#retro notebook

[classic-shoujo]

[crashpl]

Another fine piece of retro computers joins my army! Say hello to Siemens-Nixdorf Scenic Mobile 500! Equipped with Pentium 100 MHz, 40 MB of RAM, 788 MB HDD, Chip & Technologies 65550 1 MB video chip and ESS1888 sound card, it’s a complete beast for DOS and other older OS. One of the downsides is the fact it doesn’t feature any kind of CD-ROM, but at least it has a functioning floppy drive, as well as a serial/parallel port, so I don’t complain this much. Who knows, I might pick up a PCMCIA CD-ROM/PCMCIA-to-SCSI adapter someday.

MS-DOS 6.22 works like a charm, as I suspected it would. The ESS sound card, and its OPL3 clone, sounds as good as the Yamahas I have in my other retro machines (YMF744B in Tecra 8100 and OPL3 SA-x in my oldschool rig). The screen quality is also great, for an old TFT monitor. However, when it comes to the video, this one doesn’t have a built-in BIOS function of screen scaling, so I have to use a small TSR program to force the full screen, otherwise I’d be playing the DOS games in a bit smaller window (the native resolution is 800x600, and the screen is downsized to 640x480).

Just for the kicks I also tried out Windows 3.11, and no problems here as well (though I had to search for appropriate drivers first). Really enjoyed a quick round of SimTower and other Win3.x games.

Overall, just like Tecra 8100, it’s a damn fine machine if you’re looking for an authentic DOS/early Windows experience, but worried about building from scratch and configuring a retro rig by yourself.

Oh and shoutout for @ms-dos5, as I know you like these kind of thingies. ;)

[crashpl]

Ah, yes, the fine art of transferring files between PCs, with no USB, ethernet or CD-ROMs. The glorious speed of 14.4 kilobytes per second reminds me of good ol’ modem times.

...I might look for parallel cable someday.

[retropc-and-retrogames]