VOGONS


Reply 421 of 878, by vorob

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Despite I've found a perfect retro laptop (Toshiba 2805), I'm currently busy with Toshiba 5205. It's a AC97 laptop with Geforce 5600Go. Reason? Gorgeous retina-like screen. It's a 1600x1200 resolution 15 inch panel with almost no sign of wear. It's bright, it's colorful and it has good black color.

Of course, Geforce FX 5600 can handle any Windows games, but what about DOS? I've installed Win 98 and tried several titles. Yamaha F753 allows General MIDI in Windows 98, so Duke, Blood, DOOM and so one sounds good. But few titles have some issues in some of their parts...

Moved to a dedicated thread: Fixing visual glitches on Toshiba 5205 (GF 5600Go) in DOS games under Win9x

Reply 422 of 878, by vorob

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Full Throttle (1.0) and Little Big Adventure. Is there any known bugs with them? I’m trying LBA on 2805 and 5205 under Windows 98 and after intro video game just closes. In native DOS it works fine.

Full Throttle works fine both in Windows and native DOS, but it sometimes freezes for a 3~5 seconds. During cutscenes. It’s like HDD is entering sleep mode without activity and then game suddenly starts requesting data from it and that’s where freeze happening. But I’ve tried listening to laptop and HDD is working without sleep...

Reply 424 of 878, by HandOfFate

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vorob wrote on 2021-02-13, 18:08:

Full Throttle (1.0) and Little Big Adventure. Is there any known bugs with them? I’m trying LBA on 2805 and 5205 under Windows 98 and after intro video game just closes. In native DOS it works fine.

Full Throttle works fine both in Windows and native DOS, but it sometimes freezes for a 3~5 seconds. During cutscenes. It’s like HDD is entering sleep mode without activity and then game suddenly starts requesting data from it and that’s where freeze happening. But I’ve tried listening to laptop and HDD is working without sleep...

I remember having lots of problems with Full Throttle back in the day until I replaced the DOS4GW extender executable with another version. I think the CD itself had multiple versions of DOS4GW on it, maybe in a support directory. Might be worth a try.

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Reply 426 of 878, by vorob

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Well, i've missed my chance. Now i'm interested in old, fat laptop, with big motherboard, normal screen with good scaling, sb compatible audio... Fat laptop! Early Pentium i guess 😀

Reply 427 of 878, by creepingnet

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vorob wrote on 2021-02-26, 13:35:

Well, i've missed my chance. Now i'm interested in old, fat laptop, with big motherboard, normal screen with good scaling, sb compatible audio... Fat laptop! Early Pentium i guess 😀

I can name a few I'd recommend.....since this era is my favorite (the late DX4 and early Pentium era with sound).

I'm going to just mention the obvious choices that are more expensive because everybody already knows what they are. But just in case: ThinkPad 755 or 560, Toshiba Sattelite, and Compaq LTE. Those models though seem to command higher than usual prices. Toshiba Tecra is one from those brands that I don't think gets as much mention.

Another good one nobody seems to mention is the Samsung Sens series, particularly the 700/800, which were actually marketed as AT&T Safari models. These have active matrix screens on most models, 10.4" in some cases, most are probably 640x480. The nice thing about these is the keyboard is as good or better than a ThinkPad, and the power jack is a standard barrel connector like most modern electronics that don't use USB have - so finding a power supply - I think around 15vdc 1.5 amps - should not be that hard at all. Actually, I think I ran my Safari 3151 (rebranded Sens) off a 12VDC 2 amp speaker wall wart when I had it. Just make sure to get the polarity correct - it's printed on the bottom of the PC.

Twinhead, and NanTan (usually marketed as Sager, Clevo, Prostar, Duracom, Eurocom, Liberty, and about 100 other brands) make some pretty good ones in that era too. Just have to be careful about DTSN Screens. I see two twinheads on the bay currently that might be good candidates, though one I know for sure is DTSN. People talk a lot of crap about NanTan but I've had some pretty good experiences with them TBH. Finding parts can be a pain for both brands though these days.

