Kind of surprised this only takes 18K LUTs. That's a fairly small FPGA these days.
z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode
11–20 of 39 posts
Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode
#12Question: Are there today any 386 instances running somewhere in the basement to do some productive stuff, maybe processing only some controller data once a day? I remember the link some month ago where that one small shop ran completely on an old Amiga (?IIRC, not sure, was linked here) Around 98/99 I was involved in a small IT-management company serving SME around the region, we had a client producing distinct meta…
A few years ago there was a story where the single Amiga that ran an entire US school district's HVAC was replaced with a system costing like 1.5 million dollars, after 30 years of dutiful service. I can't think of examples offhand but you bet your ass there are donut shops and auto body repair services running 386s to do POS, inventory, and the like. Some of them may be driving terminals off Xenix.
Funny thing about this is that the character-based systems of that era, whether PC-type or host+terminal type, were most of the time so much faster and more responsive than the laggy, over-animated, touchscreen trash they always replace them with in order to get big screens and prettier graphics.
Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode
#13Question: Are there today any 386 instances running somewhere in the basement to do some productive stuff, maybe processing only some controller data once a day? I remember the link some month ago where that one small shop ran completely on an old Amiga (?IIRC, not sure, was linked here) Around 98/99 I was involved in a small IT-management company serving SME around the region, we had a client producing distinct meta…
There's likely plenty of them still in use in industrial/embedded applications.
Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode
#14Kind of surprised this only takes 18K LUTs. That's a fairly small FPGA these days.
How does it compare to something like VexRisc [0] with respect to its capabilities? I know having x86 support is a metric all by itself.
Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few years ago there was a story where the single Amiga that ran an entire US school district's HVAC was replaced with a system costing like 1.5 million dollars, after 30 years of dutiful service. I can't think of examples offhand but you bet your ass there are donut shops and auto body repair services running 386s to do POS, inventory, and the like. Some of them may be driving terminals off Xenix.
Funny thing about this is that the character-based systems of that era, whether PC-type or host+terminal type, were most of the time so much faster and more responsive than the laggy, over-animated, touchscreen trash they always replace them with in order to get big screens and prettier graphics.
The Amiga was not character-based, it ran an accelerated framebuffer (with support for scanning out multiple resolutions and color depths on a single screen).
Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode
#16Question: Are there today any 386 instances running somewhere in the basement to do some productive stuff, maybe processing only some controller data once a day? I remember the link some month ago where that one small shop ran completely on an old Amiga (?IIRC, not sure, was linked here) Around 98/99 I was involved in a small IT-management company serving SME around the region, we had a client producing distinct meta…
I think there are industrial pcs with a 486-compatible soc.
A ton of industrial equipment are still using win 3.1.
Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode
#17Did the microcode disassembly find any useful backdoors to read microcode without decapping?
there are several iterations of 386 and only one was disassembled
so there's still a chance
Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode
#18Question: Are there today any 386 instances running somewhere in the basement to do some productive stuff, maybe processing only some controller data once a day? I remember the link some month ago where that one small shop ran completely on an old Amiga (?IIRC, not sure, was linked here) Around 98/99 I was involved in a small IT-management company serving SME around the region, we had a client producing distinct meta…
I think there are industrial pcs with a 486-compatible soc. A ton of industrial equipment are still using win 3.1.
Consequence of the 'if it works, why mess with it?' mindset. It will become a problem when those boards give out and spares are gone.
Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny thing about this is that the character-based systems of that era, whether PC-type or host+terminal type, were most of the time so much faster and more responsive than the laggy, over-animated, touchscreen trash they always replace them with in order to get big screens and prettier graphics.
The Amiga was not character-based, it ran an accelerated framebuffer (with support for scanning out multiple resolutions and color depths on a single screen).
Sorry, I was generalizing the "typical" pre-1995 system one would find in commercial installations, which in general were character-based. But I'm sure the Amiga solution would have been nice and fast too, since they were pretty powerful and programmers back then didn't feel the need to bring in PhoneGap, React, or 5,280 npm packages in order to display what amounts to a form.
Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode
#20Question: Are there today any 386 instances running somewhere in the basement to do some productive stuff, maybe processing only some controller data once a day? I remember the link some month ago where that one small shop ran completely on an old Amiga (?IIRC, not sure, was linked here) Around 98/99 I was involved in a small IT-management company serving SME around the region, we had a client producing distinct meta…
A few years ago there was a story where the single Amiga that ran an entire US school district's HVAC was replaced with a system costing like 1.5 million dollars, after 30 years of dutiful service. I can't think of examples offhand but you bet your ass there are donut shops and auto body repair services running 386s to do POS, inventory, and the like. Some of them may be driving terminals off Xenix.
RE "....a system costing like 1.5 million dollars, after 30 years of dutiful service....."
I immediately wondered ... how long the new system would last or be used .... and how long it would be problem free ?