Mini MSDOS gaming PC - Part 1

[@NielsHeusinkveld]

And the winner of the most casual "So I designed and build a working SoundBlaster compatible soundcard'" award for 2020 is....

[@LindenAshbyMK]

just reverse engineer the shit out of this crystal chip, solder a bunch of connectors - EZ, right?

[@twolechesconquick]

bout that life

[@CaptainDangeax]

@@LindenAshbyMK surface mount chips are not that easy to solder bro'

[@vandit6354]

Oh yeah, I design and build those in my sleep!

[@mzflighter6905]

@@CaptainDangeax How? xD You hotair the shit out of them

[@markhimself]

You could easily sell these... I would buy one!

[@szogun112]

me too !!!

[@stonebleeds]

✋

[@richardkind2794]

Same here. Let me know when you're building them for sale.

[@markhimself]

Take my moneh! 💰

Definitely would buy one (or more) too!

[@jody5661]

I'm not going to lie, coming into this I figured it would be some idiot shoving a raspberry pie into a box and thinking it's hot shit. What I found was actually a really cool story and some awesome specialty and custom hardware. Really enjoyed it.

[@MostlyPennyCat]

I too but then I saw the magic words (?) pc104. I remember drooling over them 20 years ago and thinking about building the tiniest computer evar

[@CraftComputing]

Incredible work on this! I was aware of the PC/104 boards, but stopped looking because of the difficulty of getting sound. You may have just sold me on building my own.

[@phate1489]

Came here for some 486 action... found craft computing

[@ITVOIP]

Best DOSCEMBER video i've seen so far! I hope everyone appreciates the huge effort involved in all this. Must have taken you a long time to complete this.

[@madson-web]

Fantastic! I couldn't agree more.

[@crowsinthenose]

Yes! This not only wins DOSCEMBER, but is one of THE best retrocomputing vids I think I ever seen. Simply awesome!

[@Joshikins360]

Finally someone who understands the importance of having a banana around for scale!

[@munxcorp]

11:27 Build engine needs a FPU to render sloped surfaces, so Duke3d runs slow on this SX processor without one.

[@matsv201]

I seen several dx 486 industrial boards back in the day.. so they should be avalible. A 300Mhz Dx 486 should have excelent performance.

[@RetroSpector78]

Just hitting pause here after you created a custom sound card pcb. Wanted to say I am really enjoying this video so far !! Wow ....

[@DarylCook63]

So the difference between men and boys are the price (and size) of our toys...except for the brilliant engineers who prefer a different tack. What a truly brilliant project and video! Kudos, mate!

[@JimLeonard]

This was crazy comprehensive; I had no idea these were still available. Your level of dedication getting a sound device onto these is really admirable. Really nice work.

[@matsv201]

Those industrial boards was produced far into the 00tys

[@winMANhun]

This is literally one of the coolest things I’ve seen in IT.

[@joefish6091]

ZX Uno

[@krank23]

I'd definitely buy one of these, if available. Perhaps do a kickstarter? I'd back it in a second.

[@Kenny-bw2cz]

You rushed through this build as if it was easy-peasy. This is way beyond the normal geekiness..... Wow I'm impressed!

[@adamengelhart5159]

@6:48: I think the name "Wee86" is *great.* Also, KZbin's automatic captions spell the name "wii eight six," which is kinda hilarious. Very cool project! Just subscribed.

[@cocusar]

wow, this is seriously awesome! I would like to see more about the building of that pc104 sound card! (or any other pc104 cards)

[@TheRasteri]

I'll do a follow-up with more details, as I haven't really finished the PC104 card yet (if you look closely there's some components bodged onto it to make it work :) )

[@kaitlyn__L]

This editing was really tight, your methodology really well thought out, your build satisfying! What a great thing to get recommended by the Google bot.

[@adamsfusion]

This was my favorite DOSCember video. That was a super neat idea.

[@9wattcat]

Thank you for making this video. I've been in the same mini 486 rabbit hole for quite some time.

[@blabby102]

Much respect. You just casually design your own Soundblaster card rather than just somehow adapt an existing card.

[@MartinPaoloni]

You won DOScember... This is unbelievably cool! And thanks for open sourcing your work!

