Found some 256MB DDR2-800 sticks for cheap so going to see if they will work in this laptop once they and the laptop arrives.

Will be useful at least to get 98SE installed and then I can apply the R.Loew RAM patch so I can have more RAM the 98SE can definitely use... hah. Maybe I will make it a dual boot system with 98SE and XP... or not.

Onboard sound should also have 98SE drivers available... I think. Guess I will find out. If not, I'll try a Win9x compatible PCMCIA sound card with an Expresscard to PCMCIA adapter.
From what I could find, it sounds like the older Sigmatel Win9x compatible drivers will work with these "newer" Sigmatel chips.

Everything I ordered so far for this setup has finally shipped. Even ordered a new dock that has the PCI slot.

I think the only thing left will be to upgrade the CPU as I am unsure of the CPU the laptop is coming with though I suspect it is the T9300.

how well does the sound work.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-07-28, 22:29:

So I have been itching to find the most overkill Windows 98SE compatible laptop. […]
Show full quote

So I have been itching to find the most overkill Windows 98SE compatible laptop.

I don't care about having a GeForce FX GPU in this laptop as I already have one with an FX5200. The top FX mobile model was the FX5700 which is practically just about impossible to find.

This means the max video card would be:
GeForce 7900GTX
Quadro FX2500m (same specs as the 7900GTX)
Geforce 7950GT(X)

I already ordered a couple of the Dell Quadro FX2500m as they were a whopping $19.99 a piece new.

I was planning on getting a Dell XPS m1710 / Precision M90 / Inspiron 9400/E1705 but the found out the newer model Precision m6300 can take the same video cards but supports newer / faster CPUs because of the 965 chipset.

Also found one for a great price so I bought it.

What about other laptops that support the Penryn CPUs and Windows 98SE compatible video cards. Are there any out there?

No. There are no Penryns with Windows 98 compatible GPUs. The Penryns came out in '08-'09, and both ATi and AMD dropped support for Win98 in '06 0r so.
That FX2500m does not have Windows 98SE support because nVidia stopped making Win98 drivers after the Geforce 6 series. That one is based on a Geforce 7. The Precision m6300 is a Geforce 8 board. If you shoehorn a 7 card to work with 6 drivers...it might work but it'll likely be unstable.

Unless you are gunning for one of those unicorn Clevo or Alienware gamer laptops from back in the days, the laptop with a Win98SE kosher GPU will probably either an IBM ThinkPad T43p (X600 based ATI FireGL V3200) or a Dell Precision M70 (Geforce 6800 based Quadro Go FX1400). The 43p is the easier one to live with, the M70 is the desk anchor with the most firepower.

personally would stay clear of t43 since i own one and go for the t41 or t42. issue mainly is heat and poor cooling. the chasis are the same for t41-t43 the difference is they kept stuffing faster and hotter running hardware and did nothing to change the thermal design.

maybe the t43 cpu heatsink installed on a t41 with the mobility 9000 would be good.

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-08-02, 20:37:

No. There are no Penryns with Windows 98 compatible GPUs. The Penryns came out in '08-'09, and both ATi and AMD dropped suppor […]
Show full quote

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-07-28, 22:29:

So I have been itching to find the most overkill Windows 98SE compatible laptop. […]
Show full quote

So I have been itching to find the most overkill Windows 98SE compatible laptop.

I don't care about having a GeForce FX GPU in this laptop as I already have one with an FX5200. The top FX mobile model was the FX5700 which is practically just about impossible to find.

This means the max video card would be:
GeForce 7900GTX
Quadro FX2500m (same specs as the 7900GTX)
Geforce 7950GT(X)

I already ordered a couple of the Dell Quadro FX2500m as they were a whopping $19.99 a piece new.

I was planning on getting a Dell XPS m1710 / Precision M90 / Inspiron 9400/E1705 but the found out the newer model Precision m6300 can take the same video cards but supports newer / faster CPUs because of the 965 chipset.

Also found one for a great price so I bought it.

What about other laptops that support the Penryn CPUs and Windows 98SE compatible video cards. Are there any out there?

No. There are no Penryns with Windows 98 compatible GPUs. The Penryns came out in '08-'09, and both ATi and AMD dropped support for Win98 in '06 0r so.
That FX2500m does not have Windows 98SE support because nVidia stopped making Win98 drivers after the Geforce 6 series. That one is based on a Geforce 7. The Precision m6300 is a Geforce 8 board. If you shoehorn a 7 card to work with 6 drivers...it might work but it'll likely be unstable.

