megatron-uk wrote on 2024-12-02, 17:48:

Expanding my idea of an portable native DOS laptop I saw these mentioned as a possible option with hardware YMF-719 sound.

What I've not been able to find is what options are available (if any) for scaling/zooming 320x200/240 content?

Thinkpads generally have a zoom option toggled by the PS2 tool. Does anyone with a Toshiba have any knowledge of whether they zoom low res modes?

You set it in the BIOS, there's usually a setting called LCD stretch in there. To get to the BIOS you hold Esc while powering up then press F1, or in DOS with the companion disk you run TSETUP.
From what I recall the Portege 7000 has neomagic graphics which has pretty basic scaling, there might be a driver setting in Windows to enable the LCD stretch once the full video drivers are installed too.

Ah, no good - looked at both the 7020CT and the 4260/80 from Your Retrogaming laptop/portable machine megathread (recommendations, tips, minutae), and have just realised that both only have mic-in and headphone-out jacks. I need a line-in capability to mix a Roland SCP-55... something I've been failing to do on my existing Thinkpad 600X.

The 7020CT looks a nice DOS option, otherwise 🙁

Possibly the Thinkpad 240 (non-X, non-Z) would be another candidate, but they seem rather rare.

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-12-02, 20:55:

Ah, no good - looked at both the 7020CT and the 4260/80 from Your Retrogaming laptop/portable machine megathread (recommendations, tips, minutae), and have just realised that both only have mic-in and headphone-out jacks. I need a line-in capability to mix a Roland SCP-55... something I've been failing to do on my existing Thinkpad 600X.

The 7020CT looks a nice DOS option, otherwise 🙁

Possibly the Thinkpad 240 (non-X, non-Z) would be another candidate, but they seem rather rare.

Huh that's weird, I never noticed that the Line-In is dropped from laptops like the Satellite 4200 & 4300 series, but it is. Curiously the Satellite 4090XCDT its immediate predecessor has line-in but has its own major problems with software midi audio.
On both of those ones, you do get line-in and line-out with the PA2731U port replicator. Looks like if you have the DVD-dock for the Portege 7020CT then you get line-in on that too. Toshiba were quite fond of sticking rarely used ports onto the docks which are all pretty rare now.

The version before both of those, the Satellite 4000 series (40x0CDS / CDT, Pentium II) and Satellite 3x0 series (Pentium-MMX) do have line-in with OPL3-SAx audio and built-in CD-ROM & direct-drive floppy, so perhaps that would work well for you as an all in one. Chips video too so scaling and VGA compatility are pretty good.

In terms of Toshiba laptops specifically, you should also look at the Tecra series, they have Line-In much more consistently. Most of them have Yamaha OPL3-SAx audio or Crystal audio with real OPL3. The Tecra 520/530 are fairly common with Chips VGA & SVGA displays. The Tecra 540 and 550 are XGA with S3 Virge video, the 550CDT seems to be highly regarded but the 540CDT is the same with 33mhz slower CPU.
There's also the Tecra 8000 which is very similar to the Portege 7020CT but has Line-In, along with OPL3-SAx audio, but the video is neomagic. Both that and the Tecra 540CDT tend to go quite cheap very often.

They all use the Toshiba TOPIC controller which I think some later versions of cardsoft can work with. These days I'm much keen to use Phoenix card manager, much nicer setup and seems to be less finnicky, dunno if the later versions of that support the TOPIC controller in cardbus mode.

Great info there, I'll check out those other models!

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-12-02, 20:55:

I need a line-in capability to mix a Roland SCP-55...

You can always use small external mixer in this case. I use portable Roland GO:Mixer, powered from USB.

What about the Toshiba Satellite Pro 480CDT (P1 233MMX), 490CDT (P2 233) and 490XCDT (P2 266)?

All with OPL3-SAX, and the 480 with C&T 65555 and the two 490 models with S3 Virge MX. All seems to have mic/headphone/line jacks.

MAZter wrote on 2024-12-03, 15:16:

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-12-02, 20:55:

I need a line-in capability to mix a Roland SCP-55...

You can always use small external mixer in this case. I use portable Roland GO:Mixer, powered from USB.

It's a thought, and I did consider adding a passive mixer for the onboard audio output and the SCP-55, but then that also means an external set of speakers, and two sets of audio cables too... it rapidly becomes impractical to have a gaming system I could play on the sofa without lugging around a load of cables and connectors, rather than have set up on my desk (got plenty of those).

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-12-03, 15:25:

It's a thought, and I did consider adding a passive mixer for the onboard audio output and the SCP-55, but then that also means an external set of speakers

Ohh, that's true 😀 line-in option rare for ultra portable laptops.

MAZter wrote on 2024-12-03, 15:28:

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-12-03, 15:25:

It's a thought, and I did consider adding a passive mixer for the onboard audio output and the SCP-55, but then that also means an external set of speakers

Ohh, that's true 😀 line-in option rare for ultra portable laptops.

My Thinkpad 600X does have it.... but I cannot get any external audio to be mixed with the onboard speakers in DOS (regardless of what mixer I use). This leads me to believe the line-in port is connected to the alternate, AC97 audio codec.