[@NZ2Pepper]

This came in my recommended and I am glad it did. This is also the first time I have seen DOS on a network. I had read about it, but never seen it work. THANKS!

[@RomaniaOverpowered]

LGR or Druaga1 should get their hands on your videos. Or the 8bit guy. The way you made a mini 486 in 2020 is AMAZING.

[@fnjesusfreak]

I could dig this, because I bought a mini Pentium similar to LGR's mini-486 a couple years ago. xD

[@LGR]

Not sure how to get my hands on a video exactly ;) But I have seen them. Love projects like this!

[@TheRasteri]

@@LGR not gonna lie when I saw the notification for your recent single-board-computer video my heart skipped a beat, I thought you'd beat me to it :)

[@lucasRem-ku6eb]

see them ever collab ??? too nerdy

[@mangothedutchie7462]

And just like that. A new community of dos gamers was born. Really amazing job!

[@mrsadrobot]

I had an industrial mini 486 a lot like this a few years ago and happily played DOS games for a few days. But, because it didn't have a sound card option it ended up shelved. What I didn't do is design and build a sound card module for the thing, that's next level DOS dedication!

[@eotsdev]

Duke3d uses floats on sloped floors, might be the reason for the dropped framerate. Nice build!

[@lucasRem-ku6eb]

Where you run Duke3D on?

[@TheFalschspieler]

I just have to say I really like this guy's voice and how he explains. So casual, humorous... Subbed! Thank you KZbin for this recommendation.

[@davidinark]

Truly one if the coolest builds I’ve seen! I would buy one premade in a heartbeat as I do not possess the skills nor equipment to do all the soldering. Great video!

[@justz00t48]

That tip to use PCBs for the front and back cover is pretty great. I never would've thought of that and it really opens up options for a wide range of projects.

[@Whipster-Old]

The name is absolutely perfect, you legend. Love it. My first PC was a Highscreen 486 SX from PC World in Northampton. It was DOA on Christmas Day, so when we returned it on boxing Day, my dad screamed at the manager and I played the devastated son. We got a free upgrade to a 486 DX, more RAM and an EA games collection. Badass.

[@HrLBolle]

I always find it great if KZbinrs are considerate and include metric measurements for us metric heads

[@SomePotato]

A PC104 soundcard? Sounds like a fun project to build in 2021! Great work!

[@douro20]

The Vortex86 platform is actually Pentium-class, based on the MP6 architecture from Rise Microelectronics. The particular chip on this PC/104 board doesn't have an FPU, though.

[@SobbleEntertainment]

The joystick port on the front is also an external MIDI connector, if you have the exact cable for it then you can connect your SC-7 or any other MIDI tone generator instead of using the built-in FM/daughterboard MIDI synth as well as a passthrough connector for connecting your joystick while your MIDI device is connected.

[@nyccollin]

5:15

[@SUCRA]

I love how casual you sound about this AMAZING mini retro gaming pc you invented. Awesome video and accomplishment.

[@Vokabre]

And here i thought that period computers by Unisys were small. Very impressed with the concept and the result!

[@Damaniel3]

Now I have to go buy a PC/104 CPU board before the secret gets out. I've been wanting a small DOS compatible PC for a while (mainly as a way to test games I develop), and this seems like the easiest way to get what I want. Thanks for the excellent video!

[@zenitpro]

Wow, I'm amazed! I wish I had all this type of skill to build things myself, I've always wanted solutions that do not exist - yet. Thanks for sharing.

[@PeterLister180]

Awesome video, glad to find one of these videos from a guy that sounds local !!

[@StevenS757]

oh man, I really wish these were available for purchase.

[@otg-on-tech-and-gear]

It just dazzles me to imagine how much work and time you spent on this video! Its dope!!!

[@stephanevermette145]

OK. You blew me away when you said you made your own PC/104 SB/Adlib card! WOW

[@l3chevalier]

I was a developer in a embedded systems company that used PC104 boards to run a Speed Trap Camera system, I've worked on this project. Awesome to see it for real fun use! =D Nice video, congrats!!

[@CZpersi]

What a blast from the past! We used to run Win95 on our 486 machine and boot to DOS for gaming.

