 7.5V, gives about 2HR of life per battery (up to 4HR total with 2)
CASE: NEC Ultralite Versa 486 series case w/ removable/flipable screen
MoBo: NEC UltraLite Versa planar with power & CPU daughterboards (that seem interchangable)
CPU: Intel 80486 SL DX2 40MHz
RAM: 4MB on-board, up to 20MB (Official), or 36MB (unofficial) of RAM Maximum using NEC Versa RAM cards
FDD: 1.44MB 3.5" removable floppy whose bay can be used to add a second NiMH battery
HDD: Originally came with 120MB-320MB HDD "PAKs", but takes modern PATA drives with a DDO fine
GFX: Western Digital WDC90C24 SVGA 1MB w/ Kyocera 9.4" 640x480 b&w LCD Panel or 640x480 Color NEC NL6448AC30-06 LCD Panel, also came with touch/pen as an option
SND: Internal Speaker
EXP: 2x PCMCICA Type II 16-bit Expansion Slots
NET: THey originally shipped with a 14.4K Lucent modem with a dongle, most of the time those are long since removed though. I'm currently testing out the two WiFi Cards that will work with DOS/WFWG in it - a Orinoco based Lucent WaveLAN Silver, and a Cisco LMC-352 Aironet 350 Series cards

OTHER FEATURES: LCD Panel readout that displays power saving mode for early APM, HDD, FDD, Lock key status, and the status of the batteries installed. Also completley or almost completley tool-less when it comes to replacing the RAM, HDD, or batteries.

PERFORMANCE: I'm quite surprised by the performance of this laptop having been a Thinkpad 755CD owner in the past, and my other favorite being hte AT&T/NCR Globalyst 200/Safari 3151 (aka. Samsung Sens 800).

It runs early DOS games okay-ish, if a bit fast, so Moslo or some other slowdown app is your friend. But being as I like mostly games from around 1988-1997 for most of my retro-gaming, this laptop EXCELS at it. It even, surprisingly, runs Diablo, Microsoft Golf, and Duke Nukem 3D well enough to be enjoyable, but not perfect - but that's the tradeoff of going Pre-Pentium on a vintage laptop. Have not put it to "The Sims" torture test though (did on my other 486 - that's was frightening that it worked at all, let alone well enough ot build a house). It runs my favorite stuff to run on it though (Ultima VI-VIII, Monkey Island, Loom, Freddy Pharkas, just to name some), very happily.

The screen on this thing is incredible. It's 640X480, Active Matrix, TFT, and it is sharp and clear like a modern laptop almost. The NEC Versa also came with a Monochrome, DTSN, and this model forward also apparently had a TOUCH SCREEN availible for it at the time.

EXPANDABILITY

Part of why I picked this laptop up was the fact that it's so expandable with such little effort, so anyone with a less-technical significant other can appreciate this. When I'm DOS gaming away from home on this thing, or doing other retro-hardware centric stuff, it's nice that all I need at worst is ONE philips head screwdriver (and that's to switch out HDD in the original caddy). Swapping out RAM is easily done by sliding a plate on the upper right of the base unit and sliding the RAM out like a game cartridge. The screen can also be flipped around or even swapped with other technology screens (Mono, DTSN, Touch) by flipping two leaf-levers on the upper corners of the case and just lifting the screen off and swapping it or turning it around - and it CAN be hot-swapped. I've done it several times.

2X PCMCIA Slots are also good. Currently all I'm using them for is WiFi, but in the future I would love to give this thing sound someday. Almost thinking a cool project for someone would be a PCMCIA sound card with one of those flat piezo speaker elements attached to it to use the whole card assembly as an actual speaker.

PROS
- Easy Expandability
- Easy to repair, taking it apart to me I'd think akin to a Gen 1 Lenovo X1 carbon Touch
- Relatively cheap in some cases (ie under $60.00 if you play your cards right)
- Power Jack design is decent and robust
- Amazing battery life for a laptop on such old battery technology
- Runs 1988-1997 era DOS and early Windows 95 Direct X games well or surprisingly well
- Takes almost any hard disk, detects it, and runs it with a DDO like it was made for it
- Surprising performance for a 40MHz 486 Laptop, pushing some late 90's games okay enough to be fun
- Also has a Car Adapter AND A Docking Station that offers ISA Slots and CD-ROM
- Nothing for this laptop is too expensive, most things being under $50.00, prices are going up on some of these
- The Versa Trac is very comfortable

