DOS Games On An Arduino?!

Adding an ISA port to the Vortex86EX-based 86Duino board, and playing some DOS games on it.
Last weeks' episode - a 386-based board : • DOS Games On A Tiny In...
Brad's page about adding an ISA slot: myplace.frontie...
The TinyLlama : • A quick look at the Ti...

[@wolvenar]

The fact it can waste a 486 is shocking to my stuck in 1993 brain

[@some_haqr]

@@UserUser-zc6fx more tech is my birds hair dryer that on the flight control systems that took us to the moon. Madness 🤣

[@No-mq5lw]

An electric toothbrush has more oomph than a 486

[@scalamasterelectros3204]

​@@No-mq5lwwee need some one to test it

[@matsv201]

The irony of it is that this specific CPU is already 10 years old. According to Wikipedia its based of the P54C/i586, so basically a first gen pentium. That is 20 year of die shrink i guess

[@SLAYERSARCH]

fact it's not a arduino...

[@electronash]

4:44 lol at the Great Scott musical montage. (hopefully your soldering is a bit better, though. :p ) I was tempted to order an 86duino board to have a play. At $82 (plus shipping), it's a tad pricey, but to be expected for an x86 embedded. But then I saw the VGA card is an extra $40. Just a bit much for me to justify atm. I might have another look some time, as it's great that standard ISA can be broken out onto the IO pins.

[@TheRasteri]

The module itself is only $40, so I'd wait for the tinyllama (or make your own dev board!)

[@dant5464]

@@TheRasteri if you pause at 2:23 in the tinyllama video, it looks like he might be using the same VGA board.

[@Avidiy]

i came down hear to write this only

[@AnalogDude_]

lol, was scratching my head why the music sounded so familiar, like i heard it a thousands times before.

[@thanhvinhle2893]

what a nice reference

[@omicron0mega]

Ha, I love the Great Scott reference while soldering the perf board.

[@eivindbohler]

Creator of the TinyLlama here. Just watched your video, I was wondering about the sudden uptick in activity on my KZbin video and on Vogons - now I understand why! :)

[@TheRasteri]

I found your video just as I was finishing mine up :)

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

4:47 That has to be the funniest _Great Scott!_ reference.

[@stevec00ps]

Great Scott! :D Interesting product, thanks for the video!

[@krank23]

This looks absolutely fascinating. I'm still holding out for a bit more of a plug-and-play option (I'm fine with basic assembly, but breadboards and soldering is where I draw the line personally at the moment) - still dreaming of that ultimate mini-486 console of my dreams =)

[@WhiteG60]

@ Not AN AMD Nor Nvidia nor Intel fan I wonder if anyone would ever try and make an FPGA for a 3DFX board. There's emulation already, we know the GLIDE commands. That would be sweet.

[@kevinlowe0]

I'd be happy with a KiCad file that we could order... I can do basic soldering, but not layout.

[@lucasrem]

you do have weirdo dreams and no coding skills! why you need this ???

[@Nordlicht05]

@ Not AN AMD Nor Nvidia nor Intel fan old and expensive holds me back. Sad that my mother gave our 386dx40 away. Was a little slow but I would be happy with it

[@Jackmawer]

the greatscott reference made me chuckle 😂 what a cool board!

[@KelikakuCoutin]

... not the only one! ...

[@akun10years10]

time stamp ?

[@Jackmawer]

@@akun10years10 4:47 😂

[@lucasrem]

VGA crap!

[@codebeat4192]

Speaking about Arduino, there is a guy name DjamalUK that developed a FabGL library to run/emulate DOS on an ESP32. He has plenty examples and tutorials. He designed his own boards for it but there is also a commercial one you can use: The Lilygo Ttgo. It has VGA, PS/2 connectors, sound card mini jack. It is about 17 euros. Maybe worth a try. Maybe fun to try to see what it actually is capable of. Remember, the ESP32 is 'just' a microcontroller. Something else, have you ever notice the pc/104 format standard? That is really interesting stuff. EEVBlog did a review on it.