Currently, I have an NEC Versa P/75. I'm still loving mine. Parts are still pretty plentiful, you can even get new batteries for them, and ticks all the marks, especially the later 10.5" screen models. All are active matrix and it seems the NEC NL-series panels they use don't suffer a lot of issues the other ones do. I've still got original panels in my P/75, 40EC, and V/50 and they all are nice, crisp, bright, and with vibrant colors at almost 30 years old. The Scaling/letterbox on my P/75 is not so bad at all with the 9.4" screen, actually, it's useful for weird graphics modes some old software, particularly emulators, tend to throw out. NEC also apparently may have had these rebranded as AT&T or NCR as well as the Globalyst or Safari something or other - that's part of how I found out about the NEC's was through my Samsung built AT&T. Also, you can buy multiple Versa and switch around between different screen technologies as they have hot-swappable screens in DTSN Mono, Active Matrix 640x480, Active Matrio 800x600, and even versions of at least the 640x480 mono and color with pen and touch support (albeit a few shades from being a Unicorn these days). Memory, screen panels, and batteries are still pretty easy to get surprisingly and not too terribly expensive.

The later Versas are more like that Acer you mentioned. I was actually looking at those. The 2000/4000/6000 series might be more up your alley and it seems the cracking plastic problem is far less of an issue on those, also plenty of parts. I think the 4000 and 6000 models also have CD-ROM and 12" screens on some of them. Not sure about scaling though. Pricing is weird though, I see them going for everything from $18.00 to $200 depending on who the seller is. ALso have to be more careful about getting a DTSN screen with some of these because the earlier 1st Gen Versas all came with Active Matrix as standard on the color models.

There's also the Dell XP laptops and HP TravelMate models too which are pretty good, I've mostly looked at 486 examples but seems they made early pentium versions. Same thing as far as the Gateway 2000 models go to but those seem to command a bit more - going into ThinkPad/LTE/Sattelite territory.

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Reply 429 of 878, by Julli

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Yup, laptops from AT&T Globalyst 130-200S-250P series and its relatives (later Samsung Sens is basically the same for 200/S) are ones to look for if youre after 486-early pentium era machine with good DOS/win3.1/Win95 compatibility.

Not many weak spots, DX4 75 or 100mhz, ESS 1488F sound (WSS and SBPro2 support), solid WD90c24A/A2 1mb video chip with VLB, either 640x480 active or dstn, up to 20mb FPM 70ns(4mb by default), 2 slots for pcmcia II/III, FDD, trackball, good keyboard imo, NimH batteries that u can fix... And that 10,4 inch screen on revised version (200S). The earlier 200 had dx2-50 and smaller display.

Also you can still find some parts and information online.

Had some success tinkering mine, compatibility is mostly great and its fast enough even for Quake @10,4fps, which is amazing when considering how much weaker the FPU of the DX4-100 is versus the one in Pentium. At least the video chip is not holding it back.

Reply 430 of 878, by ragefury32

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imi wrote on 2020-07-14, 19:35:

I got a Vaio PCG-SR31K recently

cute and small 10.4" 1024x768 subnotebook with PIII750, Savage IX 8MB and Yamaha "DS1" (idk if that means YMF724 or could also be another DS1* designated one, maybe YMF754) still need to test it out more 😀

Heh. I just recently took delivery of its Japanese equivalent the SR9G/K (Buyee auction + fedex shipment to the US) - the only major difference is that the 9GK Is 700MHz instead of 750. Right now the pain is to hunt down Windows 98 drivers for it.

Reply 431 of 878, by vorob

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vorob wrote on 2021-02-08, 22:04:

517W4DV7PGL._AC_.jpgDespite I've found a perfect retro laptop (Toshiba 2805), I'm currently busy with Toshiba 5205. It's a AC97 laptop with Geforce 5600Go. Reason? Gorgeous retina-like screen. It's a 1600x1200 resolution 15 inch panel with almost no sign of wear. It's bright, it's colorful and it has good black color.

Of course, Geforce FX 5600 can handle any Windows games, but what about DOS? I've installed Win 98 and tried several titles. Yamaha F753 allows General MIDI in Windows 98, so Duke, Blood, DOOM and so one sounds good. But few titles have some issues in some of their parts...

Moved to a dedicated thread: Fixing visual glitches on Toshiba 5205 (GF 5600Go) in DOS games under Win9x

Back to this machine. I’m spending happy hours with it playing old stuff, completed duke3d and blood, lba 1, full throttle and tiberium sun. Now I wanna go for doom and heretic. One problem, while other games works natively with sound and general midi, doom engine games won’t give me sound 🙁 I’m on WDM sound driver and Windows 98, duke3d works on 220 address, IRQ 5, DMA 1, but when I set the same stuff for doom game won’t launch. I’m getting this error:

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Maybe there is a direction where to dig?

Music General MIDI works perfectly though.

