Your retro tech videos are not only interesting but also very relaxing and calming to watch kind of in a therapeutic way. And it’s always good to brush up on my DOS commands. Thanks Josh and nice find on this.
Josh, I truly enjoy these videos. They are super interesting but also very relaxing! I've watched this video at least five times just to have the chill voice in the background while I work. Love this content. 😁
Good idea! I did that on my 2805 - S401 machine that I also showed in the video as the second machine. It definitely makes it run faster and saves battery.
Very interesting videos. I’m just really happy that if I needed to run windows I can run both the Mac OS and Windows OS on my MacBook Pro at the same time with parallels.
I enjoyed how happy you were to find this laptop and enjoyed watching as you unboxed it and tried it out. Super cool! And, kudos to the seller for an amazing product and packing! Keep the tech videos coming! 😊
I always found it funny how bezels got bigger with time for a while before getting small again. the bezel on this 25yro laptop is competitive with laptops coming out right now.
I was hoping to play many of the games I showed on the video including DOS games and late 90’s Windows games. I love Need for Speed III and Quake III as well.
thank you for this great video, I love it, a great laptop from 1999/2000 brought back lots of good memories for me and you presented it really well, I loved it!
NGL. I've been looking for this model for a long while. And I do understand that this makes it harder for me to find for a good price, since more people now know of it. But I am fine with that to see how well it actually runs. Really confirms that I was right in looking for it. Congrats for finding it and getting a good version. Also appreciate the Windows ME love.
Oh wow… I totally understand! I really hope you find a great one! Also, if you can live with the imperfect scaling, you can find a 4200 or 4300 series Toshiba Satellite fairly easily that that the same or similar Yamaha sound and S3 graphics. The lesser 2805 models have this configuration too. You might already have one of those though. Good luck!
10:35 Stretching image isn't always best option. If screen doesn't match DOS resolution x2 (720x400->1440x800 or 640x480->1280x960) (and here is an example), hardware must duplicate some pixels and some not, leading to unadequate scaling. I personally prefer black bars and clear untouched image instead of weird stretching. Good notebooks has an option to disable or enable screen stretching. If not - that laptop is trash (for me).
Good points for sure! This laptop does have the ability to enable or disable stretching. I also have some 640x480 laptops that do perfect scaling to just double every pixel from 320x200 to 640x400 and leave bars at the top and bottom. But this laptop does a really nice job of scaling. It’s not pixel perfect, but it’s a tradeoff. For me, I like having the screen filled as long as it’s done well. Some scaling is horrible. I have a couple older 800x600 machines that have terrible scaling that makes text unreadable. So, I completely understand your points, and I think it’s just personal preference. I like this machine because I can do DOS games with decent scaling and still do Win9X games with great performance as well due to the PIII850 and GeForce 2. So it’s kind of the best of both worlds. I should have gone more into detail on my thought process in the video, but I didn’t want it to be too long.
@@retrotv1tech yeah, and worth mentioning is also fact, that older 4:3 screens displays naturally stretched image (because of 80x25 text mode designed to be stretched), but in CRT days it was normal - LCDs unfortunately can't do it like old monitors, one pixel is always one pixel. so as you said - two options, stretching or pixel perfect... I'm glad that Toshiba did it properly and BIOS allows us to choose prefered option. Of course I don't want to offend you, it just a my own thoughts :) By the way - this notebook is also pretty good for Windows 2000 - maybe dualbooting is worth trying?
I used to refurbish and sell laptops twice a week at a farmers/whatever market and an elderly lady came in to ask if I could recycle 2 laptops. The HP was junk but the other was a Sager, made for Windows 2000 in near perfect condition. The hard drive was dead so I bought a new 60gb IDE drive and put XP on it. I just couldn't send it to the recycler. My friend still uses it to run Ham radio packets.
