I *think* the fastest Trident card would be the CyberBlade XP4. Go find yourself a Toshiba Tecra M1 and see how it stacks up: https://macdat.net/laptops/toshiba/tecra_m1.php

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-04-05, 03:34:

Just took my SR17k apart to look at it. The codec chip is the AKM4543. […]
Show full quote

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-04-04, 23:13:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-04-04, 21:48:

So... The laptop that stopped powering up last night was working again this morning. […]
Show full quote

So... The laptop that stopped powering up last night was working again this morning.

I tested my latest modded driver and it still doesn't output sound but it does make a click when the driver loads.

I decided to go looking for a specific YMF754 driver and actually found a full package with different .INF files for different codec chips. It also has instructions on what to do to make it work with the different codec chips.

It is basically the original 2019 vxd version from Yamaha but was released by a different company.

I am almost 100% sure I can get this version working. I just need to check what codec chips the VAIO laptops use with the YMF754.

I also ordered a spare motherboard which has a PIII 600, Neomagic 256XL+ and the YMF754. Not exactly sure what SR model it is from, but from the looks of it, the SR series all use the same exact form factor motherboard so i can put it in my other SR laptop that won't power up if I can't get it working.

Yeah, that’s the symptom of a failing AD3421 chip - your power circuitry will not fire up after a period of usage, but after a day or 2 it’ll come back to life. Unfortunate the chip will eventually degrade and the machine will require that chip to be replaced.

As for the codec I’ll need to take the SR9GK apart and see which chip it uses. Yeah, we should be able to get it working...it’s just a matter of making the right tweaks to it. I would also like to have the machine not report a bunch of unknown devices in Win98, though.

Just took my SR17k apart to look at it. The codec chip is the AKM4543.

So now I am going to try this driver and see how it works.

Fun thing about this full driver set is that it should work for all 744 and 754 solutions... mwahahaha.

According to the release notes, 4.12.01.2019 only supports 744 and 754.

I'm also wondering about the 4.07.1040 driver set as the release notes mention that it was changed from 4.06 to 4.07 when DX7 support was added... I'm not finding any info on exactly what the 4.12 drive set added over the 4.07 set.... maybe 4.07.1040 is the best vxd set for the other chipsets.

I am wondering if there is a service manual available for the SR17k. I have started disassembling one (to access the CMOS battery) but I am stuck...
Thanks!

ChrisTucson wrote on 2026-03-21, 04:04:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-04-05, 03:34:

Just took my SR17k apart to look at it. The codec chip is the AKM4543. […]
Show full quote

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-04-04, 23:13:

Yeah, that’s the symptom of a failing AD3421 chip - your power circuitry will not fire up after a period of usage, but after a day or 2 it’ll come back to life. Unfortunate the chip will eventually degrade and the machine will require that chip to be replaced.

As for the codec I’ll need to take the SR9GK apart and see which chip it uses. Yeah, we should be able to get it working...it’s just a matter of making the right tweaks to it. I would also like to have the machine not report a bunch of unknown devices in Win98, though.

Just took my SR17k apart to look at it. The codec chip is the AKM4543.

So now I am going to try this driver and see how it works.

Fun thing about this full driver set is that it should work for all 744 and 754 solutions... mwahahaha.

According to the release notes, 4.12.01.2019 only supports 744 and 754.

I'm also wondering about the 4.07.1040 driver set as the release notes mention that it was changed from 4.06 to 4.07 when DX7 support was added... I'm not finding any info on exactly what the 4.12 drive set added over the 4.07 set.... maybe 4.07.1040 is the best vxd set for the other chipsets.

I am wondering if there is a service manual available for the SR17k. I have started disassembling one (to access the CMOS battery) but I am stuck...
Thanks!

Try this one, the PCG SR series are pretty much all the same inside: https://elektrotanya.com/sony_vaio_pcg-sr27-2 … f/download.html

vorob wrote on 2026-02-25, 05:46:

What was the most powerful and interesting mobile Trident card? Wanna buy some laptop with it 😀

XGI CyberBlade XP Ai1 good or there was better thing? How it is compared to geforce2go?

