ThinkPad T22 Adventures

Yesterday, on August 24, 2018, I got a ThinkPad T22. It has a Pentium III 900MHz, 256MB of memory, and the same GPU as almost every late 90s/early 2000s Pentium III laptop: the S3 Savage IX with 8MB of video memory, running Windows 2000. I got it for free from my friend's dad.

The turning point is that it doesn't have a normal 1024x768 LCD of the time. Instead, it has the highly sought after 1440x1050 display. Obviously, I won't be gaming on such a high resolution with a Pentium III, 256MB of RAM, and 8MB of VRAM.

I think I'll install Windows 98 and maybe Windows XP, playing DOS games like Doom and Windows games like Unreal Tournament.

It won't boot off of burned CDs, but will boot off of a USB FDD drive, so I can use that to install Windows off of a burned disc (unlike my Gateway Solo 5300, DOS recognizes my CD-ROM drive, though in this case it is a DVD drive, but recognized as CD).

What do you guys think I should do with it?

Comments

  • edited August 2018

    Pentium III are quite fast and 256MB is plenty for such a machine, it meant no limits for the software of the time. :)

    If you don't want to take it online, stay with Windows 2000, it's the perfect mix between the usability of Windows 98 and the features of Windows XP, it already supports lots of RAM and doesn't need "Activation". If you don't have a DOS machine yet, you could install it in a dual boot configuration (more useful than 98 with XP).

  • You should give it to me. :p

    I love ThinkPads and have a T22 at home, but mine only has the regular 1024x768 screen. I've tried many OSes on the T2x series, and Windows 2000 seems to work the best. NT 4.0 worked well also. Windows 98 was kind of quirky. If you're interested in alternative OSes, it's a great machine to try out OS/2.

  • Update: I have installed Windows 98 and it runs a bit slow, but still bearable. It was definitely slower than Windows 2000, but I can probably speed it up with 98lite or just installing Windows 95. But I heard 98 is more stable so I'll probably just install 98lite. I might also put 2000 in a separate directory on the FAT32 C: drive. Yeah, I don't have a DOS machine yet, so I think this will be my DOS machine until then.

    Additionally, I installed Duke3D and Doom. While they have no sound in DOS mode (I don't have SoundBlaster compatible drivers installed, and the sound card is not SB compatible) but they work in Windows, so there is probably SB emulation for the DOS VDMs.

  • It even runs Unreal Tournament at a decent framerate (800x600 windowed mode) and I'll try 1024x768 later but I heard the S3 Savage IX is slow for OpenGL so I might not do Quake III (but I think I'll do Quake/Quake II). Is the S3 Savage/IX any good?

  • One thing to check, open up the device manager and find the first IDE hard drive. View the properties of it, and enable DMA on the drive (I forget which tab it's under, but can look when I get home). That will speed it up some as it's not turned on by default.

  • Okay, thanks. I just did some more testing though and I increased the speed with 98lite, and Quake III Arena actually runs fine in 1024x768, as does Unreal Tournament (Direct3D and MeTAL, as the Savage/IX is a mobile Savage 4). I just enabled DMA and things feel at least a little faster. Also, because of 98lite installing the 95 shell, it shows the IE5 splash screen when I start IE (I won't install IE6 because it has worse compatibility than IE5 due to artificial blocking, but I'd use Firefox, Opera, or K-Meleon anyway).

  • Oh, I forgot to add that you can enable DMA on the CD-ROM drive also (Not sure how often you use it or if those games require it) that way it's not using CPU cycles to access the drive.

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