Reply 432 of 878, by cyclone3d

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ragefury32 wrote on 2021-03-26, 15:54:
imi wrote on 2020-07-14, 19:35:

I got a Vaio PCG-SR31K recently

cute and small 10.4" 1024x768 subnotebook with PIII750, Savage IX 8MB and Yamaha "DS1" (idk if that means YMF724 or could also be another DS1* designated one, maybe YMF754) still need to test it out more 😀

Heh. I just recently took delivery of its Japanese equivalent the SR9G/K (Buyee auction + fedex shipment to the US) - the only major difference is that the 9GK Is 700MHz instead of 750. Right now the pain is to hunt down Windows 98 drivers for it.

The Yamaha driver specifically for the Vaio laptops has recently been uploaded on vogonsdrivers by me. I just happened to have a laptop that had the vxd driver install package on it.

I probably have the rest of the drivers as well for Win9x. There is one random one that I have been having trouble finding, but it is not absolutely necessary.

The nice thing about this gen of Sony laptops is that the hardware was all very similar so it is not so difficult as having to have a bunch of different driver sets for the different models.

Note... The laptop I have been working with lately is the XG28. I had to replace the screen with onenfrom a different model, but it had the same exact casing. The only difference was the model number sticker which I swapped over.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 433 of 878, by ragefury32

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cyclone3d wrote on 2021-03-30, 23:40:
The Yamaha driver specifically for the Vaio laptops has recently been uploaded on vogonsdrivers by me. I just happened to have a […]
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ragefury32 wrote on 2021-03-26, 15:54:
imi wrote on 2020-07-14, 19:35:

I got a Vaio PCG-SR31K recently

cute and small 10.4" 1024x768 subnotebook with PIII750, Savage IX 8MB and Yamaha "DS1" (idk if that means YMF724 or could also be another DS1* designated one, maybe YMF754) still need to test it out more 😀

Heh. I just recently took delivery of its Japanese equivalent the SR9G/K (Buyee auction + fedex shipment to the US) - the only major difference is that the 9GK Is 700MHz instead of 750. Right now the pain is to hunt down Windows 98 drivers for it.

The Yamaha driver specifically for the Vaio laptops has recently been uploaded on vogonsdrivers by me. I just happened to have a laptop that had the vxd driver install package on it.

I probably have the rest of the drivers as well for Win9x. There is one random one that I have been having trouble finding, but it is not absolutely necessary.

The nice thing about this gen of Sony laptops is that the hardware was all very similar so it is not so difficult as having to have a bunch of different driver sets for the different models.

Note... The laptop I have been working with lately is the XG28. I had to replace the screen with onenfrom a different model, but it had the same exact casing. The only difference was the model number sticker which I swapped over.

Unfortunately - the driver uploaded doesn’t work for my machine - although I am not sure if it’s because I am missing the Sony Programmable I/O controller (SonyPI), the Conexant 56k win modem and other various drivers that was needed to “set the table” for Windows 98, so to speak, since for some inexplicable reason the DOS setup (via the YMF744 VxD drivers from Phil...which only works in pure DOS) seems to work on IRQ5, while for some reason the Windows config locks it at IRQ9.

Yeah, the PCG-SR series have very similar hardware underneath - I actually looked at the service manual flowcharts and realized that most of the parts are actually there from the SR1BP all the way to the SRX77. i didn’t even originally plan to have this SR9GK/SR31k - I was aiming for a detailed write up/benchmark of the SR9K and its Neomagic 2380/256XL+GPU (supposedly so bad at Direct3D that it makes you wish for VirgeMX). I was actually surprised and actually slightly delighted by the presence of the S3 SavageIX in this one. It’s just like my old SR27k, but with early bluetooth.

What’s with me gunning for laptops with rare-ish mobile GPUs and getting S3 products? First it’s a Toshiba Portege 7220CT with a Cyberblade i4 - ended up with a 7220CTe with the SavageIX. Then it’s the SR9k that turns out to be a SR9GK. What’s next? This D800 with a D-Dock (for the ESS Solo-1) will have an S3 DeltaChrome S8 instead of a Geforce4Go 4200?

Reply 434 of 878, by cyclone3d

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Try the DOS driver from my upload.

The newer setupds that is included with Phil's package should work but the setupds.ini might be different.

The 8-bit and fm should work in DOS, but for whatever reason, the native 16-bit doesn't which is no biggie.

You also need to first uninstall any of the Yamaha drivers from add/remove programs before you install the one for the Vaio laptops.

