The socket for the BIOS IC is probably meant to be used for the disk-in-chip. In regards of power supply, you could extend your pc-104 ISA "backplate" with an AT/ATX power connector and power your mini board directly through the ISA port. In the way as the Voltage Blaster was designed to supply -5V, which I designed together with PhilsComputerLab. UPD: That realtek 3105 is utter shit. It is basically an 8-bit VGA card and is a desperate bottleneck even for a 386SX-25.

@TheRasteri

Жыл бұрын

Yeah the manual says it can be used for either BIOS or DiskOnChips. Unfortunately I don't own any :) And yeah I really should add a power connector to those adapters...

@Arti9m

Жыл бұрын

Agreed on 3105, the only thing it's good for is for XT machines because it works flawlessly in 8-bit slots =)

@southernflatland

Жыл бұрын

Dude did say he didn't want to risk any of his good VGA cards LOL!

@TheRasteri

Жыл бұрын

@@Arti9m Yeah that's why I bought it - I have a few XT-class machines that it works great with

@perwestermark8920

Жыл бұрын

@@southernflatland This world (as in eBay etc) has seen lots of cheap 16-bit ISA VGA boards. No need to go for an 8-bit VGA chip.

I had access to 180 of these exact computers from 1993 to 1998. I used them to automate asphalt plants in the Southeastern states from Texas to Virginia controlling OPTO-22 hardware.

@JohnDoe-cv8iw

Жыл бұрын

interesting... i thought that was what PLC controllers would be used for. or did those not exist in those days?

@nathanwoodruff9422

Жыл бұрын

@@JohnDoe-cv8iw Siemens or Telemecanique microcontrollers were about $1,000 in 1995. These 386 boards were about $300 each.

@DrTeddyMMM

Жыл бұрын

Interesting, now the secret is out, asphalt comes from plants... around where I live they grow corn and soy beans... :P j/k

@nathanwoodruff9422

Жыл бұрын

@@DrTeddyMMM _"Interesting, now the secret is out, asphalt comes from plants"_ Yes, the plant name is asphalt. _"around where I live they grow corn and soy beans..."_ Also around where you live, they also grow something call "mobile" asphalt. The plant produces the same type of asphalt though.

It's actually quite significant that you got the digitized sound out of Duke Nukem II. They used a sound blaster specific codec for it that not very many clones implemented, ADPCM.

@southernflatland

Жыл бұрын

ADPCM? As in Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation? Yeah, it may have been patented back in the day, but such patents expired years ago and the full documentation is readily available. I assume that's at least partly why there's a custom firmware chip on it. ADPCM isn't even a terribly difficult algorithm, you make it sound like it was an MP3 decoder. Now THAT would be impressive...

@sedrosken831

Жыл бұрын

@@southernflatland Right, it's not especially complex, but at the time those Crystal sound chips were made it was still quite common to leave it out especially since not many games made use of it.

@psychoticgiraffe

Жыл бұрын

duke nukem ii sounds great on this chip

@GerritJandeWilde

Жыл бұрын

nerd

@tuomollo

Жыл бұрын

From what I remember, never had any issues with it on my ES1688 which was a very nice and compatible card.

I worked for Ampro on their first product. It was a single-board computer also, called the Little Board Z80. It was just the right size to mount onto the back of a 5-1/4" Floppy Disk Drive and it ran CP/M-80 v2.2. I wrote the SCSI Hard disk driver for that board. It was a sweet product.

Well that went in a direction I didn't expect. That setup grew like an organic lifeform. I expect most industrial controllers of the day did not require much from the computer.

I have a few XT versions of these, that IC socket you said was bios is for a "disk on chip", which is where they normally boot from. Usually with just a stripped down DOS, and one program, often written to not need a screen etc. The main reason for these is that writing the software on a PC, for a PC, is considered by some people to be easier than using a micro controller etc. In their intended environment, the user interface is often a few indicator lamps and a few switches, no keyboard or monitor - looking at the machine you would never know there is a PC in there. The one's I scored came out of pay TV (as in cable TV) video scramblers, with no user controls at all.

You missed a pin installing the board onto the main board! On 6:48 you can see it.

You may not like it, but this is what peak cyberdeck looks like. Great work.

Thanks for video! This topic is close to me as I'm working on creating my own tiny PC104-like computer with a 386SX40 (M6117D) CPU, 4Mb of RAM, TVGA9000i video, ES1868 sound, onboard WiFi and CF slot, powered by microusb, and all this will be packed into 2 neat boards within G738 plastic case.

