junk wrote on 2024-09-02, 16:07:

Hi all, The laptop is a Portege 2000, it was designed for winxp but i'm in for the challenge to make it a good win98se/dos platf […]
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Hi all,
The laptop is a Portege 2000, it was designed for winxp but i'm in for the challenge to make it a good win98se/dos platform because the video card just sucks for winxp gaming.

After dealing with plop and easy2boot for a while, i managed to get rid of winxp and prepare the drive for a win98se install, but I forgot to add the usb driver to the win98se files before installing, very sad 🙁.

Now i'm "locked" (no driver for sdcard, usb, network, infrared, also external usb cd not recoignized because of usb driver i think), so the only way is to get the micro ide to ide adapter and use other pc and move the files; but before buying it, is there any way to use some driver that came with win98se files that could work at least with the sdcard or the infrared? I try a few options but after restart the devices still don't work.

Also, i cannot reinstall win98se again because plop was rewrited by win98 mbr info (i think) so no more usb boot. The laptop have cd boot but doesn't work with my external toshiba dvd-rom (very ironic).

Any ideas are welcome, cheers.

I have used a USB CD drive to boot this laptop, so it's your drive that's incompatible.

I would try a USB floppy drive. They work well with this model, and you can boot directly from it. Use a Win98SE boot disk and copy nusb33e.exe to C:\...
Profit!

You may be able to use the infrared port if it has one, I don't remember, but you'd need a device to transmit the file. Maybe another old laptop, cellphone, or a PDA.

I don't know if it's such a good idea to use Win98 on this machine, considering the sound card is AC97 and XP has better compatibility for later software and drivers. 2D stuff runs fine, and I wouldn't use this laptop for 3D software anyway.

You could re-size the 98 partition, make it smaller, and then install XP alongside.

If you're going to buy an adapter, the hard drive is one of those tiny 1.8" 50-pin IDE, not the run-of-the-mill 44-pin IDE, keep that in mind.

Sorry my ignorance, if the laptop doesn't support usb boot, a usb external floppy drive should work?

Yes the laptop has cd boot but seems that he doesn't like this more newer toshiba drive.

Well my idea was to use some of the win98 drivers (or modify?) to at least allow to work the infrared, the network, or the sd card reader but i think is impossible; in case if the infrared i have other old laptops that could transmit the usb driver.

About win98 vs xp, yes i think this laptop belongs to the xp age but the graphics are terrible (before deleting winxp i tried nfs3 with software and direct3d rendering and runs awful) so i will try dos games (using sb emu) and some win98 games and see how it goes, that's all i want for this little laptop.

thanks for the adapter details, i went for this one, hope is the right one.

junk wrote on 2024-09-03, 13:49:

Sorry my ignorance, if the laptop doesn't support usb boot, a usb external floppy drive should work?
Yes the laptop has cd boot but seems that he doesn't like this more newer toshiba drive.

It supports USB floppy drive boot, yes!
Enter the BIOS menu by pressing the ESC key before the boots. Then you will be prompted to press F1 to enter the BIOS menu.
Choose the appropriate boot sequence.
You could also try chain loading the CD/DVD USB drive using a floppy with PLOP boot manager.

junk wrote on 2024-09-03, 13:49:

Well my idea was to use some of the win98 drivers (or modify?) to at least allow to work the infrared, the network, or the sd card reader but i think is impossible; in case if the infrared i have other old laptops that could transmit the usb driver.

Why would you need to modify the drivers? They don't work out of box?
Last time I used IR to transmit files was some 20 years ago so... I don't remember the whole procedure, but it's doable.

junk wrote on 2024-09-03, 13:49:

About win98 vs xp, yes i think this laptop belongs to the xp age but the graphics are terrible (before deleting winxp i tried nfs3 with software and direct3d rendering and runs awful) so i will try dos games (using sb emu) and some win98 games and see how it goes, that's all i want for this little laptop.

Are you sure that SBEMU is compatible? Bear in mind that unfortunately the LCD panel isn't the greatest for DOS gaming. It has poor scaling, and a wrong aspect ratio (1.58 instead of 1.33). Were you aware of this?

DOSBox works fine, but you'll face the scaling problem again, and the CPU/GPU are too slow to support proper 1024x768 upscaling. ScummVM OTOH does a fine job!

junk wrote on 2024-09-03, 13:49:

thanks for the adapter details, i went for this one, hope is the right one.

