The MSX portable looks interesting, but I have no experience with MSX and I don’t think I could spend that much on something I have no nostalgia for. I think like a modernized portable TRS-80 model 4 would be more interesting, if it were a Z80 based system and not just emulating it.

Also I am amused they won’t distribute the MSX firmware, because I can’t imagine the win95/Win3.1 OS they are distributing with Pocket386 is legal. Just funny where people draw the line.

Not really. People usually draw the line where it benefits them more.

myne wrote on 2025-02-11, 08:33:

Not really. People usually draw the line where it benefits them more.

And one example is that I still do not see the source for the 8051 that handles keyboard/OSD on the pocket386...

Inhibit wrote on 2025-02-07, 16:26:

I can't recall the exact instance but I remember a blanked copyright notice for a firmware in there somewhere, where it was the integrated firmware on an original part. Might be the video.

The confusion of ideas that'd lead you to do that and pre-install Win 3.11 boggles my mind.

Not sure what you refer to, but this was likely the copylefted BIOS that was modified yet shipped w/o the obligatory source in the original 8088? On the 386 they've switched to using an ancient commercial one, much clearer status for sure... (/s)
In any case, I see no confusion nor lack of consistency there.

Yeah, this is like a rehash of the One Chip MSX setup. I'd be more comfortable if there was some documentation on how the charger is handled and monitored off the firmware Z80.

I'm probably not interested until someone hacks one into a ZX Spectrum +3 ... and even then I've got a handful of ways to run speccy stuff inauthentically so may not bother... there's probably a choice of 4 emus that run great on the Pocket386 come to that.

I know nothing about MSX. What can the OS do, other than play 80s games? Any wp-ing? Watch, the next rendition will be the Wang 😀

Well there's WordStar if you can make it CP/M but it had a version of TASword

We could help write Game of Thrones. Doesn't G Martin still use WordStar?

Huzzah mine finally arrived. So far it's fun but wow that was not an exaggeration about certain key combos triggering other keys on the keyboard. For example, hitting down, left and Z simultaneously seems to trigger "escape" which I bumped into while doing a little test gaming using Z as a shoot button in Raptor. It seems though, that this can be worked around by redefining keys if the game/software will allow for that. For instance, I changed the shoot button to X and that seems to be ok in connection with the arrow keys. It will be convenient to find a program that displays what keys are currently pressed in on the keyboard to see the extent of this. But this is going to be a problem for the many early dos games that do not let you remap buttons such as Jill of the Jungle, Xargon and others (indeed those two have issues with reliably triggering their action buttons with this keyboard). Here's a few key combos that trigger other keys that I was able to check in a text editor in relation to pressing two arrow keys and an alpha key simultaneously.

When holding up and left arrows and pressing the key on the left of the equals sign, you will also trigger the key on the right of the equals sign.
S=x
A=z
D=c
F=v
J=m
K=,
L=.
X=s
C=d
V=f
M=j
,=k
.=l

When holding up and right arrows and pressing the key on the left you will also register the key on the right.
J=n
N=j
B=f

When holding down and left you get
X=\
V=g
M=h
G=v
H=m
Z=esc
X=\
V=g
C= something that results in a beep

When holding down and right you get
B=g
N=h
G=b
H=n

I'm sure there's any number of similar false keys getting triggered if you for instance, use wasd instead of arrow keys for games.

As I was doing this testing, sometimes the arrow keys or the left shift key would permanently stop working altogether until I rebooted.

On the plus side my 3D bench score is 13.1 which seems higher than some others I've seen for the pocket 386 😉

Edit yikes, trying out Tyrian, another one of the games included with the system, and the arrow keys routinely have problems, sometimes registering the opposite input that you press, and continuing to register directions pressed down even after you are no longer pressing anything down. Such strange keyboard behavior... I understand using an external ps/2 keyboard probably fixes this, but hey, I wanted a tiny laptop and using an external keyboard for everything isn't the point 😅

Also, are there any special drivers on the CF that comes with it that are worth saving? I just popped in a DOS 6.22 CF I had set up for another machine and everything seems to work just as well as the stock CF.

