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[news] Weird AliExpress laptop with Intel 8088 CPU will take you back to the MS-DOS era [Updated]
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Filippo Zamengo
May 24, 2023, 3:33:21 AM5/24/23
to
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/brand-new-laptop-recreates-1981s-ibm-pc-complete-with-8088-cpu-and-640kb-of-ram/
Un nuovo portatilino basato sull'8088... Mah. Per un paio di centoni di USD.
Cose carine: slot CF (che funge da HDD) e USB, possibilità di un 8087, bus ISA (8 bit) disponibile per espansioni (schede) tramite dongle.
Notare in calce all'articolo l'aggiornamento con la segnalazione che il BIOS parrebbe essere stato piratato da un progetto open source (GPL).
Personalmente, la cosa più interessante sono i commenti; ne riporto qualcuno:
«
Eigenvogel
The fact that this is sold by a CNC company might be a hint. There's a niche market for DOS systems to run machine tools, lab equipment, etc. that have proprietary ISA interface cards. Back in the day I can remember trying to help people scrounge up old motherboards for such beasties. Such equipment can cost six or seven figures so there's often pressure to keep using it even if it's technologically obsolete.»
«SeanJW
vonduck said:
640k? that much? sure they didn't mean 64k?
1981 PC was available with 16k to 64k. XT was available up to 256k. But the expansion slots allowed up to as much RAM as you could stuff in it (just short of 1M because of the ROM at the top)
However the big caveat with that "as much as possible" is that IBM (not Microsoft or anyone else) reserved the top 384k for I/O expansion. Specifically, the segments at 0A000H and 0B000H were both reserved for video memory. The CGA never used more than 16K of the memory at 0B800H, and the MDA used 4K at 0B000H.
I'm mildly disappointed they didn't at least stick an EGA in there - they could have used 640x350 in 16 colours out of 64 then. The EGA did use 0A000H (in planar graphics modes), and used 32K of 0B800H in CGA style modes.
And note the lack of overlap with the MDA and anything else? Yes, you could stick an MDA alongside any colour graphics card and have dual-monitor setup on the original IBM PC (as long as you disabled the parallel port - both the CGA and MDA provided the printer port at 0x3BC). It was essential if you were a Windows programmer in the early days, as a debugger ran its output on the MDA and debugged Windows programs ran on the graphics card. It was important for a simple reason - nothing could capture the EGA state, switch it to its own, then restore it back when the program was running. The EGA was full of write-only registers.»
(Z80 vs i808x)
«SeanJW
Thomas Harte said:
… and then we saw segmented real-mode x86 and wondered how many legions of middle-managers it’d taken to committee out the requirements on that.
Nah, 8086 is clearly derived from 8080 - so much so that porting software could literally be loading a set of macros for 8080 instructions that mapped through to equivalent 8086. That was an important thing. Part of why MS-DOS APIs mapped through to CP/M ones and the COM format is identical. A portable CP/M program could just be macro translated, and boom, instant MS-DOS program. NEC took it to the next level with its 8080 binary mode.»
«watermeloncup
I was wondering about the USB port too, but then noticed that the spec sheet says "USB (CH375B)". That's actually a really cool chip which I've only recently found out about. It provides USB host support for simple 8-bit microcontrollers as well as DOS. Combined with a simple .sys driver, you can use USB mass storage devices like thumb drives in DOS. That would make exchanging files with this system super easy.
ISA cards with this chip are all over eBay for just $30. I haven't got one myself, but apparently it works pretty well once you find the right driver.»
CYA
Un nuovo portatilino basato sull'8088... Mah. Per un paio di centoni di USD.
Cose carine: slot CF (che funge da HDD) e USB, possibilità di un 8087, bus ISA (8 bit) disponibile per espansioni (schede) tramite dongle.
Notare in calce all'articolo l'aggiornamento con la segnalazione che il BIOS parrebbe essere stato piratato da un progetto open source (GPL).
Personalmente, la cosa più interessante sono i commenti; ne riporto qualcuno:
«
Eigenvogel
The fact that this is sold by a CNC company might be a hint. There's a niche market for DOS systems to run machine tools, lab equipment, etc. that have proprietary ISA interface cards. Back in the day I can remember trying to help people scrounge up old motherboards for such beasties. Such equipment can cost six or seven figures so there's often pressure to keep using it even if it's technologically obsolete.»
«SeanJW
vonduck said:
640k? that much? sure they didn't mean 64k?
1981 PC was available with 16k to 64k. XT was available up to 256k. But the expansion slots allowed up to as much RAM as you could stuff in it (just short of 1M because of the ROM at the top)
However the big caveat with that "as much as possible" is that IBM (not Microsoft or anyone else) reserved the top 384k for I/O expansion. Specifically, the segments at 0A000H and 0B000H were both reserved for video memory. The CGA never used more than 16K of the memory at 0B800H, and the MDA used 4K at 0B000H.
