This Little Retro 80386 PC is Getting a New Look and Life!

[@volo870]

There is a TSR for MS-DOS distributed as CCHAR ZIP (by Kevin D. Quitt), it displays keyboard scancodes. Once we know the "press" and "release" keyboard scancodes of that "Cyril" button - we'd be able to know what it means for the computer and find the driver for it.

[@ChernobylFamily]

This is an amazing hint! Thank you!

[@MrWaalkman]

Been a hot minute since I thought about a TSR. :)

[@volo870]

CCHAR may be found if you google for "The Simtel Net MS-DOS Collection"

[@argoneum]

I'd desolder that battery and connect it with cables, just in case it decides to leak. Cyrix FasMath are pretty good, a bit faster and cheaper than i387.

[@ChernobylFamily]

This sounds like a good idea.

[@UpLateGeek]

Great work, the machine looks almost as good as new! If you retrobrighted the front of the floppy drive, it would be pretty much perfect. ISA is a simple bus, so all the slots are connected in parallel with the corresponding pins connected to each slot. The only thing special about those riser cards is alignment of the slots so the cards line up with the holes in the back of the case.

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thank you! That drive is a temporary solution, I gonna place there a fresh grey one, judt need to pick it from tha lab.

[@absurdengineering]

I see proper cable lacing technique. Excellent work on the mainframe!

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thank you! I am working on the next segment right now...))

[@johnnyzippo7109]

Thank ya’ll so much at The Chernobyl Family , for all of the wonderful content . I am going to become a Patreon member , simply everything that y’all do , it just spins all of my right dials . I can’t really explain it , but this channel is one of my top five KZbin channels , keep up the hard work .

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thank you for auch motivating words..! You are warmly welcome to join, we have there an interesting community.

[@AttilaSVK]

What a coincidence, I just started working on a Czechoslovak XT clone, called the SMEP PP06. Let's hope your application will run on a 4.77 MHz 8088 with 640kB of RAM and a CGA card :) (if not, I could run it on my Toshiba T3200SX, but that's a capitalist computer for the bourgeoisie)

[@ChernobylFamily]

I am going to use either turbo pascal or turbo c, and i can compile that for 8088 and 8086 as well, because those interfaces were very simple, I do not expect much resources needed :)

[@RETROMachines]

Yes, soviet riser, will be working correctly.

[@ChernobylFamily]

After some cleaning with vodka, it worked, before - no. Seriously.

[@RETROMachines]

@@ChernobylFamily Radioactive components will always work. It is enough to approach the PC to 30 cm and the ISA card is installed.. :))

[@ChernobylFamily]

))))))) well, none of our machines are from THERE, they are the same as from there, which does not make your statement less true :)

[@Kini_the_Fox]

i would ABSOLUTELY LOVE to see the RBMK training software!

[@ChernobylFamily]

Working on that..)

[@rlzr.]

Will be great to see the software review!

[@ChernobylFamily]

That will take some time, as we'd like to make something meaningful. However, we are in contact with the developer of those things tou could see in the beginning of this episode.

[@rlzr.]

@@ChernobylFamily so with a small patch you might properly az-5 the simulation :D I love your channel and your work, appreciate your dedication to preserve this unique culture and history!

[@ironhead2008]

A lot of OEMs used similar riser cards with either off the shelf Baby AT boards or boards shared across multiple models. Usually though the onboard ISA slots were populated (likely so you could have a single fully populated board across tower and desktops). My guess is Infort didn't plan to use this same board in a tower or a full height desktop application, so they had the OEM leave the rest of the ISA slots off. Amusingly, you can see they still populated all of the supporting resistor packs and capacitors for the the rest of the ISA bus. Perhaps it was just simpler for their manufacturing process or they all play a role in terminating the ISA bus properly and Infort specified they remain so they could use their locally manufactured riser cards. Also, if that rear IO plate is indeed removable that case might make for an interesting modern sleeper PC build with a Mini ITX board, I know from personal experience cases that take a standard AT PSU will take a modern ATX PSU. Just an idea if someone else runs into a similar case with a Varta bombed board... As far as the Math Coprocessor is concerned: the Cyrix FPUs are markedly better than the original Intel parts but might be a bit spendy. I'd go with the ULSI Math CoSX Advanced Math Coprocessor. Supposedly they're just as fast as the Cyrix and tend to all run at 40 MHZ regardless of their rating, useful if your board doesn't support asynchronous FPU operation like most 386 mobos.

