@@playy1797 Somebody savvy enough in their localities' secondhand (fleamarket/pawnshop/craigslist...) scene to get their hands on ISA soundcards will probably have an easy time getting their hands on period correct PC parts too.
I'm sure people could retrofit ISA and LPT in the same way they used to upgrade Atari STs to 4MB, fit 68020 030 and even PPC into Amigas, etc. There weren't slots for those, they had to fit breakout sockets and solder some of the connections, or in some cases solder all of the connections.
@@playy1797 So do I; I still have an old SB16 ISA card laying about, but no slot to fit it in. I've looked at those weird industrial chinese boards which have ISA slots, but they're more geared towards old factory hardware. There's also USB to ISA converters, but they lack hardware interrupt support, so a soundcard will not work in those. A variant of this board with an actual 16 bit ISA slot or a breakout ISA board would be cool.
A modern 64 bit CPU would be cool too, so you could dualboot DOS and Windows 11 on it (I know you can do that on many modern computers anyway, but DOS compatibility probably won't be great)
@@mmuller2402 If you read the vogons post, the creator makes it clear he won't make a new batch, but will open source the hardware for self assembly. So, bad news and good news.
This is amazing and really brings back memories. These days we don't really get to experience the types of massive performance increases that were truly mindbending when the previous gen was the top of the line of what was possible. That joy of plugging in a sound blaster for the first time or new GPU. It wasn't just about increasing performance by a few frames. It opened up whole new worlds of possibilities.
Personally I'm always satisfied by emulation or even source ports/remasters of old DOS games, but even still, it is really awesome that someone is passionate enough to make the ultimate modern-retro DOS machine. If this were capable of being shrunk down to pi size, it would be the perfect thing to put in my modded mini PC "radio".
As someone who grew up with these games and wants to play them again, but doesn't have the space for an actual retro pc in a small apartment, I've been waiting for something like this to show up for ages. It's wonderful to see it arrive, and for it to be as good as this is, but it's a damn shame it's not available after the first group buy. I really hope there will be more, though of course I understand the person behind the project not wanting to take on the stress and financial burden of organising something like this. Still, as much as it sucks to say, that makes me think that my most likely source for one of these or something similar will be Aliexpress at some time in the not too distant future, as with the schematics being open sourced no doubt someone there will put them up for sale. And I would SO much rather pay the people behind the project than some random Aliexpress vendor.
Might as well be, that’s typically what factories end up mass producing these things once the schematics become open-sourced. There’s the Pocket386 as-is but since I already own a Libretto I was more interested in the now discontinued Hand386 since it was in a GameBoy form factor. They’re the only real alternative I could’ve gotten for the WeeCee which is a predecessor to this project, or at least an inspiration I’d imagine.
I really love this. As others have commented, PCI is an interesting omission but with the various audio headers and onboard networking I'm not sure what PCI cards I'd actually add - perhaps a Voodoo card, although of course AGP versions were available. I'm guessing that going with ITX limited the design to one slot so I think AGP makes sense for those later Win9x games that are too much of a stretch for MiSTer. What a cool project!
Yep, it definitely has a bit more grunt than the ao486 core on MiSTer. I actually have a Voodoo 3 AGP running with this board now - it even copes with Quake 3 OK. One for the next video!
This is not a native AGP implementation. Its PCI-E bridged to PCI running at 66Mhz. Its what the author declared and lets hope it really runs at 66. In that case its perfect for 3DFX cards. If only at 33 as PCI it would mean slight bottleneck, but not that much with this CPU. On non 3DFX it would be somewhat larger impact as they utilized the AGP bus more. Also, there seem to be compatibility issues, Nvidia cards do not work at all under windows for example. That being said, the author posts some benchmarks on Vongos and this thing performs somewhere on the level of Pentium MMX200-233. On non FPU heavy games it runs betters, so it behaves more like a Cyrix MII than anything else, so, any strong video cards makes no sense anyway. The author should have went with PCI instead, he even has PCI design done but still the AGP board seems to be more prevalent. I wold rather see micro ATX board with few PCI slots where one can get S3trioV2 + Voodoo2 with it. That would be the ideal combo for legacy glide compatibility, and also, Voodoo2 has the smallest CPU overhead of the old 3D cards.
It's amazing to me that integrating an entire RP2040, with jumper headers, is cost competitive with just using a couple of USB-to-PS/2 dongles. I have little doubt that it really is, I'm just amazed that we are at a point in microcontroller technology that a chip that could probably easily emulate an entire 386SX (with a bit of help from a handful of extra chips and some PSRAM) is cheaper than some molded plastic and wires.
PS/2-USB adapters from back in the day only worked because USB keyboards and mice were capable of doing PS/2 protocol over the USB pins. Modern keyboards and mice can't do this, and so need conversion hardware. But yeah, bunging an RP2040 in there with some custom programming is cost-competitive with finding or fabricating the specific custom chips to do the job. You can find a lot of RP2040 based custom chip replacements -- for the SID chip, the TI-99/4A video chip, etc.
I found that interesting too 😊. I don't think you could not have it run a cycle accurate 386 emulator at legacy clock speed -- maybe an 8088 though. Also (in case it's not super obvious) you could not do all the things the sum total the system board does with the pi-pico. I think the biggest issue would be getting enough gpio pins to make the PIO do 32 bit addressing without multiplexing. This is significantly more likely with the 8088, which is already multiplexed. If you tried to do a 386 core you might very well get enough resources to do everything internal to the chip, but then you miss out on the 32bit IO capabilities of the cpu for external devices. The ability to tack on a serial memory is definitely how you solve the low internal ram issue but the IO bottleneck kills it for sure.
@@lindoran Correct - as far as I know, nobody's ever made an emulated x86 CPU or CPU/RAM/whatever combo that exposes any kind of system bus. I'd say the only way to achieve this would be using a fat and expensive FPGA. Would be orders of magnitude more difficult (and probably expensive) than using one of the Vortex-series SOMs.
This is the best thing to happen to retro computing. As more and more older hardware will fail, these boards will be THE way to run older software. Judging by the Vogons thread it's not easy for hardware dummies like me to order a custom PCB, so a thorough video would be much appreciated.
Depends on the service, with one major PCB manufacturer (NOT the one with a name close to PCPDAY) it's basically the same as ordering a finished board from a webstore. Regarding the "will fail" the market for retro x86 computing is still very saturated with modern reproductions/compatibles becoming quite present. One of my major projects falls into that category. I'd love to see more *modular* FPGA based stuff. Maybe one day we'd get x86 class computers with CPU daughterboards ranging from 8088 to Pentium 3
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
I LOVE this as a project. I grew up with DOS games, being a 90's kid, and as time progresses, it becomes more and more difficult to not only play some of these games, but even just get them running and functional. Finding old PCs is difficult, and they pull a lot of power, and make a lot of noise. This is... everything I want. Hearing those soundblaster tests for Duke3D, then the final test, just.. my jaw hit the ground. My dad had a PC that made sound that good... it was amazing for games. I'm sending this video to him, I'm sure he'll wind up picking it up at some point. I wonder if he still has that old 3DFX Voodoo 4 card...
I never had the best computers as a kid, always middle of the road hardware . Having never originally experienced the games on top end hardware I dont really notice any issues when DOS BOX'in games from my childhood in the 80s and 90s. This is still a cool option for having some dedicated hardware and looks like a fun project.
I still have an 8088 based IBM plus a NEC V20 upgrade, and an 80286 PC-AT, a 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium D, Quad-core Pentium, and early Core i7.Nothing sounds like DOS more than a 5-1/4" DSDD diskette drive, buzzing away for five minutes. Can't believe you didn't try out Rise of the Triad. It's very sensitive to non-standard emulation.
Thanks for the video 😊Awesome project and it’s impressive to see the level of detail gone into designing the board. Even if this is a limited run the design has been open sourced and will hopefully get further developed
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
A video about building your own ITX Llama would be super useful. Also i hope that some company or enthusiast group will start to manufacture this amazing kit so anyone interested could purchase it, that would be a dream come true for retro computing community. Great video, the most informative and interesting retrocomputing video of this year so far! Many thanks!
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
I'm wondering if this might let some of us relive the heady days when we installed Linux for the first time. I remember the excitement of getting it running on a 200mhz pentium 2. There were a few weird games on it back then that would be fun to play again on retro hardware. Not that old DOS games aren't awesome: they are! This looks like a fun project.
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
@@foch3 that's ok. I have a gazillion video cards. I would be more happy if there was a pic slit for adding an aureal vortex 2 card with a voodoo. It just fits the board name better.
