386SX-40 Single Board Computer with ALI M6117C Embedded CPU - Testing & Gaming

[@CosmoRiderDE]

You were being missed man.... Glad you are back and then with interesting content again, as usual. I love SBCs too. They are so versatile. Just recently played with them too here. From 286 til Pentium III - but these 386 with their modern features are quite interesting.

[@backmaskingklocucha1262]

I just love how in german speed is called "Geschwindigkeit"

[@necro_ware]

Welcome back Peter! Really glad about your return, we live in a strange time and I already started to worry. Coincidentally I saw this board on Ebay shortly and my first question was - where is the CPU? :D So i started to investigate and was really surprised to find it in the chipset. I didn't buy it eventually, but was really curious about it. So, just as always, thank you very much!

[@lactobacillusprime]

The Austrian English accent is great. More iconic than my Dutch English accent ;) Great to see another video - very interesting SBC system this one.

[@nattila7713]

it is pleasant to hear this accent for a hungarian too! (maybe coz I grew up with Swarzenegger movies? :) )

[@kaliban4758]

For me whenever I hear a dutch English accent I can not help but think hey that is an Amish person

[@enilenis]

Take all the breaks you want. We can wait. Excellent channel.

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you very much!

[@KabelkowyJoe]

9:00 Taken out of CNC machine XYZ axis? ENGEL, Battenfeld injection moulding machines, extruders i worked with in 2005-2010 was still based on i386 and DOS. Much more reliable than more modern Windows XP based.

[@TheDIMONART]

Windows 2000 operated CNC machine is also very reliable. I make few, and they run via LPT port

[@JaniHalinen]

Interesting video because I just recently received a JUKI-730-M4-R3 sbc. It is almost the same as this Rocky 318 but also has a integrated video/lcd controller.

[@CPUGalaxy]

very cool

[@pigpenpete]

It's been a while! Good to see this channel booting up again :)

[@AndyMarsh]

I used to read the engineering industry magazines back in the day and would lust over the adverts for these things.

[@cloerenjackson3699]

It's a forgotten but important part of PC history. It really is about the most ubiquitous platform of all, finding its way into all sorts of industrial applications most people probably can't imagine.

[@Kedvespatikus]

"A riser can cannot get damaged..." Just wait till a lighning finds it. Or a hammer... :) I remember when I found my first and so far only one ALi CPU (M1386 A1B). A big round O-face. I had never heard about ALi processors. Of course I knew them as chipset designer/manufacturer. My little beauty was sitting sadly in the recycling container of a nearby hipermarket. Now it is paired with 4MB RAM, a Realtek VGA, a Multi IO (some GoldStar), an SB 2.0 and a Gravis Ultrasound ACE and it is on display in my living room..

[@RetroSpector78]

Welcome back !!! Been missing your content.

[@justinchampion5468]

Oh Man! So glad you're back! Long time no Video! :D - Love your content, I hope you keep at it!

[@MrLukealbanese]

You're back!!! Hooray. One of the very best YT Tech channels, superb video, thanks so much!!

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you!

[@stefanlelieveld6779]

Welcome back. We missed you, nice SBC. Had 1 with a P1 a while back.. unfortunatly not anymore...

[@Xaltar_]

lol I love how we say "not playable" today when back when doom came out you were just happy your PC could run it and would play in a 1" wide window if you had to to make it less of a slide show. I distinctly remember being really happy with my monitor because I could overscan to the moon with it and zoom that tiny window to something more reasonable sized.

[@cypriankrenski3491]

It is good to have you back!

[@karolwojtyla3047]

I'm so glad you're back Peter! Greetings! ;)

[@LusRetroSource]

Glad to see your content show up on my feed again!

[@HighTreason610]

Very good to see you again, Peter. I was actually in a discussion with someone, just a few days ago, about this "SOC" and how it might function. As such, this video was a very nice surprise, indeed. The Disk-On-Chip comes back slower than I'd expect, but it might just be the implementation on that particular SBC. Hardly matters as it's almost certainly fast enough for whatever that SBC would have been used for. It certainly is always nice to see one in use in any case and SBCs on a backplane are invariably cool.

[@lx_srs]

Missed your videos, glad to see you're back.

[@mihaigabrielbabutia4595]

Happy to see you back! Another great video that made my day!

[@osgrov]

Welcome back! I've missed your delightful videos, so this was an unexpected joy. Never heard of that ALI chip before, that's very cool. Like you I love those industrial PCs and SBCs. They can be really weird and over-engineered, and often just fun to play with. Don't see many of them nowadays sadly, but I used to get decomissioned ones from a factory I worked at some 20 years ago. Those were fun days! All gone now though, sadly I never had space to keep any of them for long.