@MarcKloos

27 күн бұрын

A year later, did you manage to get your tiny PC working?

@UzixLS

27 күн бұрын

@@MarcKloos yes, you can google for Kharon-386

The usual thing as is with tiny computers: After plugging in all the peripherals you need, you might as well have used a mini PC (like barebone PC: like BRiX or NUC).

@perwestermark8920

Жыл бұрын

Except a NUC is quite new and more expensive and draws more power.

There was a show called How It's Made, and on an episode they showed a company that made rolls for player-pianos. And they still used Apple IIs because of like you said, the expense of switching to newer hardware and software. I would imagine they had a closest of Apple IIs incase the productions ones broke.

@datavalisofficial8730

Жыл бұрын

Not that old but i worked at a candy factory here in northeastern brazil and most big machines although newer, were being controlled by pentium 3 PCs with a specialized OS that the IT guy believed it was either some BSD fork made in house by the manufacturer, which is from some place down south or even some OS based on an ancient UNIX version made by a company called COBRA in the 80s

@ImaginationToForm

Жыл бұрын

@@datavalisofficial8730 Neat

You really won me with Jazz Jackrabbit. My all-time favourite DOS game. Loved it and young kids still enjoyed playing it long after much more elaborate games came out. I remember playing it on a 386 machine and frame rate was OK then. But then this is a SX. Very interesting video BTW, thanks for making me knowing these industrial boards and the PC104 form factor.

What a neat video! Great job sorting out all the challenges! Enjoyed watching.

Really enjoy these videos on using industrial PCs for DOS gaming. I loved the WeePC but really interested in the ISA card expansion. A big part of PCs is being able to expand with different sound and video cards. Would be great to see a video on using a PC104 board that's really available and combine with standard ISA card expansion that can be installed to a standard PC case. Would be great to have an alternative to using vintage PCs from the 80s and 90s.

FrankenPC from 80s, love it! 👌

THE most elegant PC. Love it !

Thanks for posting this content, I have read DOS being used in embedded system but never seen any hardware, this is very interesting!

I really love your way of upcycling!

Well that was a lot of fun!... Good on ya!... Looking forward to more content and new adventures!

Awesome project! Great to hear Wolfenstein after all these years, nice one!

That was awesome. A trip down memory lane for sure 😁👍 I laughed when you introduced the board as a neat option for tiny formfactor gaming and then continued to stack isa adapters on it 🤣🤣

@raven4k998

Жыл бұрын

makes you wonder if you can get a 486dx 133 for dos gaming🤔

@PeterHertel

Жыл бұрын

@@raven4k998 that would be cool, I've unfortunately gotten rid of almost all my old tech. But personally I'm leaning towards emulation due to space constraints in my house, a raspberry pi makes for a much more versatile setup for my needs.

@raven4k998

Жыл бұрын

@@PeterHertel so a pc104 is not small enough for your space restraints? cause it would be tiny

@PeterHertel

Жыл бұрын

@@raven4k998 sorry, I had a brain fart. I was thinking of a regular AT board, a pc104 would of course be an option space wise. 👍

@raven4k998

Жыл бұрын

@@PeterHertel and they do make a 486 133 variant of it to so you could make one for ms dos gaming if you wanted to go that route

Pretty cool. Glad you didn’t short the video card on your adapter screw holes.

I used your design to print some of those isa adapters, thanks so much for designing that! I added a GUS clone to a PC/104 board i have with it.

Much LOVE for these tiny systems ! :-D

God I love creating these frankenstein pc's. Different parts that were never made to fit and still get the magic flowing. Love the wobling monster you create with all the adapters and still it plays =)

"It made a popping sound, thats a good start" lmao. I know you where speaking to the speaker ... but generally a pop is followed by the smoke being let out ;) cheers and keep up the good work!

I loved this and I hope you do more!

That is a fantastic Frankenstein's Monster of a PC. Do more with it for us to enjoy! 😊👍

great video! A friend and I were at a carwash in Garland Texas cleaning our cars one afternoon and a young guy pulled into a stall driving a yellow Viper. We got to talking to him and just hanging out and he turned out to be the guy that created Wolfenstein. My friend and I were both pc fans so we really appreciated the experience. Find a faster crystal and see if you can speed that 386 up a little.

Yes please continue, I find it super interesting.

So thankful for this

That is crazy! Anyway really interesting experience!

