creepingnet wrote on 2023-08-14, 14:45:

UselessSoftware wrote on 2023-08-14, 01:18:

Especially the Hand 386. Turns out when it's plugged into the wall and powered on, it still only runs from the battery. The battery only charges when the computer is switched off. What the hell is that??

I wonder if there's some way I can fix that.

I don't think that's that unusual. I don't own either, but I do have a Vintage NanTan FMAK9200D laptop computer that only charges the batteries when the power is off (it's a 486).

Yeah, charging the battery only when power is off was quite common at that time. Some laptops had the Nickel Cadmium charge controller chip in the power supply. That chip relies on the fact that the only load connected to it is the battery, so it can't charge when the laptop is also drawing varying amount of power. The issue with the Hand 386 seems to be that it runs off the battery then connected to the AC charger, instead of running from the charger (possibly without charging the battery). That's not how it was those days.

mkarcher wrote on 2023-08-14, 17:04:

Some laptops had the Nickel Cadmium charge controller chip in the power supply. That chip relies on the fact that the only load connected to it is the battery, so it can't charge when the laptop is also drawing varying amount of power

A current limiter (as used for rechargeable RTC batteries, just scaled), a timed shutoff, and added profit margin, that is...

mkarcher wrote on 2023-08-14, 17:04:

The issue with the Hand 386 seems to be that it runs off the battery then connected to the AC charger, instead of running from the charger (possibly without charging the battery). That's not how it was those days.

Even the Olivetti M15, using the above design, could run and/or charge depending on which of the 2 cables from the power brick you plugged in 😁

But to be honest both cheapness and ignorance seem weird reasons for this - most generic power banks, of the "don't trust our batteries? you'd be right so we also make a bring-your-own-18650 version", can do that (due to having completely independent charger and inverter sections)...

UselessSoftware wrote on 2023-08-14, 01:18:

Especially the Hand 386. Turns out when it's plugged into the wall and powered on, it still only runs from the battery. The battery only charges when the computer is switched off. What the hell is that??

I wonder if there's some way I can fix that.

thats how you save on one $1 DCDC converter, cheap tablets did that >10 years ago

I agree and think that even Plantronics graphics mode would be interesting, but if Tandy uses the 6845 chip then the machine is halfway to a Tandy. Hmm could a BIOS present the machine as a Tandy 1000.... that is such an interesting proposition! I understand that the Tandy audio system is quite easy to implement, and if offered alongside the OPL2 that would be exciting.

In the mean time, I wonder what the deal is with the system reserving A: and B: drive letters as that video makes out? Especially if a FDD controller card isn't the solution. Would the CH375 support use of a USB floppy drive I wonder?

I have just got one of these serial port cards, and wonder if others getting Book 8088's would also find this useful. I think there are 2 in stock. Mine arrived it is new old stock.
https://www.businessdirect.bt.com/products/st … 2s550-3ZRZ.html#

Here's a new one: 8 bit ISA PS/2 mouse card with jumpers.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005893048 … 12734497854%21A

I have both Book8088 and Hand386.
Really wanted a working XT and bought Hand386 in addition just to look at it - i love pocket devices.

Book8088 wasn't normally working right from start - keyboard was unusable (Enter returns o, Backspace - 9, etc.). After and hour of testing other aspects (with autoexec.bat 😀) bad pixels appeared on top on screen. Guy selling the device wasn't helpful, he just passed the problem to dev and he's answer back, and i did mention that Fn+F7 returns mode 80o, not mode 80<cr> as it should. I've cleaned the kbd chip as he suggested, nope. Okey, opened dispute, left the device to some rest.