CONS
- very heavy, weighs as much as a Gibson Les Paul guitar (think around 7-12LBS)
- the plastic often cracks around the hinge on the right side of the screen (easily fixed by J.B. Weld from inside)
- have had some problems with the spacebar and a couple keys sticking, so clean those mechanisms if you get one
- Versa Trac Trackball needs cleaned occasionally, and sometimes the traction balls on the mechanism inside get out of alignment and that makes tracking on either or both axis spotty (early version, the E-series was the first to have a trackball)
- Some mild ghosting on screen
- Will require a WEP network at best for WiFi Access due to age of cards availible and slots
- No CD-ROM support, so get used to removing that hard disk - a LOT
- Finding NiMH battery cells for it is proving chalenging

Last edited by creepingnet on 2021-10-07, 19:34. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 7 of 9, by ragefury32

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Intel486dx33 wrote:

I have always wanted to know which notebooks have the best displays.
What about the Macbook G3 and G4 and Sony Vaio PCG-xxx
The IBM’s have good DOS and Win3x support.

Well, the old school Macs are not called MacBooks. They are called PowerBooks.

Things to remember about the Apple side is that MacOS Classic (1.0 to 9.2) were not designed to multi-task since day 1 (Unlike the Amigas) - they were single-tasking machines in the old days, and picked up cooperative multitasking/shared memory along the way. True pre-emptive multi-tasking didn't show up on the Mac side until MacOS X (based on NEXTSTEP) came along, and it wasn't really polished until 10.2 (Jaguar) or 10.3 (Panther). Apple also had to weather 10 years of poor/indifferent management (the Scully years), project failures (the AIM alliance, Taligent, Copeland) and a fairly important architecture swap along the way (68k -> PowerPC). Can you game on them? Kinda. It depends on whether you are gunning for the 68k/classic stuff (which are like era 3 DOS games), PowerPC/classic stuff (Think late DOS/Win95), PowerPC/Early MacOS stuff (Windows 98SE to XP) or more modern fare, which might be top-of-the-line PowerPC to early Wintel Macs. All of those games are available at https://macintoshgarden.org/.

So here's a rundown - this coming from a guy who used to own, fix and maintain them...

The first PowerBooks were based on the Motorola 68000 series CPUs - 68k Mac apps go back all the way from 1984 to around 1997 when MacOS 8.1 dropped support for it. You have the 100 series (one of the first with a trackball built-in, removable batteries, PCMCIA slots and etc), the 500 (refined 100s with 68040 chips inside) and the Duo models, which are subnotebook-like machines with nice docking stations (apple were big on docking stations for quite a while). If I remember correctly the design guys who came up with the look ended up working with Compaq. If you notice some design similarities between the early PowerBooks and the Contura Aeros, well, thats why.

The next crop of Powerbooks were based on the PowerPC 603e (aka the G2). The PowerBook 5300 were the first one, and it was kinda famous for...catching on fire (it was an early adopter of Sony Lithium Ion batteries...which caught fire). There is one single port of the Duo series from 040 to 603e, and then Apple dropped the line. There was a small Powerbook called the Powerbook 2400 which was co-designed with IBM and had a bit of a cult following in Japan. There's a big fat PowerBook called the Kanga which was the first G3 powerbook - ran with a 2MB CT65550 and not really considered all that great. That changed with the next one, which was the Wallstreet/MainStreet G3 series. All had embedded ATi RageLT graphics (2 or 4MB VRAM). It was slimmer and sexier looking. The next one is the Lombard, which dropped ADB for USB, kept its SCSI port and had an 8MB VRAM allocation. The next machine is the Pismo - it's still based on the Lombard chassis, but it has these features that made them great transition machines for the era between MacOS 9/classic and 10.

The Pismo Powerbook is FAMOUS amongst classic Mac nerds. Why?
a) Last Powerbook with a removable/upgradeable CPU/RAM module (they can be upgraded to PowerPC G4 via a module swap)
b) Last Powerbook with modular option bays
c) First Powerbook with a 1GB RAM ceiling
d) First Powerbook with a decent GPU (Rage Mobility 128 / 8MB VRAM)
e) First Powerbook with Firewire and Airport (original 11b and as optional equipment)

The Pismo G3 were the "dress rehearsal" hardware for the PowerBook G4s, featuring the UniNorth/KeyLargo chipset that was used in the TiBook series. That chipset were also found in the Clamshell iBooks (had a Bondi Blue 366 and Graphite 466SE back in the days)

I had 2 Pismos at one point - kept one with the 555MHz PowerPC G4 upgrade module. The other flew apart on me when the chassis disintegrated and went to the great recycling pile in the sky. I love those machines as it came right before Jony Ive slowly screwed up Apple's hardware hacker appeal.

