ragefury32 wrote on 2020-12-06, 08:50:

Well, they are all products of the times. There are only so much you can do to fit an NEC V20/386SX/486SLC into an early/mid-90 […]
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radiounix wrote on 2020-12-06, 02:43:

Ultraportables are nothing new, they weren't new in the 486 era. You could get an 8086 Nec Ultralite or Zenith Minisport, and by the early 90s the Quaderno and Omnibook lines were out. Plus the handbook, though that WAS chunky.

Well, they are all products of the times. There are only so much you can do to fit an NEC V20/386SX/486SLC into an early/mid-90s chassis and embed it with a video controller, a good quality LCD screen, storage+base ports and have it fit a reasonable NiMH battery with non-shabby runtime.
Now add multimedia capabilities (VESA SVGA capable GPU with an audio chip setup) and ask for its components to last 35-40 years so it can be collectible. Then it becomes freaking unobtainium.

The Apple PowerBook Duo 270/280s from the same era were considered very slim at the time (1.4 inch in thickness). But it’s ridiculously expensive and depend on the duo docks, without which it is fairly useless...not that it isn’t fairly useless as is...I can already run vMac with a MacOS 8 disk image on an 8 inch Windows tablet and it’ll blow away the PowerBook Duo, and I won’t have to dedicate shelf space for the hardware.

Yeah, earlier machines won't be multimedia enabled or have color LCDs. Multimedia didn't exist on the desktop, and sound hardware and even a color CRT were luxury items. Besides, an 8088 barely has the power to move chunky 4 color sprites on a screen on a static background at a reasonable frame rate. It's not that much more powerful than an Apple II -- the Tandy 1400LT, running composite out, actually has graphics that look uncannily like the earlier 6 color high res palette. And yes, this is easily emulatable, a Powerbook Duo(!) could probably emulate this real time, so it's long been emulatable. But I feel like that totally misses the point. You lose the floppy access sounds and experience of swapping disks, sound of the PC speaker, click sound and feel of the keyboard, the EL backlight whine, the unique look of composite CGA and a blue LCD, feel of being a pioneer with 14 pounds of ICs and steel cutting off circulation to your legs.

Different eras have machines that are pretty good for games, in the 8088 era composite out was pretty common, albeit monochrome on most models. And 286 and up machines could often be docked with a VGA monitor and normal clicky AT keyboard. Dock it for advanced games, sit on the couch on battery power and connect to BBSes with Telix or play RPGs in mono.

radiounix wrote on 2020-12-15, 14:52:

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-12-06, 08:50:

Well, they are all products of the times. There are only so much you can do to fit an NEC V20/386SX/486SLC into an early/mid-90 […]
Show full quote

radiounix wrote on 2020-12-06, 02:43:

Ultraportables are nothing new, they weren't new in the 486 era. You could get an 8086 Nec Ultralite or Zenith Minisport, and by the early 90s the Quaderno and Omnibook lines were out. Plus the handbook, though that WAS chunky.

Well, they are all products of the times. There are only so much you can do to fit an NEC V20/386SX/486SLC into an early/mid-90s chassis and embed it with a video controller, a good quality LCD screen, storage+base ports and have it fit a reasonable NiMH battery with non-shabby runtime.
Now add multimedia capabilities (VESA SVGA capable GPU with an audio chip setup) and ask for its components to last 35-40 years so it can be collectible. Then it becomes freaking unobtainium.

The Apple PowerBook Duo 270/280s from the same era were considered very slim at the time (1.4 inch in thickness). But it’s ridiculously expensive and depend on the duo docks, without which it is fairly useless...not that it isn’t fairly useless as is...I can already run vMac with a MacOS 8 disk image on an 8 inch Windows tablet and it’ll blow away the PowerBook Duo, and I won’t have to dedicate shelf space for the hardware.

Yeah, earlier machines won't be multimedia enabled or have color LCDs. Multimedia didn't exist on the desktop, and sound hardware and even a color CRT were luxury items. Besides, an 8088 barely has the power to move chunky 4 color sprites on a screen on a static background at a reasonable frame rate. It's not that much more powerful than an Apple II -- the Tandy 1400LT, running composite out, actually has graphics that look uncannily like the earlier 6 color high res palette. And yes, this is easily emulatable, a Powerbook Duo(!) could probably emulate this real time, so it's long been emulatable. But I feel like that totally misses the point. You lose the floppy access sounds and experience of swapping disks, sound of the PC speaker, click sound and feel of the keyboard, the EL backlight whine, the unique look of composite CGA and a blue LCD, feel of being a pioneer with 14 pounds of ICs and steel cutting off circulation to your legs.

