News Retro Pocket 386 Win 95 laptop arrives for less than $200 — comes with 40MHz 386 SX processor, 8 MB RAM, and replaceable graphics

[Admin]

The Pocket 386 is a retro Windows gaming laptop that you can easily put in your pocket.

Retro Pocket 386 Win 95 laptop arrives for less than $200 — comes with 40MHz 386 SX processor, 8 MB RAM, and replaceable graphics : Read more

 

[jeremyj_83]

They should have used a 486 DX2 or better with 32MB RAM. Would have made that a vastly better retro system.

 

[TerryLaze]

They should have used a 486 DX2 or better with 32MB RAM. Would have made that a vastly better retro system.

It's an upgrade from the pocket 8086 laptop, they had the 386 as a handheld weird little thing that made no sense whatsoever, in laptop form it's a little bit more appealing.
General PSA , these things have harvested CPUs in them, they should still last "forever" (if they lasted until now there is no killing them) , but people should be aware of it.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bODiZ5bP84

 

[derekullo]

I still have an Asus EEE 701 from 2007-2008 with Windows XP.
7 inch screen but a blistering 900mhz celeron cpu by comparison to this pc
Installed WoW to a 16 gigabyte sd card and was barely able to do the Auction House if I stared straight down!

 

[TerryLaze]

a blistering 900mhz celeron cpu by comparison to this pc

That's the reason for these things (at least a big part of it) , play early DOS games that are sensitive to clocks and play "weird" on anything faster than what they need.

 

[Amdlova]

I like it

 

[bit_user]

They should have used a 486 DX2 or better with 32MB RAM. Would have made that a vastly better retro system.

I was going to comment that this visually reminds me a lot of the Toshiba Libretto, which is the first sub-notebook I ever saw. In fact, according to the Wikipedia page, the first version was actually a 486DX4-75!

Here's a slightly later model:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_Libretto
​

A guy I worked with actually bought one and it was roughly the size & shape of a VHS tape. On the longest axis, it was maybe an inch longer.

 

[jeremyj_83]

I was going to comment that this visually reminds me a lot of the Toshiba Libretto, which is the first sub-notebook I ever saw. In fact, according to the Wikipedia page, the first version was actually a 486DX4-75!

​

Here's a slightly later model:​

​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_Libretto​

​

A guy I worked with actually bought one and it was roughly the size & shape of a VHS tape. On the longest axis, it was maybe an inch longer.

My first personal desktop was powered by a 200MHz Pentium with 16MB RAM on Win 95 in 1996. Had a MASSIVE (for the time) 2.5GB HDD and a 2MB Video Card. Playing Duke 3D it was fine, but I-76 was hit and miss for framerates at 640x480 resolution. At that time 16MB was like 12GB RAM now. Would have been nice to have had 32MB.

 

[USAFRet]

I was going to comment that this visually reminds me a lot of the Toshiba Libretto, which is the first sub-notebook I ever saw.

I had a Libretto. Do not remember which CPU it had.

 

[MSimoes]

They should have used a 486 DX2 or better with 32MB RAM. Would have made that a vastly better retro system.

i still have a old 486 dx2 66mhz somewhere at my parents. CPU - Board and Ram it was working but i guess now maybe the CPU and Ram will work, i need to find it ( probably my mother throw it away i wouldnt be surprise if she did )

 

[jeremyj_83]

i still have a old 486 dx2 66mhz somewhere at my parents. CPU - Board and Ram it was working but i guess now maybe the CPU and Ram will work, i need to find it ( probably my mother throw it away i wouldnt be surprise if she did )

I should have an old Cyrix PR-166+ somewhere. It was working before it was put into storage 20+ years ago. I've thought about turning that into a retro gaming system.

 

[Geef]

I remember in 1988 heading to my grandparent's place and seeing my grandpa using a 'laptop.' It was huge. Probably about 4 inches thick. I checked the date because he had just bought a new game to play on it called Ultima 5.

 

[MarkHughes]

Right up until 2005 I was using an Amiga as my main machine, So I kinda missed this era of PC, This kind of system would be quite interesting to me.