Hand386 - i actually liked it. It reminds me of some old handheld devices. Rubber keyboard is ok, you can plug external PS/2 kbd and mouse, and a monitor. Would love having a COM port there - it would be a good network setup device. Problems - quick discharge with external devices connected and external power is not enough for it. After working for some time on external display, i notices that internal display become very bright, in sense like it's contrast/brightness controls went to max. Seller wasn't helpful in this case either. But - Ian Scott on Youtube suggested setting unknown to display controller mode and it worked for me - i've set an extended VESA mode, display said "Auto" and colors were fixed. At that time sticker on the front started to fall off. Removed. Would love to have an advice how to program RTD2660 controller, it has some kind of flashing interface (4 very small pads).
Overall - nice device to run an old game for 5 mins and have that nostalgia satiated. Kind of SoundBlaster would make it a hit, imagine having Second Reality in your pocket 😀

Meanwhile, dispute for Book8088 was resolved, i've disassembled it. 3.5 connector fallen off together with some traces. No probs, that's fixable. Removed and cleaned all socketed chips. After cleaning chip labelled XT IO, keyboard started to work. Good. Soldered connector, put together, time to use. Still have bad pixels, but well.

Next, flashed Sergey Kiselev BIOS - https://github.com/skiselev/micro_8088 and made a CGA firmware with CP866 (that "CGA" eprom chip contains only character tables).
All good.
Unsoldered soviet-era 8088 clone chip from my old broken board - it worked in Book8088 😀 Made my day, really.

Found incompatibilities: 3-Demon draws garbled sprites, fixed after some reversing research (BIOS was not saving DX register in int 08 handler). Turbo Basic hangs on file load - found the answer here on Vogons 😀

I would love to have ability to connect at least external keyboard to Book8088. Having ISA8 connector is not practical for me, it's a laptop by design. VGA/Mouse/Joystick/Keyboard would be much more useful.

So i wouldn't recommend Book8088 - but if you have no XT and want one - that might be your choice.

P.S. Placed all stuff i made so far here https://github.com/jinshin/Book8088

An amazing contribution @nop thank you.

n0p wrote on 2023-08-24, 16:53:

I have both Book8088 and Hand386. Really wanted a working XT and bought Hand386 in addition just to look at it - i love pocket d […]
Show full quote

I have both Book8088 and Hand386.
Really wanted a working XT and bought Hand386 in addition just to look at it - i love pocket devices.

Book8088 wasn't normally working right from start - keyboard was unusable (Enter returns o, Backspace - 9, etc.). After and hour of testing other aspects (with autoexec.bat 😀) bad pixels appeared on top on screen. Guy selling the device wasn't helpful, he just passed the problem to dev and he's answer back, and i did mention that Fn+F7 returns mode 80o, not mode 80<cr> as it should. I've cleaned the kbd chip as he suggested, nope. Okey, opened dispute, left the device to some rest.

Hand386 - i actually liked it. It reminds me of some old handheld devices. Rubber keyboard is ok, you can plug external PS/2 kbd and mouse, and a monitor. Would love having a COM port there - it would be a good network setup device. Problems - quick discharge with external devices connected and external power is not enough for it. After working for some time on external display, i notices that internal display become very bright, in sense like it's contrast/brightness controls went to max. Seller wasn't helpful in this case either. But - Ian Scott on Youtube suggested setting unknown to display controller mode and it worked for me - i've set an extended VESA mode, display said "Auto" and colors were fixed. At that time sticker on the front started to fall off. Removed. Would love to have an advice how to program RTD2660 controller, it has some kind of flashing interface (4 very small pads).
Overall - nice device to run an old game for 5 mins and have that nostalgia satiated. Kind of SoundBlaster would make it a hit, imagine having Second Reality in your pocket 😀

Meanwhile, dispute for Book8088 was resolved, i've disassembled it. 3.5 connector fallen off together with some traces. No probs, that's fixable. Removed and cleaned all socketed chips. After cleaning chip labelled XT IO, keyboard started to work. Good. Soldered connector, put together, time to use. Still have bad pixels, but well.

Next, flashed Sergey Kiselev BIOS - https://github.com/skiselev/micro_8088 and made a CGA firmware with CP866 (that "CGA" eprom chip contains only character tables).
All good.
Unsoldered soviet-era 8088 clone chip from my old broken board - it worked in Book8088 😀 Made my day, really.

