Really cool! 😃👍

How about an extremely basic Covox Speech Thing in a future revision ? I hope it will get one.
An unbuffered/discreet parallel port at 3BCh or 378h (no IRQ) and a resistor ladder/a cap is all it needs - this would be okay for TEMU, some games and module players.

PS: I don't mean to hijack your thread, but this might be interesting.
A basic LPT port can be done with little parts.

https://133fsb.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/famic … port-interface/

The great thing about PC BIOS is that even the oldest release is looking for LPT1 on both 3BCh and 378h.
If both are in the system, 3BCh has priority, because it was in use on parallel ports found on MDA and Hercules cards. 378h, normally LPT1, then gets next number (LPT2).

And usually most systems have need for only one parallel port. 378h I think has some conflicts with a COM port... it's been a while since I mucked with manual assignments and I'd have to dig through the RB Interrupt List...

With kudos to Horun for posting the M6117 datasheet in another thread, here it is...
https://www.dmp.com.tw/app/webcamera/pdf/m6117d.pdf
.. to check out the shiny features.

First thing I am getting is that while I don't spot any system clock control apart from the SMM states, there appears to be ISA bus clock control.

If someone made one of these in a NUC style form factor, I'd really be tempted to grab one. I can't see myself enjoying the tiny keyboard and monitor. This one would almost work, but I don't like how the VGA and PS/2 expansions are connected with a cable and aren't contained in an enclosure.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-04-03, 04:28:

If someone made one of these in a NUC style form factor

Tiny Vortex86-based DOS gaming PC - weeCee

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-04-03, 06:24:

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-04-03, 04:28:

If someone made one of these in a NUC style form factor

Tiny Vortex86-based DOS gaming PC - weeCee

Thanks. I had forgotten about that one after seeing it years ago on LGR. I think that's something I'd need to build myself, which would rule it out. I've never built something like that.

USB controller on a 386?

How does that even work?

More interestingly, is the mini-isa breakout inside. Something akin to the serial based bluetooth stacks, something that can be controlled with a serial port (for configuration and management, such as via COM3?) that simulates the gameport by sitting on the IO address and providing some glue for bluetooth packets, (and some latches to hold button press data until state is changed from the gamepad?) should do for most circumstances.

DOS games would think it was a traditional joystick on the gameport.

(While a bit jank... Due to the size, those "Universal android bluetooth gamepads" that clamp onto the sides might work well with this?

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-04-03, 06:51:

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-04-03, 06:24:

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-04-03, 04:28:

If someone made one of these in a NUC style form factor

Tiny Vortex86-based DOS gaming PC - weeCee

Thanks. I had forgotten about that one after seeing it years ago on LGR. I think that's something I'd need to build myself, which would rule it out. I've never built something like that.

If you dont mind SBEMU for sound, IIRC, the old NUC I ordered has a CSM equipped bios...

I should try to see if it can boot DOS some time...

wierd_w wrote on 2024-04-03, 07:18:

USB controller on a 386?

How does that even work?

It's not true USB, it's only for storage media. It uses a CH375 chip which you could already find on ISA cards for a while. Tech Tangents among others made a video about them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgtvVi_mjjg

FreddyV developed a better driver for it https://github.com/FreddyVRetro/CH375-USB-DRIVER

wierd_w wrote on 2024-04-03, 07:38:

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-04-03, 06:51:

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-04-03, 06:24:

Tiny Vortex86-based DOS gaming PC - weeCee

Thanks. I had forgotten about that one after seeing it years ago on LGR. I think that's something I'd need to build myself, which would rule it out. I've never built something like that.

If you dont mind SBEMU for sound, IIRC, the old NUC I ordered has a CSM equipped bios...

I should try to see if it can boot DOS some time...

I haven't had any issues with SBEMU. Works fine on a thin client I bought a few years ago.

Just saying, an older NUC in an enclosure might "just work" for your use case.

wierd_w wrote on 2024-04-03, 16:17:

Just saying, an older NUC in an enclosure might "just work" for your use case.

Certainly. I'm not disagreeing (-:

Yrouel wrote on 2024-04-03, 11:03:

wierd_w wrote on 2024-04-03, 07:18:

USB controller on a 386?

How does that even work?

It's not true USB, it's only for storage media. It uses a CH375 chip which you could already find on ISA cards for a while. Tech Tangents among others made a video about them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgtvVi_mjjg

FreddyV developed a better driver for it https://github.com/FreddyVRetro/CH375-USB-DRIVER

Thanks for the details on that, yeah I think I've encountered CH375 as serial/usb adapters on microcontroller stuff. Sounded a bit odd it was used for ISA USB but makes sense now.

