Could this cheap Windows XP laptop make for great Windows 98 gaming? 

Couple of points. 1: dont run more than 512mb of RAM on W98 unless you want to run a patch (forgot the name) this is why youre getting random hangs (esp during 3d mark test) it has to do with AGP iirc 2: i noticed that your system was reporting the GPU as a PCI device. there is a glitch im aware of (at least on desktop w some nvidia cards) under W98 where in some situations you need to install chipset drivers first, and then VGA drivers so that W98 sees the GPU as an AGP gpu and not PCI gpu (it actually does affect performance) 3: try to find an nvidia driver package that has ur gpu, and force install it. i think the issue u were having where u needed dells driver is solely bc ur specific dell branded GeforceGo wasnt present in the INF file for the vanilla nvidia drivers. Edit : for the MIDI part you can run the Roland VSC3 emulator and get really decent software emulated MIDI. its my go to for systems with awful or no MIDI support. On a system like that theres plenty of overhead to handle it

I’m so glad I still have my gaming pc from the early 2000s

The early XP era is kind of a "forgotten era" of retrocomputing IMO, glad to see you covering it.

The problem with older pre Pentium 4/ Centrino Dell’s is a number of things that make them tricky to use at times, such as the annoying 3 pin charger, and more common battery issues. Also, Windows XP in my eyes had 3 eras. The very early Pentium 3 era where machines could barley run it, the Pentium 4 era where machines could mostly run it “okay”, and then the core 2 duo era where machines made XP run very VERY well with the right conditions.

I actually just bought and received both an 8200 and 8100 on eBay like a week ago. I rebuilt an 8100 when I went to college because I couldn't afford to buy a new laptop (it was very old for the time) and part of that was upgrading the GPU inside. I remember it being relatively finicky to get things optimized, but once I did it performed surprisingly well given its age. That's why I bought them, I want to try to recreate that machine. Really solid laptops imo.

I had an Inspiron 8100, with an NVidia card. I ran Win2K on it, and it was a great laptop for the time. It had a lot of great features, and I even did a videocard upgrade on it. It was a machine that gave me confidence, compared to the Compaq I had before that.

Fascinating. I remember this exact type of issues back when it was a current issue! I feel old.

Love all your videos, that are always a must watch and right in my wheelhouse of classic computing!

I have a Dell Latitude C840 (the newer/faster) model of this and with modded Nvidia Omega v1.4523 drivers running Dos 6.22 + Win 3.11W, 98SE, and XP. With an addition ini file mod to add support for the Geforce 4 Go 440 it seems perfectly stable and has similar performance to Win XP using Omega 1.6177 drivers too (both tested in 3dMark 99 Max with Vscync on since there's no off option for using DX8 or overclocking support in 98SE version unlike XP.) Gets about Vodoo 3 2000 performance due to Vsync but can get upto Desktop Geforce 4 MX 440 SE with Vsync off

I love your content man! I'm in Melbourne OZ, and to see people repurpose old laptops, is bloody awesome.

Why not windows 2000?

I have this same model laptop with the GeForce 4 in it. If I remember correctly, there were some drivers called Omega that worked for it, and well! But I've had a lot of machines and done a lot of things, so I could honestly have it mixed up with another machine of that era. But, it doesn't hurt to give it a look! Good luck, mine was pretty rock solid back in the day and I only use it now for the native serial port for programming some of my older radios. 😎

You don't necessarily need to hack a driver. Just dig deeper into archived driver versions. There's almost certainly a few versions between Dell support site driver and the one you tried from Nvidia's current site that didn't work.

My parents first computer was the Dell Inspiron 8200. My father custom ordered it from Dell directly as that was the thing back then. Order exactly what you want, nothing you don't want. This video really brings back memories as his machine was preloaded with Windows XP. Thanks for doing your best to make this very worthy laptop a good vintage machine. I'm still searching for the perfect Windows 98SE or ME laptop for my retro gaming rig. I hope someday you make a video on the PERFECT laptop for that use.

WOW, this computer really brings back great memories of playing Unreal Tournament 2003 on a local Lan in the barracks overseas during OEF/OIF. I had the version with the GeForce 4 go 440 with 64 MB (LOL) of video ram. Honestly the Inspiron 8100 that was released just before the 8200 was also a very good machine for a Pentium 3 based laptop. The video cards could be upgraded on both models and shared the same video cad connector if I remember correctly.