Found incompatibilities: 3-Demon draws garbled sprites, fixed after some reversing research (BIOS was not saving DX register in int 08 handler). Turbo Basic hangs on file load - found the answer here on Vogons 😀

I would love to have ability to connect at least external keyboard to Book8088. Having ISA8 connector is not practical for me, it's a laptop by design. VGA/Mouse/Joystick/Keyboard would be much more useful.

So i wouldn't recommend Book8088 - but if you have no XT and want one - that might be your choice.

P.S. Placed all stuff i made so far here https://github.com/jinshin/Book8088

My Book8088 also had bad pixels out of the box. Or rather, a persistent vertical cyan line at all times near the left of the screen. Seller sent me a replacement screen for free and all was good after that. Ask him for a new screen, you'll probably get it.

Bad pixels, keyboard not working properly from the start? Wow!

May it be that the developer of this device built it from found at recycling site parts? 😄

Screen:
I did ask a seller for a solution, but as that "Aliexpress two-week test period" was about to end and no real solution was in sight, i've opened a dispute and Aliexpress decided to half-refund me. I'm ok with that.
Replacing the screen with bigger TFT one and controller board with controls would be good idea.
Parts:
Yes, it contains lot of recycled parts and that's actually great. My V20 CPU in Book8088 has '84 mark on it 😀
It's new hardware not working properly 😀
More, CGA and IO are implemented with three PLD chips (programmable logic) and that's real magic for me. Never really seen those in action.
Overall, Boo8088 is great idea executed, well not really bad, but could be much better given some test, UI, QA, improve cycles before release.

n0p wrote on 2023-08-24, 16:53:

I have both Book8088 and Hand386. Really wanted a working XT and bought Hand386 in addition just to look at it - i love pocket d […]
Show full quote

I have both Book8088 and Hand386.
Really wanted a working XT and bought Hand386 in addition just to look at it - i love pocket devices.

Book8088 wasn't normally working right from start - keyboard was unusable (Enter returns o, Backspace - 9, etc.). After and hour of testing other aspects (with autoexec.bat 😀) bad pixels appeared on top on screen. Guy selling the device wasn't helpful, he just passed the problem to dev and he's answer back, and i did mention that Fn+F7 returns mode 80o, not mode 80<cr> as it should. I've cleaned the kbd chip as he suggested, nope. Okey, opened dispute, left the device to some rest.

Hand386 - i actually liked it. It reminds me of some old handheld devices. Rubber keyboard is ok, you can plug external PS/2 kbd and mouse, and a monitor. Would love having a COM port there - it would be a good network setup device. Problems - quick discharge with external devices connected and external power is not enough for it. After working for some time on external display, i notices that internal display become very bright, in sense like it's contrast/brightness controls went to max. Seller wasn't helpful in this case either. But - Ian Scott on Youtube suggested setting unknown to display controller mode and it worked for me - i've set an extended VESA mode, display said "Auto" and colors were fixed. At that time sticker on the front started to fall off. Removed. Would love to have an advice how to program RTD2660 controller, it has some kind of flashing interface (4 very small pads).
Overall - nice device to run an old game for 5 mins and have that nostalgia satiated. Kind of SoundBlaster would make it a hit, imagine having Second Reality in your pocket 😀

Meanwhile, dispute for Book8088 was resolved, i've disassembled it. 3.5 connector fallen off together with some traces. No probs, that's fixable. Removed and cleaned all socketed chips. After cleaning chip labelled XT IO, keyboard started to work. Good. Soldered connector, put together, time to use. Still have bad pixels, but well.

Next, flashed Sergey Kiselev BIOS - https://github.com/skiselev/micro_8088 and made a CGA firmware with CP866 (that "CGA" eprom chip contains only character tables).
All good.
Unsoldered soviet-era 8088 clone chip from my old broken board - it worked in Book8088 😀 Made my day, really.

Found incompatibilities: 3-Demon draws garbled sprites, fixed after some reversing research (BIOS was not saving DX register in int 08 handler). Turbo Basic hangs on file load - found the answer here on Vogons 😀

I would love to have ability to connect at least external keyboard to Book8088. Having ISA8 connector is not practical for me, it's a laptop by design. VGA/Mouse/Joystick/Keyboard would be much more useful.