I have a Toshiba Portege R100 with Trident XP4™ m32 32MB graphics. It's...an interesting card. It's one of those cards that, compatibility-wise, tends to behave as if its an NVIDIA card when a game doesn't quite recognize it, but in doing so there are weird clipping issues that show up that otherwise wouldn't. Max Payne does this, as does Dungeon Siege (a lot of the map gets blacked out). I've played around with different drivers for it and the stock ones for the R100 still work best but ymmv. Still a great computer because it is very thin and lightweight and yet packs enough power to play games up to about 2001-2002 with decent speeds (though the computer itself is from 2005): https://support.dynabook.com/support/staticCo … omTOCLink=false

Other than PC Speaker not having the pin enabled, the Asus X401U I have goobered up as a DOS machine works quite well.

The baked on trash Radeon graphics has 32mb of framebuffer, and has VBE3.0 video bios. Gets obscenely good FPS on Quake after running MTRRLFB to turn on 32bit writes.
VSBHDA works quite nice on it.

The AMD E1 processor is already fairly weak knee'd, so it runs a bit like an Athalon class machine.

If we can convince Baron von Reidsel to make a stand-alone utility to turn that pin on (PC Speaker) on HDA chips that dont turn it on by default, it would be practically perfect.

EriolGaurhoth wrote on 2026-04-15, 22:42:

vorob wrote on 2026-02-25, 05:46:

What was the most powerful and interesting mobile Trident card? Wanna buy some laptop with it 😀

XGI CyberBlade XP Ai1 good or there was better thing? How it is compared to geforce2go?

I have a Toshiba Portege R100 with Trident XP4™ m32 32MB graphics. It's...an interesting card. It's one of those cards that, compatibility-wise, tends to behave as if its an NVIDIA card when a game doesn't quite recognize it, but in doing so there are weird clipping issues that show up that otherwise wouldn't. Max Payne does this, as does Dungeon Siege (a lot of the map gets blacked out). I've played around with different drivers for it and the stock ones for the R100 still work best but ymmv. Still a great computer because it is very thin and lightweight and yet packs enough power to play games up to about 2001-2002 with decent speeds (though the computer itself is from 2005): https://support.dynabook.com/support/staticCo … omTOCLink=false

Would you mind running some 3DMark benchmarks on that XP4? I want to know how it compares to the other laptop video chips I've benchmarked: https://macdat.net/laptops/misc/gpubenchmarks.html

megatron-uk wrote on 2026-02-18, 07:51:

All ATI cards from Rage LT upwards are great for DOS as they do the interpolated full screen scaling of all video modes. With an ESS Solo that should make a fantastic mobile DOS gaming system.

I've moved entirely over to a ThinkPad T43 for mobile DOS gaming due to VSBHDA... it's a game changer.

I've been following your adventure through this forum, trying to get my first retro Laptop for DOS gaming. I'm trying to decide between a Toshiba 550CDT or 460CDT. While the 460 is older (with an 800x600 TFT screen vs 1024x768 TFT), I believe for full screen gaming, the C&T 65554 will make it a better option.

But your message made me rethink everything. I've worked for IBM for 25+ years and have gone through most of their laptops. I never considered getting a T series laptop for retro games. Biggest concern was DOS full screen support, and especially audio. With the new Sound Blaster/MIDI emulators (like VSBHDA and VSBHDASF) getting proper OPL/MIDI support is now "fixed". All that's left is clean scaling in old DOS games with no tearing while scrolling. Are you able to comment on that using a newer laptop like the T43?

I understand much older games (like Wing Commander) are a non-starter on something like a T43, but what about all the Sierra games, LucasArts, StarWars games? Shareware from Apogee? Anything pre-DOOM? Do they really look perfect/full screen and run normal speed on a T43 era laptop?

In all of my experimentation I can agree with Megatron (in opposition to my previous assertions in this very thread) that ATI is the best due to its far superior scaling.

However, every old laptop I’ve tested, ATI or not, has issues with vertical refresh and horizontal pan not behaving the way they do on real VGA cards. Specifically, they all run vertical refresh at 60Hz (VGA is supposed to be 70Hz) and handle vblank in a way that is difficult to detect. ATI is worse than the rest of them for this because it also latches horiz pan on every line. However, it usually doesn’t make a difference, and the one game where it really matters, Commander Keen, has been patched to fix this issue.

