Epic sex.
It should also have adjustable clock speed, so you can run older games.

The only way to get really great DOS game compatiblity is DOSBOX. You can't build a PC that will run DOS games from the '80s thru the '90s without compromises. DOSBOX can do it no sweat and DOSBOX improves continuously. It emulates just about every piece of hardware that matters for games.

I would consider a netbook. They are fast enough to run all but the most advanced DOS games thru DOSBOX. They also have Intel GMA 3D accelerators and those are surprisingly decent with old Windows 3D games. I've been using an ASUS EeePC 900 for almost 2 years now and it has been useful for many old games.

Yes, but are netbooks Glide capable? A device like this would be absolutely awesome.

Netbooks aren't pocket size. Well not similar size to PSP and you can't put it in your pocket. DOSBox does require a powerful PC/device to run. Hmm... I'll look into Netbooks.... but will need to do some labs testing on the performance of DOSBox+ games under Netbooks.

Other than that... also looking into DIY own MS-DOS x86 gaming device. Apparently there's bunch of people who DIY portable gaming devices for a hobby. Will update you on news.

A Sony Vaio UX would be the right form factor http://products.pocketables.net/products/?id=144 but it would need to run Dosbox on it, I highly doubt you could install Dos on it 😀

I thought it worked as long it's an x86 CPU? It should be possible to boot from a USB CD-ROM drive, wich allows you to install MS-DOS 7.10 😀

videocard with dos compatible bios ?

Also I don't know how the essential control devices (keyboard, mouse) are connected to the device, it could be that these are internal usb devices. Not to mention that the mouse might really be a problem...

Back in 90's I remember there was a perfect laptop for that! It called Toshiba Libretto. It was a VHS size, Pentium 100MHz. Runs under Win95.
You can find one on ebay for about $100.
I think this one is very cool to play DOS and some of Win95 games!

You guys are forgetting at least one major DOS challenge. There was never good notebook sound hardware for DOS. The best that I know of was ESS ISA-based stuff but they still weren't as good as a Sound Blaster Pro. DOSBOX blows them away.

Svenne wrote:

I thought it worked as long it's an x86 CPU? It should be possible to boot from a USB CD-ROM drive, wich allows you to install MS-DOS 7.10 😀

You'll never get useful sound card capabilities from anything that can't run an ISA sound card. There is no such thing as a PCI sound card/chip with great DOS support, and I believe there are no DOS drivers at all for anything within the past 5 years or so.

Menkau_ra wrote:

Back in 90's I remember there was a perfect laptop for that! It called Toshiba Libretto. It was a VHS size, Pentium 100MHz. Runs under Win95.
You can find one on ebay for about $100.
I think this one is very cool to play DOS and some of Win95 games!

I bet it has audio issues with DOS. 😁

Also, old notebooks have awful LCD quality and LCD CCFLs don't age well. On top of that, old notebooks don't have quality scaling and very few DOS games run at typical native LCD resolutions. You'll either get ugly pixel stretch or have to run in a tiny letterboxed image.

Dominus wrote:

A Sony Vaio UX would be the right form factor http://products.pocketables.net/products/?id=144 but it would need to run Dosbox on it, I highly doubt you could install Dos on it 😀

That does look really interesting, except for the $2500 price tag. 😁
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/se … 5&storeId=10151

Basically if you wanted to make such a machine, you would need some serious dough . And then I think some of it should be run by an FPGA , and then perhaps you should use some kinds of integrated sound processor that was extremely compatible with a wide array of old sound hardware. And I think you should use flash drives as a hard drive. and then perhaps use a pentium 133 as the processor. And then maybe use some good flat screen. Anyway that was my thought upon it.

What about PCMCI cards? I am sure there were some Sound Blasters for laptops. But don't know how PCMCI sound cards works?

WolverineDK wrote:

Basically if you wanted to make such a machine, you would need some serious dough . And then I think some of it should be run by an FPGA , and then perhaps you should use some kinds of integrated sound processor that was extremely compatible with a wide array of old sound hardware. And I think you should use flash drives as a hard drive. and then perhaps use a pentium 133 as the processor. And then maybe use some good flat screen. Anyway that was my thought upon it.

You're reinventing the wheel. 😁 Why casually ignore that DOSBOX does all of this already? You just need to find a small piece of hardware, like that Sony device, that has a CPU fast enough for it.