[@ChernobylFamily]

This is super interesting! I might get the same case in future, so surely will try microITX - though about something like this :)

[@Kurop1atnyk]

Це просто неймовірно 😮

[@ChernobylFamily]

Дякую щиро!

[@DKTAz00]

Very cool, gotta love a good restore. Really interrested in seeing those reactor programs.

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thank you!

[@Kapplerartbloomingdale]

I had a packard bell 386 like this. I loved it. The ibm ps2 was great. I got one from the great lakes naval base here in illinois

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thank you for sharing!

[@alexloktionoff6833]

Quite PC case! 386SX was my first home PC, and was looking several years for a slim case, could not imagine such already existed back in 93.

[@ChernobylFamily]

I am curious if they produced anything else (I have seen only this kind of cases) and at which factory in Ukraine... perhaps at Elektronmash, or... no information so far.

[@forrestgump5959]

looks awesome instructions clear I now do have my own rbmk :)

[@ChernobylFamily]

Cooooooooool!

[@forrestgump5959]

@@ChernobylFamily 😄👍

[@gomergomez1984]

Something about fixing up and using a simple dos 386sx computer, I got a lot more work done back then.

[@ChernobylFamily]

Consider I was lucky :)

[@intel386DX]

Very cool case ! You forgot to retro right the 5.25" Floppy drive

[@ChernobylFamily]

I am going to change it to a grey one

[@MarkMcCluney]

Good stuff! I'd really like to see those training applications. Thanks for sharing!

[@ChernobylFamily]

Glad that you liked!

[@Zarcondeegrissom]

I do miss the old cake-box (8 horizontal slots) and pizza-box (less than the full 7 slots) computers from then, such cute small cases to hide on desks under monitors or other equipment. That looks good all cleaned up. B) with them old XT/AT/baby-AT PSUs, if no capacitors are bulging or leaking all over, I'll unplug the hard drive data cable to the motherboard if there is one (leave the power connected) and stab the power supply connectors with a millimeter to make sure the voltages are +/- 10%, and send it if it is. The old PSUs were tough as nails and only failed if they got hit by lightning or a capacitor aged and failed. The newer ATX PSUs have a vastly higher switching frequency (300khz or higher) that ages capacitors much faster than the old 1khz things from back then.

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thank you for those tips!

[@MeatVision]

Dude, you did an awesome retro Brighting tutorial xD

[@ChernobylFamily]

Glad you think so!

[@araujofi]

You can also use hydrogen peroxide volume 10, submerge it in a large pot and place it in the sun, the high temperature helps in the efficiency of the chemical reaction and get better results. The 8bitguy videos are very in-depth on this practice. Love ur work!

[@ChernobylFamily]

Rught! That way it worked good with semi-transparent color filters of mainframe panel. But the oxidant I use costs kinda 60 UAH (

[@rvr9391]

Very very nice restoration, love your content!

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thank you very much!

[@micharoman9188]

Piękny sprzęt

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thank you!

[@absurdengineering]

Heat helps, but UV is needed to supply energy for the reaction. UV causes peroxide to release hydroxyl radicals. Those then react with the bromine compounds in the plastic.

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thank you for the clarification!

[@TheodorosArvanitis2]

It didn't have mathematical co processor because this was based on a 386 sx model. Perhaps you can find a dx 386 processor that has in chip the math co processor, replace the sx with the dx and you are ready

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thank you for this hint!

[@ddogg14]

Awesome!

