I actually managed it to upload an up-to-date pic of the two (new) 42U cabinets. The yellowed AT cases have been replaced by rackable ATX cases, because they integrate much better. I am also looking for an AT form factor 8086 mainboard to get rid of the non-rackable Victor VPC II beauty. Sorry for you fans of old cases, but if you slided out one of the cases within seconds using the ball bearing slides, you would understand how much that eases up life.

I will hopefully update the pic of the desk rack too soon™, because it has undergone a complete renewal and grown to a monster. Most of the schematics have also become obsolete due to the much increased features/complexity and need an update.

Now that 4K Retro Scalers are becoming available, I integrated one into the planning and updated some other minor plannings.

KVM Nerd wrote on 2024-06-09, 19:48:

I actually managed it to upload an up-to-date pic of the two (new) 42U cabinets. The yellowed AT cases have been replaced by rackable ATX cases, because they integrate much better. I am also looking for an AT form factor 8086 mainboard to get rid of the non-rackable Victor VPC II beauty. Sorry for you fans of old cases, but if you slided out one of the cases within seconds using the ball bearing slides, you would understand how much that eases up life.

I will hopefully update the pic of the desk rack too soon™, because it has undergone a complete renewal and grown to a monster. Most of the schematics have also become obsolete due to the much increased features/complexity and need an update.

Why AT? There's modern 8088 on ATX mainboard/backplane boards like EMM8088, NuXT, Xi 8088/Micro 8088.

https://github.com/homebrew8088/8088-PC-Compatible
https://monotech.fwscart.com/details/p6083514_19777986.aspx
https://github.com/skiselev/xi_8088 / https://github.com/skiselev/micro_8088 / https://github.com/skiselev/isa8_backplane

oso2k wrote on 2024-08-30, 01:22:

Why AT? There's modern 8088 on ATX mainboard/backplane boards like EMM8088, NuXT, Xi 8088/Micro 8088.

Good point, and thank you for all the links!

While I absolutely embrace projects like the ones you've mentioned, there are various reasons why I want to stick to an original 8086 + Mainboard of its time:

• The 8086 is the first CPU of the x86 compatible CPU line, while the 8088 came out later and is a stripped down version, and I want the original
• Nostalgia (The first computer I played around with was my dad's 8086)
• I avoid any kind of retrofit or redesigned solutions (XTide, CompactFlash, HGC/MGA/CGA/EGA cards with HDMI output, PicoGUS and so on) for this project, because it is not in the spirit of the original idea. Every machine itself should be and behave like a machine of that generation hardware-, speed- and noise-wise. I still have to accept some exceptions to make things possible:
  • 19" Rack Cases for better handling and integration
  • FDD/ODD Emulation for remote control and automation purposes, but only as an addition to physical drives
  • MPU-401 clone cards for intelligent mode, as the originals are rare and therefore crazy expensive
  • PC Speaker simulation, so I can divide PC speaker and noise sounds as I wish (otherwise I could only capture PC speaker sounds together with the noise sounds)
  • CRT simulation instead of a real one, because I want it all converted to HDMI, so I only need one screen and am able to do screen capturing and more funny stuff

Maybe you can now understand why I decided this way.

KVM Nerd wrote on 2024-08-30, 08:03:

Good point, and thank you for all the links!

While I absolutely embrace projects like the ones you've mentioned, there are various reasons why I want to stick to an original 8086 + Mainboard of its time:

Maybe you can now understand why I decided this way.

Good points. Hopefully you already have a rack mountable AT case. How available could they be?

oso2k wrote on 2024-08-30, 17:35:

KVM Nerd wrote on 2024-08-30, 08:03:

Good point, and thank you for all the links!

While I absolutely embrace projects like the ones you've mentioned, there are various reasons why I want to stick to an original 8086 + Mainboard of its time:

Maybe you can now understand why I decided this way.

Good points. Hopefully you already have a rack mountable AT case. How available could they be?

Well, I was having a hard time trying to find rackable 19" AT cases and eventually gave up. Luckily it is quite easy to retrofit an AT board to an ATX case if you leave out the power switch, which I do, because I switch power externally anyhow. All the cases you see on the picture are ATX cases, except the XT of course. The first five generations up to and including Pentium will be held in those ATX cases too. I also actually like their black appearance, which fits the other components, although it is not that retro like the good old beige.

I've just uploaded an updated image of the simplified signal flow. Note that the features of the desk and living room consoles match now.

I dropped the analog surround sound path and added a digitized path instead. This gives me more control over the ADC process (levels, sample rate etc.), which is external now. The sound is handled digitally in the AVR anyhow because it passes its DSP (and therefore would be digitized in the AVR in every case), but this way it eases up the speaker settings, because the AVR now selects the surround speaker settings itself based on what it got fed via HDMI.

