T4x thinkpads with discrete gpus have tendency of dying quickly, same for T6x with nvidia

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-08-11, 15:38:

T4x thinkpads with discrete gpus have tendency of dying quickly, same for T6x with nvidia

I actually succeeded in reflowing a T43 some 10 years ago, in the oven ...

Afaik ATI gpus break/melt off the PCB and can be reflowed, Nvidia ones are just broken internally (between die and interposer) and heating only heals them temporarily. If this one still works fine make sure to cool it extra well.
you will need sbemu for pure dos gaming Re: SBEMU: Sound Blaster emulation on AC97 Re: SBEMU: Sound Blaster emulation on AC97

To improve cooling, Get R52 notebook 15" with GPU in it, replace the board with T42p motherboard as R52 didn't have radeon 9600. The heatsink used in GPU R52 is much better designed.

Cheers,

I think the long T42 M10 heatsink (the one that would be used on a Radeon 9600/FireGL) is fine. My T42 is more than 18 years old and was still working last time I checked. Though of course it has not been used heavily in more than a decade.

I have a T42 with the Radeon Mobility 9000. It's an awesome retro computer! I use it for DOS with it's beautiful screen.

I pair it with the IBM Dock II and a discreet audio card (Aureal Vortex) to make a compact retro battle station.

The CPU responds well to slowdown utilities.

I ran into some hurdles getting drivers but had a stable system. I cannot for the death of me find out what the WiFi card in this thing is in Device Manager (PCI Card, PCI Ethernet Controller or Unknown Device?) nor which one it even is in general. I've tried many drivers but haven't found anything that works which is really unfortunate. I really wish there was a 98SE restore disc for this thing online (I know they exist) I could use instead of going on a manhunt for everything. I'm probably going to redo my 98 installation and dualboot it with XP so I know there's something that'll always work.

The SoundMAX audio chip actually has SB emulation which suprised me, I don't think it was capable of FM (or at least I wasn't able to get it to work) but it did at least give me sound in Doom. The only problem is that I couldn't figure out how to get it to use anything but the EuCom MIDI synth (which in my case I was trying to make doom use the yamaha S-YXG100) the drivers came with. I even removed it as a MIDI device in the Multimedia settings but it still somehow was playing the music in Doom. Is there a way to set up SBEMU in Windows 98 without having to go in DOS mode? That might help and give me FM emulation as well.

fosterwj03 wrote on 2023-08-12, 02:16:

I have a T42 with the Radeon Mobility 9000. It's an awesome retro computer! I use it for DOS with it's beautiful screen.

I pair it with the IBM Dock II and a discreet audio card (Aureal Vortex) to make a compact retro battle station.

The CPU responds well to slowdown utilities.

Nice setup. Got something similiar going on here with the Mini Dock.

bobsmith wrote on 2023-08-14, 02:54:

I ran into some hurdles getting drivers but had a stable system. I cannot for the death of me find out what the WiFi card in thi […]
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I ran into some hurdles getting drivers but had a stable system. I cannot for the death of me find out what the WiFi card in this thing is in Device Manager (PCI Card, PCI Ethernet Controller or Unknown Device?) nor which one it even is in general. I've tried many drivers but haven't found anything that works which is really unfortunate. I really wish there was a 98SE restore disc for this thing online (I know they exist) I could use instead of going on a manhunt for everything. I'm probably going to redo my 98 installation and dualboot it with XP so I know there's something that'll always work.

The SoundMAX audio chip actually has SB emulation which suprised me, I don't think it was capable of FM (or at least I wasn't able to get it to work) but it did at least give me sound in Doom. The only problem is that I couldn't figure out how to get it to use anything but the EuCom MIDI synth (which in my case I was trying to make doom use the yamaha S-YXG100) the drivers came with. I even removed it as a MIDI device in the Multimedia settings but it still somehow was playing the music in Doom. Is there a way to set up SBEMU in Windows 98 without having to go in DOS mode? That might help and give me FM emulation as well.

fosterwj03 wrote on 2023-08-12, 02:16:

I have a T42 with the Radeon Mobility 9000. It's an awesome retro computer! I use it for DOS with it's beautiful screen.

I pair it with the IBM Dock II and a discreet audio card (Aureal Vortex) to make a compact retro battle station.

The CPU responds well to slowdown utilities.

Nice setup. Got something similiar going on here with the Mini Dock.

There are several possible Wifi cards models with a T42.
https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T42

You can test drivers for all, or open the laptop and visually check the mini PCI card. If you can't find a driver at all, you can probably also change the card.

I used to play Diablo II on Linux on my Thinkpad T22. I bought it refurbished for 300€ in 2006. My first laptop ever. I needed one for university.
I immediately replaced Windows 2000 with Debian Linux.
Diablo II with Wine worked like a charm on Linux.
I still have this T22 today but not in the best shape.