Yes, alot of those are rare now. I am a happy owner of an IBM 755cd which is a really nice notebook for DOS and early windows era.
My Toshiba Libretto 110CT sadly seems to be so misused by it's former owner that I can't revive it but it's a really nice one too.
I also have some older Toshiba Satellite notebooks (P1 era) but unfortunatly all of them are CS or CDS versions with dualscan screens instead of the TFT versions in the CT and CDT versions.
My other old systems are nice but lack in one or another way. The Compaq Contura and Contura Aero's are nice but lack a soundcard. 😢 If I manage to find a pcmcia version that would resolve this but without they aren't the most usefull ones.

Dell Inspiron 3000 M233MX - good screen for an old laptop. The crystal 4237b it comes with is not to shabby either. DOS drivers work flawlessly. It also has a small display witch shows remaining battery life, and all FN key combinations work in DOS w/o any drivers (volume, brightness and so on)

This thing: http://www.cnet.com/products/dell-inspiron-30 … 3-gb-hdd/specs/

kanecvr wrote:

Dell Inspiron 3000 M233MX - good screen for an old laptop. The crystal 4237b it comes with is not to shabby either. DOS drivers work flawlessly. It also has a small display witch shows remaining battery life, and all FN key combinations work in DOS w/o any drivers (volume, brightness and so on)

This thing: http://www.cnet.com/products/dell-inspiron-30 … 3-gb-hdd/specs/

Sounds awesome. 😁 I'll have to see if eBay has any.

Yeah, I've dealt with these issues - I got a Toshiba T1960CT from eBay for $50, with a nice case and all the accessories, but it doesn't have a sound card 😒
This was before I really understood which laptops have sound cards and which don't, and just how hard it is to find a PCMCIA sound card. I could get a PCMCIA card for it, but the floppy drive is shot so I figure I'll just get a better one (maybe with a Pentium), and sell the one I have (easy to sell for more than I paid for it since the hard drive had dirty pins when I got it and after a good cleaning it works great 😀 )

I thought about old laptops for DOS gaming a few years ago but soon realised that sound will be a problem. Built-in sound cards weren't standard till Pentium era of notebooks and DOS supports is also questionable.

I did manage to find a good laptop for DOS gaming after all - Siemens Scenic Mobile 710 with all the bells and whistles (DOS sound, Floppy, CD-ROM, USB) and "fast" enough Tillamook Pentium 233MMX. LCD could be better (response time) but you can always use external display.

i had a compaq armada with a celeron 400+ (cant remember exactly) and 64mb ram, was too slow for windows it came with, but ran dos rather well, it scaled dos programs into fullscreen too iirc; sound was there (one would best use external speakers imo), cant remember if midi was working though; the screen was not too tragic, right for most games, for some it was tearing too much; graphics was rage, cant remember which one;

ps found it http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx%2Fc04284997.pdf

mrau wrote:

i had a compaq armada with a celeron 400+ (cant remember exactly) and 64mb ram, was too slow for windows it came with, but ran dos rather well, it scaled dos programs into fullscreen too iirc; sound was there (one would best use external speakers imo), cant remember if midi was working though; the screen was not too tragic, right for most games, for some it was tearing too much; graphics was rage, cant remember which one;

ps found it http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx%2Fc04284997.pdf

That's a HUGE plus right there. The only thing I'd be worried about is the CPU being too fast for certain games, though that likely wouldn't be an issue for most mid-late 90s stuff. Now, for games that ARE tied to CPU speed, is it possible to disable the CPU caches on one of these, or would I have to deal with slowdown utilities instead? I know that Warcraft II runs quite comfortably under Win98, and that MySlow works well for slowing it down on Pentium II/III rigs, although I could just save myself the hassle and play BNE. 😉 Actually, another thing that would be a concern for me is FM synthesis support; the manual claims Soundblaster Pro compatibility, but if there's no OPL3, then that's kind of a dealbreaker for me. 🤣

There was an Acer Travelmate model - 7100 or 310 I can't remember - 13" screen, socket 7 in witch you can put anything from a AMD K5 to a Pentium MMX, Cirrus Logic or NeoMagic video (depends on model) and an ESS sound card with great dos drivers. I have one with a destroyed case - been trying to find a working one for a while now.

I'm actually in love with my Thinkpad 365ED - lowest model from IBM 96 lineup. I found it in great technical and visual condition.

It had Cyrix (IBM) 5x86 processor (100mhz), so while keeping 486 flair it's still pretty fast. It also has marvellous (!) keyboard, which I find superior to my 760XL. The feel of the keyboard is just very retro.

Gerenrally, my impression of this laptop is that it's just a slightly refreshed variant of it's previous generation - which is nice if you're into retro stuff, I guess.

Sound is GREAT - ESS 1868. Fully SB compatible and sounds great.

The only inconvenience is, in fact, the DSTN screen. I am thinking to replace it with a TFT one. Have already bought some 364XD to take it's screen, but then again I noticed that it was 800x600. So for now I'll stick with 640x480 DSTN, which is OK if you are playing games like Eye of Beholder, etc. Will look for 640x480 TFT though.