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
Pipe dream for me is, an all-in-one X86 SBC, complete with a button clock-able CPU @ up to 33Mhz-2Ghz, with a built-in Z80 & 68000 + OPL3 + RISC processors for coprocessor duties inc audio, MIDI FPGA, scaler FPGA, and an FPGA for raster tasks that has Voodoo, ATi & Nvidia cores complete with a 400Mhz RAMDAC. Give it a huge L1 an L2 CPU cache for hyper low latency, SRAM ROM & SD RAM drives for ultra low latency I/O, a built-in 32GB SLC base SSD NAND. AN ITX port & AGP port + PCI port.
Looks interesting however that will feel authentic only if there is a realistic CRT monitor emulation. Still DOS games look very crispy on all settings on modern monitors.
These x86 compatible industrial systems always crack me up. No matter how bare bones and stripped down they make it. Someone always finds a way to run doom on it.
DOS gaming was the generation before mine but this project is so cool. Hopefully someone picks it up and sells kits, I would love to play with something like this.
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
It's not a real AGP port. The SoC only supports PCI, so it's an AGP to PCI translation port using a converting chipset. There are some issues with Win98 using AGP features that it can't access due to this conversion process. So some issues with Nvidia drivers and 3DFX drivers have been reported.
As for the question at the end of the video... I would love to play with something like this, though space is always an issue. Would need a KB/M setup, the box looks small enough you could tuck behind a display, need another display etc for a handful of games I'd only peck at here-and-there. I wouldn't mind seeing Xeen running on this with that fricken ridiculously awesome wavetable though.
That's really a neat project. Only thing I'm missing is at least a PCI slot or two so I can slap in a good 2D board and a Voodoo - I'd love to see an (m)ATX Llama board
That's an incredible little board! Definitely can be optimized as well. Using a rp2040 for just HID devices is probably even more overkill than the AGP video card 😂😅😊
Pretty cool project. The only problem that I find with this kind of items is how expensive they become, they are custom made and running low quantity batches make them very expensive to produce in relation to what you get. For 40-50$ you can get an entire PIII with a GeForce 2 and a real SB16 or AWE64, and if you want to "modernize" it you can add a SD to IDE adapter and a PicoGUS. Still really cool board.
Try building one for yourself and see how much it'll cost! ;) You're absolutely right though - these are non-commercial hobby projects and far from cheap. The most affordable solution is DOSBox or 86Box or something similar, it'll cost you exactly $0 and be good enough for most things!
@@eivindbohler A Pentium III you mean or a Llama? If it is a llama, of course, I didn't meant that they overcharge for it, as I said as this is built in very small batches it costs a lot more, and if you build it yourself you will save some bucks but still will be expensive. But if you mean a PIII... I recently bought an Intel dot station 2300 for 40$ new in its box, never used, I modified the bios and upgraded the CPU to a PIII 1Ghz that cost me 10$, also I bought an Athlon 1800 with a SB16 Vibra and a GF2 TI for 20$...
@@drgusman I was talking about hobby projects. I'm aware you can (still) get super cheap PIII hardware! :) That'll probably end in a few years though, look at where prices are for 486 machines now compared to 5-10 years ago...
@@eivindbohler Yeah, that's totally true, that's why I'm storing some of these, right now people sells them as junk but in some years they will skyrocket in price... Btw, just saw you're the developer of the Llama, kudos man, the project is impressive and as I said, never meant that it was an abusive price, I know how expensive these things are, I do myself developments, mostly for 8 bit computers, specially the ZX Spectrum and some lab tooling that is all on my github, nothing so big of course, but I know how much these things cost :)
This is realy fantastic! I remember my first 486-66DX2 and setting the sound could be a hassle. But this looks so sleek, and optimised. Amazing. I would maybe install a SSD, if I had a USB CD/DVD burner ready. Otherwize I would install a CD/DVD Burner. This is just for legacy, if you have old PC CD roms at hand, and things like that. Cheers.
If someone were to re-engineer this into a portable chassis, ie "make a laptop out of this", it would be even more amazing and I'd be in line to buy one. So cool, thank you for documenting this.
Original hardware > modern retro hardware > emulation I'm actually glad that emulation is taking off, because it means the market for real parts will be flooded and go down in price! Even so, these kinds of projects are super cool too, and I may have to pick this up at some point.
Sadly it doesn't always work that way. Somehow, beyond a certain age, many computer parts demand a premium even if they're still widely available on the used market. Once a few sellers ask for a certain price, everyone else assumes it's a good idea, and follows suit. 😁
This is a fantastic demonstration of the capabilities of this board. I found the original thread on Vogons late last year and assumed it was a novel proof of concept but this demonstrates that it is clearly more. I've got multiple ITX cases I've been loathe to part with, that'd be perfect for something like this. Some questions that come to mind: * I wonder if the onboard RP2040 can be used as a PicoGUS? * I wonder if the ISA bus is accessible and can be attached via a ribbon and backplane? * I wonder if there is a PCI bus that could be exposed. * There is onboard SATA, but is there onboard IDE for an optical drive to support CD-Audio games? * I wonder what JLPCB would charge for a complete assembly?
I'll answer your questions: 1. No, it's not connected to the ISA bus. Nothing stopping you from modifying the design, though - and adding the PicoGUS components instead of the CS4237B (which, incidentally, is exactly what I'm doing with my in-progress project, the TinyLlama v3). 2. Not on this board, but definitely doable with a redesign. You should note, however, that the ISA bus on the Vortex86EX is stripped of quite a few pins - it only has a single DMA channel, for instance. That very much limits the usefulness of having several add-in boards. 3. Yes, the AGP slot runs off PCI at 66 MHz. There's a single lane (x1) PCI-express gen1 coming out of the Vortex86EX, being converted to PCI by a PI7C9X118 bridge chip. AGP is a superset of PCI, so you can run most AGP cards that support the AGP 1x standard by connecting the physical AGP connector to a PCI bus. 4. Nope, no exposed IDE coming out of the Vortex86EX, unfortunately. I _think_ you might be able to use an IDE optical drive together with a SATA/IDE converter though. 5. Totally depends on the number of boards you order. There's a minimum of 5, and obviously the per-board cost goes down a bit when ordering many at a time. I don't remember the exact amount I paid per board, but I think it was more than $150 and less than $200. Depends on the day-to-day price of many of the components as well, sometimes that will fluctuate quite noticeably.
@@eivindbohler What an incredible response, thank you! * I had not initially considered replacing the Crystal sound chip with PicoGUS components but that is an interesting direction. My curiosity about the ISA bus was specifically related to adding a PicoGUS via ISA to augment the Crystal chip. * Running SATA to IDE (reverse) is a great idea as it should allow IDE optical drives to supply audio output separately. Perfect. * I hadn't considered that AGP is just a superset of PCI. My use case was to add an m3D card next to the AGP slot but I'm not sure if that's a worthy direction to go. I can probably get far more bang for the buck using an AGP based Voodoo3. (I have an m3D, I don't have an AGP Voodoo3 yet...) * If the cost of a full assembly (minus the Vortex SoC itself) is $200-$250 or less, that is fantastic news as I had assumed it'd cost more than that. Thank you for your detailed response! Out of curiosity, do you or @jamesfmackenzie mind if I mirror this thread on Vogons for our future selves and fellow curious to find?
This is wonderful! I apologize but I wasn't able to figure out whether or not these are available or if there's a queue to join for the next batch. Is there any hope of more of these becoming available?
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
The problems arise when you have MS-DOS games with audio tracks on CD, which were connected directly via a cable from the CD-ROM drive to the sound card. The game would send commands to play a track, and that's how the music would play. I think this is the Achilles' heel for many of us who want to use real hardware but without relying on the physical media (CD-ROMs) from that era.
Yep, CD audio is a real gap. Especially since many ISO formats are missing it :-( The ITX Llama does have a CD audio header. I’m considering a SATA to IDE adapter, so I can connect an old CD drive with audio out 😎
I had to look this up to confirm it's not emulation. The Vortex86EX is a commercial product (I assume for other things like industrial uses) that has a real CPU etc. on a tiny module, with system bus etc. exposed to connect. This is fun to have a motherboard to go with it and work with old DOS and games.