I have an older Thinkpad 385ED that the Roland audio signal gets mixed with the onboard speakers via line-in, just perfect.... but....

a) The 385 is an absolute tank. A monster. It's around 2.5" thick.
b) This particular 385 has the old, horrid, DSTN screen... so it's useless for games

Are you sure yours Portege Microphone input is not universal mono/stereo input?

For example Sony Vaio PCG-SR9/K and PCG-SR9C/K have Microphone/line input (mono/stereo combined mini jack)

MAZter wrote on 2024-12-03, 16:32:

Are you sure yours Portege Microphone input is not universal mono/stereo input?

For example Sony Vaio PCG-SR9/K and PCG-SR9C/K have Microphone/line input (mono/stereo combined mini jack)

It's gone from the spec sheet: https://support.dynabook.com/support/staticCo … omTOCLink=false
I wasn't going to take a risk on something like the 4260/4280. Not when I verified other (albeit older) models still had it listed, alongside genuine Yamaha OPL3-SAX chips.

I've taken the plunge on a Satellite Pro 480CDT, so we'll see what it's like when it arrives; demonstrated working though... so it at least powers on and boots.

The Satellite Pro 480CDT arrived today. It came with the internal CD, but no floppy, Toshiba branded charger, with just the base 32MB of RAM and a 4GB IBM hdd.

It all works and is in pretty good condition - a few scuffs here and there, but no broken plastics, sound works, screen is okay. Had two pcmcia cards installed (a 56k modem and a 3com 10mbit ethernet) which will go into my spares box.

Hearing the horror stories about leaking cmos and backup batteries I opened it up straight away and found no visible leaks from either battery pack, but on closer examination the battery acid had wicked its way along the wires and was just starting to show on the two motherboard headers. The batteries have now been tossed and the very slight corrosion on the headers cleaned up and neutralised.

The only downside I would say are the two trackpoint mouse buttons (oh and the nipple itself which was so badly worn that I've pulled it off for now)... they've started to go horribly sticky... so I've removed the button covers (they are just two plastic fittings which rest on top of the membrane buttons underneath and am currently trying to figure out how to get rid of the tacky coating.

Cleaned up:

Laptop in pretty nice condition:

Got Ontrack installed on a 128GB mSATA drive and pulled out the original 4GB IBM IDE disk. Works great, and is both quiet and enough space for anything I ever want on this machine.

Found the right incantation for the PCMCIA drivers (use the sscbto95.sys driver in cardsoft 5+) and now have the Roland SCP-55 working in DOS on this machine, too.

Strangely UNISOUND.COM doesn't want to play ball with the OPL3-SAX in this machine - no matter what I did it just wouldn't see it. I had to use one of the Yamaha SETUPSA.EXE tools to get it working. However all but this version (Re: FM and PCM Volume Balance of SB Cards) resulted in a bug where all of the channels would be turned all the way down, meaning no audio from any source was output through the speakers - without SETUPSA.EXE running the volume was fine, and certain games did detect it, but obviously without being initialised properly you lack that vital SB Pro compatability.

Once I changed to that version linked above, FM, SB Pro digital and the Roland line-in audio source all worked perfectly. This is exactly what I wanted to achieve with the Thinkpad 600X machine I've had for years, but was never able to get working properly.

The last bit to get resolved is to find the most effective UMB driver for this machine, so that I can stuff all of the PCMCIA drivers up out of base memory. I'm down at 560kb at the moment. UMBPCI doesn't like the chipset and neither does UMB_DRVR - and I think TLB is too old when this machine came out.

So far I've not been able to get any of the normal UMB providers to work:

- UMBPCI - identifies a Toshiba Notebook chipset and claims it won't work because of lack of documentation from manufacturer
- UMB_DRVR - doesn't detect anything
- URAM.COM + UMB.SYS - just prints the help text out (no error message) when using URAM.COM R=....777777777.
- HIRAM - nothing
- TLB - no chipset support

Don't tell me that this is going to be another failure... but this time due to lack of sub-640K memory!

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-12-07, 09:12:

So far I've not been able to get any of the normal UMB providers to work: […]
Show full quote

So far I've not been able to get any of the normal UMB providers to work:

- UMBPCI - identifies a Toshiba Notebook chipset and claims it won't work because of lack of documentation from manufacturer
- UMB_DRVR - doesn't detect anything
- URAM.COM + UMB.SYS - just prints the help text out (no error message) when using URAM.COM R=....777777777.
- HIRAM - nothing
- TLB - no chipset support

Don't tell me that this is going to be another failure... but this time due to lack of sub-640K memory!

So, which OS are you using?

Have you tried the Toshiba Special Enhancements Disk? On the earlier Toshibas it has helped me with getting the laptop to use upper memory without breaking its features:
https://www.retrospace.net/download/Drivers/T … ws_95_files.htm

This is a pure DOS system, made from a Win 98SE recovery floppy so that it is happy with FAT32.

I'm using Cardsoft 5.something drivers and it all seems to work nicely, but without a UMB provider I'm down to around 580kb with the pcmcia drivers and Roland SCP55 enabling loaded.

I tend not to boot with an EMS provider until I want to play something that needs it. This normally isn't a problem on other systems where UMBPCI or TLB is supported... but nothing seems to like these Toshiba chipsets.