Wow, I'm sorry; this doesn't sound great. Because I don't game, I can't replicate your kb issues, but I don't find them in plain DOS, Win95, or WFWG. And the line of blown pixels is a problem regardless.

As for the drivers, I would use FreddyV's usb driver--it's far better and accesses a greater range of USB drives.

jakfish wrote on 2025-02-13, 21:08:

Wow, I'm sorry; this doesn't sound great. Because I don't game, I can't replicate your kb issues, but I don't find them in plain DOS, Win95, or WFWG. And the line of blown pixels is a problem regardless.

As for the drivers, I would use FreddyV's usb driver--it's far better and accesses a greater range of USB drives.

I edited my post to remove the bit about blown pixels, it turned out there was a removable film on the screen after all and the line of blown pixels was just a line on the film, so once that was removed, the screen is perfect now, yay.

As for the keyboard combo issues, that seems to effect literally every dos program I've tried. Like you could literally just go into the edit command for editing the autoexec, and try out any of the key combos I listed, and it would wind up typing both the alpha key you pressed plus the mistaken alpha key. Is this not the case for you at all? If I have a defective keyboard I'd definitely prefer a replacement, but if this is how it is for everyone then I guess I can live with it and focus on workarounds and reconfiguring keys to lessen the impact of triggering keys that I'm not physically pressing down.

Okay, I can replicate your kb issues. As I said, I don't game, so had no reason to use said key strokes, but I just worked with the machine and now see what you're saying. Beyond that, I have no advice to give, other than use a mouse instead, tho some of your games may be kb-only.

OTH, that's great news about your non-existent pixel issue. THAT would've been a reason for an RMA.

BTW, are you in the States? These on-off tariffs seem to be very much affecting Chinese shipments to the US.

I'm in the states. I bought the system probably 3 weeks ago and it arrived in the states before the various tariff announcements happened. Then it sat in customs or processing in the US for a week or two, but it did show up eventually so no big deal. The prospect of tariffs helped me pull the trigger, I figured the asking price for the unit might get higher if I waited.

I'm glad you got over the wall. Apparently, DoT has backed off from tariffs on "small packages," items under $800usd, but HK Post Offices not at all confident about reversal, and I've read about big HK backlogs.

The chaos, and the retreat from chaos, does not make for good intern'l business. Tho I have seen the Pocket 386 sold on US Amazon (machines presumably already in the States), there's plenty of kit that I can only get from aliexpress. Gonna be a long 4 years trying to keep niche electronics running.

After spending more time with the PC, here are some impressions from someone who bought this primarily for early 90s dos gaming.

The Good

-I've tested out dozens of games that I expect to run on a 386, stuff like shareware gamesfrom apogee, epic, ID software, etc. Everything runs as well as I would expect on a high end 386. I have a 386 desktop and this pc runs the same games as well as that machine does and in some cases slightly faster/smoother.

-Battery life seemed decent. I played games for over an hour nonstop and had no issue. At one point a low battery warning message came up, but I ignored it and played for another 20 minutes and the PC never shut down.

-The image quality of the screen seems pretty good to me and is better than I expected.

-OPL on the built in speaker, and PC Speaker noises on the built in beeper are clear and sound better than I expected them to.

-Compact form factor looks cool. Very similar to the libretto computers. Much easier to use and an overall better experience than trying to use vintage 386 laptops.

The Bad

-QEMM won't install on this machine. It gives a warning about a critical disk error or something similar during the install. If I slip in a CF configuration that already has it installed to run on bootup, it throws up an error screen in the dos prompt and freezes the system. I'll have to think of another way to get some EMS for games that require it. Thankfully the vast majority of dos games don't require EMS, so there's still a large library of games to play with.

-The built in keyboard is a significant let down. It throws up all kinds of mistaken junk commands if you are doing key combinations of three buttons at a time (which you might regularly do when playing a game). My post above highlights some of these, which exist across all software I've tested, so there's definitely something crappy with the keyboard hardware. Despite this, if a game supports remapping keys, it is largely possible to reduce this to a relatively minor issue by remapping the keys you use to avoid mistaken commands that you want to avoid (like triggering the escape key during gameplay).

