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z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode

nand2mario.github.io

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Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode

#21

Post by st_goliath »

bzzzt wrote: post #18
geon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder how many of those are actually still out there. According to Wikipedia, Intel kept making replacement parts (386 and 486) until September 2007, but personally, I have never come across one in actual use. My own career in this field began with an internship in 2008. My day job includes working on a PLC runtime with a code base older than myself, originally written for DOS, but every industrial PC (or other x86 based embedded device) I have ever got to play around with had at the very least a Pentium class CPU in it.

As for the Windows 3.x based industrial equipment: Some industrial devices I have worked on in the past turned out to actually be ARM based, running Linux, but the software went a long way to convincingly fake old Windows style UI or emulate a DOS prompt. I was once tasked to extend such a UI library to faithfully reproduce Windows 98 style color gradient borders.

Only once have I seen an actual embedded 486SX with my own eyes, but not in active use anymore. Last year, someone dragged a dusty, old, weirdo Siemens telephony box to the the local Hackerspace. The box itself had a design language that screamed "Star Trek: Voyager". I found a UART, it was running "On Time RTOS-32" which, according to the German Wikipedia, was an RTOS with a Windows API compatible userspace, developed by a German company in 1996 and discontinued in 2023.

Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode

#23

Post by skissane »

st_goliath wrote: post #21
bzzzt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder how many of those are actually still out there. According to Wikipedia, Intel kept making replacement parts (386 and 486) until September 2007, but personally, I have never come across one in actual use . My own career in this field began with an internship in 2008. My day job includes working on a PLC runtime with a code base older than myself, originally written for DOS, but every industrial PC (or other x…

> Some industrial devices I have worked on in the past turned out to actually be ARM based, running Linux, but the software went a long way to convincingly fake old Windows style UI or emulate a DOS prompt. I was once tasked to extend such a UI library to faithfully reproduce Windows 98 style color gradient borders.

IBM mainframes have an embedded PC (the "Support Element") used to manage the hardware configuration and diagnostics. Originally, it ran OS/2. In 2005, IBM replaced it with Linux–running a UI which looked like OS/2. (At some point more recently, they refreshed the visual look so it doesn't look like OS/2 any more, although I'm not sure when they did that.)

Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode

#24

Post by BirAdam »

geon wrote: post #16
KellyCriterion wrote: post #6

Question: 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.

No. That’s why companies like Vortex are still in business. There’s even a company producing new Win98 machines for this reason.

Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode

#26

Post by phire »

mycall wrote: post #14
UncleOxidant wrote: post #11

Kind 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. [0] https://github.com/spinalhdl/vexriscv

No contest really: RISCV is a much better ISA, VexRISC is a hyper-optimised implementation of it (for FPGAs), and it's not hindered by trying to be microcode compatible.

The roughly equivalent VexRISC configuration (full with MMU) is only 2736 LUTs, running at 124 Mhz (on Cyclone V, which I'm pretty sure is the same arch)

Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode

#27

Post by AviationAtom »

bitwize wrote: post #7
KellyCriterion wrote: post #6

Question: 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.

You missed a fun part of that story! The person who programmed it was a kid in the district at the time. They continued to hire him to come back and maintain it any time they had issues, which apparently was fairly rare.

Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode

#28

Post by RiverCrochet »

cbdevidal wrote: post #4

Of course they tested Doom :-D They might also run Linux kernel 3.7, that supported i386. Gray386linux is still maintained, and runs a patched 3.7 kernel. https://github.com/marmolak/gray386linux

If modern x86 microcode ever gets sufficiently understood and reverse engineered I bet someone gets a PLAYDOOM instruction working. (I know it's been at least partially implemented on FPGAs)

Re: z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode

#30

Post by bitwize »

asdefghyk wrote: post #20
bitwize wrote: post #7

Earlier 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.

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 ?

Ultimately that kind of question doesn't really matter. The only question that matters is "who will fix it when it breaks?" The Amiga system was a single machine running custom code written by one guy. If that guy dies or decides to quit maintaining it and it fails, hundreds of school kids are going to end up shivering or overheating for who knows how long. That's an unpleasant risk that may prove more costly than the $1.5mil it cost to replace it. The new system was written by a team, working at a company that specializes in this sort of thing, that has credentials proving it complies with relevant industry and safety standards, and a contract binding it to a term of service and support. That shit's worth its weight in gold to businesses and governments, even though it doesn't necessarily result in added functionality. So while it's fun to post "look at what they need to mimic a fraction of our power" memes about old systems like that, there's a reason why these are done by teams working at institutional organizations. It helps defray the risk.

In the late 90s I was interning at a place, and one of the IT guys there was old, we're talking white beard. He thought Linux was an absolute joke, and told me that the future of IT belonged to Windows NT (though it should have belonged to OS/2). The reason why is because with Linux, there was "no ass to drag onto the carpet"—no one to sue when it breaks. With Windows, the largest and most successful software company of all time was backing it up, staking their entire business on customer satisfaction. Of course, he ended up being wrong about Linux, but only because companies (mainly Red Hat) stepped up to assume the risk for big clients. That's one of the major functions of business—to provide an arm for customers to twist.

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