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Fujitsu LIFEBOOK C1020 - Compatibility with Sound Blaster Pro

Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 5:54 am
by Xses
Hi,

I've got weird laptop - Fujitsu LIFEBOOK C1020. It's not that old - mine is actually from 2008 or '09, however it was released in 2001 or '02 and interesting thing is that it has old stuff like a parallel port, serial port, PS2, infra red, svideo and floppy drive, but it also has USBs, firewire, builtin modem, PC Card (It even has WiFi card in slot) and even SPDIF through optical fiber, so I started wondering wheather I could use it for both early Windows XP / 98 games and DOS games.

I do not care about black frames due to the higher resolution, because it has fairly big screeen however I do care about sound and what's interesting, that page states that it has sound card compliant with Sound Blaster Pro and AC'97, so does it mean that it will have sound with DOS games?

P.S. Yea, I know, just test it. The problem is that it can only boot from HDD, DVD and floppy and it boots correctly to XP from HDD, however both DVD and floppy drives are broken and I don't want to start working on it when it eventually will not have a sound.

Fujitsu LIFEBOOK C1020 - Compatibility with Sound Blaster Pro

Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 7:19 am
by MrFlibble
Any way to attach an external drive (floppy or CD) to the laptop? Does it have USB ports?

Fujitsu LIFEBOOK C1020 - Compatibility with Sound Blaster Pro

Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 7:49 am
by Xses
It has (even 2.0) but it can't boot from USB "it can only boot from HDD, DVD and floppy".

Fujitsu LIFEBOOK C1020 - Compatibility with Sound Blaster Pro

Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 2:33 pm
by Rwolf
If it's possible to disable the broken internal dvd & floppy in bios, attaching an external dvd or floppy on USB could work to boot on, it kind of depends on how hardcoded the boot code is.

(I looked at a spare (broken gfx) Fujitsu Amilo machine I have, but as it's not the same model, there is no floppy in mine and the DVD probably won't fit mechanically as replacement)

Fujitsu LIFEBOOK C1020 - Compatibility with Sound Blaster Pro

Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2021 4:15 pm
by MrFlibble
Xses wrote: It has (even 2.0) but it can't boot from USB "it can only boot from HDD, DVD and floppy".
I thought you were able to boot it?
Xses wrote: it boots correctly to XP from HDD
So is the problem in being unable to boot, or unable to read CDs/DVDs/floppies?

Fujitsu LIFEBOOK C1020 - Compatibility with Sound Blaster Pro

Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2021 4:50 pm
by Xses
The problem is that I can not do anything with os on the drive. It boots to XP, but in order to install DOS to check the sound card compatibility I need to boot it from floopy or DVD (USB boot is unsuported). That's why I asked wheather it's gonna have sound in DOS, because specs states soundblaster compability and I can not just check it.

Fujitsu LIFEBOOK C1020 - Compatibility with Sound Blaster Pro

Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2021 2:44 pm
by MrFlibble
Oh, you wanted to install DOS as a separate OS. Apologies, I failed to understand that. I'm afraid the only way to know is either find someone who has the same model and succeeded installing DOS on it, or get some repairs to do it yourself.

You could also try looking if there is a DOS driver for the sound card, I guess.