It's unfortunate that these things are de facto unavailable. It damn near hits all of the marks. About the only thing I'd add is an LPC header so you can use an ISA slot breakout board in the second slot inherent in the ITX standard. Even better would be a standard PCI slot and ISA slot on an extended board. You wouldn't be able to use both at the same time, but it would let you play around with early PCI based 3D accelerators, like the faster EDO based Virge chips, the Rendition Verite, or even a Voodoo 1. But as is, it's an amazing accomplishment: a nice dos and win9x gaming rig that you can hook up to the living room tv. Oh well, I guess my P5GX-M based rig running at 300mhz with 256 megs of ram with a voodoo 1, an ever changing primary card (right now a Rage Pro Turbo All-in-wonder), and a memory maxed Sound Blaster 64 will have to do ;p
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
Real smart of Ivan to make the AGP slot a 2x for real Voodoo cards. Can't wait to see what this baby can do with the modern remake of the Voodoo5. Additionally, are there plans for more support for more sound devices, such as the Innovation SSI-2001, Tandy 3-Voice, C/MS and GUS?
The OSDev wiki is full of info on how to develop OSs for BIOS-PCs; that's basically the community's roots, yet on the forums for the last 6 or 7 years, every time someone says they want to develop a new OS for x86-32, there's always lots of people insisting the architecture is going away. This insistence isn't quite so strong as it was, but I think I might post a link to this anyway. 😈
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
This sounds like a great idea if you have a case that allows for a second mobo. You could have the modern hardware for modern games (assuming you find any worth playing) and have this for retrogaming.
I am surprised they arn't more popular for segregating work and personal computers. Back in the day I had 3 mid towers under my desk running into a switch for the keyboard/mouse and display. It seems especially with work from home or for dev test systems having 2 physical systems would be a huge plus.
Unfortunately the initial production run is already done and shipped. HOWEVER! Eivind has open sourced the hardware schematics on GitHub. So you could use a service like JLCPCB or PCBWay to build you own. More details here: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480 Good luck!
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
Honestly, I'd be more interested in it for Windows 98 than DOS. DOS games are by an large much easier to get going these days, while there's a large subset of Win9x games which simply don't work in the current Windows malware OS, or even WINE. I'd definitely use it as an all purpose DOS machine as well; but there's quite a few Win9x games that I'd like to play that aren't really playable these days without an old system. I wonder whether you could boot from a SATA drive instead of the MicroSD slot? It'd be one thing if this was built out into a portable hand held system, but for a desktop, I'd rather have a regular SSD, or heck maybe even embrace the old school with some spinning rust. You can still get 500GB or 1TB hdds in 2.5" or 3.5" form fairly cheaply new. SSDs aren't much more expensive, but old school is old school.
You can connect an SSD to the SATA port, it works great and is definitely recommended for Windows since it hammers the swap file. The processor is best suited for DOS, though. It’s similar to a P233 MMX in performance, which is a little slow for many Win98 games
Very interesting. Still looking for a tiny form factor solution that can utilize the Aureal Vortex 2 PCI sound card, and possibly keep AGP functionality. I can see this likely won't work.
It doesn’t support the SB Awe 64 Pro, but it *does* support wave blaster daughterboards. I added the X2GS with the Buran soundbank (the bank can be changed too)
I already have a Pentium III build but this would be fantastic to cover older DOS stuff that works sub optimally on my build. Gonna have to keep an eye out in case someone wants to make another production run.
To all the people who lament about not being able to buy this, just go buy a slot 1 motherboard. They are cheep on ebay and most times they even give you the CPU for free. They are way way more afordable then a socket 7 board and getting a voodoo3 2000 is not expensive for sound you can get the picogus which is for sale by kit or prebuilt. There are a ton of usb to floopy stuff out there along with sd card to ide as well. All in all your going to spend probably about the same as buying this if not less and you get something authentic. For sound you could even look for a azgalexy board or something that is basically a sb16 in everything but name. I could be misremembering the name there but there were tons of clone sound cards during that time. Only issue is with old games that are CPU bound, but there are tricks for that and luckly the number of them like this is not great.
@@tilla77 Yes, unfortunately the initial run of boards is over 😢 However! The design is open sourced and available on GitHub. So you could use a service like JLCPCB or PCBWay to build one for you. Would you be interested in a “build your own” video?
I love that this project exists although it's only going to appeal to a minority. I was lucky enough to get one but sadly have not yet put it together. Waiting on picking up a voodoo 3 card at my parents.Your video will help a lot with putting it together as really clear instructions. I've followed it from it's original incarnation as a credit card sized PC! The only change I would change would have been to replace the sound hardware with an ISA slot and then include the sound hardware as an addon card. That way I could try GUS cards, but a small issue. Would love to know what case you are going to use.
Slightly OT, but when you mentioned sound cards I had to think of the fact we barely have them anymore, especially not "true" soundcards that did hardware acceleration. Good audio processing has somehow become a very rare occurance in games, with only a few outliers like Alien Isolation (who created their own audio solution for that game).
Agree! Dedicated sounds cards have definitely gone the way of the dodo :-( I’m interested to learn more about Alien Isolation! What did they do that was custom?
@@jamesfmackenzie They developed their own audio solution that did real time reverb, depending on the layout of the levels and the source of the sound. None of it was "off the shelv" tech and completely developed in house (apparently because no current audio system satisfied them)
@@jamesfmackenzie I can highly recommend it :) I would recommend however to use the graphics INI tweaks and TAA injection. With current systems you can get alot more graphical fidellity out of the game. PS: they also did some magic with the lighting system, where they used dynamic cubemaps (rendered during run time) to have dynamic radiosity; the light practically bounces around corners, like it would do with current day ray tracing methods. Its mind boggling how far ahead they were with this game.
There is some hope! 😅 Eivind open sourced the design schematics on GitHub. So you could use a service like JLCPCB or PCBWay to build you own 😎 More details here: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480 Good luck!
@@PXAbstraction Those sites will allow you to have them supply and install chips but iirc the price goes up substantially. I hope someone does another group buy to pull down the price somewhat 🤞
@@PXAbstraction they can make the PCBs and do the assembly too (i.e. install the components to the PCB). Provided they have all the components in stock, they should be able to build you a complete board. I’m tempted to try myself - if people are interested!
Nothing worse than seeing a product that I would buy immediately, and then find out it is unobtainable. Yes, I know it is "open sourced" but given that thread and the last few discussions involving building your own - I have zero interest (as I am sure many people would) in trying to source/track all that down. It is a shame the creator doesn't just sell an DIY assembly kit with everything - and leaves the most time/labor intensive part up to the buyer. I guess I will continue having to drag out my old PCs to play them games. I didn't even bother finishing this video once I seen the comments indicating this was another cool product that isn't truly available past what is probably a tiny group buy.
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
@@someguy782 A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
USB-C power would be better and you could put a real floppy drive and/or IDE header where the ATX header used to be. Thin ITX would also be my preference. But those are minor quibbles, this seems like a pretty nice for gaming at least. Who knows there might be some old video rental store still running their POS on DOS that could use something like this as well. I suppose a USB Floppy drive would be sufficient for most people. an onboard USB 2.0 header would also be handy to plug in a 3.5" compact flash/SD card reader.
This thing has LOTS of potential, but the missing floppy controller bothers me. I would like a programmable floppy controller like the Paula chip in the Amiga. It can read and write lots of formats just by creating a mountlist. If you need something more for a DOS system, get an industrial VIA board. These have extremely power-saving processors comparable to the Pentium ///. The boards are ITX, but better equipped: - VIA C3 or EDEN CPU up to 1 GHz - 1 GB 133 MHz DDR3 RAM socket - 2 IDE ports - Floppy Controller for two drives - AGP graphics with 3D and MPEG2 accelerator - LVDS, VGA, Composite and S-Video output - Serial, IR and Parallel ports - PS/2, USB, Ethernet - PCI port - Some have Firewire or Cardbus
There are lots of insdustrial VIA ITX boards. I have an EPIA M II. It has a PCI bus, and on the ATX panel a CardBus (PCMCIA) and CompactFlash port. Onboard is next to the usual stuff one serial, one LPT (parallel), one IR, one SMBus connector. And of course the floppy connector. A gameport is not available. The RCA jack can be switched between composite video or S/PDIF with a jumper.
If you want ISA, then check out industrial Single Board PC's. You need a PCI/ISA backplate. The SBC comes in the middle, providing a PCI bus on one side and ISA on the other. I have several SBC's, one with a Pentium I, several with a Pentium /// 1.4 GHz, and one with socket 775 modified to use a low-power quad core Xeon L5408 socket 771 and 8 GB RAM. It's no problem to run Windows XP with an ISA Soundblaster AWE64 Gold.
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
I like it... I have been building computers since the early 80's. Even though I use the modern Apple and Windows operating systems, my job is to keep old computers like DOS and Windows 98 and other operating systems running... Believe it or not, my company has been in business since 1960. They rely on MSDOS and Windows 98 to keep their old equipment like heat ovens running... It is hard to find new old hardware that is reliable... Nicely done... I want one... Where can I buy this board? =8-)
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
I would love to get one of these. I’d love to play Trophy Bass 2 on one. It’s a speed sensitive game, and I’ve never gotten any type of emulation to work quite right.