🙂 neat, i have a retro laptop too, mines is a gateway workstation laptop with a core 2 duo and it also has a dedicated invidia graphics chip, it can run older GOG pc games just fine
There is an option in the bios to stretch the screen on the S402. You may want to check the S401 to see if the screen stretch option is there as well that’s what makes it go fullscreen
Both laptops had the screen stretch option turned on. That’s what the 401 looks like with the screen stretch option on. It doesn’t fill the whole screen. That’s why the 402 is better. It has better scaling. Thanks for watching!
Thank you for this unique Experience. I do like old Techs (as child got Windows 3.1 with Lemmings and Monkey Island) i recently got an Acer Extensa 7630 and made a Retro Windows XP Gaming Machine. For missing Driver i used Snappy Driver Installer Origin from Glenn's Page (unfortunately only XP+ compatible and the other newer Snappy is more Bait as Legit) to get all drivers installed. Works like a Charm.
Oh, you found treasure there. Just remember to swap out the deathstar hard drive with something reliable. This was my high school laptop, I managed to keep it running up to 2004, when the hinges froze.
That’s awesome! Yes, I plan to swap the hard drive for an SSD at some point. I did this in my S401 that I also showed in the video, and it works well. I have definitely been warned about the hinges. I will keep an eye on them and disassemble the machine to clean and re-grease them if they start to seize up.
The hinges on these have a tendency to lock up due to the grease they used. You may want to strip it and de-grease/re-grease before it gets stuck in place. Much easier to sort while they still move freely.
I’ve heard that too. I have white lithium grease that works great on these laptop hinges, and I used it on my IBM 701C restoration a few weeks ago. I’m nervous about taking this machine apart because is so pristine. I’d be sick if I broke any brittle plastic. I’ll have to do some research on disassembly for this machine.
@@retrotv1tech I totally get it, I wrecked my palm rest on my 2805 - S402 by putting a too long screw in the wrong place and screwing through the plastic (doh!). Luckily I have an S202 to plunder a replacement from. But my hinges locked in an open position and it made it VERY difficult to disassemble and repair while locked at a 90 degree angle so I'll always advise people to do the work on these before they get stuck, would've saved me alot of hassle. Beautiful machine, wish mine still had the stickers!
The retro laptop I have is a Thinkpad 380ED. It's great except the CD drive can be a bit flaky. I also have a Dell laptop with a Pentium III. I like laptops but my retro PC of choice is my socket 7 K6 tower, because I can just do more with a desktop. I should get the battery rebuilt for the 380ED so I can actually bring it somewhere, though.
That’s awesome! I just got a Thinkpad 380XD to add to my collection, so it’s pretty similar to the ED. Great machines as well! My battery doesn’t work either.
I have a DigitaLinx VGA HDMI scaler that I got for $20 off of ebay by pure luck and it would be perfect if you wanted to run an old laptop as a sorta game console. I grabbed one of my old laptops and it looked great even if it was slightly blurry, but since my TV is 4K it scaled it really well.
I have one of these! At least it looks just like it. It's in my old laptop pile, one of them... somewhere... I should check the specs as I can't remember what it had exactly.
I have the previous model the 2805 s401 with the savage/ix graphics and it’s tied as my favorite 98/me compatible against my t42 with the ips 1400x1050 display and Radeon 9600. The thinkpad has way better graphics and supports late 98 games better. But the sound quality on the Toshiba is infinitely better on dos games
That’s great that you have the s401! I really like mine too. It’s a great laptop. Sounds like the e IBM is nice too. I’ve never used a T42, but it’s good to have one like that to cover late 90’s games. Very nice!
I’ll have to check that. I’m pretty sure Yamaha is selected for MIDI. The Microsoft GS synth doesn’t sound nearly that good. But I will definitely check.
I did. It was automatically selected when I installed the Yamaha Driver. Just checked and midi is set to Yamaha DS-XG. The Microsoft one sounds way different.