Different eras have machines that are pretty good for games, in the 8088 era composite out was pretty common, albeit monochrome on most models. And 286 and up machines could often be docked with a VGA monitor and normal clicky AT keyboard. Dock it for advanced games, sit on the couch on battery power and connect to BBSes with Telix or play RPGs in mono.

I tend to find the oldest you can go without skimping features like sound is the 486 DX4/Pentium 75/90 era. It just so happens that's my favorite era in desktops as well.

Forgot to mention: I got an Austin PN/312 TFT that was sold for parts (broken hinge repaired with plastic epoxy and power board swapped with a working one) and it has similar specs to the AMS laptop, but this beast has integrated sound (ES688F + YMF-262M) and a 14.4K modem. Sadly, the floppy drive needs repairs, but I got a temporary belt installed to see if the track spins around.

The other sad thing is, the display stretches DOS games to 640x480 and no option in the BIOS to disable that and I'm not sure what I need to do to fix that permanently.

creepingnet wrote on 2020-12-15, 16:47:

I tend to find the oldest you can go without skimping features like sound is the 486 DX4/Pentium 75/90 era. It just so happens that's my favorite era in desktops as well.

Yeah, basically. There were one or 2 machines that were paired with a weaker CPU (like the Libretto 20/30s), but those tend to be rarities. If I remember correctly the MPC1 standard for desktops calls for at least a 386 SX16, MPC2 calls for a 486 SX25, and the MPC3 calls for a Pentium 90. On the top end this will get you around 50k gourard shaded polygons in 30+ fps with a decent SVGA card (S3 911 or an ET4000AX), with sound. The comfort zone (i.e. handles scenario well with some spare cycles to spare) for those old school machines playing multimedia games in DOS (i.e. anything that has full VGA or 256 color SVGA, with FM+sampled sound, and cues FMV off a CDROM) are somewhere between a DX2/66 and a P75 (or an AMD 5x86/133), which factoring in all the thermal/power restrictions and a slower laptop drive, is an Intel DX4 or Cyrix MediaGX laptop with a decent SVGA chip (C&T 65548, something Cirrus and maybe a late Western Digital GPU), an active matrix screen (because DSTN and HPA is nothing but a bucket of eye pain) ESFM or Yamaha OPL3. Thats how I define the earliest viable DOS laptop for gaming. Well, you could throw a PCMCIA soundcard/CDROM drive into the mix for an older machine, but those freaking cards are rarer than a hen's tooth nowadays.

My GOD, at last I found Toshiba 2805 with gf2go and Yamaha 754 chip. It will have to travel from USA to Russia, and overcome screen replacement, but at least I know that its internals is alive.

Gratz, I saw the listing. Fair price. They are probably worth twice that. Just no one knows about them becasue of rarity. If you want drivers, let me know. I've modded several. I think i still have the firmware to make the DVD drive region free as well, if that intrests you.

Warlord wrote on 2020-12-17, 22:10:

Gratz, if you want drivers, let me know. I've modded several.

Ye, we've already discussed it in a separate thread, I currently own the same model but with Savage video...
Btw, just to be 100% sure, I bought Toshiba Satellite 2805-S603, specs say that it has Yamaha Sound chip; AKM4543 Codec Chip as I understood it is 754 one, though it's not mentioned in official specs.
Ye, that's the right one. Support page features 754 drivers...

That's strange because similar laptops feature different Audio description in the official document:

Satellite 2805-S503 / S603
Yamaha Sound chip; AKM4543 Codec Chip
Satellite 2805-S402
Yamaha YMF754B-R sound chip, Codec chip AKM4543

creepingnet wrote on 2020-12-15, 16:47:

I tend to find the oldest you can go without skimping features like sound is the 486 DX4/Pentium 75/90 era. It just so happens that's my favorite era in desktops as well.

