The best gaming laptop for MS-DOS games

The other day, I used to be reading this old Computes Gazette magazine from 1983. and that I saw this card you'll send off for more information. happen if I filled it out and sent it off?

Well, stick around till the top and I'll show you the result. Most of the time, stepping into Retro Gaming are often quite challenge. Even the old Atari 2600 her, for instance, it are often very challenging to seek out a contemporary TV or monitor that you simply.

On the brilliant side, the games are pretty easy to affect. All you've got to try to to is locate them online, or thrift shop, or whatever and you purchase the sport, and you recognize, But, things get even harder once you start watching old computers. For instance, the Commodore 64 uses a disk format that's essentially foreign today. 

It's no means to attach to the web, and albeit you've got a pile of blank disks, getting the games copied over to them from the web could be a nightmare. Now, if you fast forward just a couple of years to the age of 3½ disks, you would possibly think you' So, all the systems from that point period used proprietary file systems and formats, and these modern drives are just simply unable of reading or writing to those disks. And, you know , which just scratches the surface of the issues that you're get ting to need to overcome if you would like to urge into using an old computer. However, if you were to ask me:

I would need to say MS-DOS computers. These are the ancestors of recent computers then share much more in common with systems today than any of those older systems. For instance, I can actually use this USB floppy drive to repeat files onto this disk and may actually be read during this computer. Or, even this really old one!

If I pull the disk drive out of 1 of those laptops, I can connect it to a USB disk drive adapter, and skim or write files transverse. 

I can even connect it to a contemporary Ethernet network and transfer files that way. If your machine supports CD-ROM, you'll burn those yourself. Another bonus is that it's still easy and cheap to seek out modern peripherals which will hook up with this stuff. Like this PS / 2 optical mouse, or a VGA monitor. So, the question I'm here to answer is:

Well, I feel its first quite important to seek out out what kind of games you would like to play. MS-DOS was in common use for a minimum of an honest 15 years spanning from 1981 to the latter a part of the 1990s. Now , I'm getting to attempt to break this up into three different eras of games, so within the early a part of the 80s, you had your CGA and EGA games, typically running on anything from 8088 to 286 and these computers had no sound card, just the interior PC speaker. The latter half the 80s were mostly VGA games supporting the Ad-Lib sound card. 

And therefore the 1990s was mostly dominated by S-VGA and Sound Blaster Card. Now, in fact this chart isn't exact, there are many games that overlap these boundaries.

For example, The Monuments of Mars! May be a neat little game that I enjoy playing, and it only supports CGA graphics and PC speaker sound, despite it being released in 1991. Now, I might think most of the people wouldn't have An interest during a personal computer from this point period. The most reason being this stuff are often enormous! And they're gonna take up tons of space for something that you're just gonna use for infrequent retro gaming. So, a laptop should But there are still some considerations.  

The primary generation of MS-DOS compatible laptops didn't start exposure within the market until the late 1980s. And some time past, laptops were always a generation behind on technology. So these first laptops attended have CGA graphics and older processors, and definitely no sound card. So, they were really only capable of playing the really old games, plus the screens are horrible low resolution contrast monochrome screens definitely not well-suited to games.

I suppose you'll connect one up to a CGA color monitor and it'd be better, on the other hand you're back to having the bulky things around. Oh, then there's the even bigger problem. These early laptops are highly sold. after by collectors and may choose many dollars. So, I feel we will safely rule these out. Subsequent generation of laptops is where things start to urge interesting.

For example, this 486 laptop here can run the overwhelming majority of DOS games. I actually like this laptop too. Um, it actually features a built-in power supply, which is pretty cool. So you don't need to carry one among And, it's a VGA Active Matrix Color Screen. Which is extremely important and I'll show you why here shortly. And, it's a removable disk drive tray that doesn't require an entire disassembly to urge thereto. In fact, I might go thus far is to mention that this is often the right MS-DOS gaming laptop. apart from one problem: it's no sound card. In fact, no computers from this point period have an indoor sound card. So give that just a flash to let that sink in, then well need to ask the question:

That's a troublesome call. Now, most MS-DOS games were designed to offer you a minimum of some sound using the interior PC speaker. Take Prince of Persia here for instance. So you'll hear that it does have sound even without a fanatical sound card. Then take a game like Ultima VI. It supports a sound card, but just for the music. All of the sound effects are still generated by the PC speakers. Therefore the sound effects would sound precisely the same whether you've got a sound card or not. On the other hand some games like Duke Nukem 3D won't offer you any sound in the least without a sound card. Total silence ...

It's actually kind or eerie playing a game like this in total silence. Of course, there's always the choice of a Disney Sound Source. This was a sound device that connected to the printer port and produced digital sound. So let's return to Prince of Persia now. Or how about Duke Nukem 3D?

So this thing changes everything. Unfortunately, they're darn near impossible to seek out. And once you do find one, it's unlikely to be cheap. 

The opposite problem is, it only supports digital sound effects so it doesn't have any quite music synthesizer in it so your games still won't have any music. I feel tons of it depends on the precise games you plan to play, and a few people might even consider he PC speaker sound to be a part of the charm of playing older MS-DOS games. So ultimately, I feel you ’ll need to be the one to make a decision whether your MS-DOS gaming laptop will need a sound card or not.

So that leaves us with the first Pentium laptops of the late 1990s. These machines can play most games from all three eras. I got this one from eBay recently for $ 25. And it needed a tough drive and a touch maintenance work and a significant cleaning but it came out great!

So this is often really almost like the 486 I just showed you, but it's stereo speakers and an indoor sound card. It also features a CD-ROM drive which will swap out with a floppy drive, making data transfer between modern PCs even more versatile ..

