While doing maintenance on my Compaq N600c I found this weird jumper circuit board. What could it be?

Looks like the voltage regulator board to me.

The one edge even says P75PWR.

Interesting way to place it, as additional board.

VRM for CPU and motherboard's. No space on motherboard's, interconnections is the reliability issue.

Cheers,

Guys, need your guidance here. I have Compaq n400c with ATI m1 and ESS sound, and it works under pure dos. But I wanted better video and purchased N410c which looks the same but based on ATI m6. On the other side they’ve changed sound card from ess to smth called sound max. Guess I’ve lost pure dos sound?

Yep, unfortunately the N410c seems to have AC97 audio, based on this:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090131072938/ht … /2002/12/evo410

So, you won't get DOS native audio working, unfortunately.

- Alex

I see, thx! For some strange reason I don’t get any values even in win 98, so I can’t setup sound in windows dosbox. Hmm

Maybe a BIOS setting to enable it?

- Alex

Nope, nothing about it in bios. I found this full title of audio device: Analog Devices 1886A @ Intel 82801CAM ICH3-M - AC'97 Audio Controller.

I've got WDM driver and it won't allow dos games have sound in windows dosbox. I've tried some SoundMAX drivers from other vendors, even VXD ones, but no luck, they are not compatible with my laptop.

Bummer. On my S370 desktop, the RAM option for the Sound Blaster compatibility for the AC'97 sound chip. I guess it depends on the manufacturer of the AC'97.

If you're dedicated, you can mod the BIOS. However, that is not for the faint of heart.

- Alex

To answer the original question- did you consider Thinkpad 390E/390X? I'm not sure if this is the "perfect" laptop for DOS gaming but... where is the so called perfect laptop for DOS?? I don't think there is one. I personally think you need at least 2 laptops- one that is capable of DOS gaming and another one that is several years newer for Windows 9x/XP compatibility. I can tell you from my own experience 390E/390X supports Adlib/Sound Blaster audio in DOS so that's definitely a win. You can also install Windows 98 on it very easily for administrative purposes. I have a 390X and I'm perfectly happy with it and I also use a T23 for slightly newer stuff. Yes it has Neomagic graphics card but... where is the problem? It displays graphics just fine. I kind of cannot understand the point of these topics

Can run DOS but also Windows 95 for writing, internet browsing, etc.

Are you completely out of your mind? ? ?

BlackVega wrote on 2022-07-14, 17:22:

Are you completely out of your mind? ? ?

No.

BlackVega wrote on 2022-07-14, 17:22:

I kind of cannot understand the point of these topics

That's okay. It seems then that this thread is not for you.

So far you haven't found your "perfect" laptop for over 2 and a half years, despite having access to all of the information available and going over dozens of models before and you start to run out of IBM Thinkpad models. This kinda proves the point. Where is the answer?

where is the so called perfect laptop for DOS?

Here:

Toshiba 2805-s402 Ultimate retro gaming laptop

BlackVega wrote on 2022-07-14, 18:28:

Where is the answer?

The answer lies in a few Thinkpad models that I haven't added to the original post yet and some Compaq and other models that are similarly specced. Just haven't posted here in a while. Maybe I will update

Also if you scoff at the idea of browsing the internet with ancient computers, then perhaps you are new here, or have no sense of fun.

vorob wrote on 2022-07-14, 18:45:

where is the so called perfect laptop for DOS?

Here:

Toshiba 2805-s402 Ultimate retro gaming laptop

OK this is great to hear someone finally found the answer! I will be happy to read about it

keenmaster486 wrote on 2022-07-14, 19:06:

Also if you scoff at the idea of browsing the internet with ancient computers, then perhaps you are new here, or have no sense of fun.

I tried this several years back and this was no fun at all for me. Not to mention it is incredibly dangerous to do today. Maybe I'm a completely different kind of person and I prefer to play DOS games on old hardware

BlackVega wrote on 2022-07-14, 19:43:

I tried this several years back and this was no fun at all for me. Not to mention it is incredibly dangerous to do today.

IMO, it's neither fun (because at least 80% of the modern web does not work right, no matter how much you try to dance around it), nor dangerous (because just like the web doesn't work on Win9x, neither does the malware).

BlackVega wrote on 2022-07-14, 19:43:

keenmaster486 wrote on 2022-07-14, 19:06:

Also if you scoff at the idea of browsing the internet with ancient computers, then perhaps you are new here, or have no sense of fun.

I tried this several years back and this was no fun at all for me. Not to mention it is incredibly dangerous to do today. Maybe I'm a completely different kind of person and I prefer to play DOS games on old hardware

I beg to Differ.....this is going to be a long one....

First off, you don't need Windows to surf the web on an old computer. I use Links - http://links.twibright.com - to surf the web in DOS. They have a TLS 1.2 compatible web browser that so far renders any site I might want to visit on the internet with a vintage 386 or 486 PC without much trouble at all, and is blazing fast in Text mode, even on my 386 SX-20 (needs the 387 though). I download files and read documents on there all the time. Sure the rendering is not 100%, but it's still better than Windows based browsers. The whole browser is in a 7MB self-contained executable, and theres even a 3MB "lite" version for slower systems.