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
I suppose AGP is probably a better choice in terms of card availability but feel that the lack of PCI is a small downside, I suppose if you could find an AGP Voodoo3 though you'd be good for those DOS Glide games.
It would be nice to integrate fast DOS device like this with MiSTer FPGA for other platforms. Share MiSTer's CRT shaders with DOS. Share MiSTer's MIDI abilities with DOS. And put everything into ATX. I would like one drive bay to be occupied with CD(BluRay?). I would like to have MT-32 display in another drive bay. Some games can print something there. And sound mixer controls would be handy there. Finally, third drive bay, maybe smaller 3"5 bay with TapTo NFC hidden inside decorative floppy reader. And decorative floppies with TapTo tags. And maybe some universal card reader. I currently have one by Akasa, in big 5"25 format
Is it possible to: 1. Install and run Windows (as per your summary)? 2. Install a pysical floppy drive? 3. Install multiple drives (i.e. SSD + CDROM + Floppy)? 4. Install the motherboard and associated hardward into a case (i.e. in addition to the onboard hat switches, is there a pinout for case mounted switches)?
Thanks for the questions! Here you go: 1. Yes, I am using Win98. However the processor is too slow for most Win98 games to run well - it’s best suited to DOS era games. 2. There’s no floppy header, so you will have to add a USB floppy drive or USB floppy drive adapter 3. You have one SATA port. The best you could do is: microSD card drive, SATA CD-ROM and USB floppy drive 4. It’s a regular ITX size, so can fit in a case. It also has regular front panel headers (power and reset switch, hdd led etc) Good luck!
Hello! This looks really interesting. I'd love to understand the experiences of using this vs something like DOSBox. Growing up, after the Atari 2600 and NES, my brother and I drifted more to PC gaming so I lived through DOS"s golden age of gaming (Sierra Games, Wing Commander, etc). At one point I even had an older Dell Pentium based tower PC that I put some voodoo2 cards in for retro gaming. That said, between DOSBox and Glide wrappers, is there something specific you get with this kind of hardware solution for playing games from this era?
@@jamesfmackenzie if you were able to source the build, it would likely cost more than a budget build modern system 😅 The Gravis alone would likely be $200
I think this just solved all my issues in one go. I can use multiple SD cards for multiple game libraries. Does setmul work? Can we control the speed and cache from command line?
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
My only complaint would be that there is no EISA slot. Honestly, AGP graphics were not much longer lived than VLB, and picking up an ISA card is far more feasible. If it had a built-in VGA circuit that could be used until you can get hold of a working AGP card, I wouldn't complain, as AGP is clearly the way to go for performance, but as I'm not likely to buy this till I can find an AGP card, and I expect that may take me a long time, I feel that's a bit short sighted.
Unfortunately there is only 1 DMA channel exposed from the Vortex86 SOM, and that’s used by the Crystal audio chip :-( There are some interesting new projects out there that use a mini PCIe graphics card - check out the TinyLlama 3 and Pixel86 😎
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
@@rodarkonero Agree! It’s is a very special piece of kit! Eivind has open sourced the design - it’s available on GitHub. So you could use a service like JLCPCB or PCBWay to build one for you! I’ve seen at least one person on the Vogons forum who’s done that - in a nice light/white PCB type 😎 Would you be interested in a “build your own” video?
A late reply on this, but with some good news! A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here: retrodreams.ca Find more details on the Vogons forum: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
What KIND of Midi though? Was it before they changed MIDI or after they changed MIDI? At some point during the Windows98, the MIDI standard changed and there were two companies maintaining MIDI standards... I think it was Roland and... I forget the other. Take Heretic's E1M2's theme for example. They sound _vastly_ different between the two systems. EDIT: AD-LIB. That's what it was. Thanks for answering that later in the video lol.
Could you plug a real MT-32 to the USB port using a cheap interface? I plugged mine to a 30€ eMac, I use DOSBox for old DOS games and source ports for Quake, Duke3d etc... The "free" CRT is a nice bonus, great video!
I was lucky enough to snag one of these when they were first made. Amazing board. The virtual floppy drive makes things so easy.
Totally agree! It was a great surprise when I first turned the system on - and it booted straight to the Win98 startup disk! 😎
This takes me back. This is amazing. The creator of this device is actually a god damn global hero.
The makers of those disgustingly fake emulator machines should take note. This is how you do it.
100% agree! Amazing that Eivind could put this together in his spare time! 😎
100% agree!
you can find VIA C3/C7/Eden motherboards with soundblaster support built into the chipset way cheaper.
"No compromises" no physical ISA slot, nor LPT
Still has a lot to offer and seems like a nice project overall - love the Ethernet jack.
I wished it did have a physical ISA slot and a Parallel port
@@playy1797 Somebody savvy enough in their localities' secondhand (fleamarket/pawnshop/craigslist...) scene to get their hands on ISA soundcards will probably have an easy time getting their hands on period correct PC parts too.
I'm sure people could retrofit ISA and LPT in the same way they used to upgrade Atari STs to 4MB, fit 68020 030 and even PPC into Amigas, etc. There weren't slots for those, they had to fit breakout sockets and solder some of the connections, or in some cases solder all of the connections.
@@playy1797 So do I; I still have an old SB16 ISA card laying about, but no slot to fit it in. I've looked at those weird industrial chinese boards which have ISA slots, but they're more geared towards old factory hardware. There's also USB to ISA converters, but they lack hardware interrupt support, so a soundcard will not work in those. A variant of this board with an actual 16 bit ISA slot or a breakout ISA board would be cool.
A modern 64 bit CPU would be cool too, so you could dualboot DOS and Windows 11 on it (I know you can do that on many modern computers anyway, but DOS compatibility probably won't be great)
I want this board so badly
Same, seems a lot of people are interested, sadly i don't think the creator ever plans on doing another run of them.
Thats a joke?@@HammysHangout
@@mmuller2402 no
@@mmuller2402 If you read the vogons post, the creator makes it clear he won't make a new batch, but will open source the hardware for self assembly. So, bad news and good news.
You shall not buy
This is amazing and really brings back memories. These days we don't really get to experience the types of massive performance increases that were truly mindbending when the previous gen was the top of the line of what was possible. That joy of plugging in a sound blaster for the first time or new GPU. It wasn't just about increasing performance by a few frames. It opened up whole new worlds of possibilities.
Couldn't agree more! Glad this rekindled some happy memories for you (it did for me too!)
Personally I'm always satisfied by emulation or even source ports/remasters of old DOS games, but even still, it is really awesome that someone is passionate enough to make the ultimate modern-retro DOS machine. If this were capable of being shrunk down to pi size, it would be the perfect thing to put in my modded mini PC "radio".
Eventually it will.
As someone who grew up with these games and wants to play them again, but doesn't have the space for an actual retro pc in a small apartment, I've been waiting for something like this to show up for ages. It's wonderful to see it arrive, and for it to be as good as this is, but it's a damn shame it's not available after the first group buy. I really hope there will be more, though of course I understand the person behind the project not wanting to take on the stress and financial burden of organising something like this. Still, as much as it sucks to say, that makes me think that my most likely source for one of these or something similar will be Aliexpress at some time in the not too distant future, as with the schematics being open sourced no doubt someone there will put them up for sale. And I would SO much rather pay the people behind the project than some random Aliexpress vendor.
Meanwhile use a software virtual machine.
Might as well be, that’s typically what factories end up mass producing these things once the schematics become open-sourced. There’s the Pocket386 as-is but since I already own a Libretto I was more interested in the now discontinued Hand386 since it was in a GameBoy form factor. They’re the only real alternative I could’ve gotten for the WeeCee which is a predecessor to this project, or at least an inspiration I’d imagine.
I really love this. As others have commented, PCI is an interesting omission but with the various audio headers and onboard networking I'm not sure what PCI cards I'd actually add - perhaps a Voodoo card, although of course AGP versions were available. I'm guessing that going with ITX limited the design to one slot so I think AGP makes sense for those later Win9x games that are too much of a stretch for MiSTer. What a cool project!
Yep, it definitely has a bit more grunt than the ao486 core on MiSTer. I actually have a Voodoo 3 AGP running with this board now - it even copes with Quake 3 OK.
One for the next video!
