Well, looks like it works and I already had required files set up, just forgot about it 😉

Tested under Windows 98 MS-DOS mode (F8 key on boot)
autoexec.bat: C:\ESSAUDIO.COM
config.sys: DEVICE=C:\ESSAUDIO.SYS

ESS PCI Audio DOS Device Setup Utility, Version 2.31S Maestro 3P Current PCI IRQ: 5 PCI IO Base: EC00 DMA Mode is TDMA […]
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ESS PCI Audio DOS Device Setup Utility, Version 2.31S
Maestro 3P
Current PCI IRQ: 5 PCI IO Base: EC00
DMA Mode is TDMA

SBPro Game Settings:
SB IO=220h IRQ=5 DMA=1
MPU401 Disabled
Game Port Disabled

Here is video with directly recorded audio (PoP and prehistorik 2): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VDpDwbArmHMc … iew?usp=sharing

I attach files I used (dell_i8100_ess_dos.zip).

That last part of the Prince of Persia intro music 😁

I'm a bit jealous, I've spent so many hours trying to get it to work well on a N600c now (it works now but music volume is uncontrollably loud)

Thanks for sharing your files. I will definitely be trying and comparing your ESSAUDIO.INI to what I've got. Perhaps I can find some differences that will solve the music volume issue 😀

Thx again for your guide. Made some testing.

Sea Legends, the sound is extremely quiet, music is okay
Doom 1, the sound is quiet, music is okay
Duke 3d, sound, and music are okay but I'm getting some strange stutters
Prince now got proper music and its okay, but the sound is too quiet

And then I've tried Sea Legends again and now I'm getting Audio error. Strange.

Made a quick video about all of this: https://youtu.be/ZHME23Q7jtY

I would say the music in Prince of Persia and Duke Nukem 3D (after the first few seconds) are quite loud when you compare it to Doom (whose music volume slider does work, for unknown reasons). Maybe my ears are just too sensitive but there is a volume difference, at least.

If you enable the hardware volume buttons (needs one modification in the .BAT file, I'll upload a new one later) you can probably adjust the sound volume to your liking.

I found one of these on ebay, don't know if it works. I $34 free shipping, I'll have to get a power supply to test it.

I think this must be a very rare laptop. It was the 1st ever laptop with nvidia graphics, and besides all the reviews you can find. Almost no one has one.

It have geforce 2 go and Yamaha YMF754B-R

Looks a little rough but it wasn't bad. hope it work will be a restoration project if it does.

https://support.dynabook.com/support/staticCo … omTOCLink=false

WOW that looks interesting! Found one in Russia, also without AC Adapter 😀
Any info on Yamaha YMF754B-R? Good FM Synth? Works in native DOS?

According to the detailed specifications under sound:

1Yamaha YMF754B-R sound chip, Codec chip AKM4543
216-bit stereo, Windows Sound System Ver.2.0
3Sound Blaster® Pro compatible (in DOS box only)

So it is supported for DOS, however, it needs a TSR and the BIOS setting are required to be set, I believe.

What is TSR? And I guess there is no chance for any BIOS settings on the laptop, they are crippled as much as possible 😀

P.S. One issue, the one I found is Toshiba Satellite 2805-S302 while the one with GF is 2805-S402. Not sure what's the difference here...

By the way, was there any laptop with MPU-401 or smth like it? Best I've got on N600c is Sound Blaster 16. But of course I'm trying to get as close as possible to my childhood memories and back then I had Sound Blaster AWE64. I've compared and AWE32, 64, or MPU-401 sounds close to each other. Just to compare of what I've got now and what I want:
https://youtu.be/98-fMVFO1r8

vorob wrote on 2020-07-29, 07:44:

What is TSR? And I guess there is no chance for any BIOS settings on the laptop, they are crippled as much as possible 😀

P.S. One issue, the one I found is Toshiba Satellite 2805-S302 while the one with GF is 2805-S402. Not sure what's the difference here...

TSR means Terminate and Stay Resident. It's software that has the ability to be "running" after it ends. The is mostly used under DOS and it's typically used by DOS drivers, for instance.

Welp. It might not work, if it doesn't i'm going to try to fix it xxD. I talk the guy down a lot. doesn't seem like too expensive of a gamble. People said it's like the performance of a TNT2. Which might be good enough for retro games, with a pIII 850.

vorob wrote on 2020-07-29, 07:44:

What is TSR? And I guess there is no chance for any BIOS settings on the laptop, they are crippled as much as possible 😀

P.S. One issue, the one I found is Toshiba Satellite 2805-S302 while the one with GF is 2805-S402. Not sure what's the difference here...

those ones have a s3 savage IX. Which isn't bad at all for retro gaming.

Any why you focus on this machine? For example N600C, which we discuss here recently, has native dos sound and its ATI M6 card can handle 3d games.