I found in a scrapyard a similar (386@40, 4M RAM, IDE&FDD+Disk-on-chip module) PC104 form factor board. Here PC104 stuff are very expensive and hard to find. However, recently I got a 486 motherboard that had all the big chips (BIOS, chipset, Keyoard controller, RTC) removed (damn gold scrapers) and left only with the ISA connectors and some bus drivers. Soon I will try to make an adapter to use the PC104 board on the zombie 486 motherboard.

And this is why the PC compatible system became the dominant computing platform. It's incredible level of modular design to add whatever you could imagine to it, and could all be a hodgepodge of different manufacturers, allowing one to shop for the lowest prices per feature set they wanted. No other platform came close to it.

Seeing Wolf 3d running on that 386 (I say three eighty six, perhaps a UK/US thing?) was fun! Great video, Subscribed!

Nice! I've got several Megatel PC104 386 SBCs. They interestingly pack a flash drive, floppy controller, IDE controller, VGA controller and ethernet controller all on the same board. Megatel is defunct, but they made some breakout boards that allow you to install them on (I think) a PICMG backplane for adding other 16-bit ISA accessories. All of these are available through a 32x3 connector. I really need to get mine running; I think they'd be a fun tiny PC.

@joefish6091

Жыл бұрын

The downside is cabling, expensive to buy, or technical to DIY.

Man, my first PC was a Magnavox Headstart 386sx 20 MHz with 2 MB of RAM, and I spent WAY too much time playing Wolfenstein 3d & Duke Nukem 2 on that thing back in the day... That was over 25 years ago, and this video really takes me back.

ITS BEAUTIFUL!

That is froogin’ nuts, dood!

Would love to see more, I'm gonna have to make a pc104 to ribbon to isa adapter now

I thought you might have upped the precarious dos gaming setup further by using one of those clip on 486 accelerators but I'm still quite impressed how far you took this.

Noooo way! Another video 😀 Saving this for tonight so I can watch it and enjoy in bed. Can't wait! 💗

That was a bit of a monstrosity and it was glorious!

Neat. I had a PC104 and PC104+ (PCI) board for a little while before I let the magic smoke out. It had a power connector header similar to this board, but only needed +5V. After constantly worrying about plugging it in the wrong way, I bought a set of permanent markers to mark which way round it went. While getting ready to mark it, I noticed it already had a red paint mark on it, nice! So, that's where +5V goes, because, well red = +5V... It marked pin 1, guess what pin 1 was...

That is one hell of a Frankenstein 386.

Love your video mate, it's giving me ideas to do the same, I love old retro stuff,

Should come with a warning label "Don't use me as a computer" 😀 Of course it's made for backend stuff and should do that quite ok. Like smaller databases of various projects maybe and industry of course as it was intended. But this has been a trend for so many years now, when the goal is to see if you can game on, well anything. I guess what I have not seen yet would be someone trying to game on the chips from steroes/VCR/old cameras or a remote control, if it even is possible :) fun to watch though.

what's cooler than this project is the fact that I just learned Realtek made a VGA controller. No idea

From a performance standpoint the 386SX was just a 286 with 386 compatibility, with a slight better memory mangement. The SX was 32 bit chip internally, but with 16bit bus and often slower than the 286 given the same clock.

Subbed! Yes, more of this please!

I just love the concept of these gizmos. I never knew about PC104 until just the past year. Need an excuse to get one.

Reminds me of the board you used in the Wee86! Very fun!

Thank you. I'd not remembered Jazz jack rabbit in a long time..

This was super fun!

I love the sheet of notebook paper to keep the boards from shorting against each other.

That's a cool format. Oh. I was thinking of it be neat to make a handheld out of it till you mentioned no video.

Perverse. Love it. ❤️

Outstanding.

ITS REALLY WORKED LOL THANK YOU DUDE

She's a real Frankenstein model. But alive, she's alive!

Interesting! I was wondering about using these embedded computers for two way radio programming but from what I see is that it’s a hodgepodge of extra boards and I would need to know if these use the older slower uarts on the serial ports and clock speed as slow as possible ( some programming software relied on the motherboard clock speed to operate properly ). If I remember 8-12 mhz was the magic window. Also the ancillary boards I would figure as unobtainium.

first thought! whoa, how nice that tiny 386, final result bulkier than an actual 386 build, lol. It was pretty awesome nevertheless!

I tried and it is installed thank u very much anda

omg...Jazz Jackrabbit....haven't seen that since I installed it for my kids back in the mid 90s

This is very interesting. Cool!

