Building EVEN SMALLER DOS gaming PC! - weeCee Part 1

Using a Vortex86 System-on-Module to build a super-tiny MSDOS gaming PC. // Your trustable pcb prototype partner : www.pcbway.com/
Part 2 : • TINY DOS gaming PC bui...
Order your board here : www.pcbway.com/project/sharep...
Gerbers and BOM can be found here :
rasteri.com/weeCee_gerbers_0.3...
Source files here : circuitmaker.com/Projects/Det...
The ICOP module is an ICOP SOM304RD52VINE1
I can recommend DSL in the UK as a supplier of ICOP hardware : www.dsl-ltd.co.uk/
Enclosure is the Hammond 1457J1201.
Original mini PC build : • Mini MSDOS gaming PC -...

[@LGR]

Fantastic work, sir. The fact that it's even smaller than the Wee86 with so few drawbacks is mighty impressive. And knowing the number of folks that constantly ask me if this type of thing exists for sale? Yeah, if my own inbox is any indication, I think you could have a successful enthusiast product on your hands if you decided to sell assembled units. Even the Monotech NuXT is still consistently sold out, so I'd wager a more capable mini DOS PC like this would do well!

[@TheRasteri]

It's open source so anyone can sell them. And I'm happy to work with anyone who wants to :)

[@electronash]

@@TheRasteri Superb build. I love it. I'm also envious of your PCB panel designing skills. I've been attempting some of those recently, and it's pretty tough to get the measurements spot-on without using CAD sw. lol Can you say roughly how much the SOM304RD module costs? I see it has PCI on as well, which gives me some inspiration to possibly merge it with the Voodoo 4 VSA-100 chip. (I've been working on a Voodoo 4 clone for a while. Most of it is done, but a lot of checking left to do.) I have an old Pentium 200MMX build taking up space, so a tiny module like this with an ISA and/or PCI breakout would be ideal. Oh, and hi, Clint. ;)

[@ultimateman55]

I totally read this comment in your voice in my head.

[@electronash]

@@ultimateman55 All I hear when I read Clint's comments is the Duke Nukem voice. lol

[@TheRasteri]

@@electronash Price of the SOM304RD is around £200, although I imagine prices would come down a lot on bulk orders.

[@The8BitGuy]

Very Neat!

[@gavincoop10]

8 bit guy!

[@frostech3149]

@@gavincoop10 It is him.

[@marioalexanderski9598]

Ello, David Murray!

[@thenebula6980]

8 bit guy and LGR comment on same video! whole gang is here!

[@michaeljuneau4085]

My units are finally done, debugged and working! Machine #1 will be dos dedicated and tied to the roland modules I have and be dos based. Machine #2 will be leaning win98se and use the dream blaster s2

[@retrobitstv]

Love it! I had no idea there were system-on-modules that were so small these days. Great project.

[@Eis_Bear]

You should reach out to LGR, this thing seems right up his street.

[@LGR]

Absolutely 👍

[@kristianperryadams]

OMG of all the unnameable games I've ever lost track of, you just happened to play jazzy jack rabbit. Instantly recognized the graphics and my arm hairs are still stood after having written this, thank you so much for the memories 🥳

[@joeshmoe000]

Best DOS channel on youtube. Your skills with PCB design set you apart from EVERYONE else. I already bought two vortex boards and now I want more.

[@RetailArchaeology]

I loved your first build but this one is truly fantastic! I'd love something like this to tinker with.

[@RoyMaya]

WOW! This is way cool. Brings back memories of when I used to build pc's for a pc clone shop back in the early 90's. 386, 486, Pentium, etc...I built them all. And now I want to build another in 2021. Just crazy times we're living in.

[@jikissgamer]

I absolutely love your mini DOS PC builds. You are incredibly skilled.

[@WolfKenneth]

Nice! DOS and 95gaming was my childhood so many memories you hit nostalgia hard 😍

[@richardbaker974]

Absolutely great device you have created there, great work!

