Re: [Freedos-user] Modern add-ons for ancient PC
One thing I'd really like to see is a single board computer that plugs into a USB and/or SATA cable on one end and a pair of PATA cables and a floppy cable on the other. You put a multi-terabyte hard drive or SSD (or several of them) at the USB/SATA end, and an old PC at the PATA end, then stuff the hard drive full of disk images. You then have software on the SBC that can receive ATAPI commands over the PATA cable to set which images get presented on the ATA and floppy cables, and some management software whatever operating systems you want to run on the PC that can issue those commands (or maybe a bootloader that can switch images). That way, if you're multi-booting, you don't have to worry about finding space to fit everything on an 8 GIB drive if one of your OSes (or your BIOS) can't handle anything larger: you just give each such OS its own 8 GiB image, which the SBC presents to the PC as a hard drive. I've seen similar floppy-only projects that allowed the user to select a floppy image on a USB stick with a pair of next image / previous image buttons, but never something on as grand a scale as described above, where the goal is to serve all of an old PC's storage interfaces with images stored on a single modern drive. Original message From: Michael Brutman Date: 10/2/2020 21:38 (GMT-06:00) To: "Discussion and general questions about FreeDOS." Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Modern add-ons for ancient PC The retrocomputing crowd has a lot of these projects now, and they generally work. Most are based on open source designs so the quality will vary from vendor to vendor. The 8 bit IDE cards for example are based on a project called XT-IDE that I was part of back in 2008/2009. (See the genesis of the project at http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?12359-8-Bit-IDE-Controller . The original version of the card had the traces optimized on my work laptop while it was idling.) If I were buying an XT-IDE I would be getting it from https://www.glitchwrks.com/xt-ide. I haven't purchased any of the recent variants; all mine are gen 1 from the first production run. And I've not tried out memory boards but they are generally known to work; they are not particularly complicated. Mike On Thu, Oct 1, 2020 at 4:34 AM Eric Auer wrote: Hi! Mentioned in a video mentioned by Rugxulo on BTTR, I noticed that there is a shop where you can get some circuit boards to do-it-yourself 8-bit ISA extension cards for your ancient computers for features such as more RAM, IDE or Compact Flash interfaces or even USB interfaces which are bootable. Interesting technical detail: They use EEPROMS which you can program without using a programmer, just with magic write sequences. Has anybody tried any of those products? Are they okay for the task at hand? Note that the shop usually has only the PCB, not the pre-built devices, so you have to get the components elsewhere and solder yourself in most cases. They also have a few ready to use products. https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/product-category/retro-ibm-pc/ Cheers, Eric ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Modern add-ons for ancient PC
Some of the Lo-tech boards and other replicas end up on eBay and are sometimes less expensive (at least in the US). Another small time maker, Monotech [0], has also produced boards. I sort of consider them semi-expensive. Especially considering that they don't seem to be original designs. They do seem to have some optimizations, bug fixes, etc. They also went through the effort of integrating several designs into an MicroATX form factor, 8088 XT-compatible board including IDE, SVGA [0]. Other original designs are here [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. [0] https://monotech.fwscart.com/category/cards [1] https://monotech.fwscart.com/NuXT_v20_MicroATX_Turbo_XT_10MHz_832K_XTIDE_MultiIO_SVGA/p6083514_19777986.aspx [2] http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/xi-8088 [3] http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/isa-fdc-and-uart [4] http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/xt-cf-lite [5] http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/isa-supervga [6] http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/sergey-s-xt [7] https://github.com/skiselev/micro_8088 [8] https://github.com/skiselev/isa8_backplane On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 7:40 PM Michael Brutman wrote: > > The retrocomputing crowd has a lot of these projects now, and they generally > work. Most are based on open source designs so the quality will vary from > vendor to vendor. > > The 8 bit IDE cards for example are based on a project called XT-IDE that I > was part of back in 2008/2009. (See the genesis of the project at > http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?12359-8-Bit-IDE-Controller . The > original version of the card had the traces optimized on my work laptop while > it was idling.) > > If I were buying an XT-IDE I would be getting it from > https://www.glitchwrks.com/xt-ide. I haven't purchased any of the recent > variants; all mine are gen 1 from the first production run. And I've not > tried out memory boards but they are generally known to work; they are not > particularly complicated. > > > Mike > > > On Thu, Oct 1, 2020 at 4:34 AM Eric Auer wrote: >> >> >> Hi! Mentioned in a video mentioned by Rugxulo on BTTR, >> I noticed that there is a shop where you can get some >> circuit boards to do-it-yourself 8-bit ISA extension >> cards for your ancient computers for features such as >> more RAM, IDE or Compact Flash interfaces or even USB >> interfaces which are bootable. Interesting technical >> detail: They use EEPROMS which you can program without >> using a programmer, just with magic write sequences. >> >> Has anybody tried any of those products? Are they okay >> for the task at hand? Note that the shop usually has >> only the PCB, not the pre-built devices, so you have >> to get the components elsewhere and solder yourself in >> most cases. They also have a few ready to use products. >> >> https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/product-category/retro-ibm-pc/ >> >> Cheers, Eric >> >> >> >> ___ >> Freedos-user mailing list >> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Modern add-ons for ancient PC
The retrocomputing crowd has a lot of these projects now, and they generally work. Most are based on open source designs so the quality will vary from vendor to vendor. The 8 bit IDE cards for example are based on a project called XT-IDE that I was part of back in 2008/2009. (See the genesis of the project at http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?12359-8-Bit-IDE-Controller . The original version of the card had the traces optimized on my work laptop while it was idling.) If I were buying an XT-IDE I would be getting it from https://www.glitchwrks.com/xt-ide. I haven't purchased any of the recent variants; all mine are gen 1 from the first production run. And I've not tried out memory boards but they are generally known to work; they are not particularly complicated. Mike On Thu, Oct 1, 2020 at 4:34 AM Eric Auer wrote: > > Hi! Mentioned in a video mentioned by Rugxulo on BTTR, > I noticed that there is a shop where you can get some > circuit boards to do-it-yourself 8-bit ISA extension > cards for your ancient computers for features such as > more RAM, IDE or Compact Flash interfaces or even USB > interfaces which are bootable. Interesting technical > detail: They use EEPROMS which you can program without > using a programmer, just with magic write sequences. > > Has anybody tried any of those products? Are they okay > for the task at hand? Note that the shop usually has > only the PCB, not the pre-built devices, so you have > to get the components elsewhere and solder yourself in > most cases. They also have a few ready to use products. > > https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/product-category/retro-ibm-pc/ > > Cheers, Eric > > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