It's crazy how many people had this computer! And I still got mine too! 1.7 Ghz P4m, GeForce4 440 Go 64MB, 40GB HDD, and 768MB RAM (upgraded). I should boot up some GTAIII on it again sometime for nostalgia!

It's amazing where you can end up just to find working Drivers for old hardware. I had the same problem with my Geforce FX Go5200. Either way, getting old hardware running again with less than optimal drivers is still a win. :)

The predecessor for this (Inspiron 8000) came with a PIII up to at least 1 GHz and the same GeForce 2Go GPU. Mine came with Windows ME, and even back then, Windows 98 was a pain to install. WinME and WinXP both ran pretty well on it, though.

what a trip! i had this exact model of a laptop in the early 2000, was my first laptop in college, used windows XP! The resolution was insane! thank you for this video!

I still have that laptop that my uncle gave to me, even though it’s not working, if there’s a way to repair it, I would run retro games on it!

Nostalgia bomb! My college laptop was an Inspiron 8100, I believe. It came with Windows ME, but there were illicit XP and 2000 discs floating around campus. Learned a ton on that computer.

I bought the 8000 when they were new as they were literally the fastest money could buy (along with their Latitude twins which had the same electronics in a stronger case). You could choose ME or W2K and I chose the latter. I initially had problems with some games but slowly figured out how to get Quake 3 and Unreal working well. I still have the 8000, but it is now 8100 spec with a slightly faster P3 and upgraded video card. The panel won't do more than 60Hz anyway so the 57fps you were getting is fine in reality, albeit not making the most of what the hardware can do. The hardware, specifically the video card ever so slightly pre-dates XP but was intended for the ME/w2k era as you say, so really even the 8000 is slightly too new to be running 98 (which was always an unstable piece of junk vs the later W2K anyway). Most stuff can be made to run on XP anyway...

For the Midi issue installing Roland Virtual Sound Canvas v3.2 that up on the internet archive will help.

I wonder if one of the business-aimed equivalents like the Dell Latitude C640 would function better for something like this

The 8000 version with the ati radeon was the very last one to properly work with 98se. I was a repairing these guys back in the day and most customers that needed it ended up getting a swapped video board (its a seperate card thankfully)

wtf, I've never seen a 4:3 laptop display with that native resolution. That's actually quite impressive, as I was running my CRTs at that resolution back in the day, for a while (until I switched to something like 1920x1440). That was peak awesome back in the day.

I had one of these as a work laptop in 2004. I believe with a Go 440 chip. It was great, but bulky for travel.

This computer also came with much faster GPUs which could be "upgraded". My friend bought a top spec one with GeForce4 440 Go and later changed the GPU to Mobility Radeon 9000 to get the best performance in C&C Generals.

Suddenly rather glad that i was more or less able to finish my divine tier build for 98se in particular. Can't say i envy anyone trying to shop for a suitable build, here and now. God speed and hopefully good fortune favors you all. 🤞

I know I've learned my lesson when it comes to retro laptop computing. I only look for laptops specifically designed for Windows 98 versus trying to make an XP machine run it. It just never works out well. Great video as always! Getting a new TDNC video that's about retro laptops was a great thing to wake up to! 😊

I still have my original Inspiron 4100 I acquired in HS, it was great. By some miracle, I found the docking station at my local Goodwill! I think I will still try and get an 8200 just for the performance upgrade and a similar shell to the one I have already.

Very informative.

When you was fixing cassette tape where did you get the song from?

I have one of these, it drove me nuts.

I had an 8100 running ME. That machine was a beast.

Keeping just the USB driver on a floppy so you can use a thumb drive is lowkey genius ngl. Bravo I know it doesn’t matter for games anyway, but I probably would’ve kept the resolution high and adjusted the text size settings in the window theme settings. Of course it’s not exactly like modern DPI scaling especially when it comes to pictures and other multimedia, but I find it does a decent job with making text crispy. Sadly it got less workable with XP’s Luna theme, since it had fewer asset sizes and the ones it did have didn’t scale as well. No more adjusting the “3D-ness” of window chrome, or choosing any title bar colour, and also that text size hack.

I used to love troubleshooting things like that on old laptops and computers. Sourcing drivers and digging out 20 million CD/DVDs with drivers and installs on them. Took hours and was usually very frustrating but I really enjoyed it. The freeze on first boot was always fun because it usually resulted in another...then another..then another installation! I loved both 98 and XP - I will always remember the XP meadow screen especially when I went into component shops.