So i wouldn't recommend Book8088 - but if you have no XT and want one - that might be your choice.

P.S. Placed all stuff i made so far here https://github.com/jinshin/Book8088

It sounds like your BIOS is the one to flash if anything is - what does Mode 822 provide on the character ROM? It googles to be a POS mode?

Another question, have you tried adding the CH375 BIOS extension that's out there? Anything more integrated and less TSR dependent seems like a positive.
https://gitlab.com/hakfoo1/ch37x-bios

I think you've asked about CP866 - it's a Cyrillic codepage. As CGA has no way to change textmode character table, i had to put codepage font to CGA ROM to see some old text right on device.
As for CH375 BIOS - nice thing that it's bootable and emulates floppy (at least that seems to me from the code). But i don't think i'm that advanced - changing a couple of lines and building BIOS is one thing, but adding possibly complex logic to boot chain is other. But i might try someday.
Including additional BIOS appeared not to be a hard task.
But there's some problems:
CH37X BIOS emulates hard disk. So does XT-IDE.
With a USB flash inserted i coudn't boot with any firware order. Looks like CH37X takes drive C and it's not bootable. So book doesn't boot. There should be some modifications to either CH37X (prefferably) or XT-IDE to agree on drive numbers and boot from certain device.
I've attached prebuilt BIOS'es, but they're not for real use, just to look at additional CH37X info on screen 😀
Names in format
bios-book8088-$FIRMWARE1-FIRMWARE2-$ProcessorType.rom
(included two without CH37X bios for easy rollback)

I'm not going to be able to order one of the book 8088s until next month the way things are looking, so I'm very much on the outside looking in here.
I'm still mystified as to what might be going on about floppy disk / drive emulation.
A good point about 2 things battling for drive C:
OK CP866 is what I was thinking of sorry - thanks for explaining.

A revision of the Book 8088 with built-in parallel and serial ports has just been announced by Pengan Zhou on X.
He states that VGA graphics is on the way next.
So far on Taobao only.
https://twitter.com/pengan

There is an earlier announcement that the Hand386 was discontinued in July, a "clamshell" Pocket386 is meant to be following soon.

betamax80 wrote on 2023-08-31, 00:57:

A revision of the Book 8088 with built-in parallel and serial ports has just been announced by Pengan Zhou on X. He states that […]
Show full quote

A revision of the Book 8088 with built-in parallel and serial ports has just been announced by Pengan Zhou on X.
He states that VGA graphics is on the way next.
So far on Taobao only.
https://twitter.com/pengan

There is an earlier announcement that the Hand386 was discontinued in July, a "clamshell" Pocket386 is meant to be following soon.

Thanks!
Never though those are on TaoBao - about twice cheaper than on Ali, shipping might take somewhat 10-20 bucks.
When it gets IPS 4:3 screen, external keyboard support and VGA connector - i will get one.
As for VGA card - it might be more suitable for 286 with some SoundBlaster.

Meanwhile, having my fun with BIOS, PC speaker PWM code and old sound compression algorithms:
https://youtu.be/P0iqA5YIb5g
Having (even emulated) floppy seek sound on boot gives me feels 😀

n0p wrote on 2023-08-31, 12:52:

Thanks! Never though those are on TaoBao - about twice cheaper than on Ali, shipping might take somewhat 10-20 bucks. When it ge […]
Show full quote

betamax80 wrote on 2023-08-31, 00:57:

A revision of the Book 8088 with built-in parallel and serial ports has just been announced by Pengan Zhou on X. He states that […]
Show full quote

A revision of the Book 8088 with built-in parallel and serial ports has just been announced by Pengan Zhou on X.
He states that VGA graphics is on the way next.
So far on Taobao only.
https://twitter.com/pengan

There is an earlier announcement that the Hand386 was discontinued in July, a "clamshell" Pocket386 is meant to be following soon.