[@big0bad0brad]

He literally built a PC/104 sound card and in this video connected it up, pretty sure he's familiar with it

[@DoctorPotassium]

I like how the anti-piracy screen for ultimate doom just insults you

[@LjubomirSimin]

That Great Scotts interlude, just perfect!

[@bsdjunkie1805]

I salute you purists and hardware gurus, I however will stick with DOSBox for now

[@prozacgodretro]

Don't worry we "Purists™" use dosbox too :D

[@FoxMccloud42]

I was (and still thinking) about making a board for this module, so it can take the minipcie gpu (or put a pcie x1 slot, that is open on one side or a x16 and wire it as an x1 slot, depending on what digikey and mouser are overing), has one (or two) ISA slots and some io. I have some other stuff I working on and this is more on the low priority, but if there is interest, I give it more priority.

[@jm036]

Why not put a PCIe to PCI bridge for PCI GPUs and other cards?

[@Aisflou]

That would be an amazing adition!

[@dh2032]

why not raspberry pi pico, it would be more than enough, take what ever out from card, isa port, to do the math. and out image, maybe just direct raspberry pi pico it pin connectors or just resistor or two, for 6 pound or so. the consept do graphics has already been done, and sample games too, so there should be enough head room, proses ISA graphic card data, and if done well, could be plug in replacement for full size Isa card in big box PC's, and then why only limit it ISA cards, could do them all PCI Pcie, the only limit being 1MB graphic card limit? it would be real boom get HDMI video output real old machines, if done right?

[@prozacgodretro]

​@@dh2032 If you're trying to emulate VGA with pico it won't work - Communication over the ISA bus is the real issue in that regard, you need bidirection support for memory mapped devices such as video cards. The video card must be compatible with existing PC programs, in order to be useful. AFAIK, while it might be possible to write to a pico over ISA with the picos really nifty io state machine stuff - a read operation has to communicate with the slow internal core (where would the 'memory be located' right?) and code just isn't fast enough to return in the few ns needed to emulate memory even at the fastest clock rates of the processor. What is likely possible is using the pico to pretend to be a slow ISA device, where you write to some memory address or port address, and then wait for a reply, it would not be possible to be truly "memory mapped" So a pico could emulate a PIO mode hdd or an ethernet card or some other communications device. But a Pico could not emulate a pc compatible graphics card. You could possibly emulate a "write only" graphics processing unit... something akin to a sprite engine graphics accelerator, but the data rate would be a bit slow. That's not saying it wouldn't be amazing in it's own right! I would love to see a graphics accelerator for making modernish DOS game with a sprite engine and such, and be cheaply accessible in something like the pico.

[@jnharton]

@@prozacgodretro Doesn't the Pi Pico run at like 100 MHz+ though? Where exactly is this slow stuff you're talking about?

[@andreaspapadopoulos7502]

I loved the Great Scott reference haha😅

[@SirIsaacMewtonIII]

this feels like one of the most crazy bits of computer hackery i've seen on youtube in a long long time. i applaud your technical knowledge, a lot of knowledge of older interfaces like isa and just.. hardware in general, seems to be getting lost to the nether as computing advances. like nowadays very few people seem to know about assembly, or how bits and bytes work, how adders work, and in general computers are becoming more of a black box of magic as computers and processors advance - because chip designers need to be on the cutting edge of current circuit design knowledge and everyone involved in cpu manufacturing nowadays knows their own little section of the process, very few people seem to understand the macro of how to make a cpu, or how to make hardware work with other hardware that it wasn't designed to work with.. and this video shows how that knowledge is still out there. but it's definitely becoming more arcane. i feel like say 20 years ago, more people could've made videos like this, but now it's rare to see people that still have those skills to be able to essentially hack together pieces of hardware that were definitely not intended to work together in a way that works. amazing work.

[@p_mouse8676]

I have seen thinclients with this x86 module. There seem to be usb support and with that mice also seem to work totally fine as well. The greatscott montage was funny btw!

[@patsmalling]

yeah he nailed that. i giggled a little.

[@andrewhofmann5453]

Thumbs up for Great Scott!!!

