Forgot to add the specs of my X20 which was perfectly fine for the games I've been running:
279mm x 227mm x 23.8-27.9mm, 1.6Kg
12,1", 800x600
Intel Pentium III 600Mhz
Intel 440ZXM AGPset chipset
ATI Rage Mobility M (4MB VRAM)

Anything in this ballpark would be fine, although I'd prefer to have 8MB of VRAM if the screen is 1024x768.

ATi with 4mb or 8mb and 1024x768 resolution gaming not very well possible,
more like 640x480, max 800x600 should be fine, 1998 and 1999 games at least.

I've played Croc, Shipwreckers, Thief and many other games on my X20 with ATI Rage Mobility 4MB at 800x600 with no issues!

Besides, the 3 notebooks I've listed have all way more powerful GPUs than the ATI Rage Mobility, so playing at 1024x768 should not be an issue.

I've just looked at some benchmarks comparing Intel Extreme Graphics 2 vs the Trident Cyberblade XP... and the difference is massive.

I've seen that in 3DMark 2000 the X20's Rage Mobility M scores ~500 points, the Trident ~1000 points... and the Intel ~3000 points.
Triple the amount of the Trident. Wow.

I would have never guessed such a difference.

Unless someone comes up with some alternatives I think I'll reluctantly go with the IBM Thinkpad X40... not that I need insane amount of GPU power, mind you, but I want to play those old games smoothly at the panel's native resolution without hiccups.

I think the X40 is a good choice. The Pentium III-M is a great CPU, it'll be fast and takes a regular 44-pin drive, so should be easy to adapt to CF or mSATA. I had a slim 44-pin to mSATA adapter in an older Thinkpad and I liked it because it was the size/shape of a regular drive. Plus there are a lot of spare parts for it since it was a common business machine, so you could always fix up the cosmetics later if you like. I have a small ThinkPad collection and they're all enjoyable in their own way! I have a T42 which is very similar to the X40 and it's a good late 9x and Win2K machine.

Thanks for chiming in!

Yeah, the X40 is definitely the superior machine to those I listed.
I'm still a bit bummed out that my Thinkpad X20 died out of nowhere so I'm a little wary.

I'm waiting for a reply from the seller of the NEC Versa to understand if they kept the zif to ide flex cable when they removed the hard drive because I'm still tempted by it.
1.1Kg!
It's as light as my 11" Macbook Air!
And it has stereo speakers! (which are going to be crappy, sure, but at least I have stereo sound)

I'm also looking at something very slightly bigger, the Toshiba Portege M300.
Like the other Portege, it is "complete" and ready to go and there are several available.
Specs:
28.6 cm x 23.3 cm x 2.9cm, 1.6Kg
12.1", 1024x768
Intel Pentium M 753 / 1.2 GHz
Intel 855GME chipset
Intel Extreme Graphics 2

This is also pretty cheap, has stereo speakers and, thank god, a normal hard drive (should the included one fail).
It's pretty chunky though, at 2.9cm thickness.
At the end of the day, though, I think that weight plays a more important factor as I move often between two houses.

Here's a comparison of the size and weight of the ones mentioned so far:

1X20	27.9 x 22.7 x 2.4	1.6 Kg
2X40	26.8 x 21.1 x 2.0	1.24Kg
3NEC	28.0 x 22.2 x 2.2 	1.1 Kg
4P2000	28.9 x 22.9 x 1.9	1.2 Kg
5M300	28.6 × 23.3 × 2.9	1.6 Kg

Found another one which could fit the bill: the Dell Latitude X300, which also has stereo speakers.
Specs:
27.4 cm x 23.4 cm x 2.3cm, 1.32Kg
12.1", 1024x768
Intel Pentium M 1.2 GHz
Intel 855GME chipset
Intel Extreme Graphics 2

Another small and light notebook, this one also comes with the hard disk (which the seller says it's working, but failing – or at least that's what Crystal Disk reports) and PSU and is ready to go.

Decisions, decisions...

I also wish there was an edit button to update previous posts.

donluca4 wrote on 2025-05-17, 12:08:

Found another one which could fit the bill: the Dell Latitude X300, which also has stereo speakers. Specs: 27.4 cm x 23.4 cm x 2 […]
Show full quote

Found another one which could fit the bill: the Dell Latitude X300, which also has stereo speakers.
Specs:
27.4 cm x 23.4 cm x 2.3cm, 1.32Kg
12.1", 1024x768
Intel Pentium M 1.2 GHz
Intel 855GME chipset
Intel Extreme Graphics 2

I have two X300, I'm not sure they're compatible with Win98, I never tried though, they're happily running XP at the moment.

lolo799 wrote on 2025-05-17, 13:59:

I have two X300, I'm not sure they're compatible with Win98, I never tried though, they're happily running XP at the moment.

Then we'll find out together, because the seller sent me a fantastic offer slashing the price almost in half and I got the X300!

I've already done some research and it should be compatible, although I'm afraid it's gonna need quite a bit of help to get it up and running.

I'll open a new thread when it gets here!

The first problem I see with installing win98 with it is that the cd/dvd drive, whether in an external enclosure or in the dock, is usb only.
Of course you can remove the hdd but you have to dismantle almost the entire laptop which isn't very convenient...