Would be nice if these ISA adapters would have some kind of power input to power the computer over ISA.

@TheRasteri

Жыл бұрын

Yeah that is a good idea. If it was an ATX connector it could supply negative voltages too.

@mockier

Жыл бұрын

@@TheRasteri If you support adding a mini psu you could have a very small solution and take away the need for a big psu. Or integrate the required mini psu parts direct on the board.

@TheRasteri

Жыл бұрын

@@mockier yeah a USB-C connector plus some DC-DC converters to get the 5/-12v rails would be very convenient

Passive backplane ... Life on easy mode .. Cheers!

That was fantastic! Too bad it wasn't an 80386 DX, but it still performed well enough to call this a success. 🙂

this board and your home-made adapters would make a good custom mini 386 computer project. 3d print your own mini case and lay out the parts to make them fit of a size of a nuc pc. be interesting what it would look like.

Very cool project

Great video. More please!

Cool Video. Thanks!

With a single ISA card coming off it reminded me of how my A1200 kinda looked(obvs on a smaller scale here) when I disassembled it to remove the dead hard disk a few weeks back. The motherboard with expansion card almost as big as it hanging off the side.

I am a simple man, I see TheRasteri post some pc104 content and I click on it instantly. Great vid fella!

Great video and test bench here. I remember the 386SX chips as essentially being 286 chips with dual 16 bit busses (which kinda made it a psuedo 32 bit machine??). I had one, but I was never happy with the performance...

@bitwize

Жыл бұрын

The 386SX was a 386 with a 16bit memory bus. The CPU could do anything a 386 could do (so more than a 286) but accesses to memory were slower.

WOW I forgot all about this thing. never got one but they were really cool I saw it at a Comdex Show.

... really cool! 👏👍🖖

I'm sure it was deliberate, but I absolutely adore how janky that setup is

The expansion board contraption got much bigger than the mainboard😁!

I used to mess about with PC/104 stuff when I worked in robotics. The CPUs were Pentium-class and ran an ancient version of Debian GNU/Linux (32-bit).

Nice. Did you try a graphic card with 8 bit mode?

at first blushed seemed like a cool approach - nice little board, but then the boards started multiplying like rabbits

Wolfenstein my favorite game from those days!!!😃

That’s actually really nice. Would be great for say a portable text adventure system.

9:00 I remember this error message from back in the early 90s when I had my first PC that had a whopping 4MB of ram and when I tried to run Doom I got this exact message. Had to make a boot disc to run the game. Didn't know much about computers back then so a friend who put the game on my computer also made the boot disk.

A beautiful Frankenstein of a 386

Most of us only heard of PC104's after the 200Mhz versions came out in the late 90's. A 24Mhz one from 1989 is like a different universe.

Oh that's super cool

omg it's beautiful

Nice one!

As I remember, even the 386DX wouldn't handle Very Large drives. There were probably controller cards out there, but that's why I recycled the board and moved on.

If there’s a more hardcore retro-PC build video out there I’ve yet to see it…

I am intrigued On how it's connected in a industrial setup . Maybe for another video .

Wait, you don't make your other videos up as you go along?

@TheRasteri

Жыл бұрын

ouch :)

@tiporari

Жыл бұрын

Very enjoyable. Would love to see more just general tinkering. That's what lots of us do anyway. The scripted stuff is cool too, but there's tremendous value and appeal in sharing hobby tinkering with eachother. That's where most time in the hobby is spent anyway.

@TheRasteri

Жыл бұрын

@@tiporari I'd like to do more general tinkering too, as it's much easier to film and edit :) I haven't really got the hang of talking while I work though, I'll need some more practice

Cool video but I would never try to run DOS games on an SX processor. That FPU on the DX units is vital for performance.

"All right, let's power her up... Well it made a popping noise, that's a good start." "I've never been so happy to hear the Nazi music."

The LSI chip must be a SCSI controller, Like also the settings for it in the bios

i have one of these 386 PC104 boards floating around somewhere... i think its a JetWay brand, not sure how much ram it has, but it is onboard ram, and has (or had) a 4MB IDE DOM

I got an IPC laying in my house as well. Used to run DOS 6.22, but i suspect it can handle windows as well. I just haven’t find the time yet to tinker, cause of my busy family life….

the slot over the bios is for actual software, in fact i would get this device not to run DOS but some linux, and use it with a serial terminal and network interface; and it should be neat as an IRC server at home. on a nice glass box cooled by blue or green leds.