I'm thinking the windows 98 drivers by default forces it too run with vertical sync or in short vsync on anything 3D judging by the below 60 fps you got usually.

the sweetspot is the inspiron 8000. rocks a mobile coppermine PIII and can still have the high resolution screen with a geforce2. officially supports 98 too.

Had an 8100 back in the day. Came with win me though I opted for 2k. Could buy a dock with 2 full PCI slots! Had one second hand as it replicated the sound jacks too and mine had worn out :) Was a good machine for the time and the gpu was socketed - upgraded to the radeon 7500(?) to play GTA but would only work with external monitor! (I had the 16mb gf2 so not enough vram for gta)

As a kid this laptop was a hand-me-down from my dad. I remember struggling with reinstalling XP because I had gotten malware. We finally did and even basic 2D games wouldn't run because I had no drivers installed. At the time, I didn't know that, so I dealt with it until I tried taking it apart. I struggled with reinstalling XP because we didn't have any of the recovery media for the machine, nor did we have a retail copy. We had to borrow one from my dad's work at the time, (which never got returned) and struggled with it for like a month because we didn't have a key

I've had really good luck with an old Thinkpad R51 with a Radeon 9000 gpu. amazing performance and rock solid construction. :) There's a bunch of Thinkpads from the early 2000's with radeon 9x00 gpu's that work really well.

My first laptop was the Latitude version of that with XP, was a great reliable machine

Nice just about to watch

The biggest thing that puts me off the Latitude C840 (and by extension the consumer version, Inspiron 8200) for games is actually the trackpoint. Dell switched from a Synaptics solution licensed by IBM to one produced by ALPS, and it feels much more sluggish and imprecise. This one issue made me upgrade an Inspiron 8100, the prior model to this with a Tualatin Pentium III-M, with the Latitude's 1600x1200 display and Geforce4 Go 440.

Do you know what is the last IBM or DELL laptop with SoundBlaster compartible card? This could be the best win98/dos gaming machine.

there are custom drivers that work . im also certain you can force install the inf

I just did an INI edit on my Lattitude 610 to use the 8.05 drivers, works well and in 3dmark99 im getting 7062 3dmarks

It has a 1394/FireWire jack so good for converting old MiniDV videos.

I note the T30 being "suggested", so to speak, as a good XP device. I happened upon a T41p for 20 euroquids at a local thriftstore. Excellent condition, runs XP games rather well, but I wonder if it might stumble with 98 drivers as well. (From comments, yeah.)

I ran a Latitude C840 for a while, around 2007-09. It had the GeForce4 440. Great machine but really bulky. It ran XP Pro but I later switched to Ubuntu Studio 8.04.

I have a similar problem with the same graphics chip in a Toshiba Satelite 3000-514. It's powered by a Pentium 3M 1Ghz and 512MB SDRAM. I can't remember the GPU being replacable though. Seems like the GeForce2 Go was a proprietary card, that wasn't officially supported at all by nVidia's driver packs. I heard its technically more similar to the GeForce 1 and because of that it may work with some modded inf files. Toshiba never released drivers for anything except Win2k/XP. I got Dell's drivers working to an extent but it seems to be even more unstable than you've experienced it. Toshiba's drivers though work very well with Win2k even up to Win7 when manually selecting inf-files. Linux support for the Geforce2 Go is a mess too

I have a 8200, same issues attempting 98. The speaker jack was messed up in which sound wouldn't work half the time... may use it for parts. A latitude C640 does 98 good...

This is where one of those old universal driver cd discs comes in handy

I have a dell latitude from about that time period that came with windows 2000! I havent been able to get windows 98 working properly on it

There is an OPL soundcard which attaches to the printer port. It does perfect Yamaha sound. It isnt internal but oh well.

I went with a HP Compaq TC1100 hybrid tablet/laptop with a dedicated dock!

I had this laptop growing up. It was a tank and those rear fans would keep your hands or coffee warm during LAN parties

This was my first laptop. I got it for my 15th birthday in 2003. I still have it, and it worked fine the last time I powered it on a couple years ago.

geforce 2 go? that can be one powerful gpu. how much is the memory bandwidth of it?

That Windows 98 login sound is probably my #1 favorite nostalgia trip. My first big push into amateur PC repair was as a high-school-aged kid, toward the tail end of Win98's dominance in the market, and I set up a LOT of old Windows PCs with 98SE. Heard that login chime soooooo many times as a youngster. Hard to believe that was almost 25 years ago!

I had this machine. It was pretty solid with Windows 2000

The fix for a 15" at 1600x1200 is to change the DPI. Win2k had this option and it made the best use of the real estate, much like today's laptops. I found 112dpi to be a good setting. I had an A30p with that display and it was great for CAD.