Also, a P133 is not ideal for all that many DOS games. That's another thing to consider: you need to be able to control the CPU speed from 8088 to Pentium level. Good luck accomplishing that with real hardware. DOSBOX takes seconds to reconfigure.

Menkau_ra wrote:

What about PCMCI cards? I am sure there were some Sound Blasters for laptops. But don't know how PCMCI sound cards works?

The original PC card standard was similar to 16-bit ISA. I know that there were sound cards for it but I don't know what they were exactly. I don't remember there ever being a popular one.

A catch to PCMCIA is that you need drivers for it to function in DOS. "card services". This driver is in addition to drivers for the specific PC card. That seems like trouble waiting to happen.

The earliest Creative PC Card that I know of is the 2004 Audigy 2 Notebook. This is cardbus based (bridged PCI). I doubt that it supports DOS at all.

hat does look really interesting, except for the $2500 price tag

Yeah, these are expensive, even when you try to get them on ebay. I handled one once in a Sony store and it is definitely tooooo small for me 😀
(and using it with Dosbox would be a hassle because I *think* it only has a stilus pointer or so and Dosbox (actually SDL) doesn't like that too much)

swaaye,
even if you need drivers for windows to make it work, a lot of Dos games runs fine under Win98, for me.
Audigy2 is not the first card Creative made, but the last 😀 it is very interesting for to find out about pcmcia sound cards. I will keep searching and will post it here.
Just found that Toshiba Libretto was not only 100MHz. The last model I found was P233 MMX! Which is not bad at all for a dos!!!
And I still don't know what sound card is build in. Maybe, I wish, it would work with dos:)

Menkau_ra wrote:

even if you need drivers for windows to make it work, a lot of Dos games runs fine under Win98, for me.

Of course. I used to do that myself way back, but there are many DOS games that will blow up in 9x. For example, the Crusader series simply will not run in 9x due to memory manager issues.

You can't beat DOSBOX.

Menkau_ra wrote:

Audigy2 is not the first card Creative made, but the last 😀

The last cardbus card maybe, but they have produced some X-Fi Expresscards. What did they make for PCMCIA before that Audigy? I'm not seeing anything in a Google Groups search.

Also there's this from a '94 usenet post:

A key issue is the lack of DMA signals on the PCMCIA interface. Kind of hard to be truly compatible without the same hardware support. I guess the new PCMCIA spec includes DMA, but I don't know of any controllers that feature this yet. Also, I have heard rumor that Win95 (aka Chicago) will have some sort of sound blaster emmulation mode... We'll see...

The ONLY PCMCIA sound card that works with DOOM and DOS EXTENDER games
is the 3D card from IBM, which has some way of emulating DMA.

Well, if you wanted to play DOS games in native DOS then I would suggest the IBM 3d sound card. It is fully soundblaster compat […]
Show full quote

Well, if you wanted to play DOS games in native DOS then I would suggest the
IBM 3d sound card. It is fully soundblaster compatible with games like DOOM,
DukeNukem 3D and WarCraft II. However, it does not provide full support under
Win95. Only DOS, Win31 and native OS/2 only.

♦
This lack of DMA on PCMCIA is not all that different from the problem that PCI cards have with DOS games.

I'd rather have any netbook over any old notebook, even one of the old minis. Those were interesting before netbooks arrived (mini notes used to be extremely expensive). Today though, with a netbook, you can run DOSBOX, you get good 3D hardware for 9x games that work in XP, batteries that work, and LCDs that are hugely better (beyond just horrible old notebook scaling). Also the fact that a netbook is generally modern also allows you to use it for modern apps as well, like wireless web browsing without horrible slowness.

There are way too many caveats with old notebooks and few positives at this point. Aside from retro charm at least.

Here is a some words from a review: nevitably, the 100CT also sports a faster processor and more memory, although the hard disk is the same size as before. This time your £1,495 gets you a Pentium/166 MMX processor, 32Mb of 60ns EDO RAM, 2Gb of hard disk space, a Yamaha OPL3-Sax audio chipset and a 2Mb NeoMagic MagicGraph 128XD graphics chipset that will run 32-bit colour.

It says OPL3, I guess it is SB compatible?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_Libretto

Wow, looks nice, small and can fit in a pocket.

Problem is that 2nd hand laptops usually the battery is way dead... not to mention.... hope the hardware isn't too overheat wore...