PCjs Machines • Hacker News Board

Re: PCjs Machines

#31

Post by drivers99 » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 6:07 AM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #24

drivers99 wrote: post #13

I have my IBM PC set up (to go through a Peter Norton assembly language book again) but I got a file read error for the first time recently on the 20 MB (Seagate ST-225) hard drive and parity errors from the RAM (again). I have chips (pretty cheap, industry standard chips) I can swap out to fix it hopefully. Anyway, I could just be emulating it instead (lol). Cool, they have Exploring the IBM PC. It was a bootable di…

> Anyway, I could just be emulating it instead (lol). Yeah I'm wondering about that too. I'd say there's something special about using the real thing: have the old hardware working. Ideally in a 100% real time-capsule mode: say a Commodore Amiga back then didn't have a "Vampire 8000 GTX Turbo 16-valves" accelerator. My machines are all pristine time capsules, not polluted by modernity. But as you wrote: at some point…

Good points. I'm leaning towards keeping it original. For example, I recently got an 8-bit VGA card for it and did some VGA assembly code on it, but then I put the original CGA card back in, even though I have to use a couple external converter boards to actually view the CGA output on a VGA monitor. Having a 90s/2000s era MS-DOS computer for that would be better.

Re: PCjs Machines

#32

Post by hakfoo » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 6:07 AM UTC

drivers99 wrote: post #22

vunderba wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a couple of enthusiast friends who use CompactFlash-to-IDE adapters, and that’s one of the upgrades that almost makes it worth it. You still get the full retro experience (well except for the actuator arm seeking sounds), but on the plus side you don’t have to worry about failing magnetic hard drives. Also this looks pretty neat as well https://picoide.com

Well, this computer is too old for IDE (but see below). :) Looks like it's something called MFM, driven by an entire expansion card that hooks up to the hard drive. But I get what you mean. My oldest tower is running Windows 2000 (since it has a serial port on the motherboard, it comes in handy... for transferring files to/from the IBM PC.) and that has IDE so I could use that for MS-DOS as well (and would be able to…

Personally, if you want to go the XT-IDE route, I'd consider getting a SD-IDE adapter to pair with it, like $10 from your preferred fountain of Rubbish From China.

Some CF cards don't work well with XT-IDE cards, since they often depend on some specific 8-bit modes that are not guaranteed to work, but SD adapters generally support it. SD cards these days are also more available and probably cheaper, considering you won't even need 2Gb for many retro machines.

Another option is an "ISA USB" card using a CH375 or CH376 chip. This requires software support (a DOS driver or an add-on BIOS ROM) but you can plug in a cheap flash drive and format/partition it like a hard disc.

Re: PCjs Machines

#33

Post by anthk » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 7:11 AM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #24

drivers99 wrote: post #13

I have my IBM PC set up (to go through a Peter Norton assembly language book again) but I got a file read error for the first time recently on the 20 MB (Seagate ST-225) hard drive and parity errors from the RAM (again). I have chips (pretty cheap, industry standard chips) I can swap out to fix it hopefully. Anyway, I could just be emulating it instead (lol). Cool, they have Exploring the IBM PC. It was a bootable di…

> Anyway, I could just be emulating it instead (lol). Yeah I'm wondering about that too. I'd say there's something special about using the real thing: have the old hardware working. Ideally in a 100% real time-capsule mode: say a Commodore Amiga back then didn't have a "Vampire 8000 GTX Turbo 16-valves" accelerator. My machines are all pristine time capsules, not polluted by modernity. But as you wrote: at some point…

Disks rot with ease. Having an IDE->CF adapter for old computers it's almost mandatory today.