@This Does Not Compute This may seem like a crazy idea, but if memory serves, that laptop was actually designed with Windows ME in mind. The drivers are optimized as such, which is why they are so labeled likely why why 98 didn't perform as well. If you are so inclined, give it a try.

Just outta curiosity, did you ever switch the color mode from 16-bit to the more supported 32-bit? When you changed the resolution you left the color mode to 16-bit.

I have a latitude x840, which is the business version of the 8200. It has the geforce 4 440, and its quite buggy with 98. However, windows me does fare much better and dells website has better 9x support on the c840 page, which works with the 8200. A few drivers you have to hunt down like intel speedstep however.

Have you looked at the ibm thinkpad t42? It has win98 drivers

I found a Dell Latitude C600 with it's original carry case for 6 bucks in a thrift shop recently. Seems to work great win 98se

To get a newer driver or just stability there's a chance kernel ex can help you

You could burn your own custom bootable (with Nero 6 it's really easy) Windows 98 CD-R by keeping only the "win98" and "tools" directory and adding all the bells and whistles (NUSB, KernelEX, DirectX...) you need. You can also install Windows way faster by system formatting your HDD beforehand, then going creating a "W98" directory on it, then using the xcopy command in the "tools" directory to copy the "win98" and "tools" directory with the setup;exe program into your HDD, then get back to the "W98" directory of your HDD and launch the setup program.

I use a 2006 Dell Optiplex to play my mid 90's to early 00's games, completely stock besides an ssd it runs every game I've tried perfectly using an intel core 2 duo, integrated graphics, 2gb of ram, and windows XP SP3

What were people's thoughts on running Win 98 on the ThinkPad T4X series? Latest being T43 or even R series? Finding vintage systems for running 98 has become more and more challenging.

Me and my brother had this laptop as our first gaming pc we played maffia on it all the time fun laptop and when the battery got low you could remove the floppy drive and put in a second battery

Did you install the motherboard chipset on Windows 98

Oh wow, I had one of these. Also had an 8100. My 8200 was upgraded to a 2.2 ghz P4 and had a Radeon 9000 GPU in it. Thing ran Doom 3 nicely (not at full res of course). Never tried Windows 98 on it when I had it (was bought new). Kind of wish I never recycled it... I do have a D610 (also with a Radeon 9000) that I tried to install 98se on. Wasn't happy... gave up after a few hours, but at least that machine is Core2 based and decent for Windows XP.

I never had Windows 98 freeze on me. I was looking for another one because the first Inspiron 8200 died, i found a cheap one and got lucky and it had the ATI Radeon 9000. I also upgraded the CPU to a 2.2 ghz Pentium M. I had a lot of problems getting the GeForce 2 GO to work one the previous one i had.

I have one of these and can't seem to find a power supply for it :(

Ironic that you made this video. I bought an 8100 that I encountered identical problems with over a year ago. I ended up shelving it. I did buy a PCMCIA Audigy card for it that is supposed to have some kind of emulation mode with soundfonts for DOS, but havent tried it out yet. Seeing the driver problems you have had with the Nvidia card makes me want to try some spare parts I have for mine. Mine started out as an 8000 that I swapped with an 8100 board so that I could use a 1ghz p3 instead of the 850mhz that the 8000 had. The board I got came with an ATI video card. Makes me want to try that, since the Nvidia card has driver issues.

If nothing else, that Pentium Snore will keep your lap warm in the winter. 👌

9:08 that's a good MIDI Music.

Windows 98SE. Chipset driver first (have to watch later Intel ones for 98 really aren't drivers, they're just Registry updates to make the MS drivers show the Intel device names instead of Standard or Generic) then video, UltraATA etc. Hacking that last 9x/me Geforce2 Go driver should be as easy as copying and pasting the Dell device entries from the INF and INI files to the generic nVidia driver files. I used to do that years ago for getting unsupported hardware working in 98SE and XP. One was for older UMAX SCSI scanners that UMAX had decided were not going to work in XP. It was so easy, just copy and paste a couple of entries from the 9x driver INF and INI to the XP driver for their SCSI scanners. The other half of the problem where XP would detect the older SCSI scanners as 7 devices was solved with a patch from some company in Australia. I shared my little hack with them for making the XP driver support the "obsolete" scanners. I've no idea where one would get that 7x detection patch now. Another small mod I did was for some crappy TriGEM PCI video card to make it work in Windows 95 OSR2 versions. The card was essentially a reference design from the company that made the video chip, but rather than simply replace the chip company name in the BIOS with TriGEM, they had to *do things* to it so the reference driver wouldn't work properly. Only the driver they supplied would work, and only in Win 95a. Trying it in any later release somehow made the mouse cursor only movable on the left half of the screen. A bit of trying this and that, I discovered that copying one DLL from the TriGEM Win 95a driver to the video chip companies reference driver fixed it. Apparently the code that 'locked out' drivers not supplied by TriGEM was in that DLL. I uploaded it to Driverguide.com and for several years I'd get an email thanking me for figuring it out and uploading it. I still have the same e-mail so I gues it's been quite a while since anyone has needed to use one of those crufty old video cards in Win 95B, or if anyone has, they haven't decided to send me an email.

