cyclone3d wrote on 2021-06-23, 15:09:

Ah, only laptops then. […]
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Dominus wrote on 2021-06-23, 10:45:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-06-23, 10:28:

There are PCI and PCIe parallel port cards.

You can also hook up two drives to the same controller.

I don't have a machine anymore that has pci/e slots 😀

Ah, only laptops then.

You could always get a Magma PCI expansion chassis if you have something with a PCMCIA or Express slot.

You can also do a PCIe expansion chassis over Thunderbolt.

Sorry, should have stopped it at that 😀 I do have a Kryoflux, so I am covered now. I was interested in any solution that is USB. I don't think modern machines and parallel port really mix, or in this thread's topic machine.

If you think about NES Classic Mini-like devices, I don't see the point in even bothering with real hardware. Nor do I see the point in using real Win9x/DOS on this. You can't even preload those legally on the end product, so the device will require quite a lot of setup, it will never be plug'n'play.

Instead, why not just focus on actual games?

1) Use existing sourceports for Doom, Hexen, Heretic, Quake, Descent I/II, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Wolfenstein 3D, Commander Keen, Prince of Persia, System Shock, Tomb Raider, Ultima VII, Star Control 2 (I'm sure there are many high-quality ports of DOS games I am forgetting). Use ScummVM (loads of LucasArts/Sierra games, loads of RPG games like Eye of the Beholder/Lands of Lore/etc).
2) Preconfigure those ports for gamepad (all of them are playable that way).
3) Get any ARM board, like Raspberry Pi/etc (most mature source ports are available for ARM). Make a nice nostalgic case.
4) Get EmulationStation, make a nice big screen theme and layout for games and their mods. Provide options that could be important for PC ports (like adding custom GM soundfonts, ROMs for MT-32/GUS emulation, maybe even Glide support).
5) Preload shareware/demo game files for legal reasons.
6) Provide a tool to import full data files from legal GOG/Steam/CD versions of games from your modern PC/Mac to an SD card.
7) Provide a tool to loads WADs/mods/extra maps (so you can play Brutal Doom)
8)...
9) Profit, you have a nice $100 plug'n'play system that can play a lot of DOS classics on a big screen with an Xbox/PS bluetooth gamepad.

I'd definitely buy that if software was polished. Even better if it was a handheld (tricky, because you really need to nail down controls).

There is an abandoned project to provide ports of PC games to Anbernic emulation handhelds (they run EmulationStation on RK3326 chipset). It's pretty rough, and you kinda need a better SoC than that (it's not enough for heavier Doom WADs or games like Half-Life). But you can see just how many games are available for ARM. And that's even without ScummVM/DosBox-pure.

On second thought, maybe there's already a similar project for Raspberry Pi? 🙂

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-06-23, 09:27:

Ah, I wasn't aware of that, but now I do !

And also playing DOS games without sound... This thread is so funny.

Dude I had to play a LOT of DOS games without sound back in the day. Sound card incompatibilities are part of the authentic retro experience 🤣

Hell I couldn't even get the sound to work on Starcraft when I first took it home and installed it. Kids have it so easy these days with their integrated sound that just works.

jheronimus wrote on 2021-06-23, 17:47:

Nor do I see the point in using real Win9x/DOS on this. You can't even preload those legally on the end product

You can if you buy them on the secondary market. Dual-booting FreeDOS and ReactOS out of the box was also considered a possibility.

jheronimus wrote on 2021-06-23, 17:47:

I'd definitely buy that if software was polished.

And I wouldn't, because I'd have no way to install my own games on it. This project's whole purpose and reason for existence was to provide a means for people to get their old games working again without having to hunt down third-party hacks and workarounds or rare vintage hardware. If I can't load Command & Conquer and Earthsiege II on it, then what's the point?

ReactOS is a piece of shit. You can't be serious.
FreeDOS isn't that compatible with DOS games, let alone Win9X.

Forget about Win9X/ME, you can't distribute it legally since the MS VS. Sun Microsystems legal battle over the Microsoft Java VM that was used with it.
Getting it from the second hand market does not mean that you can distribute it.