[@КовылинАлександр-з1щ]

Advantech produced industrial grade PCI cpu boards on Intel Atom and Intel Core gen 6th till 2019, unfortunately not available anymore, now they use their own CompactPCI standard.

[@anomaly95]

@@КовылинАлександр-з1щ Are you sure Advantech isn't just using the short version of PICMG 1.3 on the new boards? CompactPCI is a whole other standard, which is PICMG 2.0.

[@berinslaptop]

You earned your thumbs up. I have some old EZNET 200 units... those are NOT routers or switches by the same name but MSN produced internet Netpliance computers that have GEODE 6x89 or 5x85 cpus I forget. from the early 2000s

[@powerspec88]

New video! Was starting to get worried! Thanks for the amazing content!

[@c.zatara-673]

Always a good day when a new CPU Galaxy shows up! These industrial SBCs are so interesting =]

[@50shadesofbeige88]

Long time no see! Glad you're back!

[@alberthofmann420]

Welcome back, I already missed you! :)

[@kemi242]

Welcome back! I didn't know, the 386 was still produced as late as 2003.

[@anomaly95]

Of course you get a thumbs-up! Also, your voice and accent is very soothing. :)

[@cringemaki]

HE'S ALIVE BOIS! HE'S BACK!

[@SledgeFox]

Glad you are back! I really missed your amazing content. Thank you very much! Have a great day!

[@connclark2154]

Missed you. Good to see you back.

[@TemporarilyOfflineRetroTech]

This is almost the perfect DOS machine. I have a review of one of these on my channel as well. I think Windows would probably be OK, but right at the edge. 40MHz is an odd speed for a 386SX, but I'll take it. I can only imagine how much better this would have been as a DX with a math coprocessor... but there are 486 SBCs, so why wonder? Thanks for the vid!

[@CommodoreFan64]

Welcome back, and as someone else also pointed out the Win 3.11 software looks like it's for a 6 axis milling machine, and it does not take much to run one, so I'm not surprised they used this to keep it simple.

[@Zerbey]

Good to have you back again, we've missed you!

[@cmdr.tigirius6757]

Welcome back. Love the content. We cleaned our lab, unfortunatly nothing realy special.

[@paulverbruggen3726]

Hi CPU Galaxy! Glad to see another video posted - I really like your content!

[@MRooodddvvv]

YAAAAY! I was just recently browsing ebay and see that strange board without visible 386 CPU

[@mrbrad4637]

This is great. I have always wanted to know how a 386SX-40 would perform with DooM etc.. I had a 386Sx-25 back in the 90s and use to play doom on it.. albeit in a smaller window with graphics set to low (pixel doubling).. it ran playably when I used a Tseng labs ET4000 fast ISA video card and t turned sound blaster sound off as I had a sound sound blaster 16bit in it, but it slowed down Doom significantly

[@Zerbey]

Yeah, I remember playing in on a 386-25 and having to hit F5 to half the graphics so it was at least playable. DooM was really meant for a 486 or higher.

[@Aruneh]

Nice to see you back!

[@RetroTechBytes]

Welcome back, my friend! It's so great to see you again and hear you sharing such interesting content. I really found this SoC quite interesting; these industrial SBCs are very cool and quite robust. I found the Disk-on-Chip to be a neat addition and seeing you document its performance really answered a lot of questions. I thought they'd be faster, but the fact that there's zero seek time is still going to be pretty nice. The ALi M6117C is so neat for what it is; 386SX-40s are already odd, but seeing an embedded one couldn't have been neater! This video was a gem, but so is all of your content! Very cool stuff indeed. Thank you for sharing!

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you my friend ☺️

[@RetroTechBytes]

@@CPUGalaxy You’re welcome! 😊

[@armchaircommenter6805]

great to have you back, peter! 👏😀 great choice in video topic, too! these old architectures turned out to be amazingly long-lived in industrial environments where cutting-edge performance wasn't needed. funnily enough, i have an email to you in my draft folder right now about a somewhat similar 486 sx-based industrial mini pc (about nuc size) that runs at 366 mhz and is apparently still available to buy new today. i've been tinkering with it for a while now, found it to be quite a convenient little box for retro gaming (e.g. usb mouse/kb support, cf slot, the only real downside being that it is limited to pc speaker) and i've been wondering if you'd be interested in taking it for a spin. looking at this video, i'm thinking you just might be. 🙂

[@CPUGalaxy]

wow. that sounds interesting. Just send me please the email with all needed information i need. 😃

I was wondering in recent days what happened to you. Wellcome back

[@homeopathicfossil-fuels4789]

You sounded more like Joergsprave, the slingshot channel guy, in the way you phrased the intro! Hello and welcome to the [subject] channel! Today i got a [specific object] Let me show you its features!