The main problem that remains is crappy TN panels. I really wish there were an IPS mod available for my Thinkpad T41.

I have over the years come to the inexorable conclusion that there is no truly good DOS laptop for games. There are many great machines for productivity, but their near universal poor sound and video scaling support, combined with crappy screens (even the TFT ones, color-wise) mean they’re going to give you 25% of the gaming experience of a real DOS desktop with a CRT, at best.

I am intent on someday coming up with a video scaling solution similar to the RGBtoHDMI that accepts TTL or VGA feature connector style digital input and drives a high resolution 4:3 LCD screen, as that would be the one piece of the puzzle that is currently missing in my quest to create a modern DOS laptop. A great machine is out there somewhere just waiting to be brought into existence.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2026-04-23, 02:32:

I have over the years come to the inexorable conclusion that there is no truly good DOS laptop for games. There are many great machines for productivity, but their near universal poor sound and video scaling support, combined with crappy screens (even the TFT ones, color-wise) mean they’re going to give you 25% of the gaming experience of a real DOS desktop with a CRT, at best.

I am intent on someday coming up with a video scaling solution similar to the RGBtoHDMI that accepts TTL or VGA feature connector style digital input and drives a high resolution 4:3 LCD screen, as that would be the one piece of the puzzle that is currently missing in my quest to create a modern DOS laptop. A great machine is out there somewhere just waiting to be brought into existence.

So what you're saying is that, if someone doesn't care about using period correct hardware, the best DOS laptop is a modern IPS laptop running DOSBOX fullscreen. 😀

I wouldn't go *THAT* far.

A '10s era budget laptop is quite amenable in many circumstances with VSBHDA and a CSM.

Again, that Asus X401U I found in the trash at work is "nearly perfect". The only thing it seems to be missing is having the PC Speaker HDA routing pin turned on by the BIOS. This is just an HDA register configuration thing that should be correctable with a simple fire-and-forget enabler before running VSBHDA, but such a tool for dos does not exist.. (alsamixer for linux is able to turn it on just fine though)

It has a nice vibrant screen, the radeon graphics chip supports 32bit combined writes with MTRRLFB with fullscreen VESA 3 without TSRs, the AMD E1 processor is about as powerful as an Athlon chip from about 10 years prior, the whole thing is very light-weight and thin, and it still has an external battery.

The lack of PCSpeaker for games that need it is the only real source of frustration. Works fantastically with Svardos and VSBHDA.

I think there's one other thing that I didn't see anyone mention - joystick support. How does one connect a joystick to a retro laptop if a MIDI/Joystick port is missing? If a laptop has a USB1 port (like many late 90's laptops do) will a USB joystick work in DOS on those? Sierra/Lucas games work great with the mouse .. but what about all the joystick games like Wing Commander and other flight sims?

Joystick is probably one of the biggest sticking points.

Some (read: very few) older laptops do have a combined joystick/midi port, and of course with those you can use a real joystick. With usb-only laptops you may be able to get one of the usb enablers to detect the chip and something like Bret Johnsons USB tools which can map USB controllers to keyboard input.

But there's no way to use an analogue usb joystick with dos, natively, that I am aware of.

megatron-uk wrote on 2026-04-23, 07:10:

Joystick is probably one of the biggest sticking points.

Some (read: very few) older laptops do have a combined joystick/midi port, and of course with those you can use a real joystick. With usb-only laptops you may be able to get one of the usb enablers to detect the chip and something like Bret Johnsons USB tools which can map USB controllers to keyboard input.

But there's no way to use an analogue usb joystick with dos, natively, that I am aware of.

There IS a driver for that, but I have not tested it.
https://www.bretjohnson.us/

Naturally, a "Joystick port" joystick would need a HID class adapter to physically be connectable via USB.
I remember looking to see if that X401U could work with his USB HID Storage class driver, and found that it was not usable, since this thing is so budget, they cut USB1.1 hardware support. It only has OHCI and EHCI, not UHCI. (I wanted it for troubleshooting reasons. I have unusual mouse input if using the "Microsoft Mouse" driver for win3x--this is svardos afterall-- but found that switching it to the Logitech one fixes everything. The builtin legacy peripherals bios routines work fine knowing this caveat.)