I also enjoy 486DX4/Pentium laptops the most (actually P3 ones with good graphics are also cool), but I also like these nuclear briefcase style portables because of their looks 😁 and expandability (ISA slots, enough room to install speakers, RTC battery pack etc.). Ones with passive screens would probably be much less enjoyable though.
BTW I just tried installing that ISA WLAN card only to have these antennas sticking out, but to be honest it was PITA to configure and using ordinary 3Com card and ethernet cables is much better for the networking...

vorob wrote on 2020-12-17, 22:17:

Ye, we've already discussed it in a separate thread, I currently own the same model but with Savage video... Btw, just to be 100 […]
Show full quote

Warlord wrote on 2020-12-17, 22:10:

Gratz, if you want drivers, let me know. I've modded several.

Ye, we've already discussed it in a separate thread, I currently own the same model but with Savage video...
Btw, just to be 100% sure, I bought Toshiba Satellite 2805-S603, specs say that it has Yamaha Sound chip; AKM4543 Codec Chip as I understood it is 754 one, though it's not mentioned in official specs.
Ye, that's the right one. Support page features 754 drivers...

That's strange because similar laptops feature different Audio description in the official document:

Satellite 2805-S503 / S603
Yamaha Sound chip; AKM4543 Codec Chip
Satellite 2805-S402
Yamaha YMF754B-R sound chip, Codec chip AKM4543

I have 14.xx Geforce 2 go driver, some 10, and 12 I think too. It was hard to track down.

A little update.

The IBM Thinkpad 365X has become my main DOS/Win31/Win95 laptop. Aside from the screen scaling, it's well nigh perfect for the task.

The Thinkpad 600E I'm using for Windows 98 and later DOS stuff. Again, near perfect aside from wonky screen scaling which only throws off a couple of games.

I put Linux on my Thinkpad 560X just for kicks. It's a barebones mostly CLI-only version of Debian, works fine and is fun to play around with.

But in other news, I just sniped a Thinkpad 240 on eBay. This is significant because these rarely pop up. What I really want is a 240X since it has a Pentium III and a better (more compatible) video chip, but I see these so rarely that I went for the 240 just to have some fun with it. It's a fun little ultraportable which should be a great travel machine. I'll probably put Windows 95 on it.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2020-12-18, 01:34:

A little update. […]
Show full quote

A little update.

The IBM Thinkpad 365X has become my main DOS/Win31/Win95 laptop. Aside from the screen scaling, it's well nigh perfect for the task.

The Thinkpad 600E I'm using for Windows 98 and later DOS stuff. Again, near perfect aside from wonky screen scaling which only throws off a couple of games.

I put Linux on my Thinkpad 560X just for kicks. It's a barebones mostly CLI-only version of Debian, works fine and is fun to play around with.

But in other news, I just sniped a Thinkpad 240 on eBay. This is significant because these rarely pop up. What I really want is a 240X since it has a Pentium III and a better (more compatible) video chip, but I see these so rarely that I went for the 240 just to have some fun with it. It's a fun little ultraportable which should be a great travel machine. I'll probably put Windows 95 on it.

Oh, you’re the cat who won the 240 auction tonight? Congrats! I recently bought a 240 from Japan but somehow ended up with 3 (I bid on a fixer-upper on eBay that needed a system board swap, and then a 400MHz model showed up on Yahoo auctions Japan at a very good price) - Well, 2, for now. One more is still on a slow-boat from Japan heading my way (I hope). It’s definitely a good little machine, but loading a working OS and getting working batteries for it could be a pain unless you have the floppy drive and the 17/21mm floppy drive cable. If you plan to do a lot of vintage Thinkpad work, consider making yourself a custom FFC26 Gotek (based on the SFRM72-DU26/SFR1M44-DU26, either will do it) for FlashFloppy using the enclosure of a 21mm drive (10H3980) - it can then be used for the 560/E/X, 600/E/X, 240/X/Z and the 365XD (that one would need the 20/21mm cable).

As a former 240X owner, you are better off on the 240. The Pentium III/500s (2609-5xx) or their Coppermine Celeron 450 cousins (2609-4xx) found on some 240X models are not that much more efficient than the Mendo Celerons. It is indeed faster but it sucks down power slightly more, and it generates more heat so the fan comes on more often. It’s also not that much faster than the TP240 Celeron 400 variant unless it's doing something that takes advantage of SSE or the bigger L2 - for retrogaming or most productivity apps, that doesn't buy you much more. In the old days the machines were hobbled by their hard drives more than anything else, and you rarely see any massive speed gains there.

Both the Thinkpad 240 and the 240X comes with one RAM channel occupied by 64MB of soldered RAM (8x8MB modules), and one free 144 pin SODIMM slot feeding the other channel - it's the same situation as its cousin the 600 (which has 32MB soldered in), and that messes with the max RAM count that you may have. The 240x uses the 440MX chipset so your RAM is limited to 192MB (you can put a 256MB PC100 SODIMM in, but any access to RAM above 256MB will crash the machine, so a single 128MB SODIMM is a practical limit for most) - the 240 uses the 440ZX, which allows up to 512MB - the 256MB module is okay and yields you a total of 320MB. The extra RAM is super-useful for things like caching CD images via shsucdrd, Win2k/XP, and BeOS/Haiku and Linux.

You can physically disable (cut the traces on) the soldered chips on the 240X and just use a single 256MB module, but that's anecdotal and a bit risky. I did it to a 240X and it didn't work. There were 192MB DIMM units sold in Japan (VN10S-192M) that are specifically designed for this situation and bring the max to 256, but that's extremely rare. I also suspect that it’s just a standard 256MB unit with some SPD reprogramming done to ignore the first 64MB. There are also 240Z (440MX based) model with 128MB embedded (2609-72x or 82x) so bringing it to 256MB is super-simple, but those are even more rare than the 240X, and strictly limited to Japan. If you are willing to go that far, might as well pick up an S30/S31 (type 2639), which is the super-collectible ultimate evolution of the 240Z, but also limited to 256MB max. It's definitely a weird case of upgrading a machine, and losing RAM capacity in return. To be honest, 256MB is not really adequate for a Coppermine P3 and is a constant hobble on similar machines like the Toshiba Porteges or the early Vaio SR series.

There are some serious marks against the 240x - IBM dropped the use of the excellent ESS Solo-1 for some Crystal combo (CS4281+4297A) that wasn’t too great, but it was also found on the X20/21s. The Silicon Motion SM712G GPU on the 240X isn’t that compatible versus the Neomagic NM2160C on the 240, nor is it faster. In fact, the Neomagic has better drivers in Linux, and comes with actual support in UniVBE 6.7, BeOS 4/5/Haiku and OS2 Warp3/4 - not something you enjoy on the Silicon Motion based 240X/Z/S3x series machines. I never ran into compatibility issues with Neomagic on oldschool DOS games. It’s not super-fast, but it’s efficient, the machine stays cool and it works in a pinch. The same can be said about old school win32/DirectX games - contrary to what some has said on Vogons, it can do lower resolution DirectX/Direct3D software mode, provided that you drop into 16bpp color mode first and restart Win98 after major gaming sessions. Remember, this is a 2MB PCI card with only 2D acceleration. 24/32bpp resolution is not a thing, and Neomagic engineers didn't write high quality drivers.

Timedemo for demomap demo1/demo2.dm2 on Quake2 gets about 27/25 respectively, while UT99 on 400x300x16bpp gets an okay 22 FPS on DM-Crane practice/spectator mode with 8 bots...not terrible for a machine driven by a half-cache mobile P2 chip doing software rendering off a 66MHz FSB.

A word of advice? Buy a spare refurb TP240 system board (30L2766) with a Celeron 300A embedded. It’s available now on eBay for about 26 USD, with free shipping in the lower 48. Their internal LCD connector (the white, seemingly depopulated landing spot above the MiniPCI slot, that’s pulled from my fixer-upper) is known to cold solder fracture, and swapping the board for a working one is easier than using a hot air pencil to fix it. The boards are rare nowadays so take advantage of it while you can.
Funny enough, some eBay reseller in Italy has one right now with a broken LCD connector on a parts-only auction - don't. Just don't.

adalbert wrote on 2020-12-18, 00:06:

creepingnet wrote on 2020-12-15, 16:47:

I tend to find the oldest you can go without skimping features like sound is the 486 DX4/Pentium 75/90 era. It just so happens that's my favorite era in desktops as well.

I also enjoy 486DX4/Pentium laptops the most (actually P3 ones with good graphics are also cool), but I also like these nuclear briefcase style portables because of their looks 😁 and expandability (ISA slots, enough room to install speakers, RTC battery pack etc.). Ones with passive screens would probably be much less enjoyable though.
BTW I just tried installing that ISA WLAN card only to have these antennas sticking out, but to be honest it was PITA to configure and using ordinary 3Com card and ethernet cables is much better for the networking...

Yeah, P3 laptops with good enough graphics (read: not the Trident Cyberblades, Neomagic 256s nor the ATi Rage M series, there were plenty of those) - not that many exists within that narrow time period (1999 to early 2001) where vendors put one in and retain hardware SB support in DOS - they moved en-masse to AC97 right around that time. The mainstream stuff are usually Rage128 Mo (C600, Presario 1800s) or S3 SavageMX/IX (T20-22, XE3), with a few exceptions equipped with Radeon Mo (C810/Insp8100, n600c) or Geforce2Go (some ToshSat) - I already have enough of those mainstream machines (plus the n600c) and am not dealing with those exceptions just for a few extra games. As for the nuclear briefcase, eeeh, they do take up quite a bit of space, but I respect them. Just not enough to bring one home and risk the wrath from the missus.

On the 560E (16 bit PCMCIA) I prefer 3Com X-Jack Ethernet cards (3c589 for 10Mbit or 3c574 for 100Mbit), but on the 240/T21/C600/Evo n600c with the Cardbus slot I prefer the 3com 3c575 FastE or the CrapBag 175 - 3CRPAG175, which is an a/b/g wireless card with a foldable X-Jack antenna. It’s really too bad 3Com never made a Wifi4/N300 variant. Why 3Com? X-Jack. I hate tracking dongles like the ones that I used to have for my Xircom CreditCard FastE adapters. The 3coms are also easy to come by and have decent performance (lower CPU utilization and acceptable latency) on those oldschool machines. The beauty here is that the crapbag 175 drivers in Win98 can support WPA-PSK, which means interoperability with modern WiFi is...feasible (54Mbps isn’t fast though). I could also just hack a 2.4GHz PQi Airpen plus to act as a mini WiFi base station to jump a few air gaps..

The headache with getting networking going on those Win98 vintage machines is to setup an SMBv1 share + working NetBIOS for the sake of interoperability. I don’t really savor it.

Depending on the suitability of the caddy, I would also rather swap the media out for faster copies. The 560/240/C600 are all on Win98SE via MicroSD cards, which goes into my modern machines for faster copying. The n600c might get the same, but then I usually share SD based drives between it and the C600 due to its hardware similarity. I also have a pair of USB2 Cardbus adapters with an NEC chipset, but that’s only used if getting the drive out is a pain (the T21 has an mSATA SSD with a fragile caddy).

I also have a custom FFC26 Gotek to work with the vintage ThinkPads using an old 21mm floppy drive enclosure. It’s not that hard to build one.

Warlord wrote on 2020-12-18, 01:05:

I have 14.xx Geforce 2 go driver, some 10, and 12 I think too. It was hard to track down.

You know... I changed my mind 😀 Could you please upload everything that you have on your GeForce machine 😀 I'll download it and keep it on my pc so I won't have to run and search when the machine comes.

Thanks!

Thanks for the advice, ragefury! I’ll look into getting a system board. I have the floppy drive (I think). If not it doesn’t matter; I have my wizardry with the compact flash cards.

vorob wrote on 2020-12-17, 22:17:

Ye, we've already discussed it in a separate thread, I currently own the same model but with Savage video... Btw, just to be 100 […]
Show full quote

Warlord wrote on 2020-12-17, 22:10:

Gratz, if you want drivers, let me know. I've modded several.

Ye, we've already discussed it in a separate thread, I currently own the same model but with Savage video...
Btw, just to be 100% sure, I bought Toshiba Satellite 2805-S603, specs say that it has Yamaha Sound chip; AKM4543 Codec Chip as I understood it is 754 one, though it's not mentioned in official specs.
Ye, that's the right one. Support page features 754 drivers...

That's strange because similar laptops feature different Audio description in the official document:

Satellite 2805-S503 / S603
Yamaha Sound chip; AKM4543 Codec Chip
Satellite 2805-S402
Yamaha YMF754B-R sound chip, Codec chip AKM4543

Ack!! I never noticed YMF754 was missing from the 2805-S503/ S603 spec sheet.

*nervously pulls S603 off shelf*

It's there! How strange of Toshiba to miss that. I wonder if a YMF754 might have also snuck into the Tualatin Satellite 3000 and 3005 machines.

snickersnack wrote on 2020-12-20, 05:08:

Ack!! I never noticed YMF754 was missing from the 2805-S503/ S603 spec sheet. […]
Show full quote

vorob wrote on 2020-12-17, 22:17:

Ye, we've already discussed it in a separate thread, I currently own the same model but with Savage video... Btw, just to be 100 […]
Show full quote

Warlord wrote on 2020-12-17, 22:10:

Gratz, if you want drivers, let me know. I've modded several.

Ye, we've already discussed it in a separate thread, I currently own the same model but with Savage video...
Btw, just to be 100% sure, I bought Toshiba Satellite 2805-S603, specs say that it has Yamaha Sound chip; AKM4543 Codec Chip as I understood it is 754 one, though it's not mentioned in official specs.
Ye, that's the right one. Support page features 754 drivers...

That's strange because similar laptops feature different Audio description in the official document:

Satellite 2805-S503 / S603
Yamaha Sound chip; AKM4543 Codec Chip
Satellite 2805-S402
Yamaha YMF754B-R sound chip, Codec chip AKM4543

Ack!! I never noticed YMF754 was missing from the 2805-S503/ S603 spec sheet.

*nervously pulls S603 off shelf*

It's there! How strange of Toshiba to miss that. I wonder if a YMF754 might have also snuck into the Tualatin Satellite 3000 and 3005 machines.

Eh, Toshiba doesn’t always get the details correct (or at all) on their CSD (computing systems division) spec sheets, and that’s been a known issue since back in the late 90s. Some of their Satellite 4x0 series laptop product specs will use vague descriptions like “16 bit soundblaster audio”. Even the service manuals distributed to their techs will often get the details wrong or omit it together.

It’s a good idea to look at the driver package INF references for PCI ID or google for old Linux install write ups, preferably with dmesg/lspci listings that you can use to confirm peripherals. Sometimes Ubuntu might have old QA write ups on installs that can be useful.

Also, no on the Satellite 3000/3005. It uses a Crystal CS4299 AC97 chipset just like the Thinkpad T23/30 and the X22-24. No hardware DOS sound support.

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-12-18, 04:47:

The headache with getting networking going on those Win98 vintage machines is to setup an SMBv1 share + working NetBIOS for the sake of interoperability. I don’t really savor it.

For the record, here's my smb.conf. It works fine with Windows 98.

1[global]
2   map to guest = bad user
3   min protocol = NT1
4   lanman auth = yes
5   ntlm auth = yes
6
7[mediaro]
8  path = /media/cde
9  browsable = yes
10  guest ok = yes
11  read only = yes
12  create mask = 0755
13
14[mediarw]
15  path = /media/cde
16  browsable = yes
17  guest ok = no
18  read only = no
19  create mask = 0755

cde wrote on 2020-12-20, 16:41:

For the record, here's my smb.conf. It works fine with Windows 98. […]
Show full quote

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-12-18, 04:47:

The headache with getting networking going on those Win98 vintage machines is to setup an SMBv1 share + working NetBIOS for the sake of interoperability. I don’t really savor it.

For the record, here's my smb.conf. It works fine with Windows 98.

Copy code to clipboard

1[global]
2   map to guest = bad user
3   min protocol = NT1
4   lanman auth = yes
5   ntlm auth = yes
6
7[mediaro]
8  path = /media/cde
9  browsable = yes
10  guest ok = yes
11  read only = yes
12  create mask = 0755
13
14[mediarw]
15  path = /media/cde
16  browsable = yes
17  guest ok = no
18  read only = no
19  create mask = 0755

That's not quite the point - it's nearly the same issue as running your wifi open or with WEP to accommodate older wifi clients, that is, its disabling security for the sake of convenience.

Both DD-WRT and FreeNAS/TrueNAS Core have one-click downgrades back to SMBv1, and you can use NTLMv1/Lanman hashes if you really want to, but both are totally not recommended. Those protocols were known to be problematic from back in the early 2000s, and were disabled en-masse on the server side back at least 12 years ago by Microsoft. It's also why Win10 got rid of SMBv1 by default since Redstone 2. Unfortunately you can't segregate the older protocols to certain networks or shares on the same file server - it's all or nothing. Considering that I have multiple shares on the same server with terabytes of storage, I am not turning on NTLMv1/SMBv1 for the sake of a few old laptops. NetBIOS name resolution for SMB is also something that is hit-or-miss on those Win98 machines. Sometimes SMB drives map, sometimes they don't.

The "more kosher" way of doing it is by using an ephemeral server, that is, one that you only spin up when you absolutely need to with SMBv1/NTMLv1 support, but that's more work. You could also use something like WinSCP (version 5.05 or below has Win98SE support), but thats a version from 8 years ago. That's why I prefer taking the media out and adding/removing files directly, using a USB2 Cardbus adapter, or if I have to, run something like hfs (the mini HTTP server) on Windows.

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-12-20, 07:13:

Eh, Toshiba doesn’t always get the details correct (or at all) on their CSD (computing systems division) spec sheets, and that’s […]
Show full quote

snickersnack wrote on 2020-12-20, 05:08:

Ack!! I never noticed YMF754 was missing from the 2805-S503/ S603 spec sheet. […]
Show full quote

vorob wrote on 2020-12-17, 22:17:

Ye, we've already discussed it in a separate thread, I currently own the same model but with Savage video... Btw, just to be 100 […]
Show full quote

Ye, we've already discussed it in a separate thread, I currently own the same model but with Savage video...
Btw, just to be 100% sure, I bought Toshiba Satellite 2805-S603, specs say that it has Yamaha Sound chip; AKM4543 Codec Chip as I understood it is 754 one, though it's not mentioned in official specs.
Ye, that's the right one. Support page features 754 drivers...

That's strange because similar laptops feature different Audio description in the official document:

Satellite 2805-S503 / S603
Yamaha Sound chip; AKM4543 Codec Chip
Satellite 2805-S402
Yamaha YMF754B-R sound chip, Codec chip AKM4543

Ack!! I never noticed YMF754 was missing from the 2805-S503/ S603 spec sheet.

*nervously pulls S603 off shelf*

It's there! How strange of Toshiba to miss that. I wonder if a YMF754 might have also snuck into the Tualatin Satellite 3000 and 3005 machines.

Eh, Toshiba doesn’t always get the details correct (or at all) on their CSD (computing systems division) spec sheets, and that’s been a known issue since back in the late 90s. Some of their Satellite 4x0 series laptop product specs will use vague descriptions like “16 bit soundblaster audio”. Even the service manuals distributed to their techs will often get the details wrong or omit it together.

It’s a good idea to look at the driver package INF references for PCI ID or google for old Linux install write ups, preferably with dmesg/lspci listings that you can use to confirm peripherals. Sometimes Ubuntu might have old QA write ups on installs that can be useful.

Also, no on the Satellite 3000/3005. It uses a Crystal CS4299 AC97 chipset just like the Thinkpad T23/30 and the X22-24. No hardware DOS sound support.

That's very interesting Ragefury32. I'm used to marketing material being uselessly vague but a spec sheet being out right wrong hadn't really occurred to me. Guess I should be more discerning, hehe.

Yeah, the Satellite 3000/3005 spec sheets list CS4299 for audio. Dos sound support should be out the picture. But the s503/s603 spec sheet says it has an akm4543 ac97 codec for audio and there is a ymf-754 in there. Might be worth a look if anyone has one in their collection.

Until checking the hardware last night, I had assumed the nvidia Satellite 2805 series where a quick and dirty revision of an old 440bx design so Toshiba could be the first to produce a Geforce laptop. The legacy capable ymf754 just came along for the ride. That's wrong though, they use the newer 815 chipset with ac97 support. If Toshiba was needlessly sticking ymf-754 on 815 in 2001 I wonder where else they might show up.

snickersnack wrote on 2020-12-20, 18:20:

Until checking the hardware last night, I had assumed the nvidia Satellite 2805 series where a quick and dirty revision of an old 440bx design so Toshiba could be the first to produce a Geforce laptop. The legacy capable ymf754 just came along for the ride. That's wrong though, they use the newer 815 chipset with ac97 support. If Toshiba was needlessly sticking ymf-754 on 815 in 2001 I wonder where else they might show up.

It wouldn't. If it was released in Q3'01 it would not be an 815EM, it'll be an 830MP Almador (which is much better from a raw chipset capability standpoint).
I would also have more respect for Toshiba if it was an 830 or 440ZX machine with a GeForce2 and the legit YMF - the 815EM machines were a bit of a hack job (the Inspiron 8000/8100s also use the same chipset). Same 256MB/slot SODIMM limitations as the 440, 100MHz FSB, and doesn't even show much (if any) improvements in performance to the old 440 chipset despite being 2 years younger. The Sat2805 might be the "ultimate" Win98/DOS retrogaming laptop, but the 384MB max RAM count totally hobbles it for WinXP.