[@michalkorsak9726]

IT WORKED, THANKS I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS FOREVER, BUT NO TUTORIAL COULD EXPLAIN IT AS YOU DID

[@fairiesdreamsfantasy603]

That's extremely amazing! Let's bring DOS back to life from being obsolete for a very long time.

[@johnwhyte1488]

Just came across your vlog. You deserve this subscription. All the best to you and yours. Cheers.

[@BrainSlugs83]

FYI they make proto board shields for arduino. They fit the pinout perfectly.

[@TheGlitchyMario]

If it has transistors, it runs doom

[@nikonmikon8915]

your soldering is probably the culprit, the signals involved in this kind of circuit require clean signal without noise, get a hakko fx951 and learn how to use it well! it is a GAME CHANGER

[@RicardoRamosRetrocomputacao]

They could easily design a replacement for the vga module, using ATI Rage XL 8MB, which is still manufactured in china, including pci-express, agp, and pci 32bit versions. As for the soundblaster, I think it would be more interesting if there was an exclusive module for emulation.

[@ballardtech827]

I loved the mister wizard flashback in the middle

[@gregorymccoy6797]

Wow, loved the Homage to Great Scott 😀

[@IM2BZ4NE12C]

Love the soldering montage tribute

[@londongaz2]

Couple of Rennies always come in handy for this sort of thing

[@crashmatrix]

That build montage caught me off guard, chapeau

[@maaadkat]

If you have access to an LPT port another sound option may be to build a Covox SpeechThing, which MobyGames states was supported by 58 games, although I'm sure Patrick Aalto's LineWars 2 supported it and is not listed. You might also prefer to find an 8bit DAC IC like the TLC7524CPWR. That would make for a much smaller device overall.

[@hyperturbotechnomike]

this is an awesome little project. I still have my first original PC, a Nixdorf 486 which i got with 8 years old from my dad which was working at Siemens-Nixdorf. It's a really nice machine with a wonderful 2MB cirrus logic video card bundled with a 21" Siemens CRT which can do crazy frequencies above 100Hz. But lately the hard drive started going a bit mad and the machine overall became a bit unreliable, especially the RAM became unstable and getting a working replacement for those old SIMM modules is like lottery. To not further put too much wear on my original PC, i 'm looking out for alternatives. But i'm happy that at least the CRTmonitor and the joystick is still working fine. I lately tried using an old Siemens thin client, but it is very unstable, driver support for games isn't great and many games are running way too fast on the 500Mhz CPU. For Win 98SE and 2000 it's a great inexpensive machine, but DOS not so. I also tried using emulators on a more modern PC which i connected to my CRT, but the HDMI to VGA adaptors i tested were all not great.. The picture quality is nice, but the supported frequency and resolution range is very poor for all of them. My best luck was with the ICY BOX one, which did allow me to get 100Hz at 640x480 working, but not any lower resolutions or frequency. Especially side-scrolling 2D arcade games look wonderful at high frequencies. So i need something which doesn't run too fast with native VGA and i might try out your provided solution.

[@AsilarWindsailor]

Great Scott! I see what you did there X)

[@Schule04]

Too expensive for me, but nice to know that DM&P is still doing stuff I guess you could try a serial mouse

[@DigitalViscosity]

I gotta keep my eyes open for a 86Duino One !!!! Colour me intrigued this is one SBC i've been hoping for outside of the 386 SOC I designed on my FPGA!

[@tiporari]

Super cool little module. Do you have plans/build documents for your PC104 sound card? I have a PC104 compliant embedded system with no sound, so a build like that is interesting.

[@jocool7370]

Great Scott!!!

[@andrewwatts1997]

This would be an amazing portable DosBox ;)

[@aftbit]

4:55 It's always funny to hear the KZbin license free music reused across multiple channels. I really thought Scott Manley was coming on after that clip. :P

[@AmirKhan-qx2lr]

Great Scott would be proud

[@SieIaQ]

I appreciate what you doing, respect to your knowledge, but after playing with MiSTER FPGA, and having all legacy computers and consoles in one mini box seems to me more legit, especially that with cores like 486/Amiga/AtariST/X68000 you can have Roland MT-32 sounds extra

[@shivanSpS]

It needs someone to write a driver, but those things usually have I2C support, were you can easily add a external DAC or do your own implementation in software of I2C audio using a single transistor and maybe one resistor. No need to go ISA for that. What is needed here (i assume) is to write a driver that emulates soundblaster in software in DOS and outputs to a I2C GPIO. Same for emulating a gameport port or even a joystick by just wiring in buttons to the GPIOS. Im not really sure how one would use I2C or GPIOS from DOS but im petty sure it can be done.