FreeDOS indeed does have issues with some sound cards. I haven't used it myself but that is because I really have no need to and don't intend to unless the major bugs like that are fixed.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-06-23, 15:09:

Ah, only laptops then. […]
Show full quote

Dominus wrote on 2021-06-23, 10:45:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-06-23, 10:28:

There are PCI and PCIe parallel port cards.

You can also hook up two drives to the same controller.

I don't have a machine anymore that has pci/e slots 😀

Ah, only laptops then.

You could always get a Magma PCI expansion chassis if you have something with a PCMCIA or Express slot.

You can also do a PCIe expansion chassis over Thunderbolt.

Those Magma CB1H Cardbus-to-PCI adapters are not easy to come by whatsoever.

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-23, 08:09:

The problem isn't that this is a small or niche market; the problem is that it's a severely Balkanized one, and no product or service, no matter how well-conceived or well-executed, would be considered by a majority of retro gamers to be superior to their individual obsessions and current preferred ways of doing things.

You sound surprised, yet this is exactly what you will find on any enthusiast forum...

You think these are "rants"? Oh boy, you've not lived! The responses you've gotten here are tame compared to what goes on in some forums!

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-23, 18:25:

If I can't load Command & Conquer and Earthsiege II on it, then what's the point?

I figured at this point we're not really discussing the idea of a custom AMD SoC anymore and I wanted to go back to the idea of a "PC Classic Mini" in general — because this is something that keeps coming up in the community every now and then, and as you have noticed, the idea itself really excites a lot of people.

I was almost ready to write a very long "rant" explaining why I think it's a bad idea to try to recreate a real Windows/DOS desktop PC with real vintage OS and it's better to focus on actual games. But then I realised there used to be a project that tried to do something that makes a lot of sense to me — PC Classic by Unit-E.

The project was discussed on Vogons back in 2018, but it seems like all progress has stopped in 2019. I believe this is the only project of this kind that really got anywhere past the initial discussion.

After watching their Q&A video I think there are a few important points they've considered:

- bring retro PC games into the living room. I love my retro computers, but would I love to have a convenient way to casually play some DOS games on a big screen? Absolutely! Especially if you add Brutal Doom and other mods into the mix;
- using source ports where possible (the guy repeatedly says it's not just a "DOSBox for $99");
- prepackage and preconfigure actual games — they kept saying they've reached agreements on about 30-40 titles (while not disclosing any titles);
- software comes first. They obviously did some work on GUI and frontend long before settling on a specific board — because they would obviously have a lot of options when it came to hardware.

I would really love a product like this, but I think that it's really more about software than hardware. A fork of RetroPie with a well-implemented focus on PC ports could really make the dream of a "PC Classic" come true — I'm really curious if there is anything out there like that.

This fits into this thread nicely, IMHO : https://hackaday.com/2021/06/17/where-are-all … ngle-board-pcs/

Bump to get this to page 10. I want to see what happens too!

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-06-23, 22:36:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-06-23, 15:09:

Ah, only laptops then. […]
Show full quote

Dominus wrote on 2021-06-23, 10:45:

I don't have a machine anymore that has pci/e slots 😀

Ah, only laptops then.

You could always get a Magma PCI expansion chassis if you have something with a PCMCIA or Express slot.

You can also do a PCIe expansion chassis over Thunderbolt.

Those Magma CB1H Cardbus-to-PCI adapters are not easy to come by whatsoever.

Ehhh.. they pop up every once in a while on eBay.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-06-23, 19:49:

Forget about Win9X/ME, you can't distribute it legally since the MS VS. Sun Microsystems legal battle over the Microsoft Java VM that was used with it.
Getting it from the second hand market does not mean that you can distribute it.

Sounds like something I could talk to a lawyer about.

jheronimus wrote on 2021-06-23, 23:33:

I figured at this point we're not really discussing the idea of a custom AMD SoC anymore

That was just one possible example of how a project like this might go. I'm surprised that so many people were obsessed with that one example for so long.

