Thinkpad Windows 98SE Native DOS box and Good Old

Communities Gaming
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Project time lords of the ghe,

[img]http://www.freeinfosociety.com/media/images/1019.jpg[/img]


Ever want to play good old games (pre-2003, DOS, System Shock 2, etc.) but your system refuses to run it properly/natively (>NT/XP, 64bit, multicore, etc.)? Then here's a quick and relatively cheap (and more importantly relatively painless) way of getting good old [b]Win98SE[/b] up and running (Boss Mode).

[img]http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/3056.jpg[/img]


[b]Step 1[/b], Buy a Thinkpad T42 (has fast processor, decent GPU, pretty cheap on fleabay)

[b]Step 2[/b], Download and burn drivers from [url=http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/]lenovo support website[/url]

[b]Step 3[/b], Download and burn Win98SE Unattended Boot CD [url=http://www.mdgx.com/ubcd/list.php](Link)[/url] [url=http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/98369-driver-packs-for-windows-959898seme/](Source)[/url]

[b]Step 4[/b], Install Win98SE Unattended Boot CD (great thing about this is that USB functions installing this way, reduces burning more CD's for iso images)

[b]Step 5[/b], Install ATi driver, Soundmax driver and Intel Ethernet driver downloaded from [url=http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/]lenovo support[/url]

[b]Step 6[/b], Download and install i855PM chipset INF driver from Intel website


These are great [b]all in one[/b] machines for booting up DOS games etc. You get the build quality of a thinkpad, thinkpad driver support, games that dont gimp out on you (System Shock 2, Age of Empires 2), great specs (32MB ATi, 1.7GHz CPU etc.) and a version of Win98SE fully patched up.


Pics:

[img]http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/193/61625693.png[/img]

[i]Haven't played it yet, heard great things about SS2, looking forward to it :)[/i]

[img]http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/8069/29381089.png[/img]

[i]There are some drivers that gimp out, but this was designed for XP, last Thinkpad to support Win98SE (all the core components work, dont care about wireless and bluetooth)[/i]

[img]http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/9334/58598672.png[/img]

[i]USB support! (usually a headache)[/i]

[img]http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/7163/dump000.png[/img]

[i]The legendary System Shock 2 (supposed to be a shit scary game)[/i]

2

Hell yes. Windows 98 rocks. I tried to install it on an old desktop a while ago, but drivers acted weirdly.

How well does System Shock 2 run on this thing?

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Boov said:

Hell yes. Windows 98 rocks. I tried to install it on an old desktop a while ago, but drivers acted weirdly.

How well does System Shock 2 run on this thing?

butter smooth. nice display, fast boot, responsive and all that jazz :)

4

I really gotta know where to get one of these in good condition for a good price.

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I actually did this a while after Gandu posted. Except I built an old crappy desktop, instead of using a thinkpad. Everything works... but my mouse clicks aren't recognized properly in System shock 2, meaning I can't advance the game. I'm thinking I'll need to get an old horrible PS/2 mouse.

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GOD how i miss windows 98.....

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that may be a problem with the game itself, especially if the mouse works in other games. Try running SS2 Tool (google the latest version), running SS2 Mod Manager and doing the user.bnd fix.

By the way, care to share the specs of the system you built?

8

Ok thanks for that, I'll give it a try.

It's got a Pentium 4 2GHz (socket 478), some crappy old MSI motherboard, 512MB of DDR RAM, and a Radeon 9200. I threw in an old soundcard, hard drive and PSU. Even found a wireless card and got that working on Windows 98. So it's a pretty solid system, except for these mouse issues. It cost me around £40 for the whole system.

9

I gotta get something like this. I think I'd prefer a T42, though...