Heh, this could go all over the place...

The perfect laptop for retro-paradise will have multiple sound cards and stuff 😉

But keeping it marginally realistic, I'd go for a laptop with Yamaha ISA sound (WMF719), some nice and compatible VGA. Voodoo3 would be nice. 1024x768 TFT.

Incoming... (based on years of research and experience)

This is based on not necessarily needing to slow down the machine for early speed-sensitive games, so basically mid-late DOS through late Win9x era.

• Architecture: ISA/PCI/AGP, like unto i440BX
• CPU: something Pentium III or better
• Video: Some fully-DOS-compatible chip (see https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/) that also has some good 3D acceleration for Win9x games. Voodoo 3 might be good, but more likely nVidia TNT or Geforce series is a better overall choice. Stay away from ATI, Matrox, NeoMagic, etc.
• Sound: Anything fully SB compatible, preferably SB16. Many people would want wavetable in addition to OPL3. Good choices are various ESS cards, Yamaha YMF or OPL3SAx series.
• Screen: 1024x768 with good and easily adjustable scaling options for low-res games.
• Storage: CF or maybe SD card for the disk drive. Accessible without screws, preferably.
• Removable storage: floppy drive, CD drive
• Networking: built-in WiFi (some generic chip with support for, at minimum, Win9x, perhaps new drivers would have to be written though), and Ethernet, preferably 3C509 or something, on the ISA bus. Would be super cool if the WiFi were also on the ISA bus somehow but that would not be simple.
• Serial, parallel, game/MIDI, USB ports
• PCMCIA/Cardbus slots
• Keyboard: some good quality thing, like the old Thinkpad keyboards -- this is very important! A mushy keyboard will ruin the whole experience. Form factor matters.
• Mouse: touchpad or "trackpoint". Either way, fine. The Toshiba laptops had a roller ball mouse that clipped onto the side; I think ideas like that are pretty neat too, but bulky. It needs a default, fallback option like the Trackpoint.
• Overall form: straight edges and black plastic rather than early 2000's bubble design. You could conceivably do white plastic nowadays as I believe we have plastic that doesn't yellow with age any more. Solidly built and not fragile or bendy. With modern technology you could cram all this stuff into a smaller space than you could in the 90's.
• Battery: replaceable 18650 cells, accessible on the bottom of the machine.
• Little niceties like physical brightness and volume controls

IBM T22, but with a good IPS screen and a 3Dfx card. The rest of the specs are fine. 😀

I second that T22 idea, but I'd also love something like that Compaq laptop that was incredibly thin by 90s/early 2000s standards.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2020-01-24, 22:47:

[*]Sound: Anything fully SB compatible, preferably SB16. Many people would want wavetable in addition to OPL3. Good choices are various ESS cards, Yamaha YMF or OPL3SAx series.

Personally I'd much rather have something like an ESS Solo 1 with DDMA on the PCI bus than "SB16." Internal wavetable and hardware external MIDI-out would be killer (via 15-pin "game" port or dedicated MIDI ports - you can even use something like Arturia's 3.5mm MIDI dongle spec to save space.)

I know it's supposed to be "DOS/Win9x", but if it's leaning more towards the Win9x side of things (PIII, etc.) then something with proper A3D or EAX would be really neat.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2020-01-24, 22:47:

[*]Screen: 1024x768 with good and easily adjustable scaling options for low-res games.

1280x800 or 1280x960 would make much more sense than 1024x768. You can evenly upscale 320x... or 640x... modes without resorting to interpolation. Plus it's nicer to have the extra resolution for Win9x use. (And yes, I would want the option to upscale 320x200 to 1280x800 without forcing a 4:3 aspect ratio.) Since we're wishlisting, an in-depth software control panel for the upscaler would be sweet. 1600x1*00 would give ultimate flexibility, but that gets a little squinty unless it's a pretty big laptop.

A few other ideas: robust USB 'legacy' implimentation in the BIOS. It'd be nice to have the option to present USB keyboards & mice as PS/2, flash drives as internal HDDs, USB gamepads or joysticks as if on a "virtual" gameport, etc.