[@squid11160]

Can't wait to see it ready! I've got a soldering kit just waiting for a project :)

[@mylittleparody2277]

An awesome work! Thank you for sharing

[@user-mr3mf8lo7y]

Looks awesome, quite professional.

[@thingsido6303]

Oh I want one! I grew up using DOS on a 286 which my father bought for $1,500 brand spanking new. Can't wait to see the finished product!

[@borismatesin]

So tiny, but so powerful. I'm tempted to build one!

[@sylvainrousseau1]

I'm on the way to build one. I stay tune to see when the next version of pcbs will be available.

[@TheAfroman]

Beyond fantastic. I would love to build a few. Excited to see the final version of the PCBs.. if anyone makes a BOM list from mouser or digikey, I would love it. Also, looks like buying the modules in bulk is the way to go.. so let’s get to buying those bad boys!!!

[@QuaaludeCharlie]

Thank you so much , Loved the Wee86 , Love playing with my weeCee :) QC

[@benjaminargus9563]

What an awesome little beast. Retro gamers would love to buy and build something like this so thank you for showing how you built this

[@tj71520]

Incredible work

[@ChrisFredriksson]

Wow! Can't wait for next video!!

[@jessehart4476]

Wow this is awesome. I would probably have a ton of trouble making one of these but I would totally purchase one if they were being sold.

[@markedone9778]

LGR brought me here, you earned a new subscriber! keep it up man, awesome work.

[@AlsGeekLab]

This is incredibly cool! What a wonderful wonderful box! Where and when can I buy?!

[@vitz3]

This is incredible!

[@jpxdude]

Just fantastic. I really want one!

[@intel386DX]

This is fantastic!

[@jtsiomb]

Oh that's just beautiful. I think I might try and build one myself at some point when you release the final PCB design, assuming those system modules are not unreasonably expensive.

[@MartinPaoloni]

YES! I was waiting for this! 😁

[@DVSx86]

it is awesome! thank you for sharing!

[@jerrymuncey4136]

LGR sent me! thanks for your time and video.. great idea... i have been waiting on these to come to market....

[@johnkelly7264]

Discovered your channel watching a LGR vid. So glad I did. Subbed here!

[@patrickm9953]

Crazy Amazing work.. Super Impressive !

[@thepenultimateninja5797]

This is really cool. It's reminds me of the A9home RISCOS machine.

[@droid806]

Can’t wait for part 2

[@jengelenm]

Great video!!!

[@patprop74]

to think back in the early '90s when 486 were cool, we had them in tall towers nearly 3 feet high lmaooo and we just needed all that space, here we are 2021, your little 486 is about the size of a pack of smokes lol which was also big in the '90s and not so much in 2021. Great job.

[@nelsonpoll8526]

Just to give a shout out, I saw you on LGR. You are doing some great work Sir. Looking to get one of your boxes. Cheers...

[@PeTTs0n88]

Amazing build - I so hope that you, or some other party, can manufacture these to at least some degree, I'd gladly pay hundreds of dollars (and then some if there'd be any 3D capability) for a real DOS (i.e. with some decent ISA sound chip - preferably, personally, an ESS due to their surprisingly high quality SB and Adlib clones) mini-PC! I've got several old PCs running, but they're big, loud, unreliable (just recapping is a real hassle) and availability and prices are... iffy. I'm glad LGR showcased this, you've definitely got yourself a new follower here! :)

[@whiskeyjuliet]

Very cool! I've been playing around with a solution that allows real dos hardware to play IPX games with DOSBox over the internet. So I'm excited to see how it performs in your next video on networking!

[@TheRasteri]

That does sound very interesting - I was just planning on setting up the WeeCee and the Wee86 on a single IPX network but getting it working with DOSBox would be super fun. You got anywhere with it?

[@AdamChristensen]

Incredible! ❤️

[@michaeljuneau4085]

Just got my final parts, the SOM and its pcb mating connectors. Can not wait to solder everything in. Wish me luck

[@michaeljuneau4085]

And it's finally, finally assembled. I went slow as this was my first major task involving os many small SMT components. I posted in the Vogons thread, am now trying to make the sound chip work.