I sent a laptop once. To be a dick I wrapped it in like 50 rolls of industrial duct tape. The super thick gorilla tape layerd sheet metal so he could just cut through it 🤣 when he got it he was like "ARE U FKN KIDDING ME!?!"
That’s absolutely true, but there’s something special about playing the games on the original hardware for which they were designed. Also, emulators don’t usually handle retro game music perfectly. Also, in order to play Win9X games, you either need a virtual machine or some crazy hacks to make them work on a modern PC. And sometimes it’s fun to hack them to work. The bottom line is that the original hardware is usually better, but more importantly, it’s more fun to many of us. To each their own!
I prefer to keep things separate. Of course we are all different but i feel the same as him. I bought a Toshiba 4000 CDT and the look of the keyboard and putting a floppy in the drive, gives you a special feeling that no emulator or VM can. Tinkering with old tech is fun.
Eh, emulating 16 bit games for windows 98 is quite annoying compared to og hardware especially if you have physical games you wanna boot off of. Cause 98 games especially 3d accelerated ones or god forbid ones with unique engines are not near as easy to emulate its a bit of a caught in the middle area between Ms dos and win xp or Vista games
Your retro tech videos are not only interesting but also very relaxing and calming to watch kind of in a therapeutic way. And it’s always good to brush up on my DOS commands. Thanks Josh and nice find on this.
I’m so glad to hear that! Thank you so much!!
Josh, I truly enjoy these videos. They are super interesting but also very relaxing! I've watched this video at least five times just to have the chill voice in the background while I work. Love this content. 😁
Thank you so much! I really appreciate that!
I would recommend the hard drive swapped with a IDE to MSATA drive. Nice find
Good idea! I did that on my 2805 - S401 machine that I also showed in the video as the second machine. It definitely makes it run faster and saves battery.
Very interesting videos. I’m just really happy that if I needed to run windows I can run both the Mac OS and Windows OS on my MacBook Pro at the same time with parallels.
I love this channel… my dad was a computer 💻 engineer.. built many computers…so when you talk tech it reminds me of him…😊
That’s really cool!
I enjoyed how happy you were to find this laptop and enjoyed watching as you unboxed it and tried it out. Super cool! And, kudos to the seller for an amazing product and packing! Keep the tech videos coming! 😊
Thank you! Yes, I was so excited!
Glad you found the laptop! Liked the side by side comparisons with the games too! 🤗
Thanks Nikki!
I always found it funny how bezels got bigger with time for a while before getting small again. the bezel on this 25yro laptop is competitive with laptops coming out right now.
That’s very true.
Looks like you got lucky! What games are you hoping to play? What did you play back in Windows 98?
I was hoping to play many of the games I showed on the video including DOS games and late 90’s Windows games. I love Need for Speed III and Quake III as well.
Congrats on finding it Josh! Great condition, hope you enjoy it.
Thank you so much! I am definitely enjoying it!
the sound on this machine is fabulous 😁
It sure is!
That's a beautiful machine! 🙂
Thanks! Yes, I was so excited to find it!
Awesome find Josh! You should blank out the Windows ME key.
Thanks for watching! Yes, I thought about that but wasn’t sure if it would matter so many years later. It’s probably good practice though.
shows how easy things are now compared to when i was younger dealing with that tech 😊
For sure!
thank you for this great video, I love it, a great laptop from 1999/2000 brought back lots of good memories for me and you presented it really well, I loved it!
Thank you so much!!
Another great video Josh! I was totally amazed on how pristine it looked. That was very fun to watch!
Thanks! It really is in amazing condition! I was very lucky to find it!
NGL. I've been looking for this model for a long while. And I do understand that this makes it harder for me to find for a good price, since more people now know of it. But I am fine with that to see how well it actually runs. Really confirms that I was right in looking for it. Congrats for finding it and getting a good version. Also appreciate the Windows ME love.
