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A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

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Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#111

Post by jokoon »

Why can't they make the same thing but as a phone?

I'm desperate to have a cheap, open, frugal device that I can program easily that fit into my pocket.

I'm not willing to use Android studio just to make a simple app, or godot, or JavaScript or nodejs.

It's 2023 and Carmack is still right, there are way too many layers of crap, we just cannot use our phone like we want. It's awful.

It's such a paradox, smartphones are amazingly fast... But it's impossible to find something open and slow. Capitalism makes this impossible.

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#112

Post by okasaki »

inconceivable wrote: post #32
wang_li wrote: post #7

As a nerd of a certain age I’ve been deeply attracted to retro computing. Even going so far as to place bids on 30 year old Atari STs on eBay since that was a computer I had in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. But in recent days, through the use of modern emulators I’ve dabbled in these retro systems and I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re just bad. They are fine for the enjoyment of certain games and reliving or just…

nearly all of the old stuff just sucked. there's a reason we threw it all away (for the most part) and have turned to emulation. the new low power SoC systems with actual connectivity are much more interesting... probably why they can barely keep the stuff in stock. as a bonus, they can run emulation just fine. old, and new, in one package.

One thing that didn't suck that we threw away was 4:3 screens though.

And chunky plastic builds with easily user-replaceable parts.

And nice full 7 row keyboards that felt good to type on.

And rounded laptop edges so it doesn't kill your wrists.

And ports, lots of ports.

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#114

Post by RobotToaster »

detrites wrote: post #105
etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #52

I just checked, and you can buy a new Intel 8086 on digikey right now: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/rochester-electro... The product is not even marked obsolete.

For $95?? Looks like there are equivalents for $10 available, though.

IIRC, A lot of old chips are basically kept in small batch production for military, aviation, etc, hardware that needs parts repairing or replacing.

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#115

Post by NovaDudely »

wang_li wrote: post #7

As a nerd of a certain age I’ve been deeply attracted to retro computing. Even going so far as to place bids on 30 year old Atari STs on eBay since that was a computer I had in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. But in recent days, through the use of modern emulators I’ve dabbled in these retro systems and I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re just bad. They are fine for the enjoyment of certain games and reliving or just…

It always stuck with me when announcing the Virtual Console on Wii U that Satoru Iwata said it perfectly "It can be fun to relive your childhood but just for a little while".

It is fun to look back but we tend to forgive a lot of things that kind of sucked. It is like how some people who live through Hurricanes and then a decade later speak about how fun it was coming together even though it was just horrible. Memories can be deceiving.

"When you wear rose tinted glasses, red flags just look like flags" - Bojack Horseman

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#116

Post by tombert »

Man, I would kill for an out-of-the-box machine that's a tiny bit faster, with a bit more RAM, and has full Voodoo 2 support.

I know pcem can do a pretty decent job with voodoo these days, bit would be nice to have something that Just Works so I could play Messiah and Sinistar Unleashed in their full glory again.

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#117

Post by Krssst »

selcuka wrote: post #13

Curious. Why do we need an actual 8088? Aren't all x86 processors backwards compatible with 8088/8086? Also last time I checked VGA cards supported legacy modes such as CGA, and EGA (this may not be the case anymore). Any modern Intel laptop should be able to run the same software, without emulation.

There are subtle differences with newer CPUs such as: the 8086 does not AND shift operands with 31 while the 80186 and newer do. Not sure if it matters much for compatibility, just some trivia.

Source: 80186 hardware refence manual, appendix A "Differences between the 80186 family and 8086/8088"

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#118

Post by marttt »

chem83 wrote: post #34

DOS emulation is not a very battery-efficient way to play '88-98 games on the go, so projects like these seem to cater to that specific need, letting people run DOS natively. The Toshiba Libretto was a nice, small machine, but finding one in good condition is super hard. Toshiba Portégé was another, but after Pentium-II models, they took away the OPL3 card in favor of something more Windows-friendly (AC97), which doe…

Have you tested SBEMU? I wonder how well or hassle-free it works in reality. I'm interested in creating a SvarDOS [1] machine for some tasks, inclding some low-end audio processing, probably with some custom "program".

1: http://svardos.org/

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#119

Post by _the_inflator »

For me, this is the new Raspberry.

This machine could be useful especially for testing. While emulators have their merits, usually competitions use real hardware.

I am into the C64 and Amiga demo scene, and did some stuff on PC DOS during the 90th. Testing becomes more and more important.

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#120

Post by thorianus »

mnd999 wrote: post #110
wang_li wrote: post #7

As a nerd of a certain age I’ve been deeply attracted to retro computing. Even going so far as to place bids on 30 year old Atari STs on eBay since that was a computer I had in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. But in recent days, through the use of modern emulators I’ve dabbled in these retro systems and I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re just bad. They are fine for the enjoyment of certain games and reliving or just…

I dunno about the ST but my Amiga 1200 very much has an FPU and and IP network. I would be very surprised if that wasn’t something that you could add to an ST as well.

Amiga 1200 is in the ballpark of Atari TT/Falcon and yes STing for IP, browsers etc. were available. But ST was same year as Amiga 1000 which also had just MC68000 without MMU, both Commodore engineers (who designed... Atari ST) and Atari engineers (who designed in HiToro Lorreline - than then became Amiga) had own external MMU.
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