I'm personally interested in Toshiba Satellite 2805-S302 just because of geforce. I love geforce. But it seems that native dos sound won't work here.

vorob wrote on 2020-07-30, 07:02:

Any why you focus on this machine? For example N600C, which we discuss here recently, has native dos sound and its ATI M6 card can handle 3d games.

I'm personally interested in Toshiba Satellite 2805-S302 just because of geforce. I love geforce. But it seems that native dos sound won't work here.

RV100 chip which has no hardware T&L
No 8-bit palletized textures
Lucky table fog can be re-enable with a reg hack for rv10, if u bother to do it otherwise no.

As far as the sound, I don't think it's as big of an issue as people make it out to be. besides that the Yamaha XG will sound maybe 4 times better than that ess in windows. Don't rule out dos support yet even if u have to use a TSR that is still real dos.

the N600C is great don,t get me wrong, it's just that I have a thinkpad T42 in storage with a radeon 7500 which is pretty similar. I also have a docking station for it that has a PCI slot and I put a A3d in it for dos support

See link here of another user with the same sound chips, and how they got it to work. Re: Problems with a YMF754 inside a Toshiba Tecra 8200

But for most part if you use the vxd drivers dos games run fine in windows.

Lastly have a look at the Dos compatibility of Radeon R6 vs Geforce 2
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

Does anyone know any issues with M6 and Wrath of Earth? Tried under clean dos and all I get is a black screen.

Warlord

You've convinced me. Now I'm looking for Toshiba Satellite 2805-S402 😀 Just because it's Toshiba and GeForce and Yamaha. I want it!

TOSHIBA Satellite 5005 S504

Well, the only thing I was able to find is this. According to specs, it has:

1Intel Pentium III 1.10GHz processor
2NVIDIA GeForce2Go graphics controller 
3YAHAMA YMF753 Codec Chip
416-bit stereo, Windows Sound System V.2.0, Sound Blaster® Pro compatibility (in DOS box only)
5Built-in Harman/Kardon Stereo Speakers with subwoofer
6Full Duplex, 64 Voices, MIDI (playback) Support
73D sound support (HRTF 3D positional audio)
8DirectSound, Direct3DSound (supported by sound driver), DirectMusic 

If it's possible to enable native DOS sound then I'm in 😀

vorob wrote on 2020-07-31, 22:13:

If it's possible to enable native DOS sound then I'm in 😀

Well it says "In DOS box only" which means only the Windows 9x emulated SB Pro sound.

This is an AC'97 chip. Unlikely you will get native DOS sound, and it wouldn't be very good if you did get it.

I can only say, Good luck.

ymf753 wont work in dos. ymf754 will work with tsr tho.

Re: Problems with a YMF754 inside a Toshiba Tecra 8200
this guy already said he got it working.
anyways my laptop arrived it's in good cosmetic condition. Hinges are broke tho. I have the laptop apart, and almost have the hinges off. Then I have to try and find some replacements and order a power brick to test it. Plan is to not be anymore deep in this than 50 dollars. so if it doesn't work i wont feel bad.

icebear wrote on 2020-07-12, 09:38:

So finally Sound in DOS works for me, even in Games using dos4gw. (Auto Sound detection in Setup Programs works now) […]
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So finally Sound in DOS works for me, even in Games using dos4gw. (Auto Sound detection in Setup Programs works now)

Im using the modded Setupds for ich2
setupds_ich2.7z on philscomputerlab)
(You also need the Yamaha Dos package)
In setupds you Should See "pc-pci" unter DMA Mode, irq cant be changed and is fixed to irq11)

That Games can access the soundchip on irq5 you need a little program called "swapirq"
Call it with "Swapirq /i11 /i5"
Now the program routes irq5 calls by Games to Hardware irq11 and everything should work fine.

Warlord wrote on 2020-08-01, 02:45:

ymf753 wont work in dos. ymf754 will work with tsr tho. […]
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ymf753 wont work in dos. ymf754 will work with tsr tho.

Re: Problems with a YMF754 inside a Toshiba Tecra 8200
this guy already said he got it working.
anyways my laptop arrived it's in good cosmetic condition. Hinges are broke tho. I have the laptop apart, and almost have the hinges off. Then I have to try and find some replacements and order a power brick to test it. Plan is to not be anymore deep in this than 50 dollars. so if it doesn't work i wont feel bad.

icebear wrote on 2020-07-12, 09:38:

So finally Sound in DOS works for me, even in Games using dos4gw. (Auto Sound detection in Setup Programs works now) […]
Show full quote

So finally Sound in DOS works for me, even in Games using dos4gw. (Auto Sound detection in Setup Programs works now)

Im using the modded Setupds for ich2
setupds_ich2.7z on philscomputerlab)
(You also need the Yamaha Dos package)
In setupds you Should See "pc-pci" unter DMA Mode, irq cant be changed and is fixed to irq11)

That Games can access the soundchip on irq5 you need a little program called "swapirq"
Call it with "Swapirq /i11 /i5"
Now the program routes irq5 calls by Games to Hardware irq11 and everything should work fine.

