I Bought Something Very Silly
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- Опубліковано 27 тра 2023
- Thanks PCBWay.com - I bought a brand "new" tiny handheld 386sx computer. Let's play with it, take it apart, and see what kinds of shenanigans we can have.
VIDEO LINKS:
🍎 Sergey's 8088 BIOS: github.com/skiselev/8088_bios
🍎 AliExpress listing: www.aliexpress.us/item/325680...
🍎 Video from the creator of the device: • Hand386 -- A New Porta...
🍎 VCF thread, including discussion of the 8088 BIOS: forum.vcfed.org/index.php?thr...
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#386 #DOOM #windows95 - Наука та технологія
“Or as it’s pronounced in Australia, the nugget” I love how many DankPods references are popping up on other retro channels
At what time stamp did he say “nugget?”
@@charliesretrocomputing 4:45
I came here to wrote the very same comment
here b4 this blows up
i love being australian
Stand back, he's arming the nugget
"Can you believe no one bought this?" Dankpods intesifies :D
As a former 386SX-40 user, I'm screaming at you "PRESS F5!!!". Doom has a low-res mode if you press F5. That and about as much border as you used, can get it just about playable.
Yeah I never understood what a border thing was all about. How does that help the game run better? Modern games don't have a setting like that.
@@bland9876 Actually, they do. It's just *they* do it by running at a lower resolution which wasn't a practical option for the sort of hardware Doom was typically running on at the time, so Doom 'lowers the resolution' by letting you shrink the rendered area which will speed it up, since it has to do less.
@@aliasisudonomo so you couldn't just have the computer output a lower resolution and have the monitor upscale it like they do now?
@@bland9876 original Doom ran in a version of the 320x200 VGA "Mode Y" and was outputting things directly to the video hardware. (Remember, this was before *3D accelerated graphics cards*!). There *was no* lower resolution.
@@bland9876 "have the monitor upscale it" requires the monitor to have its own fancy digital logic. A basic analog CRT display isn't doing anything like that.
A modern monitor probably has much more computing power than a computer of that era did.
If you ordered one of the 8088 mini laptops too, I made a CGA / 8088 port of Wolfenstein 3D that I'm sure you would appreciate!
Oh yeah I've been meaning to try that!!
i love umpcs
Don't we all? :)
Anytime you can get a mostly new 386 computer today is a good thing.
The VGA just needs amplifying, there are cheap adapters available for doing just that, also it's awsome that this little handheld has a proper Yamaha FM Synth audio chip, that's something I've always dreamed about, a handheld with real FM synth and MIDI audio. Being able to listen to MIDI tunes on a handheld and playing some old school adventure games with MIDI audio on a portable would be amazing.
Was just thinking that. Old analog standard, cheap splitter, its most definitely halving the power on the RGB lines. They never sold cheap splitters like that for unamplified analog signals back in the day, so this is my first time seeing why its a bad idea. I'm surprised it works at all! Really cool to see that slice of history nobody talks about.
PLUS the music production capabilities, i mean dude this is literally a small FM synth and sampler that can have a step sequencer, midi note sequencer, a full daw, with internal FX and all that jazz, be it trackers, synth softwares, or just straight up cubase
this thing can drive a midi controller also
Honestly, it would have been nice if it just included a switch to turn off the built in screen. And set up the headphone jack where it turned off the internal speakers.
Seconding the immense impact Sergey has had on the community. He is by far one of the most prolific, smart, and inspiring people in the retro PC and related world. Most of my own homebrew projects wouldn't be possible without a lot of the foundations he laid.
It's not silly, it's unique in its own way, that's awesome, I think I would have made it out alive with it in my hand
Seems like the sort of thing that, were the creator to open-source it, the community could probably find ways to correct all of its many issues. Like, having an actual switch-over for the display. Or having digital audio out to a separate DAC. Or just a better keyboard (though I suspect the one in use was probably off-the-shelf).
Agreed.
FreeDOS is still maitained, there is developer (he also have channel on UA-cam) there are open source GUIs for DOS. Nooone yet created FreeDOS Mobile :) Nobody was inspired by such limited device. If i was him i would want this thing to be donated sent as surprise with FreeDOS pre installed fully featured to inspire make such odd thing as a prove of concept. There are USB drivers, network drivers and web browsers email clients. There could be some way to make wireless connectivity. There is linux but 8MB it's as much as router use very old Linksys OpenWRT based.