[@SimoWill75]

Nice to have a new vid, welcome back! Not sure about the rest of the world, but here in Australia the AWE64 was said not as an abbreviation but as a rhyme, like AWEsome. Awe rhymes with Four.

[@ctiborkoza8944]

Nice SBC, Nice to see you back 😉

[@Vinicius_Schneider]

YEEEEEAH HE'S BAAAAACK

[@pablosufan]

Excellent!!! great Great opction to play old games from 90's.

[@BreakingBrick]

...and my night program is saved! Great to have you back!

[@clintthompson4100]

Welcome back. You were missed by all of us. You brought us this 386 gem and it's a awesome 386 board build with a back plane expansion board. Love how if you want something more powerful you pull out the 386 and put in a 486 and hook back up the drives. I always thought this way of building your computer was a nice option as well. Have a good one.

[@Barabyk]

Great to see you back! Missed those videos!

[@mattpierce5009]

Awesome, welcome back

[@xero110]

Good to see you back, awesome little system. 👍

[@pcuser80]

I like industrial embedded systems. And welcome back. Great channel.

[@FreihEitner]

Glad to see a new video from you! Interesting machine, an embedded 386 from 2003 or so. Also, I enjoy seeing the number of bytes of capacity which are "frei". :-)

[@Sebastian_L.]

Welcome Back! As always very interesting content, would be great to see if it can be overclocked somehow.

[@Hublium]

very interesting to see a machine like this. On my day job, I create software for industrial computers, though nowadays they most likely have an Intel Atom and Windows 10 LTSC. that control program seems to be made in Borland C++ or Pascal, as given away by the "check mark" and "X" button design

[@cristinadelvalleceballos3193]

Nice yo ser You again. Un abrazo desde Argentina

[@Ilanvain]

Welcome back!

[@madmax2069]

That reminds me of those Apple DOS compatibility cards back in the 90s

[@Lemonidas75]

Welcome back :) As always a great video. And Monkey Island at the end is always a welcome treat !! :D

[@Legal-104]

Missed you dude!

[@gabrielmaligeorges4362]

Welcome back!!!

[@CandyGramForMongo_]

Yea! Welcome back!

[@krystian7246]

Thanks for new video 😊

[@jrherita]

CPU GALAXY IS BACK!!!!

[@xenon2Merchant]

Still waiting for new videos from this super interesting channel.

[@CPUGalaxy]

soon. Thanks for your patience.

[@alexandermcalpine]

Great Video!

[@junacebedo888]

That IDE input card 4 pin power with SD card slot (11:25) is so year 2021!! I can't believe they created such thing. Will they make an I/O card IDE interface for NVMe? (THAT would be crazy!!)

[@notneb82]

Yay! The CPUGalexy drought is over!

[@RodBeauvex]

I do wonder if those benchmark figures could be improved by tightening the memory and bus speed settings. You did indeed have a few options, visible at 7:25, and everything is set to its most conservative (slowest) settings.

[@denyda1754]

Наконец-то титры вставил в видео. :)

[@artursmihelsons415]

Very cool card! That ALI CPU was surprise to me.. 😂 Yeah, I still remember Windows 3.11.. Back in days, that was cool improvement in MS-DOS.. But Doom is still nostalgic as many other DOS games..

[@Schule04]

The DiskOnChip is basically a ROM and Flash in one. The BIOS option ROM is also inside the chip and it emulates an IDE drive. I have a thin client with a similar chip and it would conflict with drives on the secondary IDE controller if it was plugged in. I think with an adapter it can be used in any PC.

[@sebastian19745]

I just found at a recycle center nearby a similar board, the same ALI SoC but a PC104 only form factor. I am still to find a suitable PC104 video card or maybe even better, a PC104 to ISA adapter. Maybe I will do one myself as a ISA back-plane. It can make a very low power and compact early dos gaming machine. I wonder if the IDE port of ALI SoC can support dual IDE devices (master/slave) so I could add a CDROM too. I have a very beautiful Creative IDE 4x CDROM that mach ms-dos time. Great to see that CPU in action.

[@alisharifian535]

I love computer chips that have my name on it, specially if they are microprocessors.

