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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

#131

Post by AshamedCaptain »

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…

> DOS emulation is not a very battery-efficient way to play '88-98 games on the go

They don't mention the battery capacity or specific 8086 variant used but modern ones use to average 2W of consumption; there are zero power saving modes; and the guy even says that when using 8087 the mini-laptop must "be plugged in all the time".

So I rather doubt real hardware is the most efficient way, specially when e.g. with virtualization you can easily have 20+ hours of DOS on a subnotebook.

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

#134

Post by Moto7451 »

hypercube33 wrote: post #79
kitsunesoba wrote: post #38

A "real hardware" approach to retrocomputing like displayed here appeals to me because it much better captures parts of the experience lost to emulation. Things like insanely low latency thanks to there not being a fractal spiral of hardware and software abstractions sitting between everything. It's much more simple, and you can feel that. That said I'd also like to see some modern advancements brought in… for exampl…

One thing I'd love to see is a Pentium III class machine with a lot of cache and ram with a pcie SSD in pocket size. I feel like those machines were held back by hard drives of their day.

That sounds a lot like the Atom/Pentium 4000 based 7” notebooks you can find online from the usual large retailers.

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

#135

Post by robertlagrant »

_the_inflator wrote: post #119

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.

> For me, this is the new Raspberry

I think it's not really the same sort of thing. It's got a 4MHz CPU, for starters. I'm sure it's good for the exact cases you're mentioning, but the Raspberry Pi, even the W, is much more powerful and versatile.

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

#136

Post by coldtea »

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…

>No MMU, no FPU, no IP networking. Very limited CPU cycles and memory.

Isn't that the whole point?

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

#137

Post by kitsunesoba »

riceart wrote: post #82
kitsunesoba wrote: post #38

A "real hardware" approach to retrocomputing like displayed here appeals to me because it much better captures parts of the experience lost to emulation. Things like insanely low latency thanks to there not being a fractal spiral of hardware and software abstractions sitting between everything. It's much more simple, and you can feel that. That said I'd also like to see some modern advancements brought in… for exampl…

> mid-90s 68k or PPC Mac using components manufactured on a much smaller node would be incredible. Why not just use an FPGA?

As I understand, there’s limits to the efficiency that can be achieved with FPGAs which makes them less than amazing for usage in e.g. laptops.

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

#138

Post by lukeck »

AnthonBerg wrote: post #128
okasaki wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed! In my experience, a big enough 16:9 display also works as a 4:3 in practice – a 55” 4K OLED TV is great for this. It’s like a 2880 × 2160 4:3 display… with three little 960x720 4:3 displays next to it, heh. Window managers can enforce the split. It’s nice!

I used a single large TV for my monitor for a couple of years. At first I used a 50” 4K LCD TV. Some aspects of this were very nice. As you describe, being able to split the screen up into multiple areas or use a portion of the screen as a monitor with different aspect ratios was very nice. The downside with the LCD was the backlight on the areas of the display that weren’t in active use was very distracting. It was also nice having the flexibility for games, watching TV and movies.

I briefly tried my 65” LG OLED TV as my monitor. It didn’t have the backlight problem at all but the auto dimming of white screen areas was too distracting to be usable.

I’ve now gone to 2x 32” 4K monitors. It’s okay but either too wide if both monitors are horizontal or one is too tall if I turn one vertical.

I’d like to revisit using a large OLED again when their use as monitors has matured a little. With a little software tweaking for window management, it was almost perfect.

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

#139

Post by IggleSniggle »

bee_rider wrote: post #50
inconceivable wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fyi these kinds of pen cases have been popular in asia and asian communities worldwide for decades, usually for carrying mechanical pencils and their accessories (extra lead, erasers, protractors, rulers, mini notebooks, sticky pads, whatever) western equivalent would be trapper keepers with their pencil pouches.

You can also probably get little pencil boxes at an art store or some place like that. Would recommend. A little plastic box that prevents me from having to fish around in my backpack possible get poked when I want my pencil is great, and they are pretty cheap.

Speaking of fishing, this is slightly adjacent, but fishing tackle boxes come in a wide variety of sizes, are built to be modified, and are easily open to additional modification since the plastic is soft. And they are cheap.

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

#140

Post by ianai »

NovaDudely wrote: post #115
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. Memori…

Definitely, I always felt just a tinge of bad for how awful I was at the original Super Mario brothers. The NES and SNES games. After playing them on the classic consoles as an adult I realized they were just unforgiving and let my youthful self forgive that. I’ve done much better on the newer Mario games. SMB3 though really does shine.
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