Bruninho wrote on 2020-09-13, 21:58:

Surely someone will want a setup like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGHcX0YTPKw

I've thought about getting a Select-a-dock IBM setup before. Never ran across one for a good price though.

In the end I ended up getting a Gateway setup that has a similar setup.. except their dock supported all the way from Pentium up to Pentium III laptops.

Bruninho wrote on 2020-09-13, 21:58:

Surely someone will want a setup like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGHcX0YTPKw

I have one, and my 770x is better than that dudes on youtube. It's cool but its not as perfect as my Toshiba 2805-s402, which I'll be making a thread about soon, since its the perfect retro laptop and checks every box of the original post. Voodoo 2 and awe64 gold in a docking station was a interesting experience tho.

ThinkPad 770x w/ SelectaDock II
300Mhz P II
512 Ram
Trident 975 8MB
440BX Laptop 🤣

SB64G, Voodoo2,Intell 100s Installed in the Dock

IBM DEVA Mpeg2 Decoder + IBMVCAP Only 30% CPU utilization on Pentium 2 300 MHZ

MDK Performance

Holy Schmoly! This is Performance with a big P!

Warlord wrote on 2020-08-06, 23:59:

Good news. Was able to modify the 14 inch hinges to work with the 15 hinges fixed. still waiting on the new cmos battery to a […]
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Good news.
Was able to modify the 14 inch hinges to work with the 15
hinges fixed.
still waiting on the new cmos battery to arrive.
till then we are partially together
New power brick arrived.
Laptop works.
1st ever geforce laptop is alive.
But is it the perfect laptop?

Hi, any news on this geforce beast? Any downsides? Still looking for it on ebay 😀

Kinda strange that GPU in N600C doesn’t have any cooling. I saw even 70c one time.

p.s. does anyone know what this thing is responsible for?

Bruninho wrote on 2020-09-13, 21:58:

Surely someone will want a setup like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGHcX0YTPKw

Don't see the point. Once you put the laptop on the dock, it takes as much space as the average AT case, and you need the external monitor + peripherals (you can't game on the laptop keyboard in this position). Might as well get a desktop. As for the purpose of having a desk setup + laptop on the road - well, what are you going to do with a 233MHz Pentium brick on the road these days?

dr_st wrote on 2020-10-15, 07:23:

Don't see the point. Once you put the laptop on the dock, it takes as much space as the average AT case, and you need the external monitor + peripherals (you can't game on the laptop keyboard in this position). Might as well get a desktop. As for the purpose of having a desk setup + laptop on the road - well, what are you going to do with a 233MHz Pentium brick on the road these days?

Hand-to-Hand combat with the dork carrying the K6-2 300MHz brick?

vorob wrote on 2020-10-15, 05:57:

Kinda strange that GPU in N600C doesn’t have any cooling. I saw even 70c one time.

Mobile GPUs of that era typically shipped with no cooling. Even ATI 7500 which was used in some Thinkpads did not generally have a cooler attached. This was OK for nominal operation, apparently, but under stress could lead to various failures.

I have an N610c and the worst thing about its thermal design is that the hard drive sits in a thermal hot spot. It causes sustained temperatures of over 50C, and leads to repeated failures. I had 3 hard drives replaced in that machine during the 7-8 years that it was in regular service. I wonder if the N600c is affected by this issue as well. I'd expect it not to be as bad, simply because the PIII-M CPUs are not as hot has P4-Ms.

Thx. I guess business guys were not playing games much on their laptops back then 😀

--

Guys, I'm struggling to understand how sound works in old machines. I've got Compaq Evo N600C with ESS 198x audio chip (probably ESS 1989, aka Maestro 3/Allegro-1) and we've discussed here Compaq Presario 1800 with ES1946S Solo-1E and Toshiba Satellite 2805-S402 with Yamaha YMF754B-R. All of them can have sound in native DOS, and all of them work via Sound Blaster 16 emulation or smth like that. I thought that when you select Sound Blaster 16 in games that means some specific sound, and it can't be better on one machine and worse on another. I'm missing smth or not?