But while we're on the subject, the P6 microarchitecture debuted on a 600 nm process in the Pentium Pro. Over time, it morphed into the Pentium II, then the Pentium III, then the Centrino, and eventually the Core2 "Penryn" on 45 nm. That's an increase of 178x as many transistors per square millimeter over the course of nine fabrication nodes (600nm, 500nm, 350nm, 250nm, 180nm, 130nm, 90nm, 65nm, 45nm). Changes were made, of course, but most of these changes had little to do with the fabrication process except that smaller processes allow more transistors per die (thereby clearing the way for on-die L2 cache, multicore variants etc). A similar but less extreme example happened with the evolution of the K7 into the K8 and eventually K10. The whole "we can't take old microarchitectures and remake them on modern fabrication nodes without completely redesigning them" thing is BS. It's been done. I could imagine how a jump from MOSFETs to FINFETs would necessitate a redesign, but that would still allow shrinkage down to what, 32 nm without major changes?

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-24, 19:48:

The whole "we can't take old microarchitectures and remake them on modern fabrication nodes without completely redesigning them" thing is BS. It's been done.

Do you have any examples that can be bought at a sensible price? Always interested in alternative x86 hardware.

debs3759 wrote on 2021-06-24, 20:32:

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-24, 19:48:

The whole "we can't take old microarchitectures and remake them on modern fabrication nodes without completely redesigning them" thing is BS. It's been done.

Do you have any examples that can be bought at a sensible price? Always interested in alternative x86 hardware.

To my knowledge, no 20-year-old CPU or GPU architectures are being made on recent fabrication processes.

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-26, 01:45:

debs3759 wrote on 2021-06-24, 20:32:

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-24, 19:48:

The whole "we can't take old microarchitectures and remake them on modern fabrication nodes without completely redesigning them" thing is BS. It's been done.

Do you have any examples that can be bought at a sensible price? Always interested in alternative x86 hardware.

To my knowledge, no 20-year-old CPU or GPU architectures are being made on recent fabrication processes.

To what chips were you referring to when you wrote

It's been done

?

I certainly don't need anything like what was mentioned in the OP at all.

darry wrote on 2021-06-26, 02:17:

To what chips were you referring to when you wrote

It's been done

?

I was referring to the detailed examples that I already gave, which are no longer being made.

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-26, 20:03:

darry wrote on 2021-06-26, 02:17:

To what chips were you referring to when you wrote

It's been done

?

I was referring to the detailed examples that I already gave, which are no longer being made.

Can you explain to us again how the research & development work that Intel did to develop the Pentium Pro into the Core 2 Penryn over a span of ~13 years demonstrates that taking old designs like K8 + R350 and remaking them on 7nm is cheap?

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-26, 20:03:

darry wrote on 2021-06-26, 02:17:

To what chips were you referring to when you wrote

It's been done

?

I was referring to the detailed examples that I already gave, which are no longer being made.

I just took another look through the whole thread, and the only specific example I can find which you mentioned is the Epia P910 (an Epia board that I don't have yet). That is not a redesign of an old platform though.

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-26, 20:03:

I was referring to the detailed examples that I already gave, which are no longer being made.

Your example was Intel building on to and expanding an existing architecture. Not simply taking an architecture designed on one node and moved over to another like it appears that you are trying to say it was.

Of course, having something that exists and changing over to a new node does happen. This has happened many times with refreshes in GPUs and game consoles, which are major places I remember this occurring but it's still not a twenty-year-old architecture being made on a current node without any rework.

You're not going to get an original Pentium or even something newer like a Pentium 4 on a Raspberry Pi-sized board. You can get newer Atom-based boards like the Latte Panda which are x86 CPUs on mini boards. Develop a nice retro gaming-focused Linux distro simplifying Wine and DOSBox with the ability to attach USB CD-ROMs and Floppy drives. Y0u'll likely find that the end product would be in the 300-400 range at a minimum. The people that would be the target audience for a product like that will wonder why they should spend that much when they can get a used HP EliteDesk for roughly $100 that's much more powerful, and just install DOSBuntu or another retro gaming optimized Linux distro.