To me its bearly usable device even for DOS, even for 2004 standards. Even 20 yaars ago in comparison to WIndows CE / 2003 Pocket PC that i used and liked. Opera Mini, TCPMP player, Resco Software all bunch of software. Worked as charm but that was like 200MHz Samsung ARM CPU, 64MB of RAM not 8MB. Or Intel StrongARM ~416MHz, VIA 8655 CPU 7" laptop, Toshiba Journe 7" Windows CE based tablet.. it's was really hard to use these things even if you tried. Would stuck to DOS. Use as platform to play with QBasic aLike programable calculator.nd solve some math problem.
Those are all hardware issues. Not something the community can really do alone without creating a new device.
I wonder how much the FastDoom sourceport would be able to help claw back some playability on this thing. Handheld DOOM on more or less genuine hardware sounds like a lot of fun!
FastDoom runs kinda nice with Potato detail on 386SX-40 cpu's, yeah it's very blocky but performance is much better than vanilla Doom
I have one of these, and while it does have caveats (so it's not for everybody) I really enjoy the mere fact of having a 386 that is the size of a kindle. It has a simplicity to it - no WiFi, no complicated keyboard functions, no forced updates, even no internet. It makes me think of a calculator or a TRS80 model 100 - fits a specific niche but works well for that
I can imagine people turning this into a sophisticated graphing calculator or using it to control scientifc instruments which still run on older hardware.
Outside of being a neat toy for retrogamers, I can imagine this functioning as a portable terminal for all the places, which still use 1990s technology and interfaces - many like railroads, power stations etc. still run the old hardware, because it is time tested, not to mention specifically tailored to the particular system or machinery. Having something small that is fully backwards compatible instead of having to keep old laptops, can make the work of many engineers much easier.
We had a Gateway 386/25 with 8mb of ram back in the day. It actually held up pretty well. I was still using it in the late 90s to connect to the internet via an Isa network adapter.
Be cool ...use a modem...Errrhh,,aaaaaahhh, errrrrhhh, aaaaahhhh, eReReReReReReRe, EERRRRRRRRRR, AHHHHH
@@cbtillery135 Sound that modems make, usual when you had a 386 / 486 back in the day and wanted internet access...that's the 'joke'.
I would love to see a 68030 or 68040 powered tiny thing like that running Mac OS 8 or something for fun.
TI made a ton of those back in the day if you're willing to sacrifice perfect Mac compatibility. I'm still waiting for some madlad to port some early version to the Voyage 200.
@@charliekahn4205 I own a 92 Plus. Those things can't run SHIT. No MMU, no FPU (which is insane for a CALCULATOR) barely any RAM, and most of that RAM is taken up by your programs.
@@rwall514 The Voyage would be the better fit
@@rwall514 tbf most calculators use binary encoded decimal.
An 030 or 040 (or imagine an 060) Amiga would be nicer..... but the Mac would be nice too and much easier/cheaper to build as it is all just off the shelf parts - where would they get all the Amiga custom chips from?
I'm impressed Win95 can even run on a 386.
It happens in every windows Version, Diehards who don't want to follow Microsoft's Upgrade instructions, look at the people on UA-cam getting Windows 11 to run on "Non Compliant Hardware", just in time for Windows 12 ...
It can, but it is very slow on a 33Mhz, even with 8MB. I think Microsoft set it such as you could run it on a 386DX with 4MB to help on its sales because 386 were still quite common around back in its launch date.
Nothing bad about that decision. That looks like _AT LEAST_ $200 of fun right there.
Love the DankPods reference!
As for why the picture is so dim. There are two possibilities. VGA signal driving strength is not enough for 75 ohm termination that sits inside every VGA monitor or there is already termination on the board (for LCD controller) and plugging in external display makes termination too strong. Adding amplifier to VGA output would solve the problem in both cases, but there might be another solution. If board already has termination, you could hack in an extra switch for each of termination resistors (I don't know if suitable triple switches exist; maybe single switch with three small MOSFETs would be an option) and make them switchable.
Hey, you can take a look at the Voxtex86 CPU, which is ridiculously faster but still a 486 with ISA and there are faster versions, with MMX and more. There are some really neat portables using it.
Which portables? 386 is a little old for me but I'd be interested in a 486 portable...
Honestly a pretty good deal for a full 386 with those specs. A 30 year old Steam Deck.