It is a shame it only supports flash drives, I was hoping for USB floppy*.. he was saying it might be a power problem though.. maybe a power injector cable will fix it... or blow stuff up 🤣 .. I do have an external CD drive with additional power though, so maybe I'll give that a shot to see if anything good happens. Otherwise I guess I'm going to have to make a parallel port cable and hook up the backpack CD. However, it sounds like I can use that 4.2kb driver, have full access to the 16GB sticks I've got a few of, and mount CD images off those.

* there seemed to be some level of primitive pre-UEFI USB drive support that supported **any** USB drive, floppy, IDE/USB adapter or external case, CDROM, SDcard in a USB reader.

Edit: (Actually wondering if it might just be a bit dumb about diskchange, only unplugging USB triggers it, so maybe if you insert disk in USB floppy, then plug USB it picks it up, then you have to unplug to swap floppies.... which would be a bit annoying but more useful than no floppy at all.)

Powered USB hub. The hub supplies power to passive devices instead of the host.

Of course, yes... but I think my brain didn't go down that alley because USB hub needs to be recognised by host, a fact hammered into me a few years back when trying to use them with early android computer on a stick gizmos.

Oh no, I'm a whole 21 hours behind the times, there's vids up on youtube..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhKROl_rFGk
That is an early model and he has several game test videos posted also.

edit: also just noticed an internal serial adapter http://www.8086cpu.com/lm6/101.html I do not know if I missed that a few days ago or it just appeared.

The Pocket386 also just appeared for sale on Tindie as well.

Ah, I was reading through the 8088 Book posts and noticed a note on the DM&P used for the 386 based board. Despite resisting for a solid thirty minutes, I ordered one.

Circa 2000... I'm going to say 2002 the DM&P and later their Vortex products were the first chips I designed a bespoke system for commercial release around. There was a Taiwanese system maker of industrial machines that had a very reasonable price on them and I convinced my then boss to switch from positively antique terminals over to a Citrix like remote loading desktop I had designed to run on our already present Linux servers. Ended up working well as a stop-gap until the more capable Vortex86 was released which I could then run Debian proper on. Albeit that must've been highly customized too, looking at the specifications.

Wow. Thanks all for pointing out that's what these were running. It'll be fun to poke at it again.

I may also go dig through the antique machinery and see if I can't find one of those systems to contrast it to. I doubt any are available for sale on EBay but I might just have one in the workshop somewhere. I know there's one or two of the DM&P RiSE variants still back there if they weren't handed out at the MIT flea market.

I remember very capable video hardware and a positively massive feature set in a custom EEPROM for something that (Wikipedia helps me recall) was essentially an ALi 386.

Edit: In case anyone's curious, they were ICOP systems imported by WDL Systems. Although WDL might also contract out the manufacture and be the sole distributor.

Inhibit wrote on 2024-04-05, 03:13:

Circa 2000... I'm going to say 2002 the DM&P and later their Vortex products were the first chips I designed a bespoke system for commercial release around. There was a Taiwanese system maker of industrial machines that had a very reasonable price on them and I convinced my then boss to switch from positively antique terminals over to a Citrix like remote loading desktop I had designed to run on our already present Linux servers. Ended up working well as a stop-gap until the more capable Vortex86 was released which I could then run Debian proper on. Albeit that must've been highly customized too, looking at the specifications.

If the novelty wears off of just running old DOS stuff on mine, I might consider making it a docking station or base with a Pi type board in it, and using Cygwin X or similar for a remote desktop/graphical terminal onto the Pi. I have no idea yet how fast networking may be established, bodge a wiznet chip onto the GPIO might be a possible, or uglyhack the crynwr PLIP driver to be a 16bit parallel port driver with just buffers and i/o port decode between the ISA and the Pi thing. Obviously I can use any normal NIC on an ISA breakout but something more compact would be preferable.... .... though also I think I have a PCMCIA NIC or two with no dongles that I could maybe peel open and bodge wire to ISA and board's NIC... if I do the wiznet or PCMCIA bodge, I can just use a rockchip android box that runs retro-orange-pi. Those might be some ways down the road... been pipedreaming about tucking a pi zero into a couple of retro laptops for a while and that ain't happened yet.

A pcmcia (16bit) to micro-isa header board would be a very interesting thing for this system!

Then a pcmcia card could live in the bay!