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thank you! Check our new video :)

[@kirill_bykov]

9:16 Cool power supply. What is output power of it? Will you retrobright those MOLEX? 10:14 OMG the keyboard is magnificent! I love Soviet epoch electronics after your reviews! Do you have schematics for this piece? Any docs? How did they managed to add extra LED in hardware and software, in protocol? 11:03 Wow! 20MHz! That's a lot for that time!

[@ChernobylFamily]

It is 200W, I am not sure about MOLEX as they are badly made and are pretty fragile. This keyboard has factory seals, I decided not to disassemble it, but it is so heavy that I believe inside is very much electronics. One commenter told that that extra button works in XT mode only, but how exactly I yet did not figure out - will bring my XT back to life and will check.

[@kirill_bykov]

@@ChernobylFamily, sure thing you are the boss not to disassemble - it can be fragile, of course. But what I meant: no docs available of this keyboard? Maybe you can sniffer the key code it sends for this new key press and the control code it receives from the PC for the new LED activation? How good are you equipped? I have an impression that you have all needed and waaaaaay more!

[@ChernobylFamily]

@kirill_bykov not that good as it looks, but we will try

[@InitialiseDisk]

Great video! Is vintage computing as popular in Eastern Europe as it is in the west? Btw that is definitely one of the best retrobright treatments I have ever seen. Congratulations!

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thanks! Yes, it is popular here, with the difference we pay attention to both exSocialisitc devices and westen stuff. A lot people from retro-communities are very much for spectrum as we had many clones, including homebrew and/or enhanced. Check our previous videos! And thank you for the comment about retrobright quality. I actually managed to retrobright even transparent color filters for the mainframe I mentioned (semi-success, but that oxidant is a beast)

[@InitialiseDisk]

@@ChernobylFamily Thaank you that’s very interesting.

[@bobbysenterprises3220]

I would love to see those programs in action

[@ChernobylFamily]

Working on that..)

[@intel386DX]

Hey dude, the Cyrillic works only on XT mode , not AT. I have a Pravetz 16 keyboard and it have inside a jumper for XT and AT, so the cyl/lat button as well :) olso it work only in CGA mode (video card) so you must have CGA (with Cyrillic simbols in the ROM) and XT class machine :) no drivers needed

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thanks for these details!

[@sylwekm666]

4:10 Maybe this board works as debouncing device for swiches ?

[@ChernobylFamily]

It is an interesting version!

[@Zarcondeegrissom]

yeah, and some impedance/load protection, Even tho most chips can do 10mA drive to a LED, some can't. so maybe it is just an amplifier for the rest of the speaker and LEDs, maybe. without reverse EEVblog-ing/BigClive-ing the PCB I'm not sure if it's inverting off to on for some LEDs as well. Oh, and maybe an extra layer of static protection as well (I imagine many walking across a room and pressing a button without touching anything else to ground themselves). Usually that stuff is built into the motherboard, yet this is the early days of AT/baby-AT so may not. I have a few older cases from that era (286 to Pentium-II) that also had PCBs for a LED MHz display on the case, I miss them cool things on newer comps. Oh, if you didn't swap out that floppy drive for a new one later on, that same cleaning thing can be done to the front of the drive, Most drives have a removable front to let them be put into some OEM del/HP/Packard-bell/whatever cases that have built-in floppy drive bezels. some have tiny screws, others it's just a lift/push tab holding the front on. I tend to just be lazy and use windex on a paper towel to clean drive fronts before installing them, most of the time that's all it takes even with years of nicotine exposure.

[@romanbohdanov6644]

Sorry, but I had similar case with 80486DX2 PC motherboard by "Квазар-Мікро", but scrapped it in 2007 (because it was broken, not functioned)... Such two side riser card with ISA+PCI, so not so compartible with other motherboards as here. Very robust and hard device it was.

[@ChernobylFamily]

WOW! Thank you for sharing!

[@SobieRobie]

I would rather restore the motherboard instead of changing it for something else. Just for sake originality. BTW - maybe they desoldered the slots to put it on the riser?

[@ChernobylFamily]

We gonna fix original one as well, just the damage is too massive. One of commenters suggested that that was an OEM variant ordered specifically for this manufacturer.