This is not a native AGP implementation. Its PCI-E bridged to PCI running at 66Mhz. Its what the author declared and lets hope it really runs at 66. In that case its perfect for 3DFX cards. If only at 33 as PCI it would mean slight bottleneck, but not that much with this CPU. On non 3DFX it would be somewhat larger impact as they utilized the AGP bus more. Also, there seem to be compatibility issues, Nvidia cards do not work at all under windows for example. That being said, the author posts some benchmarks on Vongos and this thing performs somewhere on the level of Pentium MMX200-233. On non FPU heavy games it runs betters, so it behaves more like a Cyrix MII than anything else, so, any strong video cards makes no sense anyway.
The author should have went with PCI instead, he even has PCI design done but still the AGP board seems to be more prevalent. I wold rather see micro ATX board with few PCI slots where one can get S3trioV2 + Voodoo2 with it. That would be the ideal combo for legacy glide compatibility, and also, Voodoo2 has the smallest CPU overhead of the old 3D cards.
What an amazing project. I need this!
Thanks for the kind message Lu! I very much enjoyed your ITX Llama video too!
And sounds like you got in on the latest group buy? Congrats!
It's amazing to me that integrating an entire RP2040, with jumper headers, is cost competitive with just using a couple of USB-to-PS/2 dongles. I have little doubt that it really is, I'm just amazed that we are at a point in microcontroller technology that a chip that could probably easily emulate an entire 386SX (with a bit of help from a handful of extra chips and some PSRAM) is cheaper than some molded plastic and wires.
I agree! In fact on the other side of my desk I have a “Pico Micro Mac” - a full 128K Mac emulated on the 2040 😂
github.com/evansm7/pico-mac
PS/2-USB adapters from back in the day only worked because USB keyboards and mice were capable of doing PS/2 protocol over the USB pins. Modern keyboards and mice can't do this, and so need conversion hardware. But yeah, bunging an RP2040 in there with some custom programming is cost-competitive with finding or fabricating the specific custom chips to do the job. You can find a lot of RP2040 based custom chip replacements -- for the SID chip, the TI-99/4A video chip, etc.
The RP2040 with supporting components is only a couple of dollars, as you said - pretty mindblowing! :)
I found that interesting too 😊. I don't think you could not have it run a cycle accurate 386 emulator at legacy clock speed -- maybe an 8088 though. Also (in case it's not super obvious) you could not do all the things the sum total the system board does with the pi-pico. I think the biggest issue would be getting enough gpio pins to make the PIO do 32 bit addressing without multiplexing. This is significantly more likely with the 8088, which is already multiplexed. If you tried to do a 386 core you might very well get enough resources to do everything internal to the chip, but then you miss out on the 32bit IO capabilities of the cpu for external devices. The ability to tack on a serial memory is definitely how you solve the low internal ram issue but the IO bottleneck kills it for sure.
@@lindoran Correct - as far as I know, nobody's ever made an emulated x86 CPU or CPU/RAM/whatever combo that exposes any kind of system bus. I'd say the only way to achieve this would be using a fat and expensive FPGA. Would be orders of magnitude more difficult (and probably expensive) than using one of the Vortex-series SOMs.
Awesome!! Id love to have one of these for my rare Voodoo Banshee 32MB Card.
This is the best thing to happen to retro computing. As more and more older hardware will fail, these boards will be THE way to run older software. Judging by the Vogons thread it's not easy for hardware dummies like me to order a custom PCB, so a thorough video would be much appreciated.
Glad you enjoyed the video! Will try to do the “from scratch” build 😎
Depends on the service, with one major PCB manufacturer (NOT the one with a name close to PCPDAY) it's basically the same as ordering a finished board from a webstore.
Regarding the "will fail" the market for retro x86 computing is still very saturated with modern reproductions/compatibles becoming quite present. One of my major projects falls into that category.
I'd love to see more *modular* FPGA based stuff. Maybe one day we'd get x86 class computers with CPU daughterboards ranging from 8088 to Pentium 3
Except it's not happening in any usable way for most people.
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
Awesome project. Thanks for the video!
Thanks for watching! Glad you enjoyed it! 😎
I LOVE this as a project. I grew up with DOS games, being a 90's kid, and as time progresses, it becomes more and more difficult to not only play some of these games, but even just get them running and functional. Finding old PCs is difficult, and they pull a lot of power, and make a lot of noise.
This is... everything I want. Hearing those soundblaster tests for Duke3D, then the final test, just.. my jaw hit the ground. My dad had a PC that made sound that good... it was amazing for games. I'm sending this video to him, I'm sure he'll wind up picking it up at some point. I wonder if he still has that old 3DFX Voodoo 4 card...
Glad this brought back some great memories! I really like the ITX Llama. Next up I’m going to play The Dig 😎
@@jamesfmackenzieone of the best games ever
I never had the best computers as a kid, always middle of the road hardware . Having never originally experienced the games on top end hardware I dont really notice any issues when DOS BOX'in games from my childhood in the 80s and 90s. This is still a cool option for having some dedicated hardware and looks like a fun project.
I still have an 8088 based IBM plus a NEC V20 upgrade, and an 80286 PC-AT, a 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium D, Quad-core Pentium, and early Core i7.Nothing sounds like DOS more than a 5-1/4" DSDD diskette drive, buzzing away for five minutes. Can't believe you didn't try out Rise of the Triad. It's very sensitive to non-standard emulation.
Thanks for the tip! Will try out ROTT next time!
I've been waiting for someone to put something like this together. Incredible!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I love that kind of things. Reminds me of the good old days.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Great video, loved it. This project looks incredibly cool.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for the video 😊Awesome project and it’s impressive to see the level of detail gone into designing the board. Even if this is a limited run the design has been open sourced and will hopefully get further developed
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
A video about building your own ITX Llama would be super useful. Also i hope that some company or enthusiast group will start to manufacture this amazing kit so anyone interested could purchase it, that would be a dream come true for retro computing community.
Great video, the most informative and interesting retrocomputing video of this year so far! Many thanks!
Thanks for the kind words! Will look into building one from scratch 😎
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
This looks awesome! I've been hoping someone would release a full-featured DOS-capable system for retro computing.
15:21
I was NOT ready XD
Wow, I wonder how well this works for OG mugen.
It’s too awesome! Way better than I was expecting 😂
I'm wondering if this might let some of us relive the heady days when we installed Linux for the first time. I remember the excitement of getting it running on a 200mhz pentium 2. There were a few weird games on it back then that would be fun to play again on retro hardware. Not that old DOS games aren't awesome: they are! This looks like a fun project.
I wish I could still get a hold of one of these, what a great product!
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
Man, I wish that was for sale. I already have a wave blaster and some awesome video cards to go with it.
It only works with a select few graphics cards though. ATi up to R2XX and Voodoo but No nvidia.
@@foch3 that's ok. I have a gazillion video cards. I would be more happy if there was a pic slit for adding an aureal vortex 2 card with a voodoo. It just fits the board name better.
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
Pipe dream for me is, an all-in-one X86 SBC, complete with a button clock-able CPU @ up to 33Mhz-2Ghz, with a built-in Z80 & 68000 + OPL3 + RISC processors for coprocessor duties inc audio, MIDI FPGA, scaler FPGA, and an FPGA for raster tasks that has Voodoo, ATi & Nvidia cores complete with a 400Mhz RAMDAC. Give it a huge L1 an L2 CPU cache for hyper low latency, SRAM ROM & SD RAM drives for ultra low latency I/O, a built-in 32GB SLC base SSD NAND. AN ITX port & AGP port + PCI port.
Looks interesting however that will feel authentic only if there is a realistic CRT monitor emulation. Still DOS games look very crispy on all settings on modern monitors.
These x86 compatible industrial systems always crack me up. No matter how bare bones and stripped down they make it. Someone always finds a way to run doom on it.
😂
DOS gaming was the generation before mine but this project is so cool. Hopefully someone picks it up and sells kits, I would love to play with something like this.
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
I love that this has a real AGP port ❤
Time to add a Voodoo 3! :-)
How about an NVidia Riva TNT2 with 64mb video memory? It was my final upgrade on the old tank bx440-P2@450 oh the good old days of PC building.
Still have my first voodoo card. But sadly no way of using it
It's not a real AGP port. The SoC only supports PCI, so it's an AGP to PCI translation port using a converting chipset. There are some issues with Win98 using AGP features that it can't access due to this conversion process. So some issues with Nvidia drivers and 3DFX drivers have been reported.
As for the question at the end of the video... I would love to play with something like this, though space is always an issue. Would need a KB/M setup, the box looks small enough you could tuck behind a display, need another display etc for a handful of games I'd only peck at here-and-there. I wouldn't mind seeing Xeen running on this with that fricken ridiculously awesome wavetable though.
@15:21 I immediately began rocking out. Did not expect that to sound great.
Me too! It sounds amazing! 😂
That's really a neat project.