[@joveaaron-real]

This is amazing! I hope to see more of your videos soon. I have just subscribed

[@inoppi]

You could slap a soundcard into the parallel port.

[@74HC04]

I laughed at the Greatscott montage, too! 😀

[@Latvian3Dman]

Thank You, shared this to my retro friends on Twitterino :)

[@DanelonNicolas]

this video was awesome. lol that Great Scott reference 🤣

[@sirspamalot4014]

I don't really dos game that much, but for some unknown reason this is how I want to do it from now on

[@lasskinn474]

Seems like arduino mega pin header arrangement. Wonder about if its pin compatible (It was a popular choice for 3d printers a while ago with a shield known as ramps. You can get a set from china now for 20-30 bucks. It has more io pins than the other arduino form factors)

[@zaprodk]

It is Arduino MEGA compatible, yes

[@TheRasteri]

Yeah seems to be Arduino Mega. What kind of sadist designs a board with 100mil headers that isn't laid out on a 100mil grid?!

[@lasskinn474]

@@TheRasteri i dunno, perhaps someone who wants to sell official original(tm) shields and stuff for schools, universities etc. at 15x margins. Just a hunch.

[@zaprodk]

@@TheRasteri I'll tell you why. When they designed the first batch of boards (we're talking before they had USB, it was a DE-9 connector then!) Someone managed to nudge one bank of connectors half a module (50 mils) and they didn't realize before the boards have been manufactured. At this point no shields existed at all, but still, Italians as they are, stubborn, just said f. it. We'll continue and keep the mistake. That's why.

[@ericwadebrown]

I'm curious what your thoughts are on the Mister FPGA? Specifically as an old DOS PC gaming machine in a small form factor.

[@TheRasteri]

I've never used it. Looks cool though.

[@TheEricExperiment]

This is incredible!

[@lamacchinadeltempo5737]

Absolutely Great! 😊👍

[@karlnigan]

Maybe you could install a kind of pcie duplicator and a pcie to pci adapter, then you can connect a pci SB live or Yamaha ymf-7xx or XG soundcard. I know the sound quality and compatibility level would not be the same, but it would be a much simpler approach.

[@cyberluke]

Ah, ok. But Vortex86 is not normal Arduino :-)) it already has VGA output. I have two Educake x86 with Vortex86 and they have integrated powered breadboard. But no VGA output. Manufacturer says, it is not present even on PCB.

[@douro20]

Coreboot supports the 86duino. You might want to try that.

[@alexsmith8021]

Great video sir!

[@Ant_Nommer]

Really interesting stuff! What sort of industry board like this would you recommend for an amateur hobbyist tinkerer looking to make a DOS setup?

[@TheRasteri]

I really like the ICOP boards that have Vortex86s on them. The Vortex86DX is particularly good

[@Ant_Nommer]

@@TheRasteri I'll check those out, thank you!

[@markaz2kk]

Great Scott would be happy 😅

[@SatroDev]

wow, great video

[@greggv8]

What's the high memory map on this thing? Does it have enough free space between 640K and 1024K to put together 64K for EMS? A contiguous 64K would be best but IIRC LIM EMS 4.0 can work with separated chunks, if they're not too small and there's a total of 64K free. I'm looking for a tiny x86 that can run MS-DOS with LIM EMS 4.0. I need it for an old CNC mill that has a servo controller, the software for which is ancient, runs on DOS, and cannot work with XMS. It needs EMS to load large gcode files. Something small I can put in a box on the back of the mill then connect to an 800x600 touch screen LCD would be ideal. The touch input uses RS232C.

[@tommyplays5436]

If I remember correctly, USB was not fully a thing in DOS. This was the time when data started to become packet based rather than signal base.

[@mystsnake]

no support for pre-win95 dos, not sure if pure dos past that bothered though there was pc dos2000 by ibm that was after dos was dead - late enough that usb might of been in it, but *if* you can find a old site with device drivers - there was a unofficial driver for usb, i came across it the last year, also patch for win95 to work on pc above 300mhz (for those trying to set a machine/emulator)

[@tookitogo]

USB came way after DOS: the earliest prerelease hardware was 1995, but for all intents and purposes, USB came out in 1998 (with USB 1.1). And even then, the OSes baaaarely managed to support it. But in theory, a BIOS could provide its own USB stack and emulate PS/2 devices to a non-USB OS. Dunno if anything actually does this!

[@binface9]

6:55 that's what we were waiting for

[@Edman_79]

This is so cool. Thanks for the insane amount of time you've invested in it :)

[@lucasrem]

why should this be cool, super nerdy it is!

[@narutrixil]

How is the power consumption on these boards compared to a 90's retro pc? Is it significantly lower?

[@any1alive]

id hope for the lvoe of god that lil board uses less power XD

[@graealex]

Retro-PCs use a lot of not-well integrated chips, and mostly run on 5V. That is compared to today's standard pretty wasteful. Like for example individual DRAM chips with laughable capacity.

[@TheRasteri]

It uses about 3.6W, so yeah quite a lot lower :)

[@wisid]

great effort

[@elmariachi5133]

I didn't find a video about you building that ISA sound card. I would like to bild some simple and tiny ISA sound card, too, for enhancing an older notebook that I installed DOS on, which has an ISA bridge but oviously no ISA expansions as it was usual for many years.

[@TheRasteri]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/bJS7lYqDhNFrh6c

[@pjbpinheiro]

Thanks... it's working... Good Job...!

[@___aaron.m7930]

Subbed! I found this channel today and I love the content. Underrated as fuckkkk

[@Jake9066]

I'm definitely jazzed to see something like the TinyLlama... the SOM304RD-52VINE1 you used in the WeeCee is fantastic, but $210 is a bit too pricy for me to justify for a toy project. $40 for the 86duino SOM though? That I can manage. Just let me know if somebody releases an OSH diy voodoo 4, $325 is way too pricy (especially when a VSA-100 chip is $25).

[@MyProjectBoxChannel]

It would be fun to run Modplay on it. The first amigo mod tracker for PC.

[@zly_kulak]

ITS REALLY WORKED LOL THANK YOU DUDE

[@Domarius64]

2 second boot time, wow... we are very close to an "IBM PC mini", once there is some kind of sound solution, should be a matter of writing some cool software to load the games easily... and perhaps a software layer to perform some keyboard to gamepad mapping...

[@TheRasteri]

The new TinyLlama comes with a HIDMAN chip, that allows it to use USB gamepads as keyboards

[@TyTytheCat2004]

you should check out the 86duino that has the capability of running XP, I don't remember what model it was, but it's out there.

[@TheRasteri]

This 86duino should be able to run XP.

[@lIlIIlIllIIIllIIllIlIllIllI]

the greatscott gag made me like and sub just so you know

[@jengelenm]

Finally, a reason to buy me some Arduino! :)

[@cyberluke]

It would be more interesting if someone could implement this technique with Vortex86EX coprocessor in modern Ryzen or i7 to have native ISA.

[@deadaccount6135]

Would love to see a ready to go setup with mouse, sound blaster, a high end for the day video card, in a neat case. Even though you didn't have a mouse, how could you not test Duke Nukem3D? It's as obligatory as Doom ya know? 😁

[@constantinegiotopoulos3033]

This is Star Trek stuff, awesome.

[@nneeerrrd]

Good stuff. 8bit ISA only, am I right?

[@TheRasteri]

nah you can get 16bit ISA out of it with some reconfiguring

[@eivindbohler]

@@TheRasteri Weeeeell, you'll get 16bit data transfers, but it's not a fully-spec'ed 16bit ISA bus - DMP calls it "x-ISA", some signals are removed for compactness. For instance, there's only one DMA channel (DRQ/DACK pair) available instead of the usual 7 (I think).