[@Mike_Isakov]

best channel on entire enthernet

[@anomaly95]

On ebay, I've seen some 2 and 3 slot ISA backplanes. Just imagine fitting 3 or 4 separate SBC's into a single AT case!

[@atheatos]

Welcome back. Nice video. A bit amazing how much they managed to fit in 16MB. I have also some of these DiskOnChips. It is the top models of 256MB. Unfortunately more than ~80MB is not supported by most systems.

[@shadowtheimpure]

One look at that software tells me it is probably for a 6-axis computer controlled milling machine.

[@CommodoreFan64]

That's exactly what I was thinking a milling/CNC machine.

[@ciprian1919]

Great stuff!

[@ms-dosman7722]

Interesting card! I wonder why they did not integrate VGA, especially since it's from the 2000s. Couldn't have been that much more expensive.. unless the machine it was made for still ran on a composite monitor? I'd say that Raptor runs a little too slow on a 386SX. Especially in the later levels with much more enemies and effects, you're going to need a 486 for it to still be enjoyable.

[@simontay4851]

At 7:25, in the Advanced chipset setup, ISA I/O High speed and ISA Memory High Speed are disabled. Enabling these settings might slightly increase performance in Doom. Also try setting RAS Active Time Insert Wait and CAS Precharge Time Insert Wait to Disabled and changing the RAS Precharge time to 2T, 1.5T or 1T if possible. What does I/O recovery do?

[@fnjesusfreak]

As for those Dallas chips, I think the idea of soldering them to the board is braindamaged and am glad that here it's socketed. (My PS/2, a 30/286, also has a socketed Dallas chip.)

[@johnwright8814]

I have seen many different Single Board Computers, usually as part of the Human-Machine Interface, and attached to a touchscreen. They often wait for communications to a Programmable Logic Controller and the sensors. The layout of that control software is typical. I don't play games on them though - the customer wants it back, usually yesterday,

[@Dydzio]

Jak dobrze pamiętam chkdsk był od winxp wzwyż, wcześniej był scandisk. Mam podobną płytę na 286 ale bardziej rozbudowana m.in. o grafikę, al nie ruszała na zwykłej płycie pc, musiałbym spróbować uruchomić ja na takim riserze.

[@aaron96244]

scandisk is the correct command for DOS 6.22. chkdsk is Windows XP+

[@NicoDsSBCs]

Those were used a lot for gaming back then. When there was a shutdown the technicians had nothing better to do than play games on the SBCs.

[@krz8888888]

Oh man don't do that, this is some of the best content

[@DanielLopez-up6os]

One Could make a HandHeld 386 PC with that Board. I might try doing that.

[@wishusknight3009]

These SBC's tend to go for quite a lot o money sadly. The passive packplane system I have though is a 386sx-16 and consists of several boards for the CPU module. Its rather crazy. It uses much more descrete logic than IC's. And was probably among the very fist implemented SX machines.

[@benharyo]

👍good review🙋‍♂️

[@1337Shockwav3]

Eugh, those DoC2000 chips. Lovely idea and certainly revolutionary back then, but I've managed to break various of them due to the flash cells reserved for boot sectors going bad when developing a DoC that would plug into a commodore PC-1. I think those cells can be rewritten 30-50 times maybe. In the end a prototype "somewhat" worked, but I didn't persue to develop it into an actual, reproduceable product. On the other hand, I remember the interface being extremely easy to implement on an ISA8 bus. Good thing your SBC also has an integrated IDE interface.

[@RETROMachines]

Nice video, please next :)

[@arniceousmaximus2183]

Raptor was so fun

[@karlnigan]

For Doom, you should try the recompiled version of fastdoom, it will run between 15-25fps with floor textures deactivated and details low :)

[@IndellableHatesHandles]

A board called Rocky? I bet it fights well! 🥊

[@williamnessanbaum7464]

3D print a custom case and get it all finalized for desktop use.

[@Ryanfox1981]

It may be a SBC, but for a 40MHZ SX ('almost SOC') system its really pretty impressive :)

[@twoina]

Schön, dich wieder zu hören. Da ist schon RAM auf dem Board, er würde also auch ohne RAM-Modul laufen? Braucht man unter Win 3.11 schon einen SCSI Treiber für den Onboard-Flash?

[@CPUGalaxy]

danke ☺️. Ja, das board läuft auch ohne den RAM Riegel. Für win311 braucht man keine treiber. Das kleine Flashdrive ist von BIOS Seite als normales Laufwerk eingebunden.