I don't have native hardware to test everything, but I have DOSBox, PCem, and N600c. I've installed Duke3d everywhere with Sound Blaster 16 and enabled music test, they all sound the same. Why Toshiba with Yamaha or 1800 with Solo 1 should sound better?

Right now I have a chance to buy Compaq Presario 1800 for 40USD, I just don't understand what benefit I'll have with it over my current N600c other than driverless sound in dos. Also 1800 has a worse video card...

dr_st wrote on 2020-10-16, 06:10:

vorob wrote on 2020-10-15, 05:57:

Kinda strange that GPU in N600C doesn’t have any cooling. I saw even 70c one time.

Mobile GPUs of that era typically shipped with no cooling. Even ATI 7500 which was used in some Thinkpads did not generally have a cooler attached. This was OK for nominal operation, apparently, but under stress could lead to various failures.

I have an N610c and the worst thing about its thermal design is that the hard drive sits in a thermal hot spot. It causes sustained temperatures of over 50C, and leads to repeated failures. I had 3 hard drives replaced in that machine during the 7-8 years that it was in regular service. I wonder if the N600c is affected by this issue as well. I'd expect it not to be as bad, simply because the PIII-M CPUs are not as hot has P4-Ms.

Oh yeah - most people tend to forget how much power those Mobile Radeons use and how much real estate it has to spread the heat around - the M6 has a worst case power usage of roughly 3.6 watts and packs only about 30 million transistors (0.18 nm process) in the standard 16MB package. Even the 7500 Mo doesn’t use that much more (it’s definitely less than 5w). The Rage128 Mobility actually uses more power and designs using it never had any heat shields either. It doesn’t need any heatsinks (although I don’t think there are air paths to help wick away heat anyways). On those machines the concern isn’t really heat on the GPU as much as mechanical stress - when you have a chip that large repeated mechanical stress on a chassis can cause cold solder fractures on the BGA balls. The Thinkpad X3x series with ATi discrete video are infamous for having VGA chips fail over time - having the secondary battery acting as a brace under the chassis helps. The T4x is larger and has a stronger magnesium case so the issue doesn’t impact it as much.

As for the N610c, yeah, not surprising. I had Dell D420/430s with the 1.8” drives surrounded by their batteries...the battery will cook the drive after repeated use. You can try replacing the HDD with an IDE-to-mSATA adapter (one with a metallic case) and swap the drive for an mSATA SSD.

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-10-18, 19:36:

On those machines the concern isn’t really heat on the GPU as much as mechanical stress - when you have a chip that large repeated mechanical stress on a chassis can cause cold solder fractures on the BGA balls. The Thinkpad X3x series with ATi discrete video are infamous for having VGA chips fail over time - having the secondary battery acting as a brace under the chassis helps. The T4x is larger and has a stronger magnesium case so the issue doesn’t impact it as much.

Oh, yes, mechanical stress is definitely an issue with that generation, since they moved to lead-free solder. The magnesium in the case apparently didn't help much (there was no internal rollcage like on the T6x). ATI chips and ICH southbridges were failing left and right, especially to people with the habit of carrying the laptop by the corner. Somehow the Mobility 7500 was more prone to such failures, and lack of heatsink on it may have been the cause - if not for the heat, then for the extra physical support it offered. Heavy T4x users claimed that using the longer heatsink from the Mobility 9600 units could reduces the chances of failure for Mobility 7500 units.

I've also seen claims that just repeated thermal expansion/contraction cycles are enough to cause eventual BGA failure on those lead-free soldered chips. That's why on late T42 and T43 units, some extra epoxy was added around the discrete GPU chips. I have such a T42 with the Mobility 9600, and well, it hasn't failed.

