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 The yellowed AT cases have been replaced by rackable ATX cases, because they integrate much better.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 The yellowed AT cases have been replaced by rackable ATX cases, because they integrate much better.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.