Just owned T23

[NyLan]

Hi There,

after buying an A20M I found a nice T23. Missing battery but for this model it's 3x cheaper than the one for A20M so it's not a big deal.
It's been shipped with Windows XP but I want to rollback to Windows98SE. I found that the T23 was sold with Windows98SE back in the day so I don't understand why I'm not able to find any recovery CD for it. I tried a recovery CD for T21 but it's freezing when Powerquest starts.

Do you know if I can use a recovery CD from another model (like from this list viewtopic.php?f=11&t=128170 ) ?
I know there's a huge process (here viewtopic.php?f=28&t=132493 ) to install Windows98SE manually but I would prefer if there's a recovery CD

Thank you !

[NyLan]

Seems to be almost impossible to find a working Win98 recovery cd for this model. I found that A30 recovery cd would work but I' can't find it either
I tried with some other ( T21, T22 ) lot of drivers are missing.
I also noticed that display HV extension is really crappy on T23 compared to my A20M not sure why.

[NyLan]

Look, it's so ugly. The HV expansion is really bad compared to older A20m

[RealBlackStuff]

I have a few CDs with different W98 versions (all English, but not recovery versions):
- W98 (incl. subdirs for Add-ons, CDsample, Drivers, Tools)
- W98 Plus
- W98 SE (OEM version with Microsoft 0499 P/N X03-77962)

I also have various CD-keys for them, not sure they are all legal, but nowadays I don't think that matters.

On my own T23 I have always had XP-Pro, never a problem.

[NyLan]

It's mainly under DOS. I'll take a photo and create a comparison.

[NyLan]

Ok, easy comparison. When booting, the Windows Splash is taking the whole screen on the A20M but not on the T23 :





Same under Norton Ghost :



More details on the way it's displayed. The letters are extended in a crappy way on the T23 and smooth on the A20M :

[kfzhu1229]

Look, it's so ugly. The HV expansion is really bad compared to older A20m

Resolution scaling is a feature that you take for granted today, but it was very much not so back then! For machines around 1999-2004, mostly only NVidia and ATI graphics have resolution scaling as a function! AFAIK all the ATI Rage cards and Radeon cards have them (Including the Rage M1 from 1999), and GeForce2, 4 Go have them as well, but Neomagic, S3 and Intel do NOT!
Neomagic and S3 can only do near integer based scalings, hence why you see that ugly mess, while Intel graphics back then can't even do that!
In fact, the S3 graphics' 3D performance is almost nonexistent anyway. It's meant for only 2D acceleration for things like graphing performance.
What does not help is that the T2x's XGA Samsung LCD's are by far the worst TFT displays I have ever seen on a laptop, gives me eyestrain in 15 minutes.
And yeah you can use a T22 Windows 98 restore CD, but drivers such as Audio, graphics and power management are different (T23 and A30 use a much more advanced power management system that's used all the way to T4x and that's what enables newer power managers to work).

[NyLan]

That's right, it's a S3 on the T23 and an ATI on the A20M ! Good catch

For the installation, I created a Win98 restore cd based on this instructions
viewtopic.php?p=864137#p864137

[RealBlackStuff]

My T23 (with XP) uses this driver: https://www.file-upload.net/en/download ... p.exe.html
From the name, it looks made for XP and W2K, but why not try it under W98?

[NyLan]

Because this has nothing to do with Windows Under Windows everything is good. It's mainly under MS-Dos the issue

[RealBlackStuff]

Anything useful here?
http://www.resoo.org/docs/dos/free_soft ... aphics.htm

[BillP]

There is a configuration utility for DOS that may help.
https://thinkpads.com/support/Thinkpad- ... m/T23.html
Under the Software and Utility heading find Configuration utility for DOS - ThinkPad Version: 4.44
One command of possible interest is:
.[HVEXPansion]
Command Syntax : PS2 HVEXPansion ON|OFf
.fCurrent State :
Description : Select 'ON' to display 640 by 480 resolution screen on the SVGA LCD

There are other commands to influence the LCD display so take a look at the options.

[NyLan]

I'll give a try. Disabling the HVExpansion is possible from Bios but then you have a very tiny image

Let's see if there's mote options there.

Thanks !