As for X3x - I actually haven't heard so much of their GPUs failing. The most characteristic failure of these units, AFAIK, has something to do with the power circuitry leading the laptop getting stuck at POST with nothing but the power LED on. Happened to one of my units and quite a few others I've heard of.

dr_st wrote on 2020-10-18, 19:56:

Oh, yes, mechanical stress is definitely an issue with that generation, since they moved to lead-free solder. The magnesium in t […]
Show full quote

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-10-18, 19:36:

On those machines the concern isn’t really heat on the GPU as much as mechanical stress - when you have a chip that large repeated mechanical stress on a chassis can cause cold solder fractures on the BGA balls. The Thinkpad X3x series with ATi discrete video are infamous for having VGA chips fail over time - having the secondary battery acting as a brace under the chassis helps. The T4x is larger and has a stronger magnesium case so the issue doesn’t impact it as much.

Oh, yes, mechanical stress is definitely an issue with that generation, since they moved to lead-free solder. The magnesium in the case apparently didn't help much (there was no internal rollcage like on the T6x). ATI chips and ICH southbridges were failing left and right, especially to people with the habit of carrying the laptop by the corner. Somehow the Mobility 7500 was more prone to such failures, and lack of heatsink on it may have been the cause - if not for the heat, then for the extra physical support it offered. Heavy T4x users claimed that using the longer heatsink from the Mobility 9600 units could reduces the chances of failure for Mobility 7500 units.

I've also seen claims that just repeated thermal expansion/contraction cycles are enough to cause eventual BGA failure on those lead-free soldered chips. That's why on late T42 and T43 units, some extra epoxy was added around the discrete GPU chips. I have such a T42 with the Mobility 9600, and well, it hasn't failed.

As for X3x - I actually haven't heard so much of their GPUs failing. The most characteristic failure of these units, AFAIK, has something to do with the power circuitry leading the laptop getting stuck at POST with nothing but the power LED on. Happened to one of my units and quite a few others I've heard of.

If I remember correctly the Radeon M7/7500 Mo there are 2 chips on package - the long rectangle for the GPU itself, and a standalone square one on the right side (which contains the VRAM) - supposedly one of them heats up in the package unevenly and causes the package itself to distort and eventually fail. Using the heat sink on the 9600 Mo helps “even out” the thermals which does help. Supposedly the 9600 Mo and the 7500 Mo has “roughly” the same amount of transistors (about 60 million) but since the 9600 mo is made using a 0.13 nanometer process it has better thermals.

As for the X3x, the problematic one is the X31/32 (but mostly the 31) - it’s definitely a mechanical issue, but it has more to do with having 4 large BGA chips on the board with no bracing - the Pentium-M CPU, Northbridge and Radeon M6 on one side, and the Intel ICH4 southbridge on the bottom. If any of the large BGA chips develops cold solder the machine will either randomly reboot , lockup or boot without IDE/USB and do nothing. I had an X31 that average one new motherboard per year for 3 years (in extended EZserv warranty) until I figured out what happened and got the extended tray battery for it. I still have to figure out where I can go to re-pack that battery - it’s a good retro utility machine that I want to see backin service.

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-10-18, 22:32:

As for the X3x, the problematic one is the X31/32 (but mostly the 31) - it’s definitely a mechanical issue, but it has more to do with having 4 large BGA chips on the board with no bracing - the Pentium-M CPU, Northbridge and Radeon M6 on one side, and the Intel ICH4 southbridge on the bottom. If any of the large BGA chips develops cold solder the machine will either randomly reboot , lockup or boot without IDE/USB and do nothing. I had an X31 that average one new motherboard per year for 3 years (in extended EZserv warranty) until I figured out what happened and got the extended tray battery for it. I still have to figure out where I can go to re-pack that battery - it’s a good retro utility machine that I want to see backin service.

Do you know of any possible improvements they did in X32 that makes it less likely? Other than using Dothan CPUs instead of Banias, I think it's the same board.

If you use the extended battery primarily for chassis support, won't the Ultrabase achieve the same thing? Then you can use an Ultrabay battery for the extra battery life.

Bought Toshiba Satellite 2805-S401, the one with Yamaha sound, but Savage video. Will receive it tomorrow.