[@SobieRobie]

This can be the case of course, they could order such mobos but I'm not sure about their manufacturing capacity. To make custom motherboard the MOQ was probably more like 1000 pcs not 100pcs.@@ChernobylFamily

[@andycristea]

I would love to see more about that power supply. Is there a video on it?

[@ChernobylFamily]

Yet no, but that PSU is the same as for Poisk-2 computer. So if we get one (and we will), there will be a video, and of course we will talk about that PSU as well.

[@andycristea]

@@ChernobylFamily Thanks! Awesome channel! 😁

[@GenaTrius]

You're telling me you can retr0brite with *just* cream developer? I thought it was a whole dang recipe! I have retr0brite?? Over there?? In my cupboard next to the butane???

[@ChernobylFamily]

Yes, you can if it is creamy and has a high concentration. But you absolutely must use film to avoid it getting dry. And UV. Pay attention so not to overexpose.

[@projects6371]

Wow this is another wounderful piece of technology which looked ahead at the time, I wonder how many are remaining?

[@ChernobylFamily]

Not really ahead :) I have seen i think 5 on sale during two years. Don't think however there were many of them produced.

[@ocudagledam]

Would we like to see the RBMK training software? Do you really need to ask?! :D I hope that you'll have luck sourcing the coprocessor. :)

[@ChernobylFamily]

You can't imagine how many times me and my wife heard that we should quit Chornobyl and finally find a normal job, so I am paranoid already :))))

[@alexloktionoff6833]

Yes, simply, a 74 trigger ic is 10 times cheaper than a good reliable bistable mechanical switch!

[@alexloktionoff6833]

But now i think, there are more features of 74 trigger: 1 74HC74 is 10x cheaper than a button with fixation 2 simple tactile button is somewhat more reliable - less mechanical stuff inside 3 you can define default turbo button state after reset ! let's say we want to boot in 'turbo mode' always 4 it becomes technically possible to toggle the '74hc74 button' from s/w !!! 5 the buttons become 100% debounced, so less glitches and more reliable PC mode switching

[@ChernobylFamily]

Hm.... interesting!

[@alexloktionoff6833]

and 5 the buttons become 100% debounced, so less glitches and more reliable PC mode switching@@ChernobylFamily

[@MikeLabauve]

I love your computer show. I live to see it. Looking to join your page

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thank you!

[@vitezslav.lindovsky]

Hi, total offtopic question: what are you using for recording of the "selfie" part of the video? I was wondering if it's a phone, guessing from the artifacts (moving wall). Yeah, nerdy question :))

[@ChernobylFamily]

Ah, that was such a background we used for a while, it would be steady if not our cat who needs to walk below. iPhone 12 Pro Max.

[@nuriqirimli6734]

Прикольно, яке це було диво. Воно ще називалося "ЭВМ", чи вже комп'ютер, не пом'ятаю?

[@ChernobylFamily]

Я думаю, "ПЕОМ", але це не точно. Все ж таки 1993, дуже ранній період. Хоча... чорт зна який в них був маркетинг. Найсмішніше, що сайт Інфорта в стилі веб 1.0 працював ще чи не до 2020. Але не пам'ятаю посилання.

[@nuriqirimli6734]

@@ChernobylFamily Оооо, стільки часу пройшло. Мені тоді було лише 28.

[@ChernobylFamily]

@@nuriqirimli6734 у 93 чи 2020 ?

[@nuriqirimli6734]

@@ChernobylFamily У 93-му.

[@HunterShows]

A few comments about the bleaching. 1. You didn't do the blanking plate, granted you don't have it installed, but yeah... 2. You didn't do the 5 1/4" drive bezel/lock, so that part is really yellowish... 3. The brand bezel, "INFORT" had a uniform dark blue color printing. Unfortunately the background yellowed, and unfortunately the pigment on the letters was damaged by the peroxide. I feel it's really tricky to do this correctly. The result looked quite nice, but seemingly something always goes wrong. How long did you wait until cleaning off the peroxide?