One or two accessible Mini-PCI slots with "tidy" external breakout dongles available, or even a PCI(+ISA?) dock in a nice form factor like the ones for mid-2000 Dell Latitudes.

3D acceleration: Radeon 7000/9000 Mobility chips are very good. IMHO better than anything Nvidia released for laptops (that wasn't a power hog or space heater.) Of course onboard Voodoo3 would be sweet, and yes, there are stocks of NOS VSA-100 chips on Ebay, but they're not low-power or particularly cool-running either. 32MB+ dedicated VRAM.

Most of these features already exist in some laptops, just not all of them in the same one.

I took an hour or so to look into it for you, and found a few options. Id recommend a Satellite 2805-S402 if you can find one for a reasonable price.
It have geforce2 go with DX7 and T&L and YMF754 XG I have no idea how well it work in dos but it does have real OPL3.
Specs.
https://support.dynabook.com/support/staticCo … omTOCLink=false

Good Luck finding one.

2nd Option
Dell Inspiron 8100 or 8000

Warlord wrote on 2020-01-25, 04:13:

I took an hour or so to look into it for you, and found a few options. Id recommend [...]

^^ Did you read the original post? Because it sure looks like not:

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-01-24, 19:29:

I am not looking for what already exists. I want to know exactly what you would like to see.

Ok, so wifi is super easy to do with no drivers even. All you have to have is regular NIC and a NANO wireless router.

ISA and PCI are doable. Not sure about AGP though. I think something would have to be designed from scratch and pretty sure I would not have the time for that. What about onboard Matrox G450?

USB/PCMCIA/Cardbus should be doable.

CF is doable. SD maybe.

What about an integrated or clip in 88-key mechanical keyboard?
CD and floppy should be doable, even if they have to run off an ISA or PCI card.

Screen could be pretty much whatever.

Plan would definitely be to use a number of replaceable 18650 cells.

What size form factor and weight would be acceptable? This thing.. if I can get all the parts together at some point might turn into more of a small "luggable" and be pretty thick in order to house everything I want to. I would still want to do a flip up screen though.

Also have no idea what it would cost to produce in any type of quantity. May end up just being a shell and then you would add the needed parts yourself.

I'm basically looking to make something that can be built with mostly off the shelf parts that are more or less readily available.

xjas wrote on 2020-01-25, 04:48:

Warlord wrote on 2020-01-25, 04:13:

I took an hour or so to look into it for you, and found a few options. Id recommend [...]

^^ Did you read the original post? Because it sure looks like not:

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-01-24, 19:29:

I am not looking for what already exists. I want to know exactly what you would like to see.

I have a IBM 770X With a SelectaDock II same computer as this happy? I have 1 Voodoo 2 and a AWE64 Gold in my laptop. Not my video but mine is nicer than this, I upgraded mine to 512 ram. I also go the bigger Trident card its 8mb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGHcX0YTPKw
Also I have a t43 and a T41 both with Dock IIs with the PCI slots in them

But we want the "laptop" to house everything. No dock needed.

What is the point if you have to have a dock to get good 3d acceleration, etc.

I don't have to dock the t41 or t43 to have decent acceleration though, I been searching for the perfect laptop for a long time. They don't exist atleast not with the features I want. If you want good acceleration on 98se you have geforce2 go 4 go and ATI 7500. I have a Augigy2zs PCMCIA card for my Thinkpads.

98SE is somewhat easy to have a good laptop for. I have a Toshiba that uses a desktop PIV with a Geforce FX5200 Go. I also have a couple of the Audigy 2 ZS PCMCIA cards and some other PCMCIA cards.

I'm also not looking for the "perfect laptop" I am wanting to make something that is close-ish to laptop form factor that will be great for DOS and WIN9x

Even if an AGP expansion slot is not available, there are PCI cards that are good/great for DOS and Win9x.

What if you were able to put together something like this that has ISA and PCI expansion slots available.. all in one unit that was pretty small?

What if the "motherboard" could also be swapped out for something different?

I think this is more about making a super-configurable chassis to make your own laptop or small luggable more than anything else... at least for now anyway.

