I'm a DOS guy, so I'd stick with the Toshiba.

I agree with HighTreason, for DOS (and probably Win9x) gaming the Toshiba wins out.

Dont throw away the Lifebook though, if it's anything like my Lifebook E series Pentium 3 it's a very nice machine worth packing away in some drawer for future use.

Toshiba Satélite Pro 4340: - CPU: P3 @650 MHz - Chipset: i440BX/ZX/DX - RAM: 128 Mb (@100 MHz?, max RAM allowed 320Mb) - Graphic […]
Show full quote

Toshiba Satélite Pro 4340:
- CPU: P3 @650 MHz
- Chipset: i440BX/ZX/DX
- RAM: 128 Mb (@100 MHz?, max RAM allowed 320Mb)
- Graphic card: S3 Savage IX, with onboard VRAM
- Sound card: Yamaha YMF-744B
- Storage: FDD , without HDD, CD
- Other: 2 PCMCIA, 1 USB, 1 parallel, 1 RS232, composite output, VGA, no network (it has a RTL8139 PCMCIA card, but the dongle is missing), a real modem

I have a laptop with almost exactly this hardware, mine is a Samsung/RM V7000 and has a bit less RAM but otherwise same. I've not found anything useful to do with it yet, I was given it over a year ago, beyond installing win98 and 2K and running a few benchmarks that's been it. I also have another PIII laptop, it's a Viglen also on BX but with a ATi RAGE LT, not done a thing with that one either!
I've got to say I have never liked laptops much, too restrictive & fragile, keep meaning to put these up on ebay, but no gotten round to it. Be interested to hear what you get out of them.

Best,
Chris

I've had that Fujitsu for a few years, but I"m afraid that I haven't pushed to the limit.

At first, I used it to play some old games but lately I use it only to burn EPROMs (I've got a Willem programmer and this is my only PC with real parallel port).

I find that DOS and gaming capabilities interesting, but for some years I've used DOSBox for that.

I have a toshiba satellite pro 4270 which has the same chipset. Although it says 320MB support (2x128MB + 64MB onboard) it can recognize 256MB modules, Take the memory out of the lifebook and test it in the toshiba.

FWIW, a USB floppy drive is fine for writing disks for 8-bit computers that use the 720KB format (Atari, MSX etc).

Having an Internal one is still no good for Amiga or Apple ][ disks, unless you have a catweasel or similar.

ar1z wrote:

I have a toshiba satellite pro 4270 which has the same chipset. Although it says 320MB support (2x128MB + 64MB onboard) it can recognize 256MB modules, Take the memory out of the lifebook and test it in the toshiba.

Tested. Every time I put a 256 Mb module, the BIOS detects it but Linux gives a kernel panic. Memtest 86+ fails, too.

SquallStrife wrote:

FWIW, a USB floppy drive is fine for writing disks for 8-bit computers that use the 720KB format (Atari, MSX etc).

Having an Internal one is still no good for Amiga or Apple ][ disks, unless you have a catweasel or similar.

PC disk images (and MSX) starts at sector 0 (i.e.: a track have sectors 0 to 😎 while CPC and ZX Spectrum usually starts at sector 0xC1 (having sector 0xC1 to 0xC9). Although there are ways to import files from a PC formatted disk, they won't work directly. Not to mention some disk protections that rely on strangely sized (=8k) sectors. USB floppys are good for standard, unprotected PC disks.

About that: although those computers use 3 inch floppy disk drives, they can work with 3.5 inch drives. Because 3 inch floppies have 40 to 42 tracks/side and 9 sectors/track, they can be recorded into standard 720Kb floppies (wasting an entire side and half the other). And if I want to transfer "large" amounts of data, they can be tricked into using both tracks and 80 tracks/side. BTW I have a divide for my Spectrum +3, so I can use a CF card as a HDD. HDDs are NOT supported in ZX Spectrum, but there are ROMs (+3e ROMs) that allows you to do so.

Zup wrote:

... CPC and ZX Spectrum usually starts at sector 0xC1 (having sector 0xC1 to 0xC9). Although there are ways to import files from a PC formatted disk, they won't work directly. Not to mention some disk protections that rely on strangely sized (=8k) sectors.

I didn't even know you could do those things with a "proper" non-USB floppy drive. I thought the PC's floppy controller abstracted away the drive too much for that sort of thing.

Only is abstracted on Windows. If you access directly to the hardware, it's very flexible (int 13h also retains most control).

Samdisk web page has an utility capable of trasnferring most disk images to real disks, and it explains some disk protections and the capabilities of PC FDD controllers.

Zup wrote:

Only is abstracted on Windows. If you access directly to the hardware, it's very flexible (int 13h also retains most control).

Samdisk web page has an utility capable of trasnferring most disk images to real disks, and it explains some disk protections and the capabilities of PC FDD controllers.

That's really cool!

It is still partially abstracted by the IBM floppy controller as I suspected (i.e. can't read Amiga/Apple II/Mac floppies), but yeah, definitely a lot more functional than I expected.