Toshiba Tecra S3. My quest for an ultimate retro gaming machine \ VOGONS

Toshiba Tecra S3. My quest for an ultimate retro gaming machine

Topic actions

First post, by vorob

Posted on 2020-01-11, 11:44

vorob Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 612
Joined: 2005-11-04, 16:16
Location: Moscow

Currently, i've got Dell Latitude D800. Pentium M, 16:10 screen, GeForce 4200. Awesome machine for old stuff but i've got few issues:

Because of widescreen, I can't play dos games without screen stretching. It's uncontrollable.
Because of 4200, I can't play Doom 3, Thief III, Half-Life 2, Prey, SWAT 3 and games near these. And I want them cause recently I bought PCMCIA Creative card with EAX 4.0 support.

So I've googled and found Toshiba Tecra S3, similar single-core Pentium m processor, 4:3 screen, GeForce 6600 and PCMCIA slot available.

1Processor: Intel Pentium M 750, 1860Mhz
2Chipset: Mobile Intel 915PM Express
3Display: 15″ SXGA+ (1400x1050)
4Videocard: NVIDIA GeForce Go 6600, 128Mb
5Ram: 2Gb, DDR2
6Audio: SigmaTel HD Audio
7Storage: HDD 120 GByte
8Wireless: Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG (802.11b/g)
9Connectivity: 3x USB 2.0 / DSUB / RS232 / PCMCIA / Parallel port / Firewire

Last edited by vorob on 2020-02-05, 20:02. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 1 of 5, by Bondi

Posted on 2020-01-11, 12:06

Bondi Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 782
Joined: 2019-04-01, 11:45

Here ia very informative thread about choosing an old gaming laptop
The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

PCMCIA Sound Cards chart
archive.org: PCMCIA software, manuals, drivers

Reply 2 of 5, by vorob

Posted on 2020-01-11, 12:21

vorob Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 612
Joined: 2005-11-04, 16:16
Location: Moscow

Bondi wrote on 2020-01-11, 12:06:

Here ia very informative thread about choosing an old gaming laptop
The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Thx, but that's too retro, maybe i'll get to this one day.

Reply 3 of 5, by vorob

Posted on 2020-02-05, 20:06

vorob Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 612
Joined: 2005-11-04, 16:16
Location: Moscow

Okay, made some maintenance, re-pasted GPU and CPU, replaced almost dead HDD, cleaned of dead bugs and dust and reinstalled Windows XP.

706a31c0-1386-4f42-8b0c-eac2da1025eb.jpg

Now I'm installing different games and testing. For now I'm really disappointed that some games are broken because GeForce 6 dropped the support to paletted textures. Yes i can fix it by applying some patches and wrappers, but that's the opposite of what i was interested in this laptop.

Reply 4 of 5, by vorob

Posted on 2020-02-05, 20:07

vorob Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 612
Joined: 2005-11-04, 16:16
Location: Moscow

Now i'm desperately searching for the most complete list of old games that died and started looking worse because of hardware changes in GeForce 6.

Reply 5 of 5, by vorob

Posted on 2020-02-25, 08:21

vorob Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 612
Joined: 2005-11-04, 16:16
Location: Moscow

Well, another issue. I've got old Dell D800 (2004) and thought that Toshiba, which is newer (2005), will have an equal or better screen, but the reality was rough. Toshiba washout horribly, take a look: Toshiba is on the left and Dell is on right:

Untitled collage.png

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to General Old Hardware