This false bit about security is something I'm really tired of in retro-gaming circles. You are no more at risk on a vintage machine surfing the internet than you were in the 90's, actually less so. Because you're not a target.

- Malware, Viruses, and Spyware WILL NOT WORK on DOS, Windows 3.1x, or Windows 9x, they are designed today to work on a 64-bit Windows 7/10 machine most likely, and will get confused and fail to run on Windows 3.1. To get anything of this type, you'd really have to be actively looking for it.

- Nobody wants to hack you. Why would they hack a old machine? To steal THe Secret of Monkey Island? Run off with an 8x16 pixel Ark of the Covenant? Put Duke Nukem in a Strange Land? Seriously? Upload the games found he hard drive to your abandonware site that will get sued and shut down anyway? The #1 reason people would hack a machine, is because $$$$$$. The #2 reason, is because it's challenging, and the people who find it challenging, are not interested in your rinky dink 486 with a 10mbps LAN connection that won't yield anything more than your WP51 Fanfic writings or someone's billing statement from 1992 if you were stupid and did not wipe the hard drive.

- One reason I quit Atari Age is I got into a heated, almost ban-worthy argument with someone over someone creating a botnet with a DOS system as a defense to my argument. Really, a friggin BOT. Most people can't even code a simple pong game or modern day "Eliza" in under 1GB today, so how in the heck would we expect some nefarious script kiddie - the most likely offender - to create a 16-bit Real Mode BOT or Bitcoin miner that does not alert the most likely somewhat technical user that something is up, or at least prove it's lack of worthiness when they realize the machine is only on a few hours a week.

The only security risks I see would be..

1) disabling your WiFi Security to use an old WiFi card. I get around this by limiting my Cell phone to one client and using the Cell phone tethering - which I get 10GB a month of. Before doing this, I tried knocking my 486 system OFF the Cell Phone Tethering - it did not work. I could not get multiple clients on there, no matter what I tried.

2) You are trying to make purchases on Amazon or e-bay or whatever using some old browser that can't even access the site anyway. Links would fail because most of these P.O.S. checkouts online use CSS, Javascript, ASPX, and HTTPS to carry out their transactions, and encrypt your data on a level a vintage machine cannot process in a timely fashion anyway.

3) Enabling SMB 1.0 and "Send Unencrypted Passwords to Third Party SMB Servers" on a modern NT System so you can use traditional file sharing. There's literally no point to do this anymore. Use mTCP suite - setting the PC up like an FTP server, and then transferring using FileZilla on a modern machine, is the best and most secure way I've found. Plus you NEED to turn FTPSRV off in order to run the software or view the files you put on the machine, nullifying the whole "It's FTP, it's Insecure" argument.

Almost all of these are things that need to be manually configured by the user and therefore are not that easy to do for someone just starting out without a guide of some kind . They involve editing plaintext files and understanding enough about how a TCP/IP DHCP network works before going in and editing it because you will break it and it will not work, or corrupt your data xfers.

And also to consider, regardless of system, is what content you are visiting anyway. If you visit some old ROM, Warez, or Porn site from the 90's that's still around dishing up crap - you get what you deserve. But that's true regardless of the age of the site or the age of the computer, and a lot of that is common sense.

Now, I'm not an infosec expert, but I do know from personal experience that this stuff is mostly FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) spread by computer manufacturers to make sure we all buy the latest, corporate controlled, neutered, UEFI "workstation". If someone here who knows more could explain how a hacker or malware could get on a single user, single tasking, real mode operating system when the packet driver is not loaded, mTCP has not negotiated an IP, the MTCPCCFG environment variable is not set, and there's no web browser active, I'd really like to know.

==anyway back on subject==

To me, there is no **best** in vintage laptops, you are trading something off for something else.

Right now, I have FIVE 486 laptops - a NEC Versa 40EC, Versa V/50, Versa M/75, Versa P/75, a BSI NanTan FMA3500C, and a DFI MediaBook (NanTan) FMAK9200M. All of them are good at some things, and not others. I can have sound on my P/75, but everything is letterboxed because 800600 screen. I can have WSS on my M/75, but it's cantankerous to get working because it's that horrible Crystal CS-4231 chip (that II refuse to let get me down so I'm trying to crack that nut and figure it out on a low-level), The V/50 and 40EC don't have sound, but the 40EC has the best LCD. The BSI is color and has the best FSTN screen I've ever seen (no ghosting and within 75% TFT levle contrast), but I can't even put it on the network or get sound because it does not have PCMCIA Slots - I'll need one of those Serial WiFi Modems for it and possibly one of those LPT Sound solutions if I want that. And the DFI is as close as you can get but I'm still stuck with a black and white Casio STN LCD panel despite having ESS488 audio with OPL/2.

If we were to make the "perfect" DOS laptop - at least in my mind's eye - it'd either be putting a CardBarker or that New PCMCIA Sound Card someone here is working on in the M/75, or swapping the screen on the DFI with either the FSTN from the BSi, or manage to wire in a TFT like the one from my NEC versa - whcih I have a pinout for...and the cabling going to the STN Adapter board in the DFI matches. That's the best I can think of. Plus with the DFI, I could throw an Am5x86 133 in there and have a 486 capable of holding it's own with a Pentium.