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Forget Arduino & Raspberry Pi being the embedded platform computing standards, PC/104 has reigned supreme for over 25 years and is still THE industrial embedded computing standard.
Dave boots up a 17 year old 80386SX PC-104 board with Disk On Chip flash drive. Well, after a lot of frustration anyway.
And does anyone remember ThunderByte anti-virus?
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[@aatheus]

I remember PC/104. Arduino and Raspberry Pi weren't the first, but they were the first affordable ones. PC/104 was sold at industrial prices, that's for sure.

[@ANTALIFE]

So that's what the random PCB sitting on my desk for the past 2 years is...

[@EEVblog]

+ANTALIFE LOL

[@dialupdavid]

Dave, this video is amazing. I highly recommend more content like this.. These vintage machines are incredibly cool. Thank you so much for posting this!

[@ElmerFuddGun]

5:34 - Never trusted specs from a company that uses "Mhz" instead of "MHz"...

[@WurstPeterl]

ElmerFuddGun Agree 100%! It’s a good indicator that the spec sheet was written by the marketing department instead of the engineering department.

[@petrkubena]

@@davestephens3246 It makes them less reliable. It's like telling your grandmother what you do at work and then listening to her bragging to her friends about your work and not recognizing what is she talking about.

[@ashwinnarayanVlog]

I use these in my lab with real-time Linux for controlling robots! Very expensive but amazing performance compared to things like the Raspberry Pi! This is mainly because SBCs like the Raspberry Pi do not have their PCI / ISA buses broken out. You get them with high performance CPUs like the Intel Atom.

[@satibel]

to be fair, it would need to be more of a comparison with 50-150$ pico itx/thin mini itx intel atom SBCs than with 5-15$ Pis. But those don't often use standard GPIO connectors, so it's a trade off, still, if you are willing to do the trade off it may be cheaper. Another consideration you could have is Pci express Fpgas, which you can plug into any motherboard with a pcie slot.

[@MkmeOrg]

Pretty happy to have the massive Arduino community, access to my fav $3 Nanos and the option to go to a full Linux system for under $10. Good times these days. Cheers.

[@llothar68]

Yes, Arduino was a mentality change in the world of hobbyist electronics, like the china manufactoring was the change for professionals.

[@threepointonefour607]

and china arduinos... :D

[@redtails]

try doing that without china. arduino wasnt the cause of cheapness

[@TheKetsa]

what are the options under 10$ ?

[@threepointonefour607]

TheKetsa search for Arduino Uno or mega or whatever you want on Aliexpress. You'll get a lot of options

[@kevincozens6837]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I haven't thought about PC/104 for many a year. I didn't ever work with these devices but I remember reading about them a lot back when I used to read BYTE magazine. Back in the day the size of the boards was made to fit on the back of 5 1/4" floppy disk drives.

[@WouterWeggelaar]

Hi Dave, CubeSats actually do not use the full PC/104 spec. I build CubeSats and CubesSat systems, and I have to always explain to customers it is NOT PC/104. Only the mechanical mounting holes and the connector location of the PCI variant PCI-104 is used. The electrical specs are usually violated. So CubeSat boards generally do not stack into PCI-104 stacks. they do not have the ISA bus side at all. Most bigger CubeSat vendors like us are now using other connectors to save space or improve signal integrity.

[@WouterWeggelaar]

@@kasa6468 I've been directly involved in 12, of which 5 are still active and the rest retired after a successful mission. I've worked on at least a dozen more. the notification of your reply only came today, 2 years late. yay KZbin

[@WouterWeggelaar]

@oH well,lord! most CubeSats use various buses like I2C and SPI, UARTS and CAN. but physically it's indeed close to the PCI variant, albeit with another pin count

[@PlasmaHH]

I love how the battery holder sits halfway over the chip ^^ Also next year there will be the question why the new µCurrent uses PS/2 connectors...

[@Direkin]

Oh man, I remember seeing those PC/104s in the computer arcades here. Totally forgot about those things until now.

[@GermanToolReviews]

I've written a lot of software for PC104 systems, they were very reliable and not cheap. They would be manufactured to IPC class 3 standards with most companies doing everything in house to control quality. These boards would go in mission critical equipment. I probably have bunch setting around that were blown up during EMI testing that were considered "unrepairable."

[@anomaly95]

I bet the unrepairable ones could be sold on ebay for a few bucks.

[@GermanToolReviews]

Or I might send them to Dave.

[@WereCatf]

Would make for an interesting video. Dave's a wizard, he could likely breathe some life into them.

[@openSUSE5]

He's a wizard who values his time though, lol.