The one that came afterwards were the original Powerbook G4s, and is usually the Powerbook series that some old schoolers think about when they see PowerBooks (because they were the first to use Jonathan Ive's minimalist design language). Those had the Titanium chassis and were called TiBooks. I count them in 4 generations:
Mercury/Rev A: 4-500 MHz G4 (Nitro), Rage 128 Mobility, FastE, 100MHz FSB
Onyx/Rev B: 550-667MHz G4e (V'Ger), Radeon M6, GigE, 133MHz FSB
Ivory/Rev C: 667-800MHz G4e (V'Ger), Radeon M7, GigE, ESD , DVI port
TiGi/Rev D: 867-1000MHz G4e (Apollo 6), Radeon M9, GigE, ESD (TiGi stands for Titanium Gigahertz), DVI Port

All 4 has its share of issues and are not recommended. The hinges tend to fracture (Titanium is not an ideal material for laptops as they are brittle compared to aluminum), and since the LCD bezel is glued together, they pretty much cannot be fixed once fractured, only replaced at a rather ridiculous cost. The Rev A is a Pismo G4 in a newer and less flexible chassis, and both the A and B versions do not have electrostatic discharge protection to their firewire ports, and those tend to burn out over time (The Pismos were a less electrically noisy design and didn’t really need them). The B version has a newer G4 V'Ger processor (it's a die shrink/refinement with better ALU block layout - Motorola was not able to meet performance ramp-up promises to Apple on their original Mac and Nitro G4s, and the original 64 bit PowerPC (a G4 derivative from Motorola) ran into so much issues that it was cancelled and never saw the light of day). The V'ger chips received a 33Mhz FSB bump-up (from the original 100) in their MPX bus, and the northbridge was modified to support 4x AGP. The Rev Cs were refined Bs with a DVI port.

The TiBook series all supported the original USB 1.1 standard and the 11b Airport wifi setup. If you wanted something faster better look for a Cardbus card, like a 3Com X-Jack a/b/g card. I had a Rev B out of this crop - it was not a great machine. Unless it's mint and very well taken care of, I would skip the entire pile. Nothing to be savored here.

The next series are the AlBooks, as they were Powerbooks made out of Aluminum - if you remember the Powerbook family with the small, medium and large members, those would be the AlBooks. You got the 12", 15" and the 17", and Apple kept the design language/looks when they migrated to Wintel in 2006 to create the MacBook Pros. What's good about them? All of them had the faster Apollo 6/7 G4s, USB2 are built-in, the improved Intrepid chipsets, and Airport Extreme is now standard. However, they lost the ability to boot MacOS9 (classic) cleanly and must rely on “classic mode”. All of the 15" machines have at least a Radeon 9600 Mo, Gigabit are standard on the 15s and 17s, all 15s and 17s can go up to 2GB of RAM.

For this crop, here's the recommendations:
Don't buy the 12 unless you really like the size (they only have 1 RAM slot and can only go to 1.25GB RAM max, their Geforce FX5200 Go is underwhelming, and the Ethernet is limited to 100MBit) - I had a pair of 12s once, so some people do like them.
For the 15/17s, make sure that both RAM slots are working (the bottom one tends to die)
The entire series are a pain to open and service, so you would want to plan out upgrades/servicing and do them all at once.

As for image quality, the word you are looking for is "pedestrian". They were nice back in the days, but for the amount of $ some of the retro dealers want, you are better off buying a used MacBook Air or Pro.

Reply 8 of 9, by crazii

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Does the Dell XPS M170 have any win98 drivers? I checked the spec and it's XP pre-installed.
Also, For Toshiba Qosmio E15-AV101/Qosmio F15-AV201/Qosmio G15-AV501, the official site doesn't have any win98 drivers too, and I have read some topics about FX5200Go driver problems in win98.

My ideal retro laptop is capable to run games ranged from pre98 DOS to DirectX9.0 (shader model 2.0); it would have a SB hardware compatible sound card and at least a FX5200 GO graphics card.