I'm mildly disappointed they didn't at least stick an EGA in there - they could have used 640x350 in 16 colours out of 64 then. The EGA did use 0A000H (in planar graphics modes), and used 32K of 0B800H in CGA style modes.
And note the lack of overlap with the MDA and anything else? Yes, you could stick an MDA alongside any colour graphics card and have dual-monitor setup on the original IBM PC (as long as you disabled the parallel port - both the CGA and MDA provided the printer port at 0x3BC). It was essential if you were a Windows programmer in the early days, as a debugger ran its output on the MDA and debugged Windows programs ran on the graphics card. It was important for a simple reason - nothing could capture the EGA state, switch it to its own, then restore it back when the program was running. The EGA was full of write-only registers.»
(Z80 vs i808x)
«SeanJW
Thomas Harte said:
… and then we saw segmented real-mode x86 and wondered how many legions of middle-managers it’d taken to committee out the requirements on that.
Nah, 8086 is clearly derived from 8080 - so much so that porting software could literally be loading a set of macros for 8080 instructions that mapped through to equivalent 8086. That was an important thing. Part of why MS-DOS APIs mapped through to CP/M ones and the COM format is identical. A portable CP/M program could just be macro translated, and boom, instant MS-DOS program. NEC took it to the next level with its 8080 binary mode.»
«watermeloncup
I was wondering about the USB port too, but then noticed that the spec sheet says "USB (CH375B)". That's actually a really cool chip which I've only recently found out about. It provides USB host support for simple 8-bit microcontrollers as well as DOS. Combined with a simple .sys driver, you can use USB mass storage devices like thumb drives in DOS. That would make exchanging files with this system super easy.
ISA cards with this chip are all over eBay for just $30. I haven't got one myself, but apparently it works pretty well once you find the right driver.»
CYA
Ammammata
May 24, 2023, 4:32:20 AM5/24/23
to
on 24/05/2023, Filippo Zamengo supposed :
vacanza
--
/-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ T /-\
-=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- - -=-
........... [ al lavoro ] ...........
> Un nuovo portatilino basato sull'8088... Mah. Per un paio di centoni di USD.
dovrò rivalutare il mio cassone col 486DX50... potrei tirarci fuori una
vacanza
--
/-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ T /-\
-=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- - -=-
........... [ al lavoro ] ...........
Massimo M.
May 24, 2023, 5:05:54 AM5/24/23
to
Il giorno mercoledì 24 maggio 2023 alle 09:33:21 UTC+2 Filippo Zamengo ha scritto:
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/brand-new-laptop-recreates-1981s-ibm-pc-complete-with-8088-cpu-and-640kb-of-ram/
>
> Un nuovo portatilino basato sull'8088... Mah. Per un paio di centoni di USD.
Non mi dispiacerebbe, ma mi lascia perplesso il 640x200
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/brand-new-laptop-recreates-1981s-ibm-pc-complete-with-8088-cpu-and-640kb-of-ram/
>
> Un nuovo portatilino basato sull'8088... Mah. Per un paio di centoni di USD.
Ammammata
May 24, 2023, 5:36:55 AM5/24/23
to
Massimo M. expressed precisely :
> Non mi dispiacerebbe, ma mi lascia perplesso il 640x200
CGA monocromatico?
BIG Umberto
May 24, 2023, 6:02:04 AM5/24/23
to
In date: Wed, 24 May 2023 10:32:17 on group: it.comp.retrocomputing,
dos6.22, windows 3.11 ed addirittura ben 4 mega di ram!
--
Ora, se dovessero apparire mille bellissime forme di donne, non mi
stupirebbero.
Ammammata wrote:
> on 24/05/2023, Filippo Zamengo supposed :
>> Un nuovo portatilino basato sull'8088... Mah. Per un paio di centoni di USD.
>
> dovrò rivalutare il mio cassone col 486DX50... potrei tirarci fuori una
> vacanza
Calma, un gioiello simile non lo chiamerei "cassone", io lo uso ancora,
> on 24/05/2023, Filippo Zamengo supposed :
>> Un nuovo portatilino basato sull'8088... Mah. Per un paio di centoni di USD.
>
> dovrò rivalutare il mio cassone col 486DX50... potrei tirarci fuori una
> vacanza
dos6.22, windows 3.11 ed addirittura ben 4 mega di ram!