[@Manawyrm]

I really enjoyed this video! I always like a bit of retro computing goodness :) Thanks for showing!

[@jeffburrell7648]

Dave, I don't know if the title of this episode was a bow to Bob Pease, but thanks for reminding me of him and his words of wisdom. He is missed by those of us who are old enough to remember TVs that had both tubes and transistors in the signal chain.

[@ludz1047]

Absolutely amazing! I didn't know that these things still being used. My first computer was a 286. That was a very reliable technology and really makes me happy to know it stills alive. Thanks for your video!

[@FolixOrision]

Great video. I'm a Software Engineer. First time hearing of this stack-able system type.

[@RobAbdul]

This was so exciting to watch with the sting in the tail taken out. As you in the background did all the running around to get this bad boy to work! Thank you!

[@SuperToughnut]

This video was really fun to watch! Thank you so much for taking the time. Ah the simple DOS days. Eh, kinda simple. Remember autoexec.bat? Having to tweak it? My first computer was an IBM PC Jr. It could do color and sound. My Dad and I would spend hours typing in programs from old computer magazines. I learned so much. Now I'm a successful senior software engineer. That pcjr was the start of it all. Good stuff! Thanks again!

[@NetworkXIII]

Great job Dave, this video was a blast. Forgot all about the SYS command, but I'm a bit rusty on my DOS commands after 20 years.

[@saddle1940]

Reliability vrsus price and convenience. Most people now are trained to accept poor reliability over convenience, programmers included. I used to work on multi-user single processor databases that were designed to recover properly from any shutdown. That is, get 16 people to sit doing invoicing and throw the power switch of any any point and they would recover, without grabbing backups, OS included. Fully journaled datapaths, including journal recovery. You get what you pay for. I know it is not databasing, but you don't get that in a PI project with lots of module code written by "whoever". "Try version 1.1" or "Go back to version 0.87" type statements about fixing problems with addons or the kernel, makes me worry when people put them into machines that can hurt someone when they go wrong.

[@eight-double-three]

Wow. This was actually heart-warming. I did my thesis project on a PCI-104 board. That was fun...

[@maddog187killa]

We use PC/104 at work. Got tons of them.

[@mick7sp]

Also have a box of them that were used in a proprietary imaging system.

[@maddog187killa]

We use them at work as IOC (In/Out Controllers) for PLC's (Programmable Logic Controllers) in our controls system.

[@tohopes]

Which one do you use, the ISA, PCI, or PCI-Express one?

[@maddog187killa]

We use PCI. We use model MZ104-EV.

[@nishadnadkarni7874]

maddog187killa weirdly I was never taught this during my course on microcontrollers. What do libraries and languages are generally used to program these kinds of boards?

[@twocvbloke]

bootdisk.com has everything you need for making 3.5" floppy bootdisks... :)

[@MarkMcDaniel]

Nice.

[@matrix04923]

Really coooool video, last time I was thinking about what existed before Arduino & Rasberry Pi. Cool to know that

[@TKomoski]

Brings a tear to my eye to old days of PC's and DOS ...

[@hadireg]

Awesome! Thanks Dave for the Effort and the obsession !👍👍👍✔

[@tomgeorge3726]

Doesn't the lovely sound of the floppy drive head scanning bring back memories.

[@shakaibsafvi97]

@dave: this is yet another video of yours that makes me feel old and nostalgic.

[@totally_not_a_bot]

Oh, man. The feeling when you got that floppy to boot was awesome. I know the feeling of fighting boot disks well.

[@rabidbigdog]

PC104 (and others) embedded guy here. I always chuckle a bit when people excitedly tell me what they've discovered with their Arduino etc boards.

[@Milkex]

I just wanted to say the following: You've really sparked my interest in electronics repair/hobby! I've gotten a $40 O-scope (GOS-622G) that had a sticker which showed it was used in a University's electronics program! (hopefully the calibrations kept it in good shape, haha). I've accrued an almost entire electronics laboratory and have been repairing loads of stuff! I actually repaired a Wacom tablet that had been overvolted (faulty USB port), they had a previous repairman take a look at it and he completely ripped out the fuse solder pads! I made them promise to test their USB ports they would be using this device on and bypassed the fuse circuitry (they're a student so they couldn't well afford a new one!) I adore your videos and greetings from Arkansas!

[@genericgreensquid6669]

Cheers mate

[@douggale5962]

16:00 "...you really needed a high quality cable for it" The audiophiles go wild.

[@capistor1]

Enjoyed the video...thanks for your hard work!

[@DrewskisBrews]

Gee, Dave. Thanks for reinforcing my inclination to never discard anything, for one can never tell when it might be useful.