P3 - 700MHz, 128MB SDRAM, S3 Savage/IX 8Mb, 15.0” diagonal (1024 x 768), Yamaha YMF754B-R

Fro now I've downloaded drivers from the official page (https://support.dynabook.com/support/modelHom … Text=1073821137) where, for some reason, there was no video card driver.

dr_st wrote on 2020-10-19, 06:17:

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-10-18, 22:32:

As for the X3x, the problematic one is the X31/32 (but mostly the 31) - it’s definitely a mechanical issue, but it has more to do with having 4 large BGA chips on the board with no bracing - the Pentium-M CPU, Northbridge and Radeon M6 on one side, and the Intel ICH4 southbridge on the bottom. If any of the large BGA chips develops cold solder the machine will either randomly reboot , lockup or boot without IDE/USB and do nothing. I had an X31 that average one new motherboard per year for 3 years (in extended EZserv warranty) until I figured out what happened and got the extended tray battery for it. I still have to figure out where I can go to re-pack that battery - it’s a good retro utility machine that I want to see back in service.

Do you know of any possible improvements they did in X32 that makes it less likely? Other than using Dothan CPUs instead of Banias, I think it's the same board.

If you use the extended battery primarily for chassis support, won't the Ultrabase achieve the same thing? Then you can use an Ultrabay battery for the extra battery life.

It’s not that the X32 is better because it’s a Dothan - it’s that they sold more X31 compared to the X32 (something around 3:1 ratio in favor of the 31). The X32 was a low engineering effort upgrade to the 31 to help Lenovo stay competitive in the market (the x40/41 didn’t work out as well as Lenovo had hoped due to that 1.8” PATA design that went nowhere, and it was a ULV design that didn’t have the muscle of the full Pentium-M, but once the X60 came out there was no reason to keep the X3 design going)- it was also only on the market for ~9 months.

Eh, had you ever had an Ultrabase X3? It’s fairly bulky and not something you want to carry on a daily basis.
The X3 tray battery goes under the back bottom half of the machine and boosts the battery runtime to 9 or 10 hours (WiFi off, XGA screen at its second dimmest, slight undervolt with NHC). It’s also rigid enough to help with torsional stress, and since it fits in my wraparound notebook case, it was something that I carried for a few years, even on Transpacific flights.

Oh, I certainly own an Ultrabase. It's the extended slice battery for X3x I never owned. Thanks for elaborating on it.

I wrote about my adventures with the X32 (and A31p) on Thinkpads forums (Wow, it's been almost 9 years!):
https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=100340

Still, I wonder why one chip works in DOS and another one doesn't?

Satellite 5005-S504
YAHAMA YMF753 Codec Chip
16-bit stereo, Windows Sound System V.2.0, Sound Blaster® Pro compatibility (in DOS box only)
Built-in Harman/Kardon Stereo Speakers with subwoofer
Full Duplex, 64 Voices, MIDI (play back) Support
3D sound support (HRTF 3D positional audio)
DirectSound, Direct3DSound (supported by sound driver), DirectMusic
Hardware acceleration for DirectSound and DirectMusic

Satellite 2805-S401
Yamaha YMF754B-R
3D sound support with HRTF 3D positional audio 16-bit stereo, .WAV and Sound Blaster® Pro compatible, MIDI playback
2 built-in stereo speakers with subwoofer
64-channel wavetable music synthesis
Full duplex sound support
Hardware acceleration for DirectMusic and DirectSound

For me they look the same and 5005 with GF2G0 is much easier to find 😀

Okay, sorry. Found this one: AC'97 Revision2.2 Audio CODEC with Digital Audio I / F. So it's AC97...

vorob wrote on 2020-10-14, 06:42:

Hi, any news on this geforce beast? Any downsides? Still looking for it on ebay 😀

So far as I can see there are no downsides to the 2805-s402. Only downsides is the geforce 2 go performance is like that of a TNT2 or a voodoo 3.

Every Dos game I tried in pure dos works, there are no video compatibility or sound issues. I even got Final fantasy 7 running with the original tnt patch in windows.