[@julesofduty]

This is so cool ! Wish I could make myself one

[@wimwiddershins]

Very cool!

[@segfault-berlin]

Love this, want one, dunno what I would use it for but its so teeny you could just leave it on your desk till its time for StarCraft or fallout 1

[@travismoore7849]

Good little dos box.

[@diegopaz8845]

great video!!

[@RyanMartinez]

Nice! I love retro modern builds! If only you could do the same with 68k Macs and a ripped bios... Building a modern vintage Mac. Seems the only thing we have right now is MiSter. And that's only Mac Plus.

[@agenttassadar7272]

This is excellent.

[@kimthieme4599]

Great work! You should make this and sell I think lots of retro people would love this and buy.. (including me)

[@wasabinator]

Looking forward to a thimbal sized gaming PC next

[@tuomollo]

Jazz Jackrabbit was compiled in Turbo Pascal that has a bug in the crt library in a function that calculates the loop count for the delay() function. There are patches available for this library and also for the software that was compiled with it.

[@nullsmack]

This is so cool.

[@mattd5719]

Love it!

[@Mtaalas]

weecee... omg, i'm dying.,.. your puns are just out of this world. dISApointment made me already crack up uncontrollably, now this... :D

[@triskalguilo]

Phenomenal! I've been scouring the internet for _months_ trying to figure out parts for building a PC very similar to this -- in fact, your design goals line up astonishingly well with mine 😁 Except for one: DVI output. Does the Vortex86 module do it? 'cause if it does, some money could be in your future to design another bottom PCB 😁

[@sczullkjengker8380]

You sir a unique. I real like your contents.

[@andrewdupuis1151]

nice dos system i wont mind getting one

[@Anonymous-ix8ws]

Very awesome, would love to see a decent FPS capable windows 98 version in the future!

[@TheRasteri]

The weeCee is aimed squarely at DOS, Windows 98 is just a bonus. I think there are already thin client mini PCs that would do a better job of Windows 98 than this thing.

[@DeathMetalDerf]

@LGR sent me here, and I'm so glad he did. Instant subscribe and bell-click for sure! Thanks for the heads up, LGR!!!!!

[@zxcvb_bvcxz]

I wouldn't be able to build this myself, I'd love to buy one in a case one day.

[@lustechsource5197]

Such a cool project. Great for people like me who do not have the space for a full sized 486PC.

[@maxmuster7003]

On a PC i switched in the mainboard setup USB legacy to on to use the USB mouse like a PS2- mouse example with the Cutemouse driver in DOS.

[@Miasmark]

biggest issue is how it would not be as universal so you need to have a module like that one to operate this. PC/104 you can at least try to have different modules from different manufacturers. The only seller in my area selling this seems to be a reseller for about $275.

[@Skull_Gun]

Cor' this is looking lovely, shocked you didn't go with 2 joystick ports for MicroMachines though!

[@bruwin]

You don't need 2 joystick ports to run 2 joysticks. At least for old sound cards and stand alone game port adapters, they would support a splitter that let you use 2 joysticks, just with 2 buttons for each instead of 4.

[@AxiomofDiscord]

I actually dreamt of this thing thought you find it interesting someone had a keyboard and monitor that looked like an ultrabook but it was mostly empty just had a battery and some USB ports. and they plugged a little box like this into the back. Retro laptop modern convenience and i/o brilliant.

[@atheatos]

Great work! These modules look very interesting! I wasn't aware. Thank you for the info. I might also have a look in the future. I find though PC/104 easier to use and I do not mind the bigger size. Either-way both are very small. For the MIDI, a small synthesizer that plugs directly on the game port... like my G_Dream_Max is probably the best option here.

[@TheRasteri]

I was literally looking at your channel an hour ago haha. Yeah I like the look of your G_Dream_Max it seems ideal. Although perhaps integrating the SAM2695 onto the board itself like you did on your soundcard would be another way...