But let's talk LCD screens for a flash. During the DOS era, there have been several sorts of laptop screens. Gas Plasma is so rare, I don't think you'll need to worry about seeing one. For gaming, I encourage you To remain faraway from anything STN or what may additionally be called Passive Matrix. These screens have several disadvantages. For one thing, they need poor contrast compared to TFT. On these screens, it had been actually common to maneuver your mouse then actually break down on the screen because it essentially disappears when in motion.

But the difference is even more apparent when things start moving. So any games that have fast-moving objects will almost seem to disappear.

Of course, if you propose to attach to an external monitor, then this may be less of a problem. If you're depending on eBay, one easy thanks to determine which type of screen you're watching is by the amount of slider controls Where STN screens will typically have 2 sliders: One for brightness and one for contrast. So if it's a contrast control, avoid it. As for the TFT monochrome, those are really rare and you'll probably want color anyway. I might also encourage you to remain faraway from SVGA screens when possible.

The main issue is that the number of pixels on the screen. Most DOS games ran during a resolution of 320 x 200 pixels. A typical VGA laptop screen would have a resolution of 640 x 480. Or fourfold the resolution of DOS games. So, But some time past, LCD screens had very primitive pixel scalars. Notice that 640 is strictly double the resolution of 320. Scaling was easy, they only doubled abreast of the pixels, both horizontally and vertically, and it fit perfectly on the screen. Then DOS games run great on a VGA screen, as you'll see. But, what happens once you move up to a better resolution like 800 x 600?

Well, 320 won't evenly divide into 800. So, the answer was just to go away a black area round the screen like this. So, let's take a glance at the Compaq LTE 5000 series, which is what I even have here. you'll see the various configurations it came in. I might definitely rule out these top two due to the STN screen. And that I would recommend against these thanks to the high resolution. Leaving this because the one perfect configuration for DOS games. Of course, finding the precise one has been quite challenge. I ended up getting one among these and one among these. And, they're acceptable. 

Another laptop I like to recommend is that the Toshiba 400 series. It came in several configurations also. I might definitely rule out any of those due to the STN screen. And this is often the one perfect model if you're lucky enough to seek out it. Now here's another question you would possibly ask: Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it. The overwhelming majority of DOS games were designed to figure on but 1 MB. And yes, I'm talking about Megabytes, not Gigabytes like on modern systems. So presumably, whatever amount of RAM came with the system from the factory is perhaps ok. Then you would possibly ask:

Like a Pentium 2 or a Pentium 3. Theoretically those machines can boot into DOS and theoretically they will run the DOS games. But here ’s the problem: Those machines were really designed more an era where the first design goals.

So, the DOS games won't support the sound card. So you're really no more happy than you' d are with the 486. Getting a 486 or a Pentium laptop is really pretty cheap lately. You'll see I only paid $ 25 + shipping for one among these. So with a touch effort and a touch shopping around, you'll typically find a full system like this for probably but $ 50.

In fact, they're so cheap, I actually recommend learning two of them. Believe it or not, many DOS games are capable of multiplayer. And therefore the easiest method to try to to this is often with an easy serial cable like this one . You'll got to confirm the cable is 9-pin male on each side and is wired up as a null modem, meaning the send and receive wires are crossed. Then you'll invite a lover over and you'll have hours of fun playing 2-player games!

Oh man, I got the RPG now, you ’re going down!

Oh man, not the volcano!

Another problem is when these hard drives go bad, finding a replacement are often tough. And this computer here for instance, won't recognize and drive larger than 8 GB. Even this 40 GB drive which is already 10 years old, is just too new work on this computer due to the dimensions. But, finding Compact Flash cards that are 8 GB or less is easy!

Even 2 GB is taken into account enormous for running DOS games. That being the case, I like to recommend replacing the disk drive with a Compact Flash card. The older drives that came with these computers are noisy, slow, and by now, very unreliable. you'll buy these IDE to Compact Flash adapters for around $ 12. this enables you to use a Compact Flash card and replace it with the disk drive. Now, this is often not a real SSD, and that I wouldn't recommend putting an OS on this in most situations. the most issue is that the limited read / write cycles. It's usually the swap space that kill this stuff. But, if you're only running DOS, little or no writing are going to be done . It's mostly reading 99% of the time and there's no swap space.

And I actually do plow ahead and install Windows 95 on this stuff. But, I configure the MSDOS.sys file so it doesn't boot on to Windows. That way once I activate the pc, it boots straight to the DOS prompt. If And you would possibly even ask, what's the purpose of even having Windows 95 on a system like this?

I mean, it's virtually impossible to surf the web, or a minimum of todays internet on a computer like that. Well, believe it or not, there actually are some good reasons. For one, it makes it easier to transfer my DOS game over And nope, I don't just mean Solitaire. Now unfortunately, there's no laptop, or desktop for that matter, that's getting to be ready to play every single MS-DOS game out there to its fullest potential. It just doesn't exist.

For example, a number of these really early DOS games were designed with a specific processor in mid, and when trying to play that game on a Pentium processor, you'll find it runs way too fast. And therefore the truth is, there's only Most of them were designed within the early 80s, like 81, 82, and that they expected the machine to be 4.77 MHz and no faster. So, I mean, just about anything from 1985 or newer is gonna have an equivalent problem running those older games. Then, there'll be other games like Maniac Mansion. It only supports one sound card:

The Tandy 1000s proprietary 3-voice sound chip. So for everybody else, including this Pentium laptop, it'll just have PC Speaker sound. Still, I estimate this machine can probably run about 95% of all MS-DOS games to their fullest potential. Now in fact, somebody is sure to ask:

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