By curiosity, how much did you pay for it?

the x300 is too new for win98 so no gpu/audio drivers, was gonna say go for another thinkpad or at least a known popular brand, portability and reliability depends on the battery which is the most important thing to consider when buying a retro laptop, known brands are likely to use the same battery type across different models so will at least increase the chance of finding a replacement.

at the moment ive got a thinkpad thats running windows 98 and it does the job pretty well, specs are

Thinkpad R40
CPU: Pentium M (Pentium 4) 2.20GHZ
RAM: 512mb
GPU: ATI mobility radeon 16mb vram (Radeon 7000)
AUDIO: Analog Devices AD1981B SoundMAX (AC97)

the 16mb vram is what holds it back but its still enough to run max payne 1&2 at a playable speed which is good enough for me, the onboard audio is good for dos games in 98,
you have soundblaster and general midi, no FM synth. also using the cadenza soundmax audio driver it will give you enviromental effects and a softsynth with a yamaha XG lite and General midi soundset which partially works with dos games, better than the standard thinkpad audio driver and its ADIsynth.

i mainly use this for playing heretic, duke3d, doom, blood, monkey island 1/2, quake II, thief 1/2, etc. probably the most demanding games are max payne 1/2.

lolo799 wrote on 2025-05-17, 17:27:

The first problem I see with installing win98 with it is that the cd/dvd drive, whether in an external enclosure or in the dock, is usb only.
Of course you can remove the hdd but you have to dismantle almost the entire laptop which isn't very convenient...

By curiosity, how much did you pay for it?

There are a tons of ways around this and the X300 should support booting from USB from what I've read, so a bootable USB with DOS (you can do that with Rufus) and then copy over the contents of the Win98 CD and manually start setup.exe will do the trick.
USB CD Rom should work as well, you can slipstream the necessary drivers into the Win98 CD.
I also have a USB Floppy Drive which should work.

I've paid 50 euros included shipping.
It was listed for 65 + 20 shipping.

DudeFace wrote on 2025-05-17, 17:35:

the x300 is too new for win98 so no gpu/audio drivers

This is not true, I have already downloaded them.

GPU: https://www.techspot.com/drivers/driver/file/ … formation/2505/
Audio: https://www.soundcard-drivers.com/drivers/129/129538.htm
Chipset: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/intel-chipset-drivers.html (scroll down, the latest one)
...and various others.

Some work might be involved to make everything work 100% but it's definitely doable.

donluca4 wrote on 2025-05-17, 18:41:

This is not true, I have already downloaded them. […]
Show full quote

DudeFace wrote on 2025-05-17, 17:35:

the x300 is too new for win98 so no gpu/audio drivers

This is not true, I have already downloaded them.

GPU: https://www.techspot.com/drivers/driver/file/ … formation/2505/
Audio: https://www.soundcard-drivers.com/drivers/129/129538.htm
Chipset: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/intel-chipset-drivers.html (scroll down, the latest one)
...and various others.

Some work might be involved to make everything work 100% but it's definitely doable.

i missed the dell part 🤣 i thought we were talking thinkpads, in that case it should work fine for 98.

DudeFace wrote on 2025-05-17, 18:49:

i missed the dell part 🤣 i thought we were talking thinkpads, in that case it should work fine for 98.

Oh sorry about that!
You're absolutely right, the ATI X300.
It's been SEO hell trying to find drivers and information about the *DELL X300* due to the naming, 🤣.

We were talking about the Dell Latitude X300 because in the end I got one and lolo had two with Windows XP and he was wondering how hard it would be to get Win98 running on those.

After managing to boot the Thinkpad X20 recovery CD where I had to hex edit my way through the disc image to find the hook for the initial boot disk and modify it to inject custom USB drivers (the X20 doesn't support "normal" USB CD drives, let alone USB drives) I assure you this is going to be a piece of cake, 🤣.

@lolo799 do you know if the Dell X300 has screen expansion? Meaning that if you use a lower resolution it will stretch it to fill the screen or if it will have black borders.

donluca4 wrote on 2025-05-16, 15:25:

I've played Croc, Shipwreckers, Thief and many other games on my X20 with ATI Rage Mobility 4MB at 800x600 with no issues!

Dont get me wrong ATi Rage Pro architecture is ok, its from march 1997.

donluca4 wrote on 2025-05-17, 19:19:

@lolo799 do you know if the Dell X300 has screen expansion? Meaning that if you use a lower resolution it will stretch it to fill the screen or if it will have black borders.

You can choose to fill the screen or have black borders in the Intel Graphics properties screen.

Excellent, thanks for confirming!

I know some laptops don't have the function (in the BIOS or elsewhere) to stretch the image to fullscreen and that would have been a bit of a pain since the screen is already small at 12".

Also, I saw some horror stories about the Trident Cyberblade XP graphic cards (games with graphic corruptions or that didn't start/didn't work correctly) so I decided to go for the Intel integrated which seems to have better support and less issues, at least for Directx6 (or less) games.

After freeing some space on my XP partition and shrinking it to get some space for 98SE, here are some things you can expect:
-Installation slowing down to a crawl during the PnP detection part, forcing you to soft reboot and the install continuing again.

-first boot with the "welcome to 98" screen slowing down too, task manager showing one or more unresponsive items, again having to soft reboot.
-any boot after that, explorer.exe gets unresponsive (although it works fine in safe mode). I solved the problem by using progman.exe as the shell, you can then run explorer as an application

-video, audio, ethernet and cardbus work fine, I disabled bluetooth, wifi and infrared in the device manager as I won't use them.
Most of the drivers came from the D505 thread on vogons except the network one, the x300 uses a broadcom chip.

-directx 6.0 from 98SE won't recognize the 3d accelerated part of the Intel graphics, I upgraded to 8.0 and it works fine.