Well I've had Keen Goodbye Galaxy running on Compaq Armadas with ATI gfx and can't see what the heck the problem is meant to be. So I have been having the personal impression that minor things are way over emphasized on that chart according to the author's whim. Either that or it represents worst case scenario when you plug in a particularly crappy desktop LCD. Anyway, Compaq's ATI solutions seem very well tuned, don't forget that in the case of the laptop it's a GPU designed to be paired with an LCD and has been matched to the panel by the designers, and does not have any analog conversion stuff in the way each side messing things up.

Now for Satellites, I have personally had hands on older models and much newer models. The older models, Pentium and MMX class, tend to have plastic that is degrading, and we've also seen a few screens delaminate. The CD drives can die and be hard to replace. So I would recommend only in person purchase of any of those so you can get a proper feel for condition. Unless you get a "found in closet, don't know if it works" deal for $70 or under. The later models have better plastic though, so I don't know if this criticism applies to P3 models.

Presarios have okay plastic I think, but still any machine can have had a rough life. Hinges may be a problem, but that goes for any well used machine of that age. In particular, make sure you get one with the hard drive caddy. Those are hard to find. They are made harder to find by the fact that they go around the drive rather than the drive going inside it, such that the part number label is put on the drive itself. Thus you try to buy the part number for the assembly and you may get the bare and common drive with no caddy. So it's kind of a "A box full of caddyless Compaq Laptops is worth the box" situation. This is complicated a bit by the caddy assembly being low profile, the connector looking like compact flash, higher density than 2.5IDE connector, so at a glance, those who "know a bit about computers" glance in the hole and say you just need to plug a drive in, or have pulled drives and didn't really notice it was a bit larger with the caddy interface on, and will tell you you just need a regular drive. So only those small percent who know about this will know the difference. So it's hard to tell who is over-confidently bullshitting you about the drive, or who actually knows his shit, or who is straight up lying to make a sale. So yah, you buy one with a "dead HDD" get a picture of the dead drive in the bay, don't buy an empty bay. (There's a chance a "dead" HDD might only need the compaq setup disks run also)

Between the two at the same price I'd lean toward the compaq. I'd be swayed by Satellites at 2/3 the price of Compaqs. You may find caddyless compaqs in otherwise perfect shape listed dirt cheap, but then you'll probably have to buy a whole beat up machine, bust LCD or something to get the caddy. Though if you see "dead for spares" compaq HDD listed with picture you may see caddy on one of those.

I would call them good laptops for late DOS games like Carmageddon/Screamer/Quake and early Windows games.

If you choose from two, then of course Toshiba, it is more reliable and the Yamaha sound card is more interesting than ESS.

Both video cards are not fast enough for games like Need For Speed: Porsche unleashed and don't support proper screen scaling/stretching for 320x200 or 320x240 resolutions, so they are identical acceptable for early DOS games, but not perfect.

I wouldn't worry based on these tests and incompatibility especially with mentioned games.

Had one Compaq 1800T that overheated and could not be repaired.

Toshiba has better audio, Yamaha trumps the ESS, but the ESS is likely completely usable.
However, the Compaq probably has better graphics support, at least for Windows.
The Savage will probably be aces in DOS but it's definitely going to get beat out by the (probably) Radeon card.

Either one is a decent choice depending on expectations and game selection.

Thank you all for your replies!

I was also trying to find the schematics but I did not find anything for those models, any ideas ?

Also, does anybody knows if the CPUs are socketed ?

Maybe socketted, but they will be intel mobile module things.

I do not remember exactly, if they are on sale, they probably socketed

https://www.impactcomputers.com/p000297730.html
https://www.impactcomputers.com/201348-001.html

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-12-19, 14:24:

Now for Satellites, I have personally had hands on older models and much newer models. The older models, Pentium and MMX class, tend to have plastic that is degrading, and we've also seen a few screens delaminate. The CD drives can die and be hard to replace. So I would recommend only in person purchase of any of those so you can get a proper feel for condition. Unless you get a "found in closet, don't know if it works" deal for $70 or under. The later models have better plastic though, so I don't know if this criticism applies to P3 models.

Worth noting the LCD delamination (known as vinegar syndrome, it's a failure of the glue that holds on the polarizer film), is not a Toshiba failure, it's an LCD failure. Can and will happen in any LCD in any laptop. Can also be repaired, but it's one of the most difficult repairs you'll have to do to one of these, probably the most difficult one.
The plastics are also not a Toshiba problem really, more of an industry problem. I will give you that the Toshiba plastics seem especially bad, my guess would be just that they seem pretty thin in comparison to a lot of other brands. I suspect though that the newer P3 Toshibas are probably not that far behind. I've also heard of hinge failures happening on those.

The real Toshiba killer is the CMOS and Hiberation batteries. They're VARTA Nickel-Metal-Hydride cell batteries, two of them, inside the laptops. These batteries leak nearly 100% of the time after 20+ years. ALL the Toshibas, from the biggest Tecra to the smallest Libretto from the time have them, and they're located right over the motherboard in many (like the Satellite Pro 400 series, not sure where they are in the 4000 series), and they're killing most of them. I'd say avoid buying one untested or dead, instead, find one working and remove the batteries ASAP and you should be fine.

I know a lot less about those Compaqs. I do that they used that design for a good few years and sold a crap-load of them, most seemingly low-end units with crappy passive matrix displays. The earlier ones I've seen plenty of plastic failures around the display hinges on (seen from just browsing a crap load of eBay listings). I've seen far less of the later P3 models like the 1800T, so I don't know whether they're built better or not. These seem pretty electrically reliable though, eBay's full of POSTing examples, even if many are cosmetically trashed.

Overall, I'd personally take a good condition Toshiba over a mediore condition Compaq. Granted the most time I've spent in person with one of those Compaqs was a brief few seconds at the VCF swap meet, but the Toshibas seem in general to be a higher quality system, and the Yamaha sound is a plus. The Compaq is probably lower maintenance though, and that later high end model might be way better, not sure. The Toshibas do tend to have really nice keyboards.

If you're looking for the best of the best, it's apparently the Toshiba Satellite 2805-S402, but they're pretty darn rare.

Thanks for the detailed explanation.
I will keep an eye on batteries on any laptop I get.