I will just repost my post:

Re: Advice on DOS/Win 3.1 Laptop Project

adalbert wrote:

Texas Instruments Travelmate 4000M / active matrix color 10.4". That's the best DOS laptop ever made. I have it with a docking s […]
Show full quote

Texas Instruments Travelmate 4000M / active matrix color 10.4". That's the best DOS laptop ever made. I have it with a docking station (which is somewhat "slim", that mean's it adds only some thickness to the notebook and doesn't go beyond the outline). It has sound blaster compatibility, it feels really compact (doesn't have big border around the screen), it has gameport (mini DB-15 - i don't have the adapter, but it is possible to "improvise" it with some wires and hot glue), it has SCSI and great, multimedia docking station - SCSI cd rom, place for SCSI hard drive or additional battery, stereo speakers and volume regulation. It's made in USA and i found somewhere catalogue from 1994 and the price was around 8000$). I use it with Orinoco PCMCIA WiFi card and I can browse the net and listen to mp3 radio stream (22khz) in background.
Downsides (fixable) - the floppy drive, Citizen W1D, has belt mechanism and I had to replace the belt; these drives are often dead after many years. You won't find the original belt, but you can use a 1x1x70mm (or maybe 68mm) tape deck belt.
And the keyboard had some problems with not working keys and I had to put some conductive varnish on the broken traces.
Some photos (that one isn't mine):

http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq4/jed350 … s/sale012-1.jpg
http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq4/jed350 … -1.jpg~original

looks really slim without the docking station; of course it's much heavier than modern notebooks but it has nice design :p
http://collectionerus.ru/media/items-large/__ … 4__10_50_46.jpg

Best thing in the world. I can't imagine anything better 😜
And now I can upload some real photos.
It has full screen 320x200 mode as you can see. Battery can be easily opened and reassembled, it uses 4/3 AA ni-mh cells but you can just put inside some off-shelf AA ni-mh cells, they are smaller so easier to solder and fit inside.

borrowed photo of docking station (currently it lies somewhere under a stack of other things)

adalbert, I had Texas Instruments TravelMate 4000M in the past and I can confirm - for DOS gaming it's one of the best solutions ever! I remember playing OMF2097 a lot on this machine. 😀 Nice to see this notebook again in a good shape. I sold mine long ago very cheaply and I really regret this decision... Sadly, never found one again. Oh, that docking station is really sweet! 😀

tikoellner wrote:

I'm actually in love with my Thinkpad 365ED - lowest model from IBM 96 lineup. I found it in great technical and visual condition.

It had Cyrix (IBM) 5x86 processor (100mhz), so while keeping 486 flair it's still pretty fast. It also has marvellous (!) keyboard, which I find superior to my 760XL. The feel of the keyboard is just very retro.

I haven't used that model but I remember a long time ago using somebody else's Pentium-2 Thinkpad and being very impressed with the keyboard. I had (and still have) a Thinkpad A20m (early P3 era) and it's keyboard isn't nearly as nice as what they apparently had on the older models.

The best DOS laptop I have is a Compaq LTE 5380 (Pentium 133). A long time ago it used to be my sister's, and I remember having it set up to dual boot between DOS and NT4. It had the old Nintendo emulator "NESticle" installed on it, and from what I remember it was running in DOS with sound working. This was specifically done because it was faster than Windows emulators.
It has an active matrix screen and I'm pretty sure the sound is Sound Blaster compatible (don't remember any issues with making it work in DOS). I don't remember if screen scaling was a problem, but I think not. If NESticle was in an unscaled 320x200 window then I think I'd remember that because it would have sucked.
The biggest flaw with this laptop is the mismatch between the screen and the video chip. The video controller has 1MB memory but the screen is 1024x768. Lesser models of the same series (LTE5xxx) had an 800x600 display and those might actually be preferable. 1024x768 8bpp performs poorly with the 1MB video controller and it doesn't have enough RAM for double buffering. 800x600 8bpp enables double buffering and performs noticeably better but it doesn't match the screen's native res.
The CDROM and Floppy have to be swapped in the same drive bay, so that could be a big negative for CDROM based games. There is a procedure for semi-hot swapping them (standby, swap, wake up) but I don't remember if it works in DOS.
There is a docking station for them but they're probably not very common. I have one but it never really got used. I suppose it might be possible to use both drives while docked, but I don't remember ever trying. Even when I needed both drives to install NT4 I think I followed some procedure that didn't involve the dock.

Sadly I damaged it when I plugged it into my car with an adapter that I thought should be compatible. I'm still not sure what went wrong. Someday I will need to open it up and hope it has a fuse or something that can be easily fixed.

