Hamby wrote on 2021-08-23, 17:21:

If it can be battery powered... one could even make oneself a Star Trek style tricorder, but I digress.

😎👍
https://hackaday.com/blog/?s=Star+Trek

Hamby wrote on 2021-08-23, 17:21:

300mhz processor with 128mb ram seems to me to be a powerful choice for Windows98; my current Win98 desktop box is has a K6-2 at 300mhz with 256mb.
A PCIe VGA card is available for another $33. probably mandatory. Only 4mb ram, and not sure if it has 3d acceleration.

That's fine, I think. Back in the day, I was running Win98SE on 24MB PS/2 SIMMs for a while.
While it wasn't ideal, it was acceptable for the basic stuff.
Playing Hover, surfing the web with IE5, watching TV via SHOUTcast network via 56k dial-up in Winamp.. 😀

In my VMs, 96MB gave best performance in Win98SE.
Maybe it was related to simulated motherboard cache (cacheable area), not sure.

The SBC should be more than capable running Win98SE, I think.
If it doesn't, try Me. Win Me got a lot of new, pure 32-Bit system files from Windows 2000.
That's why it comes in handy for CPUs based on/inspired by RISC architecture.

I'm not kidding, the Transmeta Crusoe CPUs were running an emulated x86 core
and Windows Millennium was its official OS.
It was shown in the ads for that CPU.

That's why I wished someone would make a comparison between Windows 98SE/Me on the Pentium Pro, by the way.

Edit: Windows 9x allows for directly manipulting hardware.
Like COM port pins, LPT port pins etc.
Well, at least in comparison to Win NT (needs special DLLs to allow such things).
OS/2 and Windows 3.x, allowed direct i/o access even more easily.

I have some experience in trying to find the ideal small x86 system useful as a retro gaming PC. What you need to remember is that unless the system has an ISA slot, you will truly struggle to get sound in DOS. The "High Definition Audio" of the 86Duino does not work in DOS. I haven't looked, but there's no guarantee you'll get HDA sound hardware working in Windows 98 SE either, since drivers won't be targeted for an OS that was out of mainstream support when HDA was invented.

Since you're interested in making a handheld, you should check out the weeCee. This is a very small system, using an embedded CPU module similar to the Arduino86, and has a custom PCB to add an ISA sound chip.

Windows 98 SE offers decent Sound Blaster 16 emulation for DOS if you are using WDM sound drivers, not VXD. Playing many DOS games through Windows that way mostly works, especially if said game supports General MIDI for music. It depends on the DOS games you care about. Otherwise, you need a sound card that has Adlib support natively for it to produce music in a DOS box in Windows, and if you have that, you can also use that card in pure DOS.

I've tried two different embedded platforms that offer a PCI slot so I could use a Yamaha YMF-744 sound card, which offers excellent DOS compatibility if the motherboard plays nice.

• I first tried the PC Engines alix 1e, which is an AMD Geode LX 800 board. Only problem is that it only works with 3.3V PCI cards, not 5V cards. I was able to get it working in Windows 98 SE with some effort with WDM drivers borrowed from Windows XP. The integrated sound works in Windows 98 SE, but not in DOS.
• I next tried a Neoware CA10, which has a Via Nehemiah 800 processor. The PCI slot in this machine is 5V, thankfully, but it requires a modded PCI riser card to supply -12V for sound cards to work. The integrated sound does work in Windows 98 SE, but not in DOS. It's even possible for this machine to provide rudimentary 3D acceleration, as it has an S3 Savage 4 integrated. Quake 2 in OpenGL mode actually works.

Phil's Computer Lab covered the HP t5710 and t5720 thin clients, both of which have PCI slots and can be used with DOS compatible PCI sound cards like the YMF-7x4.

If you want a small system with an ISA slot so that you can use a real DOS-compatible ISA sound card like a Sound Blaster or Orpheus or something, you might get lucky and find a good price on a Unisys CWD4002, CWD5001, or CWP5002.

Last thing - the Tandy Model 100 (aka the TRS-80) is not a PC, and there's no modern true hardware equivalent for it. Maybe use a MiSTer for that if you want it to be small, modern, and still "hardware".

I was referring to the M100 in terms of form-factor, not capability. I have two of them.