One thing I forgot: regardless whether I go for single or dual boot: I want to install an SSD in the T41. Do I need a specific adapter for WIN ME/98?

thinkpadschminkpad wrote on 2025-01-24, 12:15:

One thing I forgot: regardless whether I go for single or dual boot: I want to install an SSD in the T41. Do I need a specific adapter for WIN ME/98?

No, you don't, Win98 works fine with SSD. I have Thinkpad T40 type 2373 and able to run some games even in DOS using SBEMU (in protected mode too).

I use a 128GB mSATA drive in a mSATA-to-44-pin IDE adapter in my T41. It's a tight fit, but it works well.

I recall having trouble getting the on-board audio working in Windows 9x. A generic USB Stereo adapter might work with Windows 98. Otherwise, you could try a PCMCIA audio card.

The good news is that Mobility Radeon 7xxx and 9xxx are fully supported in Windows 9x.

A T41 should handle a Me/XP dual boot just fine. I have a much weaker A31p doing that.

As far as selling the T60 - it depends on what you consider 'retro' and whether you have space to keep two laptops. There are definitely some XP era games that could benefit from the dual-core CPU in the T60, but they might be held back by its weak GPU.

In any case, those in your list do not seem too demanding for a the 1.6GHz Banias Pentium M in your T41, which by the way you can upgrade to a 2GHz/2.1GHz Pentium M Dothan CPU (but make sure it's the one with the 400MHz FSB and model number ending in 5, not 0).

This thread got me thinking about retesting Windows 98 SE on my T41. I downloaded the Win9x drivers from Archive.org:

https://web.archive.org/web/20241122084853/ht … t/ddfm/T41.html

I got the audio drivers working using the older drivers from the site, but Sound Blaster emulation within Windows is a bit wonky. Some software works completely in emulation, some work a little, and some crash to the desktop.

I got full music and Sound FX out of Rebel Assault for instance. I can only get Sound FX or Music out in Doom, but not both at the same time. Lucas Arts point and click titles Day of the Tentacle and Indiana Jones FoA crash. Interestingly, I got full sound out of Loom which uses Red Book audio.

id just use the t41 for 98 it will probably run most of those games not sure about vice city tho, i use 98 on my R40 2ghz, with radeon 16mb vram and same AD1891B audio, the onboad audio is usable but ist not perfect, theres two different drivers you can use, theres the standard thinkpad soundmax one which includes a 3com softsynth which is so-so, and theres the soundmax cadenza driver

info here :
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/soundmaxcadenza/index.html

which includes a standard roland general midi soundset if i remember right and also a yamaha XGlite, i couldnt get these fully working with dos games but i found a way to sort of get it working just not permanently,

if i select the yamaha soundset then select the synth in the midi tab in multimedia in control panel, id get no sound in dos games, if i leave the game running/midi music playing nothing then ALT+ENTER to change the game to windowed then select the standard windows/MS synth in the midi tab it would then play using the yamaha soundset, but it will only last till the midi ends or loops, then it will revert to the standard MS synth, its interesting testing out games like doom/duke3d/monkey island with a yamaha synth, would be nice if it was permanent, guess its like the yamaha S-YXG softsynths in that they are not meant for dos games, ive heard someone mention you can get softsynths working in 98 using VDMsound, which i know nothing about, hopefully someone with a thinkpad can figure out if its possible.

either way whatever driver you use you will only have general midi no FM synth you will have to use SBEMU for that.

Thank you all for the valuable tips and recommendations. I will get to it, once the T41 arrives. I have no idea what resolution the display is. If it's the lower resolution one, I'll keep both laptops.

If it has the higher res one, I'll test some games on it on XP to see if it can handle them. I forgot to mention, that I don't need Vice City or Jedi Academy to run it necessarily. I have a newer Dell laptop running Win 7, that should handle it.

I have the 14" screen with 1024x768 resolution. I think it looks gorgeous at all modes even with scaling. My laptop has the Mobility Radeon 9000, so it can output some respectable resolutions to an external monitor. I'm using a widescreen monitor for testing, and 1080p looks quite clean on my display.

I didn't mention that I had to do a board swap a few years ago due to water damage from the previous owner. The old board had damaged audio and power management circuits. It wasn't an issue since I purchased the Dock II for external audio, and I used software to push the CPU frequency up. I got tired of it, though, so I replaced the board.

I think the new board came from a T42 since it has the Mobility Radeon 9000 with 64MB of RAM vice the 32MB that came on the T41s. Other than some secuity features, it's a pretty much identical board. I also upgraded the CPU to the 2.0GHz Dothan. Like I mentioned before, it's a wonderful little retro battle-station.

It is limited to DirectX 8.1 at best, though. You would need a T42 with a Mobility Radeon 9600 for DX9 support. That's probably OK for most software that would run well on Windows 9x and a 2.0GHz or less single-core CPU.