[@Italian_Isaac_Clarke]

To get an Analog Output (like VGA) on a modern GPU you'd have to modify the entire GPU since the Analog Output must be supported by proper hardware (up to October 2021 it was possible to use GPUs up to the GTX 900 family with GPUs from the GTX 1000 family onwards, so I could use my RTX 2070 through my GT 710 to use my CRT), so the best you can do right now is use an adapter. DVI-D to VGA works pretty well. HDMI to VGA is not that good. DP to VGA seems good enough, at least as good as DVI-D to VGA, but it's easier to plug and unplug.

[@retabera]

There is a driver incompatibility between old and new NVIDIA cards, I simply put in an old AMD card with my new NVIDIA card to use the VGA

[@Italian_Isaac_Clarke]

@@retabera Have you actually read my comment or have you allucinated it?

[@briangoldberg4439]

sweet. i want to mess around with something like this, but i'm still holding out for a way to use my actual old soundcard hardware. i'm especially fond of the way they sound, and the crystal chips just don't quite do it for me

[@tiporari]

You just need an ISA slot and a lot of patience :)

[@retabera]

Rastari: "Only one thing for it now, I suppose" Me: *Doom* *Doom* *Doom* Rastari: *Doom* Yasss

[@NeechBear]

Could you link to Ivan’s KZbin channel that you mention at the end of this video please? I could not find it for love nor money. Great video BTW. Thank you!

[@TheRasteri]

It's the tinyllama link - kzbin.info/www/bejne/n3e9e52Eid2aq5o

[@eivindbohler]

Love how English speaking folks pronounce my name like the Russian "Ivan"! :D No worries though!

[@TheRasteri]

@@eivindbohler haha sorry :) google gave me three different pronunciations so I just picked one...

[@Aeduo]

I think quake running like that with something that isn't pentium class might be normal even at such a high clock speed.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

4:47...Oh dear....RESPECT! 8:37 Oh FFS! ♥x2!

[@wolvenar]

Pretty cool. I might have to try this if I ever find any time.

[@mid9ightwalker]

Thumbs up for the easter egg)))

[@quarterofdisorder]

5:00 I thought I was watching 8 but guy for a sec there 😂

[@albi2k88]

I'm wonder if fpses in quake will drop below that limited 27 on higher details.

[@KelikakuCoutin]

That is kind of slow by my standards, I've done similar operations in under 10,000 to 20,000 years; maybe even a bit less, by golly. But hey. Thanks for the content. Keep up the good work. בס'ד

[@prozacgodretro]

So... just a curiousity, you have window98 on it... can you get the sound card working in win98 and try running something like unreal tournament in software render? I'm really curious as to how that will turn out. I'd imagine it's slow, but ... I can't help but be incredibly curious.

[@TheRasteri]

yeah I wanna properly try windows 98 and a bunch of other stuff on it. Stay tuned :)

[@prozacgodretro]

@@TheRasteri I have some very boards that have a i386ex chip just like the board you showed previously. One of them has a 64 pin idc connector - which I suspect is the 8bit isa part of the pc104 connector. I was going to mess with them myself, but frankly I'm moving and just don't have the time. Would you be intersted in these devices? if shipping wasn't much I would just mail them to ya. One of them was a controller for a pulmonary monitor. I can email you the details/photos if you're interested.

[@ZebulonYT.]

But can you play doom on the changing color taco bell logo?

[@quarterofdisorder]

New mini dos pc 😳

[@MrSpacelyy]

I had mostly comport mice on 386 en 486. They didn't have a ps2 slot. Only at keyboard and serial and parallel. Maybe that works

[@arduinomaquinas]

Show 👏👏👏

[@MaxSMoke777]

But... you didn't attach a little LCD and make it entirely mobile....

[@NaoPb]

Neat!

[@mawizard6341]

X86 != Arduino

[@nimeraziz4009]

Can you help me out I am trying to clone this game board I have can you shout me how I can clone igs board or a jamma board

[@Riddim_glitch]

But does it run Crysis?

[@PeterSwinkels]

No need for QBasic. Debug can do the same.