I think having actual hardware compatibility in such a small form factor is the draw. I really want to build a win 98 machine but part of the hesitation is the size of the machine, not to mention inflated costs. If I had something that small that could do the job that can be tucked away when I don't want/need it it would be ideal. Not to mention modern amenities like sd card storage and connections. I myself don't live anywhere near a retro pc salvage or whatever you'd call it so older systems are hard to come by.
At around 2:40 I was tempted to make my own bad decision.... "This item is no longer available." Damn.
you can get the ISA adapter with the device as an addon or separately. The device itself is not available anymore as stated though.
I counted 100 pins, I wonder if it's -standard- _s_imilar enough to PC/104 (with the ground/power pins omitted?) that a generic 64/104 pin (8-/16-bit PC/104) adaptor would work (with shielded jumpers).
Would need to x-reference the schematics if a logic-analyzer is unavailable...
(edit:) The schematic I found for the "BOOK" model shows an abbreviated version of the 8-bit connector, so it stands to reason that the signal order's the same...
(edit 2:) By using a multimeter to find which pins are (the various) power, and ground, it could be practical to 'stretch' the "HAND" 's ISA port back to the standard 104 arrangement, and make/order an adaptor from the video's sponsor...
I am fully here for the Dankpods reference.
This is very neat - a shame for the availability and the nature of the BIOS. I do hope something like this pops up again, using slightly more juicy, and actually NEW parts. I'd love to see one using a Vortex86DX for the sweet floating point. The 900MHz ones should be much closer to Pentium-class than what's seen in this hardware (this is knowing that modern X86 clones from DM&P only perform at a fraction of the rated speed in the real world).
He said this one DOES not have that BIOS … jeeez ?
Yup you can get 486's, in SOCs, at some speed around 1GHz or something. Why they don't just add on the few extra Pentium instructions I dunno. Then again though you'd still be left with an obsolete instruction set, the Pentium's. Since then there's been lots and lots of additions, MMX, SSE, and all the little tweak instructions here and there.
So I suppose if you don't want to build a full-on Core Whatever you may as well pick a point in history and stay there, and the 386 or 486 is gonna cover almost all DOS software of the type that runs CNC machines and the like.
So actually I answered my own question there, sorry, pardon me. So yeah a 486 at hundreds of MHz would be nice! Wouldn't necessarily play newer games that want the new instructions, but wouldn't be designed to. You could even put a little slider, a knob, for clock speed! Or maybe a program to do it since the SOC probably has a clock generator PLL onboard. Shame, a slider would be nicer but I imagine you can only alter clock speed in software running on the 486 itself.
That said it's as easy to just emulate nowadays. Simpler overall, and as "authentic". You lose authenticity with every change from the original PC, and even running a 386 core on an SOC with the other addons is still not the original PC experience. Even though it has ISA, IDE, and PS/2.
There's maybe some video amplifier chip you could use for the dim video problem. The maker should have thought of that. He doesn't seem that advanced with electronics for somebody who's made what he has! Just a buffer IC would've done nicely but too late now, it'd have to go in front of the internal display circuit.
It's a cute gadget but too many compromises, I wouldn't have one, even though he's made it cheaper than he could have. Probably better off with a phone, a Bluetooth keyboard / mouse, and DOSBOX.
@@epicwildstar1918 he said it did?
@@polocatfan he said this particular device did not use the uncredited BIOS, it was another one built by the same guy
Not a huge fan of the form factor, but I really hope the creator has plans to make more models now that they've seen how much money the retro community is willing to spend on silly things! A 486 or early pentium class laptop with a decent keyboard, sound blaster and adlib would be insanely cool. I love the support for external ISA cards.
Im glad you picked that up. I read about those and was curious.
For a hobbyist project it's darn well made and actually a very good price.
Yes, you'd need a good reason to go for this instead of a used system from BITD but wanting something new might be that reason.
What about FreeDOS based programmable calculator? Qasic/Turbo C++ based calculator? Louts 123 spreadsheet. Its x86 standardized platform nothing will get lost even if optimized and written in assembly noiseless, low power, pocket friendly. I would make ton of use - if this was mine thing (80s). I recently rediscovered the power od DOS prompt when it comes to put order to files, git reposistories, power of batch files CALL IF ELSE FOR GOTO etc. To me somehow more user friendly than BASH, turned to be better faster to spend 1 hour to figure out, than any GUI based app. Also discovered that PHP actually to me - just regular user, it's better write script in PHP or Windows "DOS" Shell than PowerShell. Achieved more via DOS prompt than i expected from GUI software - i couldn't find. If i was into math. Like some people are. Would know how to use it basically calculator. I wouldnt even try to keep Windows 95 on that.