[@vlaktorbb]

selling these soundcard board wouldn't be a bad idea at all :-)

[@TheRasteri]

Unfortunately I don't really have the analog skill neccessary to design one good enough to sell, but I'd absolutely encourage others to do so

[@ms-dosman7722]

That's really cool! And the fact that you made the extra effort to build your own freaking soundcard makes it really really cool. Next to missing the fpu, do these boards come with any L2 cache?

[@spladam3845]

FANTASTIC build, what a brilliant project, your DIY approach to so much of it was very impressive, this got you an instant subscribe. Also, reaching out to Foone Turing was the smart call, I hope he's seen this build, he would love it.

[@SuperNicktendo]

This is what I've been looking for - I tried to build a pentium 2 and it just wouldn't work and it was bulky. I think I found my next new project. Thanks really for finding this and detailing the process.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Just for the network tutorial alone I have to give a big thanks. But the project itself is amazing. And I really love how dense the ports are on the finished system. There is a certain charme to machines that fully utilise the size they got available.

[@misterkite]

I have a Via EPIA C3 in an old Mame cabinet I built in 2004. Mini ITX form factor and has integrated SBPro compatible sound. It's a bit larger than your setup at 170x170mm though, but it has all the connectors you added without any extra work.

[@TheBinaryAvenger]

Looking forward to a parts list and build guide. I think a lot of us retro computer enthusiasts would love to put one of these together especially considering it’s getting harder and more expensive to build an old legit 90s pc anymore. Also as great as vms and emulation is we love our bare metal! Thank you so much for sharing.

[@HeavyD6600]

Amazing video, please post a video about making that sound card from the Crystal chip!

[@Toreonify]

Finally somebody that have time and passion to build a proper mini-PC! I am so tired of emulation boxes) They don't suck, but they lacking charm that building a PC or modifying a real game console gives you) Great stuff!

[@RobsonRoverRepair]

I'm absolutely in love with this. About to build a retro mini pc myself, but it will be emulation based as I've no where near the technical ability seen here. Fantastic work.

[@thesmokingcap]

The amount of work that went into this! Amazing haha, so cool to see this unfold

[@trocitosdefresa]

Damn... You deserve a lot more views, you are a quality youtuber. Amazing job!

[@johnshek8727]

This is so amazing, im blown away and so envious of people who cant find what theyre looking for and build it, you sir are amazing, and a great great engineer. I loved this so much.

[@buda3d2007]

You're a beast with the reversed engineering and shrinking boards down, thats a sub and like from me, thats awesome!

[@randywatson8347]

Still got my tiny Unisys CWD4002 PC. The smallest 80486DX from the mid 90's. Then few years later, the even smaller Toshiba Libretto CT70 with color lcd screen which is a portable. But I went for the PI4 build, which uses a mounted usb floppydrive working in dosbox. Fit's very well in my custom enclosure.

[@jeremiefaucher-goulet3365]

Wow... I was familiar with PC/104 but I had no idea they still made modern versions of 486SX!! How cool is that!

[@TastyBusiness]

This is spectacularly implemented. Well done!

[@retronoobtech8551]

the only time I saw a pc with this form factor was one of those boxes to attach to the TV. They must be very rare

[@billfusionenterprise]

not really, just not well known, like Mbed

[@shkdzn]

This is probably the greatest way to build a modern DOS pc.. Awesome.. I might have a few new demoscene demos I'd like to try on there..

[@m__y-t-s]

Saw "Thanks to Foone" in the description and knew I'd found a good channel.

[@BadBunny]

I think this is the most wonderful thing I have ever seen in the world of pc retro gaming!

[@mattscomp]

Incredible. You made a DOS NUC! I wish I could just build a sound card.. I am in awe. So very well done!

[@felixokeefe]

This sir is nothing short of brilliant. Very well done indeed. It makes my frustrating and failed effort to get DOS games working nicely on a full size AMD K8 machine with a SB live card seem rather pointless. I'm looking for pc104 boards now instead.

[@joefil1991]

This is incredible. Once this gets completely fleshed out and perfected, I'm definitely interested in purchasing an assembled unit if the price is sensible.

[@z80dad61]

This is amazing! I had just put dos on a hp thin client and the usb sticks would not work properly trying the multiple sticks trick had to clone the install from a virtual pc install just simply awesome!