[@ethanpoole3443]

A Sayler A lot of us suffer from that same disorder, drives my family crazy that I still have so much gear, and tons of floppies, from the early 89s through today,

[@rolotomassi7824]

Mate! I love your Aussie style and obvious knowledge depth.... GOOD JOB! thanks for the tips and insights and entertainment

[@paulstubbs7678]

And I thew my Ampro little board out ..... I orginally bought it to make a dial up BBS system, however that never eventuated, then the rail inverter for the -12V to run the RS232 interface died, so I scraped the whole thing. As for PC/104, years ago when working for Telstra we were repairing these video scramblers (Pay TV) that had Ampro PC/104 boads in them. When they eventually got scrapped I made sure I scored the Ampro's out of them. These were pre the 'Disk on Chip' you have in your's, they contain one large eprom (apart fro the bios eprom) to boot from. I desected one and found apart from a header, they were basically a disk image. So I made some test boot disks on an old laptop, on 720k floppies. This was imaged, then written to the eprom - success! Later I looked at the PC104 pinouts and noted they looked identical to a PC ISA bus, so I grafted an old CGA graphics card on, and, again my luck persisted. I never did connect a keyboard as you did, I just made up self booting images/ eproms. Pity there is no picture insert button on these comments... it's all at arm's reach. I was going to make one into a bedside clock, at the time I thought it would be good bragging rights to say my clock run's on Dos, and is written in Turbo Pascal.

[@invetegon4596]

You Could always post links from Google drive or something to the images then add a reply or edit the comment.

[@svampebob007]

"I remember this looking better" every gamer reaction when they play their old favorite game.

[@FurrySergal]

I've contemplated asking you to make a video on this more than anything else. Thanks mate!!

[@chrisfreakinp]

I wasn't aware if this. Thanks for the video!

[@allesklarklaus147]

Always good to see an old computer finally booting! Even if it is just basic MSDOS with no programs. Love it

[@steptool1]

Thanks for that Dave!!!!! That was fun!!! Blast from the past!!!!

[@georgegherghinescu]

Awesome video, aaah the frustration of getting old systems up and running.. so many wasted nights..

[@jolesco]

When I saw the title of this video I came to think of "The Bob Pease show" RIP Bob Pease ("Analog by design show" was the original title if I recall)

[@ourflagismined4129]

Cool stuff, worth the effort to put it all together.

[@rocketman221projects]

Too bad it doesn't have a 486, you could have played DOOM on it.

[@OnekiKai]

It can run Wolfenstein at least!

[@tohopes]

He could play Ultima VI on it; that would be cool.

[@tin2001]

I had a socket 7 (Pentium) one. But I blew it up with a dicky power supply. Was a sad day, but pushed me to upgrade from a P100 to a Via Epia. I was only using it for a music player so didn't need the industrial interface.

[@basshead.]

Duke Nukem 3D is so much better gamer

[@OpenGL4ever]

@basshead Duke3d came a couple of years later. You can't compare them. If you want to compare Duke3d, then compare it to Quake.

[@highdesert50]

Nice trip down memory lane ... thanks!

[@ycmdill]

Done this thousands of times. Still have OEM 6.22 in shrink wrap.

[@keithnoneya]

Absolutely loved this video. I picked a couple out of the trash at work when some equipment we fix was upgraded. I was wondering how to hook them up and then what to run on them after I get it up. Thanks for the great video Dave. Best Wishes & Blessings. Keith Noneya

[@SaturnV2000]

Wow. Just wow. Brings back memories . . . I started my career with DOS 3.11/Windows 2.0. Trying to add things like a NIC, extra serial or printer ports, memory, was a major project. Then you had EMS and Extended memory managers to contend with . . . . Kids today don't realize how good they got it! We didn't have any of this fancy schamcy Plug-and-Play stuff - *everything* was manually configured!

[@Datan0de]

I remember seeing a PC/104 setup at our local science museum about 20 years ago. IIRC, it was part of an exhibit about satellites. I remember being blown away by the idea that you could have a full (if modest) PC in such a tiny form factor, and the idea of stackable modules was just amazing. Kind of reminds me of S-100 bus machines back even further.

[@DvdXploitr]

can't believe I had never heard of this before....but sure was a very entertaining video to watch and got to learn something new! Wouldn't mind seeing more videos about this embedded platform. If possible, get some more add-on boards and let's see what it's capable of doing :)

[@devjock]

Thunderbyte antivirus. Good times. This brought back a lot of good memories, tinkering with old pc's up in the attic. I remember my parents buying me an awe 64 for christmas once. I was the happiest kid in town.

