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80386DX ISA single board microcomputer

alexandrugroza.ro

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Re: 80386DX ISA single board microcomputer

#21

Post by hulitu »

timonoko wrote: post #11
flyinglizard wrote: post #7

Awesome project, although I personally can’t identify with putting such effort into reinventing the past instead of making something new. I suspect different people live in different periods. I’ve known people who always dwell on the past, those who are preoccupied with the future and those who are in the present and not overthink too much in either direction.

"Interesting History" is just before your own time (of sentience). I would consider rebuilding 1972 computer a worthy task. But not some 1990 beige box from China.

Why not "some 1990 beige box from China" ? Do you think this is not interesting enough ? An 1972 computer is more mecanically challenging . And finding ICs could also be challenging because some are not produced anymore at least in the west. Finding SW is also a challenge. In the end is a question of mostly time and component availability.

Re: 80386DX ISA single board microcomputer

#22

Post by anyfoo »

pjmlp wrote: post #12
wruza wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also confused by this statement and had to refresh my memories. In short, 386sx had 16/24 bus instead of 32, which made it 286 main board compatible. 486sx was simply non-fpu version.

As 386SX owner, it was also the no-FPU version.

That's the point. With the 386, it means bus width, the FPU was separate as the 387 anyway. With the 486, it meant whether it had an FPU.

I'm not getting into the whole controversial deal with whether the 486SX actually just had the FPU disabled, and what the 487 actually was, because there seems to be a lot of misconception around that that I don't want to inadvertently repeat: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/lies-damn-lies-and-wikipedia/

Re: 80386DX ISA single board microcomputer

#23

Post by mjhagen »

DeathArrow wrote: post #9

I wonder, apart from having fun and scratching some nostalgia itches, what are the outcomes of this? Do any of the things learned by doing this project help in working with present day hardware?

Of course, electronics haven't changed, just gotten smaller, but the principles remain the same.

Re: 80386DX ISA single board microcomputer

#25

Post by pkaye »

roywashere wrote: post #13

> And there is the original Duke Nukem (DN1, DN2, and DN3) which I always would have liked to have the ability to turn down the volume for. Playing without sound effects was no fun and with sound effects was disturbing for the other people in the house. Is there a good reason that most XT/AT era computers had no volume control for their PC speaker? I always wondered. My dad's XT had an incredibly loud speaker, I alwa…

It was just a single pin on the timer chip connected to a buzzer so you could generate a square way at a certain frequency.

Re: 80386DX ISA single board microcomputer

#26

Post by anyfoo »

hulitu wrote: post #14
DeathArrow wrote: post #9

I wonder, apart from having fun and scratching some nostalgia itches, what are the outcomes of this? Do any of the things learned by doing this project help in working with present day hardware?

You can run Windows 3.1 which has a GUI more advanced than win 10 GUI. But 32 MB RAM ? Is there any Win 3.1 app which can use so much RAM ?

Probably not so much. Most of Win 3.1 is actually still 16bit even in Protected Mode (unless you count win32s which came much later), so everything over 1MB cannot even be addressed directly. While you can probably come up with something that makes use of the 32MB under Win 3.1, that would likely be rather artificial and not very typical of what was happening back in the day, not just because 32MB was considered absolutely massive then.

I vividly remember thinking how freaky it must be to have a PC that tests 32MB at boot (and how long it must take), and I think that was even during Pentium times already, not sure... my 486 had 8MB while many still had 4MB.

Re: 80386DX ISA single board microcomputer

#27

Post by timonoko »

hulitu wrote: post #21
timonoko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Interesting History" is just before your own time (of sentience). I would consider rebuilding 1972 computer a worthy task. But not some 1990 beige box from China.

Why not "some 1990 beige box from China" ? Do you think this is not interesting enough ? An 1972 computer is more mecanically challenging . And finding ICs could also be challenging because some are not produced anymore at least in the west. Finding SW is also a challenge. In the end is a question of mostly time and component availability.

I just threw 1988 turbo-button computer into garbage. I kept in the closet for 30 years, because it was not mine, and I excepted the owner will come any time and collect it. Now he is dead and I do not believe in ghosts.

Re: 80386DX ISA single board microcomputer

#28

Post by Firehawke »

anyfoo wrote: post #20
roywashere wrote: post #13

> And there is the original Duke Nukem (DN1, DN2, and DN3) which I always would have liked to have the ability to turn down the volume for. Playing without sound effects was no fun and with sound effects was disturbing for the other people in the house. Is there a good reason that most XT/AT era computers had no volume control for their PC speaker? I always wondered. My dad's XT had an incredibly loud speaker, I alwa…

Somewhat. The internal speaker in the original PC was pretty much just a buzzer that was probably never intended to output anything else other than simple status beeps in office settings. It does not even have the ability to modulate its amplitude, i.e. its voltage level is either "full on" or "full off" and tones are usually played by doing that, for example, 2000 times a second to get a 2kHz square wave tone. There…

This. PC speaker was driven far beyond its original design and intention. Sound Blasters, and later built-in clones/compatibles, changed the general outlook of sound.

You'll see a shift to Adlib/SB audio start around 1987-1988, and by 1991 they were no longer niche. PC speaker support started to wane, but didn't entirely go away until Windows 95.

How do I remember this? I ran a BBS in the 90s, and my family was one of the early adopters of sound cards back in 1987 (Creative Music System, later rebranded to Game Blaster before Creative Labs came out with the Adlib-compatible Sound Blaster) and we ended up going through a few of the different cards over the years across multiple PCs.

Re: 80386DX ISA single board microcomputer

#30

Post by gigel82 »

yitchelle wrote: post #19

It is truly amazing that one person can bring up a 386DX board system. It is true that there are tons of docs available, but still to bring everything together and to get it running is truly amazing. The team size at any of the PC OEMs doing a 386DX design when it was the state of the art would be at least 25 engineers and managers, easily. Congrats to Alexandru for hitting this out of the park.

I've always wondered why no one came up with cheaper / mass produced 386/486 SOCs; are there any still-valid patents preventing that or is it too much work when we have powerful & cheap ARM SOCs that can emulate them...
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