Only thing I'm missing is at least a PCI slot or two so I can slap in a good 2D board and a Voodoo - I'd love to see an (m)ATX Llama board
Would be really cool if it had more than one slot, for either main VGA card + Voodoo1 passthrough or Dual Voodoo 2's in SLI.
11:58 The man secretly built this PC to mostly play Star Citizen Prologue
The Roland Sound Canvas sounds amazing!
Yep! I’m a big fan of the X2GS!
Wow,you got me interested.Missing playing my old games.
Glad you enjoyed it!
That's an incredible little board!
Definitely can be optimized as well.
Using a rp2040 for just HID devices is probably even more overkill than the AGP video card 😂😅😊
Yep! Having great fun with this little machine!
Agree on the RP2040! You could probably emulate a 386 CPU on that thing! 😂
Looking foward to your nex video on this board :) :) :) :)
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it! 🙂
Pretty cool project. The only problem that I find with this kind of items is how expensive they become, they are custom made and running low quantity batches make them very expensive to produce in relation to what you get. For 40-50$ you can get an entire PIII with a GeForce 2 and a real SB16 or AWE64, and if you want to "modernize" it you can add a SD to IDE adapter and a PicoGUS.
Still really cool board.
Try building one for yourself and see how much it'll cost! ;) You're absolutely right though - these are non-commercial hobby projects and far from cheap. The most affordable solution is DOSBox or 86Box or something similar, it'll cost you exactly $0 and be good enough for most things!
@@eivindbohler A Pentium III you mean or a Llama? If it is a llama, of course, I didn't meant that they overcharge for it, as I said as this is built in very small batches it costs a lot more, and if you build it yourself you will save some bucks but still will be expensive. But if you mean a PIII... I recently bought an Intel dot station 2300 for 40$ new in its box, never used, I modified the bios and upgraded the CPU to a PIII 1Ghz that cost me 10$, also I bought an Athlon 1800 with a SB16 Vibra and a GF2 TI for 20$...
@@drgusman I was talking about hobby projects. I'm aware you can (still) get super cheap PIII hardware! :) That'll probably end in a few years though, look at where prices are for 486 machines now compared to 5-10 years ago...
@@eivindbohler Yeah, that's totally true, that's why I'm storing some of these, right now people sells them as junk but in some years they will skyrocket in price... Btw, just saw you're the developer of the Llama, kudos man, the project is impressive and as I said, never meant that it was an abusive price, I know how expensive these things are, I do myself developments, mostly for 8 bit computers, specially the ZX Spectrum and some lab tooling that is all on my github, nothing so big of course, but I know how much these things cost :)
This is realy fantastic! I remember my first 486-66DX2 and setting the sound could be a hassle. But this looks so sleek, and optimised. Amazing.
I would maybe install a SSD, if I had a USB CD/DVD burner ready. Otherwize I would install a CD/DVD Burner.
This is just for legacy, if you have old PC CD roms at hand, and things like that.
Cheers.
If someone were to re-engineer this into a portable chassis, ie "make a laptop out of this", it would be even more amazing and I'd be in line to buy one. So cool, thank you for documenting this.
Glad you enjoyed! 😎
@@jamesfmackenzie Thank you :)
Original hardware > modern retro hardware > emulation
I'm actually glad that emulation is taking off, because it means the market for real parts will be flooded and go down in price! Even so, these kinds of projects are super cool too, and I may have to pick this up at some point.
Sadly it doesn't always work that way. Somehow, beyond a certain age, many computer parts demand a premium even if they're still widely available on the used market. Once a few sellers ask for a certain price, everyone else assumes it's a good idea, and follows suit. 😁
@@another3997 Unfortunate, but it is what it is...
Awesome project and video! ITS GREAT!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the video! 🙂
@@jamesfmackenzie The whole thing, the video, the tests, the experience, the project are AWESOME... really good stuff. Thanks!
This is a fantastic demonstration of the capabilities of this board. I found the original thread on Vogons late last year and assumed it was a novel proof of concept but this demonstrates that it is clearly more. I've got multiple ITX cases I've been loathe to part with, that'd be perfect for something like this.
Some questions that come to mind:
* I wonder if the onboard RP2040 can be used as a PicoGUS?
* I wonder if the ISA bus is accessible and can be attached via a ribbon and backplane?
* I wonder if there is a PCI bus that could be exposed.
* There is onboard SATA, but is there onboard IDE for an optical drive to support CD-Audio games?
* I wonder what JLPCB would charge for a complete assembly?
I'll answer your questions:
1. No, it's not connected to the ISA bus. Nothing stopping you from modifying the design, though - and adding the PicoGUS components instead of the CS4237B (which, incidentally, is exactly what I'm doing with my in-progress project, the TinyLlama v3).
2. Not on this board, but definitely doable with a redesign. You should note, however, that the ISA bus on the Vortex86EX is stripped of quite a few pins - it only has a single DMA channel, for instance. That very much limits the usefulness of having several add-in boards.
3. Yes, the AGP slot runs off PCI at 66 MHz. There's a single lane (x1) PCI-express gen1 coming out of the Vortex86EX, being converted to PCI by a PI7C9X118 bridge chip. AGP is a superset of PCI, so you can run most AGP cards that support the AGP 1x standard by connecting the physical AGP connector to a PCI bus.
4. Nope, no exposed IDE coming out of the Vortex86EX, unfortunately. I _think_ you might be able to use an IDE optical drive together with a SATA/IDE converter though.
5. Totally depends on the number of boards you order. There's a minimum of 5, and obviously the per-board cost goes down a bit when ordering many at a time. I don't remember the exact amount I paid per board, but I think it was more than $150 and less than $200. Depends on the day-to-day price of many of the components as well, sometimes that will fluctuate quite noticeably.
@@eivindbohler What an incredible response, thank you!
* I had not initially considered replacing the Crystal sound chip with PicoGUS components but that is an interesting direction. My curiosity about the ISA bus was specifically related to adding a PicoGUS via ISA to augment the Crystal chip.
* Running SATA to IDE (reverse) is a great idea as it should allow IDE optical drives to supply audio output separately. Perfect.
* I hadn't considered that AGP is just a superset of PCI. My use case was to add an m3D card next to the AGP slot but I'm not sure if that's a worthy direction to go. I can probably get far more bang for the buck using an AGP based Voodoo3. (I have an m3D, I don't have an AGP Voodoo3 yet...)
* If the cost of a full assembly (minus the Vortex SoC itself) is $200-$250 or less, that is fantastic news as I had assumed it'd cost more than that.
Thank you for your detailed response!
Out of curiosity, do you or @jamesfmackenzie mind if I mirror this thread on Vogons for our future selves and fellow curious to find?
This is wonderful! I apologize but I wasn't able to figure out whether or not these are available or if there's a queue to join for the next batch. Is there any hope of more of these becoming available?
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
The problems arise when you have MS-DOS games with audio tracks on CD, which were connected directly via a cable from the CD-ROM drive to the sound card. The game would send commands to play a track, and that's how the music would play. I think this is the Achilles' heel for many of us who want to use real hardware but without relying on the physical media (CD-ROMs) from that era.
Yep, CD audio is a real gap. Especially since many ISO formats are missing it :-(
The ITX Llama does have a CD audio header. I’m considering a SATA to IDE adapter, so I can connect an old CD drive with audio out 😎
I had to look this up to confirm it's not emulation. The Vortex86EX is a commercial product (I assume for other things like industrial uses) that has a real CPU etc. on a tiny module, with system bus etc. exposed to connect. This is fun to have a motherboard to go with it and work with old DOS and games.
100% agreed!
Fantastic video, have a subscription. Yes - I'd love to see a build it yourself / via PCBWay style video.
Thanks for the sub! 😎
Will look into JLCPCB/PCBWay!
My old AT machines never sounded this good. :D
Especially the X2GS! Sounds super great! 😎
It's unfortunate that these things are de facto unavailable. It damn near hits all of the marks. About the only thing I'd add is an LPC header so you can use an ISA slot breakout board in the second slot inherent in the ITX standard. Even better would be a standard PCI slot and ISA slot on an extended board. You wouldn't be able to use both at the same time, but it would let you play around with early PCI based 3D accelerators, like the faster EDO based Virge chips, the Rendition Verite, or even a Voodoo 1. But as is, it's an amazing accomplishment: a nice dos and win9x gaming rig that you can hook up to the living room tv. Oh well, I guess my P5GX-M based rig running at 300mhz with 256 megs of ram with a voodoo 1, an ever changing primary card (right now a Rage Pro Turbo All-in-wonder), and a memory maxed Sound Blaster 64 will have to do ;p
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
Real smart of Ivan to make the AGP slot a 2x for real Voodoo cards. Can't wait to see what this baby can do with the modern remake of the Voodoo5. Additionally, are there plans for more support for more sound devices, such as the Innovation SSI-2001, Tandy 3-Voice, C/MS and GUS?