[@beejayOne]

That’s exactly what I did some time ago. But the problem with thin clients is the missing ISA-Sound. The mostly use AC‘97, which is incompatible with MS-DOS :(

[@z80dad61]

@@beejayOne I built a covox, I want to build a DSS compatibility plug as well but that's more work 🙂

[@Destide]

Who remembers their first 1gb drive? Seemed like an infinite amount of space back then.

[@twolechesconquick]

I was a tech at circuit city early 2000s and I remember this photographer/videographer came in and wanted somthing installed he had a terabyte and all of us gathered around in awe of his like 20 harddrives jammed into this massive custome case hahaha I remember thinking there is no way I could ever fill this even with all my games , back ups ,rips, etc haahahah now I install like 3 games in a terabyte hahaha

[@sonkorinda7312]

I have a 42gb hard drive(win98 installed) and a pentium 3, some ram, (idk how much) culd it run win 10

[@UNSCPILOT]

And now 1TB drives are starting to feel small fast. Amusingly I still have a 900 megabyte iPod shuffle from ages ago though that still works, entirely eclipsed by my Fiio M9 with 500 gig SD but it's still cute

[@NoMoreCandies]

haha mine was the cheapest possible : a 5.25" ( yes, 5.25" ) Quantum Bigfoot hdd . huge and slow but... 1gb!

[@Colt45hatchback]

Yeah i thought all my christmas's came at once, was rummaging through a hard waste collection pile out front of a house when i was 9 or 10 and found a pair of western digital caviar 1gb drives in the pile, and amazingly a new in box quantum fireball 3.5gb drive. I was like "oh my god i can have all my games on the computer at once" turns out the wd drives were faulty hence thrown out, but one had jazz jackrabbit on it which i copied over to my old connor 512mb drive while it was still working (they worked fine for about 10 minutes runtime then seemed to start clicking and getting read errors) but then i put all the stuff onto the quantum drive and had the connor as the master with just windows 95 on it and a few small games. Was absolutely amazing to be able to not have to uninstall something in order to put another game on

[@SimonJ57]

With windows 3.1 you can have Castle of the Winds, in your living room! My earliest Rogue-like.

[@bledlbledlbledl]

You went through a heck of a lot of work to get a smaller fuutprint, but the end result is an awesome PC!

[@SalvagedCircuitry]

This is pretty stellar. I had no idea pc104 existed. I just so happen to have a 486 powered CNC that would love a downscaled control box :D

[@benjaminvanderjagt]

OH MY GOSH! This is the greatest thing! I BEG YOU, make these and SELL them! Even just as a parts-kit, they would sell well, and as a completed set with FreeDOS you could make a bunch out of each one. Like many others, I have no love for the PlayStation 7 or the XBox-One-Zero-X-2.50. I *do* have love for an old PC. THIS would make me happy, and that matters!

[@bartomatic]

Here's some engagement man, another cracking upload.

[@evilspoons]

Very cool. Building a sound card from new-old-stock Crystal parts is pretty crazy. I imagine a 386/486 @ 300 MHz is pretty weird on games that are tied to clock speed though, lol.

[@ketturi]

I also have been thinking of designing new PC104 SB compatible card, as I have not found any cards that would work with old games. I have some older 386 and 486 processor boards and only thing that has stopped me from building similar tiny retro pc was lack of the sound card. I'll be waiting for second revision of your card or may even spin my own board layout.

[@turbinegraphics16]

I have the special edition of mm2 which includes a bunch of user made tracks.

[@AlsGeekLab]

I honestly don't know why anyone would sell an SX class cpu in this day and age. Like how much more would it cost them to add an FPU, like 0.005 cents? Great video!

[@intel386DX]

Me too 486SX on 300MHz it is just crazy, and about FPU, even old SX class 486s was equipped with integrated FPUs so they in reality are just like regular 486DX , but their's FPUs are desabled bribably due manufactured defects, and marketed as SX to sell them at least.

[@c.b.1378]

You should get a deal to mass-produce these! Look at the popularity of TheC64 and other retro computers. I think there are many others who had the same nostalgic feelings as you for PCs from late eighties/early ninethies, and who would love one of these!

[@ben_jammin242]

2:21 Liked. Subscribed. Excited! Dude, you're a beast of a man. Thanks for the content.