[@notarookee778]

Thanks for reminding me how old I am:) I can vaguely recall when lots of systems running DOS 2.0 were frequently just as difficult as this example. I liked CPM !!!

[@raminrajabioskouei781]

Thanks for your effort to bring this puppy to live. I'm very happy how you solve the problems with your well taught knowledge. definitely you are the smart one.

[@younalazzawi]

Wow ... what a trip back to the past ... I really enjoyed the video ... What a triumph when we get the "C:\ " prompt and the flashing cursor! ... Yes I did lots of hacks on the ISA bus back then.

[@piotrludorowski9529]

Very informative video. Thanks Dave!

[@JWH3]

I have an XPS420 I use as a linux server still. Was funny seeing you still have one.

[@thomasgaliana6288]

Than you, sir. I love learning about systems other than arduino and others.

[@perhansson6718]

Thanks Dave! I will use this as a reference if a customer ever complains about the hours I charge for repairing their ancient PC-104 machines. Especially the second channel video tells it very well! But I have a strange love/hate relationship to it so it's all ok ;)

[@jeffreyhunt1727]

I used to look at those old microcrontrollers in trade mags when I was a kid. 20-25 years ago. I drooled over them although I didn't know exactly what I could use them for.

[@AdamChristensen]

Love the old PC technologies that are still hanging on today! Very cool.

[@tohopes]

16:50 love the engineering on that strain relief

[@TrueMachine2]

I did a trip down DOS road, and it is a lot of work... and lately hardware for such is even rare! Fun...!

[@DanielLopez-up6os]

This was an amazing video, on an amazing long lasting platform.

[@Zenodilodon]

The last time I saw one of these it was running windows 95 and part of an animated waterfall. It controlled all the relay outputs for doing the images as the water fell. I think I still have 3 or so running around here still.

[@imir8atu321]

On my end well worth your time well done thank you thumbs up.

[@petrosrz8990]

8:24 i did ask my boss about using or creating our own rpi DIN mounted plugin. He said well it's not that bad of an idea, but there isn't the support of our beckhoff ethercat modules.

[@rownadoherty]

PC104 works really well for small defence applications. I've seen it used in some industrial-type applications, but not many.

[@codebeat4192]

Very interesting boards, like to have one. Like the formfactor. My first a self-build 386SX (an AMD) at 33 Mhz with a Connor 40MB drive. At school they had a 386DX, a 386 with co-processor.

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

PC104 is adorable! I want the 386!

[@Flymochairman1]

The typical TMJ or "Ten Minute Job" Dave? It all started somewhere. Thanks for the glimpse into what was going on when we who were doing other things at the time these boards were made. There has to be a level somewhere, other than the "bigger, faster" viewpoint.

[@thomasbland6428]

I believe that VGA header was a commonly used arrangement back in the day. I remember working on motherboards with integrated video that used a header like that to connect to the HDDB-15 socket on a slot plate or back panel knock out.

[@lylewyant3356]

Nice video. Never heard of PC104 but working with DOS was a walk down memory lane

[@N0Xa880iUL]

Absolutely Awesome ...I liked it very much

[@redtails]

As far as interface speed goes, this thing is faster at loading menus than a modern computer is. Software is such bloat nowadays

[@user-mr3mf8lo7y]

Not only menus, whole system has been way more efficient. My first PC was 80286 with 1mHz processor, and 1MB of RAM. Now, I have 3.8gHz CPU and 24 GB RAM, at least 3000 times faster and more resourseful. But don't get efficiency x3000 compare to 80286, nowhere near thanks to software bloat... Agreed..

[@Madmax23419]

Arduino is already 12 years old and still going strong and growing, another 18 years to go. :D

[@grabacr1251]

Electrodude what happens after 18 years ??

[@laernulienlaernulienlaernu8953]

I like how you can stack them in any order

[@redtails]

27:25 This is pretty much Audiosurf

[@260830107]

I just did something similar, I got my hands on a PC104 board from an IPG fiber laser oscillator. It came with windows CE and it took me quite a while to get XP installed on it.

[@MarkEichin]

Wow, now I know where to start with the Ampro Littleboard I picked up at a flea market some time in the late 90s (no disk-on-chip though.) Now I also know how much work it would be and to leave it alone :-)

[@Bleats_Sinodai]

They use a similar standard for one of the boards used in Dixtal 2010 ECG monitors. I believe it's the power management board (I don't quite remember off the top of my head), which connects to the motherboard via the pins on the bottom of the board.

[@avibank]

Wow. Amazing how you can miss what you've been looking for. Here I was thinking latte panda was the ducks guts. I thought embedded boards were designed and manufactured individually on a per device basis. Now the world makes sense. Thanks Dave.