On the “next generation” Llama, I believe Eivind will remove the crystal chip and instead use a RP2040 for a built-in PicoGUS 👍🏻
The OSDev wiki is full of info on how to develop OSs for BIOS-PCs; that's basically the community's roots, yet on the forums for the last 6 or 7 years, every time someone says they want to develop a new OS for x86-32, there's always lots of people insisting the architecture is going away. This insistence isn't quite so strong as it was, but I think I might post a link to this anyway. 😈
😎
This is awesome! Shame that the creator isn't selling anymore. Hopefully someone out there will take it on with it being open sourced now.
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
This sounds like a great idea if you have a case that allows for a second mobo. You could have the modern hardware for modern games (assuming you find any worth playing) and have this for retrogaming.
I wasn’t even aware that dual mobo cases existed - looking at the corsair 1000d now!
Thanks for the tip! I am very tempted! 😂
I am surprised they arn't more popular for segregating work and personal computers. Back in the day I had 3 mid towers under my desk running into a switch for the keyboard/mouse and display. It seems especially with work from home or for dev test systems having 2 physical systems would be a huge plus.
I wasn't either! But this raises the question of why anyone would normally want to have 2 PCs in the one case?
Actually nevermind, I think excitedbox gave a good reason there.
I just found out about this project/board because of this video.. great! now.. where can I buy this..?
Unfortunately the initial production run is already done and shipped.
HOWEVER! Eivind has open sourced the hardware schematics on GitHub. So you could use a service like JLCPCB or PCBWay to build you own.
More details here:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
Good luck!
@@jamesfmackenzie can you order an assembled board with PCBWay?
@Nuevo_El_Nanogual
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
Honestly, I'd be more interested in it for Windows 98 than DOS. DOS games are by an large much easier to get going these days, while there's a large subset of Win9x games which simply don't work in the current Windows malware OS, or even WINE. I'd definitely use it as an all purpose DOS machine as well; but there's quite a few Win9x games that I'd like to play that aren't really playable these days without an old system.
I wonder whether you could boot from a SATA drive instead of the MicroSD slot? It'd be one thing if this was built out into a portable hand held system, but for a desktop, I'd rather have a regular SSD, or heck maybe even embrace the old school with some spinning rust. You can still get 500GB or 1TB hdds in 2.5" or 3.5" form fairly cheaply new. SSDs aren't much more expensive, but old school is old school.
You can connect an SSD to the SATA port, it works great and is definitely recommended for Windows since it hammers the swap file.
The processor is best suited for DOS, though. It’s similar to a P233 MMX in performance, which is a little slow for many Win98 games
Very interesting. Still looking for a tiny form factor solution that can utilize the Aureal Vortex 2 PCI sound card, and possibly keep AGP functionality. I can see this likely won't work.
Hope you'll take a stroll through windows 2000 too. This board makes me shed a tear... Does it support Soundblasted Awe 64 pro and its soundbanks?
It doesn’t support the SB Awe 64 Pro, but it *does* support wave blaster daughterboards. I added the X2GS with the Buran soundbank (the bank can be changed too)
What I'm looking for is this as a notebook with OLED and mechanical keyboard. If that comes take my money :) in the mean time I run the Book 386
I already have a Pentium III build but this would be fantastic to cover older DOS stuff that works sub optimally on my build. Gonna have to keep an eye out in case someone wants to make another production run.
PIII is a great sweet spot! I have a build in the works too :-)
This is very good and actually (for some games), are much better since it has real hardware resources instead software emulated ones
To all the people who lament about not being able to buy this, just go buy a slot 1 motherboard. They are cheep on ebay and most times they even give you the CPU for free. They are way way more afordable then a socket 7 board and getting a voodoo3 2000 is not expensive for sound you can get the picogus which is for sale by kit or prebuilt. There are a ton of usb to floopy stuff out there along with sd card to ide as well. All in all your going to spend probably about the same as buying this if not less and you get something authentic. For sound you could even look for a azgalexy board or something that is basically a sb16 in everything but name. I could be misremembering the name there but there were tons of clone sound cards during that time. Only issue is with old games that are CPU bound, but there are tricks for that and luckly the number of them like this is not great.
that sounds like the perfect unreal tournament and other 98SE computer.
Excitement when I watched this immediately quashed when i realised you can't buy one.
@@tilla77 Yes, unfortunately the initial run of boards is over 😢
However! The design is open sourced and available on GitHub. So you could use a service like JLCPCB or PCBWay to build one for you.
Would you be interested in a “build your own” video?
@@jamesfmackenzieI would!
@@PadPoet OK! Will see what I can do!
@@jamesfmackenzie Definitely!!
@@jamesfmackenzie Awesome, take your time!
I love that this project exists although it's only going to appeal to a minority. I was lucky enough to get one but sadly have not yet put it together. Waiting on picking up a voodoo 3 card at my parents.Your video will help a lot with putting it together as really clear instructions. I've followed it from it's original incarnation as a credit card sized PC! The only change I would change would have been to replace the sound hardware with an ISA slot and then include the sound hardware as an addon card. That way I could try GUS cards, but a small issue. Would love to know what case you are going to use.
Thanks for the kind words and good luck with your own build!
I plan to add a case in my next video - still looking at options!
Slightly OT, but when you mentioned sound cards I had to think of the fact we barely have them anymore, especially not "true" soundcards that did hardware acceleration. Good audio processing has somehow become a very rare occurance in games, with only a few outliers like Alien Isolation (who created their own audio solution for that game).
Agree! Dedicated sounds cards have definitely gone the way of the dodo :-(
I’m interested to learn more about Alien Isolation! What did they do that was custom?
@@jamesfmackenzie They developed their own audio solution that did real time reverb, depending on the layout of the levels and the source of the sound. None of it was "off the shelv" tech and completely developed in house (apparently because no current audio system satisfied them)
@@xXYannuschXx Wow! Very impressive! And another reminder to final play Alien Isolation! 🙂
@@jamesfmackenzie I can highly recommend it :)
I would recommend however to use the graphics INI tweaks and TAA injection. With current systems you can get alot more graphical fidellity out of the game.
PS: they also did some magic with the lighting system, where they used dynamic cubemaps (rendered during run time) to have dynamic radiosity; the light practically bounces around corners, like it would do with current day ray tracing methods.
Its mind boggling how far ahead they were with this game.
Sad you can't buy one....
There is some hope! 😅
Eivind open sourced the design schematics on GitHub. So you could use a service like JLCPCB or PCBWay to build you own 😎
More details here:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
Good luck!
@@jamesfmackenzieBut not with all the chips installed, right?
@@PXAbstraction Those sites will allow you to have them supply and install chips but iirc the price goes up substantially. I hope someone does another group buy to pull down the price somewhat 🤞
@@PXAbstraction they can make the PCBs and do the assembly too (i.e. install the components to the PCB).
Provided they have all the components in stock, they should be able to build you a complete board.
I’m tempted to try myself - if people are interested!
@@jamesfmackenzie Here's one vote for "I'm Interested!"
Would love to purchase one and then have a slightly bigger board with both pci and isa expansions. Micro atx i think.
that waveblaster was wild
It sounds great, right?? I was very surprised (in a good way!)
Nothing worse than seeing a product that I would buy immediately, and then find out it is unobtainable. Yes, I know it is "open sourced" but given that thread and the last few discussions involving building your own - I have zero interest (as I am sure many people would) in trying to source/track all that down. It is a shame the creator doesn't just sell an DIY assembly kit with everything - and leaves the most time/labor intensive part up to the buyer. I guess I will continue having to drag out my old PCs to play them games. I didn't even bother finishing this video once I seen the comments indicating this was another cool product that isn't truly available past what is probably a tiny group buy.
This right here.
Me too, at some point I stopped watching the video. I hate this type of videos.
It's like what happened to the weepc
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
@@someguy782 A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
USB-C power would be better and you could put a real floppy drive and/or IDE header where the ATX header used to be. Thin ITX would also be my preference. But those are minor quibbles, this seems like a pretty nice for gaming at least. Who knows there might be some old video rental store still running their POS on DOS that could use something like this as well. I suppose a USB Floppy drive would be sufficient for most people. an onboard USB 2.0 header would also be handy to plug in a 3.5" compact flash/SD card reader.
Great ideas!