Oh wow… I totally understand! I really hope you find a great one! Also, if you can live with the imperfect scaling, you can find a 4200 or 4300 series Toshiba Satellite fairly easily that that the same or similar Yamaha sound and S3 graphics. The lesser 2805 models have this configuration too. You might already have one of those though. Good luck!
Thanks for another great video! Hope to see a gaming live stream soon
Yes! I need to do one of those soon.
Nice find, I never seem to find anything good lol.
10:35 Stretching image isn't always best option. If screen doesn't match DOS resolution x2 (720x400->1440x800 or 640x480->1280x960) (and here is an example), hardware must duplicate some pixels and some not, leading to unadequate scaling. I personally prefer black bars and clear untouched image instead of weird stretching. Good notebooks has an option to disable or enable screen stretching. If not - that laptop is trash (for me).
Good points for sure! This laptop does have the ability to enable or disable stretching. I also have some 640x480 laptops that do perfect scaling to just double every pixel from 320x200 to 640x400 and leave bars at the top and bottom. But this laptop does a really nice job of scaling. It’s not pixel perfect, but it’s a tradeoff. For me, I like having the screen filled as long as it’s done well. Some scaling is horrible. I have a couple older 800x600 machines that have terrible scaling that makes text unreadable. So, I completely understand your points, and I think it’s just personal preference. I like this machine because I can do DOS games with decent scaling and still do Win9X games with great performance as well due to the PIII850 and GeForce 2. So it’s kind of the best of both worlds. I should have gone more into detail on my thought process in the video, but I didn’t want it to be too long.
@@retrotv1tech yeah, and worth mentioning is also fact, that older 4:3 screens displays naturally stretched image (because of 80x25 text mode designed to be stretched), but in CRT days it was normal - LCDs unfortunately can't do it like old monitors, one pixel is always one pixel. so as you said - two options, stretching or pixel perfect... I'm glad that Toshiba did it properly and BIOS allows us to choose prefered option. Of course I don't want to offend you, it just a my own thoughts :)
By the way - this notebook is also pretty good for Windows 2000 - maybe dualbooting is worth trying?
Nice find I am amazed in the condition it is in
Love intro! But may have to watch entire episode tomorrow, getting late
Thanks for checking out part of it!
13:40 This could be a ringtone.
I loved Windows ME at the time. I recall it almost never crashing. It almost feels like people reviewing it on UA-cam, ran an entirely different OS.
Yeah… I think a lot of it was driver issues and people running it on hardware that wasn’t certified for it.
I used to refurbish and sell laptops twice a week at a farmers/whatever market and an elderly lady came in to ask if I could recycle 2 laptops. The HP was junk but the other was a Sager, made for Windows 2000 in near perfect condition.
The hard drive was dead so I bought a new 60gb IDE drive and put XP on it. I just couldn't send it to the recycler. My friend still uses it to run Ham radio packets.
That’s really cool! Restoring these older laptops is fun, and if they can still be useful to someone, that’s even better!
🙂 neat, i have a retro laptop too, mines is a gateway workstation laptop with a core 2 duo and it also has a dedicated invidia graphics chip, it can run older GOG pc games just fine
Very cool! These older laptops are so much fun!
Congratulations Josh!
Thank you!
love your videos
Thanks!!
Great video! Nice retro laptop. 💻
Thank you!
This was awesome!! thx for sharing. Just to have an idea.. how much did you pay for it?
It was about $160 and close to $200 with shipping.
I don't need one more retro laptop, I don't need one more retro laptop.....I have to keep telling myself this.
Same! 😂😂😂
28:50 sounds great
There is an option in the bios to stretch the screen on the S402. You may want to check the S401 to see if the screen stretch option is there as well that’s what makes it go fullscreen
Both laptops had the screen stretch option turned on. That’s what the 401 looks like with the screen stretch option on. It doesn’t fill the whole screen. That’s why the 402 is better. It has better scaling. Thanks for watching!
