The ultimate Windows 3.1 laptop? Sellers behind Book 8088 are back with Pocket 386
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Perfect for checking your sbemails!
More seriously, there's a niche application I can think of: running and interfacing with ancient industrial equipment (completely offline and airgapped, of course).
More seriously, there's a niche application I can think of: running and interfacing with ancient industrial equipment (completely offline and airgapped, of course).
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I have a copy of Norton Ghost in my basement, provided the disks haven't perished.
I'd still recommend avoiding running Windows 95 on anything less than a 486 because it's pretty unbearable.
I'd still recommend avoiding running Windows 95 on anything less than a 486 because it's pretty unbearable.
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The creator of FreeDOS (a project which turns 30 on June 29th) just did a video on this device, and evidently it works well —>
View: https://youtu.be/2h96UseZs6Q?si=PhasquFSyqj6eC6o
He’s even provided an image of a compact flash card with FreeDOS already installed —> https://fosstodon.org/@freedosproject/112634529411378369
I’m very tempted by this system because I would then be able to run my copy of WordStar on real hardware
View: https://youtu.be/2h96UseZs6Q?si=PhasquFSyqj6eC6o
He’s even provided an image of a compact flash card with FreeDOS already installed —> https://fosstodon.org/@freedosproject/112634529411378369
I’m very tempted by this system because I would then be able to run my copy of WordStar on real hardware
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I wish there were benchmarks of this versus an actual 386 from that time. I'm curious if it is actually slower.
I had a 40MHz 386DX back in the day with 8MB of RAM. I remember it running Windows 95 fine. The main difference between the SX and the DX is that SX has a 16-bit external bus, which mostly leads to lower RAM throughput. They both operate at 32-bits internally though.
I'd bet the compact flash storage has significantly higher throughput and lower latencies than the hard drives of the 386 era too. Seek times were ~20ms, and throughput was only in the low single digit megabytes per second. CompactFlash has a latency of <1ms, and even an average card will have >100MB/sec of throughput, which is 10x faster than the RAM in the 386.
I had a 40MHz 386DX back in the day with 8MB of RAM. I remember it running Windows 95 fine. The main difference between the SX and the DX is that SX has a 16-bit external bus, which mostly leads to lower RAM throughput. They both operate at 32-bits internally though.
I'd bet the compact flash storage has significantly higher throughput and lower latencies than the hard drives of the 386 era too. Seek times were ~20ms, and throughput was only in the low single digit megabytes per second. CompactFlash has a latency of <1ms, and even an average card will have >100MB/sec of throughput, which is 10x faster than the RAM in the 386.
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I am more excited for this than the shiny new copilot plus PC's.
No copilot button is a very big selling feature for me.
No copilot button is a very big selling feature for me.
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At this rate, in a few years we will have a laptop that breaks 100 MHz and 16MB (or maybe even 32?) of ram!
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8MB is absolutely fine for W95, the 386SX wouldn't be a pleasant experience however, even at 40MHz. The reduced memory bandwidth really hurts performance. Win3.1 would run like a champ however on this hardware, and realistically any software that can run on a 386 would be compatible with Win3.1 anyway.
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I guess I don't understand the why at that price. Just thinking that if you are enough of a geek to want this, that you probably have a junk room with enough parts to build one (or know someone).
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It's neat and I'm honestly just a little tempted for the novelty but I know I would just fill it up with old games and then leave it to languish on a shelf after about a week. I mean if I really wanted to play any of those old games, I'd have already emulated them.
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That's exactly what it's for. Somewhere somebody has an MRI, a mass spec, a CNC or whatever that only has DOS or Win 3.1/95 drivers. The machine cost a million dollars new but the PC to plug its ISA card into has long expired. Machines like that tend to get passed down the industrial food chain - some fancy firm paid the $1m new, and then it got handed down a series of increasingly low budget companies until where it currently resides. This at least means that old lump can keep running, and with some modern creature comforts like CompactFlash not an elderly SCSI HDD.
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It brings back fond memories, but those are better left in the past. I would rather revisit those times with something like SKAL Against the Black Priory, which is a modern game with a retro style.
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W95 itself ran nicely on my AMD 386DX40. It was Wolfenstein that pushed me to upgrade to a 486 processor.
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Just like my first Panasonic laptop, monochrome (white on blue background).
When the 1MB HDD failed, they wanted over $1,000 for the spare.
When the 1MB HDD failed, they wanted over $1,000 for the spare.
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Is there a turbo button? I wish they kept that and 7 segment display from desktops of the era.