So far the best I've got is Toshiba Satellite 2805-S603, which has SB software compatible sound card for DOS games in 98 command line, also working for native DOS with additional driver.
It has a GeForce 2 Go 16M card which runs games until year 2000/2001. It runs Counter-Strike 1.5 and American McGee's Alice decently (60PFS stable for CS1.5, OpenGL driver is preferred); It should run Max Payne 1 and GTA3 good but I've not tested yet.
AFAIK win98 supports DirectX up to 9.0c but I don't really know any specific 9.0c games that runs in win98. Or maybe 2 systems in one laptop is a better option, one for DOS & 98 another for XP.

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 9 of 9, by creepingnet

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Here's the rest of the Versa series that I've had and my assessment of them from slowest to fastest.....

NEC VERSA V/50

v50-1.jpg

SPECIFICATIONS
PSU: 45 Watt NEC 4 Pin Power Supply, very sturdy connector design
BATT: Six Cell Nickel Metal Hydride 7.5V, gives about 2HR of life per battery (up to 4HR total with 2)
CASE: NEC Versa 486 series case w/ removable/flipable screen
MoBo: NEC Versa planar with power & CPU daughter boards (that seem interchangeable)
CPU: Intel 80486 SL DX2 50MHz
RAM: 4MB on-board, up to 20MB
FDD: 1.44MB 3.5" removable floppy whose bay can be used to add a second NiMH battery
HDD: Originally came with 120MB-320MB HDD "PAKs", but takes modern PATA drives with a DDO fine
GFX: Western Digital WDC90C24 SVGA 1MB w/ Kyocera 9.4" 640x480 b&w LCD Panel or 640x480 Color NEC NL6448AC30-10 LCD Panel, the Screen is Non Removable on this model, and it often gets confused with the Versa "E" series and vice "Versa" (lol, a lot of people call the E a V series)
SND: Internal Speaker
EXP: 2x PCMCICA Type II 16-bit Expansion Slots
NET: THey originally shipped with a 14.4K Lucent modem with a dongle, most of the time those are long since removed though. I'm currently testing out the two WiFi Cards that will work with DOS/WFWG in it - a Orinoco based Lucent WaveLAN Silver, and a Cisco LMC-352 Aironet 350 Series cards

OTHER FEATURES: LCD Panel readout that displays power saving mode for early APM, HDD, FDD, Lock key status, and the status of the batteries installed. Also completley or almost completley tool-less when it comes to replacing the RAM, HDD, or batteries. The screen is non removable on this model. However, CMOS Battery ie easily replaceable as it's located under the memory door rather than located under the control panel beneath the screen so 100% tool-less for basic upgrades.

PERFORMANCE: Performance is similar to the NEC Versa E-series, as this laptop was both released and offered in the same clock speeds. There's a V/40 (Very rare), and a V/75 (also not common). It tends to run games between 1989 and 1994 the best, with older DOS Games running a little too fast, and some frames dropped on newer post 1996-era DOS titles. The performance feels faster than it should.

EXPANDABILITY: Pretty standard for the time, two Type II PCMCIA slots, batteries seem to still be availible, and power supplies are cheap. The cost of Screens....however, is going up, and on this model, you're stuck with whatever screen assembly you have as this is a legitimate laptop and not a converitble computer/tablet like the others.

PROS
- Easy Expandability
- Easy to repair, taking it apart to me I'd think akin to a Gen 1 Lenovo X1 carbon Touch, even more so than the E from an Electronics standpoint
- Relatively cheap in some cases (ie under $60.00 if you play your cards right, I paid $25 for mine in 2021)
- Power Jack design is decent and robust
- Amazing battery life for a laptop on such old battery technology, I was able to revive the original 30 year old battery
- Runs 1988-1997 era DOS and early Windows 95 Direct X games well or surprisingly well
- Takes almost any hard disk, detects it, and runs it with a DDO like it was made for it
- Surprising performance for a 40MHz 486 Laptop, pushing some late 90's games okay enough to be fun
- Also has a Car Adapter AND A Docking Station that offers ISA Slots and CD-ROM
- Nothing for this laptop is too expensive, most things being under $50.00, prices are going up on some of these
- The Versa Trac is very comfortable

CONS
- very heavy, weighs as much as a Gibson Les Paul guitar (think around 7-12LBS)
- the plastic often cracks around the hinge on the right side of the screen, seems they used better plastic as this was a later model (late 94'-early 95')
- have had some problems with the spacebar and a couple keys sticking, so clean those mechanisms if you get one
- Versa Trac Trackball needs cleaned occasionally, and sometimes the traction balls on the mechanism inside get out of alignment and that makes tracking on either or both axis spotty (early version, the E-series was the first to have a trackball)
- Some mild ghosting on screen
- Will require a WEP network at best for WiFi Access due to age of cards availible and slots
- No CD-ROM support, so get used to removing that hard disk - a LOT without a Docking station or external CD-ROM drive
- No sound card, so no OPL or SoundBlaster support

