Acer TravelMate 210 Reviews
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silbah.... August 2nd, 2011
Was looking for a good old laptop to play some old DOS games
I bought a Travelmate 212T on auction for 40EUR just to play old DOS games on it. I got it with Windows XP installed and it was painfully slow (only 184 MB RAM installed). I replaced XP by Windows Me to find out that DOS mode was no longer supported by it. The DOS window could play some of the old games with sound and all, but most games just wouldn't work correctly or launch at all.So I replaced ME by MS-DOS and a dual boot of Mandrive One (also painfully slow) and a pain to install on this hardware.
Wasted a few days trying to get the CD-ROM and USB mass storage to work under DOS. I succeeded and started running some of my old games. No Sound!! Only PC speaker.
This started my adventure in trying to get sound to work in plain old DOS. The AC'97 chip just couldn't cut in the real DOS mode. Tried everything but without any luck.
Ended up installing Windows 98 next to DOS and I managed to create a triple boot system with DOS 6.22 + Win98 and Mandrive One. Everything worked fine except sound in DOS 6.22. Even pen drives would work (ocasionally) in DOS with USBASPI.SYS and DD1....SYS drivers.
But, no sound!
Searched all over the internet and was able to locate an old IMB Advanced Audio Adapter for the PCMCIA interface with DOS drivers and all.
Purchased one cheap on www.tekkna.it and was very excited to try it out. I inserted it in the PC and installed the drivers but... no sound!
Apparently the card wasn't detected because the PCMCIA controller (a PCI OZ6812) is not Intel compatible. I had no idea that I needed an Intel compatible controller in order for the card's driver to access it directly (point access they call it) or alternatively install Card and Socket Services for this controller.
Well I couldn't magically change it to an Intel compatible controller so my only option was installing these so called Card and Socket Services for this controller.
After searching a lot I found this site: www.tssc.de and downloaded the evaluation version of their Cardware 7.0 collection of drivers that would enable Card and Socket services on my Acer. Installed the drivers and apparently I would have sound in DOS: no more error messages and I saw messages on screen claiming both Card and Socket services were installed, but still no sound.
The test program for the IBM Advanced Audio Adapter said that it couldn't find the adapter. I changed settings, tried to disable the internal AC'97 sound chip in the BIOS (no such option), tried in Win98, in Mandrive One, even reinstalled WinXP (replacing Linux) but nothing. The card wasn't being detected. Tried the card in a Windows 7 laptop and there it was (no drivers, but effectively being detected)
My conclusion: the card is OK, my Acer's PCMCIA slot is not. It's probably broken... Tried a WLAN card and also no sign of it in the Device Manager in XP ou Win98.
My only hope is that I can some how repair the PCMCIA slot. That or buy another old laptop, preferably old enough to support sound in DOS without any expensive tricks.
So, if you're looking for a laptop to play old DOS games, don't buy this one, unless you'd like to tell the community how to use the AC'97 chip in real DOS.