I have found my own Satellite 4005CDS usable for DOS gaming with an external monitor. Adjustable cache settings in BIOS, 233MHz P2 that serves well between DOS through Win98SE (though the basic graphics chip hampers the latter a bit), and genuine OPL3 via YMF71x chip were major selling points for me using this as a portable DOS unit. However, I will say the lack of official dock options (some claim to exist but seem to require the Satellite Pro line), missing game port (addressable via PCMCIA cards, though good luck finding an adapter that handles both joystick and MIDI), and (on the CDS model, probably less so on the CDT) heavy ghosting on the internal LCD due to display technology do hamper its abilities in this regard.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Now, for games that ARE tied to CPU speed, is it possible to disable the CPU caches on one of these, or would I have to deal with slowdown utilities instead?

quite frankly i cant remember, this was 10+ years ago; i'm not even sure about the midi stuff 🙁

Might as well repost my post from the thread adalbert linked:

Sutekh94 wrote:

I can personally vouch for the Toshiba Satellite Pro T2150CDT. Like the TI 4000M, it's got a nice, 10.4" TFT screen. It's also […]
Show full quote

I can personally vouch for the Toshiba Satellite Pro T2150CDT. Like the TI 4000M, it's got a nice, 10.4" TFT screen. It's also got a 2X CD-ROM drive built in, as well as a Sound Blaster compatible ESS688 AudioDrive with a true OPL3 synth and hardware volume control. Only real disadvantage for games it that it doesn't have a gameport built in, not even a mini gameport - you'd have to buy the docking station for that. And no built in floppy, though external drives seem to be easy to find for decent prices on sites like eBay. The plastics on mine are starting to fail, which is a common problem with older Toshiba laptops like this, though that doesn't effect functionality.

EDIT: Here's some pics of mine:
http://imgur.com/ROo19BX
http://imgur.com/Z9YhTlT
http://imgur.com/Go9KGYj

One thing I have to add is that you can disable caches and slow down the CPU speed in the BIOS for games that are speed sensitive. There's probably keyboard shortcuts for these as well.

OP should make an excel file people can modify like the one here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13hveJ … dpaQ/edit#gid=0

That way we can always have a list of DOS friendly laptops. I'd make one myself, but it should be in the first post. It should contain:
- Make and model
- CPU
- LCD type / size / resolution / quality
- Sound Card yes/no/model
- Video card - model - good for early 90's games yes/no

shamino wrote:

tikoellner wrote:

I The best DOS laptop I have is a Compaq LTE 5380 (Pentium 133). A long time ago it used to be my sister's, and I remember havi […]
Show full quote

I
The best DOS laptop I have is a Compaq LTE 5380 (Pentium 133). A long time ago it used to be my sister's, and I remember having it set up to dual boot between DOS and NT4. It had the old Nintendo emulator "NESticle" installed on it, and from what I remember it was running in DOS with sound working. This was specifically done because it was faster than Windows emulators.
It has an active matrix screen and I'm pretty sure the sound is Sound Blaster compatible (don't remember any issues with making it work in DOS). I don't remember if screen scaling was a problem, but I think not. If NESticle was in an unscaled 320x200 window then I think I'd remember that because it would have sucked.
The biggest flaw with this laptop is the mismatch between the screen and the video chip. The video controller has 1MB memory but the screen is 1024x768. Lesser models of the same series (LTE5xxx) had an 800x600 display and those might actually be preferable. 1024x768 8bpp performs poorly with the 1MB video controller and it doesn't have enough RAM for double buffering. 800x600 8bpp enables double buffering and performs noticeably better but it doesn't match the screen's native res.

I have the step-down model (LTE 5300) with the 800x600 @ 16bpp display, and it's very crisp and clear. The onboard video (at least in mine) is a Cirrus Logic CL-GD Viking 7543 (PCI) with 1MB, and onboard sound is an ESS 1688 Audiodrive. I would definitely recommend this as a good laptop for DOS gaming. By the way, does your model have that AAA-type NiMH 4.5v CMOS battery? Mine can't hold a charge and have to keep it plugged in for it to retain BIOS settings.

Brickpad wrote:

I have the step-down model (LTE 5300) with the 800x600 @ 16bpp display, and it's very crisp and clear. The onboard video (at least in mine) is a Cirrus Logic CL-GD Viking 7543 (PCI) with 1MB, and onboard sound is an ESS 1688 Audiodrive. I would definitely recommend this as a good laptop for DOS gaming. By the way, does your model have that AAA-type NiMH 4.5v CMOS battery? Mine can't hold a charge and have to keep it plugged in for it to retain BIOS settings.

I never noticed, but it's probably the same. I think all the laptops in that family are basically identical just with minor differences in features that are installed.
I probably should have located and unplugged the CMOS battery when I put it on the shelf a few years ago... I have a feeling if I get the laptop running again I'll find that battery to be dead as well.
Actually, if it's NiMH then it might be a risk to the machine if it starts leaking. I suppose I really should get it out of there.

shamino wrote:

I never noticed, but it's probably the same. I think all the laptops in that family are basically identical just with minor differences in features that are installed.
I probably should have located and unplugged the CMOS battery when I put it on the shelf a few years ago... I have a feeling if I get the laptop running again I'll find that battery to be dead as well.
Actually, if it's NiMH then it might be a risk to the machine if it starts leaking. I suppose I really should get it out of there.

I was wrong. I just checked and it's a 4.8v 50 mAh NiCad battery. I wouldn't worry too much about it either way. It's located on the underside of the base of the laptop and away from electronics. Mine did have a minor leak, but didn't go any farther than the contacts on the battery. Just cleaned up the corrosion and applied new solder.