--
Ora, se dovessero apparire mille bellissime forme di donne, non mi
stupirebbero.
mdkcom
May 24, 2023, 2:04:27 PM5/24/23
to
Il 5/24/23 11:05, Massimo M. ha scritto:
[CUT]
classe AT, con un 8088 così fatto, l'era dell'MS-DOS (secondo me) te la
godi solo a metà, un po' come non leccarsi le dita dopo aver mangiato le
Fonzies.
Saluti,
MuRdOcK
[CUT]
> Non mi dispiacerebbe, ma mi lascia perplesso il 640x200
Ecco, personalmente, per costruire un oggetto del genere, avrei usato la
classe AT, con un 8088 così fatto, l'era dell'MS-DOS (secondo me) te la
godi solo a metà, un po' come non leccarsi le dita dopo aver mangiato le
Fonzies.
Saluti,
MuRdOcK
Massimo M.
May 24, 2023, 4:40:39 PM5/24/23
to
Il giorno mercoledì 24 maggio 2023 alle 11:36:55 UTC+2 Ammammata ha scritto:
> Massimo M. expressed precisely :
> > Non mi dispiacerebbe, ma mi lascia perplesso il 640x200
> CGA monocromatico?
mah, IMHO o vai di 320x200 con cga 4 colori o direttamente passi al 640x480x16, il 640x200 e' una risoluzione strana, rischi che alcuni giochi girino male.
> Massimo M. expressed precisely :
> > Non mi dispiacerebbe, ma mi lascia perplesso il 640x200
> CGA monocromatico?
Massimo M.
May 24, 2023, 4:43:24 PM5/24/23
to
Il giorno mercoledì 24 maggio 2023 alle 20:04:27 UTC+2 mdkcom ha scritto:
> Ecco, personalmente, per costruire un oggetto del genere, avrei usato la
> classe AT, con un 8088 così fatto, l'era dell'MS-DOS (secondo me) te la
> godi solo a metà, un po' come non leccarsi le dita dopo aver mangiato le
> Fonzies.
ma li fanno ancora i 286? che sappia io ci sono ancora in giro i 386 (e hanno tirato fuori sto cosino qui https://www.hdblog.it/hardware/articoli/n569881/hand-386-console-portatile-retro-game-prezzo/) o gli 8086.
> Ecco, personalmente, per costruire un oggetto del genere, avrei usato la
> classe AT, con un 8088 così fatto, l'era dell'MS-DOS (secondo me) te la
> godi solo a metà, un po' come non leccarsi le dita dopo aver mangiato le
> Fonzies.
mdkcom
May 24, 2023, 5:42:51 PM5/24/23
to
Il 5/24/23 22:43, Massimo M. ha scritto:
sistemi embedded.
Carino l'aggeggio, certo che Windows 95 su un 386 è un bel chiodo :)
Ad ogni modo, penso che molti di questi aggeggi moderni che si vedono in
giro montino roba NOS o materiale di recupero (altri vanno di emulazione).
Saluti,
MuRdOcK
> ma li fanno ancora i 286? che sappia io ci sono ancora in giro i 386 (e hanno tirato fuori sto cosino qui https://www.hdblog.it/hardware/articoli/n569881/hand-386-console-portatile-retro-game-prezzo/) o gli 8086.
Si, mi pare che il 386 in particolare abbia ancora applicazioni in
sistemi embedded.
Carino l'aggeggio, certo che Windows 95 su un 386 è un bel chiodo :)
Ad ogni modo, penso che molti di questi aggeggi moderni che si vedono in
giro montino roba NOS o materiale di recupero (altri vanno di emulazione).
Saluti,
MuRdOcK
Ammammata
May 25, 2023, 2:51:34 AM5/25/23
to
Massimo M. laid this down on his screen :
faccia storie
ricordo che dopo aver espanso il 486 da 4 a 20 mega (*) certi software
raccomandavano di effettuare un controllo hardware in quanto la memoria
RAM riportata dal sistema era eccessiva :-)
(3) 4 moduli SIMM da 4 mega ciascuno: costo un rene, un polmone e altre
parti poco usate o ridondanti
> hanno tirato fuori sto cosino qui
> https://www.hdblog.it/hardware/articoli/n569881/hand-386-console-portatile-retro-game-prezzo/
OTTO mega di RAM è tanta roba, c'è il rischio che qualche programma
> https://www.hdblog.it/hardware/articoli/n569881/hand-386-console-portatile-retro-game-prezzo/
faccia storie
ricordo che dopo aver espanso il 486 da 4 a 20 mega (*) certi software
raccomandavano di effettuare un controllo hardware in quanto la memoria
RAM riportata dal sistema era eccessiva :-)
(3) 4 moduli SIMM da 4 mega ciascuno: costo un rene, un polmone e altre
parti poco usate o ridondanti
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