Ooh, a Inspiron 8200. I have the Precision version of this one, great machine! These 8000 series Inspirons and their Precision/Latitude equivalents have a Varta battery in the palmrest that can and WILL leak, so remove it before it does!

In my Windows days, SP3 XP was absolutely rock solid. Or maybe I just imagined it?

I actually have an 8200! I upgraded mine to the Geforce4 440 Go & it is an upgrade but I’m running XP on mine for the exact reasons you identified. Honestly not ideal for gaming when there are better options so it’s ended up as a mobile server for my retro PC’s software & drivers but even that’s been mostly taken over by a 32GB flash drive. Shame really, it’s been pretty solid & reliable, I just don’t really need it.

Yeah they're a funny machine alright! I always wanted one as a kid and bought one a few years ago. But found it's ever so slightly out of reach for Windows 9X but would make for a good Windows 2000 system!

In the late 1990s our school computer service department was still deploying Windows 98 on Gateway 2000 PCs. If the computer was over specked on memory Windows 98 would not boot, so the solution was to edit the Registry so that Windows got along with the excessive memory. Why would someone want a gigabyte of memory, we wondered, but our hardware guy was looking to the future and he constantly ordered computers with massive amounts of memory, wanting to future proof them.

Vintage tech with poetry. Nice

Why not do an INF mod on the NVIDIA driver?

What is the best XP gaming machine, HP 8770W / Dell Precision equivalent?

Kind of kicking myself for recycling my dell inspiron from 2001. Pentium 3 and AMD graphics. Came out before XP. At this point it seems the better path is to build a powerful PC and run virtual machines now that the soundcard issue has been addressed.

While I’m sure the MIDI could be better, I would have been ok with that at the time. It doesn’t sound too bad.

I have a 8200 with geforce go 4 and probably difrent drivers, it runs old 3d games ass fast ass win2k & xp in win 98se. I can share you the driver for GFgo 2/4. it can be hard to find at last to me it was

I picked up a "broken" Dell B130 for $7 in perfect working condition. It just needed a $15 power adapter. It runs WinXP.

MS DOS 6.22 SOUND WORKING?

I find Windows XP to be great for retro gaming even for DOS / Win98 era games. It's rare that a game won't work. All the DOS games I like to play work great under XP's DOS emulation and there is a bonus. You can use emulation to get Roland MT32 and SC55 sound in software and XP's built in DOS emulation can route the sound easily through the emulation. I don't own nor can afford to buy a bunch of expensive retro Roland hardware but I can play many of the games I wish I could have played with Roland sound when I was a kid on my XP rig with free emulation software. I'm kind of tired of everyone with their "authentic experience" nonsense. I had the authentic experience when I was young. And for most of us that was a DOS pc with a Sound Blaster or compatible. (For me it was an ESS Audiodrive) What I have now is a BETTER experience.

Try a Latitude C640 or Inspiron 7500

I always turn up the volume on passport midi

Compaq armada is a good machine. Came out at the tail end of 98 to 2000

I noticed the laptop had that 4 space code on it. The one that usually means you will have a terrible time with the machine. Try to look out for it in the future. It is DELL. (just kidding)

That's unfortunate. Are there other laptops from this era that might be better candidates? I was very excited for XP when it was released because I used my computer in college to get real work done. Windows 98 on my Pentium III PC was super crashy, which screwed me over a few times when writing term papers. Knowing XP was built on the NT kernel like the extremely stable computers in the lab at school made me want it as soon as I could get it. The reason NT and XP were stable is that they weren't running on top of DOS. So, the end of true DOS support in XP sucked for DOS gamers, but it was necessary for people who wanted a more stable experience while getting real work done.