NEC VERSA M/75

1stbootm75tc.jpeg

SPECIFICATIONS
PSU: 45 Watt NEC 4 Pin Power Supply, very sturdy connector design
BATT: Six Cell Nickel Metal Hydride 7.5V "Smart Battery", gives about 2HR of life per battery (up to 4HR total with 2)
CASE: NEC Ultralite Versa 486 series case w/ removable/flipable screen
MoBo: NEC UltraLite Versa planar with power & CPU daughterboards (that seem interchangable)
CPU: Intel 80486 DX4-100
RAM: 8MB on-board, up to 40MB
FDD: 1.44MB 3.5" removable floppy whose bay can be used to add a second NiMH battery, specific to the M and P models
HDD: Originally came with 120MB-320MB HDD "PAKs", but takes modern PATA drives with a DDO fine
GFX: C&T 65545 1MB SVGA, "TC" Models have a special adapter board for "True Color" that makes them incompatible with the regular M/75 models
SND: Crystal Semiconductor CS-4231-KQ WSS Compatible AUdio Chipset (NO OPL)
EXP: 2x PCMCICA Type II 16-bit Expansion Slots
NET: THey originally shipped with a 14.4K Lucent modem with a dongle, most of the time those are long since removed though. I'm currently testing out the two WiFi Cards that will work with DOS/WFWG in it - a Orinoco based Lucent WaveLAN Silver, and a Cisco LMC-352 Aironet 350 Series cards

OTHER FEATURES: LCD Panel readout that displays power saving mode for early APM, HDD, FDD, Lock key status, and the status of the batteries installed. Also completley or almost completley tool-less when it comes to replacing the RAM, HDD, or batteries. Like the Versa E/P/Ultralite, it comes capable of being equipped with every kind of screen from a "D" model DTSN B&W 640p LCD, a "C" Model Active Matrix 640P LCD, a "TC" Model wiht a 640K True Color capable LCD (570 model only - see notes on this), and even a pen with touch tablet version.

PERFORMANCE: Performance is roughly on par with a lower-end Pentium 75. It runs Quake well enough to be fun, and things like GTA and GTA London at full tilt without skipping frames if configured well. It runs Diablo flawlessly, save for some glitches with audio due to the Crystal audio codec being somewhat wonky. It also has some issues with things like WSSXLAT.EXE so SoundBlaster emulation is a true gamble on this laptop.

EXPANDABILITY

Given the base feature-set, if there ever comes a inexpensive SB/OPL compatible audio card for PCMCIA this WILL become one of the ultimate MS-DOS based laptops you can find as it will basically become the candy-shop for options. The Touch model feature is still awaiting me replacing the digitizer but I have some candidates picked and will update this entry when I get one and get it working, I could see this being great for playing Point'N'Click Graphical Adventures and things like Solitaire or Majohng, or doing PIxel art on this sytem, furthering it's expandibility. One serious note on expansion, if you have a Versa M/75 PC-570-xxxx model, you have a tricky model to work with. It won't take the myriad of other screens availible without swapping out a daughtercard on the motherboard used for controlling the True Color modes on a special version of the regular NEC 640x480p LCD panel (NL6448AC30-09).

PROS
- Easy Expandability
- Easy to repair, taking it apart to me I'd think akin to a Gen 1 Lenovo X1 carbon Touch
- Relatively cheap in some cases (ie under $60.00 if you play your cards right)
- Power Jack design is decent and robust
- Amazing battery life for a laptop on such old battery technology
- Performance is almost on par with a low-end Pentium 75Mhz, runs even late DOS games really well, especially with VBE
- Takes almost any hard disk, detects it, and runs it with a DDO like it was made for it
- Also has a Car Adapter AND A Docking Station that offers ISA Slots and CD-ROM
- Nothing for this laptop is too expensive, most things being under $50.00, prices are going up on some of these
- The Versa Trac is very comfortable

CONS
- very heavy, weighs as much as a Gibson Les Paul guitar (think around 7-12LBS)
- the plastic often cracks around the hinge on the right side of the screen (easily fixed by J.B. Weld from inside)
- have had some problems with the spacebar and a couple keys sticking, so clean those mechanisms if you get one and it's well used
- Will require a WEP network at best for WiFi Access due to age of cards availible and slots
- No CD-ROM support, so get used to removing that hard disk - a LOT
- WSS Compatible Sound with no OPL means a lot of DOS games won't have anything better than internal speaker sound, or no sound at all
- Model Numbers can be confusing as there is both a PC-470 and PC-570 model, and the screens are not interchangeable between both as the PC-570 uses special circuitry for the "True Color" graphics capability.

