8088 PC XT Compatible Logic Board | Hacker News Reader

8088 PC XT Compatible Logic Board

github.com

87 pointszdw25 comments

Modern remixes of legacy microelectronics like this are a hobby I'm particularly fond of. I'm sure I'm not alone in having assembled far too many Z80, 6809 and 6502 and of course 8088 projects than is probably healthy over Covid.

On the PC-XT specifically I highly recommend anyone who isn't already familiar dig in to the great Sergey Kiselev's project logs and documentation,[1] as he's often the root inspiration for many more recent remixes (such as the NuXT) [2]. He's also created clean redesigns of many ISA-compatible cards (sound, video, storage).

Some people take the hobby to levels I find mind-boggling, such as Alexandru Groza's efforts to essentially single-handedly recreate 386 hardware. [3]

[1] http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects [2] https://github.com/monotech/NuXT [3] https://alexandrugroza.ro/microelectronics/index.html

I built the Zeta V2 from Sergey although immediately after booting it up the first time, I had no clue what I was going to do with it. I thought about dropping in a ESP8266 into the ParPortProp board but still haven't gotten around to doing the work. I did build my own programmer for the ROM using a Teensy which was pretty fun. I think I want to use it as a TNC for packet radio but will need to add a Bell modem chip, preferably a real FSK modem lifted from the garbage rather than a microcontroller that can do everything under the sun.

And if you would like a full IBM compatible computer you can get one for $17:

http://www.fabglib.org/

https://hackaday.com/2021/07/28/emulating-the-ibm-pc-on-an-e...

https://au.banggood.com/LILYGO-TTGO-VGA32-V1_4-Controller-PS...

It's emulating a IBM PC on a cheap micro-controller.

The fact that all this is running on a ESP32 that costs ~10€ is mind boggling.

To support the author of FabGL you can buy his own boards:

https://www.tindie.com/products/fabgl/fabgl-esp32-33v-board-...

Seems like there's no ISA slot.

Other than nostalgia, XT/AT compatibility, DOS and ISA slot is still one of the major reasons to do this, to still use old expensive hardware that requires an ISA card and DOS software for interfacing.

I find it intriguing. Of all the computers of the 80's, the IBM PC was probably the least interesting. It wasn't particularly fast (BIOS character IO via the screen felt like a 9600bps terminal), was very noisy, very expensive, and had a couple horrible screen fonts (specially tragic because the fonts in IBM terminals back then were a thing of beauty).

We could do a TRS-80 Model 4 or a Model 16 and we'd have something more... interesting.

This reminds me of the 80s when every kid had a different computer and it was constant “my computer is better than your computer.”

I see your point, but I maintain that we can get a “PC experience” out of almost any desktop or laptop computer. The main difference would be that the laptop on my desk is orders of magnitude faster than its 8088-based ancestor but, nevertheless, an expanded version of the very same computer.

I think the appeal of something like this is that it is at the most minimal practical form. If you want to poke ports and see what happens, this is as close to the metal as it gets.

There are some interesting compromises relative to a "real" XT or something like the NuXT or Xi8088, that reinforce that near-the-metalness.

I have an earlier version of this project. I also have a 386SX clone and an assortment of modern PCs. Even the 386 is orders of magnitude more complex at the hardware-bringup and BIOS level. The 8088, it's all in two files and you can pretty much walk through it by tossing in an occasional call to dump a character to the screen.

> I think the appeal of something like this is that it is at the most minimal practical form

True, but computer for computer, I'd say the Apple II was much more interesting a machine than the PC. Even the last 8-bit II's could be implemented in generic TTL chips and it offered a nicer bus, and some clever graphics (do you remember any other computer of the time you could shift something half a pixel to the side?).

I'll give you that the CPU timing critical Disk II is a pain, but you can always incorporate a pretend SCSI card that maps to an SDcard and host all the software and all the data that was ever used and generated on every Apple II on the planet on a single card.

I entirely agree, but to many people in early middle age, it's literally all they have ever known.

The PC-compatible is the Peter Principle of computing. The worst computer survived, prospered, and now is computing. All of it.

And the lowest-common-denominator lashed-together OS, in a quick-and-dirty hack of a language, represents 99% of the entire range of language and OS design.

No wonder that the field has made no real progress in three decades, except "bigger, faster, more more more."

I actually had this one on my ebay watch list.

In terms of modern usage, this is far more practical than original hardware from the era, as you have new components, no mechanical storage, and USB support.

That said, I think there can be an uncanny-valley sort of thing with this kind of hardware: the lack of some of the physical ritual can make the hardware limitations all the more notable, with less of a nostalgic payoff.

This just reminds me that I have a real 8088 that I don't know what to do with. Last I knew, it even worked, but it hasn't been turned on in decades so I am not eager to risk it, even if I were to sanity check it for blown capacitors.

What’s the point of owning it then? Serious question, after seeing that article on junk that was on the front page earlier. Pull it out, fire it up. I had an 8088 “laptop” that I had a lot of fun with as a kid. By then it was obsolete but I got the OS running using one floppy and Megaman launching using the second floppy disk. Good memories.

I have a tube of ten of them waiting to be built into a Beowulf cluster.

1. There is a sizable community of retro-computing enthusiasts. It's a fun to being able bring back to action an old computer.

2. Computers evolve very quickly and they are small compare to other artifacts of human history so it is more feasible to have an interesting museum-like collection at home. I consider collecting some old CPUs - hope by the time I will afford to have more possessions they will not be too expensive.

The question wasn't "what's the point in owning old hardware?", it was "what's the point in owning old hardware if you're not willing to turn it on?".

It isn't often that you hear good memories being associated with the DOS version of Megaman. I don't mean to mess with your childhood memories, buy it was widely and rightfully considered an awful game. Capcom wasn't involved in the development of it, and it is a whole new game rather than a port of the original nes game.

Hahah! Well I was maybe 8 years old and just assumed I was terrible at the game. It was just magical to see a game run on a computer when I’d only ever used NES or SNES before.

I sorta feel like it's a historical relic at this point and want to preserve it, but you're right that it's just occupying closet space meaninglessly.

I've built an 8088 replica (Sergey's Xi 8088) and I'm having great fun with ELKS.

https://github.com/jbruchon/elks

ELKS is a Linux subset designed for the 8088, along with a complete toolchain (gcc-ia16). It's also actively maintained and comes with QEMU images and a dockerfile for fast, reproducible builds.

Best to test it on live hardware, it's more rewarding and more fun a toy Unix than xv6.

edit: typos

I have my first computer still, an IBM PC. The last useful thing I did with it is copy the 2015 demo “8088 MHZ”[1] to it. (I still had Telix installed on the hard drive so I was able to copy, via USB drive, the EXE file from my Windows 7 box which didn’t have a serial port to my XP box which did. And then use Hyperterminal and a null modem cable and 9 to 25 pin adapter to the serial port on the PC to send it via Zmodem (I think) protocol. (The demo runs most of the way but I get a parity error/crash at a certain point because it requires 640K and I have a little less than that due to some bad RAM. Even though I set the dip switches to less than the full amount, I think the demo tries to use all the memory space anyway.)

I was thinking of porting Forth (jonesforth) to it. I’d have to use 16 bit assembly language of course instead of 32 bit.

[1] https://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break-al... it’s able to do things I never knew were possible on the original PC. I wonder if it works on the device this post is about.

I love the old school everything in caps programming:

https://github.com/homebrew8088/8088-PC-Compatible/blob/main...

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