So, I guess it has 2 strikes against it. It was exceedingly rare to even *FIND* a gameport joystick port on a laptop from the days of yore anyway though.

If the quality of LCDs disappoints you, you might want to try out a mid 90s laptop that uses an NEC LCD. Their displays had a much better black level and color reproduction than other LCDs of this time. Naturally, most NEC laptops from that time used them, but also some others like the WinBook FX (it even has a Game Port!)

Also, if a Game Port is important to you, most laptops without one would give you one on the port replicator, if you can track it down.

3lectr1c wrote on 2026-04-23, 16:09:

If the quality of LCDs disappoints you, you might want to try out a mid 90s laptop that uses an NEC LCD. Their displays had a much better black level and color reproduction than other LCDs of this time. Naturally, most NEC laptops from that time used them, but also some others like the WinBook FX (it even has a Game Port!)

Also, if a Game Port is important to you, most laptops without one would give you one on the port replicator, if you can track it down.

Would be interested to know if any of these NEC LCDs could be retrofitted to 90s and early 2000s Thinkpad models.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2026-04-23, 16:18:

3lectr1c wrote on 2026-04-23, 16:09:

If the quality of LCDs disappoints you, you might want to try out a mid 90s laptop that uses an NEC LCD. Their displays had a much better black level and color reproduction than other LCDs of this time. Naturally, most NEC laptops from that time used them, but also some others like the WinBook FX (it even has a Game Port!)

Also, if a Game Port is important to you, most laptops without one would give you one on the port replicator, if you can track it down.

Would be interested to know if any of these NEC LCDs could be retrofitted to 90s and early 2000s Thinkpad models.

Much better off with a very late Thinkpad, imo. Some of the very last 4:3 format screens in the T-series (T43, T60, T61) could be had with either IPS or very high res (1400x1050 or higher) panels usually 14 or 15" that are really, really nice, this was just as they started to transition to 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratio, so anything after that is no good if you want to retain normal looking output. By that time all of the graphics options (Intel, Nvidia, ATI) did good quality interpolated full screen scaling for non-native modes, too.

Any screen from the mid 90's that has been heavily used is going to have a very tired inverter and/or CCFL backlight now. Another option might be a LED backlight conversion for an earlier panel?

leonk wrote on 2026-04-23, 05:02:

How does one connect a joystick to a retro laptop if a MIDI/Joystick port is missing?

1) Using PCJOY or PCJOY2 pcmcia card.
2) Using Colorado Spectrum Notebook Gameport (via COM port) adapter.

MAZter wrote on 2026-04-23, 20:56:

leonk wrote on 2026-04-23, 05:02:

How does one connect a joystick to a retro laptop if a MIDI/Joystick port is missing?

1) Using PCJOY or PCJOY2 pcmcia card.
2) Using Colorado Spectrum Notebook Gameport (via COM port) adapter.

Too bad these cost more than most retro laptops! 🙁

Well my Thinkpad T43 failed on me today 🙁

After reading a couple of the later posts here I though I would pull it off the shelf, charge the battery and see about replacing the soundfont I was using with VSBHDA with something larger (I mean, I've got 1GB of RAM for DOS... let's use it for something!)... sadly, whilst the battery charged (amber -> green indicator after an hour or two) it won't power on. The PSU and battery indicators light up, the cpu fan spins, but the screen is dead and there's no POST/beep messages. Tried on battery, on psu, on both, removed battery, held power button, reseated ram, etc.. all the normal tricks... it just won't POST.

I guess I'm in the market for a replacement:

- Later Pentium-M or Core Solo/Duo
- Minimum 1024x768 screen - absolutely must be 4:3 aspect
- Must have chipset supported by SBEMU/VSBHDA
- Trackpad preferred - nub controllers are a pain for gameplay
- Not too physically big/heavy - I've a lovely Armada 1750, but don't use it because it's so brick-like

Currently thinking: Thinkpad T60, T61, R51, R60, R61 (but most of the these were specced with 16:9 options), Compaq Nx6310, Dell D520

megatron-uk wrote on 2026-04-24, 11:54:

Well my Thinkpad T43 failed on me today 🙁

I'm not a big fan of junkpads, but you can try to replace cmos battery first.