Unless you are gunning for one of those unicorn Clevo or Alienware gamer laptops from back in the days, the laptop with a Win98SE kosher GPU will probably either an IBM ThinkPad T43p (X600 based ATI FireGL V3200) or a Dell Precision M70 (Geforce 6800 based Quadro Go FX1400). The 43p is the easier one to live with, the M70 is the desk anchor with the most firepower.

I've already done the research. The Dell m6300 supports Penryn and can take the video cards from the previous gen.

I already know that the 7 series works in 98SE as I have run a 7900GTX with the modded driver set.

I'm not going for a sane build here... Just seeing what is possible.

https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-Genera … 00/td-p/4034486

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/what- … n-m6300.685565/

Also, the 7900GTX, 7950GTX, and Quadro 2500m from these Dell laptops have a dual heatpipe cooler instead of the single heatpipe cooler that the 7900GS came with and thus have much less problems.

I actually want to see this when assembled.😮

As regular laptops of the time are hard to find with working drivers.

The laptop arrived today and, as I suspected, it has the T9300 CPU in it.

I'll initially be testing with this CPU until I get an X9100. I'll have to do the fsb pin mod to make it work at 800fsb, but the x9000 CPUs are priced through the roof and I can set the clock multiplier with throttlestop.

It should also work with the QX9300 but that is useless for Windows 9x. Maybe I'll end up doing a dual-boot 9x/XP setup.

Going to install XP on it first after I redo the thermal paste for the CPU and possibly the thermal pad for the chipset.
I also want to save all the PCI IDs as it is much easier to do this in XP first as I can reference what goes to what unlike in 98 where I won't have a clue .

Oh yeah, it also came with the 1920x1200 screen which is what I was hoping for .
The stock GPU is the Quadro FX1600m which is the same as a Geforce 8600m GT, but clocked much higher.

Just adding some notes for XP so I don't forget.

I tried a bunch of the newer different versions of drivers for both the Quadro and Geforce cards and was getting really horrible performance. ~13.7k was the most I could muster in 3DMark 2001SE.

Decided to go looking and found reports of similar issues from years ago. Found a post where somebody mentioned that 94.24 with a modded .inf was the best to use for the 7950GTX in XP.

Went ahead and downloaded and installed it after removing the other drivers.

3DMark 2001SE score shot up to over 36k... that is more like it.

The other drivers acted like it had the card stuck on either 2D or low power 3D clocks, which is 100/100 and 200/30o respectively. High performance clocks are 500/600.

Now that I know everything seems to be working correctly, I can go ahead and see what I can do with 98SE on this thing.

Will also be ordering an x9100 to put in it.

Have 98SE installed but haven't installed any MS updates yet.

I have the custom chipset driver set installed and almost everything shows up as it should.
Had to manually update everything and had to update the PCI bus driver in safe mode as it would hang in normal mode.

Also installed the R.Loew APCI patch.

Having trouble with the video card though even after using the R.Loew patches. Currently using the modded 82.69 set.

It boots into noal.mode ok, but the screen is all garbled. Looks like it may be an issue with the LCD interface to me. Like the h-sync is off.

I've already tried the R.Loew driver patch and also the video card BIOS patch for 512MB cards. Neither made any difference.

Going to try it closed on the dock next with the laptop closed and an external monitor to see if it works properly then. If so, I might be able to use powerstrip to get it working on the LCD correctly.

If the external LCD doesn't work, I'll try it with a CRT as well. I can even hook up my programmable converter to see what in the world signal it is outputting.

there are some other ways to work around 512 vid mem besides the rloew patch, It might be mentioned in the patch but It might not you can probably find it.

Warlord wrote on 2021-08-09, 03:05:

there are some other ways to work around 512 vid mem besides the rloew patch, It might be mentioned in the patch but It might not you can probably find it.

Hmmm... The only thing I was able to find quickly was to adjust the AGP aperture size in BIOS which this system doesn't have.

After testing some more, I think it is an issue with the 82.69 driver set just not working properly at all with the Quadro FX2500M card. External LCD and CRT both exhibit the same exact issues as with the internal LCD.

I did find another program by R.Loew that allows the loading of drivers written for XP/2000 to be installed in 9x:
http://lonecrusader.x10host.com/rloew/wdmex.html

This is very, very interesting. This right here, if it works, would fix a ton of stuff for Win9x. The example shown is for a High Definition Audio Device.

I also only have 512MB RAM installed in this system so too much RAM shouldn't be causing an issue.

On my system I have the PCIe 7900GTX installed in, I didn't have to mess with anything like that. It just works with the 82.69 driver set.