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Ever since I was a kid and got my first Commodore 64, I was hooked on computer gaming and was certain that this was the future. I was transfixed by the pixelated sprites jumping across the screen, now things are very different in the world of gaming! I enjoy collecting old games consoles and love repairing old tech which would otherwise be destined for the scrap heap. Recycling old games consoles is another passion of mine. If you have any old tech which you want to get rid of but don't want it to go to landfil, then let me know and I will collect it for free and repair the piece of tech and give it a new home. You will be safe with the feeling that you have helped salvage some old piece of tech and stop it from ending up in landfil.

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Great Retro Laptops like the Siemens Nixdorf Mobile Scenic 320CX are a one of a kind!

Especially as they came in this unusual turquoise colour! These cool looking laptops had dedicated sound card hardware built-in the motherboard as standard spec! This makes the dos gaming experience that much more amazing!

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The one in the youtube video above came with a Pentium MMX CPU running at 133Mhz, 32MB ram and the original 1.3GB IDE 2.5" HDD and a 12.1" DSTN screen. It would have been better with a TFT screen as they provide more detailed images rather than the washed out images on DSTN screens.

But its still good enough for a bit of fun.

 

One big problem with the bios is that it does not have bootable USB support, so one way around this is to install USB drivers which work under DOS! It took a little while trying to get hold of the correct drivers which work under DOS and also pick up the USB flash drive when it is inserted into the only USB port on this machine. But once I managed to find the correct setup and make sure the Config.sys file was correct and had the correct device listed, then it worked very well. However the USB port is not hot swapable under DOS meaning that you have to restart the machine if you want to add more files to the flash drive and copy them over to the retro siemens laptop.

 

I combined the files onto one boot disk and then I loaded it up on to the laptop and it picked up the usb flash drive first time! I was using a 1GB flash drive but used a 64MB flash drive to show it worked with many flash drives. One thing it won't do however is allow hot swapping of the usb device. If it is removed then you have to restart the device for it to be detected again. No big deal, still its better than using floppies to install a game! Some games I tried included Day of the Tentacle, a true classic! Another classic was Doom, this worked beautifully on this old laptop! music and sound effects also worked flawlessly. Some dos games don't work well under Windows, so for the authentic feel you can't beat an old laptop running DOS to run those old games you have stuck in the loft! You can always use DOS BOX to run those old games on your modern PC but you won't have that original retro 'feel' like you are actually using some old tech like this Pentium MMX machine!

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