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thank you:) 1) it is not original 2) the thing is, I have somewhere a perfect grey one, so once I find it, I'll replace it 3) around 4 hours.

[@vegapiratradiovpr425]

эх... блок питания на кп934... шикарный комп. жаль нет фото фронтальной платы с двух сторон для реверс инженеринга...

[@ChernobylFamily]

Дякую! Пізніше розберу знову, зроблю схему тої плати - це хороша ідея.

[@vegapiratradiovpr425]

@@ChernobylFamily дуже дякую, це було б чудово!

[@CounterStriker013009]

If cant restoration the old PC, you can mod as modern PC for non e-waste :)

[@ChernobylFamily]

Very good idea.

[@СергейЛегуша-л9о]

Классно ! 🎉

[@ChernobylFamily]

Сам тащуся:)

[@mattsword41]

get rid of that battery from your new motherboard - it will leak - they are notorious!

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thank you for the advice!

[@Jkauppa]

how about a slim micro-atx/mini-itx suitcase laptop (1u thickness or so) with desktop parts, at max low profile expansion cards

[@ChernobylFamily]

That sounds really cool :)

[@Jkauppa]

btw, usually if you ask why something nonsense, its vanity for no other reason

[@Jkauppa]

if you are coding graphics, on cpu, try plane-ray distance to a bvh sphere, after screen x+y plane normalizations every intersection test is only a dot product, on the bvh from bfs grid top down structure (ray tracing culling, ray tracing but in raster manner), also supports 360 degree equilateral vr image rendering, same for lighting ray casting bounces

[@Jkauppa]

similar to a very fast quake, descent, duke 3d or wolfenstein engine, but its true 3d, not 2.5d

[@ChernobylFamily]

Thank you!

[@ayan.debnath]

How long you kept it under the sun?

[@ChernobylFamily]

~6h

[@160rpm]

Wait, Gerasimov made Tetris lol

[@ChernobylFamily]

Gerasimov adapted tetris for PC. Pazhytnov created it, but on Elektronica-60.

[@Uf1r]

Рідну материнку не викидайте. Краще вишліть мені, спробую прочистити. Там не факт що щось вмерло.

[@ChernobylFamily]

Без проблем! Напишіть на пошту, там є посилання на сторінці "про канал"

[@Uf1r]

@@ChernobylFamily Щось не бачу там електронки, тільки інста та патреон. Якщо є телега, то @volodymyrsir

[@belliduradespicio8009]

Imma be real with you, nobody's ever going to call it Chornobyl

[@ChernobylFamily]

Statistics, media and daily conversation with lots of foreigners prove different. Many years ago I heard a similar from some _ruzzians about "Kyiv". Aha...

[@srenhaandbk7904]

What is wrong with your eyes? :(

[@ChernobylFamily]

Too much stress and little sleep, we have air raids 3-6 times per day. Plus well, other things.

[@srenhaandbk7904]

@@ChernobylFamily Oh I'm sorry to hear that. I wish you all the best, amazing that you can still keep up and get a video out! Slava Ukrain :)

[@ChernobylFamily]

@@srenhaandbk7904 Thank you, my friend. Glory to Heroes!

[@Pizdatiy_Divan]

Ну хоча б на ньому 3-дшні досовські ігри підуть (а якщо ніт, то нащо гвалтувати того жмура, якщо воно тим паче було офісним? Я б щось покраще поставив у якості апгрейду, у мене заліза вистачає, але якщо це звичайна реконструкція, то тут апгрейд заради апгрейду, який майже нічого не змінить на цьому відео не зовсім проканає). От якщо поставити відносно сучасну материнську плату з Пеньком 3, або 4 на 487 сокеті, то я б на нього або лінуксу поставив, або вінду ХР, якщо в цьому є потреба такого апгрейду звичайно, і якщо ви будете звичайно ж ним користуватися на повсякденній основі.

[@ChernobylFamily]

Мені для Turbo C, я ж пояснив..) та й форм-фактор специфічний.