This video reminded me of something I kept wanting to mention on this channel. I remember when he was looking for a good way to fit an SSD to an IDE machine without using convertors and stuff. I kept remembering that I'd seen them but I couldn't remember where. I remember now. It's the 1.8" ATA ZIF drives. I've seen up to 128GB SSDs and I think there are larger ones too. They are native ATA, they just need a simple adaptor cable to work with the usual 3.5"/2.5" form factor 40/44 pin connector. With quick googling I found the Super Talent FZM28GF18H which is a 128GB native ATA SSD. I don't know what their performance would be like, but I figured I might as well mention it before I forget again.
Some UMPC I have like Samsung Q1 and Fujitsu U810 as well as iPods came with 1.8" ZIF hard drives. It was an easy upgrade to SSD. On older machines I switch to SSD more to preserve the original hard drives than for speed anymore.
Think it would be nice to see whole benchmark suite as compiled by Phil.
Fun little device, I hope we get more.
“The nugget” that has to be a DankPods reference
HONESTLY I FOUND YOUR CHANNEL A FEW WEEKS AGO TO SEE YOU SO HAPPY AND SHARE THE SAME ENJOYMENT I DO WITH OLD TECH AND THEM BEING MODIFIED TO DO THINGS WE AS CONSUMERS WERE TOLD THEY CAN'T DO. BUT, CAN WITH A LITTLE TINKERING AND SOME MODIFICATION. THANK YOU FOR MAKING CONTENT. THIS GENUINELY SOOTHES MY SOUL. I LOVE OLD APPLE PRODUCTS AND OLD MACHINES. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Thanks for buying this so I didn't have to! Only just heard of this thing yesterday. I'll keep using my cleaned up 386 DX 33MHZ instead. Cheers and another great video as always!
Oh, Sergey has done a lot of awesome stuff! Love his stuff!
By the time I had heard about these being available, all the reviewers and content creators had snapped them all up and left none for us simple enthusiast folk. Now I gotta wait for one to pop up on ebay for twice the price :(
So surprised you haven't reached 100k yet, your videos are incredible!
Very cool to see this reviewed. I was thinking about buying one of these, I think you just saved me $200 bucks!
Fun Fact: The Zilog Z80 is still made for consumer use. It started production in 1976.
gosh I love your enthusiasum
Cool little machine!
I can't see myself buying one of these, but I'm glad it exists. Excellent review.
Then I saw the thumbnail, I thought it was a LGR video...
Wow, recent retro hardware! And here I was expecting to hear about a proto-OQO or a Dauphin competitor that I hadn't heard of.
Ever since I saw these, the first thing I thought was that you'd get one. Definitely glad you did!
Hahaha
this is by far the most interesting subject manner on your channel in quite some time.
The IC layout is beautiful
The video is very nice and informative, as always on your channel, except that tiny core will not work on that thing. Nevertheless you can try some very old distros of those on a floppy or Elks, of which I know you are a fan. With 8 mb of ram maybe you could install x11 (a very old one, of course)
Yep, TC needs a 486 with 46MB RAM. I run Debian 2.1 on my 386 with 8MB -- I had issues with anything newer.
@@nu11man if netBsd is still around you can try to boot that thing from the toaster’s hard drive…
Cool! Reminds me of my own portable retro computers!
14:44
Yonezu Kenji - Lemon in Midi ^.^
Fly on!
Lovely video man. I feel you.
Amazing that this is possible, the amount of money I had to, and have, spend just to play this. Blows my mind.
The vga is dim because it's just splitting the signal, so there's only half the voltage. I experienced that when I used a vga splitter cable to run a CRT and a projector.
It's beautiful!
This reminded me that I really want one of the old too of the line blackberry PDAs just to see what they were like. They're dirt cheap these days, so it shouldn't be a lot of money wasted.
Those little cube speakers should have a volume dial mid-way along the wire where the 3.5mm line and a USB power line meet. I have the exact same pair of speakers floating about myself.
Wow! That is so cool!
What a mad machine!
Just wow! Waiting 'till end of video, but I think I may buy it, today!