[@atheatos]

Good timing then. I am subbed here so I watched the video immediately. I only had time to comment now >< Yeah G_Dream_Max is good as you do not loose the game port. It is finished, I am just waiting for some DB15 screws now -.- If you want one just contact me. Integrating the SAM2695, as I did, is also in theory simple. There is a reference design for this too, that I also followed. The only problem is the PCB density. Also soldering the chip by hand will be very hard for most people. Either way I think you can do this in the next revision.

[@sylvainrousseau1]

@@TheRasteri It may be nice if we can buy this (www.serdashop.com/waveblaster), remove the connector and solder it under your PCB.

[@johnwiesen4440]

I am have a MisTer DE10 nano for dos gaming. I am getting the Pi-MT32 audio setup for it. Your DOS gaming PC is very very good keep them coming. My soldering skills are not that good.

[@e8root]

I would love to see this thing benchmarked

[@Vermilicious]

With some VESA mounting holes, something like this might be very interesting indeed.

[@Fezzler61]

Boy, I'd love one of these with a RS232 port instead of the game controller port.

[@Redcactus5]

I would buy one in a heartbeat

[@thinktech2go]

What a way to top the WeePC

[@TurnerXei]

I'm a little late to the party so this will probably get buried but back in the early 2ks I built a "custom" DOS install. It turns out it is incredibly flexible. What I found was that OpenDOS/DR-DOS has the most kernel features (including native networking and multitasking support) and fastest boot times. FreeDOS was very slow to boot (and last I checked still is) but had a few useful userspace utilities. And I also discovered the now-freeware 4DOS command shell. Taken all together I had a very robust DOS-based system that I ran on a variety of hardware and I could boot it from a floppy disk or install on a 4MB hard drive in my "portable computer". Lastly, I used DOS Navigator as my main file manager for full installs, but it was too big for floppy boot so I used Volkov Commander for that. Use cutemouse with DOS Navigator for the mouse support! I still have my custom DOS boot floppies! I should boot them in a VM and install stuff...

[@TheRasteri]

Thanks for the advice! I'll check out some other DOS variants in a followup video.

[@TurnerXei]

@@TheRasteri Awesome! Here's a bit more info so hopefully you don't get tripped up by the confusing mess than Caldera made of the late 90s. There are *several* different variations of OpenDOS/DR-DOS with different names and version number schemes. Here's the ones you're most likely to run across: - Caldera DR-DOS 7.03 (1999): This is the last "full" version of DR-DOS. It's 5 disks and includes peer-to-peer networking and a multiplayer 3D space shooter called Netwars! It also has its own mouse driver (DRMOUSE)! And a lovely interactive help (DOSBOOK) and configuration system (SETUP)! Yes the mouse works in all of those! You can get the disk images at WinWorldPC. *I TESTED this myself on a VM, with 4DOS, NDN, and HX* - Enhanced DR-DOS 7.01.08 (2009): Despite the version number this is the most recent version of DR-DOS! However, it is only the OS, the boot files, kernel, and command interpreter, nothing else. It is based on the open-sourced OpenDOS 7.01, but underwent a ton of development and has the best FAT32, LBA, and multitasking support out of all variants. - Devicelogic DRDOS 8.0 (2004): This is based on the Caldera 7.03 LITE (without Netware) version. It's only 3 disks, but it does still has Netwars! I did a comparison of the contents between this and 7.03 LITE and they're nearly identical except that this one doesn't include CHKDSK, and it has kernel support for FAT32 and LBA. However, by all accounts it isn't very good so I don't recommend this variant, if you want FAT32 then install Caldara 7.03 and then install Enhanced 7.01.08 over it! - DR DOS INC's DRDOS 8.1 (2005): This is a complete mogrel. It illegally incoporated pieces from Enhanced DR-DOS (but not the latest one) and also stole stuff from FreeDOS and then tried to distribute them as their own. It was also distributed incomplete. AVOID!