I’m looking into whether I can use an AGP riser cable to make an ultra thin build 😎
@@jamesfmackenzie Someone on VOGONs already did it and had the Voodoo VGA out coming out the I/O shield.
This thing has LOTS of potential, but the missing floppy controller bothers me.
I would like a programmable floppy controller like the Paula chip in the Amiga. It can read and write lots of formats just by creating a mountlist.
If you need something more for a DOS system, get an industrial VIA board. These have extremely power-saving processors comparable to the Pentium ///. The boards are ITX, but better equipped:
- VIA C3 or EDEN CPU up to 1 GHz
- 1 GB 133 MHz DDR3 RAM socket
- 2 IDE ports
- Floppy Controller for two drives
- AGP graphics with 3D and MPEG2 accelerator
- LVDS, VGA, Composite and S-Video output
- Serial, IR and Parallel ports
- PS/2, USB, Ethernet
- PCI port
- Some have Firewire or Cardbus
What kind of expansion port bus does it use?
There are lots of insdustrial VIA ITX boards. I have an EPIA M II. It has a PCI bus, and on the ATX panel a CardBus (PCMCIA) and CompactFlash port. Onboard is next to the usual stuff one serial, one LPT (parallel), one IR, one SMBus connector. And of course the floppy connector. A gameport is not available.
The RCA jack can be switched between composite video or S/PDIF with a jumper.
If you want ISA, then check out industrial Single Board PC's. You need a PCI/ISA backplate. The SBC comes in the middle, providing a PCI bus on one side and ISA on the other. I have several SBC's, one with a Pentium I, several with a Pentium /// 1.4 GHz, and one with socket 775 modified to use a low-power quad core Xeon L5408 socket 771 and 8 GB RAM. It's no problem to run Windows XP with an ISA Soundblaster AWE64 Gold.
@@Michael.Werker by awesome coincidence, my latest video was on exactly this topic! 🙂
I waited through the whole video to hear the duck boot sound. Oh well. Awesome hardware. I really want one. 👌
Haha! My apologies, I should have gone with the ducks! 😂
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
amazing hardware, so many customize ability
Agree! It’s super cool!
I like it... I have been building computers since the early 80's. Even though I use the modern Apple and Windows operating systems, my job is to keep old computers like DOS and Windows 98 and other operating systems running... Believe it or not, my company has been in business since 1960. They rely on MSDOS and Windows 98 to keep their old equipment like heat ovens running... It is hard to find new old hardware that is reliable... Nicely done... I want one... Where can I buy this board? =8-)
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
I would love to get one of these. I’d love to play Trophy Bass 2 on one. It’s a speed sensitive game, and I’ve never gotten any type of emulation to work quite right.
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
I suppose AGP is probably a better choice in terms of card availability but feel that the lack of PCI is a small downside, I suppose if you could find an AGP Voodoo3 though you'd be good for those DOS Glide games.
It would be nice to integrate fast DOS device like this with MiSTer FPGA for other platforms. Share MiSTer's CRT shaders with DOS. Share MiSTer's MIDI abilities with DOS. And put everything into ATX. I would like one drive bay to be occupied with CD(BluRay?). I would like to have MT-32 display in another drive bay. Some games can print something there. And sound mixer controls would be handy there. Finally, third drive bay, maybe smaller 3"5 bay with TapTo NFC hidden inside decorative floppy reader. And decorative floppies with TapTo tags. And maybe some universal card reader. I currently have one by Akasa, in big 5"25 format
Is it possible to:
1. Install and run Windows (as per your summary)?
2. Install a pysical floppy drive?
3. Install multiple drives (i.e. SSD + CDROM + Floppy)?
4. Install the motherboard and associated hardward into a case (i.e. in addition to the onboard hat switches, is there a pinout for case mounted switches)?
Thanks for the questions! Here you go:
1. Yes, I am using Win98. However the processor is too slow for most Win98 games to run well - it’s best suited to DOS era games.
2. There’s no floppy header, so you will have to add a USB floppy drive or USB floppy drive adapter
3. You have one SATA port. The best you could do is: microSD card drive, SATA CD-ROM and USB floppy drive
4. It’s a regular ITX size, so can fit in a case. It also has regular front panel headers (power and reset switch, hdd led etc)
Good luck!
Dang! Everything except a parallel port!
Hello! This looks really interesting. I'd love to understand the experiences of using this vs something like DOSBox. Growing up, after the Atari 2600 and NES, my brother and I drifted more to PC gaming so I lived through DOS"s golden age of gaming (Sierra Games, Wing Commander, etc). At one point I even had an older Dell Pentium based tower PC that I put some voodoo2 cards in for retro gaming. That said, between DOSBox and Glide wrappers, is there something specific you get with this kind of hardware solution for playing games from this era?
For me, I like the tactile nature of a “real PC”. But I do use DOSBox a lot too! 😎
Its damn hard anymore but a dx4 100, 16mb ram, opl3 sound card and gus is absolute supremecy for dos gaming.
@@oldschooldude8370 I agree with this!!
@@jamesfmackenzie if you were able to source the build, it would likely cost more than a budget build modern system 😅 The Gravis alone would likely be $200
@@oldschooldude8370 yeah, those have really gone up! Lucky we have the PicoGUS 🙂
big fan of 90s ms dos games
hard drive clicker is the most geeky nerdy thing ever made
😂
I think this just solved all my issues in one go. I can use multiple SD cards for multiple game libraries. Does setmul work? Can we control the speed and cache from command line?
Wild how SoundBlaster compatibility is the missing piece. In the Nineties we would have thought that would outlive the heat death of the universe 😮
100% agree! I’m glad there are options like this out there 😎
Would it be possible to try out also some AGP riser card/extension cable with the graphics card? Thanks
I’ve ordered a small case to do exactly this! 😎
Sweet baby Jesus, can you imagine if the concept could be adapted into a GPD Win Mini-sized laptop...
Very cool! Sadly, it doesn't appear to be for sale anymore.....
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
My only complaint would be that there is no EISA slot. Honestly, AGP graphics were not much longer lived than VLB, and picking up an ISA card is far more feasible. If it had a built-in VGA circuit that could be used until you can get hold of a working AGP card, I wouldn't complain, as AGP is clearly the way to go for performance, but as I'm not likely to buy this till I can find an AGP card, and I expect that may take me a long time, I feel that's a bit short sighted.
Unfortunately there is only 1 DMA channel exposed from the Vortex86 SOM, and that’s used by the Crystal audio chip :-(
There are some interesting new projects out there that use a mini PCIe graphics card - check out the TinyLlama 3 and Pixel86 😎
Can you link where to buy the brand new 9200se card? All I can find are used or unopened from ages ago.
My card is new old stock card from eBay. Looks like you can still get them here:
www.ebay.com/itm/196235630456
Is there anyway to change the CPU speed on the fly without going to the bios. Like how you could with the "Turbo" button on old machines?
@@littlefreak3000 you can use an app like CPUSPD to do that 😎
The perfect evolution is a secondary microsd slot to read floppy images and cd iso
That would be a great addition!
This is the real deal , wow , when will it be available for sale?
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
is trully an amazing piece of hardware but not available commercially unfortunately - so is just for the lucky few :D
@@rodarkonero Agree! It’s is a very special piece of kit!
Eivind has open sourced the design - it’s available on GitHub. So you could use a service like JLCPCB or PCBWay to build one for you!
I’ve seen at least one person on the Vogons forum who’s done that - in a nice light/white PCB type 😎
Would you be interested in a “build your own” video?
Ahh saw this, no real point in watching more, nice I was excited.
@@peteratkin3788 The design is open sourced 😎 Would you be interested if I did a “build your own” video from the schematics?
@@jamesfmackenzie Yes please! :)
@@jamesfmackenzie you should definitely do that.
Amazing ! Where can we buy the board ?
A late reply on this, but with some good news!
A community member is planning to build and make the ITX Llama available for general sale. You can purchase here:
retrodreams.ca
Find more details on the Vogons forum:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93480
What KIND of Midi though? Was it before they changed MIDI or after they changed MIDI? At some point during the Windows98, the MIDI standard changed and there were two companies maintaining MIDI standards... I think it was Roland and... I forget the other. Take Heretic's E1M2's theme for example. They sound _vastly_ different between the two systems.
EDIT: AD-LIB. That's what it was. Thanks for answering that later in the video lol.
😎
Would love to see a comparison video with Llama vs DosBox
Could you plug a real MT-32 to the USB port using a cheap interface? I plugged mine to a 30€ eMac, I use DOSBox for old DOS games and source ports for Quake, Duke3d etc... The "free" CRT is a nice bonus, great video!
Yes! You could connect it via the game port - just like the good ol’ days 😎