Try a Linux life-cd like Knoppix.
There is a big chance that all the built-in hardware is recognized automatically on a notebook of that vintage. Then you can use included tools like lspci or simply take a look at the kernel log to find out exact hardware specs.

Try Everest or Craig's PCI identification tool (assuming your soundcard is PCI).

You could also try AIDA16 (DOS) or Dr. Hardware for DOS.

Although with integrated audio in an ancient laptop I'm not sure I'd expect any modern Linux distro to have drivers.

Does the sound card actually require sound drivers? Have you actually tried a DOS game on it, properly configured?

I got all the BattleTech games to run at one point, Crescent Hawk Inception, Crescent Haw revenge etc but then it stopped. Win98 claims it's Esoniq but I don't trust it.
This is for DOS and Windows games so not sure how/why Linux would help.

Carrera wrote:

This is for DOS and Windows games so not sure how/why Linux would help.

Win98 usually gets the information from the PCI configuration space, so it should be correct. Although there are some manufacturers (usually of cheap clone hardware), who store incorrect or incomplete PCI IDs.

Carrera wrote:

This is for DOS and Windows games so not sure how/why Linux would help.

I did not mean _installing_ Linux, just booting up a LiveCD will do the job. The kernel usually is very verbose with hardware information and most LiveCDs include diagnostic tools, which could help in this case.
But it probably only would have been practical if you already had a LiveCD lying around... so just forget about it 😀

🤣. There are TONS of simple DOS progs you could whip onto a bootdisk to find out. AIDA16 is great, and I found another one in a 1 second google search. Forget linux.

If you can boot a CD, get Ultimate BootCD.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
or try
http://www.hwinfo.com/

HWInfo identified everything in a 486DX4 notebook I was messing with the other day. And, almost any OS newer than Windows 95 will have drivers for a comp from the Pentium era or older. Actually I really like Windows 95C for pre-Pentium systems.

Thanks.
Diskette is probab ly easier, although the laptop does have a USB port and built-in CD-ROM...

I sorta confused the point a bit, but HWInfo is for floppies and works great if AIDA fails

Went for the Ult. Boot CD since I just got 6Mbit DSL!