Hi!
it is a bit difficult to make a motherboard or hardware without factory
equipment
Actually not. There are factories doing exactly that for their
customers. You just send them the design data and they produce the
hardware for you. Large orders obviously get better prices then.
But back to the bare metal topic: If you run a simulation of a 486 CPU
on some FPGA, the result still is just a simulation. Not in software
like QEMU and all those other virtual computer apps, but in hardware.
If you get a CSM, coreboot, seabios or similar for a popular modern
mainboard, you could boot DOS from it. Of course, DOS would still only
use one of your 99 CPU cores and "only" 2-4 GB of your 128 GB of RAM,
apart from very few apps which use Japheth's 2020 upgrade to the XMS API:
https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=17007
https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/news/2020/10/himemsx-memory-manager/
People also have played with using multiple cores in DOS:
https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/894522/The-Low-Level-M3ss-DOS-Multicore-Mode-Interface
I fail to find the newest thread about that on BTTR right now.
Anyway, time to share some insights from another thread on hardware:
We got the ITX Llama based on Vortex86. Expensive but real hardware.
Then there is the weeCee, also based on Vortex86.
The Alix SBC, which are end of life.
The Book8088 laptop, which has a nice price but feels like a toy.
OpenALT.CZ has a talk about the Pocket 386 laptop.
MiSTer has the firmware to simulate a 486 on FPGA hardware, see
misterfpga.org and MiSTer-devel on github. Terasic DE10-nano are not
cheap, Mouser has them as "P0496".
People have used 2nd hand thin clients like the IGEL ones to run DOS,
but may need to use SBEMU to get proper sound there with old games.
Some with Samuel 2 or VIA C3 CPU may even have DOS compatible sound, or
that AC97 chipset with half-SB compatibility, needing VIAFMTSR Adlib?
There is an entire playlist by Phils Computer Lab about not only the
IGEL but also many other thin clients and how well they run DOS or not:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5T8bmLxd_T2_rYmojZAzvkKsVBc3Atdg
One example is HP t5720: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/hp-t5720.html
but the price of that one is not small either.
For those preferring text, there are websites like:
https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hware/hardware.shtml
The VIASBCFG tool helps DOS to use VIA686 onboard sound:
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=73270
Used thin clients may be quite used up by the time they get sold and
they do not have much, if any, space for extension cards. Of course that
also means they are nicely small. Some have too much PXE in the BIOS,
taking up extra space which would otherwise be useful for UMB. Samuel II
at 533 MHz seem similar in speed to Pentium MMX 233 MHz?
The advantage of getting a "normal" used PC from the DOS era is that you
can add actual DOS ISA soundcards, if you want the real bare metal. The
period where you had ISA, PCI and PCIe in the same computer was nice :-)
A second hand laptop like Fujitsu Lifebook E352 might be useful?
If the degradation of game compatibility in modern graphics cards does
not bother you: People still play DOS games on their modern hardware (as
long as it still has a BIOS) with the help of SBEMU. That really is a
game changer, pun intended ;-)
On the other end of the range: Even the most simple modern computer
(think single board computers such as the Raspberry Pi Zero for a few
dozen bucks) today has enough power to run emulators which let you run
DOS. No bare metal, but very cost-effective.
Cheers, Eric
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