The non-Vaio drivers will not work according to testing with multiple models.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 435 of 878, by ragefury32

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cyclone3d wrote on 2021-03-31, 03:49:
Try the DOS driver from my upload. […]
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Try the DOS driver from my upload.

The newer setupds that is included with Phil's package should work but the setupds.ini might be different.

The 8-bit and fm should work in DOS, but for whatever reason, the native 16-bit doesn't which is no biggie.

You also need to first uninstall any of the Yamaha drivers from add/remove programs before you install the one for the Vaio laptops.

The non-Vaio drivers will not work according to testing with multiple models.

Your audio driver was the first I’ve tried when I set the machine up - no dice, would not even reconcile the devices with the device manager. Even when I force it, it gives me no audio for both Win98 and DOS (command prompt on F8). The only one that seem to work is Phil’s drivers, but that only works constantly in DOS (and even then it glitches out with Wing Commander privateer). Like I said before - works fine in DOS, and not in Windows 98. I might have to boot it into Linux, do an lspci -v and reconcile the drivers manually.

Reply 436 of 878, by cyclone3d

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What is the PCI ID of the audio device? I wonder if it is the YMF754 instead of the YFM744.

If so, then a modded driver pack may need to be made.

As for DOS, what version of SETUPDS are you using and what exact settings are set in SETUPDS?

A screenshot is probably the simplest.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 437 of 878, by Brute389

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In talking with him prior to this, he indeed does have a ymf754. I have the same sound chip in my C1VJ, and it plays out exactly as he describes. I used setupds 3.16 and even 3.17 to try to get it to work and it would only come back with 8 bit sound. I have been looking around on old sites and recovery discs for Sony vxd drivers for the 754, but I don't believe any official ones were made as wdm drivers became mainstay. It indeed seems like a modded pack needs to be made. I was wondering if maybe the wdm drivers could be installed first then slipstream the vxd drivers to trick the system?

Reply 438 of 878, by ragefury32

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Brute389 wrote on 2021-04-01, 08:13:

In talking with him prior to this, he indeed does have a ymf754. I have the same sound chip in my C1VJ, and it plays out exactly as he describes. I used setupds 3.16 and even 3.17 to try to get it to work and it would only come back with 8 bit sound. I have been looking around on old sites and recovery discs for Sony vxd drivers for the 754, but I don't believe any official ones were made as wdm drivers became mainstay. It indeed seems like a modded pack needs to be made. I was wondering if maybe the wdm drivers could be installed first then slipstream the vxd drivers to trick the system?

Yes indeed, it was a 754. The later PCG-SRs (beyond SR9) are YMF754 machines, not 744.

I don't think the issue is the driver version per-se, since the VxD drivers that you have and the one for Phil's should support the 744s and 754s. I also got the audio working on Windows...once, but that was in the middle of me installing some other missing things...and somehow the config stabilized and the ability went away. I also know that the hardware is functional since I still have the original HDD with a working Win2K install (which came with the original Japanese Windows 2000 driver pack, plus the SR31k recovery disk ISO is on archive.org).

As Brute389 would've put it, there were no VxD drivers available from Sony in question, but I think the issue goes beyond simply the audio drivers. I think we need to initialize the other hardware in the machine so the resources are bumped into place correctly. Once that's done the hardware "should" work. The missing drivers are the ones for the Sony Programmable I/O controller (sonyPI), the Conexant WinModem and maybe the magicGate memory stick controller - like I've said, most of those missing drivers should be in the recovery image/driver archive for the SR1BP, which is one of the first in the series and runs Win98SE natively. it obviously doesn't help that Sony pulled the drivers back in 2017, and there's only a 455GB, multi-part driver set for vaio-link.com on archive.org that is not well documented.

Reply 439 of 878, by cyclone3d

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Ok... Gotcha. I don't think I have one of the Vaio laptops with the ymf754 but I'll double check.

The Vaio ftp backup that is on archive.org is from me as well so I am a little bit familiar with it.

If you can get me the PCI ID for the sound device in Windows on that laptop that would be great.

Edit:
I was actually going through stuff last night and pulled out a PCG-F680. Guessing it does have a YMF754 as it is a newer model and the drivers I found say DS-XG but even though the laptop originally came with Windows ME, the only downloads I see popping up are for 2000 and XP. Marketing specs say Hardware MIDI so that should mean it is really DS-XG and not XG-AC(AC97 only). And to top it off, the person that had it before me installed XP on it... grrrr. At least it will be super easy to see the PCI ID

I'll take a look at it a little while to see if I can get the 2019 VXD drivers working on it. Hopefully only a .inf edit will be required.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK