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[The Chair]

Hello everyone. I've lately been obsessed about the thought of playing good old games again, and using a laptop for it. Reason for that being that I don't have space for another computer and I could also be online and chat on the other computer at the same time easily. I haven't been able to find anywhere a topic about this yet or talk about it in general.

Is it a good idea? Is there somekind of special problem that normal PCs don't have? Only thing I can really think of is that if the LCD screen would be too slow for playing the games, or does that just apply for pre-pentium laptops? I don't have much at all experience with laptops myself, just with normal tower/desktop ones.

I've been looking for some used laptops online that would hopefully be suitable for this use, here are the canditates so far:

IBM Thinkpad 760L Intel Pentium 90MHz
16MB SIMM
510MB HD
Trident Cyber 9320 1Mb GPU
Soundcard and internal speakers (doesn't say what kind of soundcard)
(No CD-Drive)
Internal Floppy Drive
10.4" Active TFT Screen


Toshiba Tecra 510CDT 133MHz MMX
48MB Memory
2.10GB HD
(No mentioning about the GPU)
(No mentioning about soundcard)
Internal CD-Drive
External Floppy Drive
12.1" TFT SVGA Screen
(Missing the battery cover :p)


IBM Thinkpad 560Z 300MHz
64MB Memory
4GB HDD IBM Travelstar
(No mentioning about GPU)
(No mentioning about soundcard)
External CD-Drive
External Floppy Drive
USB Port
12.1" TFT SVGA Screen


Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook L460 P2 333MHz
64MB Memory
4.3GB HD
(No mentioning about GPU)
Stereo Sound (I take it there is definately a soundcard then :p)
20x CD-Drive (On the docking bay, or whatever the proper english term for it is)
Floppy Drive (On the docking bay as well)
13.3" TFT Screen
It also has loads of ports in the docking bay, audio out (which is a big plus for me), tv-out, 2x usb, 2x ps/2, 10/100Mbit network, PCMCIA slot, external screen slot, etc...


So far as I've been doing research, the two latter ones may be too fast, but are they really? There's at least hope they'd have hopefully fast enough screens and expecially the last one tickles my fancy, because of all the connectivity possibilities, but thats all rather minor in the end for this kind of use really, would be nice to hook it to my amplifier though. I've been thinking of installing DOS 6.22 on it, or alternatively FreeDos, and maybe one of the Windows. Depending a lot which one I would get.

Give me your honest opinions, thanks. :)

[Grinder]

I'd take one of the first two. 233 MHz and faster is too much. I also want to buy a dos machine for gaming, but I still don't know wether to pick a laptop or desktop. Probably a laptop, it's much more comfortable.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Some older games might have problems.

[The Chair]

Originally posted by the_fifth_horseman@Feb 16 2006, 02:33 PM
Some older games might have problems.

Do you mean just because of the CPU speed or something else?

Does either of you think there's any trouble with the screen's speed?

Thanks for the answers so far.


Edit: Some examples of games I'd be playing on it:
- Many of the old adventure games, like Sierra ones
- Crusader: No Remorse and Regret
- Hexen
- Syndicate Wars
- Magic Carpet 2
- Dungeon Master 2 (and other rpgs)
- Fallout
- Starcraft
- ...

[The Fifth Horseman]

Both CPU speed and 586 architecture (since that's what Pentium is).
So, an actual 486 would be better off.

[The Chair]

One last question, which seems to be the most important really in this laptop case. Who would say about the TFT screen issue, do you think there would be ghosting effects or too dark display on any of those laptops? Expecially the first two. How were they in that era? I remember using a 386 laptop in school when I was little, and it definately had the ghosting issue (the game was Space Quest 3).

[The Fifth Horseman]

Very possible. You'll have to bear it, I'm afraid, unless you use an external monitor.

[Grinder]

My Father has a 286 Laptop with horrible ghosting effects. I couldn't play space invaders on that monitor. I never knew were those aliens were.

[gregor]

I would take the last one.

Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook L460 P2 333MHz
64MB Memory
4.3GB HD
(No mentioning about GPU)
Stereo Sound (I take it there is definately a soundcard then :P)
20x CD-Drive (On the docking bay, or whatever the proper english term for it is)
Floppy Drive (On the docking bay as well)
13.3" TFT Screen
It also has loads of ports in the docking bay, audio out (which is a big plus for me), tv-out, 2x usb, 2x ps/2, 10/100Mbit network, PCMCIA slot, external screen slot, etc...


problems you might encounter with those games:

1. Sound card not working - game doesn' have drivers to support it. issue might be resolved by playing the game in WIN98 ( i suggest SE) or 95
2. Some games might run too fast but i am not sure. Still you can always use moslo with those and solve the problem.


- Many of the old adventure games, like Sierra ones (don't know them, speed issue..)
- Crusader: No Remorse and Regret - OK
- Hexen - OK as well as others from ID in that time (Heretic, doom...)
- Syndicate Wars - OK
- Magic Carpet 2 - OK
- Dungeon Master 2 (and other rpgs) - speed issue
- Fallout - never played it
- Starcraft - possible speed issue or might even run perfect

I give you all this data since not so long ago i update my 400MHZ pentium and this is basically how games played on that comp. Also i tried a few of those on a 800Mhz notebook. To my knowledge the worse thing you might enocunter is sound problems, other than that it should all work smooth on the above mentioned computer. so go for it! k:

[The Fifth Horseman]

Fallout will run, it is notorios for being slow in disk operations, tho. (it would run even on a 486DX4/100 w/ 16 MB RAM, you know... )
Starcraft will run perfectly. It ran on DX4/100 w/24 MB RAM without too many major slowdowns, on 333 w/64 RAM it will not encounter any at all.