-In addition to the keyboard issue mentioned above, there are also idiosyncratic keyboard issues with different games. Here were a few idiosyncratic issues I ran into:
-Crystal Caves and Secret Agent - keyboard controls work fine in game, but when you quit back to the dos prompt, the keyboard types gibberish or nothing and you must reboot the machine
-Duke Nukem 1, Tyrian - using arrow keys for movement will result in unusual movement issues, such as the player continuing to move as if a key is pressed down even when it is not, or registering directions that you are not pressing. Remapping something like IJKL in lieu of the arrow keys fixes this
-Jill of the Jungle, Xargon - the jump and shoot buttons are not responsive, you will frequently press jump or shoot and the action will not happen even if it is the only key you are pressing. The games do not allow for remapping the keys so there is no workaround to try other keys that might function better. Aside from using external peripherals like an external keyboard or joystick, maybe using FreeDOS instead of MSDOS would help for remapping keys on the stock keyboard, I think it has a key mapping feature.

Would be nice
-faster cpu/drag and drop mouse functionality/soundblaster support for pcm sound/external volume slider, etc. but I knew what I was getting in this respect and none of these are a big deal for me.

Re: battery life--even w/ limited pressure on the cpu, I can't get more than two hours (I'm running an always-on PicogusW/Femto for wifi, which may be a significant drain). A veteran here replaced the battery, but his initial comparisons to the original seemed pretty similar.

I had two Tekkeons (MP3300) which still hold up and give me all-day use.

Bummer about the weird keystrokes, but your thorough overview at least gives others fair warning.

dukeofurl wrote on 2025-02-13, 18:15:

When holding up and left arrows and pressing the key on the left of the equals sign, you will also trigger the key on the right of the equals sign.

Isn't this a rather classic problem with PC keyboards? I definitely had ghosting like this happening on everything except expensive keyboards...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_rollover#Ke … ng_and_ghosting
If you look at the p386 schematic and guess the key lines placement it is rather obvious why it happens. It is possible one could patch the 8051 to ignore this, or "jam" it as wikipedia calls it (e.g. assume if certain keys are pressed then some others are not and reject them).

dukeofurl wrote on 2025-02-14, 02:58:

-QEMM won't install on this machine.

Which version? QEMM 6 definitely runs for me, even DesqView runs.
MS's EMM386 also works (and provides usable EMS -- Windows real mode can use it).
Considering it runs Win95, I wouldn't expect this machine to produce any problem to QEMM.

javispedro1 wrote on 2025-02-14, 15:39:

Isn't this a rather classic problem with PC keyboards? I definitely had ghosting like this happening on everything except expens […]
Show full quote

dukeofurl wrote on 2025-02-13, 18:15:

When holding up and left arrows and pressing the key on the left of the equals sign, you will also trigger the key on the right of the equals sign.

Isn't this a rather classic problem with PC keyboards? I definitely had ghosting like this happening on everything except expensive keyboards...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_rollover#Ke … ng_and_ghosting
If you look at the p386 schematic and guess the key lines placement it is rather obvious why it happens. It is possible one could patch the 8051 to ignore this, or "jam" it as wikipedia calls it (e.g. assume if certain keys are pressed then some others are not and reject them).

Which version? QEMM 6 definitely runs for me, even DesqView runs.

My QEMM files say it is version 7.5. I'll try some alternatives, its very promising that it works for you.

Certainly I've encountered jamming with other keyboards over the years, you come to expect some regular occurrences like you may not be able to hit two directional arrows and space bar simultaneously and have the spacebar register, but this keyboard seemed to be on another level in terms of the false keys it registers. I just checked out a few of my other average ps/2 keyboards on old hardware and they did not have similar false keys being registered with the example combinations I mentioned.

Btw, I got the external isa adapter and the connection between the cable and connector seems a bit tenuous with the adapter shutting off if it gets moved at all, even very slightly. I'll see about getting a new cable but just curious if that's others experience.