Thats a time machine find. Love it!
It really is!
Thank you for this unique Experience. I do like old Techs (as child got Windows 3.1 with Lemmings and Monkey Island) i recently got an Acer Extensa 7630 and made a Retro Windows XP Gaming Machine. For missing Driver i used Snappy Driver Installer Origin from Glenn's Page (unfortunately only XP+ compatible and the other newer Snappy is more Bait as Legit) to get all drivers installed. Works like a Charm.
That's great! I enjoy Windows 3.1 as well!
@@retrotv1tech I did used PCEM and recreated DOS, 3.1 and 98 on it. Works like a charm. But nothing compared to original Hardware ^^
That’s awesome! PCEm is fun!
Oh, you found treasure there. Just remember to swap out the deathstar hard drive with something reliable. This was my high school laptop, I managed to keep it running up to 2004, when the hinges froze.
That’s awesome! Yes, I plan to swap the hard drive for an SSD at some point. I did this in my S401 that I also showed in the video, and it works well. I have definitely been warned about the hinges. I will keep an eye on them and disassemble the machine to clean and re-grease them if they start to seize up.
31:30 yeah drums sound real
They sure do!
@@retrotv1tech 💥
The hinges on these have a tendency to lock up due to the grease they used. You may want to strip it and de-grease/re-grease before it gets stuck in place. Much easier to sort while they still move freely.
I’ve heard that too. I have white lithium grease that works great on these laptop hinges, and I used it on my IBM 701C restoration a few weeks ago. I’m nervous about taking this machine apart because is so pristine. I’d be sick if I broke any brittle plastic. I’ll have to do some research on disassembly for this machine.
@@retrotv1tech I totally get it, I wrecked my palm rest on my 2805 - S402 by putting a too long screw in the wrong place and screwing through the plastic (doh!). Luckily I have an S202 to plunder a replacement from. But my hinges locked in an open position and it made it VERY difficult to disassemble and repair while locked at a 90 degree angle so I'll always advise people to do the work on these before they get stuck, would've saved me alot of hassle. Beautiful machine, wish mine still had the stickers!
Such clarity
It really is very clear!
Ah if I could find one like that that be awesome
It’s an amazing machine! Keep looking! It took me a long time to find one.
That is an excellent laptop.
It really is!
i envy you so much, i miss my old laptop
It’s a really nice machine for sure!
playing mid files in a daw is amazing
Never thought of doing that! Now I want to try it!
I miss tech with moving parts. It felt more alive.
The retro laptop I have is a Thinkpad 380ED. It's great except the CD drive can be a bit flaky. I also have a Dell laptop with a Pentium III. I like laptops but my retro PC of choice is my socket 7 K6 tower, because I can just do more with a desktop. I should get the battery rebuilt for the 380ED so I can actually bring it somewhere, though.
That’s awesome! I just got a Thinkpad 380XD to add to my collection, so it’s pretty similar to the ED. Great machines as well! My battery doesn’t work either.
Awesome Josh!
Thanks!
I have a DigitaLinx VGA HDMI scaler that I got for $20 off of ebay by pure luck and it would be perfect if you wanted to run an old laptop as a sorta game console.
I grabbed one of my old laptops and it looked great even if it was slightly blurry, but since my TV is 4K it scaled it really well.
That’s cool! I’ll have to check that out.
Quake 3 LAN party!!!
Yes!
I have one of these! At least it looks just like it. It's in my old laptop pile, one of them... somewhere... I should check the specs as I can't remember what it had exactly.
Yeah! Let me know if you have one! These are really cool!
Great video
Thanks!
just a note. using those post office boxes and envelopes to pack things INSIDE other packacking is illegal.
Interesting. Well, I definitely wasn’t trying to get the seller in trouble for showing this. Thanks for sharing!
Bios update with the last version and cpu and ram upgrade to the max plus te max HHD that support!!
I’ll have to look for a Bios update. That sounds interesting!