The big part would be the PCI and ISA slot boards but those should be fairly simple to design and make. Might not even have to make those depending on how much space is usable. Might be able to just use a PCI/ISA riser.

I see well I suppose if you had a wooden briefcase. You can fit a micro atx in there, and get one of those 20pin to mini itx power brick. You can get some riser cards and lay the cards flat in there somhow.

Pretty sure that a keyboard would be stupid, but you can build it so you can store a key board in the box then take it out. Put LCD in other half with some stero speakers. Lot of custom wood work but yea somthng like that can work if its is S370 or S7 with a low profile cooler.

That thing is huge... Hoping to end up with something smaller. One of the current setups I am thinking about is probably about 1/3 that size. Keyboard would not have to be integrated or stored.

Onboard USB with legacy support and floppy support is there as well. Onboard NIC and 4 IDE drive support as well. Just have to wait till some more stuff arrives to see if I can make it work.

ya that picture is example. You can fit this in 1u maybe 2/3s 1u Width. 1u is the smallest height though probably.

Went through this thought exercise many times 😀

- faster 486DX CPU, maybe Pentium 1
- 8-16MB RAM
- S3 Virge / Trio based GPU
- SB compatible sound card with real OPL3
- flash based storage, 2x2GB
- not too big, not too small, 11"-13"
- USB flash support, CF card slot
- internal Gotek
- relatively high DPI display for pixel perfect (or near perfect) scaling, lets say 4:3 1600x1200 (320x200 -> 1600x1200) + some hardware scalers
- buttons for brightness and volume
- paralel port, LAN

sledge wrote on 2020-01-25, 22:40:

Went through this thought exercise many times :) […]
Show full quote

Went through this thought exercise many times 😀

- faster 486DX CPU, maybe Pentium 1
- 8-16MB RAM
- S3 Virge / Trio based GPU
- SB compatible sound card with real OPL3
- flash based storage, 2x2GB
- not too big, not too small, 11"-13"
- USB flash support, CF card slot
- internal Gotek
- relatively high DPI display for pixel perfect (or near perfect) scaling, lets say 4:3 1600x1200 (320x200 -> 1600x1200) + some hardware scalers
- buttons for brightness and volume
- paralel port, LAN

This is good for a DOS machine, not DOS/Win9x.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-01-25, 06:59:

98SE is somewhat easy to have a good laptop for. I have a Toshiba that uses a desktop PIV with a Geforce FX5200 Go. I also have […]
Show full quote

98SE is somewhat easy to have a good laptop for. I have a Toshiba that uses a desktop PIV with a Geforce FX5200 Go. I also have a couple of the Audigy 2 ZS PCMCIA cards and some other PCMCIA cards.

I'm also not looking for the "perfect laptop" I am wanting to make something that is close-ish to laptop form factor that will be great for DOS and WIN9x

Even if an AGP expansion slot is not available, there are PCI cards that are good/great for DOS and Win9x.

What if you were able to put together something like this that has ISA and PCI expansion slots available.. all in one unit that was pretty small?

What if the "motherboard" could also be swapped out for something different?

I think this is more about making a super-configurable chassis to make your own laptop or small luggable more than anything else... at least for now anyway.

The big part would be the PCI and ISA slot boards but those should be fairly simple to design and make. Might not even have to make those depending on how much space is usable. Might be able to just use a PCI/ISA riser.

You could take it in this direction https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=130342 😁 But it wouldn't be x86 anymore.

I was checking out what the Toshibas can do in terms of the docking port, the 240 pin docks on later models like the Tecra 520CDT/Sat Pro 430CDS (2 rows) has PCI, which apparently in the dock used a PCI to ISA bridge to give so many ports in the now unobtainium desk station dock. It does break out the joystick / midi connector though 😁

The earlier ones, like the T4900CT (single row) only push ISA through the dock connector.

The unfortunate thing about all of this is that the Mini ITX standard had already shed standards like ISA/AGP, so there aren't really any small motherboards that have ISA, beyond the PC partner MVP3 board 😁
Maybe that with some risers and a 3d printed case??

@keenmaster486:
Oh, good point, I was reading "/" as OR, not as AND 😀