Eh. I recently had to replace my SXGA Thinkpad T21 with another T21 (60 bucks including shipping, an XGA machine) thanks to the ol’ blink of death (BoD) issue. I swapped motherboards and ended up with 2 T21s having the same problem (although the one with the board that was swapped out and suspected bad and the leftover XGA screen “recovered” after a day or so) - my guess is that the aging SXGA screen pulled way too much power for the DC circuit (known weak spot for the series) and caused it not to boot. I will probably need to swap the screens and see if that makes the problem go away.

So yeah, I sympathize - sometimes it’s about not overblowing the budget on these old battleaxes, and it’s also about not wasting too much time working out their kinks. To me, it’s like doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

AFAIK buying after so many retro thin clients and laptops for gaming (an HP t5720, a Wyse WT9450XE and an Igel Winnet IV, a pair of Thinkpad 560E/166MHz, an X31 and a pair of T21s, a Dell Latitude C600, a Compaq n600c, a 2010 MBP13, and I had the Sony VAIO SR27k and Toshiba SatPro 4260XDVD in the past), the mythical ideal laptop (or indeed portable DOS gaming device) does not exist. Even if the specs looks right, something falls down somewhere.

Example:
The X31 is AC97 only (so is the t5720, but that has a PCI slot)
The 2010 MBP13 can’t run anything older than win7 (bootcamp funkiness)
The Wyse WT9450XE is Ezra C3+Trident CyberBlade i1 integrated graphics +Early Via Southbridge, so it’s kinda weak for x86, kinda weak for 3D and Via FM emulation is DOS conventional memory hungry, CPU timing sensitive and a bit buggy, so not ideal either
The Igel Winnet IV is kinda small to fit a Voodoo2 by itself, the graphics is SiS6326 based and the K6-2E 333MHz is a bit weak.
The C600 is bulky, has a mushy keyboard and the DOS FM emulation is...wanting
I have to pull one of the 512MB SODIMM from the N600c if I am running Win98 with similar FM issues, and the X31 is simply better than the n600c (Pentium-M, 2GB RAM ceiling, USB2, dualband WiFi, a better AC97 chip and the same Radeon GPU, all in a smaller chassis), rendering it rather pointless.
The SatPro 4260 has the old Toshiba “smiley” touchpoint layout which drives me nuts
The VAIO SR27k is biblically slow in Windows XP due to the 440MX chipset and the Sony hotkeys require a TSR that does not exist in DOS
The 560E refuses to load Rowan flight sims and requires me to strip it to change HDD images.

Just accept that there will always be flaws in the systems and move on...or buy multiple systems, each specializing in certain things. That’s what I did. My wife might think I am becoming a hoarder (true....?), but I think I can toss one or more machines out and still be okay.

The 560E is great with DOS when combined with setmul. I’ll probably keep one. Probably with a custom 3D printed SD-to-IDE slot that makes it easier for me to work with it.
The C600 has palettized textures and table fog with a 16MB Rage128 Mo for those few games that need it. I can part with it and not be too upset.
The T21 has decent enough DOS audio, can play Rowan games and handle most DX5/6 titles well. I’ll make a working machine and toss out the other.
The X31 is portable and runs most windows games well up until 2002, and it’s super-useful as a retro machine “bridge”. That’s a definite keeper.
The MBP13 runs everything post 2002 just fine in Bootcamp or DOSBox. That’s an okay machine to have.
The n600c is...a great example of a Tualatin machine that I really didn’t need but enjoy having around. But if I need to, that one is going as well.
The HP t5720 is a good little Athlon machine and not big enough to be too annoying, but if I have to, that can go as well
The Wyse is...not going to be missed
The Igel can be easily modified (K6-3+ 550MHz, a Voodoo 2 and onboard ESS Solo-1) and I was able to get it to do stuff that was otherwise not expected.
At this stage, only the MBP13, the T21 and the X31 have working batteries. Everything else needs a power brick, which renders them less useful.

If all I have is the Igel (DOS to Windows 98) the X31 (Win98 to early XP) and the MBP13 (all the way to the end of XP and some 7), I’ll be more than happy. That’ll cover the gamut of competent game playing from 386Sx25 (via setmul on the Igel) all the way to a Core 2 Duo/Penryn which spans the time period from 1990 to 2010, and I’ll free up a ton of storage space.

I am starting to see Marie Kondo’s point about throwing things away and gaining joy.