NEC VERSA P/75

P75.jpg

SPECIFICATIONS
PSU: 45 Watt NEC 4 Pin Power Supply, very sturdy connector design
BATT: Six Cell Nickel Metal Hydride 7.5V "Smart Battery", gives about 2HR of life per battery (up to 4HR total with 2)
CASE: NEC Ultralite Versa 486 series case w/ removable/flipable screen
MoBo: NEC UltraLite Versa planar with power & CPU daughterboards (that seem interchangable)
CPU: Intel Pentium 75 MHZ
RAM: 8MB on-board, up to 40MB
FDD: 1.44MB 3.5" removable floppy whose bay can be used to add a second NiMH battery, specific to the M and P models
HDD: Originally came with 120MB-320MB HDD "PAKs", but takes modern PATA drives with a DDO fine
GFX: C&T 65545 1MB SVGA, "TC" Models have a special adapter board for "True Color" that makes them incompatible with the regular M/75 models
SND: ESS 688 SoundBlaster compatible Audio with OPL3
EXP: 2x PCMCICA Type II 16-bit Expansion Slots
NET: THey originally shipped with a 14.4K Lucent modem with a dongle, most of the time those are long since removed though. I'm currently testing out the two WiFi Cards that will work with DOS/WFWG in it - a Orinoco based Lucent WaveLAN Silver, and a Cisco LMC-352 Aironet 350 Series cards

OTHER FEATURES: LCD Panel readout that displays power saving mode for early APM, HDD, FDD, Lock key status, and the status of the batteries installed. Also completley or almost completley tool-less when it comes to replacing the RAM, HDD, or batteries.

PERFORMANCE: Performance with the Versa P/75 can be great, or horrid, depending on how you look at it. It's basically a Pentium 75Mhz plopped atop the aging i486 based Versa platform. Much of the chipset is identical to the Versa M/75 and the performance is VERY close. The only time it's noticeable is using old console emulators or games like Diablo optimized for Pentium code. Basically, it's "Bus castrated" as it's still, all in all, a PCMCIA/VLB based laptop like anything 386 SL or 486 based. So performance feels more like a faster 486 DX4-100 than a Pentium. The great selling point was the Pentium processor but the NEC Versa Pentium level laptops did not really catch their full potential until the 2000/4000/6000 series released toward the late end of 1995.

EXPANDABILITY: Much the same as the others. Can use all the same screens as a Versa E/M/Ultralite, including your old ones. Witha WiFi Card and Windows 98 SE, you may be able to connect up to WPA-PSK Wireless networks with a Cisco Aironet card, 3rd party WiFi Management software, and a firmware update for the card.

PROS
- Easy Expandability
- Easy to repair, taking it apart to me I'd think akin to a Gen 1 Lenovo X1 carbon Touch
- Relatively cheap in some cases (ie under $60.00 if you play your cards right)
- Power Jack design is decent and robust
- Amazing battery life for a laptop on such old battery technology
- Pentium optimized code will see a speed increase over the M/75
- Takes almost any hard disk, detects it, and runs it with a DDO like it was made for it
- Also has a Car Adapter AND A Docking Station that offers ISA Slots and CD-ROM
- Nothing for this laptop is too expensive, most things being under $50.00, prices are going up on some of these
- The Versa Trac is very comfortable
- Full SoundBlaster support right out of the box, will run most DOS Games perfectly, have had some issues with the early version of Monkey Island though

CONS
- very heavy, weighs as much as a Gibson Les Paul guitar (think around 7-12LBS)
- the plastic often cracks, easily fixable with baking soda and Superglue
- have had some problems with the spacebar and a couple keys sticking, so clean those mechanisms if you get one
- Versa Trac Trackball needs cleaned occasionally
- Have had problems with the 800x600 pixel models having a "yellow" backlight
- No CD-ROM support, so get used to removing that hard disk - a LOT
- Seems to have the flimsiest plastic design, mine has the entire bottom held together with baking soda and superglue at thsi point (but it works great)

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