[@0katmandude0]

beautiful! brings back so many memories. And I was thinking, yesteday, where did I put my soldering iron. :)

[@angieandretti]

I love the Wee86, in design and the name too :) I think it's awesome that you designed a PC/104 soundcard from scratch too! I wonder how hard it would be to build an MCA SoundBlaster clone.

[@hawaiianryan1890]

Nice work. I never knew that PC-104 boards covered such old hardware.

[@jimmydansbo7847]

All I want for christmas is ... this :)

[@CTFC-GERMANY]

I am totally blown away. Thats great!!!!

[@roanhemmings6107]

Congrats, your Homestar Runner wallpaper just got you a subscriber.

[@TheRasteri]

great jorb!

[@soylentgreenb]

Very cool. I have a small P233MMX industrial PC board I got for less than $5 and was going to eventually do something like this (but much, much, much less ambitious than making my own sound card; just a 2xPCI riser and voodoo 1 + PCI sound card and 12A 5V pico-PSU with a spare laptop adapter; make the box from plywood).

[@draggonhedd]

ABSOLUTELY my kind of thing, LOve this stuff.

[@LewisR09]

Fantastic work. Really enjoy watching people make this level of stuff! Also... 300mhz 486?!

[@TheRasteri]

@@georg6876 disappointingly the 300mhz vortex only runs about as fast as a 100mhz 486 :(

[@enilenis]

Those compact solid state memory modules at 6:00 are IDE-compatible? Wow! I've got a ton of those from embedded PC's and I never thought I could use them somewhere else. I assumed it was some proprietary format. I used to build micro PC's for retro gaming, but I never went as far as designing my own PCB's. I'd instead cut up existing boards, fold them over and stack with extension ribbons. As long as the board wasn't multi-layered, it could often be done.

[@BlackEpyon]

I've never played around with PC104 personally. I would have suggested making up a ribbon cable adapter to an 8 or 16-bit ISA slot to get the sound card connected to the PC104 header. I did that with my Tandy 1000 HX, to get an ISA I/O card connected to it's pin-header expansion bus. it's awkward to mount the card, but it works. I know that backwards compatibility is a pretty big thing in industrial applications, but I've never heard of a 300MHz 486 before.

[@Romerco77]

I modified an HP thinclient to acomodate a true OPL3 Yamaha YMF744 sound card inside, it has about the same total volume than this, but can also run Win98 3D games thanks to the integrated 3D graphics card.

[@richardcini6562]

Great design! SB cards are crazy-expensive even if you can find them. I'd definitely be interested in a board or two. I re-drafted and routed the board using KiCad, changing all the components (other than the sound chip) to through-hole and creating two different filtered power busses (borrowed from an SVGA card design). I played around with CircuitMaker and it wasn't for me. I've done several ECB-sized and S100-sized boards with KiCad...this is my first PC/104 attempt...so at least it will be a template for other things I might want to do. Looks like it routed fine. Only 25 vias. It's not a particularly dense board even with through-hole parts. Interested to see what changes TheRasteri is going to make from his experience with a live board.

[@DrakeDaraitis]

Work in a factory now and I’ve never seen a PC104 or x86, most of what we have is Allen Bradley PLCs but some of our European machines function more like tablets.

[@santasl]

Impressive! Thanks for letting me learn that old hardware is still buyable and how "easy" it is to get something like this up and running. Yeah the "I design my own soundcard" isnt really an easy part, but I mean the BOM didnt seem too high.

[@TheMovieCreator]

One note, for anyone who want to replicate this, some of these PC-104 boards have a graphics chip that gets silly warm unless you put a fan in its general direction.

[@madson-web]

This is the PC MINI we deserve

[@aetherspoon]

Daaaaaang. I was thinking about trying to build a mini PC similar to what LGR did (only smaller, as I found the right parts), but this... daaaaaang. If only I could actually solder, this would be my solution to the mini-DOS PC dilemma. What I really want is a mini-8088, mini-486, and mini-P3 for early-DOS, late-DOS, and Win9x eras.

[@rille47]

I´m amazed, ata boy, phreakin´n fantastic good job Sir.

[@Edman_79]

This is simply amazing! Exactly what I was looking for! Also, you speak like a Gatling gun :D Subscribed immediately.