 

[Kondamin]

would be nice if intel were to offer a retro tile that held a collection of all the cores that could be adressed by a virtual machine software

 

[PiersPlowman]

Right up until 2005 I was using an Amiga as my main machine, So I kinda missed this era of PC, This kind of system would be quite interesting to me.

So, for at least a decade longer than you should have been!

The Pentium was Commodore and Atari's coup de grace, and was the juncture in which the PC transitioned from the office to the home.

 

[lilgawain]

I should have an old Cyrix PR-166+ somewhere. It was working before it was put into storage 20+ years ago. I've thought about turning that into a retro gaming system.

I need to pull an old system out as well. It's a beastly Gateway P4 w/HT @ 2.66GhZ. In another box, I have the most powerful consumer AGP card ever made (to my knowledge): a rare AGP Radeon HD3850. I've never used it because I got it long after I had moved on to PCIE systems.

 

[NedSmelly]

The Pocket 386 will initially ship with Windows 3.11, but you could ask DZT’s Store, the seller of this retro notebook, for a Windows 95 GHO file to upgrade your system

Just curious about the legalities of this. Is MS actually still offering licences for MS-DOS, Win3.1, and Win95?

 

[TerryLaze]

would be nice if intel were to offer a retro tile that held a collection of all the cores that could be adressed by a virtual machine software

That's what PCem does, it also emulates old graphics and sound so you can play old games that need more than dos(box) .

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx2H3IV9SG4

 

[TerryLaze]

Just curious about the legalities of this. Is MS actually still offering licences for MS-DOS, Win3.1, and Win95?

Oh these are 100% illegal, the previous version even had a pirated bios that was open source and they just edited the original author out.

 

[Pemalite]

Wish it had something like a Pentium 2/3 with 128MB of Ram and a decent GPU, then I would bite.

I want to be able to run games like StarCraft, Dune, Dark Reign, Diablo 2, Total Annihilation, Mechwarrior 2, Descent 2, Quake 2, Unreal, Command and Conquer Red Alert, Dungeon Keeper, Age of Empires 2, The Settlers, Civilization, Master of Orion 2 and more... And if I could run games like Sacrifice, Giants: Citizens Kabuto, Evolva, Black and White, Homeworld... Then that would be a massive bonus.

 

[Kondamin]

That's what PCem does, it also emulates old graphics and sound so you can play old games that need more than dos(box) .

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx2H3IV9SG4

Sure there is emulation but, I mean a modern cpu has a transistor count in the billions where a 486 is a couple of tens of thousands

 

[TerryLaze]

Sure there is emulation but, I mean a modern cpu has a transistor count in the billions where a 486 is a couple of tens of thousands

No company is going to hard wire old cpu cores into their modern CPUs, that's just not happening. Also all modern CPUs have full support for all the old commands so there is no reason to, the only thing there is to do is to limit the IPC and cache and so on.

 

[MarkHughes]

So, for at least a decade longer than you should have been!

The Pentium was Commodore and Atari's coup de grace, and was the juncture in which the PC transitioned from the office to the home.

Depends on what you mean by "should" as it still worked perfectly and did everything I wanted, And indeed it still does as I still have it and use it.

In fact the only reason I bought a PC at that time was because I wanted to play World of Warcraft.

So yea, For people like me a system like the one in the article would fill in some gaps

 

[jeremyj_83]

Wish it had something like a Pentium 2/3 with 128MB of Ram and a decent GPU, then I would bite.

I want to be able to run games like StarCraft, Dune, Dark Reign, Diablo 2, Total Annihilation, Mechwarrior 2, Descent 2, Quake 2, Unreal, Command and Conquer Red Alert, Dungeon Keeper, Age of Empires 2, The Settlers, Civilization, Master of Orion 2 and more... And if I could run games like Sacrifice, Giants: Citizens Kabuto, Evolva, Black and White, Homeworld... Then that would be a massive bonus.

You could try making a Virtual Machine with Win 98 or ME.

 

[TerryLaze]

You could try making a Virtual Machine with Win 98 or ME.

Pretty much all the games he listed are on steam (or other platforms) and run on modern systems.
There might be the need to apply some patches or tweaks for best possible but they run well enough as is.