Thanks!
Never though those are on TaoBao - about twice cheaper than on Ali, shipping might take somewhat 10-20 bucks.
When it gets IPS 4:3 screen, external keyboard support and VGA connector - i will get one.
As for VGA card - it might be more suitable for 286 with some SoundBlaster.

Meanwhile, having my fun with BIOS, PC speaker PWM code and old sound compression algorithms:
https://youtu.be/P0iqA5YIb5g
Having (even emulated) floppy seek sound on boot gives me feels 😀

I have no involvement in the dev.... this person I think communicates with the developer. I did see the TaoBao pricing, I think I'd be one of those suckers willing to buy from Ali.
I don't know why he's jumping to VGA rather than anything like Tandy mode. I'm sure it's easier to implement on an LCD.
I have seen an ISA to PS/2 port card on Aliexpress - link in one of my posts above.

betamax80 wrote on 2023-08-31, 13:49:

I have no involvement in the dev.... this person I think communicates with the developer. I did see the TaoBao pricing, I think I'd be one of those suckers willing to buy from Ali.
I don't know why he's jumping to VGA rather than anything like Tandy mode. I'm sure it's easier to implement on an LCD.

Because he is now copying the work other recent board projects have done, which the more integrated ones use VGA. Before he was copying the IBM technical reference. Now it is closer to what sergey originally put out there (no coincidence right?). Of course there are space and cost considerations in making this choice. These original PC/XTs took teams of people over months to make them. This is likely one guy in just a matter of weeks, suddenly revamping the design.

I also wish there was a good XT style system more appropriate for the software it is running. The VGA chip that may be used (let me guess, a Trident?) isn't terrible for it's class, but the hardware can't really drive VGA resolutions for the games that were written for VGA. It is a compromise to make the board widely usable on many monitors. So I do agree about Tandy graphics or all 16 color graphics standards if possible. It would be interesting when an LCD that would be provided with the system anyway, you could be a little more open to be compatible with original standards. And also, improve the quality of the manufacturing. But I don't think these things are will happen.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2023-08-31, 14:18:

betamax80 wrote on 2023-08-31, 13:49:

I have no involvement in the dev.... this person I think communicates with the developer. I did see the TaoBao pricing, I think I'd be one of those suckers willing to buy from Ali.
I don't know why he's jumping to VGA rather than anything like Tandy mode. I'm sure it's easier to implement on an LCD.

Because he is now copying the work other recent board projects have done, which the more integrated ones use VGA. Before he was copying the IBM technical reference. Now it is closer to what sergey originally put out there (no coincidence right?). Of course there are space and cost considerations in making this choice. These original PC/XTs took teams of people over months to make them. This is likely one guy in just a matter of weeks, suddenly revamping the design.

I also wish there was a good XT style system more appropriate for the software it is running. The VGA chip that may be used (let me guess, a Trident?) isn't terrible for it's class, but the hardware can't really drive VGA resolutions for the games that were written for VGA. It is a compromise to make the board widely usable on many monitors. So I do agree about Tandy graphics or all 16 color graphics standards if possible. It would be interesting when an LCD that would be provided with the system anyway, you could be a little more open to be compatible with original standards. And also, improve the quality of the manufacturing. But I don't think these things are will happen.

I'm going to guess a Trident 8900 / 9000, or maybe an old Orchid chip as I see trays of those popping up.
I don't know all of the specifics but I do understand that VGA is really incongruous with an 8088 class system, and then you end up in that ghastly world of EGA / Tandy / CGA emulation. I don't know if the guy on X would respond to responses but I can of course see!
I thought that original was going to be a one-off. I'm sad that it's looking like a steal of Sergey's design with zero credit. This isn't cool.
But.... look the fact is that this is a solution which does solve a problem for someone like me - I'm in no position to host various retro desktop systems at the moment, and the laptop form factor makes this potentially a social experience.

Indeed! Tandy 1000 and PCjr graphics capability would be both more period-correct and more unique to implement, since it's not something you can add in with graphics card, at least the graphics part.

Has the person making these devices responded to requests for that specific functionality?