Before I would have to change the analog input settings of the AVR based on the number of available channels which is hell when it needs to be automated, and I did not have surround sound HDMI audio embedding, taking me the chance to have surround sound at the living room console or surround sound capturing for analog sources.

This project looks amazing. I am curious though. How are you doing the optical drives? Those cases don't look like they support optical. Are the drives hidden somehow?

I considered something similar, but using drawers instead of server cases. But, in the end, I have opted to just keep the PCs in standard cases. My single rack will hold 9 PCs (including a 12-bay NAS that will be on top). I quite like the retro look, even of it is all a bit mismatched:

I still need to add more shelves and add a facing plate to the pull-out keyboard tray.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-12-02, 19:14:

This project looks amazing. I am curious though. How are you doing the optical drives? Those cases don't look like they support optical. Are the drives hidden somehow?

You're right, the drive bays of the cases are hidden behind their doors. The cases all have two doors with dust filters which can be opened sideways. My plan is to fit optical drives in all generations of PCs where they were used, and also additional hardware drive emulators.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-12-02, 19:14:

I considered something similar, but using drawers instead of server cases. But, in the end, I have opted to just keep the PCs in standard cases. My single rack will hold 9 PCs (including a 12-bay NAS that will be on top). I quite like the retro look, even of it is all a bit mismatched:

The attachment 20241122_074450.jpg is no longer available

I still need to add more shelves and add a facing plate to the pull-out keyboard tray.

This looks very nice! As I already wrote, I gave up on the nice retro beige finish of desktop/tower cases to have better handling instead.

After getting a bit more into MCU programming again to solve some USB HID emulation issues with the KVM switches, I thought it would be nice to have a conversion of joystick/joypad inputs to keyboard and/or mouse events (and maybe also the other way round) for games which only support keyboard and mouse controls (or only joystick/joypad controls). I will put the projects on GitHub once they are finished.

I just added some more ideas for future expansions.

I am currently working on freezing a certain status of my plannings that I can present as a starting point in videos. This way I can take you on my journey with my unique project instead of just telling of more and more features while the planning goes on, without being able to actually show anything.

KVM Nerd wrote on 2025-11-02, 20:16:

I just added some more ideas for future expansions.

I am currently working on freezing a certain status of my plannings that I can present as a starting point in videos. This way I can take you on my journey with my unique project instead of just telling of more and more features while the planning goes on, without being able to actually show anything.

Amazing stuff, i just start with 4 port kvm switch maybe and i try to use small matx cases, but most cases are big atx ones and i have only one AT case. Room is small, but the computer cases are mostly big.

For the most part i love 3 vga in one pc or 4 in 1 if i can add one more for multimonitor setup. Idea is to use ATi Rage2+DVD 4MB PCI / ATi Rage Pro 8MB AGP / Voodoo 1 or Voodoo 2 PCI / Matrox M3D PoverVR PCX2. Wilder build would be 5in1 if 2xVoodoo2 sli. Someone told that Verite cards are also good, but i havent seen 1 in my life. This is also one reaseon i made bit better drivers for ATi, drivers can still be better, but 5.40 drivers are good ones from ATi and its like old 3D API build, all cards support 3D APIs @Win9x (CIF,GLIDE,SGL) + standard D3D and OpenGL, All in 1PC

marxveix wrote on 2025-11-27, 15:51:

Amazing stuff, i just start with 4 port kvm switch maybe and i try to use small matx cases, but most cases are big atx ones and i have only one AT case. Room is small, but the computer cases are mostly big.

Thank you! It is indeed one of my motivations to have a big collection of PCs from different generations on a small footprint. Right now my setup takes around 3.24 m² including the desk.

marxveix wrote on 2025-11-27, 15:51:

For the most part i love 3 vga in one pc or 4 in 1 if i can add one more for multimonitor setup. Idea is to use ATi Rage2+DVD 4MB PCI / ATi Rage Pro 8MB AGP / Voodoo 1 or Voodoo 2 PCI / Matrox M3D PoverVR PCX2. Wilder build would be 5in1 if 2xVoodoo2 sli. Someone told that Verite cards are also good, but i havent seen 1 in my life. This is also one reaseon i made bit better drivers for ATi, drivers can still be better, but 5.40 drivers are good ones from ATi and its like old 3D API build, all cards support 3D APIs @Win9x (CIF,GLIDE,SGL) + standard D3D and OpenGL, All in 1PC

That's also a part I try to address: Covering as many old technologies as possible, but this adds a whole lot of dimensions of complexity. If you try all of this in one PC, I guess you will have a hard time setting it all up to run correctly.

I think I was running a setup with three S3 ViRGE cards in one PC with three CRTs on Windows 9x for a short time in the past, but that was more than 25 years ago, so I don't remember exactly what I did, but it was working. Multi monitor setups were a pain in the past, but nowadays it is quite easy fortunately.