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I still have a Samsung NC10 from 2007 in a similar form factor with touchpad that runs XP and Linux
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Other than the aforementioned use as an interface with old lab machines (We're got some here still on XP), I don't understand the market
Recreations of Apple IIs or C64s I can understand since they're so limited you can actually understand them pretty much completely and there's some nostalgia from folks of my generation. But are there really people feeling nostalgic for Win3.x or 95?
Even lab machines I'd hesitate- just how sure are you of the quality of the communications ports? The reason people keep NMRs around is because they're really expensive to replace- I'm not sure I want to hook up a supercheap Temu PC to one.
Recreations of Apple IIs or C64s I can understand since they're so limited you can actually understand them pretty much completely and there's some nostalgia from folks of my generation. But are there really people feeling nostalgic for Win3.x or 95?
Even lab machines I'd hesitate- just how sure are you of the quality of the communications ports? The reason people keep NMRs around is because they're really expensive to replace- I'm not sure I want to hook up a supercheap Temu PC to one.
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This was exactly what I was thinking: I can remember in the late 2000s having supply issues for hardware that would work with legacy systems and software; a fleet of these would have been a godsend!
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Apparently, there are some book authors who do their writing in DOS because they want to avoid any unnecessary distractions. The author most famous for doing that is probably George R R Martin.
But to use this laptop for that would require that the keyboard is any good.
But to use this laptop for that would require that the keyboard is any good.
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Mungus the Unhyphenated
Ars Tribunus Militum
And ham radio operators / emergency services & communications folks who are often also ham radio operators. Old equipment, software, and software needed to run older equipment never really dies. It just gets traded around. Often because it just works when newer stuff goes on the fritz, and it's repairable/configurable without costing an arm and a leg.
Also see: Techs who work on old avionics and techs who work on 1990s-early 2000s vehicles. Including military surplus and emergency services stuff.
There's a lot of "forgotten" old tech out there that's anything but forgotten by the people who depend on it -- because newer didn't equal better when the new stuff wears out faster, or becomes a brick when licensed support turns the lights out -- and the devices that it supported.
And yeah, this is kind of tempting, because I have old ham radio software it can run and plans and schematics for devices I can build that it can control. It's likely to be a great tool for tinkering with tech that predates the Internet of (Shitty) Things.
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The workhorse of my first shop was a late 80's CNC punch. Super fast and reliable, but often ran into insufficient memory issues with auto generated G-code.
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I like the idea, it's kinda appealing for retrogaming.
But one thing I realized last year when I modded my Wii for retrogaming (I highly recommend it if you have one sitting around), was that while, say, Mario Kart 64 or Goldeneye were great games, what I enjoyed about them was being like 14 or 15 at my friend's house on a warm spring/summer day after school hanging out, playing games...
It's sorta like the Atari 2600+, that wood-grain box is trying more to be a time machine than a console. I salute them for their efforts and I am incredibly thankful that people are doing stuff like this, but I also kinda feel like it's important to remember the nostalgia aspect because there were good reasons later technology was such a BFD at the time as well.
But one thing I realized last year when I modded my Wii for retrogaming (I highly recommend it if you have one sitting around), was that while, say, Mario Kart 64 or Goldeneye were great games, what I enjoyed about them was being like 14 or 15 at my friend's house on a warm spring/summer day after school hanging out, playing games...
It's sorta like the Atari 2600+, that wood-grain box is trying more to be a time machine than a console. I salute them for their efforts and I am incredibly thankful that people are doing stuff like this, but I also kinda feel like it's important to remember the nostalgia aspect because there were good reasons later technology was such a BFD at the time as well.
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HuntingManatees
Smack-Fu Master, in training
There's a snarky comment in here about Martin perhaps not being the best spokesperson for productivity software, but he really has written quite a few words over his career.
Jokes aside, it's a solid idea. Didn't Douglas Adams have to be locked in a hotel room for about a month to finish one of the "Hitchhiker's" books in no small part because he was goofing off on his Mac all day instead of turning in drafts to his editor?
I recently rehabilitated an IBM Selectric II that a woman put out in a free pile on the sidewalk along with a bunch of other junk that had been cluttering up her basement -- in pristine condition aside from the lubricant having congealed during probably 30 years of disuse -- and writing without the temptation to compulsively tab over to a browser is, pleasantly and unsurprisingly, a much more focused experience. Now I have this fantasy of rigging a cheap portable scanner up to a giant Kerouac-style roll of paper and having a Raspberry Pi automatically OCR every line that comes out of the typewriter. . . .
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Also, when you mention hand-me-down MRIs, I also think developing or emerging market nations. A $200 laptop is...
So, I stopped typing that because I've been spending some time on projects with our IT team and yeah, medical IT makes Macguyver look like an amateur. If anything the inspiration for this could easily have been some MSF tech in East Timor.
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Not quite as old, but the same reason to need old equipment:
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