Just curious, what graphics card does the s401 have? I had a Toshiba laptop from late 2000 early 2001 with a awful trident cyberblade XP video card.
The s401 has an S3 Virge Chip in it, so it's not too bad, but it just doesn't do scaling very well. It's pretty decent for early 3D games on Win9x.
I have the previous model the 2805 s401 with the savage/ix graphics and it’s tied as my favorite 98/me compatible against my t42 with the ips 1400x1050 display and Radeon 9600. The thinkpad has way better graphics and supports late 98 games better. But the sound quality on the Toshiba is infinitely better on dos games
That’s great that you have the s401! I really like mine too. It’s a great laptop. Sounds like the e IBM is nice too. I’ve never used a T42, but it’s good to have one like that to cover late 90’s games. Very nice!
Doubt you have selected Yamaha dsxg in control panel sound proprieties midi file sound like Microsoft synthetiser in this video....
I’ll have to check that. I’m pretty sure Yamaha is selected for MIDI. The Microsoft GS synth doesn’t sound nearly that good. But I will definitely check.
I did. It was automatically selected when I installed the Yamaha Driver. Just checked and midi is set to Yamaha DS-XG. The Microsoft one sounds way different.
Interesting that this particular laptop was actuallysold in China. You can tell from a sticker on the bottom.
That is interesting for sure. I noticed that too.
i own one, but it's missing keys. totally going to fix it!
GeForce 2 Go was unveiled on Nov 11, 2000 so this laptop had to come out in 2000 or later.
That’s good to know. So it must have been very late 2000 or early 2001.
10:07 ...wait is that Unifont?
Not sure!
You can ugrade these laptops to pentium 4 and install windows xp or 7
Yep… you probably could, but for me, that defeats the purpose of using it for retro. I want to be able to play DOS and Win9X games on it.
I sent a laptop once. To be a dick I wrapped it in like 50 rolls of industrial duct tape. The super thick gorilla tape layerd sheet metal so he could just cut through it 🤣 when he got it he was like "ARE U FKN KIDDING ME!?!"
😂😂😂
Dosbox emulates the full PC, and doesn't weigh 4 kilos.
Yes, but that's boring. LOL. Seriously though... it's a good option for sure! I just enjoy tinkering with these older machines.
29:30 60fps?
Not sure! I didn’t have an fps counter, but it was very smooth!
@@retrotv1tech nice
Yes hello
Hello!!
Good evening everyone
Hello!
5:45 - it looks like that USB port is broken ;(
Fortunately, they both seem to be working, but you're right, it does look funny.
tbh the speaker tht laptop sound decent instead nowdays budget laptop sound like only treble got no bass on it beh welp
So true!
I'll tell you this, watch it! It's good!
Thanks!
Hi all
Any laptop is good for retro gaming because you download an emulator. You don't need a specific laptop!!
That’s absolutely true, but there’s something special about playing the games on the original hardware for which they were designed. Also, emulators don’t usually handle retro game music perfectly. Also, in order to play Win9X games, you either need a virtual machine or some crazy hacks to make them work on a modern PC. And sometimes it’s fun to hack them to work. The bottom line is that the original hardware is usually better, but more importantly, it’s more fun to many of us. To each their own!
I prefer to keep things separate. Of course we are all different but i feel the same as him. I bought a Toshiba 4000 CDT and the look of the keyboard and putting a floppy in the drive, gives you a special feeling that no emulator or VM can. Tinkering with old tech is fun.
@@retrotv1techgreat video, i agree with your angle
Eh, emulating 16 bit games for windows 98 is quite annoying compared to og hardware especially if you have physical games you wanna boot off of. Cause 98 games especially 3d accelerated ones or god forbid ones with unique engines are not near as easy to emulate its a bit of a caught in the middle area between Ms dos and win xp or Vista games
@dan167 it's Windows ME and he could upgrade to XP