You're welcome my friend. It looks like it will work! You can also get a compact flash to 50-pin IDE adapter and use a CF card instead of the spinning disk. A USB floppy drive comes in very handy too.

Hey,
Adapter for the micro ide arrived and usb functionality is working! The laptop came with a 60gb kingspec ssd installed when purchased it.

BTW, stock win98se drivers didn't work for the infrared, neither network, video, sdcard, etc, but all solved now, chipset, agp and video driver installed. Next time i will try to remember to add the nusb33e.exe to the installer files.

Well, sbemu seem that is not compatible with the crappy ali sound card (still ac97).

About the laptop and the panel, well I wasn't aware but it has a stretch mode (in the bios) and the panel is TFT, i don't see any lag or ghosting, and for some reasing sound blaster emulation under windows is working (midi sound like crap but it works in duke3d and doom as "general midi"), so full screen dos gaming is working.

Also the size and package of this laptop is unbeatable i think. Now time to install other games and spend some time playing, thanks for the help.

Cheers!

Correcction: full screen dos gaming under windows 98!

junk wrote on 2024-09-08, 18:42:

Hey,
Adapter for the micro ide arrived and usb functionality is working! The laptop came with a 60gb kingspec ssd installed when purchased it.

BTW, stock win98se drivers didn't work for the infrared, neither network, video, sdcard, etc, but all solved now, chipset, agp and video driver installed. Next time i will try to remember to add the nusb33e.exe to the installer files.

Excellent news!

junk wrote on 2024-09-08, 18:42:

Well, sbemu seem that is not compatible with the crappy ali sound card (still ac97).

I'm sure this sound card will be supported in the future, as the ALi/ULi chipset is pretty common. It may take months or years, but SBEMU is slowly moving forward.

junk wrote on 2024-09-08, 18:42:

About the laptop and the panel, well I wasn't aware but it has a stretch mode (in the bios) and the panel is TFT, i don't see any lag or ghosting, and for some reasing sound blaster emulation under windows is working (midi sound like crap but it works in duke3d and doom as "general midi"), so full screen dos gaming is working.

On Windows 9x it's standard to have some level of DOS support for the sound card (wave sound). The software midi emulation is acceptable, but you don't have any adlib/FM support and that's the whole point of running DOS/9x, IMHO.

The scaling for DOS native resolution (720x400) is poor: pixels don't look as sharp, and it doesn't keep the aspect ratio. Instead of 4:3, it's 16:10 (black bars on the top and bottom).

You will notice that games that run on Windows at a 640x480 resolution also don't look as sharp. The only resolution that looks properly on this panel is 1024x768. Back in the day, apparently it was expensive to have an LCD panel to work well on more than one resolution...

junk wrote on 2024-09-08, 18:42:

Also the size and package of this laptop is unbeatable i think. Now time to install other games and spend some time playing, thanks for the help.

This machine is incredibly light, has a nice keyboard, it's aesthetically pleasing... a feat of engineering.
The only real downsides are the bad screen scaling, the proprietary ram module, and of course the lack of SB compatibility.

If you still want to play DOS games, I advice you to try the official DOSBox. You will get SB16 support and the correct aspect ratio (4:3) albeit the pixels still don't look perfect, it's much better.

Here's some key parts of the config file I found to work the best:

1[sdl]
2fullresolution=original
3output=surface
4[render]
5aspect=true
6scaler=none

Late DOS games such as Doom don't run at full speed but you have a lot of options for those on newer systems, such as source ports.
Keep an eye on ScummVM too, it's pretty good for many many games. It's also compatible with Windows 9x.

Hey dude, thanks again. Guess you have this very same laptop or similar toshiba platform?

Hope sbemu add support for this sound card; some games really needs dos mode (im struggling to run under windows terminal velocity, network rally championship 2000, both need more than 550k conventional memory, didn't have time to correctly setup config.sys). The display yeah, is a shame about the aspect ratio, but haven't played dos games in ages everything looks good to me! I was comparing to normal aspect ratio images of duke 3d in google and yes, some pixels are weird, still duke 3d runs in vesa 800x600 mode and looks alright.

About dosbox, i will try it but didn't expect to run fine on this kind of machine, guess it will be slower?

I have scummvm in my main laptop to play indy and the fate of atlantis, will give it a go!

Jizz wish i can add some real sound card and a capable video card to this little case!! 🤣.

Cheers.