Thanks for the honest review. I was about to offer you your money back at VCF for it, but I'll stick with my 50CT.
so cool i would love one of those
Bad decisions arriving in the mail describes my life.
I would love to see you get OS/2 or Arca OS running on it. If you could get a serial modem or a ISA NIC working for internet access that could be an interesting challenge. If you were to try to get Tiny Core Linux running on it, you would have to run an older release. The Linux kernel dropped support for the 386 some time ago.
Whoa. That reminded me of a similar case mod idea I had, except that would've used an early laptop Pentium, would've had the battery level reported through ACPI, would have a proper 4:3 aspect ratio display, and would have resistive touch input paired with Windows 95 Pen Services. There'd be touch controls which would be mapped to the MIDI connector on the sound board.
Also got the same device too, it's very interesting I must say. The major quirk us how you have to disassemble it to remove the CompactFlash card, ugh.
What a coincidence! “Half forgotten late night purchase” was the name of my band in college!
Kickass, I want one!
You can get the ISA expansion from the same places as this and the 8088 laptop are available from. They both use the same board.
Sweet! Now it can be written off as a business expense! In all seriousness, though, I was hoping a retro UA-cam channel managed to grab one of these to show it off. Neat little device, just above a hobbist level creation. It seems that the creator(s) didn't have have much experience with analog, but I suppose making CNC stuff wouldn't require much of that(the rest of the storefront that sold this and the 8088 book is CNC stuff like laser cutters.)
Nice. Wouldn't mind owning one of those.
It is a good beginning but still way to go for a finished product.
I do like the overall design, but as an option it would be good to have a cheaper ARM based board inside that can emulate old PCs and game consoles too.
Interesting creation. Nice
Back in 1995 when Windows 95 first released I bought it for my am486 DX2 80MHz PC with 8mb of ram and it ran so horribly I can't even fathom how badly it must run on a 386 SX which is technically below the minimum requirements for the OS which is a 386 DX. That little device looks like it would be very good for playing early to middle dos era games though and the fact that it is so portable is interesting.
I could imagine one could make a "docking station" out of an ISA backplane, load up a video card and sound card and nic, and really cook with that little guy
Neat. Reminds me of my 1st computer a HP100LX palmtop! 2 AA batteries I think. Those were the days
Excellent!
I want one of those!
you could probably sort out the VGA output with some kind of gate/buffer combo or something. you'd have to roll your own little pcb to do it though
I saw this elsewhere and seriously thought about getting one.
that's fiercely cool....
10:31 that is pretty cool i remeber playing back in i was 12 back back oct 1992-1995.
7:20 - if not for that keyboard that would be a magical device.
How about taking out the board and 3D printing a cool retro chassis for it, and then use it as a standard 386 PC, connected to an old school CRT and retro keyboard/mouse, perhaps something like the retro mouse that came out for the A500 mini combined with a brand new model M?
This week in Retro on YT covered this - yesterday! no units remain for purchase on AliExpress.
The display being 16:9 with no way to letterbox it to 4:3 is such a huge oversight.
WeeCees are now being built up in Seattle if you want a better experience with a micro retro PC (though not portable).
I remember wanting to buy one of these cool little $200 netbooks.
That copy of wolf 3d is definitely modified. It seems to have native 16:9 support, alternate sound effects, and a blue ceiling in the first level.
Thats awesome i want one, man so cool.
I dreamed about such a device when i was a kid! Would've been awesome to have at school! I had a windows CE device, but it wasn't good enough, to compromised, i learned about the HP mini handheld with a true dos experience like on pc, a friend's dad had this pc and it was tiny, running on this cute small rechargeable battery . . . This device is in all seriousness pretty impressive for what it is, it was never intended to be used like this! Why couldn't he use a 486dx equivalent, that can play doom for sure!
Great first generation device. I hope they can fix the obvious shortcomings for the next iteration and maybe even find a partner to scale up production.
It might be cool for running old music trackers.
In case any of you are curious, the midi is of the song Lemon by Kenshi Yonezu
This reminds me of the Handheld Computer Book in the Hitchhiker Guide to the universe television series
This is the future!
Me and my friends say that devices like these are "talking frogs". Not of much practical use, but sure neat to have 😅
I just got the 8008 book and I like it
The form factor is interesting. I'd want something with a bit more grunt though.
I remember RadioShack had a 486DX mini laptop on sale for $200 back in the late 90's. It was running I think windows 98 I believe.