[@robvdl]

The jazz jackrabit crash is well known and the executable can be patched. I used to be a Turbo Pascal programmer and any code that used the "crt" module would crash with a division by zero error on faster processors. Jazz jackrabit was coded in Turbo Pascal 7 which has this crash in the "crt" module, and you can patch the executable to fix this crash.

[@briangoldberg4439]

Awesome. What I would love to do is make one of these that has at least one ISA port so that I can plug in an OG SB Pro. It also might be interesting to see if one could interface a PCI slot for an external graphics card. I know that goes against the "Wee" part of it, but I really like my old cards and I'd like to have a small(er) enclosure to mess around with. Also, if you had an external video card, Windows 98 games could run better.

[@TheRasteri]

Yeah the module has a PCI bus so you could connect a Voodoo to it haha

[@37Kilo2]

Very cool Weendows 98 PC. I'd love if there were a kit readily available simply for convenience because I'm that lazy.

[@TimothyMakin]

I really want one of these for Speedrunning Prince of Persia!

[@douro20]

How about an external sound module built around an SCC-1? It's basically an SC-55 on a card and can actually be used without a PC with a bit of hackery to get power onto the board.

[@althejazzman]

This is a beautiful piece of design. Did you test the CPU temperature at all?

[@scheitinjebroek]

This is the ideal thing for me, since i dont have the space for a big tower

[@christophervillanti1417]

Using the Shell command in Windows 98 config.sys you should be able to boot directly into DOS 7 and eliminate the GUI overhead. shell=cmd.exe should be the correct format

[@ronm6585]

Thanks.

[@AxiomofDiscord]

Another option for slower computers would be to go FPGA I suppose but glad you found this gem. People kept telling me it was a fantasy that old hardware would still be produced or old hardware compatible hardware I suppose. Well fantasy appears to be at least partially a reality here. It would be nice if there was a line of computers that went through the ages of the x86 computers like something that tackled each 5 or so years of it that was sold commercial in the same way we get clone consoles on fpga and flash and ramcarts.

[@smartroadbiker]

Please make a kit :D

[@PixelReality1]

Groovy!

[@inachu]

Would love to buy one please!

[@tcl78]

Now all you need to add is a power switch, reset button, power led, hdd led and internal PC speaker and it is perfect

[@candyforchris]

I would buy this

[@piecaruso97]

You should try running openstep and linux on this thing, but those may require a floppy drive for that and so i don't know how you can install it (maybe use a vm on a modern pc to perform the installation)

[@randlepatrickmcmurphy834]

Awesome little box :) How fast would Quake II run on this? I'd love to see a Duke Nukem 3D network game too :D

[@mikeymike3240]

That’s amazing , if you build it, I will buy it, lol 😂, but seriously 😳, I would. Great video man. 😎👍👍👍🇬🇧

[@temporarilyoffline]

I missed it, does that thing need to be soldered on or is it a mechanical connection?

[@1BitFeverDreams]

I think the sound chip has to be dealt SMT style but not the CPU. There are holes in the pcb and it looks like he just pushes the CPU casing in, making the pre-existing screws snap in place without going through to the other side (there's a view of the underside while the CPU is already set in)

[@temporarilyoffline]

@@1BitFeverDreams thanks!

[@1BitFeverDreams]

@@temporarilyoffline Nope, you need 4x SOM connectors. Part number is Samtec FTS-138-01-L-DV referred to by ICOP and partners as "ICOP SOM304 SX/RD/MX+/DX2/DX3 Dev Board Mating Connector" PH2*38(1.27)-5.3MM

[@ajroach42]

I'd buy one.

[@siva9244]

I will buy 100 of them, if available on line, not for the size (size can be 3.5 inch by 7.0 inch) but for function and quality.

[@retrocomputerskarachi6158]

Innovative. Greetings from Karachi, Pakistan.

[@neophytealpha]

Sound Blaster still makes cards. Ad Lib, not so much. Clones of the old ones are around though.

[@Matrxmonky]

I have no clue what you're doing, but I'm on board.