[@TechnotikaRU]

Cool video! Nostalgie for my old computer based on intel 386DX2...

[@mrmobodies4879]

I have actually got something a little bigger with the same isa 16 bit header, a 10Mbit lan controller module. It is a CSI Netplus Series 2000 Router with a I386. It was pulled out of an I/NET door controller system.

[@Necrocidal]

I still have PTSD from working with cubesats that had many PC104 stacked boards. Reliability in extreme environments drops exponentially as you stack more boards.

[@khx73]

lol... "three finger salute" .. haven't used that term in many years!

[@anomaly95]

There are also some PC104/PCI104 Arm, MIPS, PPC based CPU boards out there for other niche applications.

[@programorprogrammed]

Had no idea about pc/104

[@Draugo]

No love for the Banana tossing game in QBasic? :D

[@paweadamczyk4096]

Dave, could you make a video (if you haven't already) about the kind of filter that we can see attached to the end of the cable at 16:00? I've always been curious about them, have seen them on many cables but I was never quite sure what they were and how they worked.

[@JuanCarmonaJr]

That pc is about the power of my first desktop computer. Watching it boot took me back. Gotta go play Art of War now.

[@mrwonk]

Love to see some examples of interfacing external electronics components with boards/PC's like this. I'm familiar with Serial over USB; but would like to see some of the older, more reliable methods used.

[@george-broughton]

I have a bunch of PC/104 compatible systems. They plug into a PCI/ISA backplane and the single board computer cards have PC/104 slots on the side. Pretty cool. One of them I salvaged from a system that was "broken" and had been left out in the rain. Took it home, powered it up and found it was running Windows NT 4.0. The BBC used to use it in R&D according to the files on it. It was used for analysing the DVB-T network. The analyser cards were from Wavetek Wandel Goltermann. The other system I salvaged was used in the automotive industry hooked up through a TAXI interface to a Brüel & Kjær data acquisition box. Sadly I couldn't find the box that it goes with for a reasonable price. Had a beautiful modular ISA card inside though with six huge Texas Instruments DSPs on it, a 5w4 connector on the end and a shielded ribbon cable that ran to another ISA card in the box. Both systems were Dolch MegaPACs. I'm currently in the process of modifying one of them to take ATX boards. Already got it a 1080p LCD to replace the 800x600 one on the front.

[@hypercube33]

Setting up an old computer is such a pain in the ass he had to edit the ass right off

[@foxyrollouts]

I was cheering for the A prompt as well :)

[@chrimony]

Love them old floppy sounds.

[@ricorenet9004]

Didn't know about PC104 yet. Cool to see! The DIN5 connector reminds me of my first Computer, a IBM desktop with a 5" floppy drive and a big clunkin power switch. If I forgot to use discpark.exe to park the head of the hard drive I had to power cycle the thing until I heard the disc spinning up :p These days computers are so much more user friendly ^^ And the A prompt... that takes me back ^^ 24:26 nostalgic to hear the sound but I don't miss it ;) "I think it likes that" LOL

[@frederickevans4113]

My first PC was an 80286 with 640K of RAM. I upgraded it to 1MB of RAM and installed Windows 3.0 on it (40MB HDD). Some of my classmates at school had PCs running MFM and/or RLL hard disk drives (which I got to see the innards of). I think mine was running the newfangled IDE interface on the HDD. Remember SIPP RAM modules? My introduction (as far as I can remember) was via DOS v.3.1 or thereabouts. I worked my way up through DOS 3.3, 4.x, 5.x, up to 6.22, Windows 95, 95a, 95b, the rare 95c, 98, 98SE, NT4.5, 2000, Major Error (a.k.a.: Millennium Edition), XP, and so forth, up to 10 and Server 2016. Never saw a PC/104 system (also never heard of it before). Seeing the floppy, IDE, and DIN connectors, as well as the BIOS, POST, and DOS boot screens brings back memories...

[@TheEPROM9]

As some one who collects and restores old computers. You are right it can be hard.

[@sergeantseven4240]

There are still PC/104 format SBCs being made, some of them with newer architecture like the Intel Atom and others. They can fit a lot more on those boards with newer tech.

[@SVanHutten]

The PC/104s are indeed great pieces of hardware. Glad they got here a well deserved tribute. They sit inside a number of industrial grade machinery and all sorts of instruments that run non-stop 24/7, with no trouble whatsoever. Most run MS-DOS derivatives, with all their limitations for threading and resources management but others run industrial versions of UNIX, which overcomes said limitations and allows to exploit fully the processor power. Real men (or women!) stuff, not for the amateur ;-)